Beverly Gage and Lloyd Blankfein provide context before the episode pivots to the one-month Iran conflict, where President Trump faces criticism for launching an unconstitutional war without congressional approval. While Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claims decisive victories sinking 150 vessels, callers debate the strategy's financial risks, constitutional legality, and potential global economic collapse if the Strait of Hormuz closes. The discussion highlights deep divisions over executive overreach, domestic security threats, and whether this impulsive campaign serves U.S. strategic imperatives or merely distracts from other crises. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
Appearances
p
pete hegseth
admin02:10
Clips
b
beverly gage
00:22
d
david rubenstein
00:13
l
lloyd blankfein
00:27
Callers
joe in michigan
callers03:15
|
Speaker
Time
Text
Lloyd Blankfein's Streetwise Memoir00:02:40
unidentified
And prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, the Bancroft Prize in American History, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography.
Her most recent book is This Land is Your Land, a road trip through U.S. History.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
Now, when biographers spend five years, ten years, 15 years or so with a person, they often fall in love with them because they spend so much time with them.
Did you fall in love with J. Edgar Hoover or did you come away saying, geez, he's not as good as I thought or wished he was?
To me, I was just fascinated by him the whole time.
I thought that he was important, and I thought that he was really an interesting, complicated character.
We mostly know him as a villain, and I did find that he was much more complicated than that one-dimensional portrait.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Beverly Gage today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
On C-SPAN's Q&A, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, author of the memoir Streetwise, on his upbringing in public housing in Brooklyn, attending Harvard, and rising through the ranks of one of the world's largest investment banks.
He also talks about the 2008 financial crisis, which happened during his tenure as CEO, and the power and influence of Goldman Sachs executives within the U.S. government going back decades.
There's a lot of ex-Goldman people, so much so that there was a time, and this was meant as a pejorative, government sax, as if going into government service was a pejorative.
We took it as a compliment.
And then there were comments about revolving door, but our door didn't revolve.
We didn't hire from government.
Government hired from us because the ethic at Goldman and the people we hire tend to be service-minded.
unidentified
Lloyd Blankfein with his memoir Streetwise tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
And a very good Sunday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
We show you the lead story this morning.
President Drunk With Power00:15:14
unidentified
Again, at the one-month mark of the Iran war, this is from the New York Times, their lead headline, portrait of Trump at war, impulse and ultimatums.
They write in that story that although the Supreme Leader and many top military and intelligence leaders in Iran have been killed, the regime in Tehran remains in control.
Iran's leaders have all but sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, sending gas prices skyrocketing and rattling investors, and Iran retains control of the material it would need to produce a nuclear weapon, the main threat cited by Mr. Trump in taking the nation into war in the first place.
And the president's allies have always said that his unpredictability is his superpower and that it keeps his enemies guessing.
But they write, it also suggests an inconsistency of purpose that has led the president to keep shifting his goals, even as the risks of the war grow bigger by the day.
That is the front page story of the New York Times, how they describe the conflict at the one-month mark.
It was last week during a press conference at the Pentagon that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was talking about the Iranian war.
He was talking about how the news has described the war.
This is Pete Hegseth from the White House, not the Pentagon.
Never in recorded history has a nation's military been so quickly and effectively neutralized.
Operation Epic Fury is not an endless war.
It's a decisive campaign with clear objectives to destroy Iran's offensive military capabilities and ensure they never obtain a nuclear weapon.
This is stuff for the history books.
This is stuff for legacy.
Mr. President, you are acting now to ensure future generations do not have to live under the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
However, you wouldn't know it if you listened to the dishonest hate Trump media as you referenced.
The folks here in the room, these cameras, they have a choice.
You're either informing the American people of the truth or you're not.
Because I hear it from my people every day.
Behind every headline you write, there's a helicopter crew in the air.
And behind every news banner you write, there's a battalion on the move.
And behind every fake news story, there's an F-35 pilot executing a dangerous mission.
My message to the media is get it right.
This actually isn't something new to me.
I may be a young guy, Mr. President, but I'm not a rookie in this realm.
In 2007, in 2007, I helped lead the surge, the public fight for the Iraq surge.
Stood and watched people stand in the Senate and declare the war is lost before it even started.
Who was that?
It was Harry Reid.
That was the Democrats and the media working hand in glove.
Back then, it was three years into a war.
Now we're three weeks into an operation.
But see, unlike Iraq, this isn't a tie.
This is not parody.
This is not chaos.
This is success, pure American success on plan and, as the president said, ahead of pace.
Over 10,000 enemy targets destroyed.
Over 140, I think now you're right, Mr. President, over 150 naval vessels sunk, underground facilities destroyed, their defense industrial base in shambles.
And overnight, not only do they not have a Navy, Mr. President, they no longer have a Navy commander.
IRGC's Navy commander was killed overnight in Operation.
So no Navy, no Navy leader.
unidentified
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday from the White House at the Pentagon.
This is the latest.
This is the lead story in today's Washington Post.
The Pentagon is making ready for weeks of ground operations.
The headline, if approved, there's a raft of risks for American troops, targeted raids in Iran, sources say, but no full invasion.
That's the Washington Post headline this Sunday morning.
Talking to you this morning, getting your thoughts on the Iran conflict one month into that conflict.
Marvin's up first out of Philadelphia.
Line for Democrats.
Marvin, good morning.
What are your thoughts?
My thought is you got to look at what kind of war they fighting.
Iran ain't fighting no war of destroy, destroyed, destroyed.
They fighting the financial war.
And right now, with the way the gas prices has gone and everything that's going up, the world is feeling it.
And as well as Desert Storm, shortly after that, we went into a real bad depression.
Now, my thing is that I wonder, will the same thing happen after this little war that we fight?
And then another thing is that the president didn't even go to Congress to find out why we're over there.
He didn't send people over there to check that they actually have nuclear capability.
You know, he did all this on the fly, you know.
But the one thing that I pray for as American is for our president and America.
Because right now, everything is looking kind of drifty here.
And he's putting a lot of weight on the American people's back.
And my thing is that if you trace the money, I still think you're getting paid off for this war.
Marvin, can I ask you?
You used the term this little war.
Why is it a little war, and what would make it a big war?
Well, we'll make it a big war when they land down there and try to take that island.
Ground troops, you're saying.
Yeah, because the Iranians is set up and they're ready for it.
I'm saying, I don't think the president thought this war out.
I think that he thinks that he can do everything on his own, that he can make up his own decisions in mind.
You got to get specialists in everything to be a good leader, and you got to listen to all these people and then come up with a conclusion.
If you would have come up with a conclusion, they might have wouldn't have taken the straits of Amuse.
Now they got another power, you know, another weapon.
Now they know that, because now they ask them, when they do, if they do make any peace talks, let them take over the Strait of Amuse and let people pay taxes to get through there.
So that means anytime they want, they can.
Hello?
Go ahead and finish your thought, Marvin.
Anytime they want, they can shut down the Strait of Amuse when they get mad or not.
Marvin, thanks for the call from Philadelphia this morning.
Lita's next out of New Mexico.
It's Albert Kirkey, Republican.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call, and thank you so much for your program.
I learned a lot.
I didn't realize we had built 17 bases in Greenland, and I know that was ages ago, not really ages, decades ago.
But at any rate, I learned so much.
Thank you so much.
Callers are wonderful.
Some of them really should obey laws.
What do you think about the Iran conflict that we are now one month into?
I pray for our military all the time.
I pray for Israel.
I pray for Iran because there are wonderful people in Iran that are being killed by their leaders that are not worthy to lead.
But at any rate, I pray for this world.
And thank you, C-SPAN.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, callers who call and obey the laws.
There aren't that many C-SPAN Washington Journal laws.
No laws here, just some guidelines on how to make this program work.
That's Lida in Albuquerque.
This is Carl in Chicago on that line for current and former military.
Carl, go ahead.
Yes, I'm 92 years old.
I was overseas in the Air Force for four years.
The Iranian war was poorly planned.
It's likely to I don't see how it can be resolved and the Hormuz, the Straits of Hormuz opened again, and anytime soon, it's going to be a major tragedy for most of the for a very exceeding period of time.
It's it evolved in a totally wrong way.
I happen to be stationed in the Philippines.
I just read that the whole Philippines transportation system depends so much on diesel fuel that they cannot have now that it's virtually bringing their economy to a halt.
I think that the war in Iran, Trump will do anything to keep the focus off of Epstein and the Epstein files.
What I think is all the files should be released and let the truth come out because obviously he's hiding something and he'll go to any length to have his way.
Not only that, I don't think he's too brave a person.
Thank you.
unidentified
It's Mike.
This is Timbo, Mountain Home, Arkansas, Republican.
I want to complain that Iran on the 21st almost hit 65 years of accumulated plutonium at the exact center of the seven occupied continents.
The reactor that they tried to bomb is situated on the Dead Sea fault line in the caldera of the Mount Zion supervolcano, and it's called by many names.
unidentified
So, David, help me understand where you're going with this.
Iran was trying to bomb the Demona Israel weapons reactor, and there's 65 years of accumulated plutonium there at the exact center of the seven continents.
The inventory is called is the A-bomb and nation of desolation, the atomic reactor core of thick evidence, the crucible fish and story of Jesus, Hitler's Plutonium Sun bomb, the final solution.
Well, you know, that justified what I thought about that call.
I mean, I don't want to be rude to people or callers.
I've caught many years once a month.
I spent many years in the service, commander of five-man ops, Navy SEAL team.
Most of my career was in the Mideast.
This is the most successful war in the history of right, and it is, and it's beneficial to not just our country, the world.
They are monsters.
Iran for 47 years, and all the homas, all these proxies, all this money and bombing, what was it, 3,700 when they went into Israel.
That was all funded by Iran.
You go back to Bay of 400 Marines killed.
This goes on for 40 since Jimmy Carter to now.
And now, I believe our last six, seven Oslo murders in our country that were terrorist attacks.
They almost all cavada, every one of them, wearing it, saying it right when they're shooting at everybody.
Now we have them here.
unidentified
Can I ask you, the first call today was saying that Donald Trump didn't go to Congress and make the case for this war.
And the Washington Post, in their write-up about the one-month mark of this conflict, they touch on that point.
In their story, they write, the president chose to launch the war without first making the case to the American public or to Congress, which they said perhaps contributed to the absence of a rally around the flag moment that many wartime presidents see.
That's, again, the Washington Post today and they're write-up.
Do you think that might have something to do with it?
Do you think there has been an absence of a rally-round the flag moment for this particular conflict?
When they blow their own bodies up with bombs on them, I've seen it with little kids that they send out and blow up.
They mean it when they say Satan obliviate America, not just Israel, us, the whole world.
They'll go all over the world doing this.
You look at these extremists.
unidentified
Got your point.
That's Ed in Ohio.
Maureen is in Mobile, Alabama.
Independent, good morning.
You're next.
Oh, good morning.
Thank you for giving us a chance to use our voice to give our opinion.
I think everything about this spells an impending disaster.
The fact that Trump ran on a central platform of stopping wars and not starting any new wars, I think he needs to go to Congress and get the authority to continue with this plan of his, which seems half-baked.
I have a cousin and a granddaughter that are serving in the military right now.
And I think that Trump has put our military in harm's way when he alone, in his own life, was a draft Dodger five times.
I don't think that he and his Secretary of Defense or War Department really have an understanding of war.
They're playing a dangerous game.
Trump Puts Military In Harm's Way00:12:52
unidentified
I feel like our president is drunk with power.
And the fact that his emissaries in the Middle East is some real estate buddy and his son-in-law, there's so much that seems wrong with this decision.
And if he does put troops on the ground in Iran, I feel like four weeks could easily turn into four years.
We have violence and war just spreading throughout the world.
And under this administration, he's making things worse.
And it's becoming normalized.
The violence, the bullying talk, and the swagger of Pete Hegset and the whole administration is an outrage.
And I hope that cooler minds can prevail so that our young people won't die in this conflict that's fastly accelerating into something that's maybe beyond control.
That's Maureen in Mobile, Alabama.
It's about 7.15 on the East Coast, taking your calls this morning in this first segment of the Washington Journal on the one-month mark of the Iran conflict.
202748-8,000 for Democrats, 202748-8001 for Republicans.
Independents, it's 202-748-8002.
And if your current or former military, 202748-8003, a line we've set aside for you, we're also checking in on various op-eds in newspapers around the country, not just the major papers here on the East Coast.
We showed you the Washington Post and the New York Times this morning.
This is from the Colorado Sun.
Mike Litwin is the columnist there.
This is just the first couple graphs of his piece today on the Iran war.
The war in Iran is now a month old.
Happy birthday question mark, he writes.
And we're either on the verge of a negotiated end to the war or the beginning of a dangerous ground war that would almost certainly put many more Americans in peril, or neither.
If you don't know, and I certainly don't, that's because just guessing here, Donald Trump doesn't know either.
Mike Litwin writes, which is scary.
I mean, you've got to want to be a dictator who doesn't feel the need to consult Congress, who didn't feel the need to consult NATO, but then lambasted the alliance for not helping, whose mood and actions can be determined by which person he last saw on TV in charge of a war of choice that should never have been chosen.
Mike Litwin in his column today, if you want to read it, Colorado Sun.
This is Ann out of Philly.
Good morning, Line for Democrats.
Good morning.
I agree with the last caller, Maureen.
And our troops are in peril if they put them on the ground.
It has been said, coming out of Iran, that they are waiting for them to arrive on the shores and come and do a land battle there.
They're waiting for us.
And I feel that they're walking into a trap.
The war is unconstitutional.
And they can, you know, he can, he even said, you know, he called it a war the other day.
And he, you know, said they don't want him, you know, calling it a war.
But it is, in fact, a war.
They're claiming that they, you know, have annihilated or decimated the obliterated, I'm sorry, all this stuff last summer.
And that wasn't true, or it was true.
Who knows?
We can't trust this president's words.
And, you know, his actions are what matters.
And it's just, it's horrible.
It just really is.
It's Ann in Philadelphia.
This is Bobby in Florida.
That line for current and former military.
Go ahead.
Yes, good morning.
I guess in response to your question, I have to say I have a feeling that I don't even belong in this country anymore.
I watch TV coverage.
I see protesters running down the streets carrying flags of countries that are our enemy, that hate us, irrespective of anything we do.
They, meaning the protesters, are in the streets rioting and calling Trump a king and everything else that you can imagine.
I just have a feeling that we have, over the past 40 years, have lost the country.
I came out of Vietnam.
I had a feeling then that I was returning home to a strange place.
And over the years, that feeling has been confirmed.
Bobby, did you see that?
Did you see any of the no kings rallies that took place yesterday where you were in Florida?
I saw it on TV.
I didn't see it.
I didn't witness it in person, no.
But CNN And the other channels proudly displayed as much of it as they could possibly jam in on us.
I fully expect to have Wolf Blitzer standing on the streets and Tehran announcing that America has lost the war, just mimicking Walter Cronkite and his pronouncement in Vietnam that ruined the whole damn thing.
Anyway, keep it up, Seek Sam.
Bobby, appreciate that from Florida.
Coming back to those protests, we showed you a picture just a second ago.
This is from the Washington Post coverage here in D.C., some 3,300 rallies across all 50 states.
But the picture there were demonstrators from that No Kings rally here in D.C. marching across the Memorial Bridge.
That's the bridge across the Potomac River that connects the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington Cemetery sitting on the Virginia side of that bridge, right at the other end of that bridge.
The marchers there on the front page of the New York Times, the headline that they went with this morning, they asked, will the primal scream of no kings echo in the voting booths?
Their story, their coverage of it this morning.
This is John in Princeton, New Jersey, Independent.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for this opportunity.
Seeing what I'm seeing now, I'm actually worried a lot about protection of the United States itself.
I think we've made a lot of enemies and I have very little confidence now that we're prepared and staffed to intervene and prevent terrorism in the USA.
We've been through that a few times.
I actually was in the air at 9-11.
I had to land in Denver.
This could easily happen again.
And I really am concerned about whether the FBI is up to protecting the country internally.
It doesn't take a lot of people to do some horrible things here.
I just don't see where this war is going.
John, on protecting the homeland, your thoughts on this, the shutdown at partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, looks like it's going to be going on for a bit longer, even though the president signed that executive order that would pay some of the TSA agents.
But this partial shutdown, and there's a whole lot of agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, looks like it's going to go at least for another week or two since the House and Senate can't seem to agree on legislation to reopen the agency.
That's pretty terrifying.
But on top of that, Homeland Security is aimed inward rather than at external threats, which Iran must have people thinking about doing that here, doing some damage here.
That's a big worry.
I don't think this move is going to stand up well when historians get to it, get to figuring out what it all meant.
John, in terms of preparing for what's next, the Pentagon has asked Congress for some $200 billion that they say would help replenish stockpiles of munitions, many of which have been drained in this conflict.
Do you think that's something, even amid the shutdown fight at DHS, do you think that $200 billion war supplemental is something Congress should pass?
I think we have to replenish our arms.
We've made a lot of enemies, but like I said, I'm worried about short term.
In the next year, we could be in this big political mess we're in.
Think we could be vulnerable to domestic terrorism and some serious damage done in the U.S. That's about all I could say.
That's John in Princeton to our line for current former military, Charles Fort Lee, New Jersey.
You're up.
Good morning.
I'm a multi-decorated Vietnam veteran.
I'm 85 years old.
I have three master's degrees as well in counseling.
And I would like to suggest the following.
So long as the president keeps troops not going to Iran, I'm for him.
I don't want to confuse many people's hatred for Trump and what he's doing in this war.
This, to me, is a righteous war in that this has been going on with these mullahs literally since 632 when Muhammad died.
It's been a struggle between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
The Shiites want to dominate the world and basically destroy everybody else.
I would suggest if the president knocked off a couple of very prominent sites in which people pray, he would get them to come to the bargaining table.
Charles, you think that the president should target religious sites?
I just wanted to show that he means business.
I think this would get them to come to the bargaining table.
They literally want to kill everybody and the world.
And I don't know that people really understand that.
Charles, do you think doing that would cast this war into a religious war and everything that comes with that?
No, no.
They are religious.
But I'm trying to say, they are so fervently religious that they would come to the bargaining table.
Of course, anything they do is just going to be temporary.
And I think we really should understand that.
Trump may win this war, so to speak, by getting them to the bargaining table.
But that's what war is all about.
Wars are temporary kinds of events.
I don't know that we'll see a war like World War I or World War II again, but this is a temporary event that they are concerned with their survival, their domination of the world.
And if we can sort of get them to accept the fact that they're not going to dominate the world, maybe, well, this man is president.
Well, that sort of puts it off for two or three or four years.
It's been put off now for 47 years.
And I just see the fact that they are bombing the Sunnis in these other countries should tell you something.
They hate Sunnis because they really felt as if they should be in charge of the religion.
Got your point.
That's Charles out of Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Bombing Sunnis Reveals Hate00:01:12
unidentified
Coming back to some of the op-eds on the one-month anniversary of this conflict, this is Ani Chikavadez-Vadzi in the Washington Examiner writing this morning, a strain of commentary prevalent on both the isolationist right and anti-interventionalist left insists on framing the military campaign against Iran as Israel's war.
The claim is convincing in its simplicity and serves a recognizable political function.
It feeds a broader campaign to demonize Western power and delegitimize its exercise.
It's also wrong, she writes.
The confrontation with Tehran reflects America and Western imperatives that would demand attention even if Israel vanished from the map tomorrow.
Start with the nuclear question, she writes.
A nuclear-armed Iran would pose a direct strategic challenge to the United States.
It would transform the balance of power across the Middle East and it would trigger a U.S. response.
The story, the op-ed from the Washington Examiner, if you want to read more.
This is Carol in St. Louis, Missouri.
Democrat, good morning.
You're next.
Good morning.
What I was thinking is when they send our troops over,