Washington Journal Open Forum addresses a record 44-day partial government shutdown, where House Republicans rejected bipartisan DHS funding, prompting Speaker Mike Johnson to dismiss the bill as a joke while Senator James Lankford defends unpaid federal workers. The discussion escalates with caller Mark proposing a controversial strategy of deploying troops and dropping 30 megabombs on Iran before demanding their departure, linking potential conflict to President Trump's broader geopolitical strategy against BRICS nations to protect dollar dominance. Ultimately, the segment juxtaposes these aggressive military proposals with concerns over asymmetrical resistance and concludes by noting the President and First Lady joining Christians in prayer during Holy Week. [Automatically generated summary]
One is before we put ground troops in there, we ought to drop, ask all good people of Iran to leave the country and then just drop about 30 mega bombs on a thing and just flatten the whole thing and then go in with our troops and they would be safe.
The second point I'd like to make is that the people that are always crying about somebody going to die and of our troops in the country, they never compare it to the 70 million babies that the Democrats have killed in this country in our abortion clinics.
That's where the death loss really is in our country.
And that would solve Social Security problems if we hadn't killed all our babies and they would be working and producing and we'd have all our great-great-grandchildren to take care of us.
And the third thing is the religion that these people hold in the country of Iran is to bring everybody in submission.
And you can see that even in their practical life, how they take women and if they don't wear their headdress or they speak up or anything like that, they take them and beat them so bad their bodies are almost like hamburger.
So we can't expect any mercy from them.
They're set.
They believe that they have the right to lie to anybody.
All right, Mark, let me actually turn to something else that we're tracking this morning, of course, is the partial government shutdown that continues because they did not pass any resolution over the weekend before senators went on recess.
The headline from NBC here is: DHS funding lapse is now the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
The partial shutdown, the rest of the federal government, is being funded, excuse me, hit a record on the 44th day, Sunday.
If you just scroll down a little bit, it says the ongoing funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security crossed into new territory Sunday when it became the longest partial government shutdown in history.
Now, on its 44th day, it breaks previous record when the department and the rest of the federal government went without funding from October until mid-November.
This time around the rest of the federal agencies and departments are funded.
Negotiations to reopen DHS were dealt a major setback Friday after House Republicans voted to pass a short-term funding bill that has no viable path in the Senate.
That came hours after the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to fund all of DHS except immigration and customs enforcement and customs and border protection.
House GOP leadership rejected the bill with Speaker Mike Johnson calling it a joke.
Now, yesterday, back on Meet the Press, Republican Senator James Lankford spoke about the House and Senate Republicans not being on the same page when it comes to DHS funding.
It seems like Republicans are not on the same page here, but let me ask you big picture because you're a member of both the Homeland Security and Intelligence Committees.
Federal officials have been warning about the war with Iran creating a heightened threat environment in this country.
Republicans are in charge of all three branches of government.
Given that and the strain on airport security caused by this shutdown, is air travel and airport security safe right now.
That was Senator Lankford talking about the shutdown.
Now, of course, both the Senate and the House have gone on a two-week recess.
There is no expectation at the moment that they would come back to vote to reopen the government.
Helen from Long Beach, California, a Republican.
Good morning, Helen.
It's open forum.
You can talk about whatever you'd like.
unidentified
Oh, morning.
Yeah, I'm going to piggyback on your last speaker about the troops, 50,000 being moved into Iran.
And what I was hearing your speaker say, she was reflecting a lot of accuracy.
My question is, well, not my question, but my thought is on this issue: is Trump wants to deal with China, especially on the terrorist.
And he's also wanting to break this new, it's called the New Development Bank.
And its primary members are Russia, China, Brazil, India.
And Iran was about to become a member of this bank, and it's thriving.
It's doing very well.
And it's working with second, third world countries to bring up their quality of life, parity in the economic world, instead of the U.S. global dollar controlling it all.
Anyway, I think Trump's main reason for invading Iran is to knock out Iran, which is a major ally of Russia and China and also North Korea.
And I think he's trying to do what he did in Venezuela, which was also a strong ally of China.
So I'm kind of going, going into it, some might seem kind of circular in what I'm seeing, but this has to do with economics.
This has to do with Trump maintaining U.S. global dollar, his investments, U.S.-Israel investments.
But now, when she mentioned asymmetrical warfare, this is what I've been reading.
It's horizontal, asymmetrical.
It's what is happening, it's the Arab world, the Muslim world may come to Iran's rescue regardless of prior alliances with the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and so forth.
What does not look good for U.S.?
I keep going back to Vietnam, and we didn't win that war, and it was protracted, went nowhere, and caused many senseless deaths.
And I'm wondering if Trump is too arrogant to realize he's not going to walk into this region and knock it out like he did Venezuela.
So, anyway, new development bank.
It was also known primarily, it was also known previously as BRICS, B-R-I-C-S Development Bank.
In this holy week, President Trump and the First Lady are joining in prayer with Christians celebrating the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.