CSPAN - Washington Journal 04/05/2026
Aired: 2026-04-05
Duration: 03:00:58


=== Religion Gaining Influence in 2024 (04:31) ===

[00:00:00]  On Washington Journal this morning, along with your calls and comments live, Republican strategist Chris Johnson and Democratic strategist Lucy Caldwell will be on to talk about Campaign 2026, the political impact of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, and the political news of the week.
[00:00:16]  And then Brookings Institution Foreign Policy Fellow Asla Eidentashbosh will join us with the latest on the Iran conflict, including the U.S. effort to open the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:00:26]  C-SPAN's Washington Journal is next.
[00:00:28]  Join the conversation.
[00:00:39]  Good morning.
[00:00:40]  It's Sunday, April 5th, 2026.
[00:00:43]  Many around the world are celebrating Easter this Sunday, including the first American Pope, who delivered his first Easter Mass as Pope earlier today at the Vatican.
[00:00:53]  Here in the United States, political leaders in Congress and the White House are pushing for a greater role of religion in politics and policy.
[00:01:02]  That's our topic this morning.
[00:01:04]  What do you think of the role of religion in public life?
[00:01:08]  If you think there's too much, you can call 202-748-8000.
[00:01:12]  If you think there's not enough, that's 202-748-8001.
[00:01:18]  And if you think there's the right amount, 202-748-8002.
[00:01:23]  If you'd like to text us, that number is 202-748-8003.
[00:01:28]  Please be sure to include your name and where you're writing in from.
[00:01:32]  We're also on social media at facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
[00:01:39]  Now, there has been some recent polling on the role of religion in public life.
[00:01:44]  This is polling from Pew Research.
[00:01:46]  Actually, excuse me, this is from last year, but it does give us a sense of the role of religion in public life, according to polls from Pew Research.
[00:01:54]  So, from February 2024 to February of 2025, there was a sharp rise in the share of U.S. adults who say religion is gaining influence in American life.
[00:02:07]  While this remains a minority view, it is increasingly held by adults across several demographic groups with gains of at least 10 percentage points among Democrats and Republicans, adults in every age category, and most large religious groups.
[00:02:22]  The survey also finds that in recent years, a growing share of the public takes a positive view of religion's role in society.
[00:02:31]  In a February 2024 Pew Research Center poll, 18% of adults said religion was gaining influence in American life.
[00:02:39]  That was the lowest level we'd seen in more than two decades.
[00:02:42]  A year later, in a February 2025 survey, 31% of U.S. adults said religion was gaining influence in American life, the highest figure we've seen in 15 years.
[00:02:54]  To be sure, most Americans continue to say that religion's role in society is declining, but the share who take this position fell sharply from 80% in 2024 to 68% in 2025.
[00:03:07]  Now, going a bit further in terms of how people feel about this shift of religion in public life, 59% of U.S. adults express a positive view of religion's influence on American life, either saying that religion's influence is growing and this is good, or they say that religion's influence is declining and this is bad.
[00:03:28]  20% express a negative view, either saying that religion's influence is growing and this is bad, or they say that religion's influence is declining and that this is good.
[00:03:40]  Now, as I mentioned earlier, Pope Leo in the Vatican did give his Easter homily earlier today and spoke about various things.
[00:03:50]  Here's reporting on that from the Associated Press.
[00:03:53]  Pope Leo marks his first Easter as pontiff with a call for hope amid global conflicts.
[00:04:00]  Pope Leo celebrated his first Easter Mass as pontiff with a call on Sunday to exercise hope against the violence of war that kills and destroys, saying, We need this song of hope today as conflicts spread around the world.
[00:04:15]  Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, addressed the faithful from an open-air altar in St. Peter's Square flanked with white roses, while the steps leading down to the piazza where the faithful gathered were filled with spring perennials, symbolically resonating with the Pope's message of hope.

=== Wicked War Against Justice (03:50) ===

[00:04:32]  And with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in its second month and Russia's ongoing campaign in Ukraine, Leo has repeatedly called for a halt in hostilities.
[00:04:40]  In his Easter homily, the Pope singled out those who wage war, abuse the weak, and prioritize profit.
[00:04:49]  Many have viewed these comments by the Pope as a direct attack on the Trump administration, which in various ways has sought to imbue religion into various aspects of the work that they're doing.
[00:05:03]  The Washington Post has reporting about this, saying, Invoking faith in wartime, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, breaks norms and worries critics.
[00:05:15]  The Defense Secretary is upending decades-old norms, current and former leaders say, with some cautioning that his proselytizing violates the Constitution and undermines troop cohesion.
[00:05:27]  In that Washington Post article, among other things, it says, Long-time norms are being upended by the proselytizing Christian campaign of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, say multiple former high-ranking military officials and experts on religion and law.
[00:05:43]  Rather than boosting cohesion through a more universal spiritual uplift, they say the new approach violates the Constitution and undermines the bonds of mutual respect between troops that are essential, especially in wartime.
[00:06:00]  Now, last year, Defense Secretary Hegseth started a monthly Christian worship at the Pentagon, and at a survey service last week, which was the first service since the war in Iran began, Hegseth recited a prayer that he said was read by a military chaplain to the troops who conducted that raid to capture then President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.
[00:06:23]  Here's a portion of those comments: Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous.
[00:06:43]  Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly.
[00:06:48]  By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish.
[00:06:51]  Let their bulls go down to slaughter.
[00:06:54]  For their day has come, the time of their punishment.
[00:06:57]  Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.
[00:07:03]  Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence.
[00:07:09]  Surround them as a shield.
[00:07:10]  Protect the innocent and blameless in their midst.
[00:07:13]  Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed.
[00:07:18]  Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.
[00:07:24]  Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.
[00:07:35]  Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse, that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them.
[00:07:46]  For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.
[00:07:53]  We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings.
[00:08:00]  And amen.
[00:08:02]  Amen.
[00:08:03]  And may the righteous be as bold as a lion.
[00:08:06]  May we pray such prayer for our men and women in harm's way right now to think that such Americans exist on our behalf on behalf of the American people.
[00:08:18]  And that is certainly our prayer for them today.

=== Too Much Religion Divides Us (05:18) ===

[00:08:22]  Once again, our question this morning is about the role of religion in public life.
[00:08:27]  If you think there's too much, the number is 202-748-8000.
[00:08:32]  If you think there's not enough, 202-748-8001.
[00:08:35]  And if you think there's a right amount, 202-748-8002.
[00:08:40]  Let's look at some comments we've received via text and social media.
[00:08:43]  This one from Facebook.
[00:08:45]  Jim says, the United States was founded under Judeo-Christian values, and it's pretty obvious as a society that we have lost our way.
[00:08:54]  Politicians might want to take some time to bring back Christian values.
[00:09:00]  And then Deb says, Hegseth, this is the Defense Secretary, is out of control.
[00:09:06]  Mike says, who's religion?
[00:09:08]  And yes, there's far too much of people using religion for their own agendas and greed.
[00:09:16]  And then Kathy says, there is not enough when it comes to religion and public life.
[00:09:22]  Let's hear from Melvin in Richmond, Virginia, on our line for folks who think that there is too much religion in public life.
[00:09:29]  Good morning, Melvin.
[00:09:31]  Good morning, Kimberly.
[00:09:33]  Thank you for taking my call.
[00:09:35]  Kimberly, may you live long and now, Kimberly, of course, I'm calling in on this line because I do not believe in religion.
[00:09:48]  I believe that religion is just another thing that we have in life that is set up to divide us and to control us.
[00:09:58]  You know, you would think that in 2026 that we have passed the concept of some kind of God in the sky who controls us all, who hears everything that we say and do, when really it's just another, religion is just another organization to raise money.
[00:10:25]  Because that's what it's really all about.
[00:10:28]  It's, you know, you go to church and they put on a little show for you and you give them some money and you believe that what the guy out there who's running the show, the Reverend your pastor or whatever his title is, it's all a con game.
[00:10:48]  Just like politics, they always tell you, don't discuss religion or politics.
[00:10:53]  And the reason why is because they are con games, both of them.
[00:10:58]  And so that's why I don't believe in any of these religious things and it's God and any of that stuff.
[00:11:07]  All right.
[00:11:08]  Next up is Arthur in Florida, who says there's not enough religion in politics and policy.
[00:11:14]  Good morning, Arthur.
[00:11:16]  How's it going?
[00:11:18]  Well, thank you.
[00:11:20]  And yes, we have got to realize our laws in this nation was based on morality.
[00:11:30]  And basically it is going to be very difficult to have any kind of morality without an influence of religion.
[00:11:40]  You look back at how our nation started based on the people's understanding of the Christian religion.
[00:11:53]  Okay.
[00:11:54]  What do you think, though, that the modern politicians and our modern systems should do when it comes to the role of religion in public life?
[00:12:03]  I believe that they should have a respect for religion and that people who believe that people don't want to believe in God, I can't force them to do that.
[00:12:18]  But we need to have respect for people who want to believe in God.
[00:12:26]  All right.
[00:12:27]  Well, this has come up not just amongst Republicans, but also amongst Democrats, including the Democrat James Tallarico, who's running for office in Texas.
[00:12:38]  And in January, Texas Democratic State Representative James Tallarico appeared on the Ezra Klein show.
[00:12:46]  He's the Democrats nominee for Texas Senate, the seat held by John Conron, who faces a runoff challenge from A.G. Ken Paxton.
[00:12:56]  But here, Tallarico, who's a Presbyterian seminarian and the grandson of a Baptist preacher, discusses his views on dogma, abortion, homosexuality, as well as the priorities of the religious right.
[00:13:09]  Let's listen.
[00:13:10]  Almost every debate Jesus is in is with the religious authorities of his time and challenging, directly challenging, orthodoxy.
[00:13:19]  So I do think this is, you know, Jesus was a religious reformer.
[00:13:22]  Paul was a religious reformer.
[00:13:24]  And so I think when we're at our best as Christians, we are challenging religious dogmas and religious supremacy.
[00:13:32]  But, you know, I also try to come at this with humility.
[00:13:36]  On the issue of abortion, I've said before, I don't know what Jesus thought about abortion.

=== Mixing Faith With Public Life (15:16) ===

[00:13:40]  The Bible doesn't tell us.
[00:13:41]  The Bible doesn't mention abortion at all.
[00:13:43]  And so, as with many issues that aren't mentioned in the Bible, we have to take scripture and we've got to try to piece together what we think is what love demands of us on a particular policy question.
[00:13:57]  And you're right, for the past 50 years in this country, the religious right, a political movement, convinced a lot of Christians in America that the two most important issues were abortion and homosexuality.
[00:14:12]  Two issues that aren't really discussed in scripture.
[00:14:17]  Abortion is never mentioned.
[00:14:18]  Consensual same-sex relationships are never mentioned.
[00:14:22]  And so it's remarkable to me that you have an entire political movement using Christianity to prioritize two issues that Jesus never talked about.
[00:14:35]  And so I'm not saying they're not important.
[00:14:38]  I actually think both of those issues are very important.
[00:14:41]  But to focus on those two things, instead of feeding the hungry and healing the sick and welcoming the stranger, three things we're told to do ad nauseum in scripture, to me is just mind-blowing.
[00:14:55]  Once again, our question is about the role of religion in public life.
[00:14:59]  If you think there's too much, not enough, or the right amount.
[00:15:04]  Taking a slight detour, though, we do have a comment on Facebook from Carolyn saying, happy Easter.
[00:15:10]  Our airmen is home safe.
[00:15:12]  Thank you, Lord.
[00:15:13]  Referencing, as he is reported in the New York Times, that the U.S. has rescued a downed Air Force officer deep inside Iran, Trump says.
[00:15:22]  An Air Force officer of an F-15E strike eagle shot down on Friday by Iran spent a day in hostile territory with little more than a pistol for protection.
[00:15:33]  An Air Force officer whose fighter jet had been shot down in Iran was rescued by U.S. Special Forces in a risky Saturday night mission that took commandos deep into enemy territory, President Trump said on a social media early on Sunday.
[00:15:47]  The rescue followed a life or death race between U.S. and Iranian forces that stretched over two days to reach the injured airman, who is a weapons systems officer.
[00:15:57]  Current and former U.S. officials said, in the end, Navy SEAL Team 6 commandos extracted the officer in a massive operation that involved hundreds of special operations troops and other military personnel.
[00:16:10]  There were no U.S. casualties among the rescue team.
[00:16:13]  Mr. Trump said all the commandos and the weapons officer returned safely.
[00:16:18]  A senior U.S. military officer said.
[00:16:20]  Rescue planes flew the injured airmen to Kuwait for medical treatment.
[00:16:26]  Now, back to our topic of the morning about the role of religion in public life.
[00:16:31]  Emily says on Facebook, there should be zero religion in government.
[00:16:36]  Keep your beliefs to yourself.
[00:16:39]  Georgie says, I want people to personally believe how they choose, but I want it out of my government.
[00:16:46]  Patty says the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has posted a Christian message on its Facebook page.
[00:16:53]  That is inappropriate.
[00:16:54]  We need to keep religion and government separate.
[00:16:58]  And Matthew says, there's not enough.
[00:17:01]  Our society has declined tremendously without the Bible and prayer in schools.
[00:17:06]  Without it, we have seen an increase in violence, people blaming the objects rather than the perpetrators, perversion, pride, potheads, mental illness, suicide hotlines, fatherless homes, sanctuaries for lawbreakers, and gender dysphoria.
[00:17:20]  When the truth is rejected, garbage is the only thing left to embrace.
[00:17:25]  And again, if you would like to send us a social media post or a text, the text number is 202-748-8003.
[00:17:33]  We're also on Facebook at facebook.com slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
[00:17:38]  Now back to your calls about the role of religion in public life.
[00:17:42]  Michael in Michigan says there's not enough.
[00:17:44]  Good morning, Michael.
[00:17:46]  Yes.
[00:17:47]  Good morning.
[00:17:49]  Yes, there isn't enough for religion in life.
[00:17:52]  There isn't enough understanding of what religion is.
[00:17:56]  Religion is a way of life.
[00:17:58]  Worship is the cornerstone of religion.
[00:18:02]  Hello, can you hear me?
[00:18:03]  Yes, we can hear you.
[00:18:04]  Go ahead, please.
[00:18:05]  Okay, yeah, look, religion, the cornerstone of religion is worship.
[00:18:12]  But that worship should trickle down into a way of life, a way of living.
[00:18:19]  Like they talk about the American way of life.
[00:18:22]  If you follow the American way of life, you're involved in a sense of worship.
[00:18:28]  That's a sense of worship.
[00:18:30]  So far as when I'm speaking of religion, I'm talking about morals.
[00:18:36]  Now, you had a number of people speak about Christian morals.
[00:18:41]  Where was Christian morals when it came to slavery?
[00:18:44]  Where was Christian morals when it came to the annihilation and the genocides of this of the other people, the indigenous people of this country?
[00:18:57]  See, what people worship in this country is capitalism.
[00:19:02]  And they then slowly turned up the volume of capitalism and merged it in with Christianity.
[00:19:10]  They never follow Christianity because people are so busy trying to maintain or improve their way of life that they don't look at the words that religion.
[00:19:27]  All of the great religions in the world speak of living in harmony with mankind and nature.
[00:19:37]  Now, that's something they wrestle.
[00:19:39]  Last point I wanted to make.
[00:19:41]  This country says they're so religious.
[00:19:43]  How did the Supreme Court not have a code of ethics?
[00:19:49]  Ethics is a code of values that determine your choices and action.
[00:19:54]  So when you have people calling in talking about where it shouldn't be no religion, well, where do you get your values from?
[00:20:03]  Where do you think morality comes from?
[00:20:06]  It just popped up.
[00:20:07]  It just is in the atmosphere.
[00:20:10]  When everybody can choose, this is a guy that's on the internet that says what they talk about is freedom and democracy, but they never talk about morals.
[00:20:21]  And morals is an essential element of religion.
[00:20:26]  Honorable moral, not selfish morals, but morals that will galvanize a people and bring out the best in people.
[00:20:36]  So is there not enough religion?
[00:20:38]  Everybody got a religion.
[00:20:40]  Everybody got a way of life.
[00:20:41]  All right.
[00:20:42]  Bob is in Sacomaine, who says there's too much religion in public life.
[00:20:47]  Good morning, Bob.
[00:20:50]  Yes, good morning.
[00:20:50]  So thank you for taking my call.
[00:20:52]  The reason I'm calling in is I read a chapter in a book, and the book is called Finding Our Compass by Robert Raymond.
[00:21:00]  And the very first chapter is on religion.
[00:21:04]  And it talks about how it's okay to have God in politics and in policy and the teachings of God, which are pretty much the universal feelings of all religions combined, what they all share in their good moral beliefs.
[00:21:24]  But it says there's really no room for religion because, well, first of all, the First Amendment says you can't have a state-sponsored religion because they want everybody to religions to be accepted,
[00:21:41]  tolerated, and it's important to have the teachings of God in government, but it's not important to have the teachings of certain religions in government.
[00:21:56]  Like, for example, take medicine.
[00:22:01]  There's people out there such as myself that not only believe that medicine is a miracle given to us to save lives, but it's also a miracle given to us to control our population through abortion medicines, through abortion procedures that are healthy for a woman who has to have one.
[00:22:23]  We know that if mankind was to overrun the world, we're going to destroy the planet we live on.
[00:22:30]  So not only is medicine a miracle to save lives, it's also a miracle to keep our planet healthy.
[00:22:38]  And that's one of my religious beliefs.
[00:22:40]  And I know that's very different from other religious beliefs, but that's an example of the differences we have in religious beliefs.
[00:22:49]  But yet the morals of God out there to shepherd our planet and to be in a healthy planet is pretty much a universal thing.
[00:22:58]  It's just how we do it is different.
[00:23:00]  I just want to leave that call.
[00:23:01]  That book is called FindingOurcompass.com.
[00:23:04]  It's on findingourcompass.com.
[00:23:07]  It's a very good book to read.
[00:23:08]  Thank you.
[00:23:10]  Next up is Iris in South Lyon, Michigan, who thinks that there's the right amount of religion in public life.
[00:23:16]  Good morning, Iris.
[00:23:20]  Iris, you can go ahead.
[00:23:23]  Oh, yes, I do believe it should have a balance, but I do believe that people are trained in warfare when they join the service of our country, and they are not sent to worship or get comfort in prayer before they train them to kill people and go against others who are not necessarily the people that they train, have any bias against.
[00:23:53]  It is something that men exercise to get an upper hand, I do believe.
[00:24:00]  And the word war is a reversal of the word dog, so you really don't know where language comes from.
[00:24:07]  But people should keep in their place as to what they do and try and mix it up with other things to give it some righteous aspect.
[00:24:16]  I don't like war as a solution to solving any problems.
[00:24:21]  I think people should get together.
[00:24:23]  And we're a country that says we're one nation under God, and this is what we should practice.
[00:24:30]  And religion has its place.
[00:24:33]  It's to be used as comfort, I do believe.
[00:24:36]  And I think we'd be very lost if we didn't have it.
[00:24:41]  I think everybody needs some in every aspect of their life.
[00:24:45]  You need to go someplace where other people, human beings, are not there to be helpful.
[00:24:52]  And you just need to believe in something that is bigger than yourself or humanity as a whole.
[00:25:02]  And there should be a way of dealing with things in a peaceful manner.
[00:25:06]  Otherwise, we're all doomed.
[00:25:09]  Duncan is in Cocoa, Florida, who says there's not enough religion in public life.
[00:25:13]  Good morning, Duncan.
[00:25:15]  Yes, good morning.
[00:25:17]  Yes, excuse me.
[00:25:19]  I'm a Roman Catholic, and when the First Amendment was made, it was made to give all of us the freedom to choose our religion and not to force the government to ever being involved in religion or even encouraging it.
[00:25:36]  Meanwhile, the purpose of religion, I remember a couple of years ago, I called in a previous episode and said that the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ.
[00:25:50]  And what seems to be the most serious issue when it comes to this is the First Amendment, yes, which I think is grossly misunderstood.
[00:26:07]  Okay.
[00:26:08]  This idea of how the original founders thought about religion in public life has come up quite a bit.
[00:26:15]  Last month, GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington and discussed his views on the founders' interpretation of the separation of church and state.
[00:26:29]  There are some very angry voices out there trying to convince us breathlessly that there must be a rigid separation between church and state.
[00:26:37]  It's a phrase that's often repeated, as we know, but very rarely understood.
[00:26:43]  That phrase, as you all know, derives from not the Constitution, but a personal letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association.
[00:26:52]  And in that letter, he explained that because, quote, religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, the First Amendment is a vital safeguard for our rights of conscience.
[00:27:03]  Jefferson wrote that he revered that act of the American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.
[00:27:19]  Now they take that phrase and they turn it around.
[00:27:23]  Jefferson clearly did not mean that wall to keep religion from influencing our government and public life.
[00:27:30]  To the contrary, the founders wanted to protect the church and the religious practice of citizens from an encroaching state, not the other way around.
[00:27:41]  Our founders understood that a free society and a healthy republic depend upon religious and moral virtue.
[00:27:47]  Not only because these things help prevent the abuse of power, but also because those convictions make it possible to preserve our essential freedoms.
[00:27:56]  The father of our country, George Washington, famously said in his farewell address, of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.
[00:28:06]  John Adams came next, our second president.
[00:28:08]  He said, our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people.
[00:28:12]  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
[00:28:15]  The founders wanted a flourishing of faith in the public square because they knew that religion and moral virtues strengthen our nation by encouraging and inspiring things like individual responsibility and self-sacrifice and civility, family and community, the dignity of hard work, the rule of law, and the sanctity of every human life.
[00:28:37]  Without those virtues, indispensably supported by religion and morality, no nation can endure.
[00:28:45]  Back to your calls on the role of religion in public life.
[00:28:48]  We're going to be joined now by Thomas in Massapequa, New York, who thinks there's too much.
[00:28:53]  Good morning, Thomas.
[00:28:55]  Good morning.

=== Agnostic Views On God's Role (15:29) ===

[00:28:57]  Yes, I think there's way too much religion in politics.
[00:29:02]  The other day, you know, Egg Smith is quoting Bible verses as a war is going on, and as the Pope says, anyone who prays to, you know, for that is not godly.
[00:29:25]  So it gets in there and, you know, it influences people who believe in a God, any God, actually, you know.
[00:29:38]  It doesn't matter what it is, if you believe in a good energy.
[00:29:44]  You know, I believe if you want to worship a tree, you could worship a tree.
[00:29:49]  You know, I don't believe that we use God or this administration uses God quoting all the time, which is from a Bible, which I'm an agnostic.
[00:30:02]  You know, I don't know what to believe, you know, but I don't believe in what's going on here.
[00:30:10]  You know, it's just too conflict.
[00:30:14]  You know, God is telling us to kill people.
[00:30:17]  I don't agree with that.
[00:30:19]  Thank you.
[00:30:21]  Thomas was referencing comments by the Defense Secretary and the Pope's response to it.
[00:30:26]  This was also reported in the New York Times.
[00:30:28]  Hegseth says, U.S. troops are fighting for Jesus.
[00:30:31]  The Pope disagrees.
[00:30:34]  Pete Hegseth, the U.S. Defense Secretary, has asked the American people to pray every day on bended knee for a military victory in the Middle East, quote, in the name of Jesus Christ.
[00:30:44]  Pope Leo XIV, the first U.S.-born pontiff, has a starkly different take on what should be done in Jesus' name.
[00:30:51]  In a homily during a Mass on Thursday morning before Easter, the Pope said that the Christian mission had often been distorted by a desire for domination entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.
[00:31:04]  Since the United States and Israel began bombing Iran in late February, the Pope has consistently called for an end to the violence and a return to dialogue to resolve the conflict.
[00:31:14]  But without naming Mr. Hegset, he has also pointed out the ways in which Christianity has been marshaled for purposes the Pope says do not align with Catholic teaching.
[00:31:26]  Back to your calls.
[00:31:27]  Robert is in Hudson, Florida, and thinks there's the right amount of religion in public life.
[00:31:32]  Good morning, Robert.
[00:31:34]  Good morning.
[00:31:35]  How are you today?
[00:31:36]  Doing well, thanks.
[00:31:38]  I have a complaint to start with.
[00:31:40]  You're asking two different questions.
[00:31:43]  You're asking, what is the role of religion?
[00:31:45]  And you're asking, is there too much?
[00:31:48]  Now, I'll stick with the first one.
[00:31:50]  The role of religion in the government is to influence the person himself aligned with his beliefs in what he does, not too much or too little.
[00:32:06]  All of main religions promote brotherhood and love one another, and that should be part of what we do.
[00:32:18]  The trouble with our country right now is we're developing hate.
[00:32:23]  We hate one another.
[00:32:24]  I'll find or make up an enemy for you to hate, and then I'll get support for that.
[00:32:30]  And that's not right.
[00:32:32]  But really, you're asking two different questions, and that disturbed me.
[00:32:38]  What do you think of the second question, Robert?
[00:32:41]  Is there too much, not enough, for the right amount of religion in public life?
[00:32:48]  I don't think there's enough.
[00:32:50]  Okay.
[00:32:52]  All right.
[00:32:52]  Well, next up is Rich in Kingsport, Tennessee, who also thinks there's not enough religion in public life.
[00:32:58]  Good morning, Rich.
[00:33:01]  Good morning, Jasmine.
[00:33:03]  Or Kimberly, sorry.
[00:33:07]  I think there's not enough.
[00:33:10]  And for this reason, I'll go back to one of the earlier callers who said, I think correctly, that your beliefs are your religion.
[00:33:22]  And morals have to have some sort of basis.
[00:33:28]  When we're talking about religion and politics, you know, you have if two people have the same opinion on whether to raise taxes, whether to allow abortion, whatever the issue is, all laws are based upon someone's beliefs, and someone's beliefs are going to be imposed upon everyone, whether we agree or not.
[00:33:54]  And if we both agree on an issue, and one person says, well, it's just my opinion.
[00:34:01]  That's just the way I feel.
[00:34:03]  And the second person says, well, that's what my religion teaches, the outcomes can be the same, but some would say, well, the second opinion shouldn't count.
[00:34:13]  You shouldn't be able to base your decisions, your vote, your legislation, based on some sort of religious morality.
[00:34:24]  And that, to me, makes no sense.
[00:34:27]  Everyone's beliefs come from somewhere.
[00:34:30]  And to say an opinion is all right, but with no basis other than just the way I feel, but religious, something from a specific religion, that that's not okay.
[00:34:44]  That just doesn't compute.
[00:34:45]  And we don't, so we need more morality.
[00:34:50]  We need based upon some objective standards and not just self-interest, which is what I'm seeing, that people are choosing not what the old, you know, do ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
[00:35:10]  And now it's vote your self-interest.
[00:35:14]  And I am, as a Christian, directed to follow God and do what he says.
[00:35:22]  And that involves doing what's best for others.
[00:35:26]  Even if it doesn't benefit me personally, it's what's the best thing to do.
[00:35:32]  Mike is in Ohio and thinks there's too much religion in public life.
[00:35:35]  Good morning, Mike.
[00:35:38]  Yes, I'm in Lickskill, Ohio.
[00:35:40]  How are you?
[00:35:41]  Fine, thank you.
[00:35:43]  Well, you know, 47, he repealed the separation of church and state.
[00:35:50]  And now we've got Pete Hedges preaching to us.
[00:35:56]  And I'm just wondering how many of the 5999 Bibles, 47, sold.
[00:36:03]  And it seems like their God now is when you break G-O-D down, E is for gold, O is for oil, and D is for drugs.
[00:36:15]  Now, this concept of fear and ignorance and unknown control the masses.
[00:36:21]  You know, you can't keep them down.
[00:36:23]  You can't keep them dumb.
[00:36:24]  You can't keep them divided.
[00:36:26]  And my last question is this: Where was God when the caveman was in search of fire?
[00:36:33]  So I just, a few of my own thoughts.
[00:36:36]  So thanks.
[00:36:37]  Have a good day.
[00:36:39]  All right.
[00:36:40]  Next up is Richard in Arlington, Virginia, who thinks there's the right amount of religion in public life.
[00:36:46]  Good morning, Richard.
[00:36:48]  Good morning.
[00:36:49]  There are two relevant issues that are not being mentioned.
[00:36:53]  And one is, I believe there's a statistic that believers are happier than ones who don't, who don't believe.
[00:37:02]  And the other issue is that our current war is against a theocracy.
[00:37:06]  So that from Iran's point of view and some of Israel's point of view, it is a religious war.
[00:37:15]  All right.
[00:37:17]  Next up is Linda in Babberton, Ohio, who thinks there's a right amount of religion in public life, excuse me, in Barbertown, Ohio.
[00:37:25]  Good morning, Linda.
[00:37:27]  Good morning.
[00:37:28]  Happy Easter to all of you.
[00:37:30]  Linda, can I ask you to please turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead with your comment?
[00:37:36]  Certainly.
[00:37:40]  All right, go ahead.
[00:37:42]  Okay.
[00:37:44]  I'm calling because I do believe there is the right amount of religion in our country.
[00:37:51]  However, the thing that bugs me the most is those who practice a phoby religion for the sake of their popularity.
[00:38:05]  And the number one person who does that is our president.
[00:38:10]  He is not religious.
[00:38:12]  He is a fake.
[00:38:15]  And I find that very, very disturbing.
[00:38:18]  And when I see it, I'm very much.
[00:38:21]  Linda, we're still getting the background noise, but I think we understand your point.
[00:38:26]  Let's hear from Sophia in North Carolina, who thinks there's not enough religion in public life.
[00:38:30]  Good morning, Sophia.
[00:38:32]  Hi, good morning, Kimberly.
[00:38:34]  Happy Easter.
[00:38:37]  I'm half asleep here.
[00:38:38]  When I heard Tellerico talking, I had to jump up because he was not telling the truth.
[00:38:44]  So he said that homosexuality is not to be found in the Bible, the morality or immorality of it.
[00:38:53]  That is an absolute sorry lie.
[00:38:56]  Okay.
[00:38:56]  I just quickly did it.
[00:38:58]  I mean, I know there is like Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 9, Jude 1:7.
[00:39:04]  Okay, just a few.
[00:39:06]  Just to name a few.
[00:39:07]  Then he said that so many Christians focus on this.
[00:39:12]  Like we hate, that's not true.
[00:39:15]  I'm a devout Christian, and I know that every person is priceless.
[00:39:18]  And most of my Christian work and charity work is done with the homeless and is done with the poor.
[00:39:24]  So that's to say that everyone is just so hyper-focused.
[00:39:29]  No.
[00:39:29]  And people are, the other thing I wanted to say is, I'll try to make it quick.
[00:39:33]  I have so much to say, but when he was saying that Jesus questioned the authorities, yes, in fact, that's true.
[00:39:40]  He called the Pharisees hypocrites and abood vipers because they were, somebody else was talking about, hypocritical.
[00:39:47]  They followed the letter of the law, but not the Spirit.
[00:39:49]  But he's making it sound like we should forever be questioning, questioning, questioning, and never actually believe that God could communicate to us that he sent his only son to die for us.
[00:40:00]  As if there's the Bible is just, I don't know, just keep asking questions.
[00:40:04]  There's no end to it.
[00:40:05]  There's no, God is the author.
[00:40:08]  The Bible says God is not the author of confusion.
[00:40:11]  He's making it sound like God is an inept God who cannot possibly explain to us clearly what's happening.
[00:40:17]  And last thing, I think, just about the abortion.
[00:40:20]  Maybe the word abortion is not specifically.
[00:40:24]  The whole Bible is about how much God loves us.
[00:40:28]  He made us fearfully and wonderfully made.
[00:40:30]  The price he put on human beings is his own son coming to the cross for every single person in this world.
[00:40:38]  So the value of life is priceless to God.
[00:40:40]  And so if you can't understand that, abortion just for willy-nilly reasons is wrong.
[00:40:46]  Yes, medical necessity, when it's medically necessary, and people need good help, but how can you not look at the Bible and say this is a book of love?
[00:40:55]  So I guess I'll leave it there.
[00:40:56]  I have so much else I want to say.
[00:40:59]  But I guess those points other people want to get in.
[00:41:04]  And oh, one last thing.
[00:41:06]  I don't know if this applies or not, but I wish news people, the anchors and everything, we never talk about Iran in terms of where do they get their religion from?
[00:41:17]  What does their book actually say?
[00:41:19]  What does the Quran actually say?
[00:41:22]  What do the Ayatollahs really believe?
[00:41:24]  I don't understand why nobody reports on that.
[00:41:27]  Seems like that would be really important to kind of say, where are these people coming from that they kill, that they're, you know, the state sponsors of terrorists all around the world.
[00:41:36]  We should explore that.
[00:41:37]  I wish maybe you guys could do that.
[00:41:39]  So that's it.
[00:41:40]  I'll let you guys go.
[00:41:41]  Thank you for the suggestion, Sophia.
[00:41:43]  Let's look at a comment from Brian on Facebook who says, no one should ever be faulted or blamed for having faith or being spiritual.
[00:41:51]  For many, it's a compass that guides and provides their own moral clarity and communal responsibility.
[00:41:57]  However, no one should also ever be faulted or shamed into a dogma through the influence of others.
[00:42:05]  It's a personal decision.
[00:42:07]  Anyone should be welcome to have as much or as little as they'd like in their lives.
[00:42:13]  And then Douglas says, practice your religion, don't impose it on others.
[00:42:18]  The problem is the people in the government that use religion to terrorize and subjugate.
[00:42:23]  Carrie is in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and thinks there's too much religion in public life.
[00:42:28]  Good morning, Carrie.
[00:42:30]  Good morning, America, and happy Easter.
[00:42:34]  My daddy was a preacher, and bust was hard.
[00:42:37]  He's passed.
[00:42:38]  But he never talked about religion or politics in a sermon, ever.
[00:42:46]  And I believe that's the way it should be.
[00:42:48]  I don't understand what's going on today.
[00:42:51]  Addressing Mike Johnson, he's a clone of Trump.
[00:42:55]  He doesn't even have an opinion.
[00:42:57]  Everything he says is exactly what Trump told him.
[00:43:00]  And Trump lies.
[00:43:03]  I see Billy Graham on a commercial on Fox News yesterday.
[00:43:07]  He mentioned that Trump's got to win in 2028.
[00:43:12]  Wow, religion has totally lost its way.
[00:43:15]  The premise of the Bible is salvation.
[00:43:20]  The rest of the Bible tells you about the concept of other people.
[00:43:25]  Republicans, wow.
[00:43:28]  Reginald is in Jacksonville, Florida, and thinks there's not enough religion in public life.
[00:43:33]  Good morning, Reginald.
[00:43:35]  Good morning.
[00:43:35]  Good morning.
[00:43:36]  How are you doing?
[00:43:36]  Doing well, thank you.
[00:43:38]  Awesome.
[00:43:39]  Happy Easter to you.
[00:43:42]  Ray from you.
[00:43:43]  Yes, go ahead, Reginald.
[00:43:44]  Okay.
[00:43:45]  Yeah, I definitely think that there is not enough religion in public life.
[00:43:53]  And I think that's where some of the confusion comes from, just in my opinion.
[00:43:59]  Because if you read the Bible for yourself, you'll be able to know it for yourself.
[00:44:03]  And some of the things that when people get on national TV and say, you'll instantly know, yeah, that's not of God.
[00:44:12]  And that's when you can turn the TV off.
[00:44:14]  Because part of our issue is we listen to rhetoric and we listen to other people's opinions rather than going out and reading it for ourselves and understanding the Bible for ourselves.

=== Government Control Through Religion (03:16) ===

[00:44:26]  And I think once everyone starts to doing that more, this country will be in a better place.
[00:44:32]  The world will be in a better place.
[00:44:35]  Ray is in Tennessee and thinks there's too much religion in public life.
[00:44:41]  Well, I'm 87 years old, and all I hear is religion and politics.
[00:44:49]  And everywhere I go, it's religion.
[00:44:53]  But I've been asking this one question all my life, and I've never got an answer.
[00:44:58]  Where did God come from?
[00:45:00]  And how could he make a man out of clay and breathe on him?
[00:45:03]  And he started breathing.
[00:45:05]  That's all I got to add.
[00:45:07]  That's all I got to say.
[00:45:08]  All right.
[00:45:09]  Kurt is in Mount Union, Pennsylvania, and thinks that there's the right amount of religion in public life.
[00:45:15]  Good morning, Kurt.
[00:45:17]  Yes, good morning, Kimberly.
[00:45:18]  Happy Easter.
[00:45:20]  Several issues.
[00:45:22]  First, consider chicken or the egg.
[00:45:26]  And what I mean by that is that when you talk about the separation of church and state, states don't exist unless there was a church before them.
[00:45:38]  The faith of the people are what form a government and stipulate how they want their society to be.
[00:45:49]  Secondly, let me explain to some people that are talking about morality.
[00:45:54]  They don't realize what's on the horizon with AI.
[00:46:00]  When AI takes its position, which it will, and it's coming quickly, AI is amoral.
[00:46:09]  And that's all I'm going to say.
[00:46:11]  Let people understand that and think about that.
[00:46:14]  It is amoral.
[00:46:18]  All right.
[00:46:18]  Carl is in California on our line for folks who think there's too much religion in public life.
[00:46:23]  Good morning, Carl.
[00:46:25]  Good morning.
[00:46:28]  I think there's too much religion in Easter.
[00:46:30]  Can you please turn down the volume on your TV and then go ahead with your comment, please?
[00:46:34]  Okay, I'm sorry.
[00:46:36]  I think there's entirely too much religion in the world.
[00:46:44]  The whole world, all the upheavals in the world have been caused by religion.
[00:46:51]  Religion is used by governments to control the masses.
[00:46:58]  Just think about that.
[00:47:00]  You would have to convince people that their way is the better way.
[00:47:06]  But it's mostly used to gain resources from other countries, other tribes, you call it whatever, other civilizations.
[00:47:17]  So religion, you have to motivate people to want to go out and die for the king or the government just because they believe in a deity.
[00:47:28]  No one has ever seen God.
[00:47:31]  Nobody knows if there's a heaven or a hell.
[00:47:35]  So when you question people about the Bible, the average religious person, they can't answer.

=== Interpreting The Bible For Marriage (04:27) ===

[00:47:43]  The retort is, the Bible says the Bible was written by men.
[00:47:49]  And we know that it's been interpreted so much.
[00:47:54]  The King James Bible, for instance, it is what it is.
[00:47:59]  It was his version.
[00:48:01]  The Ethiopians say it was the oldest civilization, say their Bible is the original Bible.
[00:48:10]  So it's all a matter of interpretation.
[00:48:15]  Lastly, if God is perfect, why does he make all this suffering?
[00:48:24]  People pray and they still suffer.
[00:48:29]  That's all I have.
[00:48:32]  Much of the way that religion has been interpreted in public policy has been settled by the Supreme Court over the years.
[00:48:40]  And in February, former GOP Vice President Pence spoke at an event at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania, and he discussed faith and public service.
[00:48:50]  Here, he is asked about his views on the Supreme Court's 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage, as well as his own religious beliefs.
[00:49:00]  During your political career, you opposed gay marriage, believing that marriage should only be a union between a man and a woman.
[00:49:06]  This conviction, if I'm not mistaken, arises from your faith and your belief in the authority of the scriptures.
[00:49:12]  How do you reply to those people who say that your opposition to gay marriage is a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment?
[00:49:19]  And for those in our audience who are trying to quickly remember what they learned in APUSH, the Establishment Clause reads, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
[00:49:30]  Well, you're right.
[00:49:32]  I'm someone I'll always believe that the marriage is between one man and one woman.
[00:49:40]  But the Supreme Court of the United States ruled otherwise about a decade ago.
[00:49:50]  And as I said at the time when I was governor of Indiana, we can disagree with the Supreme Court, but we can't disobey it.
[00:49:56]  And it's part of the supreme law of the land.
[00:49:59]  That being said, I'll always hold to those convictions myself.
[00:50:02]  And I think the issue actually is not the first part of the First Amendment, but it's the second part.
[00:50:09]  Because the First Amendment reads that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
[00:50:19]  And if you go back and you read that decision, the Oberfell decision, Justice Kennedy, who I know, wrote that opinion.
[00:50:29]  And in recognizing same-sex marriage, in the same opinion, he said, now future courts will have to make decisions to ensure that this ruling does not intrude upon the free exercise of religion of Americans who otherwise may hold a different view.
[00:50:47]  And I must tell you, having had our administration appoint three justices to that Supreme Court, I've been very encouraged over the last 10 years, Dr. Mann, in the ways that the Supreme Court has drawn that line to essentially ensure while respecting the decision that the court made with regard to gay marriage, at the same time,
[00:51:13]  you've seen one decision after another that really has recognized and respected the right of conscience of Americans to hold a different view and not to be placed in a position where they would have their religious convictions intruded upon.
[00:51:32]  So to me, the debate over gay marriage, I'll always hold the values that I hold and believe them from my heart as a Bible-believing Christian.
[00:51:42]  But I do think going forward, the key now in our society is to ensure that no one is ever discriminated against for who they are or who they love or what they believe.
[00:51:56]  And that's the balance, I think, that ultimately the Supreme Court has struck, that respect for belief and respect for people's individual lives ultimately is the result of that decision.

=== Private Beliefs Versus Public Debate (06:59) ===

[00:52:10]  And we're back to hear more of your thoughts on the role of religion in public life with Robert in Colusa, California, who thinks there's not enough religion in public life.
[00:52:19]  Good morning, Robert.
[00:52:21]  Good morning.
[00:52:23]  Yeah, there's not enough religion because love is the answer to all religions, and there's never enough of that.
[00:52:36]  All right.
[00:52:37]  Then Frank is in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, who thinks that there's too much religion in public life.
[00:52:44]  Good morning, Kimberly.
[00:52:47]  I'm going to have some choice words, and please don't take anything personal because you are definitely one of my favorite hosts.
[00:52:53]  Please don't use profanity.
[00:52:56]  No, no, just a little frustration is what I'm going to use.
[00:52:59]  I'll keep my words clean.
[00:53:01]  But my frustration, I'm going to start with just the topic that Washington Journal has chosen this morning, shows the bias that Washington Journal has.
[00:53:14]  And I will explain.
[00:53:15]  I save my monthly phone call every 30 days.
[00:53:19]  And the reason I call every 30 days is when I sit here and listen to Washington Journal let too many callers bring up their God.
[00:53:28]  And my argument is that this is a political show, not a religious show.
[00:53:33]  And I used to do a monthly sustaining gift, financial gift to Washington Journal because I believed in where you guys stood compared to all the other wacky news channels out there.
[00:53:45]  But I took away my funding to Washington Journal and C-SPAN for the reason was there was one day where Pedro allowed a caller to recite a Christian prayer.
[00:53:58]  And it wasn't a Christian topic.
[00:54:00]  Like today is different.
[00:54:01]  It's a religious topic.
[00:54:03]  I'm okay with this.
[00:54:04]  But Washington Journal, on a daily basis, allows people to quote scripture, mostly from the Christian Bible and the Torah.
[00:54:13]  And I find it disgusting and insulting.
[00:54:17]  And the second time John allowed a caller to recite a Christian prayer.
[00:54:24]  And the third, the short that broke the camel's back for me is when Mimi allowed it.
[00:54:28]  And that's when I decided no longer will I fund C-SPAN and Washington Journal until this changes.
[00:54:34]  And every 30 days when I get a chance, when people talk about their God on this political channel, I'm not a Democrat.
[00:54:41]  I'm not a Republican.
[00:54:42]  I watch this just to hear both sides.
[00:54:45]  And when I start hearing too much scripture spoken on this channel, it's no good for me.
[00:54:52]  And I've begged the producers, just really think about this.
[00:54:56]  When we call, you know, we have rules, lower the TV, pay attention, don't watch the TV.
[00:55:03]  I wish they would also give the call, the rule that whatever topic you're talking about, keep your God out of it.
[00:55:10]  This is a political show.
[00:55:12]  Okay, with that being said.
[00:55:14]  Oh, Frank, before we let you go, I mean, the White House, as we've seen in some of these clips of tape, as well as members of Congress, are trying to bring more religion into politics.
[00:55:26]  And so I wonder how you think about that, you know, if you want to completely remove the topic of conversation here in Washington Journal when our political leaders are inserting it into their political discussions.
[00:55:38]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:55:39]  And again, that's why I'm okay with the talk about religion today, because obviously your topic includes religion.
[00:55:45]  My argument is when it's on a daily disgusting level where people call up and bring up their God when it has nothing to do with the topic.
[00:55:53]  That's what Bobby.
[00:55:53]  But to answer your question, just very quickly, I promise you, my problem with your title today, and it proves that Christianity is so horrible in this country.
[00:56:03]  It says, what's the role of religion?
[00:56:04]  Your question is not the role of religion, because there is no other religion accepted in this country except Christianity.
[00:56:11]  It should say, what's the role of Christianity?
[00:56:13]  Because no other religious people have say in this country.
[00:56:16]  And it shows by all the politicians you're showing, bringing up.
[00:56:20]  They don't bring up Allah.
[00:56:21]  They don't bring up Buddha.
[00:56:23]  They bring up Jesus.
[00:56:24]  So to answer that, and I'm going to end this with this, with anyone who believes that they have telepathical powers to an invisible wizard in the outer space should never be in control of a country and decision-making.
[00:56:38]  And to tie it in, these same politicians, they fight to bring the Bible in schools.
[00:56:44]  I mean, they're not fighting to bring the Quran in schools.
[00:56:48]  It's strictly the Christian and Jewish Bibles.
[00:56:51]  And they want to teach children that the earth is 6,000 years old and human and dinosaurs walk the earth at the same time and a man lived in the stomach of a fish for three days and got spread.
[00:57:01]  This is what they want to teach children.
[00:57:03]  It's disgusting.
[00:57:05]  I think we've got the idea.
[00:57:06]  Let's hear from Paul in Philadelphia, who also thinks there's too much religion in public life.
[00:57:11]  Good morning, Paul.
[00:57:13]  Hi.
[00:57:14]  Hi there.
[00:57:15]  Go ahead with your comment.
[00:57:17]  Yeah, I think that the religious aspect is far too much in the structure, but the morality, the virtue, the character piece is not emphasized enough.
[00:57:31]  Okay.
[00:57:34]  All right, then let's hear from Michael in Riverdale, California, who thinks that there's, excuse me, Riverdale, Georgia, who thinks there's the right amount of religion in public life.
[00:57:44]  Yes, I feel like people have their own choices of religion.
[00:57:48]  They think they can do pretty much what they want when they want.
[00:57:52]  But as far as public life and political life, there's the difference.
[00:57:55]  But the founding fathers, I think, also said that more specifically, they said freedom from religion.
[00:58:01]  We can't help if we put religion in things.
[00:58:04]  We have the choice whether or not.
[00:58:06]  But James Baldwin and Malcolm X also said, which is a reflection of the United States, that the most segregated time in America is 12 o'clock on Sundays, which is emblematical of this country.
[00:58:18]  We are separate and not equal, even in our religion from the Constitution on down.
[00:58:25]  All we have to do is just look at what religion does.
[00:58:29]  It can build character, but it also reveals it if we pay attention.
[00:58:33]  But we don't pay attention.
[00:58:34]  We're so busy caught up in the political aspects of it and the social aspects of it that it should be a private thing.
[00:58:41]  That's what I mean when I say be a right amount of religion.
[00:58:45]  You have the right to do what you want as far as your religious beliefs are in private.
[00:58:51]  Maybe not in public, but in private.
[00:58:53]  Thank you.
[00:58:55]  We have a comment from Douglas on Facebook who says, practice your religion.
[00:59:00]  Don't impose it on others.
[00:59:02]  The problem is the people in government that use religion to terrorize and subjugate.
[00:59:07]  All right, that's all the time that we have for this segment.

=== Religion Should Stay Private (03:17) ===

[00:59:10]  Coming up later on Washington Journal, the Brooking Institution's Asli Aydan Tabash will join us to discuss the latest on the Iran war, including the effort to open the Strait of Hormuz.
[00:59:23]  But up next, Republican strategist Chris Johnson and Democratic strategist Lucy Caldwell will join us to discuss Campaign 2026, the political impact of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, as well as political news of the week.
[00:59:36]  We'll be right back.
[00:59:54]  Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
[00:59:59]  Today, with our guest best-selling author, Arthur Brooks, who has written 13 books about finding purpose, connection, and cultivating lasting joy.
[01:00:09]  His books include Love Your Enemies, Build the Life You Want with co-author Oprah Winfrey and his latest The Happiness Files.
[01:00:17]  He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein.
[01:00:22]  So what's the key to having a happy marriage?
[01:00:24]  The answer is not passionate love, but what we call in my business companionate love.
[01:00:28]  Companionate love, which is best friendship.
[01:00:31]  You know, I told my kids that, who are now, you know, two of my kids are young married, and my son Carlos said, companionate love, that's not hot.
[01:00:41]  And I said, well, trust me, it's got some hotness to it.
[01:00:44]  Watch America's Book Club with Arthur Brooks today at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
[01:01:02]  Tonight, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Levasser discusses the history of the 135 mission space shuttle program and takes us on a tour of the Space Shuttle Orbiter.
[01:01:15]  There are well over 20,000 tiles on this vehicle, and about 80% of them are original to Discovery's very first flight in 1984.
[01:01:24]  So some of this evidence goes all the way back to 1984.
[01:01:28]  And it's really, and it's one of the funniest things about being the curator.
[01:01:31]  Sometimes people will look and say, well, it looks really dirty.
[01:01:34]  Why don't you clean it?
[01:01:35]  That's not dirt.
[01:01:36]  That's the evidence of all the hard work that happened.
[01:01:38]  The Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Levasser.
[01:01:43]  Tonight at 8 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.
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=== Populist War Funding Risks (15:43) ===

[01:02:28]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:02:31]  Welcome back to discuss the political news of the week as well as campaign 2026 because we're already there.
[01:02:37]  I'm joined by Lucy Caldwell, who is the founder of Mockingbird Bird Labs, as well as a Democratic strategist.
[01:02:44]  Good morning, Lucy.
[01:02:46]  Great to be with you.
[01:02:47]  Chris Johnson is also with us here on set.
[01:02:50]  He is the president and co-founder of the American Energy Leadership Institute and a Republican strategist.
[01:02:55]  Good morning.
[01:02:56]  Thanks for having me.
[01:02:56]  Thank you both for joining me.
[01:02:58]  I want to start with the talk about Iran.
[01:03:00]  The president addressed the Iran conflict and the ongoing war today, this past week, from the Oval Office, talking about the war's goals.
[01:03:10]  Chris, how well do you think he articulated the goals of this conflict?
[01:03:15]  I think unfortunately, we have a lot of constituencies within the party with different goals for foreign policy generally and specifically this war.
[01:03:22]  And so he basically tried to assuage all of them and say, I'm focused on this, I'm focused on gas prices, I don't want this to be an extended conflict.
[01:03:30]  And all of those things end up seeming sort of jumbled and a little bit contradictory.
[01:03:35]  And so I think there was a lot that Republicans wanted to see, especially if you look at the comments.
[01:03:42]  You know, John Bolton was writing an op-ed about what he wants to see from this conflict.
[01:03:46]  And in folks like him who support action in Iran and have for a long time, I personally believe that we should have acted on Iran much, much earlier and the JCPOA was a huge mistake and those kind of things.
[01:03:58]  But ultimately, the president did not tell specific groups or any specific group what they wanted to hear.
[01:04:05]  And often that message got mixed up with a bunch of other messages as well.
[01:04:09]  Lucy, Chris mentioned gas prices, which has been such a huge topic as this war continues and Americans are experiencing much higher prices and in other countries even more severe energy shocks as a result of this.
[01:04:23]  How do you think this impacts overall sentiment regarding the war effort?
[01:04:28]  Well, I think that certainly it doesn't help.
[01:04:30]  I think that despite a policy wonks or a Hillstaffer's best attempt to explain the relationship between one thing or another or the intricacies of the Iran-Russia Axis.
[01:04:48]  I think the reality for Americans is they experience that we are now in another, what feels like it could be endless war, perpetuated by the very man who claimed that he was America first, that he was the person who was going to eradicate the neoconservative establishment from the Republican Party, the person who has become, you know, named John Bolton, who Chris just mentioned as one of his key enemies,
[01:05:18]  you know, these warmongers like John Bolton.
[01:05:22]  And yet now Americans see not only has that not been true, but also in their daily lives, the kinds of relief that they hope to get, more permanent relief from inflation, other types of kitchen table issues, have actually not been relieved at all, but actually exacerbated in the form of extremely high gas prices.
[01:05:41]  And these are very challenging issues to understand.
[01:05:44]  And I think Donald Trump has, in his very Trumpian way, tried to thread that needle.
[01:05:49]  But the reality is that what Americans are experiencing is another newfound endless war that has not been authorized by Congress, that they do not understand the justification for, even his supporters, coupled with the daily grind of yet one more thing that is going to make their daily lives very difficult.
[01:06:11]  Chris, that doesn't even include the actual sort of military and human toll of this conflict.
[01:06:17]  We obviously saw this this weekend an airman rescued from the within Iran after the fighter jet was shot down.
[01:06:24]  I wonder, especially given what Lucy said about how Trump ran on sort of being away from these forever wars and being America first, that's going to affect particularly the Republican base heading into the midterms.
[01:06:37]  I think the Republican base understood when they were listening to him when he was running for president, especially the second time, that America First was not America alone.
[01:06:44]  It was not an isolationist endeavor.
[01:06:46]  It was peace through strength.
[01:06:47]  And one of the goals of this war is to show countries like Iran that we are still in charge, that we still have the power, we still have the military capacity to keep our enemies in check.
[01:06:58]  And so that keeps us out of a lot of these other conflicts that we could potentially be dragged into for extended periods of time.
[01:07:05]  And so I think when you look at the polling that shows almost 100% support for MAGA Republicans for this war, they understand that America First does not mean just completely stepping away from any kind of use of military force.
[01:07:19]  They understood that President Trump's main goal is to show strength.
[01:07:22]  And what they really love about President Trump is not that he has, they align with a nuanced foreign policy view, which most American voters aren't thinking about that this intensely.
[01:07:32]  What they saw is a guy who was going to stand up to bad guys, was going to use America's military where it makes sense to defend our interests, and was going to do it in a way that was strong, in a way that most Republicans saw the Biden and Obama administrations as quite weak.
[01:07:47]  And that was the goal of the America First foreign policy agenda, was to project that strength.
[01:07:52]  Lucy, though, on the other hand, when it comes to the midterms, President Trump is polling pretty poorly.
[01:08:00]  There's a YouGov poll showing that Trump's net approval rating has sunk to negative 23 points, with 35% of Americans approving of the president's job performance, 58% disapproving.
[01:08:12]  What do you think that that suggests about the upcoming midterms?
[01:08:15]  Because often midterms are a referendum on the president in office.
[01:08:19]  They absolutely are.
[01:08:21]  And I think that Chris just identified polling around MAGA Republicans, right?
[01:08:26]  Well, heading into the midterms, Donald Trump may have the support of MAGA Republicans, but MAGA Republicans are increasingly a dwindling audience, right?
[01:08:37]  Only something like a little more than half of Republicans currently self-identify as MAGA.
[01:08:43]  And among the entire voter base and U.S. population, MAGA, I think, is down to something like under 20%, right?
[01:08:51]  And even that Republican number is way, way down from even just last year.
[01:08:56]  There is a real softening, even within the Republican base, of people embracing the MAGA label.
[01:09:03]  And it is in part because you have former MAGA diehards like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying MAGA has been a lie perpetuated by Donald Trump and others, right?
[01:09:15]  You have these people who we think of as peak MAGA saying we have to re-look at all of this.
[01:09:20]  And I'm not suggesting that Marjorie Taylor Greene is a figure to be embraced.
[01:09:26]  I just think that it is a really good reflection of the fracturing that's happening within the Republican Party, which brings me to your question about the midterms.
[01:09:33]  It is very hard to hold a coalition that is so fractured together, especially from what we know about Trump's experience at the midtimes previously, right?
[01:09:45]  When Trump has been on the ballot, there's a lot more Republican energy because of that core base than there are in the midterms.
[01:09:52]  Even earlier in the campaign season, Susie Wiles, Donald Trump's chief of staff, talked about how they actually felt like they needed to inject Donald Trump into campaigns up and down the ballot to really help bring the base out to make it feel more like a referendum on Trump.
[01:10:09]  Now, that may very well be an astute political assessment, but that is certainly a needle to thread that is getting harder and harder in a time where what's coming out of this White House, the policies that people are seeing, feel so, so disparate from what feels like the best path forward for everyday Americans.
[01:10:29]  That creates an opportunity for Democrats.
[01:10:31]  I'm a former Republican myself.
[01:10:33]  I will tell you, Republicans are about a gazillion times better at politics than Democrats are.
[01:10:40]  So rest assured, Democrats could screw this up, but there is a very big opportunity for Democrats right now to embrace that energy that Americans are feeling of just something is not quite right, really up and down the ballot.
[01:10:56]  The 2026 map historically has not great for Democrats in the Senate, but even in the Senate, it seems like Democrats may be making inroads in some of those races.
[01:11:05]  I think that one of the key things for Democrats is that they have to accept that we are in a populist moment.
[01:11:12]  And again, I say that, look, populism are not my natural politics.
[01:11:16]  We are in a populist moment.
[01:11:17]  It is why you see figures like Graham Plattner, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine, rising in the polls, doing so well against an incumbent Democratic governor who's running for that seat in that race to replace Susan Collins.
[01:11:32]  It's why you see a lot of new figures coming up in the Democratic Party who I think have a really compelling ability to make that message to folks.
[01:11:41]  We can either embrace this populist moment and elevate figures who can do something healthy with it, or we can be swept away in the ongoing tsunami of toxic MAGA populism.
[01:11:52]  So look, it's about Democrats making smart assessments around the map, thinking about map expansion in the right way, thinking about shoring up blue state governors without, you know, I think going too far and deploying resources in places that it doesn't make sense.
[01:12:08]  They're still going to be massively outspent by the Donald Trump MAGA RNC machine.
[01:12:14]  But I think that they're in a very good place.
[01:12:16]  Speaking of which, the Democrats, as you mentioned, Lucy, are trying to latch on to this narrative around the war.
[01:12:23]  Last week, the Democratic Aligned Vote Vets Action Fund released this ad targeting GOP Representative Derek Van Orden of Wisconsin, a retired Navy SEAL whose Wisconsin district is considered competitive this year.
[01:12:36]  Let's listen to this ad.
[01:12:39]  Look at that gas pump.
[01:12:41]  We're paying the cost every damn day of this war in Iran.
[01:12:44]  But for Congressman Van Orden, we're not paying enough.
[01:12:48]  He's going for another $200 billion to spend on Iran.
[01:12:52]  This is the same guy who backed big cuts to VA care for vets.
[01:12:57]  Look, vets like me, they understand the cost of war.
[01:13:00]  But if we don't have the money to take care of our veterans, we damn sure can't afford another war.
[01:13:06]  Call Van Orten on it.
[01:13:09]  Chris, this vote in particular about the war funding supplemental and ads like this, how risky do you think this is for Republicans?
[01:13:17]  I think for right now, it's going to look bad because we are in charge and everybody is focused on the president.
[01:13:22]  They're focused on Republicans in Congress.
[01:13:24]  Those are the folks that are seen as the change makers.
[01:13:29]  And so ads like this are great because you can go out there and say, look at all they're doing.
[01:13:33]  But as soon as the stage shifts and we get into the midterms and there are clear Democratic standard bearers, I was glad that Lucy brought up Graham Plattner.
[01:13:42]  As soon as folks like that are in the spotlight and Democrats have to answer for their policies and not just critique Republicans, I think a lot of this is going to fall flat.
[01:13:50]  Yeah, the war is not super popular right now.
[01:13:53]  We don't know how it's going to go.
[01:13:54]  It could go great.
[01:13:55]  We could get some really great concessions out of Iran out of this.
[01:13:59]  But even that aside, if you're criticizing the American military or defense spending and you're coming from this supposedly patriotic bet when you're somebody like Graham Plattner who has an extreme left worldview and often has criticized not the American troops, but has criticized America, has comes across as unpatriotic.
[01:14:17]  Many of these other Democratic candidates, when they try and do what I call LARPing patriotism, live action role play where they're trying to act out, play act patriotism, it comes across as really hollow.
[01:14:29]  Comes across as really just trying to win over voters.
[01:14:34]  I think Platiner in particular is interesting in that they basically got this guy because he looks like what they think a populist looks like.
[01:14:42]  He has this affect, he's an oyster farmer and that kind of stuff.
[01:14:45]  But then when you listen to him talk, he sounds like your standard Democratic Socialist of America activist on Columbia's campus.
[01:14:51]  And so when you're trying to criticize this administration, it's very easy when you're not the one holding the platform.
[01:14:57]  But as soon as folks are looking at you as the alternative, not just the critic, that's going to be a real challenge for Democrats on this.
[01:15:04]  We are going to be taking questions for Chris Johnson and Lucy Caldwell from you, our audience.
[01:15:09]  Our phone line for Republicans is 202-748-8001.
[01:15:13]  For Democrats, 202-748-8000.
[01:15:16]  And for Independents, 202-748-8002.
[01:15:19]  Before we want to turn to the callers, I do want to ask you both about another issue that is likely to be coming up in the midterms.
[01:15:26]  I want to point out some polling from Gallup that health care has reclaimed the top spot among U.S. domestic worries.
[01:15:35]  61% of Americans worry a great deal about health care access and affordability.
[01:15:41]  Average national concern across 16 issues has declined from a year ago.
[01:15:47]  Republicans' average worry has plunged now that Trump is in his second year.
[01:15:51]  And so it points out here that although the Iran war intensified in March, the latest Gallup poll found that health care is topping Americans' lists of domestic concerns, with more saying that they worry a great deal about it than about 15 other domestic policy areas.
[01:16:09]  But on Wednesday, President Trump said that the U.S. government can't take care of child care, Medicaid, or Medicare costs, and suggesting that states should fund these provisions while the federal government focuses on military protection, such as the war.
[01:16:26]  Let's listen to the president.
[01:16:28]  We can't take care of daycare.
[01:16:30]  We're a big country.
[01:16:31]  We have 50 states.
[01:16:32]  We have all these other people who are fighting wars.
[01:16:35]  We can't take care of daycare.
[01:16:37]  You've got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too.
[01:16:41]  They should pay.
[01:16:42]  They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it.
[01:16:45]  And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up for it.
[01:16:48]  But it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.
[01:16:58]  Chris, you know, with health care being such a top issue for Americans, you know, we had those ACA-enhanced subsidies expire and no legislation was able to move on that.
[01:17:08]  How do you think this issue is going to play out in the midterms, especially as Republicans are pushing for more funding for the war?
[01:17:14]  Yeah, obviously, this is something I'm sure Lucy's excited to see, where Democrats love talking about the health care issue, as an issue that traditionally voters really trust them on, despite a lot of, you know, the Republicans would make the argument that a lot of the issues with our health care system are downstream of Democrat policies, you know, mostly the Affordable Care Act that happened under the Obama administration.
[01:17:35]  But this is where it gets tough for Republicans: our solutions on a lot of this stuff are get government out of the way, lower taxes, lower costs, lower barriers to entry, you know, limit the ability.
[01:17:46]  You know, right now there's efforts to get rid of the state barriers between the exchange markets for health care so you could buy health care health insurance from another state that you don't live in, getting rid of that.
[01:17:57]  But those are all things that are going to have a lag time because they are trying to leverage markets, which will move and adjust over time, where Democrats are just going to go out there and say, we just need more subsidies, we need to throw more money at this, we need to go into further and further debt to solve this stuff.

=== Nostalgia And Health Care Fixes (08:25) ===

[01:18:11]  Meanwhile, Democrat states are the ones that are taxing their voters, taxing their residents out the wazoo.
[01:18:17]  And so that's why President Trump's exactly right to say that the states should step up and do this kind of stuff.
[01:18:22]  Because if you're a Democrat state, if you're California, If you're in Massachusetts and you're taxing your constituents to such a degree that millionaires and billionaires are leaving the state, you should say, well, we're going to use that and we're going to take care of our citizens.
[01:18:37]  And instead, I think a lot of voters see that money going towards silly projects or infrastructure that never gets built.
[01:18:44]  The California high-speed rail is a perfect example of that.
[01:18:47]  Or they go to a laundry list of NGOs, these nonprofits that take taxpayer money and are supposed to provide services, but end up not doing that.
[01:18:56]  And so I think as long as the Republicans on this issue are reminding people why the problems exist, what their solutions are, and where the money is going currently as opposed to going to you for your health care, that is going to be, I hope, strong enough message to make sure that voters are at least not going to say, I don't trust those guys anymore in the healthcare stuff.
[01:19:18]  And Lucy, I imagine the Democrat counterargument to all of that is going to be pointing out that in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year, there were about a trillion dollars in cuts to health care programs between cuts that are coming down the pipeline to Medicaid, ACA marketplace coverage, and other things.
[01:19:36]  How good of an issue is this, do you think, for Democrats when it comes to the midterms?
[01:19:42]  Yeah, I think that healthcare continues to be an important issue for Democrats and one that is compelling to the American people.
[01:19:47]  I don't quite understand the point that Chris just made around flow of funds to NGOs, but I think that the Democratic Party definitely has failed the American people and how it has shown up on this issue.
[01:19:58]  The real core driver of our costs, and say this again, I'm a former Republican.
[01:20:04]  I've worked on both sides of the aisle and I also worked in conservative policy around the Affordable Care Act and its implementation is that the Affordable Care Act, the calculus that Democrats made in that moment,
[01:20:16]  and actually Barack Obama himself in a lot of his interviews since being president has talked about this, was to try to get what they thought that they could while threading the needle to not wake sort of just horrible lobbying forces.
[01:20:36]  And the force that they chose to supplicate were insurance companies.
[01:20:42]  And so in essence, the Affordable Care Act wound up being a giant payout to insurance companies.
[01:20:49]  And I'm not trying to lead us down an analysis of the ACA, but that becomes very important when we look at the issues coming up around healthcare now, right?
[01:20:57]  Part of why we're in this is that we are constantly figuring out: is there going to be an extension of subsidies?
[01:21:04]  We saw that in the Big Beautiful bill of ACA exchange supplements, yada yada.
[01:21:10]  You know, certain Republican states that did not implement their own federal insurance exchanges and are, excuse me, their own state-based exchanges now actually have much higher prices.
[01:21:20]  It's a very, very messy situation.
[01:21:22]  And so, certainly, I think that Democrats running on a campaign of like, we just need to fix ACA subsidies and just sort of further supplicate in payers and just sort of continue the scaffolding on this system that we know is not working for people.
[01:21:38]  I think their credibility with the American people will certainly run out if that's the calculus they make.
[01:21:43]  I do think that in candidates, you know, you wanted to stick with the Grand Platinar example.
[01:21:49]  I would say, Chris, I think you probably didn't mean to say this, but I think that suggesting that a combat veteran is LARPing, as you said, LARPing patriotism is not a way that we want to be talking.
[01:22:00]  But we'll just stay with the Plattner example for instance.
[01:22:03]  You know, candidates like Platiner are threading this interesting needle of both putting themselves forward as candidates who have a lot of affinities with people who are center-right Americans, you know, strong pro-gun Credentials while also saying, like, look, you can be a person who is a pro-Second Amendment and wants to own a gun and also wants to have a conversation about Medicare for all, right?
[01:22:33]  So, I think that Democrats at their best campaigning right now are putting these traditional issues together, like Medicare for all, with issues that have kind of become non-traditional issues for Democrats.
[01:22:45]  Like, look, you can be a gun guy and a veteran and a person who looks like what we think a Republican looks like, who's saying, This isn't working for me, and I need to be able to have assurance that I'll get my health care needs met, right?
[01:23:01]  And so, I think that is the kind of pairing that we'll see on the healthcare issue that could be a winner for Democrats.
[01:23:08]  And just real quick on the Platinum thing, I wasn't trying to say that a combat veteran was LARPing patriotism.
[01:23:12]  I'm saying that Democratic consultants and strategists that are pushing for candidates like Plattner who agree with them on all their far-left ideas while also have the aesthetic that you're talking about.
[01:23:22]  That's where what I'm talking about.
[01:23:23]  I'm not criticizing Plattner's service, obviously.
[01:23:25]  Yeah, you specifically referred to LARPing patriotism in the context of the city.
[01:23:28]  Yeah, I should have been more careful with my language.
[01:23:31]  All right, let's go to Gary in Texas on our line for independence.
[01:23:34]  Good morning, Gary.
[01:23:36]  Good morning.
[01:23:37]  How you doing?
[01:23:37]  Can you hear me?
[01:23:38]  Yes, we can hear you.
[01:23:39]  What's your question for Chris Johnson and Lucy Caldwell?
[01:23:42]  My question is may not be specific to them, but I've been hearing the term MAGA.
[01:23:51]  It's taking a lifelong on its own.
[01:23:53]  I think everybody can understand that.
[01:23:56]  But I have yet to hear anybody, young, old, middle-aged, give me a date when you thought America stopped being great.
[01:24:08]  And give me a date when you thought it was.
[01:24:11]  That being the case, we could have a head-on debate, if you will, because there are some people who think it's great at a certain time, and others who would probably take the other side.
[01:24:28]  You see, when you can just say MAGA, MAGA, MAGA, people jump on to that.
[01:24:33]  It's a cliche.
[01:24:35]  There was a time in this country when people used to say, Love it or leave it.
[01:24:41]  Apparently, they didn't love it and they didn't leave.
[01:24:47]  So I think we understand the gist of Gary's question.
[01:24:50]  Chris, I'll give that one to you.
[01:24:51]  When folks talk about MAGA, when was America great and when did it stop?
[01:24:57]  It's obviously never stopped being great.
[01:24:58]  But I think what President Trump and Ronald Reagan before him using make America great again as a phrase is pointing to this sense among the American people, especially folks in my generation, who feel like in the past America did big things.
[01:25:11]  I mean, just this week, we saw the first launch to the moon in decades.
[01:25:15]  And that is something that felt like it feels like America was doing big things at one point, was able to just decide, hey, we're going to go to the moon, we're going to do this, that, and the other thing, as President Kennedy said.
[01:25:26]  Those are the kind of things that the nostalgia that MAGA brings up, that's what folks are thinking about.
[01:25:30]  And I think, unfortunately, it gets framed a certain way that it's about nostalgia for some past ways that America has not been great in certain ways.
[01:25:39]  And I understand that, but it's really mostly about signaling the nostalgia for when America felt like it was doing big things, when things worked, when policy led to outcomes that actually were positive for the American people.
[01:25:51]  And folks have a sense that that's not working right left and center.
[01:25:54]  And so the fact that this is a right-coated term, obviously it's just downstream of the president.
[01:25:59]  But that's what people are, that's what the president's getting at, and that's what he's trying to talk about is that nostalgia that people have.
[01:26:06]  Since you mentioned the mission to the moon, I should point out that we continue our live coverage here on C-SPAN of the Artemis II lunar mission this afternoon.
[01:26:16]  We're going to have an update from NASA officials.
[01:26:19]  This comes before the four astronauts are scheduled to orbit the moon.
[01:26:23]  You can watch the news conference live at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN now, and online at c-span.org.
[01:26:31]  And obviously, we have lots of Artemis II coverage on our website, c-span.org, that you can check out.

=== Local Politics Beyond MAGA Rhetoric (14:18) ===

[01:26:37]  But let's get back to our callers.
[01:26:39]  Akiva is in Clifton, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
[01:26:42]  Good morning, Akiva.
[01:26:45]  Good morning.
[01:26:47]  Good morning, Lucy.
[01:26:48]  Good morning.
[01:26:50]  The other guy, I forgot your name.
[01:26:52]  Chris Johnson.
[01:26:53]  I'd just like to have two brief questions.
[01:26:56]  You can decline answering them if you like, but I just want to say Georgia is going to have a big sand race because Republicans really have made an aggressive effort to defeat Osaf.
[01:27:08]  Never mind.
[01:27:10]  The thing is, Republicans, I believe, and you're going to agree with this, is that Republicans are going to gain six seats in the House.
[01:27:18]  Speaker Johnson has said that Republicans are going to gain at least five seats in the House.
[01:27:23]  What do you make of that?
[01:27:24]  And one other thing to point out, this isn't a criticism or a question, just to Lucy.
[01:27:28]  Republicans are going to keep control of the Senate in November because Republicans eventually themselves that your party, the Democrat Party, can only gain two seats.
[01:27:39]  That will not be enough to get the majority.
[01:27:40]  There is no path to a Senate majority for the Democrat.
[01:27:45]  Period.
[01:27:46]  All right, Lucy, why don't you take that last point first?
[01:27:51]  Yeah, well, I did say earlier in this hour that the map for Democrats in the Senate in 2026 is a challenging map.
[01:28:02]  There are some interesting opportunities for Democratic pickup, including in places like the state of Maine and elsewhere.
[01:28:12]  And of course, there are parts of the country where the Democratic machinery really needs to make sure to do the hard work to retain a seat in purple states.
[01:28:24]  And I think that the Georgia example is a good one.
[01:28:28]  I think, and you're right, I am a Democrat, but again, I have a little bit of a different background than some other Democratic operatives.
[01:28:35]  And I am constantly encouraging my fellow Democrats to embrace the style of politics that Republicans have used as operatives.
[01:28:49]  Not the ugly MAGA rhetoric, but some of the way that they operationalize politics.
[01:28:54]  And one of the things that Republicans do extremely well is they focus on state and local races.
[01:29:00]  And I think that Democrats have a tendency to generate, push all of their energy into federal politics and federal races.
[01:29:09]  And they overlook a lot of the pieces that are downstream of elections at the state and local level.
[01:29:16]  So I am really hopeful that Democrats are going to make inroads in state legislative races.
[01:29:24]  There's a lot that's downstream of state legislative races, including congressional redistricting, as well as in shoring up blue state governors.
[01:29:32]  I think that some of the rhetoric coming out of MAGA, coming out of the mouths of people like Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, suggesting that they're going to do things like send ICE agents to polling places and continue federal encroachment into blue states and blue communities just reflects that the Democratic Party needs a much better counterpart, counterbalance to this moment that we're in.
[01:29:58]  And so I think that shoring up state and local elected officials is the way to go.
[01:30:03]  Though I agree with you, the map is very challenging for Democrats in the Senate in 2026.
[01:30:08]  I do think that there are lots of spots to be very hopeful, but no argument from me here that that should not be a singular focus.
[01:30:17]  Chris, I want to follow up with Gary's point about the House.
[01:30:21]  Including off-year elections last year, and this is according to reporting from the Washington Post, Democrats have flipped 30 Republican seats since the start of 2025.
[01:30:31]  Republicans, sorry, this is at the state level legislature.
[01:30:34]  Sorry.
[01:30:35]  30 Republican seats at the state level.
[01:30:37]  Republicans have not flipped a single state legislative seat.
[01:30:40]  When you move to the House, there are a bunch of Republicans who are retiring or resigning.
[01:30:46]  36 ahead of the midterms compared to 21 Democrats.
[01:30:51]  What about what do you think the prospects are for both the state level and the House for Republicans?
[01:30:57]  Yeah, like Lucy said, at the state level, we organize quite well.
[01:31:00]  Folks generally trust their Republican governor, even if they don't necessarily trust either the president or Republican elected officials at the national level.
[01:31:08]  So at the state level, I feel very, very confident.
[01:31:10]  I got my start working in state politics in Ohio.
[01:31:13]  And folks just, it's just a different beast.
[01:31:16]  At the federal level, Speaker Johnson, it's great to just be projecting strength and confidence that we're going to pick up seats, but we've got to deal with the reality that midterms are often hard.
[01:31:25]  I think those special elections, those state-level elections, are showing that there is momentum behind Democrats right now.
[01:31:31]  It's a long time from November right now here on Easter Sunday.
[01:31:34]  But that being said, there's real headwinds anytime you're in a midterm.
[01:31:39]  I mean, in 2018, during what was the blue wave in the middle of President Trump's first administration, we saw dozens of seats flip towards Democrats.
[01:31:49]  And that was with a lot of young charismatic candidates like AOC running for the first time.
[01:31:54]  So I think that's the bigger question is what kind of candidates are they running?
[01:32:00]  Are they these young, motivated, excited folks who can speak to regular people and are charismatic and interesting?
[01:32:06]  Or are they going to elect radicals potentially that are going to scare folks off?
[01:32:11]  That's going to be the real decider of not just how many seats get flipped, but further and further flips happening from there.
[01:32:19]  I want to talk a little bit about budget.
[01:32:22]  Here's a comment we received from Teresa in Little Rock, Arkansas.
[01:32:26]  When growing up, my parents set a budget to cover food, daycare, and other responsibilities.
[01:32:31]  When did the federal government become responsible to pay for daycare?
[01:32:36]  Look at the fraud in Minnesota and other states for daycare.
[01:32:39]  No one is talking about getting the stolen money back.
[01:32:41]  Both parties are destroying the government in what they want it to be responsible for.
[01:32:48]  Chris, your thoughts on what Teresa's raising here in terms of who should actually be responsible for covering some of these types of programs?
[01:32:57]  Yeah, I have a two-year-old, so I am very aware of how much child care costs right now.
[01:33:01]  And that's, I think, the more proximate concern a lot of folks have is even, you know, for a lot of people, the government doesn't cover their child care.
[01:33:08]  For most working young people, we are paying exactly what the market bears.
[01:33:13]  Unfortunately, because of the overregulation of a lot of these daycare programs, I mean, here in D.C., daycare teachers are required to have a college degree in some circumstances.
[01:33:22]  That's the kind of stuff that makes things more expensive.
[01:33:26]  And so ultimately, when things become so unaffordable for regular people because of either being subsidized or over-regulated, which is often the cause of these things, the government has to step in to make sure that folks have what is provided.
[01:33:37]  So by making these costs cheaper, by lowering costs, by lowering barriers to entry in the market, by making it easier for folks to become daycare teachers or even use funds available to form homeschooling groups or use that for other child care purposes, all of those things could potentially lead to a point where we're not just talking about who is responsible, but why does the government have to provide this?
[01:34:02]  Because it's just so affordable that it doesn't even seem like something that the government needs to fund.
[01:34:09]  Lucy, you have any thoughts on this?
[01:34:12]  Yeah, I mean, I think that certainly childcare is a huge challenge as a fellow toddler parent.
[01:34:18]  I can certainly attest to that.
[01:34:20]  And I think that there are other types of creative solutions that we could start thinking about, including asking businesses to do more to help make this more manageable for employers.
[01:34:33]  There are large corporations that used to have on-site daycares when people did things like went into offices all day long, right?
[01:34:41]  There is no reason that American businesses could not become core stakeholders in this and see the writing on the wall and say, you know, we don't want to see this problem continue to go unaddressed.
[01:34:57]  And we're going to make childcare a broader, more common benefit for our employees, right?
[01:35:06]  Or, I mean, there are also taxing structures that could make sense around this, you know, that have to do with how we tax corporations.
[01:35:16]  There are a lot of things we could explore.
[01:35:18]  I will say, I think that Donald Trump really was losing in that speech the other day and how he spoke about it.
[01:35:25]  And I, as people who know me know, I am absolutely not a defender of Donald Trump.
[01:35:29]  The core idea that he was putting out there was actually not the worst one, which is if we are going to look at things like paid parental leave at government subsidized daycares, that is a thing that should occur at the state and local level.
[01:35:47]  And it should not be the job of the federal government in contrast to, say, the national defense.
[01:35:52]  Again, you never find me defending Trump, but that actually is practical because of some of the differences community to community in the childcare needs of a community, right?
[01:36:05]  Different types of aspects of the workforce, as well as the regulations, right?
[01:36:10]  As Chris mentioned, a patchwork of regulations where in one state, what's required to become a daycare teacher is different than somewhere else.
[01:36:19]  So it's certainly a problem that needs addressing.
[01:36:22]  And I think that the post-COVID moment has certainly reflected that.
[01:36:26]  And lots of people have more flexibility in where they live.
[01:36:30]  And I don't know the stats, but I know many people are choosing to live closer to places where they have networks of family support and organizing their lives differently.
[01:36:38]  So it's certainly an issue that needs to be addressed.
[01:36:40]  I don't see it being a midterm issue, if anyone's thinking about that.
[01:36:45]  But it's a bummer when these perennial issues come up and continue not to be addressed and feel like pain points.
[01:36:54]  Garrett is in Louisville, Kentucky on our line for independence.
[01:36:57]  Good morning, Garrett.
[01:37:00]  Hi, thank you for having me on.
[01:37:02]  I just wanted to highlight a couple things that Chris said in his opening statement.
[01:37:10]  Number one, I hear this from Republicans a lot that the JCPOA is bad.
[01:37:15]  It's bad, it's bad, but there's no follow-up to that.
[01:37:21]  What I'm looking at is that we ripped up the JCPOA and Trump's first term.
[01:37:27]  And this is the alternative is we're going to war.
[01:37:29]  We're pulling out of bases in the Middle East.
[01:37:32]  We're lifting sanctions on Russia and Iran.
[01:37:37]  India just bought oil from Iran for the first time in decades.
[01:37:41]  France may be buying oil from Iran.
[01:37:44]  It's not confirmed yet, but we're giving them more money than the JCPOA could have ever given them.
[01:37:52]  And we're still saying the JCPOA is bad.
[01:37:54]  So I'm just very confused on that.
[01:37:57]  And then secondly, the conflation of patriotism and being an American.
[01:38:02]  I feel like this is something that we need to talk about as an American people.
[01:38:07]  We can't let this happen.
[01:38:09]  To be anti-war is not to be an anti-American.
[01:38:12]  That's crazy thoughts.
[01:38:15]  We cannot sit there and group people into these massive lumps and call people anti-American.
[01:38:22]  We're anti-war.
[01:38:23]  We want our money to go to our schools, to go to our health care, to go to taking care of Americans.
[01:38:28]  How is that anti-American?
[01:38:31]  Chris, I'll let you respond to those points.
[01:38:33]  Yeah, on the second one, you know, I'm not saying that folks who have foreign policy disagreements with the American government are not patriotic.
[01:38:39]  What I was trying to articulate was that often Democrats are associated with folks who are on the left who are very critical of America generally, not just our foreign policy, but often of capitalism, of our forms of liberal democracy, of various things that are so uniquely American that are getting criticized by folks on the left.
[01:39:00]  And so that's the sort of sense that people have.
[01:39:04]  I often say that politics is a vibes-based endeavor, and the vibes are often unpatriotic on the left for the American voter.
[01:39:10]  I'm not saying that Democrats are all unpatriotic and stuff.
[01:39:12]  That's just the sense that voters get based on the rhetoric they've had in the past, especially during 2020 and post-George George Floyd.
[01:39:22]  On the GCPOA thing, I understand that folks wanted to stay in that because there is now a counterfactual where we stayed in it.
[01:39:30]  Iran never got a bomb and none of this ever happened.
[01:39:32]  But we were not headed in that direction under the JCPOA.
[01:39:35]  Under the JCPOA, there were still ways that Iran was going to be able to get a nuclear weapon, even though they're obviously agreeing not to.
[01:39:42]  That is the main criticism on the right, is that they were still headed in that direction.
[01:39:46]  They were still aligned with our enemies abroad.
[01:39:49]  This is not some new thing that folks like China and Russia are aligned with Iran.
[01:39:55]  That's not surprising to us.
[01:39:57]  And on the oil aspect of it, there is, because Iran has been so hindered by this war, we are seeing massive increases in demand for American oil and liquefied natural gas.
[01:40:08]  And so that's going to be a huge shift in our benefit.
[01:40:12]  Debating the merits of the war itself aside, the idea that Iran is somehow benefiting from this, I think, is not correct.
[01:40:19]  And just a little bit of background for folks who might not be familiar with that acronym.
[01:40:24]  JCPOA refers to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
[01:40:28]  That was the Iran nuclear agreement that was passed, agreed upon between the United States, Iran, and several other world powers back in July of 2015.
[01:40:37]  I'm reading here from the Council on Foreign Relations.
[01:40:40]  Under its terms, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and open its facilities to more extensive international inspections in exchange for billions of dollars worth of sanctions relief.
[01:40:52]  Obviously, the president pulled out of that deal.

=== National Debt Crisis Looms (11:31) ===

[01:40:55]  Let's hear from Rachel in Weakiwatchee, Florida, on our line for Republicans.
[01:41:00]  Good morning, Rachel.
[01:41:02]  Good morning.
[01:41:03]  Yes, I would like to ask the lady Democrat.
[01:41:09]  I heard her say Calmwell.
[01:41:12]  Yeah, Calm.
[01:41:14]  Yes, I'd like to ask her.
[01:41:16]  I heard her say she was a former Republican.
[01:41:18]  I would like to ask her, what was her main reasoning for changing from a Republican to a Democrat?
[01:41:25]  All right, go ahead, Lucy.
[01:41:27]  Sure.
[01:41:27]  Well, thank you so much for that question.
[01:41:30]  I am a former Republican, and I came up in the Republican Party really working on state policy, lobbied on the ground in 30-some states.
[01:41:40]  And what attracted me to the Republican Party is that I held a lot of small L libertarian views, right?
[01:41:48]  I was very interested in the concepts around the free market and individual liberty, individual responsibility, and a huge fan of federalism.
[01:42:00]  You've heard me, I still think there's a lot that is amazing in federalism, and I'm encouraging Democrats to embrace federalism.
[01:42:09]  But the reality is that as we got closer and closer to the 2016 election, and I was looking at the debate stage of the 17, not all the debate stage, but the 17 Republican candidates in 2016 who were running for president, I could not see, I could not see many candidates who I felt like I could support.
[01:42:33]  Maybe a John Kasich, maybe a Carly Fiorina, perhaps a Jeb Bush, but the vast majority of the Republicans on those debate stages, not even just Donald Trump, but also people like Ted Cruz and others.
[01:42:46]  I just did not feel that they spoke for me, and I did not feel like they spoke for the concepts that had attracted me to the Republican Party in the first place.
[01:42:55]  And for a very long time, actually, until last year, I always identified as a political independent because I have a lot of things to criticize with the Democratic Party.
[01:43:05]  But I could see in this political moment that we are in that I actually think that the Democratic Party is doing the right thing to try to broaden the tent and to be open to a range of ideas and to elevate non-traditional voices.
[01:43:24]  And I thought I should stop complaining about the Democratic Party.
[01:43:28]  The Democratic Party is inviting me in.
[01:43:30]  I'm going to take that invitation and help shape the Democratic Party into a party that can be inclusive of a lot of Americans, whether you're a person who was a Republican last week or, you know, whatever.
[01:43:43]  And so that was my journey.
[01:43:46]  So thanks for that question.
[01:43:48]  That's really kind to ask.
[01:43:49]  Rachel is in Silver Spring, Maryland on our line for Democrats.
[01:43:53]  Good morning, Rachel.
[01:43:54]  Good morning.
[01:43:55]  Thank you, C-SPAN.
[01:43:56]  Happy Easter.
[01:43:57]  I have a question from Mr. Johnson.
[01:44:01]  Regarding Christy Noam, when she was in charge of DHS, there's an investigation going on about overspending when they were buying warehouses to hold so-called illegal aliens or immigrants.
[01:44:20]  Where is the accountability, sir?
[01:44:23]  Should there be accountability?
[01:44:25]  And these were our tax dollars used, your tax dollars, sir.
[01:44:32]  Will the Republican Party be known as the Party of Grifters?
[01:44:37]  Thank you.
[01:44:39]  Yeah, I mean, well, first, there have been consequences.
[01:44:41]  Christy Noam is no longer in the administration.
[01:44:44]  And part of that was concerns over these contracts that were going through Corey Lewandowski and other folks.
[01:44:50]  So I think that's going to get looked into.
[01:44:52]  I think Republican voters have been animated quite a bit recently by the idea of how much fraud is happening in the government, how much states and the federal government are both being taken advantage of by various groups.
[01:45:05]  So I think there is going to be some introspection.
[01:45:08]  I think there's this belief that we don't ever criticize our own side.
[01:45:11]  And politically, that's often the strategy.
[01:45:14]  But for regular voters, they're not looking at fraud as a partisan thing.
[01:45:18]  They see it as a government problem.
[01:45:20]  And so the more that we are straightforward, we're investigating ourselves, we're taking this stuff seriously, taking these accusations seriously, the better it is with the voters.
[01:45:28]  That being said, we know that there are certain biases within the mainstream press where they will look into certain stories or certain angles or potential issues much more critically for Republicans.
[01:45:39]  And so we have to be clear-eyed about what's being accused and make sure that these are credible and not just partisan attacks coming from elected Democrats or a biased mainstream press.
[01:45:49]  All right.
[01:45:49]  Let's hear from John in Vicksburg, Michigan on our line for independence.
[01:45:53]  Good morning, John.
[01:45:55]  Yeah, good morning.
[01:45:58]  One thing, our country is about to hit a, I guess you'd call it a dubious milestone.
[01:46:04]  It's projected to happen before the midterm, the net $40 trillion in debt.
[01:46:11]  And we have achieved this by voting for people with Ds and R's next to their name for, you know, as long as I can remember, which is why I'm an independent.
[01:46:23]  We've watched the net worth of politicians, both D's and R's, grow exponentially while serving in government.
[01:46:36]  I don't trust either one of these people.
[01:46:39]  And I think that's why the independents in this country are a growing population.
[01:46:45]  Thank you.
[01:46:48]  I'll let both of you respond to this point about the national debt.
[01:46:50]  I'm looking here at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's debt clock showing over $39 trillion in debt, which is more than $114,000 for every single person in America.
[01:47:03]  Lucy, why don't you go first and then we'll follow up with Chris?
[01:47:07]  Sure.
[01:47:08]  It's hard to know.
[01:47:10]  I think that some of what was referenced just now in the question was around whether or not this is a swing issue for independents.
[01:47:17]  And it's hard to know from the research.
[01:47:21]  I tend to think it is not.
[01:47:23]  I think that certainly the national debt, and it's an issue that I've worked on, is an issue of grave concern.
[01:47:31]  And it is certainly unsustainable to be in a situation where we are increasingly just trying to service the interest on our debt.
[01:47:40]  Of course, federal debt is a little different.
[01:47:42]  We have to adjust our minds a little bit because it's a little bit different than your own personal debt.
[01:47:47]  But obviously, this is a fiscally unsustainable situation.
[01:47:51]  I don't think that independents are aligned on this issue.
[01:47:54]  You know, they may say they are, but one of the realities of the independent label, and I know this having worked in independent politics, is that you can get people who identify as independents to flag a lot of issues, but they actually are spread across the political spectrum themselves.
[01:48:10]  And sometimes we accidentally use independent as almost like a stand-in for moderate, and the data tells us that's not true.
[01:48:16]  It is everyone.
[01:48:17]  You can ask an independent who turns out to have views like Rashida Tlaib and also views like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
[01:48:24]  So obviously not a monolith.
[01:48:26]  I think that unfortunately the debt is going to be an issue for ever in this format because people can't decide on how they want to pay this debt and get on top of our national debt crisis because one party wants to make adjustments to tax revenues, but not to program or vice versa.
[01:48:51]  And we have a really hard time reaching agreement on what those things are.
[01:48:54]  I think that America is unlikely to impose austerity measures that other countries have done when they have tried to tackle their debt.
[01:49:01]  That is a thing that I think hits people hard.
[01:49:05]  So it's certainly an important issue.
[01:49:07]  I don't think that it is going to be an activating issue for swing voters or even for most independents in an election anytime soon, candidly.
[01:49:20]  Even if it's not going to be a major issue in the midterms, it is a pretty significant issue when it comes to policy decisions.
[01:49:27]  I'm still looking here at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and it says every day we spend over $2.8 billion on interest on the national debt.
[01:49:35]  It is the fastest growing part of the federal budget, and it's crowding out a lot of other spending.
[01:49:41]  Well, exactly.
[01:49:41]  And I think that's where folks are going to get frustrated is as the debt continues to go up and the interest we're paying on it continues to go up.
[01:49:48]  And they're going to see less and less of their individual tax dollar going to programs that they think the government should fund.
[01:49:53]  It's going to be something that becomes more salient as a political issue, I think.
[01:49:57]  But unfortunately, I think because of the nature of how debt works and how interest rates work, it basically won't become a salient issue until there's a real crisis where you start to see interest rates going up, where the government is losing the ability to spend or borrow, see credit ratings going down, those kind of things.
[01:50:13]  And so I think that's the only point that this actually gets changed because even among Republicans, you're going to see folks who acknowledge the government is bloated, we need to cut things.
[01:50:22]  But looking just at the limitations of the Doge effort, where we're running into just the reality that it's really, really hard to cut government programs, especially in a meaningful way on the budget.
[01:50:32]  And so when you look at the pie chart of the federal budget, I think most people's impression is that we're giving all this money to defense and foreign aid and stuff like that when over half of the budget is entitlements.
[01:50:42]  It's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, various forms of other entitlements.
[01:50:46]  And those are really, really hard to convince people that we need less of or we shouldn't be spending as much because that's what's driving the debt up so much.
[01:50:54]  So I'm hopeful, though, that as the economy continues to grow, as we continue to see more development in AI and new technologies that could increase productivity, hopefully growth helps us get out of this debt crisis.
[01:51:07]  But until it becomes a crisis, I doubt I see a lot of policy change.
[01:51:10]  John is in West Town, Pennsylvania, on our line for independence.
[01:51:13]  Good morning, John.
[01:51:15]  Hey, Chris, and hello to the other guests as well.
[01:51:19]  Lucy Caldwell.
[01:51:21]  Hello.
[01:51:23]  Chris, I just wanted to, last time you were on, I called in and talked to you a little bit.
[01:51:29]  And yeah, you listed off a bunch of, I guess, adjectives that you would describe yourself as.
[01:51:33]  I think it was evangelical, capitalist, so on and so forth.
[01:51:38]  You never put American in that.
[01:51:39]  And I just wondered where Americans fit in on that list of adjectives.
[01:51:47]  No, that's a great question.
[01:51:49]  I think there's an assumed American preface to all of those: an American evangelical, American dad, and American conservative.
[01:51:57]  And so I think that because we just talk about America and we live in this American political discourse, we don't focus on that as part of our identity near as much as we should.
[01:52:09]  And so I'm glad you called back in and called me out on that because, yeah, being an American is a huge part of my identity.
[01:52:16]  It's just not something we think about ourselves in ways that distinguish ourselves from others.
[01:52:20]  And so when we're sitting around other Americans, especially other patriotic Americans, it's often something that gets left behind.

=== Kissinger Tapes Commentary (02:52) ===

[01:52:26]  So thanks so much for the call.
[01:52:28]  Well, thank you both for your commentary this morning.
[01:52:30]  Lucy Caldwell, Democratic strategist, as well as Chris Johnson with the American Energy Leadership Institute and Republican strategist commentator as well.
[01:52:38]  Sure.
[01:52:40]  Thank you both very much for joining us this morning.
[01:52:43]  Thanks so much.
[01:52:45]  All right, coming up later on our program, we're going to be joined by the Brooking Institution's Asla Aydan Hashbosh, who's going to discuss the latest on the Iran war, including the U.S. effort to open the Strait of Hormuz.
[01:52:56]  But first, we are going to have an open forum.
[01:52:59]  You can call in now to participate.
[01:53:01]  Republicans at 202-748-8001.
[01:53:04]  Democrats at 202-748-8000.
[01:53:07]  And Independents at 202-748-8002.
[01:53:10]  We'll be right back.
[01:53:21]  On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb, author and editor Tom Wells opens his 600-page book titled The Kissinger Tapes this way: quote: Henry Kissinger is one of the most polarizing figures in recent American history.
[01:53:37]  He's hailed by many as a master in the art of diplomacy and realpolitik.
[01:53:42]  Tom Wells, who has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, writes this, quote, many critics consider his diplomacy overhyped, and some condemn him for committing war crimes, close quote.
[01:53:57]  Mr. Wells' book is subtitled Inside Henry Kissinger's Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations.
[01:54:04]  These recordings cover years 1969 through August of 1974, the end of the Nixon presidency.
[01:54:13]  A new interview with author and editor Tom Wells about his book, The Kissinger Tapes, inside his secretly recorded phone conversations.
[01:54:21]  Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
[01:54:34]  Democracy is always an unfinished creation.
[01:54:38]  Democracy is worth dying for.
[01:54:40]  Democracy belongs to us all.
[01:54:42]  We are here in the sanctuary of democracy.
[01:54:45]  Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies.
[01:54:49]  American democracy is bigger than any one person.
[01:54:52]  Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected.
[01:54:58]  We are still at our core a democracy.
[01:55:01]  This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.
[01:55:12]  Washington Journal continues.
[01:55:14]  Welcome back.
[01:55:15]  We're in open forum, ready to take your calls and commentary.

=== Threatening War On Truth Social (15:50) ===

[01:55:18]  But first, a quick update here from Ox Axios that Trump has threatened Iran with quote-unquote hell if the Hormuz Strait isn't open in 48 hours.
[01:55:29]  This is from Saturday.
[01:55:30]  President Trump threatened on Saturday that hell will rain down on Iran if the regime doesn't agree to open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.
[01:55:40]  Trump's 10-day deadline to Iran is expected to expire on Monday.
[01:55:44]  He previously threatened to bomb the country's energy, water, and oil infrastructure if no deal was reached to open the strait.
[01:55:52]  Tehran has accused Trump of planning to commit war crimes.
[01:55:56]  Just some of the news that we're following this morning.
[01:55:59]  Michael is in Connecticut on our line for independence.
[01:56:02]  Michael, you are in open forum.
[01:56:04]  Yes, thank you for reading that part of that comment from Donald Trump.
[01:56:10]  I notice you didn't read the full comment because it would be so inappropriate for you to do that.
[01:56:16]  He uses the F word in that comment, if you look closely.
[01:56:21]  He used on Easter Sunday, Donald Trump uses the F word to describe another nation that he attacked and is now threatening war crimes, bombing their public works facilities and their bridges, war crimes, threatening war crimes while using the F word on Easter Sunday, the President of the United States.
[01:56:49]  Could we be more despicable?
[01:56:52]  And I'm just going to leave it as this.
[01:56:54]  The problem isn't the president.
[01:56:57]  It's the Republican Party.
[01:56:59]  Congress can stop this president tomorrow morning, but Republicans refuse to.
[01:57:07]  So if you follow the yellow brick road, I hope America is understanding what to do in the next election.
[01:57:14]  Vote out all Republicans because they are the problem.
[01:57:18]  Fix the problem.
[01:57:19]  The Republican Party.
[01:57:21]  Bring that party back as a decent, respectable party, the kind of party it used to be before Donald Trump took control of it.
[01:57:29]  But Donald Trump, yes, he's the face of the problem with his language, with his threatening war crimes on Easter Sunday.
[01:57:39]  But the people of America have the ability to end it by voting out all Republicans at every level in the next election.
[01:57:46]  And let's try to get America back by rebuilding the Republican Party and restoring trust in America once again with our friends.
[01:57:57]  Thank you for listening to me.
[01:57:59]  Michael is correct that there was quite a bit of profanity in the president's post from a little under an hour ago on Truth Social talking about Tuesday being a power plant bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran saying that they should open the Strait of Hormuz using multiple versions of profanity on Truth Social in that post this morning.
[01:58:24]  Let's hear from Larry in Fort Calhoun, Nebraska on our line for Republicans.
[01:58:29]  Good morning, Larry.
[01:58:31]  Well, happy Easter, everybody.
[01:58:33]  Number one.
[01:58:35]  Number two, I think the Democratic Party's got some serious trouble.
[01:58:41]  We got the Democratic Party that I used to know, like JFK and a few others.
[01:58:54]  If they were alive today, they would sit down and cry to see what happened to the Democratic Party today.
[01:59:02]  It needs to go back to the Democratic Party of the 1960s and the 50s and even the 70s and stop this hate.
[01:59:16]  I mean, on Easter, how can a Democrat or a Republican, anybody talk about hate on Easter?
[01:59:24]  That just boggles my mind.
[01:59:27]  Larry, what do you think of the President's post this morning on Easter using that level of profanity?
[01:59:35]  The profanity, I do not agree with.
[01:59:39]  That's one thing I got to say about the president.
[01:59:42]  I agree with him all the time except for his firing of Palm David and Christy No.
[01:59:49]  I did not like that.
[01:59:51]  But other than that, the man is doing a great job trying to keep America back to where it used to be, where it was honorable.
[02:00:02]  He's trying to clean up the corruption.
[02:00:04]  He's trying to ask you, we had a caller in a previous segment ask about this framework in particular of Make America Great Again.
[02:00:13]  And you were just saying that you're calling back to a time when America was better.
[02:00:18]  When was that specifically?
[02:00:21]  I think in the 60s, even though we had all this trouble, because I lived in the 60s and the 70s, even though we had a lot of problems back then with the protest of the war, civil rights, and everything like that, we were all working to try to fix the problem.
[02:00:45]  Okay, Democrats and Republicans both.
[02:00:49]  And here's the thing about today is there's so much hate that it cliles up.
[02:00:56]  We actually got people not being civil to each other.
[02:01:03]  That's one problem.
[02:01:04]  But to think about it, you've got Democratic people rooting for criminals and terrorists.
[02:01:14]  You know, JFK would just literally just roll over his grave if he knew what was going on.
[02:01:23]  Ben is in Chicago on our line for independence.
[02:01:26]  Good morning, Ben.
[02:01:28]  Good morning.
[02:01:29]  This war with Iran is planned, led, carried out by the president's cabinet and Israel foreign operatives.
[02:01:36]  The intel our president receives is manipulated.
[02:01:39]  He gets two-minute YouTube shorts of bombings.
[02:01:42]  We don't want this war.
[02:01:43]  We're being led by mind control.
[02:01:45]  Godspeed to the A-10 pilots shut down.
[02:01:48]  I hope Chechen soldiers don't get to them because we usually have to save a bullet for the soldiers over there.
[02:01:53]  I pray that everybody's okay.
[02:01:54]  Please let our men and women in service be okay.
[02:01:58]  The war is hurting our allies more than anybody.
[02:02:00]  South Korea is literally telling people to stop driving as much.
[02:02:03]  What are we doing?
[02:02:05]  The side causes of this are military-industrial complex profits off of this like crazy.
[02:02:10]  The U.S. president is talking about hitting their water desalination plans for rural people in Iran.
[02:02:16]  This makes no sense.
[02:02:17]  That is a war crime.
[02:02:18]  And another caller called in earlier about double-tap bombings where they try and rescue people and then they get bombed.
[02:02:23]  That's a war crime.
[02:02:25]  I want to move on to Ed Martin for Deputy AG.
[02:02:28]  We need Ed Martin in now over Todd Blanche.
[02:02:30]  Todd Blanche killed the Autopenn investigation, and Joe Kent is being called a Nazi.
[02:02:36]  And it's unfair why he is being called a Nazi.
[02:02:41]  He's not a Nazi.
[02:02:42]  He's an American patriot.
[02:02:43]  He got deployed.
[02:02:44]  He wants to serve and fight.
[02:02:46]  And then just because he talks about Israel being behind all this, he gets kicked out and blamed by the administration.
[02:02:51]  Why is the president lying to the people?
[02:02:54]  Thank you.
[02:02:56]  William is in Atlanta on our line for Democrats.
[02:02:59]  Good morning, William.
[02:03:01]  Hey, we just had two people on, a Democratic operative and a Republican operative, and they didn't know, have no answers for the people.
[02:03:09]  People, please let black America save America.
[02:03:14]  Please vote all black politicians in.
[02:03:19]  We are the smartest.
[02:03:20]  We can save it, even with reparations.
[02:03:22]  Give us reparations, and we will repair all the infrastructure.
[02:03:26]  We will fix everything.
[02:03:28]  This is our nation.
[02:03:30]  It used to be ours.
[02:03:32]  Give it back to us.
[02:03:33]  We're the real owners of this land.
[02:03:35]  Give it back to us.
[02:03:36]  We will repair it.
[02:03:38]  We will fix it.
[02:03:39]  We will run the country the way it's supposed to be run for all people.
[02:03:44]  No matter what your color is, no matter what your faith is, we are the chosen one.
[02:03:50]  We are the people of God.
[02:03:53]  Put the control back in our hands.
[02:03:56]  You don't have to be scared.
[02:03:59]  All right.
[02:04:00]  We are in open form and ready to take your calls with comments about public policy and news of the day.
[02:04:06]  Republicans, again, can call in at 202-748-8001.
[02:04:10]  Democrats at 202-748-8000.
[02:04:14]  And Independents at 202-748-8002.
[02:04:18]  Once again, if you'd like to text us, that's 202-748-8003.
[02:04:23]  We're also on social media, facebook.com/slash C-SPAN and on X at C-SPANWJ.
[02:04:30]  Mike is in Rockford, Illinois, on our line for independence.
[02:04:33]  Good morning, Mike.
[02:04:35]  Good morning, Kimberly.
[02:04:36]  Happy Easter to all who celebrate.
[02:04:39]  Five underreported stories recently in the news.
[02:04:43]  The first one, Stephen Miller, in a hearing with Representative Lou.
[02:04:48]  Lou was questioning him about the $6.2 billion being transferred to an overseas account in the Grand Caymans to a company that was formed seven days before the transfer.
[02:05:00]  He could not answer in four minutes.
[02:05:03]  It was quiet.
[02:05:04]  The second underreported story is Mark Wayne Mullen's confirmation.
[02:05:10]  He was asked about Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2 in the Constitution where congressmen can't work for another branch of the government.
[02:05:23]  He admitted that he did COVID work where only four people write into it.
[02:05:27]  Well, he was a congressman.
[02:05:30]  I think there's a big gray area there where you might have blurred the lines of the three branches.
[02:05:37]  No reporting at all.
[02:05:38]  The third one is Counter Fitzgerald, Luttnick kids, I guess they all went to the island too, running Tenner Fitzgerald or buying the tariff rebates.
[02:05:52]  And there's after Trump and Lutnick passed the tariffs, and then we know that the Supreme Court shot him down.
[02:06:00]  Now they're getting the rebates to the import companies, and they bought the rights to the tariff money.
[02:06:07]  Very, very questionable, not much reporting on that.
[02:06:10]  And four and five, number four is the refinery in Texas that exploded.
[02:06:14]  I've seen videos of it.
[02:06:16]  It vapor lights.
[02:06:18]  And wildfires in Nebraska burned a million acres, almost no reporting.
[02:06:24]  And then lastly but not least, the border fence is not being built on the border.
[02:06:30]  It's going through tribal lands.
[02:06:32]  We're losing hundreds of acres, and no one's really pointing these things out.
[02:06:38]  Everybody, happy Easter.
[02:06:39]  Thank you.
[02:06:41]  Next up is Jim in Rossville, Georgia on our line for Democrats.
[02:06:44]  Good morning, Jim.
[02:06:47]  How are you guys doing today?
[02:06:49]  Good, thanks.
[02:06:49]  What's your comment for Open Forum?
[02:06:52]  Well, I was just, you know, curious about the, you know, I'm in the district of Margaret Taylor Green's, excuse me, vacant seat.
[02:07:03]  And I'm sitting here watching YouTube all night long, and all I see is nothing but the Republicans thing just fighting against each other.
[02:07:13]  Why haven't I seen any Democratic stuff?
[02:07:19]  You know, I mean, I don't want to say I'm a Democratic personally, but I would like to see some more fair balance, you know, negotiations or not negotiations, but just some fair, you know, from both sides.
[02:07:41]  I don't know how to articulate the way I'm trying to say, but.
[02:07:45]  Jimmy, if I'm understanding you correctly, the videos that are coming up naturally for you on YouTube are skewing Republican.
[02:07:51]  Is this what you're saying?
[02:07:53]  Yeah, that's all I've seen.
[02:07:54]  It's just Rick Jones and the governor and nothing but, you know, Republican.
[02:08:01]  Have we seen anything about the Republican seat for the Congresswoman?
[02:08:11]  You know, it's just been, you know, attack ads against Sean Harris.
[02:08:16]  And it's been, you know, just, hey, vote for Clay Fuller.
[02:08:21]  So I was just curious about why the algorithm is going that way.
[02:08:28]  Often those algorithms show you more things that are similar to what you've already watched.
[02:08:34]  So perhaps searching for different things might yield different results in your algorithm, perhaps.
[02:08:41]  Well, I steamed the, you know, go to Democratic side, but that is interesting.
[02:08:50]  So, well, you know, thanks for your time.
[02:08:52]  I was just curious about that because, you know, this election is, you know, pretty pivotable.
[02:08:59]  I'm sorry, not pivotable, but pivotal.
[02:09:02]  You know, I understand.
[02:09:04]  Yeah.
[02:09:05]  All right.
[02:09:05]  Let's hear from Joshua in Harwick, Pennsylvania on our line for Republicans.
[02:09:09]  Good morning, Joshua.
[02:09:11]  Good morning, and happy Easter to everyone.
[02:09:15]  Go ahead, Joshua, with your comment in Open Forum.
[02:09:18]  Yeah, I think that today is a great day for America.
[02:09:22]  And there are a lot of different issues that I think, as you listen to the open forum, people have on their minds.
[02:09:29]  But I think the central most point that we all should really hold is that America is winning this war in Iran, and that a problem that Joe Biden should have dealt with is now finally being solved.
[02:09:44]  Gas prices haven't gone up as high as what they were under Joe Biden.
[02:09:49]  And everyone's upset about gas prices now, but they weren't that upset two, three years ago.
[02:09:55]  And once again, we are going to bring peace in the Middle East.
[02:10:00]  And with Iran decapitated and effectively its regime silenced, there's going to be peace with Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Dubai with Israel.
[02:10:12]  And that they're all going to kind of center around this word of peace.
[02:10:16]  Donald Trump is laying out the framework of how to deal with the Palestinians, and he's cleaning up with Israel, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.
[02:10:27]  And I think this is a great day of celebration for America as a whole, for just all the free-loving people of the world that a dictatorship is falling.
[02:10:38]  And this is a great day.
[02:10:40]  And I couldn't be happier that we've got this down to pilot.
[02:10:45]  And us holding Iran stops China from getting Iran.
[02:10:50]  And this is how we reset the balance of power.
[02:10:54]  And so I'm really excited.
[02:10:56]  I'm really excited about how this realigns our allies against China and brings them back to the fold of American free world capitalism.

=== Homelessness Justifies Violence (08:33) ===

[02:11:09]  Carol is in Marlborough, Massachusetts on our line for independence.
[02:11:13]  Good morning, Carol.
[02:11:15]  Good morning.
[02:11:16]  Happy Easter.
[02:11:18]  I just wanted to say I agree with everything that the colleague just said, the Republican caller.
[02:11:26]  Thank God for this president.
[02:11:27]  President Trump is doing a great job.
[02:11:30]  And thank God that we saved that airman in Iran.
[02:11:36]  And everything that the president is doing is to make America safe again.
[02:11:42]  And I appreciate you taking my call.
[02:11:45]  Thank you.
[02:11:46]  Next up is Anthony in Houston, Texas, on our line for Democrats.
[02:11:50]  Good morning, Anthony.
[02:11:52]  Hey, good morning.
[02:11:54]  I just, you asked the question earlier, and I hope I can have time to respond to it.
[02:11:59]  Is there too much religion?
[02:12:02]  And I would have called in on that line, stating that there's too much religion.
[02:12:07]  And why?
[02:12:10]  Because how religion has been used historically, not just by the United States, but all around the world.
[02:12:16]  But in the United States specifically, you think about the curse of Ham and how Genesis was used to support shattered slavery.
[02:12:27]  You think about the doctrine of discovery and the indigenous displacement and how the Bible and religion was used to take land away from indigenous people and under the guise of bringing Christianity to the new world.
[02:12:43]  You think about racial segregation and racial purity and how the Bible, Ezra, for example, is the book of Ezra was used to support that.
[02:12:54]  And so very difficult for me to support this faith movement over facts, right, over reality.
[02:13:04]  It just has been used to justify violence.
[02:13:07]  And people who gather on Saturdays to watch a lynching with their families and then go to church and raise their hands and praise to a God that they believe supports that.
[02:13:17]  So I believe there's a great deal of moral value in biblical teachings, not just Christianity, but many other religions.
[02:13:27]  There's a lot of moral value, but that's not what's being taught or being propagated or perpetuated throughout society.
[02:13:38]  The Book of Eli with Denzel, Washington, gives us a great example of how these people in power see the strategic use of the Bible.
[02:13:48]  And I just use that because people like watching movies, so maybe they'll watch the Book of Eli and get an understanding of what I mean.
[02:13:54]  Finally, what I would say in response to one of the other callers who said he'd like to go back to the 1960s because he gave justifiable reasons, but he said one thing that got my attention.
[02:14:06]  He said that we were trying to work on things.
[02:14:09]  We were working together.
[02:14:10]  And I would agree with him.
[02:14:12]  The result of working together gave us civil rights.
[02:14:15]  It gave us voting rights.
[02:14:18]  It gave us affirmative action.
[02:14:20]  But as Martin Luther King said in his last book, where do we go from here?
[02:14:25]  Chaos or community?
[02:14:27]  There is a white backlash that takes place.
[02:14:31]  And white voters primarily vote for political clowns, he said, who use a witch's brew of bigotry in order to gain their vote because it's not really about religion.
[02:14:47]  It's not really about Christianity.
[02:14:49]  It's not really about, it's about self-preservation.
[02:14:53]  It's about what they want for themselves and their group and their tribe.
[02:14:57]  And that's the unfortunate thing of how, for me, how religion is used.
[02:15:02]  Now it's about DEI and the attack on DEI.
[02:15:06]  We've got your point.
[02:15:06]  I want to hear from a couple other folks.
[02:15:08]  Let's hear from Dave in Dana Point, California on our line for Republicans.
[02:15:12]  Good morning, Dave.
[02:15:13]  Yes.
[02:15:14]  Thank you for taking my call.
[02:15:15]  I just want to say happy Easter to everybody.
[02:15:18]  And I just want to say a long time ago, I used to be a Democrat.
[02:15:23]  And now the Democrat Party is the party of open borders.
[02:15:27]  We all saw it.
[02:15:28]  People who call in here on C-SPAN, they watch this stuff.
[02:15:32]  They know what's going on.
[02:15:33]  But we all know that they're a party of open borders.
[02:15:37]  They're a party of defunding and abolishing law enforcement agencies.
[02:15:42]  They're a party of allowing males in females safe spaces like their jails, their sports, their locker rooms, bathrooms.
[02:15:50]  They're also a party that likes to call druggy tent communities homeless.
[02:15:56]  We all know they're not homeless.
[02:15:58]  They're druggy tent communities.
[02:16:01]  If you go through and if you analyze all those things, those are just a small portion of what I just said that they're for.
[02:16:08]  All that stuff hurts our women and children.
[02:16:12]  That's what it hurts.
[02:16:13]  It doesn't hurt grown men like me, but that's what it does.
[02:16:18]  And it's weird that people who watch this stuff call in on C-SPAN.
[02:16:25]  They see all this stuff that I just said.
[02:16:27]  So everybody knows that that's what the Democrat Party is for nowadays.
[02:16:32]  Dave, I understand your broader point about the Democratic Party, but can I follow up with just one of the point that you mentioned about homelessness in the United States?
[02:16:41]  I want to point to some research from the University of California, San Francisco, about how common illegal drug use is among people who are homeless.
[02:16:51]  And they found it was the largest study among people experiencing homelessness since the 1990s and found that less than half of people experiencing homelessness regularly used illicit drugs in the prior six months.
[02:17:04]  The most common drugs used by this population aren't opioids, but methamphetamines.
[02:17:09]  And a significant percentage of people who are homeless and use drugs regularly have tried but have been unable to receive treatment.
[02:17:18]  I understand your larger point, Dave, but I did want to give you some data around homelessness and drug use.
[02:17:25]  But that data that you're saying, you didn't mention this, and this is the key.
[02:17:31]  I'm 59 years old, so I know the difference between homeless and druggy tank communities.
[02:17:36]  Druggy tank communities are a phenomena that's been popping up hardcore over the last 10, 15 years.
[02:17:43]  That's what these are.
[02:17:45]  Everybody knows prior that if you're 30 or older, you know the difference.
[02:17:50]  Homeless, you'd see one or two in a park somewhere.
[02:17:53]  Now you have druggy tank communities and they're everywhere.
[02:18:00]  They pop up behind strip malls.
[02:18:02]  They're in empty fields.
[02:18:04]  They're in our parks and recreational areas prior, say 10, 15 years ago, before we had druggy tank communities.
[02:18:12]  These are homeless communities.
[02:18:13]  I think we have your point, Dave.
[02:18:15]  All right, let's hear from Edith in Illinois and our line for independence.
[02:18:18]  Good morning, Edith.
[02:18:21]  That prior caller just shows there is no mercy in the heart of most Americans today and no intent to try to improve the lives of everyone in America.
[02:18:33]  The pathetic Republican Party is going to go down this November, I hope, mostly because the Hispanic community has found out that they do not intend to help anybody but someone who has pink skin, rosy cheeks, blue eyes, and basically from Europe.
[02:18:56]  So America has to decide, doesn't it ever care about immigrants?
[02:19:02]  Apparently the immigrant is the dirty word today.
[02:19:07]  And they don't realize our own ancestors were immigrants at one time or another.
[02:19:13]  And just hope that we don't have a basic revolution right here in this country and slit each other's throats one day.
[02:19:22]  All right.
[02:19:23]  Well, that is all of the time that we have for open forum.
[02:19:27]  I want to remind folks that if you are looking for coverage of the Artemis II mission, you can tune in to C-SPAN.
[02:19:34]  Later today, we're going to continue our live coverage of the Artemis II lunar missid mission this afternoon with an update from NASA officials.

=== Student Cam Documentary Winners (02:35) ===

[02:19:42]  This is going to come before the four astronauts are scheduled to start their orbit of the moon.
[02:19:47]  You can watch the news conference live at 3.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, and online at c-span.org.
[02:19:55]  But joining us next, we'll have Brooking Institution's Asla Aishdan Tabas, who's going to join us for the latest on the Iran war, including in the effort to open the Strait of Hormuz.
[02:20:07]  We'll be right back.
[02:20:12]  Lights, Cameras, Impact.
[02:20:15]  To celebrate the 250th anniversary since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, thousands of students across America started writing and filming for this year's C-SPAN Student Cam documentary competition.
[02:20:26]  Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. created documentaries examining themes from American history, exploring rights and freedoms rooted in the foundational document, or tackling modern-day issues from the economy to immigration, criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
[02:20:44]  They researched, they interviewed experts, and they told powerful stories, exploring the enduring impact of the Declaration of Independence.
[02:20:53]  And now it's time to announce the top winners of Student Cam 2026.
[02:20:58]  The middle school first prize goes to Harper Hayden and Helena de la Hussé of Correa Middle School in San Diego, California.
[02:21:05]  Her documentary, this is what democracy looks like, about free speech and the no-kings movement.
[02:21:11]  The high school Eastern Division first prize goes to Kessler Dickerson and Charlotte Liggin from Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina, for Roots of Freedom, the struggles and tensions of rural American agriculture, about farmers and government policies that impact food production.
[02:21:27]  In the high school Central Division, Benjamin Curian of Oman Tangi Liberty High School in Powell, Ohio, won first prize for A Right to Health about healthcare policy.
[02:21:37]  And in the high school Western Division, first prize goes to Ganaya Safi and Juhi Fari from Indercom High School in Sacramento, California for Dreamers Deferred, the American Dream on Hold about immigration policy and deferred action for childhood arrivals.
[02:21:52]  And we're happy to announce that Student Cam 2026 Grand Prize winner earning $5,000 is Irena Holbrook from Troy Athens High School in Troy, Michigan for her documentary, The Pursuit of Fair Pay, about the impact of name, image, and likeness, known as NIL, on college sports.
[02:22:10]  And out of almost 4,000 students who participated this year, you've won $5,000 in this year's grand prize.
[02:22:16]  Congratulations.

=== Iran Nuclear File Stalled (16:10) ===

[02:22:17]  Thank you.
[02:22:19]  Want to see their amazing films?
[02:22:21]  Watch all 150 award-winning documentaries at studentcam.org and catch the top 21 winners airing this April on C-SPAN.
[02:22:30]  C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
[02:22:36]  Washington Journal continues.
[02:22:39]  Welcome back.
[02:22:40]  We're joined now by Asla Aydantashbash, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
[02:22:49]  Thank you so much.
[02:22:50]  She's the Turkey Project Director at the Brookings Institution.
[02:22:55]  Asla, welcome to Washington Journal.
[02:22:58]  Hi, Kimberly.
[02:22:59]  Good to be here and happy Easter to you and your listeners.
[02:23:03]  Thank you so much.
[02:23:05]  It has been over a month since U.S. operations started in Iran.
[02:23:09]  What is your take on the state of the war so far?
[02:23:13]  Well, it's been an incredible military success for the United States, clearly displaying superior technical capabilities, but not a decisive strategic win.
[02:23:26]  Iran continues to control Hormo Strait, but beyond that, clearly has retaliatory capabilities, is able to hit back.
[02:23:35]  And it does look like they are increasingly feeling like they are going to control the timeline, that they have the upper hand now, that they don't have to agree to an off-ramp.
[02:23:48]  So I think all of these questions point to this interesting middle ground, this interesting middle phase in which the United States, despite its very clear superior capabilities on the military side, is not able to decisively claim victory on the political situation on the end state.
[02:24:14]  President Trump has a number of options, but no clear theory of the case yet.
[02:24:20]  You had a guest essay in the New York Times saying, Trump, don't repeat Churchill's deadly mistake.
[02:24:27]  And this was looking at the straight of her moves and cautioning against history repeating itself.
[02:24:33]  Can you talk about the connection between what's happening now and Churchill and why you're making this particular warning?
[02:24:40]  Sure.
[02:24:41]  Look, hormoz is not just a technical problem.
[02:24:44]  I think these choke points look like technical issues to war planners.
[02:24:49]  It's a narrow passageway.
[02:24:51]  And, you know, given U.S. military capabilities, why not go ahead and militarily solve the situation and force through the hormones and open it up?
[02:25:03]  Warn using a page from Turkish history, in fact, from World War I. Winston Churchill, before he became the hero of World War II, he was actually responsible for a humiliating defeat for the British forces and its allies during World War I,
[02:25:21]  which was the effort to open up the Turkish Straits, that is to say the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, and get towards the Black Sea in order to be able to help the Russian Empire, which at the time were Britain's allies.
[02:25:38]  This turned into an enormous disaster.
[02:25:41]  Churchill had mistakenly thought that Ottomans were too weak, but it is not so easy to force yourself through a strait, even with superior military capabilities, as British forces found out, leading to a situation with 133,000 men dying on both sides.
[02:26:05]  I caution against thinking of the strait as a plumbing problem.
[02:26:12]  It is a sovereignty issue.
[02:26:14]  For Iran, clearly, it's their sole leverage, the key leverage, and they're fighting for their survival.
[02:26:21]  So I also talk about possible solutions.
[02:26:26]  Gallipoli, the war of Gallipoli, which many people even today remember, people read about it in books, in those who study World War I, but certainly everybody in Britain.
[02:26:39]  That has shown us that great powers, even great powers, can get trapped in thinking that they can force their way through narrow passageways.
[02:26:51]  But when they're facing a determined defender who's, you know, with nationalism and survival instincts combined, it does get to be a very tricky situation.
[02:27:04]  I offer negotiations, a negotiated maritime deal, as a possible way forward, guaranteeing free passage.
[02:27:13]  That obviously has to happen.
[02:27:15]  Iran cannot control the hormones and use it as a toll boot.
[02:27:21]  But there are ways, options to keep it open, guarantee free passage, and without a sort of a protracted long war.
[02:27:33]  If you all have questions for Asla Adan Tashbash of the Brookings Institution, you can call in Republicans at 202-748-8001, Democrats at 202-7488000, and Independents at 202-7488002 with your questions about the ongoing Iran war.
[02:27:52]  And Asla, I want to talk about the President's prime time address to the country last week, where he urged U.S. allies who rely on the Strait of Hormuz to take it.
[02:28:04]  Let's listen.
[02:28:06]  The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage.
[02:28:12]  They must cherish it.
[02:28:14]  They must grab it and cherish it.
[02:28:16]  They can do it easily.
[02:28:18]  We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on.
[02:28:25]  So, to those countries that can't get fuel, many of which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, we had to do it ourselves.
[02:28:34]  I have a suggestion: number one, buy oil from the United States of America.
[02:28:39]  We have plenty, we have so much.
[02:28:41]  And number two, build up some delayed courage.
[02:28:44]  Should have done it before, should have done it with us, as we asked.
[02:28:47]  Go to the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.
[02:28:52]  Iran has been essentially decimated.
[02:28:56]  The hard part is done, so it should be easy.
[02:28:59]  And in any event, when this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.
[02:29:06]  Asla, I wonder what you think of the President's strategy when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz and demanding that allies that are relying on, this is mainly European allies and allies in Asia, be responsible for reopening the Strait.
[02:29:21]  That's not really a possible path forward, nor would it help U.S. economy or interests.
[02:29:28]  Well, primarily because Europeans are not going to be militarily able to do that.
[02:29:34]  It's a very risky proposition.
[02:29:36]  Their militaries are not strong enough to take on Iran, and they don't want to.
[02:29:41]  I think they are very skeptical about this war.
[02:29:46]  They seem to think of it as a war of choice on the part of the president, with the strategic goals of the war still being fuzzy as far as Europeans are concerned.
[02:29:57]  So they don't want to go into this war and clash with Iran and face retaliatory attacks or reprisals from Iran.
[02:30:07]  And also, let's not forget, even if Europeans were to lead a military operation in order to open hormones, let's say the French Navy takes the lead.
[02:30:18]  If their boats, their Navy vessels, or their sort of civilian infrastructure targets get hit by Iran, Iranian missiles, Iranian drones, it would really create a greater economic shock in the world economy because there is only one market for oil.
[02:30:39]  In other words, a French boat getting hit or a Saudi refinery getting hit does not help the United States.
[02:30:47]  We'd still see the oil price rising, we'd still see inflation rising, we'd still see fertilizers and other commodities both become more difficult, more scarce, and more expensive.
[02:31:02]  So I think that President Trump obviously has a number of options.
[02:31:07]  I thought in his April 1st speech, which you played, he tried to do several contradictory things.
[02:31:13]  It was simultaneously a speech for an off-ramp, but also escalation.
[02:31:19]  He tried to appease nervous consumers and perhaps an undecided American public, but he was also threatening to bomb Iran into Stone Age.
[02:31:31]  I think you cannot do both of these things simultaneously.
[02:31:35]  So what I came away with is still no end game, possible escalation, possible off-ramp, but also no clear and clean option for the United States.
[02:31:49]  Yes, he declared the Iran war in near completion.
[02:31:53]  How accurate do you think that is?
[02:31:55]  Well, clearly, the events of the past four days since that speech show us that it's not a clear option and it's not near completion.
[02:32:06]  Because if you think about it, we're seeing that Iran has retaliatory capability, that they can continue to fire ballistic missiles, drones, and so on, that they do have a command structure.
[02:32:19]  It seems to have been dispersed across the country.
[02:32:22]  We don't know who's running what, except to know that IRGC, their Praetorian state, their security forces, the more hardliner elements, are in control right now.
[02:32:33]  We also know they continue to have highly enriched uranium.
[02:32:37]  Now, President Trump no longer talks about the nuclear file anymore because, you know, I think we have continued to target their nuclear facilities.
[02:32:48]  Nonetheless, there is about 440 kilograms, which is almost 900 pounds, of highly enriched uranium that Iranians continue to have.
[02:33:02]  We don't exactly know where it is.
[02:33:05]  We think it's buried under Natan's, the nuclear plant that was bombed in the 12th day war, but who knows, maybe it's dispersed around the country.
[02:33:14]  So I think President Trump's near-completion speech, if it was a chance for an off-ramp, if it was to prepare the ground for an off-ramp, I think U.S. market and the markets would be ready for that.
[02:33:29]  Consumers are getting more and more nervous.
[02:33:32]  But the reality is that we are not very close to achieving objectives when it comes to nuclear file.
[02:33:41]  And perhaps the best, cleanest, easiest way to get there would be through negotiations and a negotiated settlement.
[02:33:49]  All right, we're taking your questions for Asla Adan Tashbosh of the Brookings Institution, where she's a foreign policy fellow.
[02:33:55]  We'll start with Kwame in Georgia on our line for Democrats.
[02:33:58]  Good morning, Kwame.
[02:34:00]  Morning, morning, C-S-Pan.
[02:34:02]  My question for the guest is, does the United States have the moral authority in reference to telling the Iranians to not block the Straits of Hamus when they have blocked all medical and other life-saving,
[02:34:23]  um, um, actually, um, get the, um, the Cubans people to live?
[02:34:37]  So the United States has definitely not been a good steward of the world.
[02:34:44]  And what I would say is that the United States is the biggest threat to world peace.
[02:34:53]  Well, I will say this: the war is not popular around the world, and there isn't a decisive support for the war in the United States.
[02:35:06]  And we also have increasingly questions raised about targeting civilian targets and war crimes issues.
[02:35:17]  I think those questions will linger.
[02:35:19]  They will continue to cause strain, put strain on US alliances.
[02:35:25]  We're already seeing Europeans very much question the logic of this war and show an unwillingness to be involved.
[02:35:34]  The other issue, of course, would be the sympathy that Iran is able to garner from around the rest of the world, particularly the Muslim world, but not just the Muslim world.
[02:35:46]  Now, the Iranian regime is not a good regime.
[02:35:49]  They have just in January brutally cracked down on demonstrations.
[02:35:55]  They have regularly shown that they would put down any demand for greater freedoms with bloody crackdowns and brutal force.
[02:36:06]  Nonetheless, what we're seeing right now is a certain amount of sympathy for Iran because the picture looks like a David versus Goliath to many watchers around the world.
[02:36:21]  So I think those issues should trouble US policymakers as they think of US place in the world.
[02:36:28]  A moral authority, as you highlight, is very, very important.
[02:36:33]  Another important issue is the fact that the US had been the country that upheld the idea of a rules-based order.
[02:36:42]  So that's why it had such a strong hand when it opposed Russian invasion, Russian attempt at a full-scale occupation of Ukraine.
[02:36:52]  When the United States took this issue to the UN, it had almost full support with the exception of North Korea and a few other, a handful, maybe four or five countries.
[02:37:03]  Nearly everyone supported US-led UN resolutions condemning Russia.
[02:37:10]  Now, of course, we've also been condemning Russia targeting civilian infrastructures in Ukraine.
[02:37:16]  Now, if we go to a situation in which the United States is willing to target civilian infrastructure and bridges, petrochemical factories, as we have this morning, or other aspects of civilian life, that would raise very troubling questions in terms of what United States stands for.
[02:37:39]  And the rules-based order, even if it's depleted form, is still the only principle we have that keeps the world away from full chaos.
[02:37:50]  You know, speaking of a rules-based order and going back to your op-ed on the Strait of Hormuz and sort of some historical context for that, I want to read you a bit from an article in CNN about an issue I'm sure you're aware of, that Iran has a new demand to end the war, and it could bring in billions.
[02:38:09]  This story pointing out that when an Iranian official this week, and this is a story back from March 31st, laid out a list of demands to end the war started by the United States and Israel, he added an item that hadn't been on Tehran's list before, recognition of Iran's sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.

=== Dangerous Gulf Strategy Risks (15:31) ===

[02:38:28]  The narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil and liquefied natural gas ordinarily passes has emerged as the Islamic Republic's most potent weapon.
[02:38:36]  And now it's seeking to turn into both a source of potentially billions of dollars in annual revenue and a pressure point on the global economy.
[02:38:45]  Can you talk about the significance of this demand?
[02:38:49]  We thought of Iran's leverage as its ability to impose pain on its neighbors and therefore on the global economy.
[02:38:59]  It was clear that Iran was no match for United States militarily, but could inflict pain on its neighbors, attack its neighbors.
[02:39:08]  But it turns out its greater leverage was the fact that it controlled Hormuz.
[02:39:13]  Now, for listeners who may not be familiar with that part of the world, that's a narrow passage, that's a narrow strait that opens into the Gulf, where you have pretty much all of the oil-producing Gulf Arab states use ports in order to export their products to the rest of the world.
[02:39:33]  The result is that one-fifth of the world LNG or oil passes through Hormuz, not to mention fertilizers and other important products.
[02:39:45]  So I think that Iran is aware of this leverage, and they are approaching Hormuz as their key bargaining chip.
[02:39:55]  They also have enormous ability to defend Hormuz because there's a very long Iranian coastline along that whole sea that would allow them to target any military effort, any ship, or using not just missiles, but also sea mines, drones, and mining in general to make it very difficult.
[02:40:22]  So I think my issue with the military option is it's not clean.
[02:40:27]  It would not be something that you could even imagine being able to solve with 10 or 20,000 troops.
[02:40:36]  Would need a very large contingency and very long-term sustained U.S. effort.
[02:40:43]  And it's not clear that U.S. public or war planners are prepared for that.
[02:40:49]  So my issue is to also see this as a way that Iran, a way to give Iran something to end the war and provide free passage for all ships.
[02:41:05]  A model for a negotiated maritime deal that provides freedom of navigation for everyone, including the Gulf states.
[02:41:16]  Let's hear from Jack in Liberty, Missouri on our line for Republicans.
[02:41:20]  Good morning, Jack.
[02:41:22]  Hello.
[02:41:24]  Go ahead, Jack, with your question.
[02:41:27]  Well, my original question was she said there was means to do that, and she's kind of answered that.
[02:41:34]  But I have another comment and a question for her.
[02:41:39]  It's very simple.
[02:41:42]  It has been proven time and time again all through history and that these people that run the country, not the vast majority of people, because they prove what they do to them.
[02:41:53]  But they have said as soon as they get a nuclear bomb, they will end Israel and they will come after the United States.
[02:42:01]  History tells you you cannot appease these kind of people.
[02:42:05]  There is nothing worse to fight than a religious fanatic.
[02:42:10]  And these people are that because dying in their cause brings their end to justification.
[02:42:17]  So how do you deal with them?
[02:42:19]  You cannot negotiate with them.
[02:42:21]  It has been tried.
[02:42:22]  You can go through history all the way from Genghis Khan to the Romans to the Germans.
[02:42:33]  You cannot appease them.
[02:42:35]  You appease them is a sign of weakness to them, and they will keep going.
[02:42:41]  If we had done what we done in World War II, where would you be now?
[02:42:45]  Because these people will use the nuclear bomb.
[02:42:49]  They have exported all over the region terror, and they will not stand until they are gone.
[02:42:57]  So, Jack, I think we have a sense of your question.
[02:43:00]  Go ahead and respond, Asla.
[02:43:02]  I understand, and I think you're absolutely right that there are no easy options here.
[02:43:08]  President Trump could escalate, but that might mean getting the United States bogged down here in another Middle East war, possibly a forever war.
[02:43:21]  And we do know that based on the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan, the American public does not want to do that.
[02:43:28]  Is there a way to contain the Iranian regime?
[02:43:32]  Some would claim that the previous nuclear agreement with Iran called JCPOA was a way to contain the nuclear threat.
[02:43:44]  Iran was allowed to enrich uranium, but to a very, very low percentage, only enough to be able to produce energy.
[02:43:55]  But more importantly, they had inspectors across the country, and they had to report to International Atomic Agency.
[02:44:06]  Therefore, I think an inspection regime is one option in terms of how to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions.
[02:44:15]  But this is a chicken and an egg situation.
[02:44:17]  I think Iranians are also feeling unsafe.
[02:44:21]  The regime certainly, as you note, it's not a good regime.
[02:44:25]  The more insecure they feel, the more they're likely to rush to a bomb because they look around to countries that are not attacked, and particularly countries like North Korea, and they think if only if we have a bomb, that would be the key to having to sort of build some type of an immunity from the United States and Israel.
[02:44:49]  In other words, I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation at this point.
[02:44:55]  And to disrupt that cycle would require a major grand bargain with Iran, providing some level of security and sovereignty to them, but also taking away their right to threaten neighbors, use proxies, ballistic missiles.
[02:45:12]  There's some elements of that in the 15-point proposal that was sent to Iran.
[02:45:23]  But it's not clear that they're in a mood to negotiate.
[02:45:28]  We received this question from Dwayne on X. Can you comment on why Trump is threatening destruction of civilian targets in Iran?
[02:45:37]  Trump and Hegseth already bombed a girls' school, killing over 100 people, destroyed bridges and hospitals in Iran.
[02:45:44]  Now he is threatening even more, harming innocent people.
[02:45:50]  And Dwayne here references a Truth Social post by the President from earlier this morning saying that Tuesday would be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day all wrapped up in one and that there would be more potential attacks.
[02:46:07]  Yes, President Trump's tweet this morning is certainly signaling his level of frustration.
[02:46:16]  I think only a couple of days ago we heard him seeking an off-ramp and there have been negotiations through third parties, not negotiations, but messages being passed down, including a U.S. plan, 15-point plan passed down.
[02:46:34]  It does look like Iranians are not interested in negotiating.
[02:46:37]  They feel they have escalation dominance, not in terms of conventional war, but in terms of being able to control hormones.
[02:46:47]  They want to decide when this war will end.
[02:46:51]  And they want guarantees that they won't be attacked again.
[02:46:55]  So therefore, I think President Trump is frustrated.
[02:46:58]  So he's threatening, once again, to go back to the Stone Age metaphor, he's threatening to target civilian infrastructure and bridges.
[02:47:10]  I do think that this is a dangerous and risky path forward, a Vietnam path of sorts, deeper military involvement and possibly boots on the ground, whether it's to seize Hark Island, one of Iran's major oil facilities, energy hub, or to open the straight off hormones.
[02:47:35]  We call this escalatory ladder.
[02:47:39]  In other words, you do something as a response and then they do something.
[02:47:43]  And before you know, you find yourself in a situation that you cannot extricate yourself.
[02:47:51]  It is something that happens to great powers also.
[02:47:54]  Wars don't start with people feeling they're starting a forever war.
[02:48:01]  Most often policymakers, as was the case in this war, most often policymakers think that they are going to wrap this up fairly quickly.
[02:48:12]  We know from President Trump's own statements that he intended this to be a couple of days of war hitting Iranian targets and perhaps getting them to capitulate.
[02:48:26]  But the targeting seems to have the opposite effect on whatever is left of the Iranian regime, making them more hardline, perhaps more resilient, more resistant to negotiations.
[02:48:40]  Sally asks another question on X. Iran's Hormuz strategy seems to be to punish U.S. allies far more than the U.S. itself due to their energy dependence.
[02:48:50]  In your view, is this giving Tehran real bargaining power, or will it eventually pressure allies to push for a quicker deal?
[02:48:59]  Absolutely.
[02:49:00]  I think it's giving Tehran greater bargaining chip, negotiation power, leverage, whatever you want to call it.
[02:49:10]  Look, it's not just European ships or Gulf Arab vessels that are not able to pass through.
[02:49:19]  There are certain vessels that are able to pass through because what we see now is Iran's most hardline element, that is to say revolutionary guards, controlling the straits and using it as a toll booth.
[02:49:34]  Not just that, but they are in communication with countries like Pakistan, China, and others who are reaching out to IRGC, the revolutionary guards, and saying, could our ships pass through?
[02:49:49]  I've over the past couple of days have seen a number of countries pleading with the remnants of the Iranian regime, the most hardline elements, and offering to pay.
[02:49:59]  And we know that some ships are paying and that Iranians are accepting payments in Yuan.
[02:50:05]  They're not accepting payment in dollars.
[02:50:08]  So I think this really goes against the dollarization, wanting to keep dollar as the primary global currency.
[02:50:17]  This also goes against the idea of keeping a stable front against Iran so as to increase the pressure.
[02:50:27]  I don't think Europeans can solve this issue.
[02:50:30]  It will have to be, once again, President Trump negotiating whatever ceasefire or off-ramp is negotiated would have to have a component about Hormuz remaining open, freedom of navigation for Hormuz.
[02:50:47]  Munif is in Chicago on our line for independence.
[02:50:50]  Good morning, Munif.
[02:50:52]  Yes, good morning.
[02:50:54]  I would like very much to make a simple comment.
[02:50:59]  Any expert in this day and age should no longer use the word the rules-based order because it is really dead, dead as a dead horse.
[02:51:13]  And we did it in 2003 when we invaded Iraq without a United Nations Security Council resolution that would allow us to use force.
[02:51:23]  And it was a war of aggression, not a war of defense.
[02:51:29]  And I think that this is a 1956 Suez moment in which this is the end of the United States as a superpower and a unipolar world is certainly over.
[02:51:48]  And I'll take the response off.
[02:51:50]  Thank you.
[02:51:53]  Well, thank you for that comment.
[02:51:55]  We are certainly going through a global age of disorder.
[02:52:02]  And you're absolutely right that there have been significant violations of rules-based order.
[02:52:08]  There is still a United Nations, there's still a UN, there's still all the charters and treaties that we have since World War II that a lot of countries are abiding by.
[02:52:19]  We're still not in a Hovsian state of perpetual war around the globe.
[02:52:26]  So we should be aware of these.
[02:52:29]  I think the bigger question is what the U.S. relationship with the rest of the world will be.
[02:52:37]  What is going to be the U.S. strategy?
[02:52:40]  What is going to be its role, self-designated role in terms of the new century?
[02:52:48]  We've had multiple different messages from the Trump administration.
[02:52:55]  They talked about hemispheric defense, returning to the hemisphere as the core foreign policy doctrine.
[02:53:06]  They've talked about, some have talked about great power rivalry.
[02:53:10]  Others have talked about a concert among great powers settling on a new order with Russia and China, U.S., Russia, and China sitting together for a new Yalta.
[02:53:21]  But we seem to be very far from any of these conversations.
[02:53:26]  I think we're just going to have to live through a period of disorder for a foreseeable future until the United States decides what it wants to push for and what kind of a new global order it is willing to sign on.
[02:53:45]  And of course, the United States is not the only country that's going to have a say.
[02:53:48]  We're also going to most likely have China weighing in and middle powers weighing in on this issue.
[02:53:55]  But it's too early to start thinking about what the next phase will be.

=== Think Tanks Shape Foreign Policy (06:58) ===

[02:54:00]  You're absolutely right.
[02:54:01]  The old order is dead, but we don't know what is going to be replaced with.
[02:54:06]  Louise is in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on our line for Republicans.
[02:54:10]  Good morning, Louise.
[02:54:13]  I wanted to say all of these think tanks, are they really necessary?
[02:54:20]  And do they lead the United States down a rocky path?
[02:54:27]  I think that they're experts only in name.
[02:54:33]  Do you think our guest in particular is an expert only in name, or are you saying think tanks in general?
[02:54:38]  I think she's got, she talks a lot, but her thinking screwed up.
[02:54:46]  I will say that our guest has a long career in journalism focused on Turkey as well as its domestic evolution and regional reshuffling and has been with Brookings, I believe, for a while now, yes.
[02:54:59]  That's right.
[02:55:00]  I will say this.
[02:55:03]  Think tank world, the policy community, is diverse, and there are many people with different areas of expertise.
[02:55:13]  It is actually a rich ecosystem that has typically also been a resource for U.S. government.
[02:55:22]  And successive administrations have tapped into the human resources, the incredible pool that you have of the expert community in the think tank world, and that's Republicans or Democrats.
[02:55:37]  I think without expertise, you're not really likely to get to a good decision-making process, which is why governments, whether Republican or Democrat, have really relied on the think tank community, the policy community, and expertise on foreign policy issues.
[02:55:57]  I wonder if you can comment, given some of the cuts that we've had in the State Department in particular, and research in various branches of the federal government from earlier in the administration, if do you think that's shifted the way that federal policy is shaped by the expertise and research coming out of the think tank world?
[02:56:16]  It certainly has shifted.
[02:56:18]  I think this administration relies far less on expertise in specifically the think tank community.
[02:56:27]  I also think that the decision-making process is more focused at the White House and President Trump's inner circle.
[02:56:36]  As such, the rest of the bureaucracy is also not as involved as we have seen in previous administration.
[02:56:44]  And that even goes for the State Department and other institutions that used to be very involved in this ecosystem of decision-making in the past, like some of the agencies that have experienced cuts or some of the institutions that have actually been taken out of the equation entirely, like USAID or Institute of Peace.
[02:57:09]  Let's hear from Michael in Wisconsin on our line for Democrats.
[02:57:12]  Good morning, Michael.
[02:57:14]  Good morning.
[02:57:14]  Thanks for taking my call.
[02:57:15]  I have a quick comment, and I do have a question.
[02:57:19]  Someone mentioned earlier about we can't negotiate with the Iranians.
[02:57:25]  Well, we were negotiating.
[02:57:26]  President Obama did a great job of negotiating with them and making sure that we can be in their country and have eyeballs on what they're doing, as your guest has mentioned earlier.
[02:57:39]  But Trump didn't like it, and Bibi Netanyahu didn't like it either, because I remember him coming and speaking to Congress about how bad of a deal this was.
[02:57:49]  They wanted out of it.
[02:57:50]  Now we got out of it, and we got this mess.
[02:57:52]  And to the caller who called earlier about dropping a bomb, that if Iran got the bomb, they would use it.
[02:57:59]  Well, we had the bomb and we used it.
[02:58:02]  And I know Israel's got it too, and no one makes mention of that.
[02:58:07]  Now, what I'd like to hear from the guest is if her comments on this greater Israel project that I'm hearing about, Israel is trying to expand their geographic territory and how, well, in my opinion, I think they're using our military to help them do that.
[02:58:25]  Does she have any comments on this Greater Israel project?
[02:58:30]  I'd like to hear about it.
[02:58:31]  I'll take that off air.
[02:58:33]  Thank you.
[02:58:33]  Okay.
[02:58:35]  Well, there's a far-right government in Israel, as you know, a coalition led by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, but some of his partners in government are even more far-right than Netanyahu and his Likud party.
[02:58:54]  The result is actually there is some of those elements in the current Israeli government or supporters of the current Israeli government that think Israel needs to have a broader space geographic reach.
[02:59:11]  There is also clearly a notion that Israelis have expressed as mowing the lawn the national security doctrine in which they think keeping their neighbors militarily suppressed and regularly using Israel's air dominance to target,
[02:59:33]  to take out targets in neighboring countries, including of course Lebanon, but also Syria and now Iran.
[02:59:43]  This is essentially a strategy that believes, in my view, erroneously, but this is a strategy that argues that keeping these countries destabilized is better for the security interests of Israel.
[03:00:02]  Not everyone in Israel or inside the Israeli national security establishment believes this to be the right course, but this seems to be the policy that the Israeli government is pursuing, mowing the lawn and therefore keeping the countries, Israel's neighbors, destabilize and a military edge over these neighbors.
[03:00:24]  But we're seeing, of course, this policy obviously affect the lives and livelihood of people, especially in Lebanon, but also in Syria.
[03:00:34]  And now, of course, you know, very much the current operation in Iran, very much something that Israel has falled for for years.
[03:00:47]  Right.
[03:00:48]  Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise this morning.
[03:00:52]  Asla Adan Tashbas is a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution.
[03:00:57]  Thank you very much for joining us today.