Giles Tremlett discusses his biography of Francisco Franco, detailing the dictator's 1939–1975 rule supported by Hitler and Mussolini. The conversation shifts to a looming April 13th Strait of Hormuz blockade, with callers debating Iran's role in terrorism and criticizing the Trump administration's unauthorized $1.5 billion reallocation to the Board of Peace. Viewers also analyze JD Vance's failed 21-hour Pakistan negotiations over Iran's nuclear commitments and Victor Orban's concession following Vance's campaign visit, while upcoming hearings on Eric Swalwell loom over Capitol Hill. Ultimately, these events highlight deepening geopolitical fractures and domestic legislative gridlock under current leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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President's Negotiations and Breaks00:11:45
On this episode of Book Notes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
Giles Tremlett is a biographer, a narrative historian, and a journalist based in Madrid, Spain.
He was born in Plymouth, England in 1962, but since graduating from Oxford University, he has almost continuously lived in Spain.
His latest book is titled El Heneralissimo, a biography of the late dictator Francisco Franco.
Supported by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, Franco rose to power by defeating loyalists in the Spanish Civil War that lasted from 1936 to 1939.
He then controlled the Spanish government until his death in 1975.
He was a strong supporter of national Catholicism and a strong opponent of democracy.
A new interview with author Giles Tremlett about his book, El Generalissimo, a biography of Francisco Franco.
Book Notes Plus with our host Brian Lamb is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Open forum now on the Washington Journal.
Any public policy, any political issue you want to talk about, here's how you can call in: 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats, 202-748-8000, Independents to a session today.
They're back in full session late at 2:30.
We'll, of course, show you that when it happens.
Plenty to talk about this morning, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranian ports is expected to begin, at least according to the president and his true social post, at about 1 a.m. Eastern this morning.
It's set to begin today at 10 a.m. Eastern, so about an hour and a half from now.
President has promised that other countries would be involved in that effort.
We'll see how that plays out.
Also today, we're monitoring the results and what has come from the election in Hungary.
What has come from the results of that election is that Trump ally Victor Orban conceded defeat yesterday in an election in which some 77% of Hungarians turned out to vote.
You'll recall that it was Vice President JD Vance who was in Hungary campaigning and boosting Victor Orban.
He went down in defeat over the weekend and we're monitoring what has come from that.
JD Vance also over the weekend in Pakistan and negotiations failing to come up with an agreement to end the conflict in Iran and that's why we're at a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz today on Capitol Hill.
There's also plenty going on appropriations hearings beginning this week, potential expulsion hearings.
There's talk of Eric Swalwell possibly being a member in a rare expulsion vote, possibly linking that vote with a vote for Republican Tony Gonzalez of Texas.
So with so much going on, we'll let you lead the discussion.
Tell us what you want to talk about.
Dave is in Auburn, New York, a Republican.
Dave, go ahead.
Yeah, good morning.
I just want to remind everybody that this thing in Iran is the biggest problem, that they are the exporters of terrorism all over the world and Muslim fundamentalists, this Islamic religion.
And they're pushing it everywhere they go.
So everything goes from there.
And they're willing to sacrifice their own population.
And a lot of other countries are the same.
They're willing to sacrifice all their citizens for their ideology, whether it's China, whether it's Russia, whether it's Iran, or you could name the other places.
And We don't want that type of mentality to come here in our country.
And the problem may be showing up here because our leadership is now willing to sacrifice its own citizens economically to the special interests of the unionized public employees in all the states, especially the blue states.
So it is a problem, but it has a lot of tentacles.
But Iran is the heart and soul of all of this.
How they ever got to that point, I don't know.
But it is a religious fundamentalist thing, and they are willing to die in order to keep it.
So to negotiate with people like that, it takes a master stroke.
I don't really have an answer for what you would do, but day by day, play it and let's see where it ends up.
I'm all in for this.
Let's realize what the real problem is and do what we can to suppress those people, those corrupt leaders.
And I thank you.
Dave, in New York, Sandy is in Sand Point, Idaho.
Democrat, go ahead.
Yes, I wanted to mention that the Trump administration reallocated funds that Congress had appropriated in $1.5 billion to Trump's Board of Peace.
And I just wonder how he can do that without authorization from Congress.
I think that they need to subpoena the Treasury Secretary and find out.
Thank you.
That's Sandy in Idaho.
The secretaries of the various agencies will be coming up to Capitol Hill in the days and weeks to come in the wake of the release of President Trump's fiscal 2027 budget request.
Russ Vogt, the OMB director, will be on Capitol Hill towards the end of this week.
But then those cabinet secretaries also come up and testify, give their budget asks to Congress.
So you'll see plenty of them in the weeks to come.
As we go to Ben here in Washington, D.C., Independent, go ahead.
Yes, this is Ben Carey.
Yes, my issue is the issue of peace deal with Iran.
I'm not sure.
I think America should, I mean, just kind of sometimes reduce this idea of power, like you have too much guns, too much bumps, and all of that.
So instead of America is not good in terms of diplomacy, to be honest with you.
Because just look at the issue of funding ICE and all of these other issues that is causing, I call it budgetary issues here.
They've not been able to achieve a deal or get a deal in almost two months now, if not more.
So there'll be two months this week.
Okay, two months this week.
Nobody died during that, you know, kind of call it budget conflict or so.
But in Iran, America and Israel just went there unprovoked and killed almost tons of their leaders, spiritual, political, and otherwise, and destroyed things as much as they can because they have power.
And then you expect them to make a deal under 24 hours.
It doesn't happen like that.
It was 21 hours of negotiations over the weekend.
It was led by Vice President JD Vance.
No deal was reached.
JD Vance came out and spoke about his efforts in those negotiations.
It was about three minutes that he spoke.
Here's his full statement afterwards.
Notes of appreciation.
First of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and to Field Marshal Munir, who were both incredible hosts.
And whatever shortcomings of the negotiation, it wasn't because of the Pakistanis who did an amazing job and really tried to help us and the Iranians bridge the gap and get to a deal.
We have been at it now for 21 hours, and we've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement, and I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.
So we go back to the United States, having not come to an agreement.
We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on, and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on.
And we've made that as clear as we possibly could.
And they have chosen not to accept our terms.
Questions?
Sir, Nick Robertson from the CNN, precisely what have they rejected here?
Can you help us understand it a little bit?
Well, I won't go into all the details because I don't want to negotiate it in public after we've negotiated for 21 hours in private.
But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.
That is the core goal of the president of the United States, and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations.
Again, their nuclear program, such as it is, the enrichment facilities that they had before, they've been destroyed.
But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term?
We haven't seen that yet.
We hope that we will.
Jen?
Was there a framework on anything?
And also, did the Iranian frozen assets come up?
And did you reach any conclusions on those frozen assets?
We talked about all those issues, Jen, and we talked about a number of issues beyond that.
And so certainly those things came up.
But again, we just could not get to a situation where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms.
I think that we were quite flexible.
We were quite accommodating.
The President told us you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a deal.
We did that.
And unfortunately, we weren't able to make any headway.
Preston.
Mr. Vice President, how often did you communicate with President Trump throughout the negotiations?
There were reports that there were multiple rounds where there were breaks in between negotiations.
How often did you communicate with the President throughout those rounds?
And what was he saying as you were going through these negotiations that you said fell short?
Yeah, obviously we were talking to the President consistently.
I don't know how many times we talked to him, a half dozen times, a dozen times over the past 21 hours.
We obviously also talked to Admiral Cooper, to Pete, to Marco, to the entire national security team.
We talked to Scott Bassin a number of times.
So look, we were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith.
And we leave here and we leave here with a very simple proposal, a method of understanding that is our final and best offer.
We'll see if the Iranians accept it.
Thank you.
That was Vice President JD Vance on Saturday after ending those negotiations this morning.
We are less than 90 minutes away from a blockade of Iranian ports.
This is the information provided yesterday by the U.S. Central Command, which is leading the military effort in this conflict.
They wrote, U.S. Central Command forces will begin implementing a blockade of all maritime traffic entering and exiting Iranian ports on April 13th at 10 a.m. Eastern.
In accordance with the President's proclamation, the blockade will be enforced impartially against vessels of all nations entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas, including all Iranian reports on the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Omam.