President Trump and Pope Leo clash over Iran, with the U.S. imposing a Strait of Hormuz blockade while Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzalez resign amid misconduct allegations. Callers debate nuclear threats, Epstein files, and a DoorDash driver pitching tax cuts to the White House. Experts analyze Trump's $1.5 trillion defense budget paired with domestic program cuts, while Noah Rothman argues Iran's military is degraded despite media narratives. Finally, NAACP president Derek Johnson invokes the 25th Amendment, citing Trump's delusional behavior and Jesus imagery as threats to national safety. [Automatically generated summary]
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Pope And President Clash00:15:09
American Progress and the Mercatus Center's Veronique DeRouche will discuss President Trump's annual budget request for fiscal year 2027.
Later, the National Review's Noah Rothman will talk about the Iran War and political news of the day.
And NAACP president and CEO Derek Johnson on the Iran War and the NAACP's call for President Trump to be removed under the 25th Amendment.
Washington Journal is next.
Join the conversation.
This is the Washington Journal for April 14th.
President Trump commented on his ongoing feud with Pope Leo on Monday and asked if he will apologize for disparaging remarks against the pontiff on social media.
This after the Pope directed very sharp comments to the president about the war in Iran.
President Trump said he would not apologize for those comments, saying there was nothing to apologize for.
This is the U.S. embargo.
The Strait of Hamuz enters its second day in the current ceasefire agreement.
To start the show this morning, you can comment on these latest events by calling the lines.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents.
202-748-8002.
If you want to send a text regarding the back and forth between the President and the Pope, war events in Iran, especially with the Strait of Hamuz, you can do that by texting us 202-748-8003.
And as always, comment on our Facebook page, facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
RNX at C-SPANWJ.
The Associated Press picks up on the latest comments from the President regarding the Pope and a story posted recently saying that the President refusing to apologize to the Pope on Monday after criticizing the pontiff for his opposition to the war in Iran.
And he sought to explain away a now deleted social media post depicting himself as a Jesus saying he thought the image was him as a doctor.
When the president was asked about his comments towards the U.S.-born head of the Catholic Church, as well as the post depicting him as a statelike healer in comments, he hastily called a question and answer session with reporters at the White House.
That whole question and answer session, by the way, is still available on our website at c-span.org or our app at c-span now.
But when asked specifically about the comments to Pope Leo, here's the President of the United States from yesterday.
No, I don't, because Pope Leo said things that are wrong.
He was very much against what I'm doing with regard to Iran.
And you cannot have a nuclear Iran.
Pope Leo would not be happy with the end result.
You have hundreds of millions of people dead.
And it's not going to happen.
So I can't.
I think he's very weak on crime and other things.
So I'm not.
I mean, he went public.
I'm just responding to Pope Leo.
And you know, his brother is a big MAGA person, and he's a great guy, Lewis.
And I said, I like Lewis better than I like the Pope.
Now, you have to have law and order in our country, and that's what we have now.
We have the lowest crime numbers we've had in a long time, despite the fact that many criminals were allowed into our country.
But we've gotten a lot of them out.
We've done a great job on crime.
So we have the lowest murder rate in 125 years since 1900.
The lowest murder rate.
So we believe strongly in law and order, and he seemed to have a problem with that.
So there's nothing to apologize for.
He's wrong.
And the other thing is he didn't like what we're doing with respect to Iran, but Iran wants to be a nuclear nation so they can exterminate the world.
Not going to happen.
That was yesterday at the White House, reporting this morning, including the Washington Post, saying that Pope Leo responding to those comments to Mr. Trump saying that on Monday morning aboard a flight to Algeria for a 10-day papal visit to Africa, quote, I have no fear of the Trump administration or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I'm here to do.
Going on to say, I don't want to get into a debate with him.
I don't think that's the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in a way that some people are doing.
So those are the comments not only from the president, but the Pope when it comes to the back and forth, again, this going to the larger issue of events in the Strait of Hormuz, the second-day blockade taking place after it was started on Monday there.
And as we go on the morning, you can comment on the current situation in Iran, especially with this new blockade in place, or the comments when it comes to the President and the Pope.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents.
202-748-8002.
You can always send us texts at 202-748-8003.
And our social media sites are available if you want to make comments there.
That's Facebook and on X as well.
It was the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, speaking at an event here in Washington, D.C.
She herself, a devout Catholic, was asked about the back and forth between the President and the Pope.
She made these comments yesterday, and here they are.
Donald Trump and the Pope have started something of a feud.
You are a prominent Catholic-American politician.
The president said that the Pope is too liberal.
He said he's terrible for foreign policy.
And he posted an image today, the president did, of an AI-generated image, apparently, with him looking like Jesus.
The Pope said, has been speaking out against the war.
He says, I'm not afraid of the Trump administration.
What is going on?
You'd have to ask a psychiatrist.
You'd have to ask a psychiatrist.
As a devout Catholic and the rest, and I wear these bracelets that say, faith and charity, if you believe in the goodness of the American people, that gives people hope.
And very prayerfully, I wear these.
And when I see the president put himself in a I can't even speak of it.
You said it.
But then he has like flames coming out of his hands like he's some.
It really isn't even worthy of a conversation.
It's really worth a diagnosis.
Should the Pope have refrained from saying these things?
Has he gotten himself involved politically in ways that?
He hasn't.
He's speaking about values.
And popes have always spoken about values.
And for this president to criticize that is inappropriate.
Nancy Pelosi from yesterday.
Again, those comments still available on the website and the app.
Let's hear from Tim in Michigan, Independent Line.
Tim, good morning.
You start us off.
Hey, Pedro, what's up?
I got three questions for you.
I watched all three things.
Nancy Pelosi, she said she had no clue about Eric Swalwell and messing around with Fang Fang.
And now we find out that he's been doing some other stuff.
The next question is with the Pope, if the Vatican was getting bound by these terrorists, you think he'd open up his mouth and say something about that.
About the straits of our Hormuz.
Democrats have been wanting to do this for 47 years to go into Iran because they already knew what was happening.
And look what happened.
Joe Biden bowed down to him.
Barack Obama gave them cash and gold, and the American people got screwed every time.
So, can you explain it to me, Pedro?
Well, as far as your second comment, well, as far as your second comments to the back and forth between the president and the pope, what do you make of it?
It's just that they're taking place in itself.
Yeah, well, that the pope, what he should have done is went after Iran for killing all these people, killing our people.
Look what we got now, Pedro.
I live in Flint, Michigan.
I got death right here at my front door.
People channeling death to America at my front door to live right here in fucking Dearborn, Michigan.
You guys don't say nothing about that.
You don't want to report it.
Okay, okay.
Dottie in Florida, Independent Line.
Good morning.
You're next.
Hi, Mr. Pedro.
Good morning, sir.
I'm going to call your station very, very seldomly, but I'd like to ask the American people one question: Who gives America the right to determine what countries should have nuclear materials and which countries should not have nuclear material?
America does not possess that right.
This is a worldly right.
And his man was just on before you.
Let me tell that boy called that money that was given to Iran that was Iran's own money that was seized by the American government.
That was not United States' money or no taxpayers' money.
Those are properties that were seized from Iran.
And let me tell American people something they don't know.
This war didn't just start back from 1979.
In 1953, the United States government overthrew a legitimate government in Iran and put in his shy.
And that's where all this problem started.
And so, if the American people want to say this and this and that, let's go back to 80 years ago.
And on 13, during World War II, Iran was on the side of America with the ally, and we fought together.
Now, today, because of this stupid man we have in power, who's a rapist, and her 34 conviction trial, we have turned the Middle East into a hot-branding fire.
Okay, Dottie from Florida, the Wall Street Journal takes a look at the back and forth between the Pope and the President, saying that it was the President's decisions to post that AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure, firing off criticism of the post, triggered the most significant pushback from Catholic and evangelical Christian supporters since he returned to the White House.
It goes on to quote: This is John Yep, CEO of Catholics for Catholics, a nonprofit that has hosted events at the President's Moral Augue Club, saying we are a little bit beside ourselves.
He said, when it comes to the events there, it was on Sunday night that Yep was eating dinner with friends after services when his phone lighted up about the messages about the now-deleted image in which the president was wearing robes, touches the foreheads of a man lying in a hospital bed.
The collective sentiment around the table, he said in an interview, said, One was sadness when we were truly confused by the president after Catholics.
He gave him so much a resounding vote, and yet he is treating our faith with such disrespect at this moment.
Again, that's on the Wall Street Journal.
Let's hear from Godwell.
Godwell in California, Republican line.
Hi.
Hi.
Thanks for taking my call, Pedro.
My point is this.
In the recent years, the Catholic popes have really been hyper-partisan.
Okay, Pope John Paul was criticizing Donald Trump, President Trump, for trying to build a border wall.
And then it turns out that the wall protecting the Vatican from the outside world was one of the highest in the world, anywhere.
Okay, so regarding this Pope, he's been ultra, you know, partisan.
You know, he's been very, very critical of this administration.
As the caller alluded a few calls ago, Iran has been the biggest sponsor of terror.
Okay.
The Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnapping little girls from their school dorms, okay?
And, you know, Abu Saif in the Philippines and Hezbollah, not to talk of Hamas, you know, these people, and not to talk about the attack on U.S. military personnel from taking them hostage in 1979, okay?
Well, let's bring it up to the modern day.
Do you think the Pope has a right as the position that he holds to make these kind of comments, especially when it comes to Iran?
Of course, he has the right.
However, he needs to see himself as the Pope of everyone.
He doesn't have to be so hyper-partisan, you know.
And in recent years, Pedro, they've been too liberal, you know, to be able to, you know, command the respect that is required, you know, for them to be Pope, you know, for all the people.
Of course, you know, the president has the right to tame, you know, this, you know, terror that's been building for almost 50 years now.
You know, that's what this is.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's go to Homer.
Homer in Kansas City, Democrats line.
Go ahead, please.
Good morning, Pedro, and thank you very much, C-Span.
This president, I'm thinking 25th Amendment, probably.
And the Pope to attack the Pope.
I'm so with Nancy on this one.
Look, look at his diplomats, his son-in-law, who couldn't receive security clearance to 1600 because of his ties to Saudi Arabia.
And how much money did he get from Saudi Arabia?
$2 billion at least.
And another payment.
Well, when it comes to his comments to the Pope, what was wrong with them, in your opinion?
Because everything that this guy has done has been wrong.
This specifically to the Pope, what were wrong with those comments?
It's blasphemy.
I think the guy needs to be, he needs to be in the Leven Wars.
That's where he needs to be.
Yeah, we shouldn't even be giving this guy credence at this point.
I'm serious, Pedro.
I thank you for letting me have my say.
Okay, Frank's in Arizona, independent line.
Hi.
You're on.
Go ahead, Frank.
Yes, everybody's talking about how evil Iran is.
All nations are evil.
There's no good nations around here.
Every nation is evil.
America, Britain, everybody got their own evils.
What's going to happen is that she was going to come and lead his people back to where they were kidnapped.
All right, Frank, well, to the topic at hand, what do you think about the back and forth that's going on Between the Pope and the President, they're both evil.
This is bottom line.
Nations Are All Evil00:02:29
I mean, there's nothing that anyone's going to do.
The prophecy is already being fulfilled.
Okay, Frank in Arizona there, the Washington Post adds this: that the Catholic Church's moral authority has declined substantially after decades of clerical abuse scandals and the weight of a Pope's word is not once what it was.
But the risk of a direct confrontation with the sitting Pope, observers say, is perhaps greater for Mr. Trump, who is taking on not only the first Pope born in the United States, but a spiritual touchstone for an important core group of Republican voters, conservative white Catholics, and he is also doing so in a midterm congressional election year.
Again, those are the comments with the latest when it comes to the goings on between the president and the pope.
You can make those comments: 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats and Independents, 202748-8002.
You can text us at 202-748-8003 if you want to make those comments on that via text.
Coming up in a little bit, we'll talk a little bit about the events of yesterday here in Washington when it comes on Capitol Hill.
Two members of Congress resigning amid sexual misconduct allegations.
The Democratic representative from California, Eric Swalwell, the Republican from Texas, Tony Gonzalez, both announcing plans yesterday to step down after allegation of sexual misconduct.
We'll talk about that in a bit.
We'll hear from Angela first, though, in Washington, D.C., Independent Line.
Hi.
Oh, morning, Pedro.
I'd like to start off by saying I'm a black American.
I'm a 12th generation Catholic.
And this is true of many black people in the Archdiocese of Washington.
Our roots in the Catholic Church were way back.
As far as the president, you know, I feel like he overreacted to what the Pope said.
What the Pope said was very, to me, very mild.
He could have actually said a lot more.
But as the Pope said, he's not a political leader.
And he has a right to express an opinion.
The president has to learn to accept the fact that everyone is not going to agree with him.
He does not have to go off the rails like this.
Okay.
Washington, that's Angela there.
Paul joins us from Boston, Independent Line.
Hello.
Hey, how are you doing, Pedro?
Accepting Disagreement00:15:41
Yeah, I'm a Catholic, and I just said a question was: Pedro, are you Catholic by any chance?
Not important to this discussion, but go ahead.
Paul, you're breaking up.
Paul, you're breaking up a little bit.
So can you get closer to your handset or put that closer to a better signal for you?
Sure.
Can you hear me now?
Yep, go for it.
I was wondering, Pedro, are you Catholic by any chance?
I said, not important to this discussion.
Oh, okay.
Not for this discussion.
Okay.
But I am, and I just know that, you know, popes they're entitled like we all are, of our opinion, but it's not necessarily the church as a whole, the Catholic Church.
I mean, until it's put, you know, before the magisterium and such.
But, yeah, I believe that I believe that there are just wars.
I mean, I, you know, I've listened, I go to Mass, I listen to the readings, and I also read past the readings, other readings where, you know, in the book of Luke, where Christ actually said to, you know, take any money or a cloak and to buy a sword and defend yourself and to spend widows and orphans, you know,
and I just believe that the separation of church and state is a necessity in this country.
So, Paul, because you say you're a Catholic and it sounds like you follow it pretty closely, what do you think about the Pope's statements overall on these kind of things?
Does he have a right, given his position, to make these kind of statements?
I do.
And, oh, yeah, everyone has a right to their statement, like what I was saying, their own personal view.
But whether or not that's scriptural is, it's up to translation.
You know, like I said, it's, you know, the liturgical readings at Mass are sort of looped.
They've been looped.
You know, you get to, you know, an Old Testament and a New Testament reading in the Old Testament about God not hearing the prayers of people who are pro-war.
You know, and if you read that into context, it also says, you know, to defend the oppressed, you know, and, you know, there's a lot of, you know, the Iranian people as a whole, not the IRGBC, not the regime that's actually occupying Iran.
I mean, they're the ones who are going to pay the consequences if you just pull out and don't really understand what I'm saying.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
Let's go to Alyssa in Virginia Republican line.
Hello, you're next up.
Hello, Pedro.
So I first voted when I was 18, and I'm 36 years old now.
And I started calling Washington Journal or listening to it a year after that.
And I swear, yours was the first voice I heard.
So it's so great to be talking to you, Pedro.
I've listened to you throughout all these years, over a decade now, you know, always a faithful listener, at least, listening to everyone's opinions, and you do a great job.
I have voted, I want to say I'm nonpartisan.
I voted twice for Obama and then three times for Trump.
And with this whole Pope thing, I think it is kind of funny.
Like, we are America.
We have freedom of speech.
He's allowed to give his opinion.
And I don't think it's wrong to be saying that, look, the Pope is not God.
Trump is not God.
No one's God.
We're all just people here.
It's okay to criticize people.
And I don't think, oh, also, I've been reading the, I read the New Testament, the Quran, and I'm currently finishing the Old Testament and reading the Torah.
I suggest everyone find a translation of the Quran in English.
And I know racists or someone with those proclivities might say, oh, what are you talking about?
But if you just read it in English, I think you'll hear the voice of God come through.
And it's not anything, you know, I don't get what all this hates about over religion these days.
But yeah, I pray for our country.
I pray for all the Americans here.
I pray for everyone around the world.
And I hope you all just have a great rest of your week.
Okay.
Alyssa there in Virginia.
Here is the vice president, JD Vance, not only commenting on comments about the Pope, but that recent AI-generated image that the president posted and then subsequently took down.
Brett, I think the president was posting a joke, and of course he took it down because he recognized that a lot of people weren't understanding his humor in that case.
I think the president of the United States likes to mix it up on social media.
And I actually think that's one of the good things about this president is that he's not filtered.
He doesn't send everything through a communications professional.
He actually reaches out directly to the people.
You know, when it comes to the disagreements with the Vatican, look, we're going to have disagreements, Brett, from time to time.
I think it's a good thing, actually, that the Pope is advocating for the things that he cares about.
But we're always going to have disagreements on matters of public policy.
I should say, sometimes we're going to have disagreements on matters of public policy.
The Pope has been critical of our immigration policy, but ultimately the immigration policy of the United States is set by Donald Trump.
The Pope is going to have disagreements on other issues.
We can respect the Pope.
We certainly have a good relationship with the Vatican, but we're also going to disagree on substantive questions from time to time.
I think that's a totally reasonable thing.
It isn't particularly newsworthy.
Here's the image that the president had posted on social media and then, as reported, taken down not long afterward.
The Washington Post writes that the president's saying himself that he claimed the image was meant simply as an image of healing.
Quote, I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do with the Red Cross, as a Red Cross worker, which we support.
The story going on to say this may be an image that represents healing, but the president clearly isn't a doctor.
Rather, he's giving what is known as the thematurgic touch, a miraculous power of healing by laying on of the hands.
If an image generator had left out the white robe and red mantle, he might have claimed merely to be depicting the quote royal touch, the power to heal claimed by kings, especially English and French kings in the Middle Ages.
But that claim also touches on blasphemy, which gives that power to heal supposedly came from and reinforced the king's divine right to rule.
More there if you're interested in reading that in the Washington Post, getting your comments on it as well.
And Illinois, Democrats lying.
This is George.
Hello.
Good morning.
You're on.
Go ahead.
Yes, I'm sorry, but I'm going to get some people upset, I guess.
I would like to see the Pope concentrate on a Catholic Church, the pedophile, the richness they have, and everything else that goes with the Catholic Church from day one, working together with the Nazis during the war, and so forth and so on.
Now, as far as Middle East, yeah, President Trump has a problem because he doesn't have advisors like Kabul, Kirby, Sullivan, and all these that they know everything about the world.
I wish you a very great day.
Bye-bye.
Angela, in Virginia, Independent Line.
You can talk about the blockade or this back and forth between the Pope and the President.
Angela, hello.
Angela, hello.
Hello, how are you?
I'm well, thank you.
I would like to say that Donald Trump doesn't respect anybody.
And he doesn't even respect Jesus.
So why do we expect him to respect the Pope?
He thinks he's above everybody.
And I think the Pope didn't say anything wrong.
He said what the Bible said.
You know, blessed is the peacemaker.
The pendulum lies.
Okay.
Brian.
Brian in Michigan, Independent Line.
Hello.
Good morning, Pedro, and good morning, America.
I'm a longtime listener and love C-SPAN.
I love the fact that you're balanced, and I think everybody will agree with me that about half of the people called have a great point, and the other half are total idiots.
But that's not what I called for.
I just wanted to say that people got to understand the Pope is a spiritual leader.
President Trump is a, well, a country, a political leader.
And my main point is that the difference between the Pope and Donald Trump is the Pope doesn't think he's God.
Thank you, sir.
Speaking of the Pope, he himself making a reaction to the president's remarks.
We read a couple of those pieces in the papers this morning, but here's Pope Leo the 14th from yesterday.
The message of the gospel is very clear.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
I will not shy away from announcing the message of the gospel, of inviting all people to look for ways of building bridges for peace and reconciliation, of looking for ways to avoid for any time that's possible.
To put my message on the same plane as what the president has attempted to do here, I think is not understanding what the message of the gospel is.
And sorry to hear that, but I will continue on what I call as the professional church in the Columbia.
I do not look at my role as being political politician.
I don't want to get into a debate with him.
I don't think that the message of the gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing.
And I will continue to speak out loud against war, looking to promote peace, promoting dialogue and multilateral relationships among the states to look for just solutions to the problems.
Too many people are suffering in the world today.
Too many innocent people are being killed.
And I think someone has to stand up and say there's a better way.
Let's hear from Raul in Miami, Independent Line.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
Good morning.
I think it's important to remember who the Pope is.
The Pope spent his entire life in Latin America.
He is very much pro-immigration.
The Catholic Church makes billions of dollars from monies that are sent back to Latin America by the immigrants that come to the United States.
And in fact, the church has prospered in the last 50 years thanks to the immigration from Latin America.
So he is protecting his pocketbook.
Also, I'd like to remind everybody, the Pope is the head of a country.
He has the Swiss Army guards that protect him, that kick people out every evening at 5 o'clock.
And of course, he doesn't criticize the Chinese because they have an official Chinese Catholic Church and all the atrocities that they commit and all the threats that they make every day to take over Taiwan.
So I wish the Pope was fairer in his criticism.
Thank you.
Joyce joins us from North Carolina Democrats line.
Hello, Joyce.
Hi, good morning.
I have a comment here, and I feel that I'm personally, I'm not Catholic.
I am a follower of Christ.
And like I said, I'm not Catholic.
And I feel that what the Pope said is a biblical spiritual thing.
And I think it was great that he spoke up on the behalf of what's going on in this world.
I think it was a disgrace to God and a disgrace to our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, the image that Donald Trump put on social media.
And I think that I feel that every Christian person or everybody that loves God and that follows God should have an objection to what Donald Trump has put on social media.
And again, I am on the side of what's right in the eyes of God.
And this is what the Pope was talking about when he spoke on the things that's going on into this world because it's very wicked and it's evil.
And there's nothing good about anything or anyone that would do something to hurt or to kill a little innocent child.
We are supposed to be their protectors, not their killers.
So I'm with the Pope on what he said in a spiritual way.
And I am totally, totally against what Donald Trump put on social media because it's not funny.
It is a disgrace and is disrespectful to God.
Okay.
Joyce there in North Carolina, Antar in Washington, D.C., Independent Line.
Good afternoon.
Good morning.
Just calling to say how the cult of Trump is really hilarious.
I heard the caller before say all these things about the Pope and things like whatever he says, they say.
The Pope didn't call out Trump.
He said wars that were optional are shouldn't be an option.
That's me paraphrasing.
So him taking a personal and him putting himself as Jesus and then joking that he's a doctor, all these things are occultish.
And it's really kind of, I don't want to say scary, but it's just idiocracy and it's Gilead, all rolled in one.
So good luck.
Mocking God Is Dangerous00:04:21
God loves everybody and wars are for the devil.
Antar in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post and its opinion section has this piece by George Weigel with the D.C.-based Ethics and Public Policy Center.
And he writes about this back and forth between the Pope, saying this, from my own interaction with Pope Leo, I am convinced that when he deplores violence in today's world, he isn't thinking solely about Donald J. Trump.
He's also thinking about Vladimir Putin's barbaric war in Ukraine, about those who wage bloody assaults on Christians in the African countries the Pope will visit this week, and about the persecutors of journalists whose plight the pontiff called the world's media attention after his election last year.
Had the Vatican press office, which is yet just to the breakneck pace of the 21st century media environment, made these points immediately after the Pope's Palm Sunday homily on March the 29th, called to account those who, quote, hands are full of blood, close quote, and that the world media resisted the trap of interpreting everything as a reference to Trump, thus mirroring the president's own proclivities.
Perhaps a calmer discussion of war and peace in this fractious age could have been engaged.
Such a discussion would recognize, as Leo suggested, that he's not the papal equivalent of a global umpire, but just like a just war tradition of moral reasoning functioning like baseball's ABS automated false strike system.
The Pope feeds in data, and out comes the correct call.
This is not the papacy's role in world politics, nor is it the way the just war tradition works.
You can read more.
That's in the opinion section of the Washington Post this morning.
Let's go to New York.
That's Yusuf on our line for Republicans.
Hello.
Hello, Pedro.
I just want to say I'm a big fancy fan, and that I think this whole story between Trump and the Pope is a distraction issue from dealing with the real problems in this country that include regular citizens that have no voice at all, and no one listens to them.
Who are those citizens specifically?
Sorry.
Who are those citizens you're talking about specifically?
That's what I'm saying.
No one knows the 350, 400 million American citizens' names and the names of innocent people who have died abroad from our wars and our bombs and weapons.
Independent Lyme.
That's this is Gordon, Independent Line, Maryland.
Hello.
Hi, Pedro.
How are you doing?
I'm hearing people saying that Nepal shouldn't interfere and stuff like that.
But people will read their Bible all the time, like Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all those people, those men, prophets, they spoke a lot against Kings when they saw things that were going wrong or saw King doing things wrong.
They spoke against, and some got thrown into prison, but they did speak against what they saw that was wrong.
So it wasn't nothing wrong that the Pope did because, like I said, you have to read your Bible, but I think it's a dangerous thing when you mock God because the Bible says it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Almighty.
And can't nobody deliver you out of God's hand.
So I would encourage the president, you know, to do the right thing by the people and tell the truth and be careful what he's doing because he don't want God's wrath to really fall upon him, you know.
But I pray that he would definitely just do the right thing by the people and focus on the country.
I know he wants to help other countries, but there's a saying charity starts at home first.
So, you know, I pray that everybody just do the right thing.
Okay, Gordon and Marilyn, finishing off this question, thank you to all who participated.
Calls To Step Down00:11:06
And now we'll have a chance for the rest of you to participate in what we call Open Forum.
You can talk about the events of Iran.
You can talk about the back and forth between the Pope and the President.
You can talk about other matters of politics as well.
Here's how you can call and participate: 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats.
Independence, 202-748-8002.
Texas at 202-748-8003.
You may also want to talk about the two resignations that happened in Congress yesterday: a Democrat and a Republican, both with allegations of sexual misconduct attached to them.
And to join us to further talk about that, Sudik Shakochi of The Hill joining us.
She's their congressional reporter.
Good morning to you.
Thank you so much for having me.
The story yesterday, it was concerning the California Democrat Eric Swalwell saying he's resigning from Congress.
Set up how we got to that point yesterday.
Yeah, so basically, what happened was there were several news reports that came out with the San Francisco Chronicle initially reporting that Eric Swalwell was accused of sexual misconduct.
A former aide had come forward and said that Representative Swalwell had sexually assaulted her.
There were several other news reports that came out of other women also accusing Representative Swalwell of sexual misconduct.
There were a growing wave of bipartisan calls for Representative Suawa to step down from Congress and also to end his California governor campaign.
And so he actually ended up ending his campaign on Sunday, but the pressure of Democratic and Republican members calling for him to step down from Congress, I guess, became too much.
And so he ended up resigning from Congress or he announced that he was going to resign from Congress yesterday.
Representative Ana Paulina Luna was already prepared to expel him.
She said she would file a motion to expel him this week.
And a lot of Democrats and Republicans said that they would back that motion.
And, you know, Eric Swalwell, I guess, took matters into his own hands and announced his resignation on Monday.
Now, with the resignation announced, when is it effective?
And also, then what happens to the seat once he leaves office?
Yeah, so Representative Swawal didn't give an exact date.
He did say that in the coming days, he would prepare his staff in his office for his absence.
So we are seeing them, you know, possibly have an election to fill his seat, which will have, which will probably take a couple months.
And so it will take a while for his seat to probably be filled.
And I do want to note that right after he announced his resignation, Representative Tony Gonzalez, who was also facing allegations of sexual misconduct, also announced that he was going to file his retirement from Congress.
And he had also been facing bipartisan calls to step down.
And so that is actually two seats that will be vacant soon.
So then, how does that affect the current balance of power?
And could other resignations take place even after these high-profile ones were announced?
Yeah, so right now it doesn't really affect Speaker Johnson that much just because it kind of balances out.
You have one Democrat who's leaving, you have one Republican who's leaving.
Now, he is in a one-vote margin, so he can only afford to lose one Republican vote, assuming all members are present and Democrats are unified in opposition to any party line bill.
I will say that he, you know, Johnson has a lot of legislative priorities that he wants to get passed this week.
He wants a clean extension of FISA this week.
He also needs to rally Republicans around a funding deal, and House Republicans are pretty much split on both.
So it will be a difficult task for him.
Some members are eyeing the expulsion of Representative Sheila Trifflis-McCormick, as well as Corey Mills.
Triflis McCormick was accused of improperly, or I guess funneling improperly federal funds towards her campaign.
And then Representative Mills is facing a wide swath of allegations, including allegations of violating campaign finance as well as sexual misconduct.
And so some members were actually calling for both of those members to be expelled even before Swalwell announced his resignation.
So now that Swalwell and Gonzalez have stepped down or announced that they are going to step down, the ethical police I would say on Capitol Hill are now eyeing these two members who are wrapped up in their own ethical controversy.
So we will expect to see members kind of, I guess, shine the spotlight or focus their attention on trying to remove those two members.
We return to our viewers on both chambers expected votes when it comes to war powers.
Set that up for us.
What are you watching for this week?
Yeah, so Democrats were pretty firm.
Last week, President Trump had issued skating threats against Iran, saying that a whole civilization will die before reversing course and announcing that he will have a two-week ceasefire with Iran.
Now he's kind of blocking the straight of Hormuz.
So it is, he is taking a lot of action there.
After the U.S. and Iran had talks, there was no deal that came out of that.
Democrats are very firm in trying to push this war powers resolution that would limit President Trump's military action in Iran.
It's not expected to pass.
The one that they tried to pass through unanimous consent through a pro forma session last week, it did not pass.
It failed.
And so they're trying to push another one in the House this week.
The Senate is also trying to push a war powers resolution this week.
Again, it's not expected to pass because you're expecting widespread Republican opposition, at least on the Senate side.
You have Senate John Fetterman, who's probably the lone Democrat who will vote against the war powers resolution.
And then you have Senator Rand Paul, who has been opposed to the war in Iran and has said that he would vote for a war powers resolution.
So you only have two members really crossing the aisle there, but you have pretty much everyone else voting party line vote.
And then specifically on the House side, you also have similar things happening where you might have a few Republican members cross the aisle, but not enough for the war powers resolution to pass.
So we won't expect those resolutions to pass, but Democrats are very firm in bringing them forward.
Sudika Sa Kochi is reporting for The Hill.
She's their congressional reporter.
You can find her work online, including the stories that we've been talking about when it comes to these resignations.
Ms. Kochi, thanks for your time this morning.
Thank you so much for having me.
Again, you can talk about those resignations or other news of politics in our open forum: 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats.
And Independence, 202748-8002.
Zachary and the Bronx Republican line.
Thanks for waiting.
Go ahead.
Yes, thank you.
I hope everyone, I hope all the Americans are having a good day.
My judgment is I think the Pope and Mr. President should settle the differences and be more concentrated on what's going on with Ukraine and Russia and the other wars that's going on.
Settle everything, figure out a solution.
Listen, we all have the same color blood.
It's all red.
We got to figure something out to make this world a better place and more safe for everybody.
That's all I got to say.
Zachary and the Bronx there.
Next up is Franklin.
Franklin in Washington, D.C. line for independence.
Hello.
Pedro, I just want to encourage you to slow down when you're reading some of these stories.
You seem to have trouble with some of the words.
You're kind of sounding mashed potatoes in your mouth or something.
Just slow down a little bit.
Try to sound words out.
Go a little bit slower.
Okay.
Franklin there in Washington, D.C., you can continue on in open forum on the lines.
It was about Eric Swalwell, by the way, that the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, during that interview that she had in Washington, D.C., we showed you a little bit before talking about the issues of the Pope, but also talking about the issues when it comes to the California Democrat and the announcement from yesterday.
Here's a portion of that.
Eric Swalwell resigned today from the Congress.
He withdrew from the gubernatorial race in California.
Did you tell him to resign?
Oh, I think that was his decision.
I think it's a smart decision to do.
Yes, the right thing to do, yes.
Not to subject members to have to take a vote on something like that and not to subject your family.
Probably five times in the history of our country has anybody been ejected from the Congress.
Why should you be the sixth?
If you have a challenge that you have to address, it's best addressed not as a candidate for governor and not as a member of Congress.
Some Republicans and others are saying that Democrats turned kind of a blind eye, that they knew what he was up to.
That is absolutely positive.
It's true that they may say that, but it is absolutely not possible.
You had no idea.
None whatsoever.
None whatsoever.
I had none whatsoever.
That full conversation available online.
Let's go to Bob in Washington.
Oh, sorry, Wisconsin, Democrats line.
Hi.
Hello, sir.
You know, a religious leader or the Pope has a right to say how people about war, about people killing each other.
And I need to warn the Senate and the Congress before November 3rd, they need to get rid of this man.
I mean, they're talking about blocking the Strait of Emus.
They need to get rid of this man before November the 3rd.
Get your pants on, get your big pants on.
Well, the November 3rd elections only deal with congressional elections.
It does determine who controls the House and the Senate, ultimately.
Yeah, but they have some votes in the Senate.
Am I correct?
You know, they could take over the Senate and the House, and they need to, Republicans need to get their big pants on any, you know, before November the 3rd and impeach this man.
They are warning them.
They need to impeach this man.
Thank you, sir.
Okay, that's Bob in Wisconsin.
Warning Against Unprovoked Attack00:08:35
When it comes to the latest on Iran, Axios reporting that and other related matters, really, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host on Tuesday today a meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington, D.C. to launch direct negotiations between the countries.
The talks, which will take place amid fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, a wide-ranging Israeli ground invasion in southern Lebanon are going to focus on the possibility of a ceasefire and on longer-term disarming of Hezbollah, along with the peace deal between the countries.
According to sources, this will be the most high-level direct-meaning talks between Israel and Lebanon since 1993.
In addition to Secretary Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Michael Issa, State Department Counselor Michael Needham, Israeli Ambassador Yektel Leichter, and then Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamada will attend the meeting today.
So look out for that play out in Washington, D.C. Also, when it comes to Iran and the state of Hermuz, this was a story published yesterday dealing with the United Kingdom and its British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
He's saying on Monday that the U.K. is, quote, not supporting that U.S. naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and that the country remains focused on bringing together a coalition of countries to reopen the critical waterway.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Starmer stressed that reopening the Strait of Hormuz remains a high priority for his government and that the U.K. is committing significant resources to finding a peaceful solution.
Quote, in my view, it is vital that we get the straight open and fully open, and that's where we've got to put all of our efforts in the last few weeks, and we will continue to do so.
And that's in the Washington Times, 202-748-8001 for Republicans.
Democrats, 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002.
Caller, go ahead.
Yes.
I would like to say that the Pope, he had it half right when he said, blessed are the peacemakers.
He should have brought up all of the peace that Trump has brought around the world.
And also, maybe he should look into 1 Samuel chapter 15 when he'll find out how God feels about those that do terrorism when he commanded Samuel to annihilate all of the Amalekites.
Trump is doing God's work.
He's doing America's work.
And he's not a Sunday school teacher.
He's the president, and he's one that's got a lot of guts.
And we're going to stand with him.
Thank you.
Okay.
David.
David is in North Carolina.
Republican line, you're next up.
Hello.
Pedro, you are about the most articulate broadcaster I've ever heard.
Not to mention the most polite.
But the reason I called is there's a fundamental question that has to be answered and not just skipped over as it seems to be today.
And that is, would the Supreme Leader of Iran use an atomic weapon, you know, A-bomb versus H-bomb, I know the difference, against Israel or the U.S. once they completed it?
You have to answer that question.
And the argument between the Pope and the President, it's, you know, they're in different realms.
It's not that critical.
I wish the Pope would talk about the roughly million unborn that Americans kill every year.
But you have to defend your answer to the question of what Iran use a nuclear bomb against Israel, the U.S. Can I ask you how you would answer your own question and how would that determine U.S. policy in your mind?
Well, I think if the answer is maybe or probably, in President Trump's mind, that is as good as a yes.
In other words, it's not worth taking a chance.
And I think it was probably right to do the Midnight Hammer.
But my concern is that Russia or China will equip them with a weapon somehow or a dirty bomb or something like that, or they could do a dirty bomb.
But I'm concerned that they would do an unprovoked attack against Israel.
And that would start World War III.
David, there in North Carolina, let's hear from Carl.
Carl joins us, Independent Line, West Virginia.
Hi there.
Yes, this is Carl for West Virginia.
Long time, no talking, Pedro.
Anyway, some brother spoke about evil in this country.
Barack Obama spoke about evil, how it's somehow showing his face.
In the book of Enoch, he spoke about evil and future generations on how these demons would show up.
It would be so subliminal to the average person.
And they would wreak havoc in society.
Unfortunately, one of them has gotten into the White House.
And this is what we have: evil all over the world.
Okay.
Richard in Maryland, Democrats line.
Richard, hello.
Hi.
Hi, Pedro.
Good morning.
I just wanted to say that I'm very concerned about the Iranian situation and this war.
I'm a peace lover.
I'm a raised Presbyterian and I practice Judaism now.
But I am not in favor of Donald Trump and his war here, which I think is just a distraction from getting into further trouble with the Epstein files, or as they like to call them on late night TV, the Trump Epstein files.
But anyway, I'm thinking that Donald Trump has committed a violation of the Constitution with this military action that he sought no approval from Congress for.
And I believe the Democrats are right to bring up the War Powers Act every day until the Republicans step up and do the right thing,
which I believe should be to control Donald Trump's actions by power of the purse and just regulate him until we can come to some sort of meaningful way to get out of this mess that he's created.
Okay.
Richard there in Maryland.
Let's go to Mike in New York, line for Republicans.
Good morning.
This is going to seem a little funny because I'm a registered Republican and I'm also a Catholic.
You know, we got to separate the religious belief.
Obviously, the Pope couldn't support killing people and annihilating people.
But President Trump, whether he got us into this or whatever, obviously with the Iranians fighting like they have, we can't wait for another 9-11.
If you recall 9-11, after Democrats and the Republicans all were singing the praises of America, well, you know, you got to be proactive to make sure we don't have another 9-11.
So I'm not a big Trumper.
He says things that are just off key.
But in the end, we've got to let it play out.
Thank you.
Okay.
Mike there in New York, Fox News reporting of another event taking place at the White House Oval Office that wasn't related to the Pope.
Separation Of Church And State00:07:39
It was related to a McDonald's delivery and a DoorDash driver saying that the delivery turned into a tax day pitch when a DoorDash driver came to the White House.
It was Arkansas native Sharon Simmons, who delivered the delivery from and where the DoorDash delivery driver was handed two bags of the president's favorite fast food while promoting the president's no-tax on tips policy.
Here's that exchange from the White House yesterday.
Nice to meet you.
We're all your favorites.
So The reason for this is the fact that I heard you picked up an extra $11,000 that you didn't leave it because the tax bill was so big, the refund was the biggest you've ever had.
Is that a correct statement?
It definitely was.
Yeah, I saved over $11,000 by not having to claim it.
Was that surprising to you?
It was very surprising.
Very surprising.
Great big, beautiful bill.
And that doesn't include overtime in your case.
This is only just based on what we did in terms of every other aspect of the tax bill, right?
Yes, sir.
So it was $11,700.
Yes, isn't that incredible?
And that's what it is: the tax cut.
It's really, you know, we've got the Great Big Beautiful Bill.
We should call it the Great Big Beautiful Tax Cut Bill because it's a tremendous amount of money.
And that's overtime.
That's also on Social Security, as you know.
Yes.
And it's really amazing.
Yes, it is.
You're really nice.
Would you like to do a little news conference one day with these people?
These are not the nicest people, and they're not nice like you.
We know that, right?
I'll do whatever you ask me to do, sir.
So the no tax on tips is something special.
It's very special.
And that's the one that we pretend to be more than anybody else.
Yes, sir.
That's fantastic.
And so such an honor to meet you.
And I think you voted for me, did you?
I heard you're a great supporter.
We appreciate it.
Democrats line from Boston.
This is Robert.
Hello.
Hello.
Thanks for taking my call.
I'm just calling to say that we always give the president an off-ramp.
Like, for example, like people said, the thing about the Pope Leo, the guy is preaching the fact that this is a choosing law.
And then you say you're going to eliminate people.
And then now you said, Iran would eliminate people.
This is why you're doing it.
The Pope is weak in crime.
I think we Americans are playing like little kid in mud, letting the president get away with whatever he does and then say, well, he's doing the right thing.
For example, look at when his wife talked about the Epsom thing to Capital, and he said he didn't even know about it.
And this is a guy when he left the presidency last time.
He went home.
They report that his wife changed the furniture and he was upset saying he don't want it like that.
You take a guy like that would let his wife go on television and talk and then he didn't know about it.
What would we even think about something like that?
And then, you know, you got a guy that his kids, everybody's making billions.
Now he's giving a hundred dollar tip, put a slip bit, and then we get let him get away with it.
And then now the Pope, people are saying the Pope should buy his business instead of understanding this guy needs people around him that curate him in so we can have a decent day in the world because with him, with those kind of antics, we keep making an excuse for him.
We are driving this country to hell in a handbasket.
From Graham, Graham in Florence, South Carolina, Republican line, you are next.
Go ahead, please.
Well, good morning.
Appreciate you letting me on the call.
First time caller, retired pastor.
Know everything going on with the Pope and the President of the United States.
It's true.
There is separation from church and state.
And of course, the church is going to say to follow Christ and Christ's teaching.
And that is peace and love and not war.
There's plenty of war in the Bible, however, now.
Let's not be mistaken about that.
There is time when it calls for that.
Mainly called to talk about immigration.
And I've been watching, and I've seen every Democratic president when they're running for office.
Everyone says we've got to control the border.
This includes Clinton, both Clintons, Obama as well.
And if you go back in their campaign speeches, they're all about securing the border.
We must have a stronger border.
Bill Clinton comes out.
They're taking jobs away from taxpaying American citizens.
So does Hillary Clinton.
So does President Obama.
Now all of a sudden they flip-flop.
And I want the Democratics to tell me what reason, other than getting votes, letting them sign up to vote Democrat, they have for letting illegal aliens into this country.
It's common sense.
Everybody can see it.
It's the only way they carry certain areas.
The Democratic Party has come out against having illegal aliens in this country forever until this year.
It's anything that Trump does, they're again.
It doesn't matter what it is.
They have no platform.
They have no leader.
Newsom's not going to be the leader.
He's already gone his crazy hand movements and crazy.
Okay.
Hey, Graham, before we let you go, can I ask a question?
You said you were a retired pastor, I think.
What do you think about this AI image that was generated that the president says he thought he was a doctor, but some people interpreted that he was posing as Jesus?
Well, you know, our president, he says things sometimes, and sometimes it gets taken a little bit out of context, and I agree with that.
Is he the best president we've ever had?
Maybe not, but maybe so.
You can look back at him in time, and that will see.
But the one thing that you can take with Donald Trump is that he's going to do something at least and stand for something.
And he says what he stands for, and that's why we voted for him.
Going back to the image, do you think it was blasphemous?
I do not think it was blasphemous.
I mean, the guy's just wearing a robe.
That's it, his picture.
It's not supposed to be a picture of Jesus.
I do not think that's Jesus Christ.
There is no long hair.
There is no beard.
There is no halo.
There's nothing about that that says that's Jesus Christ.
Okay.
Graham there.
And let's finish off with Maria Maria in Florida Democrats line.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
I just want to point out something that doesn't make sense to me.
Okay.
Let's see.
Let me read.
March 6, 2026.
The Department of Justice released a bunch of previously unreleased documents from the Epstein file that include notes from FBI interviews.
Okay.
And these files contain sexual assault allegations against Trump.
But no one, Republicans, or really even Democrats or Independents, they got their pennies in the bunch.
Bridging The Political Divide00:15:21
Excuse my language, but that today they are doing since yesterday, the day before, yes, just because someone said that the guy raped there, then now he has to retire.
No, he has to give up his job.
Moreover, that Republicans think we meant saying that they had voted illegally and we remember the scandal, right?
That it wasn't true.
But how can they just put up all these accusations and destroy the life of someone like they're doing with the Democrat guy from California?
Well, Democrat and Republican retired yes or resigned yesterday over sexual allegations.
Yeah, yeah, but I understand.
How come if Trump not resigned any yet?
Why wasn't he asked to resign?
Explain it to me, please.
Because the guy said clearly on TV, I agree.
We'll leave it there to those who participated.
You're calling in.
Thanks for being part of this program.
We'll continue on with various discussions as we go on through the morning.
Later on, we'll talk about events in Iran and the political fallout from it from National Review's Nora Rothman.
But first, we're going to turn our attention to the president's budget request for 2027, including a $1.5 trillion request for the Defense Department.
We'll dig into the numbers with Veronique De Rouget of the Mercatus Center and Bobby Cogan of the Center for American Progress.
Back coming up on Washington Journal.
Best ideas and best practices can be found anywhere.
We have to listen so we can govern better.
Democracy depends on heavy doses of civility.
You can fight and still be friendly.
Bridging the divide in American politics.
You know, you may not agree with the Democrat on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Kins and I are actually friends.
He votes wrong all the time, but we're actually friends.
A horrible secret that Scott and I have is that we actually respect each other.
We all don't hate each other.
You two actually kind of like each other.
These are the kinds of secrets we'd like to expose.
It's nice to be with a member who knows what they're talking about.
You guys did agree to the civility, all right?
He owes my son $10 from a bed for a year.
And he's never paid.
Fork it over.
That's fighting words right now.
Glad I'm not in charge for it.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
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Washington Journal continues.
The president released his budget request for 2027.
We have two guests joining us to talk about that request and what happens going on from here.
Joining us in studio Bobby Kogan of the Center for American Progress.
He's their federal budget policy senior director.
Joining us also, Veronique Des Rouget of the George Mason University Mercatus Center.
She is their senior research fellow.
To both of you, thank you for giving us your time.
Thank you for having us.
Veronique, let me start with you.
Here's the request.
Give us the big number and tell us what you think about that number.
The big number, the one that matters, right, is an increase in defense spending from last year's budget, including actually the combined budget of 2026 plus the $155 billion, including in the one big beautiful bill that was passed last year in July.
It is requesting an increase of $445 billion for a budget, a defense budget of $1.5 trillion with barely any offsets.
That's the thing that actually is the most striking about this budget.
It's not the first on-serious budget we've had.
It's just one of many, many unserious budget.
This one is more concerning because we are getting so close to actually a real fiscal inflection point that will concern everyone, Democrats and Republicans, coming up in five or six years with the drawing up of the trust funds for social security and then Medicare.
Bobby Kogan, same question to you.
Big number, what's your interpretation of what's being asked for by the Trump administration?
Sure.
So I agree with Veronique that the most important kind of part of the budget is the fact that they are asking for $1.5 trillion in new kind of defense spending.
The reason for that is that most of this is kind of dead on arrival, but behind this are the real defense increase requests they're going to send to Congress.
So there's the 1.5 behind that there's $350 billion of new money for reconciliation that they're asking for.
In addition to this, this isn't part of the budget, but we've seen the reporting on it.
The president's going to ask for another $98 billion on top of that for defense supplemental for the Iran war.
And so this would be a historic increase in defense.
When I say historic, I mean it would be the single largest increase in defense spending outside of a ground invasion in U.S. history in a single year.
If you count ground invasions, you have to go back to the Cold War more than 50 years.
And in exchange, he calls for historic cuts to domestic programs.
So it would quite literally take food away from hungry families by cutting WIC.
It would take housing away from poor families struggling to pay rent, take money away from education to pay for historic cuts to pay for historic increases to defense.
So I think that that's the thing that we should focus on.
The reconciliation stuff is very live, very real.
And I think that's kind of the meat of this otherwise pretty unserious budget.
This is often known as a wish list.
Eventually Congress makes its own decision.
To what degree do you think Congress goes along or does it go along with the president's request?
I think most of it is dead on arrival.
And so there are two reasons for it.
Number one, the cuts that the president is proposing are extreme even for an extreme Congress.
And so let me give an example.
A few years ago, when President Biden was in office, there was a deal to freeze domestic discretionary spending to keep it the same level that it was before.
House Republicans said, that's not enough, even though we came to a deal just a week ago.
We actually want to alter the deal.
And they instead tried to do a $60 billion cut.
They gave up.
They pulled their own bills.
They couldn't do it.
They couldn't write bills to that level because it was too extreme for them, even though it was just for show President Biden would have vetoed it if they had done it.
This calls for $82 billion in kind of an apples to apples comparison.
So it's too much for them to completely eliminate preschool development grants and LIHEAP and that sort of stuff.
So that part won't happen.
What's real behind is that the president is requesting $350 billion in a reconciliation bill for defense.
That is something I think is pretty high for Congress to deliver, but I think that's where the play will actually be.
Mr. Rouger, you talked about those offsets.
To Mr. Kogan's point, what do you think about the offsets that are currently listed on this and how much further should they go?
You know, some of them I would agree with.
The problem is that there's this tradition in Washington where you want a lot of spending and you don't want to offset any of it.
And it doesn't matter what the trajectory of the debt is.
I mean, I agree that this budget is dead on arrival.
Most presidents' budget are dead on arrival.
But Congress, nonetheless, does not want to do its job.
We have like real problems, fiscal problems coming up, and no one is talking about it.
I don't see like my real issue, I just like look at this budget like I've looked at pretty much all the other budgets where it's a wish list.
Yes, I mean, it is signaling something really important on the defense side.
I mean, I just, I will agree with your guests.
Absolutely.
Like, it's concerning.
But the problem is, like, no one wants to cut.
Everyone wants their spending increase, but no one wants ever to have an actual conversation, national conversation about what to spend.
I mean, there are some of the stuff that's on this list, like returning some programs to the states.
I'm for, you know, reduction to the small business administration.
I'm for.
I mean, a lot of it is actually, you know, it's what I would categorize, cronyism, but there will be no discussion about any of this nationally.
And it is really more concerning to me, again, that the next senators, Republicans or Democrats that are going to be elected in November, no one is going to be asking them, okay, Social Security benefits are going to be cut by 23% in 2032, actually, when the Trust Fund dries up.
What is your plan when that comes?
Congress is not interested in having this conversation.
No one is interested in having this conversation.
And in my opinion, this budget falls in this category of unseriousness of everyone when it comes to spending.
Both our guests are with us.
And if he wants to ask some questions about this budget request from the president for 2027, you can call the lines 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents.
202-748-8002.
You can also text us your questions and comments to 202-748-8003.
Mr. De Roger, let me follow up with it.
Is it the money for defense that bothers you most or just the figure that's being asked for?
Listen, I'm not a defense expert.
I think this is, it seems large and unjustified.
And it seems, I mean, a lot of it is dead on arrival, right?
I think a lot of this project, a lot of this ginormous increase is for the golden dome, which, again, we should be having a conversation about whether this is a good project or not.
I don't know.
This is my position.
This is not my position.
But my problem is more about what budgeting looks like.
I mean, again, if I had my way, the defense budget wouldn't look like this.
It'd be way smaller, right?
But my problem is that at this point, we're not actually having conversations about what are the priorities.
What is this defense spending for?
And there's indeed a supplemental that is going to be going through Congress through reconciliation, actually.
It's going to be a reconciliation bill.
It's very unclear what's going to be shoved into this defense money that is being requested by the Department of Defense.
It's like everyone makes their wish list, you know, large and large and large.
And we're not discussing the content of it.
We're not discussing how we're going to be paying for this.
That's what really bothers me ultimately.
Mr. Cogan, when it comes to the figure that the defense figure, how does the calculus work when these requests come in the mail?
How do people figure out what they should ask or at least what the president initially should ask for?
It depends on the president.
And for our president, I mean, he picked $1.5 trillion because it was a big round number.
He tweeted it out on like January 7th or 8th or 9th or something.
And he said, I was thinking about doing a trillion, but instead we're going to do 1.5 trillion.
It's not like the smartest defense analysts in all of DC and in fact the country put their heads together.
They added up all the costs that we had last year.
They thought about the new things that we're going to have to do to keep the country safe and it just randomly got to 1.5 trillion.
They picked 1.5 trillion because that's a big round number.
When I was in the Biden admin, we tried to do from the bottom up.
We tried to look at what we had last year.
We tried to look at all the new kind of things that had, things that had fallen behind, things that we needed to do this year to kind of meet all of our commitments.
And we put forward a discretionary request that we thought would, you know, that we wanted to do that we thought kind of hit everything we needed.
And on the mandatory side, we only sent what we were trying to do through reconciliation.
So we were trying to do a budget that we thought was real.
Obviously, not all that was taken by Congress, but we tried to do something that we thought, you know, we could kind of justify and stand behind.
This one is a little bit different.
I mean, 1.5 was so big, they actually didn't even send along all the details under the hood.
And they said, we'll get to that later with kind of all the stuff there.
It's because 1.5 was just a big number and they can't figure out how to use it.
Let's hear from callers.
Let's go to John.
John in Florida, Republican line.
You're on with our guests.
Good morning.
Go ahead.
Hi, people.
You're trying to keep your reconciliation.
John in Florida, hello.
Yes.
You're on.
Go ahead, please.
Yes.
I had a question about the budget.
I know that the primary function of federal service is defend the shores and take care of the treasury.
And a lot of folks complain whether we're a republic or whether we're a democracy.
But I think we're slowly becoming a welfare state.
So I'd like this fellow to actually tell me how much money is spent on welfare rather than worrying about defense.
Defense is critical as well as watching the Treasury.
We just can't keep giving money away just to be like to get votes.
That's what I was in the fear of federal bureaucracy for 35 years.
And the reason that people want to keep getting elected is give away free stuff.
And it's hard to beat that a lot of these blue states.
Okay, thank you.
John and Florida, we'll let both our guests respond.
Mr. Kogan, you go first.
Hey, John, thanks so much for calling in.
Appreciate the question.
I think it depends on what you count as welfare.
OMB has a concept of payments for individuals, but that includes stuff like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, right?
So it just depends on what your definition of welfare is and what you think of as those government functions.
Social Security Needs Reform00:03:48
To your point, prior to the 20th century, the United States didn't really do anything other than war.
We would go to war and then we'd stop doing it all.
And then we'd go back to war and then we basically stopped doing everything.
The 20th century saw the United States fundamentally change.
We kept our war, we kept our military spending outside of war.
We kept it going.
And we also started doing things to directly help people.
And at this point, if you count Social Security and Medicare, which I think you should because those are government payments to people to help them get by, yes, you pay in, but you pay taxes.
All parts of the government are people paying in and then the government putting out.
If you take that non-interest spending that helps people is 70% of the government, military is about 15%.
The remaining 15% is other stuff like investments in the future, biomedical research, hard basic research, infrastructure.
And what we do now is we help people.
And I think that, I mean, I think Veronique will maybe disagree with me on what the numbers really ought to be.
But by and large, what the government does is it helps people.
Let's ask her, Ms. Dierge.
So I think what's missing about this conversation is like, yes, it is true that defense spending is actually part is a constitutional part of what government should be doing.
But there's no question ever asked about whether this defense spending is actually increasing the security of this nation.
And there's this implicit in some corner of the political spectrum that any dollar spent on defense is a dollar that is increasing national security.
And that is not true.
So as much as I actually believe that we should have an important, it doesn't shock me that we have significant defense, significant defense spending.
It doesn't mean actually we should apply the same scrutiny, or actually, I guess we don't apply much scrutiny to anything, to the defense spending.
And we shouldn't have just like say, oh, it's for defense, so it's great.
Where I will disagree with Bobby is the fact that, you know, Social Security and Medicare actually is spending for seniors.
And there are seniors that are needy and that we should be helping.
But the problem right now is like we have a system that is designed where seniors are overrepresented in the top income quintile.
And effectively what Social Security is, and Medicare, is it is a massive transfer of wealth through the payroll tax from the relatively poor and young in society to the relatively old and rich in society.
And so we can have conversations about welfare and what we owe to the people to considering we're such a rich country to the people who are low-income and poor in this country and how we can help them.
But we need, it is imperative that we have a conversation about Social Security and Medicare precisely because this program as it is now is not basically doing what it's set out to be to do, which is to really help people who are poor.
And I'm just kind of always, I'm sorry I'm taking this chance to actually make a case for the American people to have a conversation about what it is we want, because Social Security and Medicare are the driver of our future debt.
And they are necessary reform.
Reforms are coming whether people want it or not, because when the trust fund dries up, spending is going to be cut automatically by law.
And this is why I wish, I mean, I really would like people to start asking questions to their representative.
Irresponsible Budget Cuts00:15:03
Independent Line, this is Jamal from Virginia.
Hi.
Hey, what's going on, guys?
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are.
Jamal McMillan, calling out a Virginia business owner here.
I, as a business owner, know that what's more important than anything is solving a problem, right?
So I'm a solutions guy.
I believe totally and wholeheartedly that our problem when it comes to wars, when it comes to budgets, all kinds of congressional matters, the problem is the people.
Even when it comes to these isms, right?
Capitalism, socialism, all of these things are not really a problem.
I don't care which one it is.
It's the people behind pushing the mechanisms that's the problem.
So my solution is, and entertainment, if you will, what would happen if you got rid of party lines, you made everyone independent like me, and you just let an independent person run for a position.
You don't know what side they lean on either way until you hear them speak.
Then that makes you know that they are more earnest about who they are, where they stand at.
You won't ever get rid of the money.
The money should go away definitely.
You won't get rid of that.
But at least the person should really be doing what they say they're going to be doing because they can't feather themselves to a particular tribe.
Okay, that's Jamal in Virginia.
Mr. Roger, to his point, when it comes to the people involved, you have various committees now that will take these requests and consider them eventually.
You have budget appropriators, budget committees.
What role should they be playing and what questions should they be asking when it comes to this request and how it should change?
Well, so I think this budget is not dead on arrival.
I think we all agree on this.
I mean, it's not the first one that is dead on arrival.
It seems to me now that kind of when a president puts out a budget, I don't know, like 20 years ago, it used to be actually something serious, and now it's not anymore.
It's kind of a wish list.
And it's like this one doesn't even like, it's really a skinny budget.
It doesn't actually kind of like get into the details of what all of this money is going to be for.
And so the appropriators are going to start from scratch.
And it's just like that's what they're going to do.
And the but the problem we have is an incentive problem.
I think the Colorado actually says something that is, I mean, I don't know if this is what it says, but this is what I hear, which is that actually he wished that actually they were during campaigns conversation about policy.
And unfortunately, this is not what we're doing.
Campaigns now are turned into theater.
A lot of the time, people don't know, apart from like opposing Trump or opposing this or opposing this.
Like it's like you don't know actually what how these people are going to rule.
And there's also the fact that Congress hasn't been doing its job for a long, long, long time.
And so appropriators are going to push things through.
There's an incentive problem within government, which is they only and mostly hear the call for more spending from the people who are going to benefit from them.
And we don't hear from the people who are shouldering the cost of these programs.
There's like very little conversation about whether the programs are actually doing their job or not.
But the appropriators are going to be, I think, you know, like not taking this budget seriously.
They may want to throw, the Republicans may want to throw some defense spending at the president.
They're going to have to make a decision about whether they keep funding this war and do their job at some point.
I don't think they want to do that.
I don't see how they're not going to have to.
Mr. Kogan, your past experience includes serving on a budget committee under Senators Patty Murray and Bernie Sanders.
Your experience as far as what's next when it comes to numbers that are going to be considered when the full budget comes out.
Oh, I don't think we're going to get a full budget.
I think that this is all we're getting for this year.
Exciting for us.
And, you know, appropriators are going to work.
I think they'll basically put this aside.
As I say, unfortunately, because the numbers are kind of so extreme on each end, the real effect of this is that the president is going to neuter his own influence.
Appropriators are, the House is basically getting to work next week, the week after, in writing stuff.
I think the Senate will wait a little bit more and then get going.
But I think all of this is going to hinge on the election.
Maybe we'll see some stuff laying duck, depending on how it works.
But I basically think that we will be on standstill waiting to see how the powers in Washington shift to see the level, because in this, we will decide how much more are we going to give defense versus non-defense, just kind of at a top line level.
And then under the hood, we're going to do all these fights that have a lot of kind of partisan backing or detractions for the various programs.
So I just think we're going to have to wait a lot of time to see where we end up this year.
Rob joins us in Pennsylvania Democrats line.
You're on with our guest, Rob.
Hello.
Yeah, hi.
I'm a little nervous here, but I'll do my best.
Since the 1930s, the GOP has been trying to get rid of or prevent Social Security.
If people go back and look at their history, bottom line is they, I guess they're opposed to it.
I look at the new defense budget and I see an opportunity to grift.
His kids both have interest in drone companies.
They're going to be getting kickbacks.
There's a lot of defense contractors going to make a ton of money based on this defense budget.
I've been paying into Social Security and Medicare for 60 years.
I'm still working.
I still pay in.
And I think it's really sad that these guys, they're using a budget as a cudgel to cut Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid benefits.
And if you really want to make America great, make us healthy, make us strong, make us smart, make us the envy of the world.
Right now, we're just an embarrassment.
And they're cutting, I mean, somebody talked about cancer research.
They're cutting NIH.
They're cutting the things, the crown jewels that make our country great.
So I'll get off the line and thank you for taking my call.
I appreciate it.
Mr. Cogan, he mentioned NIH, education could be affected.
Heat programs, money for heat, those kind of things could be affected if this goes through.
Put those into context of what the caller says.
Sure.
Thanks for calling in, Rob.
Absolutely no doubt the budget calls for historic cuts to domestic programs.
As Veronique said, it kind of ignores the mandatory side.
So there's nothing in this budget about Medicare or Social Security or Medicaid or SNAP.
But of course, the president did just last year enact the largest cuts to Medicaid in U.S. history and the largest cuts to SNAP in U.S. history.
So obviously, in terms of what he wants to do, there's lots of stuff there.
It's just not in this budget.
What this budget calls for is all sorts of cuts to the things that Congress plays with every year, where appropriators get together and they say, well, how much are we going to give NASA?
How much are we going to give NIH?
How much are we going to give the EPA this year?
And so NIH, they call for a 13% cut, kind of across the board, right?
You know, to the lungs, body, heart part of it, to the childhood part of it, to the human genome project part of it, kind of all across the board cuts to NIH.
They call for completely eliminating LIHEAP, which is a program that helps poor households heat their homes in the winter so people don't freeze to death, particularly important in the really cold states.
Calls to completely eliminate the preschool development grant program, which helps states set up preschool programs across the country.
Calls to completely eliminate the social services block grant, sorry, community services block grant, which helps the neediest individuals kind of address the root causes of poverty.
So all across the board, there are tons and tons and tons of proposed cuts in here for Americans.
And both Veronique and I agree that this thing is dead on arrival.
I think the important thing is the frame, therefore.
It's not that this is going to happen, but what the president is calling for is taking away services that Americans rely on and sinking them instead towards defense.
I just disagree at a fundamental level that that's what we ought to be doing.
We should be thoughtful in what we're doing.
There's definitely room for improvement.
But at a very top-level frame, this is the wrong way to go.
Veronique, Dere Roger, go ahead.
I think Bobby's correct.
The framework is really wrong.
And this is, by the way, something that the Republicans have been trying for 40 years, which is enact big defense spending while trying to actually implement cuts to a very, very small part of the budget.
So it's dead on arrival for that reason because you cannot just concentrate all the cuts on this small, like it's not even 25% of the budget.
But the caller seems to be very worried about his Social Security, and he should be.
But I don't know that he knows that by law, right now, if Congress doesn't do anything, benefits will be cut by 23% across the board in 2032.
I don't know that a lot of people know this.
So when the president, whether it's President Biden or whether it's President Trump, are promising that they're not going to touch Social Security, what they're effectively saying is that we're going to go ahead, not talk about this, and effectively heading into the wall where Social Security is going to be cut across the board.
I think reform to Social Security benefits are important because there are a lot of very rich people getting Social Security.
But I think it is important to keep it for the people who are poor, who need it.
I mean, there are people who depend on Social Security for the entirety of their retirement saving.
It would be entirely irresponsible.
But the problem is that we're not talking about this.
People are talking as if right now the law is that no cuts will happen unless Congress decides it when actually it's the other way around.
So budgets like five years down the road or six years down the road from these cuts that are proposed that are making enormous increase in defense spending like and concentrating the cuts on a very small part of the budget while not talking at all about reforms to the drivers of our debt, but those that are actually going to be cut in a way that could that would be unfair for those who are really poor, I think is very irresponsible.
Let's talk Social Security.
What's the number one reform then that should be imposed?
Me?
Yes.
You're asking me?
Well, my position, but again, I think that we should have conversation.
I would cap benefits.
I would cap benefits because in order to preserve the entirety of benefits for people who are really poor, we can consider capping the benefits so that two-thirds of the beneficiaries keep 100% of their benefits.
But then the richest beneficiaries are actually seeing cuts.
I am opposed, but I understand that this is not going to happen.
I'm opposed to actually a solution that is to raise the payroll tax because that would reinforce the unfairness of the system where you have younger people who are relatively poor compared to seniors shouldering even more of the cost of the program.
But you know what?
Ultimately, what I really hope for is that when the time comes, Congress doesn't decide to do something extremely irresponsible, which is to borrow the entirety of the money that is needed to preserve this system, again, a bad system that is, I think, really unfair, and borrow that bad system because I actually think that we will feel the consequences immediately the moment they make that really irresponsible decision.
Mr. Kogan, a reform to Social Security in your mind?
Well, so I was actually going to respond to the underlying thing here.
Well, I'll answer the first.
If I were looking for a reform, I'd switch the right now.
We do a payroll tax.
I'd switch it to an employer side tax that kind of, sorry, not an employer side.
Shoot, I'm struggling for the word that I'm sure I'll come up with in a sec.
But basically, right now we're only hitting payroll.
And if you instead are getting kind of all compensation, then all of a sudden you can actually do that and lower the rate.
You're decreasing the burden on a whole bunch of folks.
And then it'll do kind of, it'll hit it more broadly and the program will be good to go for a long time.
But I wanted to quickly say, I wanted to agree with a fundamental part of what Veronique was saying, but then disagree on one part.
I think it's important for folks to know, if you look at Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and then you look at the rest of the budget, the rest of the budget is shrinking, and those are the parts of the budget that is growing.
And so when folks focus on cutting down the rest of the budget more and more and more and more and more, you are A, foreclosing the future because that's where a lot of our investments in the future are.
And B, it's just, it can't be a long-term strategy because that part is an ever-shrinking part of the budget.
The one thing that I wanted to kind of frame, though, is that we used, when we began this century, we used to have a tax system in place.
And I'll just say, even if you had first patched the AMT, we used to have a tax system in place where we would gain enough revenue to completely cover Medicare and Social Security despite the demographic changes.
So we used to be on track to be able to pay our bills indefinitely.
And then we did two rounds of enormous tax cuts.
And now there isn't enough.
And that's just the truth.
We used to be on track to have debt declining for forever.
Then we did two enormous tax cuts and now debt is rising for forever.
And so I think it is a tough thing to ask the American people, because we did these enormous tax cuts, we need to cut your Social Security benefits.
I just don't think that that's what Americans are going to want.
I don't think that's a fundamentally fair thing to do.
And I don't think there would be a big push to cut Social Security benefits if debt were going down.
But again, the only reason debt is going up is because of these giant tax cuts.
So I would look first at the revenue.
Yeah, I want to ask you your take on what he just said.
So I think, you know, reforming the tax code is important, but we should never reform it in a way that actually expands the budget.
There should have been a lot of offsets.
And the president made the situation for Social Security and Medicare worse by giving tax credits to seniors.
But where I will disagree with Bobby is the fact that actually I remember during the Iraq war going on TV and saying, you're asking for defense spending.
At the time, it was $87 billion.
The Big Budget Battle00:08:05
Imagine that.
$7 billion.
At the time, we already knew that Social Security and Medicare had an unfunded liability problem.
So the problem of the funding of Social Security and Medicare go well beyond the fact that we cut taxes without offsetting it either by closing tax loopholes or by cutting spending.
I mean, it has been known for decades that we've known for a long time that 2010, like Social Security has been running a permanent cash flow deficit, where payroll taxes are not capable of paying for the entirety of the benefit.
This has been a long time coming.
The tax cuts haven't helped.
I totally agree.
But it's not the problem.
The problem has been there structurally because we've increased benefits in various ways without actually paying enough for them.
And now, again, the president has made it worse with this tax credit to seniors.
And I think there were also reforms during the Biden years that made the funding for Social Security worse by expanding benefits.
Quick response and then we'll go to the...
So totally agree that if you look at Social Security and Medicare as individual programs, they were always set.
Well, not always, but once we knew what we know now, they were always set for at an individual level for their trust funds to eventually be depleted.
What I was trying to say was if you look at the unified budget, the on-budget portion was set to run such a surplus that it would totally swamp the off-budget portion, the off-budget deficit.
So we used to be on track where our general tax system was going to raise enough for Social Security and Medicare.
That was the case in 2012 before the Bush tax cuts were made permanent.
You look at projections from then, we were on track.
Then we did enormous tax cuts.
We made them permanent on a bipartisan basis.
Giant mistake.
And as a result, we no longer are on track to pay for everything.
And so that was the point that I was trying to make, unified budget versus just the trust fund part.
Let's hear from Jason.
Jason in Baltimore, Independent Line.
Hi there.
Jason in Baltimore.
Hello.
One more time for Jason.
Can you hear me?
Yep.
Go ahead, please.
Hey, good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
I wanted to talk about the defense spending bill again.
And the question I have is when they present any large bill like that and such a big investment in defense spending, is there a proportionate bill or some sort of allocation for increasing veterans affairs spending and veteran care?
Good question.
Okay.
Ms. Derge, you want to take that first?
You know, I don't know.
I have to admit, I don't know.
So I will give it to Bobby.
But before that, let me ask you this, though.
In any defense spending request, whether it be for military hardware or veterans affairs, what's the oversight when it comes to once those dollars are given out, how they're spent and if they're used in the best way possible?
Well, I don't know that there's enough oversight.
The defense budget has failed its audits for many, many years.
Now, since the audits have been requested or mandated, I think the defense department has failed its audit each time.
So it is a problem.
I think it's trying to get a little better, but there's a big chunk of the defense spending.
It looks like we don't know what we're spending on and no one is actually able to account for it.
And that's an enormous problem.
I would say that there's other problem of oversight all over the government.
And one problem, leading aside that some of the inspector general's positions are not filled, which I think is an enormous problem, is the fact that when the government is the size of our government, we cannot pretend we're going to be doing good oversight.
We just don't know where the money is going in a lot of cases.
And that is not acceptable.
Okay.
Mr. Corbyn.
So quick response, Jason, thanks for calling in.
Most of the government budgeting is done on the cash flow basis.
So since the future veterans benefits, since the veterans benefits coming from increased war activities can happen in the future, they are not presented in the immediate part of the request.
And they're basically treated like an entitlement, right?
So like, well, some of it is a direct entitlement, so it'll automatically get bigger as need comes.
And then the other part of it, we just do on an annual basis.
So we, so in this request, there will be no additional money that's kind of directly allocated for vets compensation or for or for VA medical care.
But the government will automatically increase its spending on vets compensation.
And every year, Congress will come back to the president and will say, okay, how much do we need for vets medical care?
And the president will give a number and then we will just do it.
But really fast on this.
So what's tough there for is it creates a bad incentive structure because you get to spend with your left hand and you don't look at the spending that will need to come from that with your right hand in the later care.
And so when folks try to add up the cost of a lot of war, they're only thinking about the left hand.
And as I say, that leads to us making kind of wrong, bad decisions.
Before we let you go, quick question, because we're running out of time.
What are you looking for in the days and weeks ahead when it comes to ultimately what budget will land on?
Yeah, great question.
We are going to, right now, we're in the middle of a reconciliation fight.
Well, maybe we're in the beginning part of it.
So we're going to, we are still rounding out the end of fiscal year 2026 with there's a big fight around DHS.
So we're going to have to be looking for that.
We might see contours of it this week, next week, TBD.
But then when the desk finally settles on that, what I really want to see is if in fact we are going to do a giant defense reconciliation bill, allegedly that would be a month later, two months later, but that is really, really up in the air and that's where I'm going to be focusing.
Ms. Diruger.
Yeah, I think the next big budget battle, because this one, Congress is going to do what Congress does not very well and not very seriously.
But the next big budget battle is going to be the reconciliation bill, which is like where I assume Republicans are going to try to push the $200 billion in defense spending that have been asked by the Department of Defense through, and they're going to need votes for this.
And what it means is big, big, some people are going to be demanding that some of that spending be offset.
And others are going to be saying, if you want my vote, you're going to have to add some spending.
So it's going to be the next big budget battle.
And it is very important that everyone demand that they be offset.
There are lots of things that we could offset this money with, including closing a lot of the tax expenditures, those tax loopholes that very often benefit special interests.
So we should be looking.
There's a lot of ways to offset this spending.
Two budget watchers joining us, Veronique Déruger of George Mason University's Mercatus Center.
She's their senior research fellow and Bobby Cogan of the Center for American Progress, formerly of the Office of Management and Budget in the Biden administration.
Democracy Unfiltered00:02:25
He serves at CAP for the federal budget policy, senior director to both of you.
Thanks for the conversation.
Thank you for having us.
Thanks, Pedro.
Coming up in the program later on, a conversation with NAACP President Derek Johnson.
He'll talk about the group's role in the upcoming midterm elections.
But first, after the break, we'll be joined by National Review writer Noah Rothman about the ongoing conflict with Iran and political fallout.
Those conversations coming up on Washington Journal.
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Washington Journal continues.
Joining us now is Noah Rothman.
He's a senior writer for National Review, also author of the upcoming book, Blood in Progress, A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America.
Noah Rothman, welcome to Washington Journal.
Thank you so much for having me.
President Had Upper Hand00:07:40
In the lead up to last weekend, when it comes to Iran, Noah Rothman, you wrote a piece that suggests that when it comes to negotiations and everything else that was happening at the time, the president had an upper hand going into it.
Can you make that argument for us today?
Yeah, I do.
I would, actually.
So going into the ceasefire on Friday, negotiations into Islamabad, the assessment among the political press, both in the United States and abroad, was that the president was begging for a ceasefire.
That was the Financial Times.
He wanted to bug out.
Iran had the upper hand, as was reported consistently.
All the leverage would compel American concessions at the negotiating table.
The president would give away the store, internationalize the conflict, put pressure on B.B. Netanyahu in Lebanon to suspend conflict against Hezbollah, and just walk away from the table.
None of it happened.
The party with additional leverage at the negotiating table is the one that's capable of walking away.
And that's what the president did.
And he did so after, during negotiations, applying pressure to the strait for the first time in a military kinetic nature, introducing these Arleigh Burke-class destroyers to ferret out a channel through which shipping can negotiate that contested waterway, and also introducing unmanned drones to clear out whatever mines have been laid in that contested channel.
And then subsequently, after negotiations collapsed, introducing this blockade, which is not bugging out from the war.
A blockade has been understood as an act of war since the Peloponnesian Wars.
And it is ongoing.
And it's interdicting shipping in ways that are designed to throttle the Iranian economy of the hundreds of millions of dollars that it derives from the sale of oil.
When those dollars stop flowing, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, cannot pay its salaries.
It cannot finance its proxies.
It cannot advance its propagandistic enterprises across the Middle East.
And that's valuable.
This is prosecution of the war that has been ongoing since February 28th by other means, and it's designed to compel Iranian capitulation.
When it comes to last week, as well, one of the things we saw is the president sending out on social media threatening what he would do to Iran if the deadline passed, then we saw a two-week ceasefire put into place.
Do you think that comes into the larger calculations of trying to maintain an upper hand, the argument that you make?
Well, it's quite possible.
The president's articulation of his threat against the civilization of Iran was ham-fisted, and it did him, I think, domestically at least, and perhaps internationally among our allies, more harm than good.
But it's hardly atypical for a president in wartime to issue threats against an adversary.
It was interpreted by the president's critics in particular as an invocation.
And I've had this conversation on CNN, for example, an invocation of the intention to commit genocide.
It was interpreted by his critics as a threat to violate the nuclear taboo, which is their interpretation.
And it's very uncharitable interpretation, one that sort of flies in the face of what you understand to be rational statecraft.
Now, maybe that's a rational consideration on the part of his critics.
I don't think it is, but they could probably defend it.
Nevertheless, issuing threats against an adversary in wartime to compel their capitulation and to signal resolve to continue prosecuting the war is hardly atypical.
You talked a little bit about the ceasefire.
We saw that the vice president went.
Nothing came of it as of yet.
What did we learn about the diplomatic side of trying to resolve the issues of Iran versus whatever might happen in the future militarily?
Well, we learned the Iranian regime is recalcitrant as ever, is not a reliable negotiating partner.
According to JD Vance in remarks last night to Fox News, he believed that the Iranian team was not at liberty to make decisions on the fly, that it had to communicate with whatever the clerical leadership cast is inside Iran, and that that was difficult by virtue of the degradation of communications inside Iran.
So it was a fruitless enterprise.
And we're hearing now some talk about attempting to restart those negotiations.
And I think eventually this will be settled at the negotiating table, at which point everybody, including Israel, including the United States, have said that the next phase of this campaign would begin, which is far more covert and designed to undermine the Iranian regime from within.
But eventually there will be a settlement with somebody who can claim to represent the whole of the Iranian regime, such as it is, at which point that stage of the conflict, a more covert stage, begins.
So yeah, we're going to see new talks.
I don't know if the terms have been set for those talks just yet.
Noah Rothman is our guest.
And if you want to ask him questions, you can do so on the phone lines.
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Mr. Rothman, you can't see it, but underneath the table here at our camera here at C-SPAN, a couple of opinion pieces from this morning when it comes to Iran.
I'll just read you the headlines because you wrote a little bit about this as well.
This is Wesley Clark in USA Today.
He wrote under the headline, after failed talks, Iran now has the advantage.
There is a piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning by Gerard Baker saying, for now, at least, this is the headline, the Iran war seems to be failing.
You wrote about this idea of pundits or people at this time when talking about the events of Iran.
Put that into perspective, especially for those who haven't read the piece.
Yeah, well, I just struggle to see it.
If you take the Iran war in its entirety, and I don't think you can perform a careful analysis of this conflict if you don't take it in its entirety, the Iranian regime's central nervous system has been severed.
Its capacity to execute attacks on its neighbors have been degraded substantially.
Its missile, long and short-range missile capabilities, its nuclear program is in rubble.
Its army has been hurt significantly.
The IRGC has been decapitated.
Its navy is at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.
Its air force is gone.
And it is casting about for its last point of leverage, its final point of leverage being the Strait of Hormuz, which seems to us, at the outset of this tactic, like it is a really effective demonstration of Iranian power.
But as Bobby Ghosh, a foreign policy contributor, wrote recently in that magazine, just like many other Iranian tactics, this seems destined to be destroyed at the first use of this approach.
And one of the reasons why the administration, I think, was caught somewhat flat-footed by the market reaction to what is really a very modest application of force in the Persian Gulf.
We've been wargaming this out for years.
In 1987, 1988, the Iranian regime attempted to close the strait through the application of force.
We haven't seen anything like that, but we have seen the market react as though the strait were closed, even in the absence of overwhelming military force by Iran.
I think that caught the Pentagon and the president on their heel.
However, the Iranian regime is throttling its own lifeline.
It has one revenue stream, and that's it.
And it can't do this forever.
It certainly can't mine its own, for example, straight, the networks, the lanes that it uses to transit its own oil out of the strait.
So there's really only a partial closure.
And the application of force, as well as pressure in the form of this blockade, and then diplomatic pressure from, for example, Beijing, which relies disproportionately on Iranian illicit Iranian oil exports.
All of this will combine in the theory in Washington, at least, will combine to increase the pressure on Iran to relent far faster than the United States and Israel.
We can keep this up much longer than they can.
To Mr. Baker's fairness in his piece, he does finish the last paragraph by starting off saying, the good news again, it's that it's too soon to declare a final verdict.
Pressure On Xi Jinping00:03:10
Would you agree at this stage?
Oh, sure.
Yes.
And a lot could go wrong for the United States and Washington.
But right now, I do think they have, in strategic terms, they have more advantages on their side than the Iranian regime does.
Let's go to Max.
Max joins us from Maryland.
Independent line, you're on with Noah Rothman of National Review.
Max, hello.
Go ahead.
Hi, how are you doing?
So just a few moments ago, I heard you, your guest gave a pretty interesting excuse of why it was okay for Donald Trump to say that he was going to annihilate the whole civilization of Iran.
And I beg for him to find any other leader in history to make such a statement out like that out loud other than Hitler or maybe Netanyahu.
And also, I would like to ask him about the picture that Donald Trump put out of himself looking very much like Jesus Christ, but then taking it down and saying that, oh, I was just being a doctor.
What does he think about that picture also?
I'm just curious to see how far this guy is going to go in order to cover for Donald Trump.
Thank you.
Mr. Rothman.
Do you want to respond?
Yeah.
Well, you don't have to actually go back very far in history.
You can find many leaders who have issued very significant threats to adversaries in wartime.
You don't have to go to Hitler.
You can go to Harry Truman, a reign of ruin the like of which the earth has never seen.
A more literary and poetic approach, certainly more than I think Donald Trump is capable of mustering.
But nevertheless, the sentiment is similar.
And I have absolutely no truck for the president's social media habits, which have gotten him in trouble on more times than you can count.
You would need 15 hands to count the number of times the president's intemperate social media habits have gotten him in trouble.
And this is merely the latest.
I'm not inclined to defend his activity on the internet, and I'm not sure why anybody would think I would.
But the conduct of a president in wartime does include issuing rhetorical threats against adversaries.
That's not remarkable.
From Guy, guy in Oklahoma, Independent Line.
Hello.
Hey, good morning, Pedro.
You look sharp as usual.
Noah, thank you for coming on the show with your expertise.
My concern is, how would this conflict in the Gulf right now affect the upcoming summit meeting with President Xi and President Trump, and who will hold the cards in that meeting?
And also, one thing the fake news hasn't reported as of yesterday, there are over 100 super takers heading towards America to load up with our incredible sweet crude and our LNG export to the rest of the world.
How will that affect our future and our revenue sources for America and making America great again?
Thank you very much.
Guy in Oklahoma.
Mr. Rothman.
Two important questions, and I can't say that I have the answers to them.
In the first one, there's a reason why the President Donald Trump was leery about having this meeting, postponed this meeting with Xi while the high-tempo phase of combat operations was ongoing.
Vulnerable To Anti-Air Missiles00:09:08
This has put a lot of pressure on Xi Jinping.
China needs Iran much more than Iran needs China.
And reportedly, it was China that put pressure on the Iranian regime to come to the table in the first place.
However, China has a lot to gain from this conflict if it's improperly prosecuted.
If, for example, Iran's control of the strait were to pertain indefinitely.
I think it would all but guarantee that China would test the proposition that a limited amount of force, or even a theoretical application of force to a contested waterway, can all but close it.
I think that would guarantee a soft or a hard version of a blockade around Taiwan and limiting traffic through the Taiwan Strait, which would have far graver implications for the international economy.
If, however, this gambit is successful, it demonstrates that the Iranian approach, the effort to wrest some influence over the global economy through this tactic, is short-lived, more dangerous for its executor than those who oppose it, and not something that is sustainable in the long run.
The very high stakes.
And we want to have a definitive conclusion of that open question before Trump sits down with Xi.
That would be in our interests.
Second, to your question about the export of American energy, we underwent an energy revolution in this country very quietly over the course of this century, on only this century, in the form of the fracking revolution and the exploration of alternative sources of energy, particularly liquefied natural gas exports.
We have become the world's supplier of last resort to stabilize the market.
And we've done so on a couple of occasions, specifically in relation to Iran.
In 2019, Iran executed a brazen multi-drone assault on the Saudi petroleum processing facility in Ramco, the largest petroleum processing facility in the world.
And in the 90s, you did something like that and it would crater the global economy.
We barely felt it because the United States was capable of stabilizing the market.
Right now, we're wresting either by proxy or directly control of Western Hemisphere's energy supplies for export in order to stabilize those markets, which has made this operation against Iran far less destabilizing for the globe than was predicted in the early 2000s, for example, when we would game this out and the scenarios would suggest that oil, crude,
brent crude, for example, would skyrocket to $200, $300 a barrel in the first couple of weeks of this conflict.
We've seen nothing like that because there has been an energy revolution in this planet over the course of the last 100 years, 10 years, 15 years, and it greatly advantages the United States, which is one of the reasons why this operation was desirable now, as opposed to later when the Iranian regime could protect its nuclear ambitions behind a shield, an impenetrable shield of short and long-range ballistic missiles.
Mr. Rothman, to what degree is China a lifeline to Iran right now when it comes to buying its oil or trading with other things in light of where other revenue is going to the country or leaving the country?
A substantial one, not only economically, but militarily.
We've had pretty credible reports that Beijing is attempting to shore up the significantly depleted anti-air defense systems that Iran has.
Now, over the course of the last two conflicts in this year in Venezuela and in Iran, it's been pretty conclusively demonstrated that Russian anti-air defense systems, these S-300s, S-400s, and Iranian, Chinese rather, anti-air systems, and importantly, their radar systems, their stealth radar systems, are little match for America's high-altitude air assets.
When it comes to assets that fly lower, for example, like the F-15E that was shot out of the sky by Iran, lower-altitude flights are still vulnerable to the sort of thing that we hear China is introducing into Iran, shoulder-fired anti-air missiles, for example, man pads, which is a sort of thing that's very hard to find and even harder to interdict.
And that is going to present problems for us if the conflict resumes.
But we're doing the exact same thing that the Iranians are.
We're regrouping, we're rearming, we're conducting targeting analysis, we're refining our target package just as they are.
So if hostilities resume, we're going to be in just the same better position than we were two weeks ago.
But that is a significant concern, and it produces more leverage for Beijing at the negotiating table if this is a live conflict by the time Xi and Donald Trump sit down across from one another.
You talked about those planes being shot down.
We heard in the lead up that air systems were dismantled and naval systems and other things were dismantled.
And yet we saw these planes shot down.
To what degree do you think we're getting the full picture of the damage done in Iran?
I think, well, the damage done in Iran, we have very limited picture of that, with the exception of open source intelligence.
And there are very good open source intelligence analysts out there.
The Institute for the Study of War, for example, and then its threat project.
There's quite a lot of aggregators of that sort of thing, if you know where to look for them.
But when it comes to that sort of intelligence, we're not privy to it.
And we probably should not be privy to it, given the fact that this is a live, hot conflict, even though it's paused presently.
And it may be subject to further prosecution.
So we don't know.
But from what we gather, from what's publicly available, the extent of the devastation and the limited capacity of Iran to retaliate against U.S. and Israeli assets has been truly remarkable.
Milton is joining us from Baltimore Democrats Line.
Hello, Milton.
Hello.
Thank you.
So, Mr. Roffman, I have two comments and a question for you, sir.
My comment is that because of the social media post that Donald Trump made, I'm sure you wouldn't object to me saying Trump Jesus or referring to him as Trump Jesus.
But my comment, my other comment is that with the negotiations, Iran had basically four points that they wanted to adhere to, a stand that they would not find that was actually non-negotiable.
And the United States had three or four points that was non-negotiable.
However, the United States, the non-negotiable points was that Iran could never develop a nuclear weapon.
Now, I do believe that there was an official, Trump administration, Trump Jesus administration official who recently designed, who said that Iran had no capacity of a nuclear weapon.
And intercontinental ballistic missiles could never reach the United States.
So, sir, if that's the truth, and if that's what really is the case, why is the United States trying to negotiate something that isn't even possible?
That's my question.
That's Milton in Baltimore.
Sure.
So the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, didn't touch ballistic missiles very explicitly.
Over the course of 18 months of negotiations, the Obama administration attempted and failed to introduce that into talks.
The JCPOA itself was a porous agreement, but it did sunset in 2025, exactly 10 years after the 2015 deal.
And it only mothballed Iran's capacity to use these cascading centrifuges that allow them to enrich nuclear materials.
So with inspections, which were porous and not well observed by Iran over the course of the few years in which it was in place, nevertheless, Iran retained its capacity to enrich nuclear material.
And then when it sunset, the limits were off.
There were no limits on its capacity to enrich uranium, to use heavy water, to create plutonium, for example.
And all of this enrichment activity would have been sanctioned essentially by the United States by virtue of the fact that it was part of the deal, which is why those who objected to the JCPOA objected to the JCPOA, because while it put a temporary limit on and an artificial limit on Iran's capacity to build a weapon, it sanctioned its capacity to build a weapon once that deal sunset.
When it comes to long-range missiles, what we've learned in this conflict, by Iran's own admission, by tacit admission, when it fired off a long-range missile that it didn't say it had the capacity to have at Diego Garcia, this base in the middle of the Indian Ocean, that is a very long-range ballistic missile, a multi-stage ballistic missile that it said it wasn't developing.
And maybe it was developing only for space.
No nation on Earth has missiles that have that capacity, that range, and does not have a nuclear weapon.
There's no reason to have a ballistic missile with conventional capabilities that can launch at that range because you wouldn't do enough damage with a conventional weapon and you wouldn't have enough of them to devastate a target that far away.
There's precisely one reason to have a missile that has that capacity.
Nuclearization Concerns00:13:43
Well, two.
One, to launch satellites, two, to deliver a fissionable device on the other side of the planet, or at range at least.
And that's what Iran has demonstrated it was doing by virtue of using that multi-stage rocket.
Let's hear from Dan.
Dan in New Hampshire, Republican line.
You're next up.
Hey, good morning, gentlemen.
Mr. Rothman, actually, I'm a big fan of yours.
I had a quick question as just a layman observer of politics.
I had a quick question about the Trump administration's foreign policy more broadly.
Looking at it from my end, again, as just a basic observer of politics, it looks like the steps that the Trump administration has gone in his second term with kind of Venezuela, with Iran, with strengthening our ally with Israel.
It seems like there's kind of this really strong effort, I would imagine, also with isolating Cuba, is to kind of push out foreign influence of spheres that the United States kind of wants to take back control, things like trying to remove Russia from Cuba's influence.
I imagine China from South America, Russia from South America, things like that.
Is that an accurate assessment, or kind of I wanted to see if you could elaborate on that?
Yeah, I think you're on the right track.
And I'm just in the same place you are.
I'm reading the tea leaves as much as anything.
I'm not privy to any intelligence.
However, we can see with our own eyes events as they're unfolding.
And at the end, for example, at the end of 2023, pretty much after October 7th, 2023, you had the outlines of a loosely aligned axis of anti-American powers, all of whom were at odds over the particulars, but united in one regard, that they were actively working to undermine and overthrow the U.S.-led post-war geopolitical order.
Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, and to a lesser extent, some other smaller powers on the periphery, rogue states, all of whom were contributing to one another's initiatives designed to frustrate American ambitions, frustrate its allies, and gradually roll back the Western-led influence that has typified at least the post-Cold War period, but for the most part in the West, at least the post-World War II period.
And we've seen over the course of the Trump administration efforts to roll that back in very select theaters.
I think that quite a lot of the initiative aimed at wresting control, for example, the Western Hemisphere from foreign adversaries in particular, have been a little convoluted by the degree to which the Trump administration was extremely hostile towards our allies in NATO and across the Atlantic, up to and including threatening one with force if it didn't surrender its own sovereign territory.
That's coming back to bite this president.
That was a very short-sighted initiative fueled by peak.
And now that the president needs the assistance of NATO, or at least the tacit support from NATO, he's getting a lot of resistance to it.
And you know why?
Because these people are people.
Human beings respond to incentives and to slights and insults as human beings would.
There's a strange realist conception of nations as being essentially just giant calculators.
They do not take into account human emotions and they act in their own interests in basically a very dispassionate assessment of things as they relate to a spreadsheet.
That's just not how human beings behave.
And nations are composed of human beings.
So I think the administration is sort of reaping what it sowed when it comes to Europe.
But everywhere else on the globe, in just about every theater, in the Western hemisphere, in the Middle East, in East Asia, the administration is engaged in rollback, not containment, to use a Cold War metaphor, but rollback of the influence of these anti-American powers and their capacity to frustrate our aims, designs, and ambitions.
And from the perspective of somebody who believes that the American-led geopolitical order is a good thing that deserves preservation, it's an enterprise that I support.
Mr. Rothman, in Congress this week, though, being both houses votes on war powers when it comes to Iran.
What do you think of the effort, and what do you think of that as an idea?
Well, I think the effort is important.
I think that this, if you squint really hard at the 2001 authorization for the use of military force after 9-11, you can find justification for a war against Iran, the foremost exporter of Islamist terrorism on the planet Earth.
But it would be very valuable if Congress were to ratify this in a separate AUMF and demonstrate that the president is on firm ground when it comes to his assessment of the threat posed by Iran, which has killed hundreds, if not thousands of Americans and continues to actively try to do so at every waking moment.
Americans don't really take stock of the threat posed by Iran because we've gotten very good at interdicting the threat posed by it.
But they spend every waking hour attempting to frustrate our interests abroad and kill Americans and their allied citizens.
And it has been a constant threat.
Congress should absolutely ratify this.
What Congress is attempting to do, however, is throttle the president's access to funds, is limit his ability to conduct this war.
And that's Congress's prerogative, too.
But I think it's also doomed to fail because Congress is controlled by the president's allies in the Republican Party.
So what it is is a political messaging exercise, and that's not valuable.
That doesn't advance enough interests for me to get behind anything.
It is designed to secure, in my view, a political narrative that will be advantageous in the midterm elections.
But the midterm elections are not what I'm focused on, particularly when it comes to an epochal development in the Middle East like this, which could usher in a new status quo that will define the next several decades, if not the rest of the centuries.
So it's a little bit short-sighted to be focusing on November when what's before us is the remainder of the 21st century and the status of deterrence in the Middle East.
To that end, we have a viewer who sends us a text this morning talking about what this could look like in six months.
And then he ends up with this saying, this looks like another forever war.
What do you think about that idea?
And what do you think about public opinion going forward and how it shapes eventually what we do in concluding Iran, if that's possible?
Well, listen, it just depends on how you define forever war.
If you define forever war to be the U.S. maintenance, for example, of security in the global war on terrorism, when people think of forever war, I think they think of Iraq.
I think they think of Afghanistan.
I think they think of boots on the ground.
I don't think they're thinking of the Horn of Africa or Western Africa or Southeast Asia, areas where we have covert or overt kinetic activity designed to frustrate radical Islamist ambitions, which have been ongoing since 2001, but don't generate a lot of headlines.
And that's the sort of thing that I think Americans can generally tolerate because it simply doesn't register with enough Americans.
When it comes to the polling, the war is certainly unpopular.
And the president did not solicit American support for this war.
He didn't trust them enough to be honest with them about what was going to be asked of them, the burdens they would be expected to bear.
So I expect them to return the favor.
However, if you dig into the polling, for example, CBSUGov, which came out recently, and reaffirmed polling that we've seen earlier, that the American public has ambitions for this war that they may not believe will be met, but are nevertheless desirable.
If you look at, for example, the notion that extirpating from Iran the prospect of nuclearization, of breaking out with a fissionable device, eliminating its ability to kill its own citizens, to threaten its neighbors, to threaten us, all of those are very popular propositions.
You know, eight in 10 Americans support those things.
They're skeptical that the means will achieve the ends, which is very prudent, but that's different from opposing this war.
We have not seen the kind of mass outpouring of anti-war enthusiasm that typified the pre-Iraq war period and well before the pre-Iraq war period.
Even in 2002, late 2002, there were mass demonstrations in the United States, to say nothing of the rest of the world, against that war.
And we've seen nothing of the kind.
So Democrats will be heartened by the top-line numbers in those polls that say the public is against the war.
But they should be careful about over-interpreting or extrapolating those results to suggest that opposition to this war extends to opposition to any war against the Iranian regime.
The American people don't trust and don't like the Iranian regime, and for good reason, Democrats should calibrate their opposition to this war to take account of that fact.
Noah Rothman is with National Review joining us for this conversation.
This is Joseph in Georgia, Independent Line.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
First of all, I think the increase in gas prices is a small price to pay to prevent Iran from developing and being able to use a nuclear weapon.
Sure, we have North Korea, we've got China, we have Russia.
They all have nuclear weapons, but they didn't bring down the towers.
The terrorism and the religion fanaticism of Iran is so scary that when I see these protesters on the corner saying, stop the war, I think, I wonder how they would feel if the first nuclear weapon was dropped in their city.
And once a weapon is developed, I would be very, very fearful of Iran.
Donald Trump is on track.
I think Rubio would do a much better job of explaining what's going on.
But the increase in gas prices, I'm happy.
Maybe more people will stay home and only use their car when it's necessary because I'm tired of the traffic.
Thanks.
Joseph from Georgia, thanks.
Mr. Rothman.
Well, it's a real hardship on the American people, and we shouldn't be callous about it.
The prices are rising.
And at a time when prices have been rising across the board for the better part of a decade, it's hard to absorb.
This administration would be ill-served if they were to be dismissive of American concerns, pocketbook concerns.
But I share the callers' enthusiasm for the prospect of interdicting this threat, which would be far graver the more it matures.
And if you think, you know, the modest increase in gas prices that we've seen now, compared to, by the way, the scenarios that we were expecting in the event of this war again at the beginning of this century, was significant, but by no means the kind of catastrophic event that was anticipated before the fracking revolution, before the diversification of energy sources.
But the more this threat matures, the more the threat to the global economy becomes graver.
And the more significant any action against Iran would be if it were to pursue and had been pursuing nuclear weapons.
And the Iranian regime doesn't have to use nuclear weapons, although its millenarian radical Islamist outlook, which we're dismissive of.
We think is just something that's designed for domestic consumption.
And it's not.
It's a very real philosophy inside the Islamic Republic.
But they wouldn't have to use a nuclear weapon in order to really exert catastrophic, produce catastrophic devastation across the Western world through terrorist attacks, because it would do so as the foremost sponsor of radical Islamist terrorism on the planet Earth from behind a nuclear shield.
And as we learned after North Korea broke out with a fissionable device, there's very little you can do kinetically to that state without risking a cataclysm, a nuclear cataclysm.
So it's imperative to interdict and prevent Iran from breaking out with a nuclear weapon, because even if it didn't use it, it would exert devastation and kill more people and throttle the global economy at its leisure.
Look, this threat to the Strait of Hormuz was ever present.
We didn't incept it.
It was always there.
And Iran would execute that from behind a nuclear shield in the not too distant future, which is why it's better to extirpate that threat today than to wait for it to mature.
Mr. Rothman, in the days and weeks ahead, signs that you would look for either way to tell us where this thing might end up?
Well, my anticipation is that this war will end with something resembling a truce, a cessation of hostilities, not a durable peace, with some representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was always going to look like an unsatisfying outcome from our perspective, because there would be no dramatic event in which we could say the war ended here.
But as everyone has said on this side of the conflict, in the United States and Israel, none of whom have disavowed it, and in fact, we've had plenty of indications that they're very serious about it, including the president saying we're filtering weapons into the country.
The next phase of this war looks like a covert campaign to destabilize the regime from within and foment unrest sufficient to topple the Iranian terror apparatus.
And when the Iranian people come for the regime once again, as they did in 2001, in 2009, in 2017, in 2022, in 2025, they will again.
And when they come, they will face an Iranian regime that no longer has the kind of terror apparatus it used to subjugate its people.
Hopefully the Iranian regime will fall and its people will enjoy the freedom that they have been denied for the last 50 years.
But that's not going to happen tomorrow.
And so people who are looking for that kind of dramatic event to put a period on this war are going to be disappointed.
Wave Of Domestic Violence00:03:34
And before we let you go, your forthcoming book is Blood in Progress, A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America.
Give us the elevator pitch.
Sure.
So every time we, for the most part, there's a shibboleth in Washington in particular and elsewhere that the right, the American political right, is the font from which domestic political violence springs.
And if there's any evidence of left-wing violence, it's minimal and limited, and the paucity of it is demonstrative of how much the threat on the right is.
It's predicated on a lot of not faulty statistics, but perhaps misclassified and certainly abused statistics.
And it increasingly flies in the face of the evidence of your own eyes.
We are in the midst of a wave of left-wing political domestic terroristic violence, akin to waves that we experienced in the 1910s and 1920s, 1970s and 1980s.
And there are signs that we can recognize to see when that wave is about to crest, when the water comes out from the shore.
This book is designed to help policymakers identify those traits so that they can actually effectuate some kind of a policy that would limit the devastation that can be done by terroristic actors, radicalized individuals, and mobs that execute the kind of violence that we've been experiencing in this country since at least 2020.
But my book posits slightly earlier.
So it comes out on May 19th, Blood in Progress: A Century of Left-Wing Violence in America.
Nora Rothman of National Review, thanks for your time.
Thank you.
Our last guest of the morning is the NAACP president Derek Johnson.
He'll talk amongst other things his organization's call for the use of the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from power.
We'll have that conversation when Washington Journal continues.
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Impeach Or Use 25th Amendment00:15:05
Washington Journal continues.
We welcome back to the program.
Derek Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP.
Mr. Johnson, thanks for giving us your time.
Thank you for the opportunity.
A couple of days ago, a press release from your organization saying that your organization for the first time is asking the 25th Amendment to be used to remove President Trump.
What led to this moment?
Well, we have a president that's incoherent, irradical, irrational, and we are deeply concerned for someone to occupy the office to not have all of his mental faculties.
And based on most recent activities, what has been happening for a while, I think it's time that the cabinet seriously consider removing him from office.
The press release says that part of the concerns was over, quote, deteriorating health and increasingly delusional behavior.
Can you cite examples of those?
Well, no, two nights ago, you know, he posted a picture late night of him as Christ.
Then he comes back yesterday saying, no, he wanted to post, he meant to say he was a doctor because he can heal people.
That's irrational.
That's deterioration.
You know, on top of that, he attacks the Pope.
What president in their right mind attacked the Pope for the Pope actually saying that a war is not justified?
That's the role of the church.
That's the role of moral leaders.
And there are so many examples of his irrational behavior.
I think all Americans should be alarmed regardless of one's political affiliation.
When you were coming to this decision, did you talk to not only members of your organization, did you talk to members of Capitol Hill?
Talk about the process of coming to this choice.
Well, I think many people within our membership ranks, members of Congress, particularly CBC members, they've all been saying the same thing.
This is not normal.
We should not normalize this type of behavior.
And it just didn't start.
I mean, yesterday, he had someone deliver McDonald's to the White House and, you know, create a social media moment for that.
There are very serious issues this nation is confronted with, both domestically and globally, and we're doing these type of things.
We have a commander-in-chief that many people are desperately concerned.
Members of our organization who served in the reserve armed forces, they are concerned to be deployed abroad.
Now, that's in the backdrop of them being deployed domestically, something that should not happen.
In the backdrop of an unnecessary shutdown of many airports because TSA workers are not there.
I mean, there's been so many examples of just irrational, erratic behavior that many Americans should be concerned.
Mr. Johnson, you said yourself that you were calling on the cabinet leaders in power to make this decision.
What makes you think that they would listen to that?
Well, I don't know if they'll listen or not, but the power of the cabinet, I mean, to invoke the 25th Amendment, it rests with the cabinet.
So they would have to take on that responsibility.
They have to own these bad decisions and erratic behaviors of the president, or they'll take the responsibility and serve out their duty based on the Constitution to say that we have someone who lacks the mental capacity to continue to lead this nation.
Do you think that there are actually members of the cabinet who might sway that way?
Do you think the Republicans writ large may be thinking along your lines?
You know, I quit predicting what people would do in 2016 when we elect him to office the first time.
I just think at some point, Americans who care about our Constitution, who care about our nation, who care about the safety of our future, would need to step up beyond their own personal interests or political alignment.
This is Derek Johnson giving us his time and joining us.
And if you want to ask him questions about this, and we'll talk to him about other issues as well, you can use the phone lines, 202-748-8001 for Republicans, 202-748-8000 for Democrats, and Independents 202-748-8002.
If you want to text us your thoughts for Derek Johnson, it's 202-748-8003.
Mr. Johnson, what's been the response to this call?
I think many people are waking up to the reality that we must do something.
When former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also called for the 25th Amendment to be invoked, that speaks volumes.
So it's just not people on the left or the right.
There are people who care about this country.
And regardless of how we see the role of government, we need a leader who care about the citizens, who understands the Constitutions and willing to operate within the rule of law.
It was not too long ago, it was earlier this year, that the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the White House physician saying that, this is from Jamie Raskin, quote, experts have repeatedly warned that the president has been exhibiting signs consistent with dementia and cognitive decline.
And in recent days, the country has watched President Trump's public statements and outbursts turn increasingly incoherent, volatile, profane, deranged, and threatening.
I suppose not unusual for Democrats to send this kind of letter, though, considering your position and the position your organization has taken.
Well, let's be very clear.
We should not view this from a partisan lens.
We have a problem with this current president and his mental state as being displayed late night posting on social media platforms.
That's not something that's normal.
We should not normalize it, the NAACP.
We're a nonpartisan organization.
We care about this nation.
We care about the Constitution.
And how this current president has demonstrated the lack of ability to be completely present is concerning.
Mr. Johnson, when there were questions about the mental acuity of the previous president, President Biden, did your organization ever think to use the same kind of means to remove him from power?
The questions we had with those questions, was it legitimate like we had with this one?
We didn't rush out and make this decision, but at all times, I didn't see President Biden do late night tweets.
I did not see him operate in a way in which people would question his decision-making.
In fact, I've met with President Biden on several occasions, and I was amazed at his ability to recall conversations, his ability to be present in conversation, but his strategic mind.
I don't think these two things are the same.
I think we are witnessing real-time rapid decline of the President of the United States in this moment.
Derek Johnson is our guest with the NAACP.
Let's start off with Christopher.
Christopher joining us from Arizona Independent Line.
You're on with our guests.
Good morning.
You're next.
You're first up.
Hello.
You're on.
Go ahead.
Hi, I was just calling to ask, what is the NCAACP doing to remove President Trump from impeachment?
And what is the national action that you're doing to remove Trump from impeachment?
And what are the grounds of that impeachment that you're going to call for?
Right.
So, first of all, we are calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.
We can only use the platform of our voice to make that declaration.
That is upon the cabinet to actually initiate it.
Impeachment is a congressional process that must be initiated in the House of Representatives.
And from there, the Senate will determine whether to remove.
I think there are individuals in the House of Representatives seeking to impeach, but that's a different process.
Now that your organization has taken this step towards this call for the 25th Amendment, have other similar organizations come alongside you?
We have Common Calls, Legal Women Voters.
Others have stepped up to begin to review, and some have actually made the same declaration.
You know, it's really important to understand the serious nature in which we are in this country.
We are in a war that was unprovoked.
We have serious domestic issues here.
You have many individuals whose rights are being violated under the Constitution.
Their due process rights have been violated.
And you have an individual in the White House posting on social media late night attacks on people and casting themselves as Jesus Christ.
That's a serious problem, and we should recognize it for what it is.
The president himself had said yesterday when it comes to that AI image that he thought he was a doctor, at least before the image was taken down.
When you heard that, what was your response?
I mean, it's again, it's laughable for any news outlet to take that serious.
He know we all know he's not a medical doctor.
We all know he's not a doctor of any sort.
The fact that he would try to pivot the conversation from the posting that we all seen with our own eyes and try to say it's something else that it wasn't.
But even in those statements, he said, well, he thought it was a doctor because he has the power to heal people.
I mean, what are we dealing with here?
We're dealing with someone who's that appears to be delusional, if not dementia.
Here's Jim.
Jim in Michigan, Republican line.
Go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you.
Sir, I'm just curious your position as to that you're unhappy with Trump and you want to remove him on the 25th Amendment.
However, back before 2016, Donald Trump was honored and revered by the black community.
He received several plaques, several honors, had his image taken with Jesse Jackson, with Al Sharpton, with NAACP.
He's been a huge supporter all along, and he's done more for black colleges and universities than any president in the history of the United States.
And you're trying to remove him because he makes text at night that you're amazing.
And so, what's your opinion about Joe Biden, seeing as how he was absolutely off the reservation?
But there were crickets when the 25th Amendment was presented against him.
Okay.
Okay, Jim in Michigan, we talked about former President Biden, but Mr. Johnson, go ahead and answer the question.
Just like this, isn't a partisan issue.
This is a racial issue.
We have an individual who are displaying a serious mental decline.
We are seeing it real time.
I'm not aware of any mass support of the black community pre-2016.
The NACP has never stood with President Trump, never received any resources from President Trump.
There are no images of the NACP with President Trump.
We're the largest African American civil rights organization in the country.
We're the oldest African American civil rights organization in the country.
One picture with Jesse Jackson or Al Shapton does not denote a mass black support for any individual.
But that was 10 years ago.
We're talking about today.
We're talking about in this reality.
And this is not a racial issue.
This is about an individual who is serving in the highest office in the land, who's displaying serious, rapid decline.
It's laughable on the global stage.
There have been multiple occasions where he's given speeches, and he was incoherent.
You didn't know what he was saying, what he was talking about.
He goes off the reservation to come back.
We have a problem here.
This is not a partisan issue.
This is not a racial issue.
This is an issue of serious concern.
But more importantly, if the 25th Amendment was invoked, it doesn't change political hands.
The office wouldn't change political hands.
The vice president would have sent to become president.
The cabinet will remain the same, subject to the president's prerogative.
So this is not a partisan issue.
This is an issue of an individual who's seriously displaying rapid decline before our eyes.
Mr. Johnson, the caller had mentioned support for Donald Trump amongst the black community.
There were stories leading up to the 2024 election about that support that helped put the president in power.
Do you think that's still a constant today?
And if so, what's the message to those voters from the NAACP?
Well, it's laughable to say the least.
Over 92% of African Americans, we vote the same.
And if you have a fraction of that, if it's 15%, I don't think it was that high, or 12%, or 10%, let's not, I don't fall into that narrative that black people are moving towards Trump.
We continue to vote the same.
We vote our economic and our safety interests across the board.
And so political alignment may shift.
Individual candidates may receive our support.
But there is no disputing that the African American vote is the strongest vote for the current alignment of Democratic Party policies.
That's factual.
And so anything else to counter that is laughable to say the least.
Derek Johnson of the NAACP joining us.
This is Jan in South Carolina, Independent Line.
Go ahead.
This is for those people who may care about Donald Trump, his cabinet, his family, people in the legislature, anyone with power, his medical team.
I ask you, I implore you to do something.
You cannot stand by and let a self-destructive person do whatever he wants and just let it happen.
Look what happened to Michael Jackson when everybody stood back and let him do what he wanted.
Look what happened to Elvis Presley when everybody stood back and let him do what he wanted.
It's not safe.
We know this man is cruel and hateful.
Get that computer away from him.
Expanding Voting Access00:04:02
Use the 25th Amendment.
Impeach.
Do whatever you need to do from your position of power.
But if you care, do something.
Okay, Jan there with her thoughts.
Mr. Johnson.
I absolutely agree.
She is spot on.
This has nothing to do with partisan politics, racial politics, or othering.
This is about an individual who's serving in the highest office in the land, and he is a danger to our country.
And we should recognize it for what it is and begin to continue the drumbeat to have him removed by invoking the 25th Amendment.
Let me talk about another subject that's coming up in relation to the midterm elections.
Your organization also suing when it comes to the president's recent order or executive order on mail-in ballots.
Tell us a little bit about that.
What led to that?
Well, access to voting is paramount to our democracy.
And attempts to limit access is subverting our democracy.
It is unfortunate that this same individual actually voted by mail this past election just a few weeks ago.
And so within days of him casting his ballot by mail in the Florida primary, he then drew an executive order to limit voting by mail.
That has nothing to do with protecting and growing our democracy.
That has everything to do with his self-interest and his fear and concern that the November election outcome may not reflect something that he would like to see.
And so absolutely, we had to follow a lawsuit, not because he is the EO.
Did it because protecting our democracy is the job of the NA CP.
We were created 117 years ago.
Uh, we we work to expand democracy, to ensure that, to make sure it is an inclusive democracy, and the only way we do that is by uh fighting for access to voting, for every citizen to cast an eligible, effective ballot.
Uh, when it comes to when it comes to voting issues.
So you've probably seen, as others, the recent polls related to the Save America Act, a lot of Americans saying that, even if you don't disagree with the act, this idea of showing an id and making sure you're a citizen should be of paramount importance.
What do you think about those ideas, especially as midterms are coming up?
Yeah, you know, there is scant evidence of individuals voting under an?
Uh, an alleged name.
The real question here is, how do we make voting more accessible to eligible voters?
Period, not limiting access, not creating a solution in search of a problem.
We can no longer say we're a leading democracy uh on the globe when less than 60 percent of eligible Americans are participating in voting.
Uh, just in Cano, close to 90 over 90 uh of eligible voters are participating in their elections.
Australia has the highest rate of voter participation.
They have something called uh, compulsory voting, where every eligible Australian are required to vote or you receive a penalty.
Um, we should be expanding access to voting, not limiting options.
Uh, to try to control electoral electoral outcomes.
Uh, from Washington Dc.
Republican LINE, Antoine, good morning, good morning.
So as I sit and listen this morning, being a young black man, how do you convince me, also a fifth generation Republican, how do you convince me that this isn't partisan, when I can't take you serious if you tell me there were no signs of Joe Biden needing the 25th Amendment?
Fifth Generation Republican00:05:27
We watched him fall, we watched him stammer over his words.
Now, any elderly person would be prone to these actions and i'm not saying that president Trump wouldn't be prone to these actions but to repeatedly tell me this isn't partisan or there is, there isn't some type of overwhelming bias, it's hard for me to believe you.
And on the um note of you know black people voting for Democrats at a repeatedly high rate.
Well, like I said, i'm a fifth generation Republican, just like my dad, my granddad, my great granddad and his before him.
I've converted so many of the people around my age that it's kind of hard to see the continuance of you know, my community, continuously voting for people that aren't producing anything for us but high crime, illegal immigration and none of anything of what they say when they're running for office, just like across the water.
For me, miss Spanberger, she did almost a complete 180.
It's so many of my friends that live in Virginia, they're so disappointed with her that it's it's.
You know it's a it's a mess, but got your point.
Well, let you put.
Uh, you put a lot out there for our guests, so we'll let him respond.
Mr Johnson, first of all uh, I commend you and your family for being fifth generation Republicans.
The Republican Party, the African American half have, have had and should have, should continue to have a long relationship.
The party affiliation has nothing to do with agenda.
Party affiliation is the vehicle for agendas and we've had a tradition in this country for African Americans to be actively engaged in the Republican Party.
Uh, during a time when the Democratic Party in the 30s, 40s and 50s barred African Americans from participating in primaries, particularly in the south, black republican clubs uh sprung up.
Frederick Douglas was a Republican, Jackie Robinson was a Republican.
Jackie Roberts served on our board Bishop Graves, who one who died a few years ago, was active Republican out of Tennessee coming out the tradition of the Tennessee Black Republican CLUB, Ben Hooks, who uh served in this seat and I was a youth president under his leadership, who I admire.
This has nothing to do with party affiliation.
It has everything to do with the current occupant of the White House and the clear deterioration of of his ability uh to serve uh.
Joe Biden wasn't up in the middle of the night uh, uh posting on social media platform that he's Christ.
Uh, Joe Biden was not up in the middle of the night uh posting irrational thoughts on his platform.
Uh, we did not see uh Joe Biden giving speeches to world leaders and no one could understand the gibberish he was.
He was saying, uh, that simply did not happen uh.
In terms of the policies, we all have to choose which set of policies that uh best reflect the needs and interests of our communities and, quite frankly, there have been Republicans who said one thing on the campaign trail and govern differently.
There have been Democrats to do the same uh, so i'm not advocating for one side to be promoted versus the other side.
I am narrowly focused on what's obvious to so many people.
If you just sit back and look at what's taking place uh, we'll go to Tony.
Tony is in North Carolina Democrats line.
Yes, top of the morning uh.
Well said uh.
Look, a lot of people talking now concerning about you know how he portrayed himself as Christ or a doctor, as he say.
And since we're talking about the Old Testament as well.
You know who he remind me of.
He remind me of Nephew Cenelza uh, Nebula Canza, also like Boy.
That's why he took over Jerusalem right and took the ark of the Covenant and but, but at the same time never can't also lost his mind, and he did some radical things.
He put Daniels in the lion's den, he put the three Hebrew boys in the fire and furnace but, but you know that same spirit That came out of Napoli Canalism, also went into Hitler.
And that same spirit left Hitler.
And now we know exactly where he is.
Whenever you try to portray who you are and say you are Jesus, then something got to be wrong.
I wonder, this is my question.
I wonder how long or what he's going to have to do before the Republicans, black or white, understand that this man had lost his mind.
Thank you.
Tony in North Carolina.
Mr. Johnson, go ahead.
Yeah, thank you for that.
That was more of a statement than a question.
But we're beginning to see both evangelical Christians wake up to the fact that what he did was heresy based on their faith.
We're beginning to see more Republicans begin to wake up to say, wait a minute, something isn't right here.
As we all should recognize that this has nothing to do with partisanship.
This has everything to do with the mental capacity of the occupant of the White House.
It's questionable at best.
And I hope his cabinet take a serious look at what's happening.
Mr. Johnson, you as well as anybody knows about the November elections coming up, what do you think is going to be the end result when it comes to who holds power in Washington?
What's the NAACEP's role in this?
Wake Up To Heresy00:09:17
Well, our role is to turn out as many voters as possible so they can have the ability to select candidates who represent their best interest, however they define it.
I think the interest now for many Americans is the price of things.
The price of gas is going up and will go up higher.
The price of bread, all of this economy in general.
For African American women, we've seen a tremendous decline in job, I mean, increase in joblessness, particularly federal employees in the DMV area.
Over 300,000 African American women plus have been removed from their positions as a result of Doge and other efforts of this administration.
We're going to see many entrepreneurs who begin to recognize that their innovative ideals are going to be limited because of this current climate.
The tariffs is having a devastating impact on the cost of things.
We see farmers, black, white, green, and yellows, who received commitments, and those commitments have since gone away, whether it's U.S. AID and the farm opportunities there, or just the tariffs and the redirecting of agricultural business across the farmland.
I think November election is going to really be an inflection point for this country.
It's not about partisanship and rhetoric.
It's about the quality of life that Americans currently have or the lack thereof.
Is the focus then for your organization just on turnout or are there specific races you're looking at?
What's the scope?
Well, we always look at turnout in areas where the increase in the African American community can make a quality difference in one's life.
The congressional races across the country are going to be really important.
Can we increase participation of infrequent voters?
That's going to be really important.
Midterm election typically have a lower turnout.
Our goal is to try to increase it.
We believe that more people participating and exercising their right to vote, we have a better representative democracy.
And so that's our goal is to have a representative democracy where the African American community can use their vote, which is their currency for this democracy, and help direct the direction of this country in a way in which it can be more inclusive, more representative, and allow more Americans to be profitable.
Here is Greg from Texas, Independent Line.
Good morning, y'all.
Thank you for having me on.
Let me ask you something, Michael.
NACP has been out here for the longest.
Right now, our young people out here out here is out here suffering because the fact is we don't build nothing for these kids.
What we build, we got to go through the same people that tell us what we can't do.
We got to do like everybody else.
Come out here and take care of these.
That's why they run into the Republican Party because they want money.
This whole country is built on money.
Donald Trump went out here in our town right here.
They done came out and took all the public schools out because of money.
It's tax money.
Now they're talking about private schools.
That's control, man.
That ain't got nothing to do with the fact that people ain't getting no education.
They're taking them schools and shutting them down, not turning them back into alternity schools in the private school.
That's control and money, man.
And these young kids out here, I have been taught one culture and one culture only.
Everybody else out here that the NACP and everybody voted for, that black folk, those people are taking care of each other.
Let them people do that.
Take care of our young black men and women out here and build them a future, build them jobs, build them something so they can have something to get off from work, not go work for somebody else.
That's what our problem is.
And we out here voting for talking about the Fifth Amendment.
Let this man, this man build his own military force, his own security ice and all that.
That's what they've been talking about.
Take their country back.
Now, them other ones out there complaining about what they're going to, they're going to, they don't want to go to war.
Caller, caller, I hate to interrupt in the interest of time.
Do you have a specific question for our guest?
Yeah.
Stop trying to support everybody else and worrying about what Donald Trump is doing in the Fifth Amendment and all that.
That ain't got nothing to do with us out here right now.
The NHCP needs to get out here and focus on educating each and open up businesses for you made those points.
I'm going to end you there and then we'll let Mr. Johnson respond.
Yeah, part of our concern that goes beyond just the 25th Amendment is how the role of government is being weaponized against the African American community.
The fact that there's effort, there are efforts across the country, particularly in the southern landscape, to privatize public dollars, which will not benefit our children.
When I say our children, black children, Latino children, poor white children, or children in general, is alarming.
Many individuals see the public education system as a way to make profit, putting profit over people.
We're concerned about that.
Up until this administration came in, the fastest growing class of entrepreneurs were African American women.
That has been severely slowed down as a result of policies and executive orders by this administration.
Our job as an organization is we advocate for public policy and corporate behavior to promote and support the communities we represent.
We're going to continue to do that job.
We've done it effectively over 117 years.
That's why many African Americans are positioned better off today than they were in the past.
Although we have a long way to go and is much more fighting to do to ensure a true representative democracy where our tax dollars are used to improve the quality of our lives, the communities we live in and the prospects for our future.
One more call, and this will be from Jay.
Jay in Florida, Republican Line.
Yes, good morning.
I'd like to ask our guests a few questions here.
One is, you say it's not partisan, but yet the NAACP doesn't vote Republican, and they don't do anything with the Republicans, actually.
Y'all forgot about who it was that funded all the black colleges for permanent.
I guess that was Donald Trump in his first term.
You know, I'm tired of hearing this division coming out of the Democrat Party and the NAACP.
It seems to me like you want to keep the racism going and only for one reason, one reason only.
How much do you make off the NAACP?
It's a racket.
Have a good day.
Okay.
Quick question.
So in terms of support for HBCUs, Historical Black College University received the largest allocation of resources during the prior administration, which was over $17 billion.
That's more than the first Trump administration and his second administration combined.
So the talking points sound good, but the data simply doesn't support it.
Secondly, we don't align with either political party.
We have members both on our board and among our ranks who are affiliated with both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
We don't tell people how to affiliate their political alignment nor how to vote.
Michael Steele is a life member, the former head of the Republican National Committee.
He's a member of the NAACP.
We communicate.
My predecessor, Ben Hooks, was an active Republican up until he died.
And so this fallacy or narrative that people try to push that an ACP is on one political spectrum versus another isn't true.
The real question here, what are the parties doing in a very tangible way through their policy pushes to attract individuals to participate under their political party banner?
It is not a choice we're saying we're going to go here versus there.
We're saying that based on the platform that the political parties put forward, these platforms better represent the needs and interests at that time.
Are they perfect?
No.
Are they complete?
No.
So the challenge for many of you who operate under the Republican Party banner, challenge your party.
What are you doing to attract more African Americans?
What are you doing to ensure that the interests of the communities you're trying to get to vote for you align with your platform?
And that has been the problem over the last several decades.
There was a strategic approach with a southern strategy to align with the grievance politics of working class whites against the other, whether the other were based on religion, the Jewish community or Mormon community, whether the other was based on race, African American community or ethnic background.
The grievance politics of the Republican Party created what we are witnessing here.
Now's an opportunity to begin to hold your party officials accountable to say, is the tent that we're casting wide enough to attract more people to support our party alignment?