Brian Blaise and Reverend Jim Wallace dissect the Trump administration's global blockade of Iran, hospital consolidation driving healthcare costs via certificate of need laws, and the fiscal unsustainability of Medicare. They debate the "most favored nation" drug pricing policy, massive hospice fraud in Los Angeles, and the administration's shift toward a theocratic regime using faith for political gain. While Wallace condemns military threats as potential war crimes contrary to just war theory, callers clash over immigration mandates and economic polling, revealing deep societal fractures regarding religion, healthcare reform, and national security. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Government Policies Drive High Costs00:14:54
Of Hormuz much more than we do and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and getting a boat.
This is much more their fight than ours.
On this core mission, America's will is unshakable, our capabilities unmatched.
Our blockade is only growing and going global.
And as the President said, we have all the time in the world.
Iran has a historic chance to make a serious deal, and the ball is in their court.
Either way, the War Department stands ready for what comes next, locked and loaded.
May God continue to bless our warriors each and every day, and on each and every mission.
Mr. Chairman, over to you.
All right, Pentagon leaders giving an Iran war update here in Washington this morning.
Live coverage continues over on C-SPAN 2.
Here in the Washington Journal this morning, we want to turn our attention to health care.
Joining us this morning is Brian Blaise.
He's the president of the Paragon Health Institute and a former White House economic policy advisor in the Trump administration.
Brian Blaise, I want to start with the report from your group, the hospital cost crisis.
And in the report, you write: hospitals are the largest cost drivers in the U.S. healthcare system, accounting for about one-third of total expenditures.
Government payments into the system are a primary driver of the nation's worsening fiscal outlook.
Given these realities, it is imperative that policymakers understand the role of modern hospitals, the development of giant health systems, and the incentives driving their business decisions.
Unfortunately, hospital care in the United States does not reflect a well-functioning, dynamic market that provides efficient, cost-effective care.
It is marked by opacity complexity and distorted prices.
Do you blame this situation on government-run programs like Medicare and Medicaid?
Hey, Greta, it is great to be on with you this morning.
And thank you for highlighting our new and very important new paper.
Hospital prices have risen faster than any other economic sector.
Since the turn of the century, they've increased three times faster than inflation and more than twice as fast as worker wages.
Family budgets are increasingly strained under high health insurance premiums, and worker wages are much, increases are much lower than they would otherwise be because of health insurance premium increases.
And hospital prices and costs are the primary driver.
What we looked at in the report are the numerous federal and state policies that protect hospitals from competition, that lead to excessive consolidation in the market, and consolidation leads to higher prices and actually worse quality of care, and that subsidize inefficiency.
You know, government payment programs have historically paid hospitals based on costs and cost-based reimbursement.
And if you reimburse based on costs, what you are going to get is higher costs and administrative bloat.
So we do have a hospital cost crisis.
It is driven primarily by policy failure.
And it's important for policymakers to have the correct diagnosis because there's going to have to be policy changes that bring down hospital prices and that improve overall health care affordability.
What government programs are you referring to?
So we can sort of separate out into a few categories.
There are policies that protect hospitals from competition.
One of them is a state-level policy.
It's called a certificate of need law.
What these do is basically give hospitals veto power over competition.
So in order for new supply to come into the market, you need to apply to a state board, the certificate of need board, and that board is often controlled by the incumbent hospital providers.
So that gives them a veto power over new competition.
There are a policy in the Affordable Care Act, limited Medicare reimbursement for physician-down hospitals.
Physician-downed hospitals were increasing in the market prior to the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, and their growth has completely stagnated.
Again, it was the traditional hospital systems that argued for that inclusion in the ACA and protecting them from competition.
There are government payment policies through Medicare and Medicaid that have incentivized higher costs and consolidation.
The Medicare and Medicaid program will both pay more for identical services provided in a hospital than in an independent physician office, like much more, two to three times.
What that does is lead to incentives for consolidation.
So hospitals have acquired physician offices, and when they do, they then bill for the exact same service, but at a much higher rate.
And the Medicaid program has distortions as well.
There is Medicaid program is a joint federal state program.
States are spending mostly with federal dollars.
Hospital systems and states have colluded on financing gimmicks that enable the hospital systems within the states to get much more federal money and where you've got hospital systems that are now making large profits off of the Medicaid welfare program.
And we did detail a whole bunch more in the report.
But in totality, what those government protections from competition and subsidies for inefficiency have done is led to consolidation.
So many parts of the country, there's only one or two hospital systems.
When you have that much consolidation in the market, that leads to much higher prices for commercial payers.
So people that have employer-sponsored insurance are paying much higher premiums because of the bad government policies that have led to so much distortion and so much consolidation in the market.
Why is it leading to consolidation?
Why is there an incentive to try to consolidate?
So the hospital, if they acquire the physician office, are then able to bill at a much higher rate.
So it actually leads to incentives with hospitals and with physicians for the hospital to acquire the physician practice.
The physician will get a cut of the higher rate that the hospital is able to secure.
So there are direct financial incentives.
Hospitals that the payments increase for the same service delivered in a hospital than in a physician office.
There's also this program, the 340B drug program that has also led to consolidation.
What the 340B drug program does is it was meant to be a small program for safety net providers to allow them to access drugs at a discount and then sell them at a much higher rate, netting the difference.
It was a way for safety net providers to be able to provide care to lower-income Americans to be able to gain some extra revenue in order to do that.
But what we've seen is that big hospital systems have acquired these smaller covered entities, and the 340B program has exploded, and it's another major factor with consolidation.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 68 million people currently are enrolled in Medicare Part A, which covers hospital stays.
82 million Americans covered by Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program known as CHIP.
1.5 million births paid for by Medicaid and CHIP each year.
Recently, this is the NBC news headline: President Trump says it's not possible for the U.S. to pay for Medicaid and Medicare and daycare.
Do you agree, Brian Blaise, with the president's remarks on Medicare and Medicaid?
Well, I mean, the federal government is paying an enormous amount for Medicare and Medicaid.
If you look at the federal budget, and the federal budget has grown significantly, it grew significantly during the Biden administration, during the COVID pandemic.
The Medicaid program in particular just exploded with extra enrollment from the pandemic, improper enrollment, and then a lot of this corporate welfare, these financing schemes that Paragon, we've written a lot about them.
I mean, I think what the president is saying is that resources are ultimately limited.
The government can't do anything.
It can't do everything.
And what we need is these programs to be put on a sustainable trajectory.
They are the primary driver of rising federal spending and putting significant pressure on interest rates and inflation because of how large the deficits are.
So I think it is really important that we get Medicare and Medicaid both put on sustainable trajectories so that they can serve the patients who truly need them.
And I think one of the things that we're seeing from CMS is this war on fraud.
There is tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse in government health care programs.
And this is money that doesn't go into patient care.
It's just lost.
And that is, I think, the administration targeting wastewater abuse.
I really applaud that and the moves of Dr. Oz and the broader administration to protect these programs for Americans who are eligible for them and who most need them.
We're talking about health care costs and the role hospitals play in it.
Our guest is Brian Blaise.
He's the president of Paragon Health Institute and a former White House National Economic Policy Advisor in the Trump administration.
We'll take your phone calls here this morning, and this is how we're dividing the lines.
If you have private insurance, dial in at 202-748-8000.
If you are on Medicaid or Medicare, 202-748-8001.
If you have the ACA insurance, dial in at 202-748-8002.
And all others, your line is 202-748-8003.
Brian Blaise, let me show you this headline from the Washington Post.
White House says it's boosting affordability through physician reforms.
What is the White House doing?
And do you agree?
I do.
So the White House is enacting a series of proposals through their rulemaking authority to help primary care providers and general practitioners.
The Medicare payment formulas have a long-standing bias towards specialists, and that is another distortion.
Like the government payment policies, we talked about them on the hospital side.
They also cause distortions on the physician side, where there's a financial incentive because of government payment programs for doctors to pursue a specialty rather than go into general medicine.
So they're making moves to correct that disparity.
And they're also taking the steps that they have within their authorities to get at this differential between much higher payments for hospitals and much lower payments for the same service and physician offices.
So they're moving in the direction of site-neutral payment in terms of the administration of drugs and really trying to push the boundaries of that as far as they can.
And what about government policy to incentivize doctors to sell out to big hospital systems?
And what about the president yesterday at the health care event that he hosted at the White House?
What did you hear?
What's the headline?
Well, the president, the focus yesterday is the president's most favored nation drug pricing policy.
It is by far the health policy issue that animates the president the most.
And I learned that when I worked for the White House during term one.
And, you know, if you listen to Secretary Kennedy yesterday, he said that the president is often calling late into the evening, the Secretary and Dr. Oz, to talk about the need to lower the pharmaceutical prices that Americans pay.
What the aim of most favored nation pricing is to address the fact that Americans pay much higher rates for brand name pharmaceuticals than people in other developed countries pay and to bring about a process where that disparity is closed so that Americans aren't subsidizing the research and development for pharmaceuticals for people across the globe.
So they've entered into agreements now with 17 pharmaceutical companies.
Yesterday was the announcement of the because they sent letters many, many months ago laying out the process with 17 companies.
And the company that came in yesterday was the 17th company that has reached agreement with the administration on the most favored nation drug pricing, with the main point being that they're going to launch new medications, many new medications at the same prices in the U.S. as in other developed countries.
All right, let's get to calls.
Steve is waiting in Freeland, Maryland.
You have private insurance, health insurance, Steve.
Good morning to you.
Brian Blaise, I want to thank you so much for everything you've done.
This is not the first time you've been on C-SPAN.
You are knocking this out of the park.
I wish the topic that we just discussed about Congress, I think Congress is the largest procrastinating body that I've ever seen, and we avoid this healthcare cost issue in this country like cancer.
And we do that because of everything you've just talked about.
The fraud in this is unbearable.
And the consolidation is obvious.
We're eliminating all competition.
I don't know how you do it without banging your head against the wall every day, but you, sir, need to keep up the good work.
And I don't know how we get you in charge of this whole program for the United States of America to get and open the eyes up of the legislative branch who are fully aware of all this, but choose to do nothing about it.
All right.
So, Brian Blaise, if you were in charge, what would you do first?
Well, I love Steve.
He's a great caller.
Thank you, Steve, for those very kind remarks.
You know, we're animated at Paragon to address the problems that emanate from government programs.
And we are very concerned about families that are paying much more for health care that is not delivering the quality.
For patients, we want patients to have access to the most innovative medications without going into financial ruin.
And for the American taxpayer, and you're correct, these programs are loaded with waste, fraud, and abuse.
And the government, both state and federal governments, have been complicit in allowing so much to get siphoned off to fraudsters, to bad actors, and really to organized crime.
So the challenges are really significant.
I view this as the most important domestic policy issue that we need to reform federal health programs.
If I was in charge, I would go and try to remove as many distortions as possible.
So first of all, I would enact, we have 12 recommendations in the hospital cost crisis paper that we put out.
We should enact those, remove distortions that advantage big, politically powerful hospital systems over independent physicians and smaller facilities.
We should enact price transparency so that Americans actually know how much they're paying for services that they receive at hospitals.
And on the demand side of the market, the main problem is the consumer isn't in control.
We don't have a patient-driven health care system.
So what we need to have is the patient, the family, to be in control of the money.
They should be the ones making more of the decisions, not the government bureaucracies, not the insurance companies, and not their employers.
So to get the financial power and control in the hands of the individual consumer.
Mike in Florida, you have your insurance through Medicare.
Is that right?
Yes, yes, ma'am.
Okay, question or comment?
Go ahead.
Yeah, my question is to this person here.
They keep talking about waste, fraud, and abuse in the system.
Now, Trump, I'm looking at pardon many of these people that were charged with waste, fraud, and abuse, and they owe the government like over $2 billion.
Don't we have to pay that back?
How do you explain that?
So I'm not familiar with the individuals that President Trump has pardoned, so I can't really comment on your direct question.
I mean, I do.
There are a lot of bad actors that, unfortunately, the way that our Medicare program works in particular is a pay and chase model.
So the CMS, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, they operate, the main thing that they do is pay claims.
And the people that submit the claims, the entities that submit the claims, they want those claims paid as quickly as possible.
And so they're very good at paying claims.
They are not very good at making sure that the claims that they're paying are appropriate.
And let me give you a good example.
I was with Dr. Oz last week, and I heard Secretary Kennedy talk about this in sort of the whirlwind testimonies that he gave on Capitol Hill.
There is massive fraud in hospice in the Medicare program, and it's centered in Los Angeles County.
One-third of all Medicare spending on hospice is in one county in the country, Los Angeles County.
They sent letters to 450 hospice providers, basically shutting them down, saying that they were going to stop Medicare reimbursement.
The number of hospice, those providers that appealed is zero, right?
That shows rampant fraud.
We have been spending billions of dollars towards these hospice providers that aren't providing any services and that are completely fraudulent.
Like that is such an indictment on the way that these federal health programs are working.
And we need to focus more attention on shutting down fraud schemes like that.
Our topic is healthcare.
Our guest is Brian Blaise, and we'll go to John in Dallas, Texas.
Get your insurance privately.
Is that right, John?
Hi, yes, that is correct.
I just wanted to bring up a trend in our country that I've been noticing, and it extends to all kinds of different fields, but it seems to be this kind of reluctance or even this aversion to sort of a strictness towards groups that we consider disenfranchised or victim groups.
And so an example in the healthcare industry or the health insurance industry or just health benefits is the SNAP program, where recently there was cuts made to allowing people with SNAP to buy candy and soda, which seems like a pretty obvious thing that should have been enacted before and now.
But then you see reports coming out in the media.
And I'm not sure if you're noticing this.
I'm curious to know your take on this.
But the reports come out, these news articles talking about the reasons why this is bad, or it's causing confusion, or it's resulting in a stigma.
And it seems like there's all this pushback in public opinion to why we shouldn't be doing this thing that seemed very obvious.
And to me, it just seems like it stems from this tendency that, like I said in the beginning, goes through all kinds of different areas in our culture to be very reluctant to be strict towards people that we consider victims.
And I'm just wondering if you do you notice this and what do you think it might be caused by?
Thank you.
Yeah, so let me to talk about SNAP, the food stamp program.
And that's not a program that Paragon has done a lot of work on.
But I think one of the issues, so the Make America Healthy Again movement has really looked at SNAP and said SNAP, a large part of what people use their SNAP benefit for is junk food, soda.
So a lot of high-calorie, basically nutrition-free substances.
And should we limit the coverage of SNAP? so that it can't be used for junk food.
And several states have gotten waivers, and this is a sort of big priority of Secretary Kennedy, and to restrict SNAP recipients' ability to use those benefits on junk food.
I'm sympathetic to those efforts.
I think that it's a welfare program.
And if the government is going to place restrictions on them, these seem like pretty sensible restrictions to place, in my view.
There are other people who think that these programs should operate where the recipient should have the freedom to make their own decisions.
And the government shouldn't come in and restrict the types of products that you can use with that benefit.
Bill's in Arizona.
Bill?
Yes, I'm on Medicare.
And recently, United Healthcare, who I'm on, canceled all their PPO plans and kicked me off my insurance, so I had to get an inferior insurance.
And I've been paying into the thing since I was a kid.
They could fund that thing a little better, but instead they give tax breaks to rich in the big corporations.
All they'd have to do instead of giving those tax breaks to the rich is take a little extra money for them and shazam, you'd have the whole thing paid for.
All right.
Well, let's get Brian Blaze's take on that, Bill.
So Bill said that his plan was canceled by United.
So that means Bill was enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan.
And most seniors on Medicare are now enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan.
That means that the government is paying a health insurance company, and the health insurance company has a provider network, and they are managing the care for that individual.
Medicare Advantage plans are increasingly popular because they offer a lot of supplemental benefits that aren't available for original Medicare.
So people can use, so there's lower cost sharing with Medicare Advantage, but people can use Medicare Advantage for often dental coverage, vision coverage, even things like gym memberships.
And I think Medicare Advantage, their plans can come and go with Medicare Advantage.
The enrollee will have a choice whether to enroll in a PPO, which is a much broader set of providers, or a health maintenance organization, which is a smaller set of providers.
You know, to the point about sort of the Medicare versus tax comparison, I will say just looking at federal expenditures, the growth of Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA is outpacing every other part of the federal budget.
It is a real threat to future American prosperity if we don't get Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA back on sustainable trajectory.
And you can't raise taxes high enough to solve the fiscal budget problem.
You need to address the unsustainability of the federal health programs.
What is the history of the Medicare Advantage program?
And do you agree with it?
Is it run well?
Medicare Advantage was, there were some elements of insurance company involvement with Medicare prior to the Bush administration, but President Bush signed the Medicare Modernization Act.
And so Medicare Advantage really started in 2003.
And enrollment growth has been pretty steady.
There were changes made to Medicare Advantage in the Affordable Care Act that reduced some of the spending in Medicare Advantage.
But enrollment has remained steady.
And now, you know, more than half of all seniors are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.
I think there are severe problems with original Medicare.
Original Medicare is the government setting all prices throughout the healthcare sector and this pay and chase model where doctors are also incentivized just to provide more because the more they provide and the more hospitals provide, the more they get paid.
So I think Medicare Advantage is an important alternative for seniors.
I think there's certain advantages with Medicare Advantage.
That said, I think Medicare Advantage needs reform.
There are inefficiencies with Medicare Advantage.
And I think Medicare Advantage costs the American taxpayer slightly more than original Medicare.
So we did a paper at Paragon two years ago on how you could reform Medicare by improving Medicare Advantage.
And we have a bunch of recommendations that we make that really should be bipartisan on ways to improve some of the excesses of Medicare Advantage.
Hospital Bills and Retiree Struggles00:09:06
Floyd in Indiana, good morning to you.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Thanks for taking my call.
Yes, I am an individual without insurance and hadn't had this experience ever since I got married and got on my own in 1986.
And just this year alone, I had a surgery done in Mexico because I had a doctor in 2002 that wouldn't help me here in the States.
If I had to go back there to have repair surgery done on a bone graft, I pinched my nerves.
But anyway, I ended up with a $31,000 hospital bill there and came back here and got an infection.
And so locally, I've got over a $40,000 hospital bill right now to be paid.
And just one of the ridiculous things, and I understand where they're coming from, I'm on the board of a local healthcare clinic.
That's a nonprofit, FQHC.
So I looked at my itemized bill, and so to do a glucose test, just this rep, they charged $58.88.
By the same token, I didn't realize by owning the physicians' offices.
So on the hospital bill, this is Baptist Health.
They offered me an 86% discount, which is super, a lot better than it was 40 years ago.
No discount then for self-pay.
But then on the physician's part, they only allow a 35% discount.
So I've got $1,000 of bills from the hospitalist, from the infectious disease doctor, from the neurosurgeon.
And Floyd, with those discounts, you have a $40,000 bill.
No, that was...
Oh, yeah, with the discounts.
Yes, with the discounts.
Absolutely.
Astronomical, the figures on the hospital bill, it was over $200,000.
Brian Blaise.
I'll have Brian Blaise jump in.
Floyd, thanks for the call.
Hey, Floyd, yeah, thank you for the call.
And I'm very sorry to hear about the health issues that you've experienced and the problems with the hospital billing.
I mean, this is the reason why we wrote this paper.
The hospital cost crisis is very real.
People in the country are harmed by excessive out-of-control hospital bills.
And unfortunately, Indiana, and I've done significant work on hospital prices in Indiana, hospital prices in Indiana are among the highest in the country.
These charges that you see from hospitals are complete fictions.
They do not represent reality in the real world.
And then you get discounts off of these fictions.
Unfortunately, government payment policy has incentivized hospital bloat and inefficiency.
So the prices that Americans are paying for hospital care is outrageously more expensive than it should be.
And I think rising, high and rising hospital prices is the number one threat to the American family budget.
Hospitals are very politically powerful and they are increasingly politically powerful because of just how massive they have become and how they are also like the major employer in many congressional districts.
But if policymakers are serious about health care affordability, like they this issue has to be dealt with.
And from our perspective, the best way to deal with it is to undo all of the government rules and policies that protect hospitals from competition that have led to consolidation and that incentivize bloat and waste.
Josephine is in New Jersey and has Medicare as her insurance.
Josephine, question or comment?
Well, I'd like to comment.
And my comment is, I'm glad he mentioned that it was on the Republicans that came under the or created the Advantage program.
It was brought under that guise for the reason to get rid of Medicare.
52% of seniors belong on Advantage.
And who came along to carry the Advantage program?
It's we, John Q citizen.
I now pay $656 a month to cover people on Advantage so that the insurance companies, which are privately owned, are so corrupt that he's thinking, oh, they do such good work.
Let's be quite honest.
We under Medicare cannot submit a billing in it.
Only the vendor can.
And let's target one of the biggest areas on it.
The state of Florida, Senator Scott, was found guilty of fraud with $600 million to the organization that he ran.
Okay, Josephine, before you go down that road, I just want to get Brian Blaise's response to your argument that people on Medicare are footing the bill for Medicare Advantage.
Brian Blaise?
I have a hard time following that argument.
I mean, the vast majority of Medicare costs for both original Medicare and Medicare Advantage are from taxpayers.
So you have the payroll tax that finances Medicare Part A, which is the hospital insurance program.
And then Part B, and Part D.
So Part B is outpatient services.
Part D is prescription drugs.
You do have beneficiary premiums.
The beneficiary premium is about 25% of the cost, but the rest is general tax revenue.
So Medicare is largely financed by American workers, and it's a transfer for American to American retirees.
Now, the people that are on Medicare now, they did pay into the program or for the program when they were working, but those payments didn't represent like an fund that finances their receipt of the benefits from the program now.
It was just a transfer program to people that were on the Medicare program back then.
One of the problems in the financing is that current retirees on Medicare paid $1 for every $3 that they're expected to get in benefits.
So the Medicare program is a major transfer from workers to people on the program.
In terms of Medicare Advantage, I mean, I share a skepticism of health insurance companies too, and think that we should reduce in many ways the role of health insurance companies in our healthcare sector.
But at age 65, seniors will get a choice.
They can join original Medicare or they can opt into Medicare Advantage.
And then they could choose every year during an open enrollment about which type of coverage that they want.
And I am a strong supporter of choice and think that seniors should have that choice of the way that they want their Medicare benefit to be structured.
Kathleen in Dayton, Ohio.
Good morning.
Good morning.
And, boy, I hope I'll have time to explain an issue I've been involved with here in Dayton about the closure of a 93-year-old hospital opened by the Sisters of Charity here in Dayton 93 years ago called Good Samaritan Hospital.
And the closure of that hospital in a 75% black neighborhood in northwest Dayton by Premier Health.
Health Network.
When I asked why, when I asked the workers in that hospital why they thought that hospital was closing, they believed that it was because most of the customers coming in were on Medicare and Medicaid.
Then Premier expanded out in there in the predominantly white neighborhoods around Dayton and expanded their services in that neighborhood, those neighborhoods, while closing it in that 75% black neighborhood.
So Kathleen, I will jump in.
I think we have the gist of this.
Why Dayton Hospitals Are Closing00:03:58
Brian Blaise, go ahead.
I mean, it's hard for me to, I don't know the details of this specific example.
I do the concerns that Kathleen is raising have been raised in other states as well that with these hospital mergers.
And I think some of it is related to the 340B program that I described earlier.
Hospitals are acquiring other facilities, gaining the ability to charge higher prices, and then closing some of the facilities down.
I mean, I think it's hard to comment on the specifics with this example.
So I think I should probably just leave it there.
Our viewers can learn more about this new report by the Paragon Health Institute if you go to paragoninstitute.org.
Brian Blaise is the president.
He's also a former White House economic policy advisor in the first Trump administration.
Thank you for the conversation this morning.
Thank you very much, Greta.
Later on on the Washington Journal, we will talk with Reverend Jim Wallace from the Georgetown University Center on Faith and Justice about the role of faith and religion in the Trump administration.
But first, after this break, we'll get your reaction to news of the day.
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Today, on C-SPAN's Ceasefire, a bipartisan conversation on the Iran conflict with Maryland Democratic Congressman Stenny Hoyer and Nevada Republican Congressman Mark Amade, joined by our host Dasha Burns.
They'll also discuss Congress asserting its war authority and how the conflict and rising gas prices could impact the midterm elections.
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Peace Talks with Iran Update00:13:11
And you're doing a column for the New York Times.
And you've got three teenage children.
How do you have time to write a book?
They would like the answer to that question, too.
Slowly is maybe the answer.
It took me about eight years to write this book.
But you realize the Great Depression was over in less than eight years.
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Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We're taking your calls and your texts and your posts on news of the day.
We'll start with the Washington Times this morning.
Front page, President Trump rules out nuclear hit, orders shoot to kill.
The Navy told to sink Iran's mine layers.
That's the front page of the Washington Times this morning.
The president yesterday in the Oval Office, speaking to reporters, said he would not be rushed to end the war with Iran as negotiations continue.
I took the country out militarily in the first four weeks.
I took it out militarily.
Now all we're doing is sitting back and seeing what deal.
And if they don't want to make a deal, then I'll finish it up militarily with the other 25% of the targets.
We've hit 78% of the targets that we've wanted to hit.
We've knocked out their manufacturing.
We've knocked out their missile production.
We've knocked out their drone production.
We've knocked out everything.
In some cases, when I say knocked it out, 70, 80, 90%, it's amazing what we've done.
So I've done that within that period of time that I mentioned, but I don't want to rush myself, you know, because every story says, oh, Trump is under time pressure.
I'm not.
No, no.
You know who's under time pressure?
They are.
Because if they don't get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode.
You know what that means?
Because they have no place to store it.
And because they have no place to store it, if they have to stop it, something happens that only Lynn can explain.
Something happens underground that essentially renders it in very poor shape and you never recover fully.
You can recover 50, 60%, but you can never have it like it is right now.
And they have a matter of days before that event takes place.
So I'm not under any pressure whatsoever.
They're asking for more time to sort out negotiations.
I'm not asking you for more time.
I'm not asking for them.
No, it's not.
I'm not asking anybody for more time.
If you need more time, does that mean Americans should anticipate spending more on gasoline for the foreseeable future?
For a little while.
And you know what they get for that?
You know what they get for that?
Iran without a nuclear weapon that's going to try and blow up one of our cities or blow up the entire Middle East.
President Trump, yesterday, on the latest on Iran, the CNN is reporting this morning that Iran's foreign minister is now headed to Islamabad as Pakistan expects fresh U.S. talks.
The Iranian foreign minister is expected to arrive tonight with a small delegation.
Also, the United States brokered a ceasefire recently between Israel and Lebanon.
The Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday in the Oval announcing an extension of the deal.
Yes, sir.
Well, first of all, congratulations.
Congratulations to you and our Secretary of State.
But most importantly, congratulations to the people of Israel and Lebanon.
I think it's a major historic moment.
We're going to extend the ceasefire for three weeks that's already in place between Israel and Lebanon.
Of course, it wouldn't have happened without the president's direct engagement.
The fact that you have these leaders of different countries coming together for the first time, they came together in the Oval Office and they came together because of energetic diplomacy, of course, led by the President of the United States.
So I think it's a big moment for the world.
It's a big moment for our country, but just very proud to be a part of it.
So, thank you, sir, for making it happen.
Thank you very much, thank you, Mr. President, for hosting this.
Actually, you know, the president wanted to be personally involved, and I'm glad he was because it made it possible to get this extension, and it gives everybody time to continue to work on what's going to be a permanent peace between two countries that want to be at peace.
Both are victimized by the same terrorist organization, a terrorist organization that no doubt has victimized Israel, but has also victimized the people of Lebanon.
The people of Lebanon deserve to live in a country that's peaceful and prosperous.
They have an opportunity to do that.
They have a history of that.
And what's standing in the way is an organization that operates a terrorist organization that operates within their national territory that needs to be, that threat needs to be eliminated.
And so, thank you, Mr. President, for this gathering today and for convening it and being a key part of it.
And it inspires us time to continue to work.
I'm very optimistic that in a few weeks we'll be even closer to the kind of permanent peace that the people of Israel and Lebanon deserve.
An extension of the ceasefire deal brokered by the United States between Israel and Lebanon.
That is the latest on the conflict with Iran.
This morning, we're getting your reaction to the headlines.
You can either call in, you can post, and you can text as well.
Ken in Phoenix, Arizona, Democratic caller, we'll start with you.
Okay, hi.
I think that this headlines just show, you know, and in particular when you play that, you know, back-to-back from that previous program that was relating to health care costs, really illustrate how politicians are totally out of touch with the public.
The public demands Medicare for all, and we need sharp, major reductions in military spending.
We can fund health care for the entire public.
That's what the voters want.
And we have a great opportunity coming up this year to make the candidates get on the record and let us know that they support Medicare for all.
If you're going to get voted into office, if they don't, they won't.
And we have an opportunity now to reform our health care system, get Medicare for all.
Ken, if you were running a debate between candidates in your district, beyond health care, what other topics would you start with?
Sharp reductions in the military budget.
It's, you know, this idea that the current administration has to increase it by 50% is ridiculous.
I mean, all you do when you spend more money on weapons is provoke people to use the weapons.
You end up with more wars.
You need to, you know, drastically lower military spending than you have fewer wars, fewer bullets.
I mean, it's a no-brainer.
Ken, with his thoughts in Phoenix, Arizona, Democratic caller Politico.
This is about one month ago, and we're waiting on action in Congress on this.
The Iran war triggers talks of supplemental defense spending.
And since then, we've learned that the administration is looking at about an additional $200 billion for the conflict with Iran.
Paul in Lafayette, Louisiana, Republican.
Paul, what's on your mind this morning?
Yes.
My concern was this.
We had a cost-of-blazing increase of 2.8%.
And what happened?
They raised Fort D. Medical up to $200 a month, which was a $15 per month increase.
My wife's part of Social Security lost $3 because they went up $15 on the Court D medical.
I asked if there would be a case There would be hardship and we could forego the $200 a month, but we missed it by $4.
And the only thing we have is Social Security, my wife and I.
And it's a no-winning situation.
It would have been nice to remove Court D medical from our expenses.
And then, like that, we would have had a little bit more money to live.
Okay.
Unfortunately, that doesn't happen.
All right.
Paul in Lafayette, Louisiana, on our line for Republicans.
We'll get to your other calls on the news of the day here in just a minute, but I also want to share with you from Capitol Hill yesterday.
Howard Luttnick, the president's commerce secretary, was testifying for the second time on Capitol Hill.
Democrats at the House budget hearing clashed with the secretary over his ties to the late financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
I mentioned in my opening statement that we had learned in recent months that contrary to your earlier statement in which you suggested that you had cut off all contact with Epstein in 05, you and your family had in fact had lunch with Mr. Epstein on a boat during a trip to his private island in 2012 and exchanged business emails with him as recently as 2018.
This was years after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
I just wanted to ask, why did you publicly claim following your nomination that you were never in a room with him after 2005?
So I have voluntarily agreed in less than two weeks to sit with your colleagues in the House and answer any and all questions on this topic.
I have nothing to hide and I am glad to answer their questions.
Whatever questions you have on this topic, I will be glad to answer.
It's in less than two weeks and we've set aside the time to do that and I will answer all the questions.
So whatever questions you have, if you would give them to your colleagues, I will answer them.
But today, I am here to testify about the budget.
I've set aside voluntarily the time to answer those questions in less than two weeks.
So today I am here to testify about the budget.
The Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick previewing his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, which is conducting an investigation into the Epstein files.
Front page of the Washington Post this morning, the Department of Justice faces an audit over the Epstein release.
The Justice Department's chief watchdog said Thursday that his office is launching an audit of the department's compliance with the law compelling the release of millions of pages of investigative material tied to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The internal probe announced by Deputy Inspector General follows months of complaints from victims who say their personal information was included in publicly released documents and from lawmakers who have questioned decisions to redact the names of members of Epstein's influential circle from some of the files.
That's the Washington Post if you want to read more.
We will go to Robert in Utah, Democratic caller.
Hi, Robert.
Hi.
I would like to know why you immediately shut down a caller who wanted to bring up Tim Scott's fraud.
Rick Scott in Florida.
Tim Scott.
That's right.
And you shut that down.
You tripped over yourself.
Yeah, Robert, they made their point about the topic, and we had other people waiting to talk to our guest.
So I was just trying to move the conversation along, not cutting it, not cutting the caller off because they brought up Rick Scott.
If you were an open forum, you want to talk about Rick Scott?
Go for it.
Boy, he's the only one that's been convicted of any fraud that I've heard of.
All I hear about Republicans waste and fraud that nobody wants to talk about Rick Scott.
Thank you.
Okay, Robert, Democratic caller in Utah.
Campaign 2026 and Faith Issues00:02:01
We're going to take a break, and when we come back, we'll be joined by Reverend Jim Wallace from Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice.
We'll talk about the Trump administration's relationship with faith and religion.
We'll be right back.
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Exploring the American story, watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
Campaign 2026 is underway and the stakes couldn't be higher.
Every seat in the United States House of Representatives is up for grabs, along with 33 U.S. Senate races.
And the outcome of both could reshape the balance of power in Washington.
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Watch live coverage from the Washington Hilton featuring red carpet arrivals of top journalists, political leaders, and celebrities.
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The White House Correspondents Dinner, live this Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
Washington Journal continues.
Religious Offense Against the President00:15:44
Reverend Jim Wallace joins us this morning.
He is the director of Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice.
He previously served as President Obama's White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and he's here to talk about the role of faith and religion in the Trump administration.
Reverend Jim Wallace, I want to begin with the president, a portion of the president's reading of the Bible recorded from the Oval Office.
It's part of a week-long Bible reading event led by a Christian nonprofit.
We'll talk on the other side.
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Reverend Wallace, how would you describe the Trump administration's effort or relationship with faith and religion?
How do they use it or not use it?
Thank you, Greta.
Nice to hear you this morning.
Well, I think it's Trump has brought religion and faith into this war.
And that's very concerning to many people.
To depict himself as Jesus with light coming out of his head and hands with a robe was deeply concerning to many people, even people who voted for Donald Trump.
And to have Jesus embrace him, which another post did, and say that God is playing his trump card, these are deeply concerning things to say, because this war doesn't meet criteria of traditional just war theory, Aquinas and Augustine, but it certainly isn't a holy war.
And we have many problems, legitimate issues with the theocratic regime in Iran, but we don't want to become ourselves a theocracy.
So when Pete Hegset says, when he boasts about all the destruction and then says, to God be the glory, Secretary of Defense saying, to God be the glory, these are religious offenses.
So I and others have named this blasphemy, which is a theological term.
So it isn't just differences in policy, but blasphemy shows an irreverence, a disrespect, and associating himself with Jesus is something we've never seen before in a president of the United States.
And blasphemy means what for those who are religious?
Well, it's irreverence.
It's not respecting or honoring the name of God.
It's using.
Billy Graham's granddaughter the other day said that Trump is using religion.
She said using the Lord.
She's an evangelical Christian too, but she said it's using the Lord for his own political purposes.
And I think that's well said.
So it's using the Lord, as she would say, or using religion for his own political purpose.
And she said, to avoid accountability, this president needs accountability, particularly in its war policy.
And so using the Lord, using religion, is something that's offensive to many of us who are people of faith, regardless of our political point of view.
There has also been the back and forth between the president and Pope Leo.
Here is the Washington Times this morning.
Pope urges the U.S., Iran, to restart peace talks to end this war.
Recently, the Vice President JD Vance defended the president's disagreements with the Pope and said that the Vatican should stay in its lane and stick to matters of morality.
How would you respond?
The Vatican's lane has always been to speak out against war.
John Paul spoke out against the Iraq war.
Popes have always spoken on moral issues like the moral issues of war.
This is not new.
Pope Leo is not the first pope who's spoken like this or other faith leaders when wars are unjust or unfair, don't fit the criteria of a just war.
So this is not new.
It's very ironic that JD Vance, a new convert to Catholic faith, is attacking the Pope on his theology.
And I think when Pope Leo was on the plane, that was the moment that was most decisive for me.
So he's on a plane, his usual plane, talking to reporters, and they asked him how he felt about Trump attacking him, a president attacking a Pope.
And so what he was saying there wasn't prescripted, it wasn't official Vatican statements edited by bureaucracies.
He said just from his head and heart, he said, I have no fear of the Trump administration.
I have no fear of speaking loudly about the gospel.
And the gospel that he then referred to was Jesus calling us, saying, instructing us to be peacemakers.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And he said that message is needed right now.
So Pope Leo becomes, for me, a model for church leaders, clergy around the country to speak out against this war and to say these are theological issues now and not just political issues.
So Pope Leo is showing his heart and he's very much in the long tradition of papal statements about the morality of war.
That's not new.
Reverend Wallace, it's not new that popes have spoken out about war, but how he is speaking out made the headlines this morning.
Here's the Wall Street Journal.
Pope speaks forcefully on global issues.
And another headline similar in the papers this morning from the world section of the Washington Post, on Africa trip, quiet Pope adopts a confident global voice.
Well, Pope Francis certainly had a global voice.
We all remember that.
And Pope Leo, he was on the plane.
He was on this two-week African trip.
And so this voice, it will always be a voice for the ones Jesus called the least of these.
In Matthew 25, which was my conversion text, I call it the It Was Me text.
Jesus says, I was hungry.
It was me.
I was thirsty.
I was naked.
I was a stranger.
And the word stranger there literally in the text means immigrant, refugee.
I was sick.
I was in prison.
And as you've done to the least of these, these vulnerable people, you've done to me.
So Pope Leo always will say and rightly say, the first thing we see in a war situation as Christians is the faces of the victims.
Those who have suffered 2,000 people have already died.
And Donald Trump has now threatened to bomb all the bridges and all the power plants.
And even in military law, that's a war crime.
And his incredible statement about killing a whole civilization, when that happened, many people just were, their jaws dropped.
Killing a whole civilization.
That's by definition genocide.
So I don't know what's going to happen next, but threats for a lot more bombs to fall and civilians to suffer further, that's a religious issue.
And Pope Leo and all of us need to speak to that question.
The victims, particularly innocent civilians, have to be our concern.
Those who are suffering and dying.
And now, this war costing a billion dollars a day, it's hard to fathom that.
Now they're saying Trump is saying this will be taken from funds for Medicaid.
So from those who are sick and low income.
So taking money away from the most vulnerable is a violation of Matthew 25 and putting it into war and protects potentially war crimes.
This is a serious moral religious issue.
And the Pope is right in his lane, as we all should be in the lane of evaluating wars by a moral theological stance and not just politics.
All right, Reverend Wallace, let's get to calls.
Bob in Franklin, Indiana, Republican, you're up first.
Yes, good morning.
So glad that you're on this subject.
But what does the Bible instruct us on immigration?
In Leviticus 19 and 33, this is what the Bible says about immigration.
It says, and if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, you shall not vex him.
But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you.
And thou shalt love him as thyself, or ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
I am the Lord your God.
Now, the portion of this last verse is actually the most important commandment in the Bible.
Jesus said that the whole Bible hangs on two commandments: one is to love God, and the other is to love the neighbor as yourself.
And this is the first instance where this scripture is used.
It's talking about the stranger or the immigrant.
It says, thou shalt love him as thyself, and that you should not vex him, and that you should treat him as one born among you, as a native.
And today we're putting immigrants in cages.
We're taking little kids in bunny hats, detaining them.
We're keeping immigrants in concentration in camps, depriving them of medication until they die.
We separate spouses, we separate parents, when in fact the Bible tells us how we should think about the immigrants.
So if you're going to use the Bible from the Oval Office, how about what the Bible says about how we treat the immigrant?
Bob, I'm going to have Reverend Wallace jump in.
Bob, you said it so well.
I use that Leviticus text in my class at Georgetown on ethics for public policy students, and they see it the same way you do, how we treat the stranger.
It is loving our neighbor as ourselves, loving God and loving our neighbor with no exceptions.
And that Leviticus text is one of the strongest in the whole Bible.
So if the president wants to use the Bible or read the Bible from the Oval Office, and he's often said showing he doesn't know the Bible well, yet he's reading the Chronicles text, and yet that text talks about turning from our wicked ways.
So what President Trump is doing to the stranger, to the immigrant, is wicked.
It's contrary to what the Bible says.
So if we're going to talk about the Bible, let's do the whole Bible and talk about how we treat the poor and vulnerable, how we treat the immigrant, the stranger, and how we treat those civilians who are being threatened by war.
So if we're going to use the Bible, let's be fair and do the whole Bible.
I agree with you, Bob.
We'll go to Jack in Baltimore, Democratic caller.
Hey, good morning, guys.
That was a great call.
Good morning.
Great call, that previous caller.
Interesting that he caught on Republican line with that viewpoint on the Bible and how it plays into our politics.
In any case, Donald Trump is by far the most immoral president we've ever had.
But I contend that Donald Trump isn't the problem.
The problem is, I guess, the religious infrastructure that enables Donald Trump, that excuses Donald Trump, that supports Donald Trump.
And I'm wondering, I would like to ask your guest if he thinks that the religious community as a whole is doing enough to push back on that and call that out.
Okay, Jack, let's take that.
Reverend Wallace.
Thank you, Jack.
Great name, Jack.
My son's name is Jack.
I think you're right.
In fact, the biblical prophets, the Hebrew prophets, label the apologists for the king as court prophets, false prophets in the court of the king.
That's how I view the religious advisors to Donald Trump.
They don't speak the truth.
They don't speak the Bible.
They just speak what he wants to hear.
That's court prophets, false prophets.
And so I think genuine prophets have to speak from the Bible and across the spectrum to Republicans and Democrats.
And I think the Pope is, to me, a wonderful example.
No, we're not doing enough, but the Pope is showing how to lead.
And I see a number of church leaders, heads of denominations, heads of faith-based organizations speaking up for the immigrant, even acting, even going to the streets and even risking their own safety and security for their immigrant neighbors.
I see that happening.
I think that's going to grow and grow and grow.
And the more that Donald Trump or Pete Hagsth make this into a holy war, a religious war, you're going to see more and more Christians, Jews, Muslims, people of many faith traditions saying, no, that's wrong.
This is not right.
And you must not use religion in this way.
So making the war a holy war, a religious war, a biblical war, is in fact blasphemy.
It's a religious offense that many people across the political spectrum are feeling now in relationship to this president.
Christian Nationalism and Political Homelessness00:15:21
Reverend Wallace, are there conservative and progressive theologians?
And if so, are you seeing the pushback from the conservative side?
Yes, I would say both conservatives, progressives.
I always say don't go left, don't go right, go deeper.
So religion shouldn't be binary, religious right, religious left.
I don't want to be part of a religious left, even when I challenge the religious right.
So let's go deeper.
Let's go to what the Bible says.
And yes, a number of people who have been conservative their whole lives, politically and theologically, I'm a theological conservative.
The authority of the Bible, the Lordship of Christ, I'm not a liberal theologically at all.
And yet a number of people who are conservative theologically don't support what Donald Trump is doing and don't even believe he's a conservative.
But he's someone who is all taken up with himself, his ego, his agenda, his narcissism, his instability.
People are seeing more and more and more.
So yes, many conservatives, religious and theological, are seeing, are having deep concerns about Donald Trump.
What does it mean to be conservative theologian?
Well, it means to take the Bible seriously, that the Bible is the Word of God.
I believe that.
And the Lordship of Jesus Christ, that means Jesus is my Lord and Savior.
And to me, what Jesus teaches is authoritative.
When he says, blessed are the peacemakers in his Beatitudes.
In that wonderful sermon on the Mount, he says they will be called the peacemakers, the children of God.
So he's not saying, blessed are the peace lovers.
We all say we love peace, or peacekeepers, which often just preserves the status quo, but it's making peace, peacemakers, which means you enter a conflict, you embrace a conflict in order to resolve it.
So, for example, the negotiations we need that have stopped, the negotiating table is no longer operative, that's a function of peacemaking.
That's part of our vocation and calling as Christians to be the makers of peace.
So we must get to the table, U.S. and the Iranians, and find solutions to this conflict without this waging of total war, which is the most dangerous way to respond to inevitable human conflicts.
What do progressive theologians then believe?
Or how is it different?
Well, I find a lot of agreement between, again, I don't always use these terms, but agreement between those you might call progressive and those you might call conservative.
They might differ on many policy issues, many big issues.
But on this issue, they're coming together to oppose this war and to say that Donald Trump's use of religion to justify this war is blasphemy, a term I hear many people using, both on the more liberal progressive side, but also on the conservative side.
All right.
Stephen's next.
He's in Connecticut, independent caller.
Good morning, Lady Greta, and Reverend.
I want to go back to Matthew 25.
I'm not really a Christian, but Matthew 25, I think, is one of the most profound parts of the Bible.
You know, the God of a trillion galaxies, and he cares about, you know, people that can't function in life.
And, you know, you go back to the Pope.
I'd love to see the Pope from the United States.
No matter what happens to him, he really has an obligation for people that need the Matthew 25 people, us.
Right.
Yeah.
You're right.
It's interesting this Pope on the plane spoke these words in English.
He's the first Pope that we had to ask, are you a White Sox fan here at Chicago Cubs?
The fact that he's an American and also a Peruvian gives him a very unique perspective.
That Matthew 25 text is the one that brought me to Christ.
Because you're right, it's more radical than Karl Marx and Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara, who I was reading in college.
This is the most radical thing.
Here is the Son of God saying, how you treat the most vulnerable, those who are in trouble, those who are marginal, on the edge, who need help.
That's how you treat me.
To me, that was the most radical thing I'd ever read.
And so it brought me to Christ.
And I think this president just violates that text again and again.
Yeah, I just really, when the president and Pete Hegseff show no grief or sorrow for those who have died, civilians who suffered and died or are disabled now because of this war, there's no grief, there's no sorrow, there's no empathy.
In fact, his followers, some of them call empathy toxic.
I don't know what that means.
Matthew 25 says empathy is, and this was Jesus' last teaching before going into Jerusalem to be crucified and resurrected.
This was his last teaching, and maybe his most judgmental one, because he talks about the sheep and the goats, those who say they belong to Jesus, and those who welcome the stranger and those who don't, those who feed the hungry and those who don't.
So this is a text that really separates those who all think, all believe they're Jesus' followers, but they're held to this test, this Matthew 25 test, of how we treat the vulnerable.
And in a war, the vulnerable, the innocent, suffering civilians, are often the last people being covered by the media.
Mary, in Nevada, on our Line for Democrats, you're on the air with Reverend Jim Wallace.
Go ahead.
Good morning, Reverend.
I really just have some comments to make.
I don't know if my thought process is 100%, but here I go.
I see a connection between this Christian nationalism and Project 2025.
And I view Christian nationalism as not conservative, but more as a fascist theocracy.
I applaud the Pope and you for coming out and trying to get people to understand how the Bible is being misinterpreted and used by this administration that is performative.
You've got Pete Hegseth coming out and quoting lines from pulp fiction as if they were his spoken word.
I think it's a follow-the-money moment.
Money is being made.
Profiteering is going on.
That's what this is all about.
And it's being done at the taxpayer's expense.
I mean, his own son just cut a deal with the Pentagon.
Nobody, we never have the topic on who's making money and what's going on behind the scenes, what real estate deals are being made.
I mean, why do we have two real estate people trying to negotiate peace?
Mary, you can't do that.
You're right on track.
Mary, you're right on track.
And Christian nationalism, I'm glad you raised that, because Christian nationalism is a problem, is a theological problem.
We can love our country.
I love this country.
I've been all over this country for many years.
We can be patriots, but Christian nationalism, somehow associating America with God's purposes, that's theologically blasphemous.
That's not right.
That's a violation.
You know, God hasn't chosen America for God's purposes.
And they imply that again and again.
It's rather that the Bible that Donald Trump, remember at St. John's Church, he held the Bible up and he actually held it up upside down, which I thought was ironic.
But that Bible would hold him accountable.
And that lack of accountability to what the Bible teaches, you can't do that and say you're a religious man.
So I don't think Donald Trump is really a religious man.
I don't think he understands the Bible or, frankly, cares much about the Bible.
To hold the Bible up is just using the Bible, or as Billy Graham's granddaughter said, using the Lord for his own purposes.
So I think religious communities across the boundaries, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Baha'i, all of it, need to hold political leaders accountable to moral principles, which for us are often religious or biblical principles that all sides need to be held accountable to.
And I don't see that happening with Donald Trump's religious supporters, like Franklin Graham, who's the uncle of this woman who's his niece, who spoke against.
She said the hypocrisy here is so loud.
And that's, I think, a wonderful way to say it.
Painful, but that's very true.
We'll go to Minnesota.
Mark is watching there on our line for Republicans.
Mark, go ahead.
Thanks for taking my call.
NATO forces during the Clinton administration destroyed every bridge over the Danube River in Serbia.
I'm wondering if the guest was equally horrified by that.
And did the Clinton administration and NATO forces commit an act of war when they destroyed those bridges?
Thank you.
Well, Mark, I think we have to hold both sides accountable.
And without going into the particular instance you talk about, I remember all of that.
But yes, we have to speak clearly.
And I spoke out during the Clinton administration to things I thought he needed to be challenged by.
And so I think the point that is important to make is sometimes we communities of faith are politically homeless, politically homeless, which we mean that we don't fit into one party or another.
And our concerns, our deep convictions, would challenge parties and presidents across those boundaries.
We've never seen a president promise and threaten to commit war crimes like this president is doing, or to talk about killing a whole civilization.
By any definition, that's genocide.
But we have to be consistent and challenge both parties on the basis of our biblical principles.
You're exactly right.
We'll go to Florida.
Chuck, an independent, you're talking with Reverend Jim Wallace.
Go ahead.
Hello, Reverend Jim.
How are you?
I'm good.
How are you?
Pretty good.
I think you're personally, I think you're a wolf in sheep's clothing.
We'll have that discussion another time.
First of all, there have been bad popes before.
I've been Roman Catholic all my life.
And especially the year 1050 to 1087, a really bad pope came in on the Roman Catholic side.
And that's when the Orthodox Catholics broke away from that church.
And we still have, like in the Roman Catholic Church, it clearly says in Timothy that bishops are supposed to be married and their families unruly.
Well, you're saying just that's a little problem with the Catholic Church.
I'm more Eastern Orthodox these days than I am Roman Catholic because we have had bad popes before.
Okay, so Reverend Wallace, are you following?
Yeah, I think Pope Leo would agree that popes haven't always behaved perfectly or well.
There was a Pope that was very supportive of, you know, Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s.
So, yes, you're right.
I don't believe in papal infallibility.
And I have deep friendships in the Catholic Church with bishops and archbishops and cardinals.
But they would say, they would admit that you're right, that popes have not always been faithful to their calling.
But the calling, as Pope Leo reminded us again, is to follow the teachings of Jesus.
That's what Pope Leo is saying that we, he is a Pope, he is a Catholic, and we as Christians, all of us, Catholic or not, need to do.
And so I want to bring the teachings of Jesus back into these conversations.
What did Jesus say?
What did he do?
What did he mean?
As we heard from Greta at the top, loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself are the two great commandments.
And so how do we love our neighbors as ourselves if they're immigrants or if they are victims of war?
How do we love our neighbor with no exceptions?
Not just those who are like us, who speak like us, who look like us, who worship like us, but all of our neighbors, regardless of being religious or not, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves?
So the Pope is doing the right thing, which popes haven't always done, to say we have to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.
And loving your neighbor as yourself is really one evidence of loving God.
You can't just love God and not care about your neighbor.
You've got to connect the two together.
And the best of our religions across our religious boundaries would say that.
Reverend Jim Wallace, the director of Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice.
Thank you for the conversation.
My blessing.
Mine Threats and Ceasefire Violations00:04:16
Great to be with you again on C-SPAN.
I know across the political spectrum, we have to find agreement on your helping us do that.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Reverend Wallace.
We're going to take a break.
When we come back, we will get your reaction to more news of the day.
You can text, you can call, and you can post.
There are the lines on your screen.
We'll be right back.
Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold original series.
Sunday, with our guest, co-anchor of CNBC morning program, Squawk Box, and the founder and editor-at-large of the online financial report, Deal Book.
Andrew Ross Sorkin has authored two best-selling books, Too Big to Fail, about the 2008 bailout of the U.S. financial system, which was adapted into a movie by HBO and 1929 on the great stock market crash and named the best book of 2025 by Time, Bloomberg, and others.
He joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein at the New Orleans Book Festival.
You are doing the show Squawkbox.
You're doing Dio Book, which you invented.
And you're doing a column for the New York Times.
And you've got three teenage children.
How do you have time to write a book?
Ah, they would like the answer to that question, too.
Slowly is maybe the answer.
It took me about eight years to write this book.
But you realize the Great Depression was over in less than eight years.
This is very true.
This is very, very true.
Watch America's Book Club with Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Washington Journal continues.
Welcome back.
We are rounding out today's Washington Journal with more of your thoughts on news of the day.
Earlier this morning, the Pentagon leaders held a war update on the conflict with Iran.
We heard from the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with General Dan Kaine, the Joint Chief's Chair.
Here is what Secretary Pete Hegseth had to say earlier this morning.
Question about the mine threat.
Has the mine threat been neutralized enough to facilitate freer flow in the straits?
Well, to the second question, first of all, we are seeing vessels transiting.
There are paths that are open.
And part of what the president is threatening is ensuring if there's an attempt to lay, recklessly and irresponsibly lay more mines, we're going to deal with that.
It's a violation of the ceasefire.
So transit is occurring, much more limited than anybody would like to see, and with more risk than people would like to see.
But that's because Iran is doing irresponsible things with small fast boats, crafts, like I said, with weapons on them.
These are commercial ships, in some cases, cruise ships, cruise ships that came through being threatened by these.
So as far as breaching the blockade, it's been a pretty consistent, there were a number of ships at the beginning.
Then you had the interdiction that the chairman described, where we took out the engine room and disabled that ship.
I think that sent a very clear sign that this is not a fake blockade.
This is a real full blockade.
We'll use up to and including lethal force if necessary.
And that stopped, and other ships have taken note of that.
So any ships that have attempted, there's been levels of escalation, but none that far and they've turned around.
The Defense Secretary earlier this morning with the latest on the Iran conflict.
If you missed it, you can find it online on demand at c-span.org.
Also, our free video mobile app, which you can download on your phone on the go, C-SPAN Now.
In other news, this morning, the Hill newspaper with the headline, Democrats Top Republicans on the Economy for the First Time Since 2010.
Congressional Frustration and Poll Data00:03:30
This is a Fox News poll that they're citing, and the poll found released Wednesday that 52% of the respondents think Democrats would do a better job in the economy, while 48% backed Republicans on the issue.
That poll follows another one earlier this week from Gallup that found the approval rating for Congress is at a tide with the all-time high at 86%.
86% of those polled said that they disapprove of the job of the 119th Congress, while 10% said they approve.
That is from Gallup poll that was conducted April 1st through April 15th.
Yesterday on Capitol Hill, the minority leader Hakeem Jeffries addressed America's frustration with Congress when he took a question from the daughter of CNN reporter Manu Raju.
It was, take your child to work day at the Capitol.
You got a question there.
Why do voters you Democrats so poorly?
Did your dad give you that question?
It's a great question.
I'm going to have words with you after this, Mario.
Listen, I think that we exist in an era right now where the American people are understandably frustrated with institutions because far too many people in this country are struggling to live paycheck to paycheck.
They can't thrive and can barely survive.
And so there's a frustration with Congress.
There's a frustration with institutional political parties, whether that's Democrats or Republicans.
Certainly a frustration with the courts, with organized religion, with the media, frustration with institutions of higher education, and of course frustration with the current President of the United States of America.
There's a great frustration that applies to every organized institution in this country.
And Democrats are not immune from that.
And we do have a responsibility to continue to convince the American people that as a party, we're actually focused on making their life better, on fixing our broken health care system, on cleaning up corruption, on ending this reckless and costly war of choice, and on getting ICE under control.
From the Capitol yesterday, Hakeem Jeffries responding to a question when it was take your kid to work day.
We also want to let you know about this weekend.
The annual White House Correspondents Dinner is being held in DC, a decades-long tradition that brings together journalists, politicians, and celebrities for one night to celebrate the First Amendment and recognize the work of the White House Press Corps.
This year's entertainer is Mentalist Uz Perlman, and President Trump is expected to attend for the first time as president.
Our live coverage begins at 7 p.m. Eastern with the Red Carpet Arrivals, and you can watch on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free video mobile app, or online at c-span.org.
White House Correspondents Dinner Preview00:13:00
Also happening next week, King Charles III will have an official visit to the United States.
He arrives on Monday, and you can tune in to our coverage of King Charles' tour in the United States.
If you go to our website at c-span.org, you'll find his schedule there.
And you can follow along as he arrives in Washington on Monday.
He will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, followed by a state dinner and all the pomp and circumstance that goes along with it.
Front page of USA Today, Susan Page writes, the royal test.
Can King Charles show his mother's magic with Trump?
Susan Page is out with a new book, by the way, The Queen and Her Presidents, The Hidden Hand That Shaped History.
We'll go to Clarence in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Republican Clarence, what news are you reacting to this morning?
Go ahead.
Two things I want to say.
When you had the theologian on, I want to call him and tell you, read the whole Bible.
He took Matthew 25, and he wanted to stay on that.
If you had to read Matthew 24, Jesus was letting them know at his return.
The Bible says in Luke 21, I'm a minister of the gospel.
I've been studying the Bible for 40 years.
Luke 21 told us in the last days will be wars and rumors of war.
Trump is not, he's not a Pope.
He's not a bishop.
He is the president of the United States.
When religions get into politics, it's not about God when talking to the world.
He was talking to the church, what the church should do.
When these guys get on and tell the president, he's not the church, he's not the church.
When you're theologian, talk to the church.
It's not talking to the world.
It's talking to the church what the church should do.
The church should feed the poor.
The church should be out there doing that.
Not the politicians.
That's not the job.
The Bible said, if a man don't work, you don't eat.
Then he should have gone on here and talked about Luke 21.
What did he say about wars?
There are going to be wars and rumors of wars.
So all this, that's stupidity, what they be talking about.
And one more thing I want to say: the Democrat Party, I'm a black man.
The Democrat Party have had black folks in Claver for 21 years, 60 years, because they have never did nothing for the black race.
And they don't have a policy today.
I hear them talking about Trump, but I never hear them talking about what they're going to do for the working class.
If they can tell me something they're going to do, I'll vote for them.
Tell me something you're going to do different than what Trump is doing.
We'll go on to, is it Berta in Forest Lake, Minnesota, Independent?
Hi, Greta.
Yeah.
I'd like to say something.
You just had the religious guy on.
My niece was Melissa Hortman, and it was a white Christian nationalist that killed Melissa and Mark and their dog, dressed up with a mask as a policeman.
And I'm just tired of all these people that talk about their religion, and Trump is their God.
He's not a God.
He's a pedophile.
He's sick in the head.
Everybody needs to take a look at what's going on in this world.
I have Melissa sign out at the end of my driveway.
I get a honk and people flip me off.
And what does that tell you?
That tells you where our world is.
Melissa was a great person.
She worked on both sides.
She did for over 20 years.
And all these Republicans, nobody ever says anything about Melissa and Mark and Gilbert and their family and what we have to deal with.
And I'm just sad.
And I also know Pete Hegseth, and I also have a nephew that's in the military that knows what's going on and is going to get out in two years because he's so scared.
And it has changed.
My uncle, he's told my brother to tell my sister not to talk about Trump because Pete Hegseth has people out looking.
And if they see anything online related, they will not get up in ranks.
Okay.
And I'm sorry.
Berta, I'm going to leave it there and go on to R.W. He's in Marshall, Arkansas.
Democratic caller.
What's on your mind this morning?
Good morning, Greta.
How are you doing?
Morning.
Well, I just want to say this guy we got in the White House, I think he's trying to set himself up as an Antichrist.
He's a great disruptor, and that's what the Antichrist does.
So I hope it's not the case.
All right, R.W. More from the White House yesterday.
President Trump and other officials speaking about the DOJ's reclassification of state-licensed medical marijuana as a less dangerous drug.
Take a listen.
It does not legalize marijuana.
It makes it easy for the researchers to actually study and understand medical marijuana, especially in populations that are using it.
We know that one in 10 seniors right now use medical marijuana in the past year, and they report that it really helps them, but we don't have the science or the understanding to guide the patients and the doctors.
And so both patients and doctors are flying blind without knowing how they interact with other medications because the research has been difficult to do.
And so your promise today says those state-licensed medical marijuana products are now in Schedule 3, and we expect their research to significantly increase so that we can understand how to guide patients and doctors in this effort.
And there will be additional actions that will come this summer to do an expedited hearing for the administrative, an administrative hearing of the Department of Justice for all of marijuana to move into Schedule 3.
And the military is very happy about it.
And a lot of people suffering from big problems, which seems to be the best answer.
They're very happy about it.
So the rescheduling is starting, and that's a big thing, rescheduling.
They kept saying, what about the rescheduling?
And so, great job.
I appreciate it.
I want to thank Mr. and Mrs. Howard Kessler.
He's one of the most successful men in the world, actually.
And he had some medical difficulties, and he came upon this by accident, in a way.
And he said, well, he had to go through a lot of different medications.
And he said, this was the one that was much better than anything else.
And so he experienced it.
He didn't benefit by it other than from the standpoint that he lives a much better life now.
So hopefully you don't need it.
But if you do need it, I hear it's the best of all the alternatives.
The president at the White House yesterday on the reclassification of medical marijuana.
Front page of the Wall Street Journal this morning, the headline inside the Navy Secretary's last ditch bid to save his job.
Yesterday, he was asked for his resignation from the Defense Secretary.
He didn't believe it.
So he headed to the White House and waited for the president.
The Wall Street Journal this morning says that once the president had a spare minute on Wednesday, Phelan asked to keep his job, but the commander-in-chief backed Hegseth's decision.
That is the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
At the White House yesterday, here's the President when he was asked why the Navy Secretary was fired.
Can you talk a little bit about why your Navy Secretary was fired yesterday, sir?
He's a wonderful guy.
I just put out a statement about him.
He's a very good man.
I really liked him, but he had some conflict with, not necessarily, Pete, with some other...
He's a hard charger, and he had some conflicts with some other people, mostly as to building and buying new ships.
I'm very aggressive in the new shipbuilding.
And somehow he just didn't get along with him.
He's an excellent guy.
I think he would have gotten along great with me.
I didn't really deal with him too much, but he's a you know, I consider him to have done a very good job.
I put out a nice statement about him.
You've got to get along, especially in the military.
You've got to get along.
And some people liked him, some people didn't.
And that's usually the truth about everything.
But I found him to be a very good man, and I liked him a lot.
The President yesterday on the firing of the Navy Secretary, the Washington Post this morning with the headline and pictures, Spring has seen a cleaning out of top officials in the Trump administration.
It shows a Navy Secretary there next to General Randy George, the Army Secretary that was fired.
Pam Bondi, who was fired as Attorney General.
Laurie Chavez-DeReamer, who resigned this week as labor secretary, and then the firing of Christy Noam.
We'll go to Guy in St. Augustine, Florida, Republican.
Guy.
Three things on the program this morning, which have all been fascinating.
The first, I'm disheartened both with the Congress and the Senate.
We have to have term limitations, in my opinion, both in the Supreme Court and in the government.
I happen to be over 80, but consequently, I think that 70 should be the cutoff for all the above groups.
I think that leadership needs to be working with the newer group of our society.
And you can't have people that have been there for 20 and 30 years.
They could be advisors, but it's time to step aside and they just don't want to do it.
The other thing is we've crossed over with religion and government, and that's a terrible travesty when that occurs.
And there's been too many memes on our internet with the president posing his things that he says he isn't, and then other things being posed on the memes, and it just shouldn't be there.
Okay, and they're third, Guy.
The third thing, I think that our immigration system has been broken for many years, but this administration has made it so bad that we can't rebuild our nation and not have the immigration system working with us, not against us.
Okay, I'm going to leave it there.
One more phone call, Ron in Pennsylvania, Democratic caller.
Good morning.
I think the people that run the detention centers should be listening to the Reverend Wallace.
The core civic private prison operators should be subject on C-SPAN.
Find out what these people are doing.
And talk about cost of waste, fraud, and abuse.
That's one of them, the detention centers.
And also, I'd like to see someone from Southern Poverty Law Center on your program one of these days.
That's a good organization, which I support, and I think they do a very good job.
So that's basically what I wanted to say today.
All right, Ron.
Thanks to you and all that called in, and thank you for watching today.
That does it for us here.
We'll be back tomorrow morning, 7 a.m. Eastern Time, for another conversation.
Enjoy your Friday and your weekend.
Democracy Unfiltered.
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