Russ Fulture and John Berman dissect Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's controversial testimony regarding the $25 billion Iran war, a conflict some callers claim has expanded to control the Strait of Hormuz and Malacca. The discussion covers a Supreme Court ruling tightening Voting Rights Act enforcement, which President Trump hailed as a victory while critics argue it undermines minority protections. Simultaneously, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell secures his tenure until 2028 amid inflation fears driven by energy prices and tariffs, even as the national debt balloons toward $40 trillion. Ultimately, the episode highlights deep divisions over military qualifications, fiscal responsibility, and the balance between national security and civil liberties in a polarized political landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
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Confidence in Pete Hegseth00:06:31
Coming up on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, Axio's chief economic correspondent Neil Irwin will talk about the Federal Reserve's decision on interest rates and possible new leadership, plus current economic conditions.
Then Idaho Republican Congressman Russ Fulture reviews the latest on the Iran war, followed by California Democratic Congressman Jim Costa on the Farm Bill and other congressional news of the week.
Washington Journal starts now.
Good morning.
It's Thursday, April 30th, 2026.
The Senate's back at 10 a.m. Eastern.
The House is in at 9 a.m., and we're with you for the next two hours on the Washington Journal.
We begin with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's testimony yesterday before the House Armed Services Committee.
It was his first public testimony since the Iran war began.
He'll get a second chance to talk to members today on the Senate side.
So this morning, we want to get a sense of your confidence in the job Pete Hegseth is doing.
And we want to hear from just members of the military on this question to start.
So if you're active military, the number to call 202-748-8000.
If you are former or retired military, 202-748-8001.
Special line for text messages, that number 202-748-8003.
If you do text us, please include your name and where you're from.
Otherwise, catch up with us on social media on X.
It's at C-SPANWJ on Facebook.
It's facebook.com slash C-SPAN.
And a very good Thursday morning to you.
You can go ahead and start calling in now.
I want to show you the front page of today's Washington Post, the headline there, Hegseth slams defeatist lawmakers in a fiery clash.
That from yesterday's House Armed Services Committee hearing.
And here's part of that clash.
The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless, and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans.
Two months in, I remind you, two months in to a conflict.
Lest I remind you, and my generation understands how long we were in Iraq, how long we were in Afghanistan, how long we were in Vietnam, two months in on an existential fight for the safety of the American people, Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb.
We are proud of this undertaking.
I am proud that President Trump has had the courage to do it.
And I look forward to sharing more about what our troops have accomplished.
How was Pete Hegseth yesterday?
As we said, he's back on Capitol Hill today on the Senate side.
The Senate Armed Services Committee will be holding a hearing.
He'll be testifying again, and you can watch it on the C-SPAN networks.
But we want to hear from you this morning.
We're talking with just active and former military, getting a sense of your confidence in Pete Hegseth.
202-748-8000 for active military, 202748-8001.
One other headline out of yesterday's hearing, starting to get a sense of the cost, the financial cost, at least, of this conflict.
The Iran war cost $25 billion, according to one of the Pentagon officials that testified yesterday alongside Pete Hegseth.
The story noting, in mid-March, the Pentagon submitted a $200 billion spending request for the Iran war to the White House, but it was never sent on to Congress.
An independent cost estimate at the time of the ceasefire in early April found that the conflict cost somewhere between $25 billion and $35 billion.
Again, some of the financial accounting for the conflict.
And as we know, of course, the Pentagon has sent Congress a $1.5 trillion budget request for the fiscal year 2027.
Want to get your sense of your confidence in Pete Hegseth.
Again, talking to just members of the military, active or retired.
We'll start with Joe, Tampa, Florida, former military.
Joe, what do you think of the Defense Secretary?
Good morning.
I think he's trying to do the best he can without actually being too political.
Again, that might be an understatement because it appears when he was asked, do you disagree with the president or have you ever said no to the president?
He couldn't even say that, okay?
And that's a problem because, again, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing and giving either your leadership a good sense of direction so they can make the decision.
But at the end of the day, the part that actually got me really worried is that CFO who sat there and was trying to be political.
Again, I've been in the financial industry, working particularly in the military enterprise.
You should know the cost of replacing those munitions.
That's number one.
Number two, you mentioned the $200 billion supplemental that we're asking about never went to Congress.
It was supposed to go to Congress.
So from that perspective, I have serious concern about Pete Hexac's ability to continue as sec dev.
Not just primarily for those two points, but because he's actually thinking that he can actually get rid of black officers or female officers.
The military is a meritorious enterprise.
You cannot go up the ladder because somebody thinks you're DEI or you're better than somebody else.
So he should actually go ahead and respectfully resign his position and get somebody more knowledgeable to cover down on that.
That's Joe in Tampa, Florida, staying on that line for former military John in Portland, Connecticut.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
Good morning, John.
How are you?
Doing well.
Doing well.
Good.
Yeah, I back Secretary of War Pete Hegseth all the way.
Give the guy a chance.
It's only been, like I said, 60 days into this war.
And I think he's doing a great job.
Hopefully, this ends quick.
But I'm going to ask the question again, like I did to your when I called in.
Why do you continue to call him Secretary of Defense when he's Secretary of War?
John, the official name of the department is still the Department of Defense.
That's because it takes an act of Congress to change the name.
President Trump's executive order from last year allowed the Defense Department to use Department of War, but it's still officially the Department of Defense.
Navy Secretary Relief Explained00:15:45
Though I should note, there's a story in the Hill newspaper, part of this proposal.
The Pentagon has been asking Congress to codify Department of War as the official name.
They said it would cost about $52 million to do that, and it would require some 7,600 changes to federal law to officially codify that.
So as of now, it's still the Department of Defense officially.
That answers my question.
Okay, I'm glad you, yeah.
I wasn't able to find all that.
Glad I could help, John.
Taking your phone calls, active military 202748-8000, retired former military, 202-748-8001.
Go ahead and keep calling in two other stories from yesterday that we've been tracking and that you've certainly been hearing about on C-SPAN.
This, the front page of the Washington Times, the Supreme Court issued a seismic ruling, they write Wednesday, preserving but tightening the use of the Voting Rights Act, saying that the iconic law can't be used to force states to add more minority districts to their maps unless there is a clear evidence of racial discrimination.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the 6-3 majority, warned that the iconic 1965 law had come to be used cynically to force states to add more Democrat-friendly minority seats under the guise of protecting minority voters.
He said that can no longer stand that out of the Supreme Court.
And we aired some of the reaction yesterday and the latest from the court on the other side of First Street up here on Capitol Hill.
The House was in very late yesterday, and one of the key pieces of legislation that they'd been working on yesterday was FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
They've been looking for a three-year reauthorization of that act.
It expires today.
They passed it, though, as the Washington Times notes, the three-year authorization, not likely to be supported in the Senate.
So it could head back to the House with a much shorter-term reauthorization.
So the fight continuing likely over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and you can watch it when the House comes in.
9 a.m. Eastern, likely continued discussion about it, though there was discussion about it yesterday at that hearing with Pete Hegseth.
He was asked by Congressman Mike Turner, Republican of Ohio, about the importance of FISA, specifically Section 702, which you've probably heard about.
This is what Pete Hegseth had to say yesterday.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Hegset, your written testimony on page 20 includes a statement concerning the importance of FISA and Section 702, which is incredibly timely because this body is going to be voting today on 702, which could be expiring this week.
You state this vital tool keeps Americans safe, provides critical intelligence to our warfighters, and is subject to a rigorous system of oversight by all three branches of government to guarantee the protection of the constitutional rights of the American people.
Thought I'd give you a moment to expound on that because this is going to be very important because there's several people who right now in this body are going to be considering their support for 702's reauthorization.
Well, thank you for that opportunity, Congressman.
Yes, this department strongly supports the reauthorization of FISA 702.
And it is not hyperbole to say many of the most important missions we have executed could not have happened without the intelligence gathered through FISA 702.
So we would urge members to support that so we can continue doing the good work of the American people.
Again, that passed later yesterday in the House, but it's likely to come back to the House.
Most of the reporting on it saying the Senate is not likely to approve a full three-year authorization.
So we'll all see what happens together when the House and Senate come back in.
House is in at 9 a.m. Eastern.
The Senate's in at 10 a.m. Eastern.
And as we said, Pete Hegseth is back on Capitol Hill before the Senate 11 a.m. Eastern.
He's testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Talking to active and former members of military only in this first segment, this is James in Tennessee.
James, what do you think of Pete Hegseth?
I support him wholly.
Also support General Kaine.
Also support President Trump.
Hegseth put his line on his life on the line for this country, just like I did.
He knows what it is to take care of troops and everything.
And we all support, every veteran took an oath.
We never relinquished that oath.
We took an oath to our country and to support our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
It seems like all the Democrats want to do is play political games.
I used to be a Democrat, but no more.
No more.
Because they're putting Iran over America.
That shows her true colors right there.
And I'll never vote for another Democrat again because they're trying a democracy, a pure democracy is pure communism.
That's what it is.
It's James in Tennessee.
This is Michael in Michigan, former military.
Go ahead.
And to the previous caller, I am a Democrat as well, and he has his opinions.
The reason I'm calling is I am a combat veteran.
There's a difference.
I've been in battle.
I have no confidence in Pete Hegseth.
He is, to me, a used car salesman trying to promote the president's personal and political agenda.
As far as the generals he's fired, if you really look at those, how can he even compare in experience and knowledge to the guys that he fires because he's insecure around them?
And that's my comment.
I have zero confidence in Pete Hegseth and to all those people who really so blanketly excuse everything they do.
They need to really, really look around and look inside because, again, I'll close on this.
I am a Vietnam combat, 100% disabled veteran.
And it's just amazing to me how people can be so easily brainwashed and cavalier.
Have a good day.
Michael, what years did you serve in Vietnam?
Two and three, 70.
Toward the end.
When did you get out in the military?
When?
I got out in 75.
Michael, thanks for the call from Michigan this morning on the firing of members at the Pentagon of high-ranking officials at the Pentagon.
That was a topic of yesterday's hearing as well.
Pete Hegseth was asked about the firing of John Phelan, now former Navy Secretary.
That took place last week.
It was Jennifer Kiggins, Republican of Virginia, representing a state with a very large Navy base in Norfolk, asking about the firing of John Phelan.
This is that exchange.
Just again, representing a big Navy district and having just a concern for the Navy, could you shed any light on why the Secretary of the Navy was relieved and what that timeline to replace him looks like for permanent leadership?
I think that's one of the reasons why we struggle with even, I think, about the basing decisions and again, naval aviation.
And that's, I wish we would talk more about just the contributions of our aviators.
But could you shed any light on that issue?
Well, as the President stated, we thank the previous Secretary for his service.
Appreciate a lot of the initiatives that he undertook.
Ultimately, it was time for a new leadership and a new direction as far as running fast toward those objectives.
And so we made a change.
We think it's hard to personnel is policy.
And the sooner you identify, especially we talked about general officers, you know, as you're evaluating whether they're running with the mission they've been given, you got to make a change if they're not.
The same with civilians.
And in this case, we made that change.
And any timeline to replace or have a new Secretary of the Navy?
Well, right now we have an acting in Hung Cow who did a fantastic job as the number two, and he'll be acting for now.
And I would imagine we'll know in due time.
Pete Hegset on Capitol Hill yesterday.
By the way, if you missed the testimony, you can watch it in its entirety at c-span.org.
And you can watch his testimony before the Senate today, 11 a.m. Eastern.
Sid, Pennsylvania, former military, what do you think of the Secretary of Defense?
You know, I'm really confused because this is the first time you're going into a conflict with no mission defined.
I really feel for our troops because they don't know what they're going to face from day to day.
And this guy fires generals and admirals who would have a definite mission plan.
There is no mission plan, and he gets rid of them like he's somebody.
He was not even above the rank of a major.
And he recites, when he speaks, he recites things and quotes from books like he's some kind of a great writer or whatever.
I think I really feel for our troops because there's so much confusion right now.
Sid, when and where did you serve?
I served down there with the Marines in Camp Lejeune.
I served, I got out in 2001.
And, you know, I must say this, also being a combat veteran from Desert Storm, there's no mission here.
I don't know what the mission is.
And thank God I'm not in the military or government right now.
But I feel for our troops, the Marine Expeditionary Unit.
What are they doing?
What is their mission?
What are they going to do?
Board ships for a naval blockade?
Good Lord.
That's Sid in Pennsylvania.
Valerie, New York, former military.
Go ahead.
Hi, how are you?
Doing well.
Good.
I'm a veteran, and I have zero, I'm a former helicopter pilot.
I have literally zero confidence in Hag Seth.
He's a hothead.
I agree with what previous callers have just said.
Also, veterans who have said that he just fires people willy-nilly.
Who fires the head of the chaplaincy when we just lost 13 soldiers over in an undefined war, illegal war, too?
And, you know, he has no experience.
He has zero experience to be heading all of the military.
And just like the previous caller said, I feel horrible for the current soldiers.
My husband's retiring in one month.
He's actually leaving after 37 years.
And he is happy to be leaving, sadly, because he said this is just a mess.
The military is a mess.
Nobody has confidence.
And Heg Seth is just a hothead who is just full of pompous.
He comes up and he makes briefings.
He's definitely no Lloyd Austin.
Let's just put it that way.
He's definitely not somebody that the military has confidence in.
And I guarantee you, the majority of the military does not.
Valerie, where did you fly helicopters?
At Fort Drum.
I imagine somebody who flew helicopters.
Did you have any thoughts on that crash on the Potomac River between the military helicopter and the civilian commercial flight?
Yes.
That hit me really hard.
That was also because my family has a lot of ties to the skating community.
And it was really unacceptable that there was not the amount of information in terms of sharing of their altitude that was just, you know, that was bad on the military and definitely changes need to be.
But it sounds like there have been changes that have been needed for years.
And this unfortunately was the tipping point.
Valerie, thanks for the call from New York to Virginia Louie, former military.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think Hazak and Jenner are doing a great job.
And I don't know why these last two negative people came on.
Of course, I know they're probably not, you know, far the president either.
But I think they're doing a great job.
And these people, they come on the phone and they say, we don't know why he's over there.
We don't even know why we're over there.
Well, they need to learn to watch Fox or news, any news, and they'll tell you except for CNN and, you know, the others.
Louis, what's your understanding of why we're over there?
To cut out their nuclear plans to nuke the United States and Israel and to make all those.
They wanted to make thousands of ballistic missiles and the other fly instruments they have.
And I mean thousands so that we couldn't ever attack.
That's Louis in Virginia.
It was yesterday in that hearing that the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Adam Smith, Democrat from Washington, pressed Pete Hegseth about the threat of the Iran nuclear program.
Here's that exchange.
So what is the plan to actually turn all of this lethal kinetic action into an improvement in the nuclear situation?
Because we haven't gotten there yet.
Play it out for us.
How does that happen?
How does it actually lead to that result?
Well, I would take issue with the premise of the question that nothing was done.
Operation Midnight Hammer was a very effective.
Well, I didn't say nothing was done.
I said in this war.
Ultimately, under this administration, unlike other administrations, which cut bad deals and pallets of cash with no ability to oversee whether Iran is actually pursuing a nuclear program.
If we want to litigate JCPOA or the Iran deal, our view, the president's view, is that was a very bad deal.
It gave them a bunch of money up for the future.
You talked about negotiated deals, funded, allowed them to fund their proxies and spread Hamas and Hezbollah all around the region, build up nuclear capability.
What are we going to do?
President Trump has been clear-eyed from the killing of Qasem Soleimani to the pulling out of the Iran deal to Midnight Hammer and now to this effort to recognize that you have to stare down this kind of enemy who's hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon and get them to a point where they're at the table giving it up in a way that never haven't.
So they haven't broken yet.
Okay, we haven't gotten there yet.
For all of the nuclear facilities have been obliterated.
Underground, they're buried and watching 24-7.
So we know where any nuclear material will be claiming.
We had to start this war, you just said, 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat.
Now you're saying that it was completely obliterated.
They had not given up their nuclear ambitions, and they had a conventional shield of thousands of people.
So Operation Midnight Hammer was nothing of substance.
It left us in exactly the point in the place we were before.
So much so.
Their facilities were bombed and obliterated.
Their ambitions continued.
And they're building a conventional shield.
Obama's War Strategy Claims00:08:38
Let me try again.
It's the North Korea strategy.
You know this very well.
The North Korea strategy was to use conventional missiles to prevent anybody from challenging them so they could slow walk their way to a weapon.
President Trump saw Iran at its weakest moment, took an action to ensure in a way that only the United States of America could do with our Israeli partners to ensure their conventional shield.
Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill yesterday were asking about your confidence in the Defense Secretary, and we're talking with just active and a former military on that line for active military.
Scott in California, good morning.
Thanks for being up early.
Here I am.
Thank you, John, for suffering through.
We work on the language here.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Let's just try to keep it appropriate.
You made it through.
Now, I'm Taekwondo, Hapkido, and Judo.
30 years.
Trained by a South Korean general.
I went to the best.
I'm still active.
Are you there?
I am.
So, what are your thoughts on the Defense Secretary?
I have no thoughts.
All right.
To John, Brooklyn.
John, go ahead.
I'm John from Brooklyn.
I was in service, 1968.
And I want all these soldiers that's called in to stop acting stupid and trying to fool people that haven't been in the service.
When you become over the Department of Defense, you got to have experience of war strategy.
A general is not somebody that goes to combat for five or six years and become an expert.
It is dangerous to put that man in that position and he don't have experience.
War strategy, when you become a general, you go to different types of schools, different types of training.
It's like a doctor.
You start out as a doctor, you do your interim, then you go and get experience.
You don't take a man that said, I was in the service and I have been in combat and I led a group.
Where is the soldiers that know what experience as a general is?
What's wrong with you military people?
Stop playing.
If you want no war strategy, you got to study it and you got to be good.
What's wrong with you, soldiers?
Thank you very much.
That's John from Brooklyn.
This is Blunt in the Tar Hill State, former military.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Go ahead, Blunt.
Good morning.
Morning.
What are your thoughts on the press secretary?
Or on the defense secretary, I should say.
Secretary of Defense is way better than Secretary of War, I think.
He's just a success of Trump, and he's doing what his superior ordered him to do, as a lot of other people I know are.
And I just don't believe everything he says.
He says things, and then he finds out they're not true later.
And I don't trust him.
He doesn't have any experience to begin with.
Blunt, who did you think was the, in your experience, is there one you can remember as a particularly good defense secretary who had that experience that you want to see?
Oh, golly.
I can't.
I'm thinking of back in the 60s.
I trusted him, 60s, 70s.
But I don't trust this organization at all.
You're thinking like a Robert McNamara?
Yeah.
Maybe not.
Maybe not.
That's Blunt in North Carolina.
This is Barney in Florida.
Go ahead.
Yes, hello.
Go ahead, Barney.
Hello?
I'm listening, sir.
This is what America voted for.
They voted for a DEI hire off of Fox News.
And he's just him and the President Trump are two most uneducated, uninformed individuals that I've ever seen in my 73 years of living in this world.
This man has no idea what's going on.
These guys in this Republican Party asked when he was, they confirmed they knew this man was a DEI hire.
They knew this man was not fit for the job.
Why did they pass him through the Senate?
I mean, everybody knew this man was unqualified.
They just hired him because he was a white man.
That's what it seems to me.
And they're all there, getting on front of TV hollowing about DEI.
This is the worst case of DEI in American history.
We have a DEI president.
We have DEI over the Pentagon.
It's ridiculous.
This is what DEI do a mediocre white man would do for the United States of America.
They got the whole world is in turmoil in one year.
How was this going to get?
As far as Iran, if I was Iran, I would have 10 nuclear weapons to keep the United States from bumming us, bumming them.
We all go, wow, what?
Well, I mean, they didn't even know that the people were written to give that nuclear program up.
But what did America do?
That's Barney in Florida on the issue of race.
That topic coming up on the other side of Capitol Hill out of the Supreme Court yesterday.
We mentioned it.
This is the front page of the New York Times.
Justices reject district map in Louisiana.
The decision deals a blow to the Voting Rights Act.
The court finds gerrymandering by race is illegal in a six to three decision.
The story on the front page, also noting the ruling, may help Republicans, but the timing limits the midterm election effect, saying that this redistricting fight is now likely to extend into the 2028 election.
That's some of the stories from the front page of the New York Times.
This was some of President Trump's reaction to that decision yesterday from the White House.
Mr. President, I want to go back to the Supreme Court ruling on their Voting Rights Act.
I know you said you haven't seen any of that.
When did it come out just now?
No, it came out this morning, but basically very much narrows the Voting Rights Act.
Would you consider a win for Republicans?
I love it.
But my question is.
This is a very good.
We can end this news conference.
I want to read it.
My question to you, Mr. President, is that some Republican governors have not responded in terms of what they're going to do.
I guess early voting, for example, and Louisiana Republican governors.
What about it?
Early voting begins Saturday there, for instance.
Should they redraw the map in the next couple of weeks?
I would.
I mean, it depends.
I mean, some states don't need to redraw, and some do.
I mean, I know what the concept of the ruling is, I just haven't seen the result.
Yeah, I would say generally, I would think that they would want to do it.
Some are greatly helped, and some, you know, it didn't make much difference.
Yeah, I would say they would have time to do it.
Yep.
That was President Trump yesterday from the White House, former President Barack Obama also weighing in on yesterday's Supreme Court ruling.
This from his ex-post saying the Supreme Court decision effectively guts a key pillar of the Voting Rights Act, freeing state legislatures to gerrymander legislative districts to systematically dilute and weaken the voting power of racial minorities so long as they do it under the guise of partisanship rather than explicit racial bias.
And it serves as just one more example of how a majority of the current court seems intent on abandoning its vital role in ensuring equal participation in our democracy and protecting the right of minority groups against majority overreach.
Part of Barack Obama's statement yesterday.
Public vs Reality on Hegseth00:14:53
We're taking your calls this morning as the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth goes back up to Capitol Hill, this time on the Senate side.
And it's 11 a.m. Eastern when he'll be appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
We're going to be airing that, by the way, on C-SPAN 3.
If you want to watch live, you can also watch on c-span.org and the free C-SPANNOW video app.
He'll be joined by, once again, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Kaine.
Again, that happening today.
We've been showing you clips from yesterday's House Armed Services Committee appearance, and we've been talking to military only, getting your sense of the Defense Secretary's job performance.
This is Buddy in Philly, former military.
Go ahead.
Hey, hey, how are you doing?
Hey, listen, I come from a military background.
My dad was in the Marine Corps.
My grandfather was in World War I, World War II.
My uncles, my nephews were in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I served in Hawaii.
I wasn't in action.
But let me tell you something.
After 9-11, a nuclear bomb would vaporize you.
You will be gone.
Pete Essek was in two.
He was in Afghanistan and he was in Iraq.
This guy knows about combat.
You go to war, you go to win.
This ain't no game.
And these guys that are calling, they just got pure hate for Trump.
This is how you win.
You cut them off with the money.
Them soldiers are not going to get paid.
Okay?
It's going to be hell in Iran.
And this is when the Iranian people can rise up.
It ain't no game.
You will be vaporized in New York.
You think 9-11 was unbelievable?
That's why I joined the Army.
Those people, I'll never forget watching on TV where those people were jumping out of the building.
Apparently, they forget.
But if a nuclear bomb hits New York, you're vaporized.
You're gone.
And then you're going to have radiation in Philadelphia.
These people that are calling and say they don't know what they're doing, they know exactly what they're doing because they're winning the war and they hate Trump and they hate Pete.
And let me tell you something.
You have, listen to General Patton, you wouldn't have the trouble in, I'm trying to clean up my language.
You wouldn't have the trouble in Russia.
You had Storm and Norman that went in there and just cleaned house.
You had Tony Blair.
These generals knew how to win.
That's Buddy in Philadelphia.
You mentioned Pete Hegseth's military career.
This is from the DOD website.
Hegseth commissioned as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard after graduating from Princeton University in 2003.
He participated in a number of active duty deployments during his time in service, including operations in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Also served in multiple staff positions in the National Guard.
His military awards include two Bronze Star Medals, the Joint Commendation Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, Combat Infantry Badge, the Expert Infantry Badge.
And they note his books, five books that he's written, including The War on Warriors in 2024.
John is in Kansas City, Missouri.
Former military, what are your thoughts on Pete Hegseth and his job performance as Secretary of Defense?
Well, his job performance is terrible.
I'm from the state of Missouri.
One of my favorite presidents was Harry Truman, because one of the best things that he ever did was the DEI.
He desegregated the military.
I felt that Pete Hegseth is trying to reverse that trend.
You know, I had relatives right now.
I told them, I'm black American.
Don't join this military right now because no matter what your service is, you're going to be claimed DEI.
No matter how much you bled and gave for this country in war, you're going to beat DEI and you won't be given the chance to move up in the military.
I tell them, just wait till this guy blows over because there's no way in hell that I would serve somebody with Nazi tattoos on their chest.
That's telling me right then and there what they think about me.
And with him firing all these black and female Soldiers, patriots that have served this country based on DEI, if this guy is the number one post-the child for DEI, is beyond me.
That's John in Kansas City on the desegregation of the military.
It was Executive Order 9981, July 26, 1948, when President Harry Truman desegregated the United States military.
And if you want to learn more about it, we covered a discussion on it on C-SPAN's American History TV on one of the anniversaries of that executive order.
C-SPAN.org, you just click on American History TV on the tab at the top of the page there.
Robin, Elm City, North Carolina.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
I just wanted to tell you that I was in the Marine Corps, and we in the Marine Corps supported the ground troop, the combat engineer.
So that man who served in Vietnam, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I was there to help your mission.
Pete Hegset is a clown.
He's not as big a clown as his boss, Donald Jehosaphat Trump.
But that's my opinion.
Thank you.
That's Robin in North Carolina.
Franklin's here in Washington, D.C., former military.
Go ahead.
Eric, can you hear me?
Yes, sir.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, you know, I hesitate to say this.
I don't want to disparage anybody who's served in any capacity, but the extent to which Heg Seth goes on with this fake tough guy stuff, and it would be one thing if it was just performative for the cameras, which is obviously, you know, the main appeal for him being in that position.
It would be one thing if it was just, you know, trying to please Trump or again, if it was all just an act.
But he's, you know, gutting the standards by which we've raised up officers and eligible candidates for decades.
He's holding back women.
He's holding back people of color, all on the basis that he thinks he's some kind of tough guy.
I think we have to point out, again, and I wouldn't have called, but since you're saving it for active informer, I think some of the people who are not part of that 1% don't realize Hegseth is a weekend warrior.
He was the National Guardsman and National Guard people, National Guard service men and women have done incredible things, especially during the global war on terror.
They were critical as part of the surge.
But this guy is not some special ops Delta Force Navy SEAL.
He was a civil affairs officer from Princeton.
Let's get serious.
Franklin, we went through the list of the awards, two bronze stars, the Joint Commendation Medal, Army Commendation Medal, Combat Infantry Badge.
None of those strike you as doesn't change your opinion on it.
I hear you.
And again, I think those have value, but they're without V. And anybody can look up what that means and why the White House tried to pretend when they first started putting him up for this position that they were with V. They are without valor.
A lot of people get those awards.
And look, anybody who serves deserves respect from every single American.
And I respect the service of everybody.
But I'm just saying, when you then try to manipulate that into some kind of tough guy better than I've been in the dirt and the muck.
You're not, man.
You're a civil affairs officer.
You're a TV personality.
You're not Audi Murphy.
And it's just, and when you then use that to try to hold other people down and try to put on this whole idea, no quarter.
And I'm G.I. Joe, it's absurd.
It denigrates the service that I was part of.
I was a Marine.
I am a Marine.
And professionals.
Wait, where did you serve?
Professional Marines.
I was in three and four, got out in 12.
I served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I don't, you know, professionals, soldiers, professional Marines, don't talk this way.
Ask anybody else on the rest of the time.
Do you have to call?
The way he carries on isn't the way real people who have seen things carry themselves.
And the whole thing's a joke.
And I think it's insulting to the people who are currently in there.
I'm sure some disgruntled junior officers like it.
But this isn't what the service is built on.
This isn't what honor, courage, and commitment looks like.
And it's just, yeah, I think of all the bad, it's one thing to denigrate the tactics and the reason we're over there.
I'll leave that to the generals.
I'll leave that to the elected officials.
But the performance and just the constant denigration and the nonsensical tone and the stuff he says about everybody, it's beneath us.
It's beneath the uniform.
And it's exactly what I expect from a weekend warrior like Pete Hegseth.
Frankly, I got your point.
You bring up Audi Murphy for folks who don't know who Audi Murphy was.
Remind folks.
I think we lost Franklin.
Audi Murphy, World War II Medal of Honor winner and one of the more famous soldiers to come out of the Second World War.
Back to the phones.
This is Chris in New York.
Chris, go ahead.
Yeah, I just want to discuss the Defense Secretary, ironically named, War Secretary.
We could have Information Secretary.
It would be great.
I think the American people are not being informed.
They vote on issues.
And now we have the result of Pete the Hegseth confused, confusing an American public.
The American public is not aware about how Iran attained its nuclear position.
And I think what people need to understand is that Iran's nuclear program began in the 50s, right after the 40s.
And if you make that correlation, you'll see right after World War II that nuclear technology was given to Iran by the United States.
The schematics, the grids, the diagrams, the charts.
I think what we're missing here is how to deal with people.
Now, you don't open a door with a shotgun, okay?
You have a key.
And what I'm saying is we are now skipping over diplomacy in exchange for the polymarket ramp of wealth that comes along with bombing a country for two months or three months.
And these are quick cash grabs.
And I think we have to acknowledge this as American people and see it for what it is.
See past the information on the screen and ask yourself the questions, why are we there?
When we ask ourselves about the performance or the confidence that we have in Mr. Hegseth, I think that that's derailing the real issue, which is why are we there?
What is the information that we have been given?
And what information have we been excluded from hearing?
And I think that these are the real issues, especially when you think about the military.
Most active informer know.
There's things you say, there's things you don't say.
Now the public is being told one thing, but the reality is another.
Chris, you mentioned cash grabs.
I did want to note that we learned yesterday the Pentagon accounting for the cost of this conflict so far puts it about $25 billion.
It was ranking member, a Democrat from Washington, Adam Smith, who asked about the cost of this conflict.
Here's some of that exchange.
Mr. Hurst, drag you into the conversation here.
We have not yet received from the Pentagon the costs of the war.
So just for the record, we'd like to get that as soon as possible.
Certainly the munitions expended, but also underreported is we've had a fair amount of equipment destroyed, including two C-130s with the rescue of our downed airmen.
So do you have either A, a cost estimate coming to us anytime soon, or B, a specific supplemental request?
Thank you for that question.
So approximately at this day, we're spending about $25 billion on Operation Epic Fury.
Most of that is in munitions.
There's part of that that's obviously OM and equipment replacement.
We will formulate a supplemental through the White House that will come to Congress once we have a full assessment of the cost of the conflict.
So you're saying the full cost at this point is $25 billion.
Yeah, that's our estimate for the cost.
Okay.
Interesting.
I'm glad you answered that question because we've been asking for a hell of a long time and no one's given us the number.
So if you could get those details over to us, that would be great.
That from yesterday's hearing.
And again, Pete Hegseth and his top officials back on Capitol Hill, 11 a.m. Eastern in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we are airing it on C-SPAN 3.
Richard, Arkansas, former military.
What do you think of the Defense Secretary?
Yeah, I think he's a boob, if I may say so.
I think he's a bootlick, if I may say so.
And this whole fiasco in Iran with another boob in charge of all of it, Commander-in-Chief, it's all for greater Israel.
It's all about Gentiles sacrificing themselves for Israel.
National Guard Misconceptions Addressed00:13:23
That's what it's all about.
That's Richard in Arkansas.
This is Martin in California, former military.
Go ahead.
I think Pete Hegseth is doing a great job, and I would follow him anywhere he went.
What do you like about him, Martin?
What I like about him is, you know, he's forward, and I think he's speaking the truth.
I just like the man.
That's Martin in California, New York City.
Edward, former military.
Go ahead.
Yes, hi.
Good morning.
Thank you for having me.
A shout out to all my military brothers and sisters.
I would rate Hegseth about a C minus, maybe even a D plus.
But I'm not going to get into the weeds with this thing.
The U.S. Army is about 440,000 people.
And that's only about 10% of that force, 10 to 15, maybe 20 at the most, are combat soldiers.
You know, we rely heavily on the National Guard and the reserves.
And the entire U.S. military, I think, is probably around 1.5 million if you include all of those.
It's a different military, and it's part of, we forget the military-industrial complex.
Now, in World War II, quickly, we had 16.5 to 17 million Americans in uniform for four years.
We had seven four-star generals, only seven.
Today, we have 47 for a force of about a million and a half.
So, you know, for years we've seen these generals parade into the committee hearings.
They're overwracked.
The ribbons that they have, participation trophies, many of them, you know, it's a different military, and it's part of the military-industrial complex.
As I said, it needs reform.
They're going about it with a meat axe rather, a cleaver than a scalpel.
There was some cosmetic changes.
They changed the uniform, which is a really nice uniform, to a full World War II uniform.
I think that happened under Biden with the former Sec Defense.
Anyway, that's where we are today.
Edward, when and where did you serve?
I was a first lieutenant, a young captain in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, and I was in an artillery battalion.
And just to compare again, that was probably the last conventional war that the country has fought, and let's hope to God there aren't any more.
Edward, on the size of the military, the fiscal 2027 budget request, it's a $1.5 trillion, more than 40% increase in the budget for the Pentagon.
The ask is for enough money to grow the total force by almost 50,000 personnel.
The expenses include $75 billion for new drone and counter-drone technologies, some $102 billion in aircraft procurement, $65 billion for Navy warships.
What do you think of a $1.5 trillion Navy, I'm sorry, Pentagon budget?
Well, it's largely technology-driven.
I mean, the shipbuilding needs to be increased.
We don't have as many ships, anywhere near as many ships.
I think we probably have about 250 ships in the force today, compared to maybe 350 to 400 back in the 70s and 80s.
But that being the case, it's all technology, and it drives the, I mean, to build an aircraft carrier, I mean, it's like 6,500 personnel in nuclear aircraft.
This is where they're going.
So, you know, the U.S. is the dominant power in the Middle East right now.
We're going through a lot of changes.
It's very, very complex.
But one thing I know, and the National Guard, I mean, just serves this country with great honor and distinction.
But sending weekend warriors, and that's what they are.
I'm not being derogatory, but they are to rip them away from their families and send them off to foreign lands rends families apart and upsets local economies.
And something needs to be done about that.
A lot of the military right now is a large social services organization.
And we need to just confront that with the personnel, the kind of personnel we have today.
But again, my point is it needs reform.
These people are probably, they're under, they're not qualified for the jobs to run an organization like this.
And they're taking a meat axe or a cleaver to something that requires something completely smaller, if you will.
Everett, thanks for the call from New York City.
This is Mark in New York as well.
Go ahead.
Hi.
Hello.
First, I'd like to say hello to the Walmart Marine who called in, who said that HEGSF is a clown.
I agree.
He's funny, right?
Funny to listen to, no smarts, whatever.
I'd like to ask the presenter there one question real quick.
Were you in the military?
No, sir.
Okay, that's okay.
So I'd like to continue on.
So the question yesterday to Haysif was how much money is being spent on this war?
And he would not answer it.
It's probably not because he didn't know a number somewhere, 25 or 50 billion.
It's because he would not answer.
And the number that came up, and we showed the clip just a little while ago, $25 billion was the number for the cost of Operation Epic Fury so far.
Right.
And who answered that?
Who said that?
One of the staff members that were there with him don't know the exact title.
The Undersecretary of Defense, not Pete.
Why didn't Pete answer it?
Because Pete came back with the answer that if we're so scared of Iran, we should support this war, right?
We're so scared of nuclear stuff or whatever, which isn't going to happen, which never happened in the last 40 years.
They never tried to send nukes over here.
So his point, okay, I'll take his point.
Okay, we should put everything we can into this war, right?
So why is Pete dressed up in a suit and tie, right?
He should be in a t-shirt and jeans or something, scraping by, right?
He should donate all his money because he is so scared of Iran attacking us.
And Trump is so scared.
It's a lie.
And then you brought up the budget, the $1.7 trillion.
Are you kidding me?
You don't think most of that money is going to be stolen by Trump and gang?
Come on, he's already stolen a ton of money.
Okay, his son was worth $60 million when they got into office.
He's worth $600 million now.
Where do you think that money came from?
Our taxes.
Okay, our taxes are going to support everything that these clowns are doing.
That's Mark in New York.
This is David in Illinois, former military.
Go ahead.
David, you're with us.
Hello.
Go ahead, sir.
Yes.
I think what they're trying to do is to restore what they destroyed, which was the agreement Obama had.
It wasn't perfect, but it was a diplomatic opening.
Sanctions were being lifted.
The Iranian people and the elected officials would have pushed back against the Ayatollah if Iran was becoming prosperous in a good economy.
Another mistake was invading Iraq.
Iran is to the east of Iraq.
And when there was a power vacuum, it allowed them to travel through Iraq to Syria to support ISIS and Hamas, the enemy in Lebanon.
And it was a big mistake.
We will come out with some sort of agreement which is similar to Obama's agreement.
Thank you very much.
That's David in Illinois.
This is the opinion pages of today's Wall Street Journal, one of the resident scholars for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and one for the Council of Foreign Relations, one of two of these think tanks in D.C. with a column saying that reopening the Strait of Hormuz is now job number one in the Iran war.
Here's what they write.
America's war with Iran has already transformed the Middle East for years.
The Islamic Republic's clerical regime bragged that it could strangle the Persian Gulf, but it refrained from doing so, fearful of U.S. retaliation.
Two enormously destructive bombing campaigns in eight months altered Iran's calculations.
Neither its nuclear weapons program nor ballistic missiles deterred the U.S. and Israel.
Today's battle for the Strait of Hormuz offers the Islamic Republic an opportunity to resuscitate its fortunes and humble the U.S. for Tehran controlling the waterway surely now takes precedence over advancing its damaged atomic ambitions.
The regime has learned, they write, that it can inflict severe economic pain on its enemies with missiles, drones, mines, and other established technologies.
The Islamic Republic is unlikely to forfeit that leverage peacefully, saying that reopening the strait, now job number one in this conflict.
A couple minutes left here talking with active and former military only in this first hour of the Washington Journal.
Again, it's a two-hour Washington Journal today because the House is coming in at 9 a.m. Eastern.
So we will go to Ed, Jacksonville, Florida, former military.
Go ahead.
Good morning, John.
First of all, to answer your question about peace, I believe what Ronald Reagan said, and that is peace through strength.
And I think that's what our secretary is doing, is showing the strength of our country.
My background, real quick, is two and a half tours in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, saying that National Guard sent me to Iraq and Afghanistan.
I want to clarify something with the people that think that the National Guard is a weekend warrior.
That used to be an old terminology, but that has changed quite a bit.
We are an operational force for our country.
So I want to clarify that to make sure people understand that.
Ed, thanks for that.
In terms of the $1.5 trillion budget that we've been talking about, what are your thoughts on that?
Well, I'll be honest with you because I'm not in the weeds about where all the money goes and how it goes that way, but I would respectfully look at our leadership and understanding what we're up against and that we're spending our money wisely.
That's Ed in Florida.
One more call from Florida in this segment.
Israel, Crystal River, Florida, former military.
Go ahead.
Yes, all right.
Thank you.
There's a couple of different things going on here, which I'm in agreement and in disagreement with some of the things that the caller said prior.
But a couple of things that's going on here is a spiritual warfare, number one.
Number two, the money that's being sent is because they're trying to obtain more than what they are supposed to obtain because this country has always been used to taking what's not theirs, you know, whether it's from the indigenous people, et cetera, et cetera.
But there's ancient, what you would call dragons or dinosaurs that are very dormant.
Even in the biblical scriptures, it talks about that.
And these people are testing the waters to see if they can wake up or stir the pot by these sleeping giants.
What they do is...
Are we talking about real things or are you making an analogy?
Well, the Bible is real.
So if you're against the Bible, then you would consider it a blasphemous being by saying that it's not real.
I'm just talking about the dragons and the dinosaurs.
Well, Leviathan is in the scriptures.
So if the scriptures, the Bible talks about Leviathan, is that real or is that fake to you?
I feel like this is a much larger discussion than we have time for.
Israel, the last caller in this segment of the Washington Journal.
Bridging American Political Divides00:02:24
Stick around.
Plenty more to talk about this morning.
We just have an hour left.
The House is in at 9 a.m. Eastern.
We are going to be talking with two members of Congress later, Russ Fulcher, Republican, Democrat Jim Costa, join us to talk about the news of the day.
But first, it's Axios Chief Economic Correspondent Neil Irwin.
We'll discuss the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's decision on interest rates and the Federal Reserve Board.
And we hope you stick around for that conversation right after the break.
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Fed Independence and Inflation00:15:35
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 document on everything, but you can find areas where you do agree.
He's a pretty likable guy as well.
Chris Coons 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 bet.
I never paid fork it over.
That's fighting words right there.
I'm glad I'm not in charge.
I'm thrilled to be on the show with him.
There are not shows like this, right?
Incentivizing that relationship.
Ceasefire, Friday nights on C-SPAN.
Democracy.
It isn't just an idea.
It's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
Democracy in real time.
This is your government at work.
This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
Washington Journal continues.
C-SPAN viewers know Neil Irwin, currently Axius Chief Economic Correspondent, joining us after playing news out of the Fed yesterday.
Neil Irwin, what was the bigger news yesterday that the Fed left that benchmark interest rate unchanged or that Jerome Powell plans to remain on the board possibly into 2028?
Yeah, that's definitely the real headline.
So Jay Powell, he's been the chairman of the Federal Fed for the last eight years.
He is a governor as well.
That's how it works.
You're both one of seven governors and also the chairman or vice chairman here in leadership.
His term as chair is up May 15th, two weeks from tomorrow.
However, he has the option of remaining as a regular governor until as late as January 31st, 2028, 20 more months.
It's been an open question.
What's he going to do?
Is he going to stay or is he going to go?
He says he's going to stay at least for now until some of these, what he views as significant threats to the Fed's independence from politics get resolved.
Let me show viewers Jerome Powell and his words yesterday.
This is about a minute and a half.
You know, my concern is really about the series of legal attacks on the Fed, which threaten our ability to conduct monetary policy without considering political factors.
And I want to note here, this has nothing whatever to do with verbal criticism by elected officials.
I've never suggested that such verbal criticism is a problem, and neither has anyone else here.
But these legal actions by the administration are unprecedented in our 113-year history, and there are ongoing threats of additional such actions.
I worry that these attacks are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public, which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political factors.
It is so important for our economy, for the people that we serve, that they can depend over time on a central bank that operates that way, free of political influence.
It's part of the absolute foundation of this amazing economy that we have.
It's just one of the many reasons why the U.S. economy is the envy of the world.
That piece of institutional architecture separates successful countries from unsuccessful countries.
It is extremely important, not for the people who work at the Fed at any given time, but for the people that we serve, that the Fed remain able to conduct monetary policy in a way that doesn't get pulled into politics trying to help or hurt any particular politician or political party.
It's critical for the people that we serve.
In terms of when I would leave, I will leave when I think it's appropriate to do so.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, that was likely his last meeting of the Fed board as chair.
Why does him staying on the board, though, as a governor, protect the institution more than him leaving the board, just for folks who haven't been following this?
Well, I think there's a few aspects to it.
One is it blocks President Trump from filling one more open seat.
So if Powell was to move on, that would give a seat for Trump, and that would be four out of seven appointees would be Trump appointees.
So that might be part of the logic.
Part of the logic is that if he's in place, he has access to what's happening, this Inspector General's report on the Fed's Building Project.
You know, he will be kind of in the room and part of any efforts to undermine Fed independence and undermine independent decision-making at the central bank.
If he's retired, all bets are off.
In terms of who's replacing Jerome Powell as Fed chair, what should viewers know about Kevin Warsh?
Kevin Warsh was a Fed governor from 2006 to 2011.
He worked with Ben Bernanke in responding to the global financial crisis in 2007, 2008.
In the last 15 years, he's been an increasing critic of the Fed and then critic of quantitative easing, these bond purchases that flood the financial system with money.
So he has a lot of sharp criticisms of the Fed.
At the same time, he's very knowledgeable.
He's an experienced central banker.
And he wants to do pretty significant change in the institution.
He thinks there's been institutional rot.
It needs to be reformed in significant ways.
So seeing what exactly that consists of, how quickly he moves in trying to change how the Fed works, is one of the things we'll be watching once he's confirmed in the coming days.
Does Jerome Powell sticking around make Kevin Warsh's job harder when he becomes chair?
I think it does.
I'm sure he would prefer not to have a former chairman sitting down the hallway.
Now that said, Jay Powell did say he's going to lay low.
What does he mean by that?
I suspect he will not be giving speeches.
I suspect he will not be dissenting from policy decisions.
I think he's not looking to be over Kevin Worsch's shoulder and really creating a distraction.
I think he wants to preserve this seat out of a kind of desire to maintain the Fed's independence.
What that looks like in practice, we have yet to see.
Just because our viewers might be more familiar with Congress than the inner works of the Fed, is there an analogy here to a Nancy Pelosi sticking around after she was Speaker and going back to being a rank-and-file House member,
but reporters still flock to Nancy Pelosi to get her opinion on big stories, especially right after she was Speaker and what that means for the current leader of the party trying to get that attention and have the megaphone that the chair platform gives.
I think there is.
I suspect that Jerome Powell is not going to engage in much media or speeches, things like that.
From what he said yesterday, he understands there's one Fed chair at a time.
Kevin Worsh will be that person within the next couple weeks, most likely.
And it's his role not to kind of distract from that or be, he said, I'm not trying to be a dissident or anything like that.
He is just trying to hang on to this seat for the moment.
So I think this will not be quite as dramatic as Nancy Pelosi giving her own take on the latest politics.
But it is, you know, this is a situation that hasn't happened since 1951.
So Mariner Eccles was the Fed chair in the 1930s and 40s.
He remained as a governor of the Fed from 1948 to 1951 after his term as chair was up.
But you have to go back that far, 75 years, to have a parallel.
But there is some precedent.
Before this news came out, the headline from your story in Axios, Fed holds rates steady amid most dissents in decades.
Just explain what dissents are and the importance of the Fed holding the rate steady.
Speaking of unprecedented things, so the interest rate decision yesterday was not terribly controversial.
They left rates stable.
They're waiting to see what happens with energy prices, the Iran war, broader growth, and inflation trends.
What was surprising is that four different officials dissented from that decision.
So one of them was Trump appointee Stephen Myron.
He wanted to cut rates.
The other three didn't actually disagree with leaving rates steady.
What they disagreed with was some language in the policy statement saying, essentially signaling that the next move is probably going to be a rate cut.
They wanted to be more symmetrical.
Maybe it's a rate cut.
Maybe there's a rate hike on the way.
So add in those three dissenters plus the Stephen Myron dissent.
That's four.
The last time there were four dissents at one Fed meeting, October 1992.
You just don't see that very often.
What was happening in October of 1992?
You know, I haven't looked it up yet.
That was the Greenspan era, and we were just coming out of a recession, but I really do not know.
In terms of what's happening right now, how much is the Iran conflict impacting interest rates and pressure on interest rates beyond just what we're seeing at the gas pump?
What were sort of the factors that the Fed was considering when they were looking at moving this rate?
Yes, we've had high inflation for the last five, six years, and the Fed is well aware of that, that they've been missing their target.
Inflation has been higher than the 2% that the Fed aims for for a long time now.
And so what's happened in the last few weeks, in a couple months, is energy prices especially have surged.
That'll start to ripple through to other prices.
So that's creating high headline inflation.
Now, what the Fed tries to do is look for underlying trend inflation.
And a one-time adjustment in energy prices is the kind of thing they traditionally look through.
They don't overreact to a short-term change in energy prices.
The problem is, when you're coming on the heels of five, six years of elevated inflation, the fear is that you're creating this sustained trend inflation that will be higher.
And maybe you do have to react to it.
Maybe you do have to raise interest rates to try and keep that inflation from being part of the kind of economic gears and built into the system.
Neil Irwin joining us for something like his 50th appearance on the C-SPAN Network's first appearance back in 2007, way back when he was reporting on economics for the Washington Post, now Axius chief economics correspondent.
He's always happy to take your calls and talk money and economics.
Alan's up first out of Brooklyn.
Democrat, Alan, you are on with Neil Irwin.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Good morning.
I'm speaking partly as a general listener, but also as someone who attended a forum with President Eisgruber of Princeton last week in New York.
And he reminded us of our school spirit of Princeton and the nation's service and the service of all nations.
And I think that Powell has been exemplary in epitomizing that kind of standard of public service.
Not only has he kept his eye on the ball about respecting the law that requires the Fed to act independently, but he has avoided any kind of return fire in terms of the kind of vitriol that's been thrown his way.
He said specifically in your clip, I don't worry about words that might offend me.
I do worry about things that will adversely affect the institution that I'm defending.
And he has kept his eye on the ball in terms of trying to oppose the inflationary effects of Trump's own actions.
His tariffs were terribly inflationary.
He should know that.
His war in Iran that has closed Hormuz and raised the price of gas is very inflationary.
And any president who thinks that a Fed share should be in the business of ignoring those inflationary pressures to improve the electoral success of any president or any party is not a patriot and is not living by the doctrine of a government of laws, not men.
And I'm also thinking, if you give me a second further about this, other Princeton alums recently, Kagan dissented from the Alito ruling about the Voting Rights Act, which Alito is virtually trying to repeal after saying during his confirmation hearings that he does not believe in judicial legislation, totally contrary to what he said during his hearings.
So you could have the same school with people who think they're doing the public service or not.
And clearly, some of them are right and some are wrong.
And I think Powell will go down a history there with Volcker, who risked the electoral success of Carter by raising interest rates to fight inflation in the late 70s, even though that had probably had the effect of helping defeat Carter in the following election, even though I wasn't happy about the outcome.
I respect the fact that the integrity of that other Princeton graduate is the same as Powell's.
And I respect Powell's service and hope he continues in office as long as he can.
And Alan, wasn't the gentleman we were just talking about in our last hour of the Washington Journal, wasn't Pete Hegseth a Princeton graduate as well?
Yes, he was, and I didn't want to drag that in because it's a different topic.
But I'm just baffled by the idea that someone who attended that school should think that he is qualified enough to even accept a nomination when he knows there's so many other people in military service at higher rank, more experience, and greater qualification to hold the office.
And the greed for power over your regard for public service is a disappointing aspect of his record so far.
And I hope he'll wake up.
That's Alan in Brooklyn.
Neil Irwin, bringing it back to Jerome Powell.
He under one thing the caller pointed out, which is Jay Powell yesterday said that this is not about tough words and criticism coming from the executive branch that's causing him to stick around as a governor.
And I draw a distinction.
So back in President Trump's first term, he attacked Powell and the Fed a lot.
He had a lot of aggressive tweets, comments saying he was a malign force.
He should be cutting rates.
He should be a bad guy, all kinds of stuff like that.
And the Fed, Jerome Powell's stance then was to put his head down, do the job, do the work, analyze the data, and try and make the right decision.
And that's how he started out in this term as well.
What has changed compared to that first term and the first few months of the current term is that this is not just attacks and saying they're wrong or they're making a mistake.
This is legal attacks.
This is things that specifically undermine the legal independence of the central bank, trying to fire Governor Lisa Cook over some pretty questionable accusations, launching a criminal investigation over the Fed's building project, which is really a federal judge's rule.
It is blatantly an effort to punish Powell for interest rate decisions, not a kind of good faith investigation into cost overruns.
And so that's the distinction Powell is drawing.
And that's why he did this really startling Sunday night video straight to camera a couple months ago explaining that this criminal investigation was underway.
That's why he's taken this more assertive stance of staying around as a governor instead of stepping down, which is, of course, kind of the modern precedent for chairman whose term is up.
What makes a good Federal Reserve Chairman or a great Federal Reserve Chairman?
How much of it is just getting lucky with your time in the economy and when recessions happen and when they don't happen?
Look, luck helps a lot.
You know, you can say that the legend of Alan Greenspan was helped a great deal by the fact that the 90s had this great productivity boom and he presided over that.
At the same time, look, it takes a great knowledge of economics and how the moving parts of the economy fit together, not just the real economy, employment, inflation, but financial markets, financial regulation, how all these pieces fit together.
But it also takes an adept style at politics and communication.
So the Fed chair has to be dealing with Congress and keeping Congress on side, dealing with the administration, dealing with international central bankers.
There's a diplomatic role as well, because what happens overseas really can blow back to U.S. shores.
Complex Role of the Fed Chair00:12:35
So it's a very complex job.
You know, it's been a checkered history.
There have been some fantastic Fed chairs.
People talk about Greenspan.
People talk about Paul Volcker, who as the caller said, broke the back of the 1970s inflation.
But others were not.
G. William Miller was a short-lived Fed chair under G. William Miller was a corporate executive.
Jimmy Carter put in as Fed chair, lasted a very short time.
It was not a cultural fit.
He was out of his depth and viewed as one of the least successful Fed chairs.
So it's a history of uneven results.
And I think history will be looking back on the Powell era with great focus.
This is Patrick out of Florida Independent.
Patrick, go ahead.
Well, thanks for taking my call.
I'm 67 years old.
I can remember when the accepted 10-year interest rate was GDP plus inflation.
I think a lot of our problems have run from, what, we have a balanced budget with $9 trillion in debt when Clinton left office.
Now we're at $35 trillion.
At 3%, that's $1.2 trillion.
And one last thing, with the WMDs in Iraq and the economic crisis, when interest rates were drove down to keep, I guess, social stability, annuity companies quit writing annuities because at 2%, 3% interest, they can't make any money.
Insurance companies are required to keep their reserves in safe Deposits, which is, I guess, government bonds, and the required to keep a certain amount of capital requirements at 3%.
They make no money.
The only thing they can do is drive up the policy or fight any payout on any policy or both.
I think you should talk about trying to get rid of that $40 trillion in debt.
Thanks for taking my call.
$39,182,979,000 in current U.S. national debt and counting.
Yeah, look, the U.S. debt is unsustainable.
The deficits are running 6% to 7% of GDP in a time of the Iran we're notwithstanding a time of relative peace, no recessions.
So what those numbers look like if we do get a recession down the road is very worrying.
You know, you just can't go on like that.
You can't have borrowing that's at a much greater share of GDP than your growth rate without that debt dynamics becoming a problem.
Right now, you know, interest rates are higher than they were in the 2010s, but are not through the roof, you know, 4.5% on the 10-year.
You know, it is a question, what happens if there is a resetting of interest rates higher?
Because then those debt service costs for the U.S. government, which are already quite high, really can go through the roof.
And that's where you get into risks of some kind of fiscal crisis, something like that.
I'm not saying that's on the horizon or something happening tomorrow, but I think it's anybody setting fiscal policy in D.C. either is aware or needs to be aware that if something can't go on forever, it won't.
It's the old line from Herbert Stein.
And that's where we are with the U.S. fiscal picture.
Sally Sue follows your reporting and writes in, you've reported on supply chain cracks and tariff-driven goods inflation.
How much of the Fed's current hesitation to cut further is due to these fiscal policies?
And can monetary policy even fix inflation that is being driven by trade barriers rather than consumer demand?
Yeah, I think the hang-up to further interest rate cuts right now is that it's not clear whether the war on inflation has been won, right?
So we came from 8%, 9% inflation back in 2022 down to around 3%, but we've been stuck around 3% for a few years now.
And so it's not clear that that continued progress is underway.
Now, you could say, well, it's because of one-time things.
There's the trade war, there's tariffs, there's now the Iran war and the energy price surge.
So you can look past those.
But again, if you look past things year after year after year, eventually people start to say, you know, maybe 3%, 4% inflation is the new normal.
And maybe that gets priced into contracts, into leases, into employment agreements, into union contracts.
And selling that becomes a self-sustaining thing.
That's what happened back in the early 1970s that gave way to a much higher inflation in the later 1970s.
That's what Jay Powell has been trying to prevent.
That's what the Federal Reserve and Kevin Warsh are going to try and prevent.
Speaking of Kevin Warsh, a recent story of yours in Axios, how Kevin Warsh wants to rewire Fed communications.
What is that about?
Yeah, so he said several things both in past speeches and op-eds and in his congressional testimony at his confirmation hearing suggesting he does not like the way the Fed communicates with the world.
They do some of these things to try and use forward guidance, tell you what they think they're going to do.
And that way the theory is that that way when incoming data happens, the market adjusts, it does the job for them.
But when those statements go out, we usually require or rely on people like you to interpret those statements.
If you go back and read the Fed statements, for the layperson, it's hard to understand what they're talking about.
Yeah, but I think his argument is that once you set out these predictions of this is what we think we're going to do, it makes you less nimble.
It makes you as a Fed policymaker more kind of set in what you've penciled in.
And so the argument is that's what happened back in 2021, 22 when inflation was taking off.
So they had said we expect to keep rates low for a long time.
And so therefore they have to do it.
And that they were slow to change, you know, pivot and start raising rates partly because they had essentially pre-committed to keep rates low.
So the idea is that by saying less, you commit fewer policy errors, remain more nimble.
Does that allow people like yourself to have more influence on how people view the Fed if they're saying less?
Well, see, I mean, you know, the press conference, you know, yesterday we had this press conference with Jay Powell.
He does eight of them a year.
When he took office, the chairman only did four a year.
They did zero a year before Ben Bernanke.
He started them in, I believe, 2011.
Do you think they've been a good thing?
I do.
I think, you know, the idea that the Fed chair takes questions from the press eight times a year and can address all these issues that come up, I think is a healthy thing for democracy, for a democracy.
Does he stay in the room and take every question?
Is it you get 10 minutes and whoever gets the question in 10 minutes gets it?
How do those press conferences work?
He usually runs about 45 minutes.
Not everybody gets a question in, but they go around the room and get a lot of questions in.
And there's no pre-screening, anything like that.
We can throw anything at him that we want.
And the main topic is obviously monetary policy, interest rate policy.
But as you saw yesterday, there were a lot of questions about his future, about the governance of the central bank, about you get questions on regulatory policy, on things that are maybe a little more political that he tends to try and duck.
So what will Kevin Worsh do?
He has said he's a little skeptical of the press conferences.
Will he continue doing eight a year?
Will he throttle that back to four?
We'll see what he chooses to do.
And on these more formal communications, they have what's called the dock plot and then this dot plot.
So they put out four times a year the 19 different members of the Federal Open Market Committee, no names attached, dots of where they think interest rates will be appropriate for them to be one year from now, two years from now, three years from now.
So that way you can kind of see, okay, they think they're going to be cutting rates later this year, or most people think they're going to be raising rates.
Does that cause like a parlor game of trying to figure out who's which?
Absolutely.
And some people, some officials will identify themselves and say, yeah, I think we're going to have rates at so-and-so.
Some don't.
You know, Worsche is very skeptical of that.
Powell has been skeptical of that.
Powell has not been a fan of that dot plot for some time, and he's pretty clear about that.
What replaces it?
Do you scrap it entirely, or do you keep some mode of communicating not just here's what the interest rate is today, but here's where we think things are going?
Because, look, markets price this stuff in.
You've mentioned the layperson may not scrutinize these things, but if you're a bond trader, you definitely do.
And what happens in bond markets shapes the price of taking out a home mortgage, getting a car loan.
So these subtle distinctions in how the Fed communicates do get rapidly transmitted into the price of borrowing for all of us.
A few minutes left with Neil Irwin of Axios.
Tim is in Ohio Independent.
Thanks for calling.
Hi, how are you doing?
Mr. Irwin, to be honest with you, I am really, really with Mr. Powell, and I congratulate him on all of the antics that our president has thrown at him.
I sure don't want Mr. Walsh in there after seeing him on the committee and he refuses to accept reality.
He wouldn't even, when they asked him who won the 2020 election, he refused to say Biden.
And that he's just going to be another Trump bootlegger, and he's going to change the whole system of the Fed.
The Fed was supposed to be a separate, you know, a separate entity.
They're part of the government.
They're actually a bank.
And, you know, they are the ones that look out for our economy and stuff.
Now, One other thing I'd like to say is that if Mr. Trump does something really, really bad, we may lose our petro dollar.
And I don't know how many people realize how much we really depend on that as far as, you know, getting loans and stuff like that.
I just, you know, I hope it doesn't happen, but with him, you can't ever tell.
Neil Irwin.
Look, I will say Kevin Worsch says he believes strongly in the independence of the Fed, that he will act with independence and try and make the best decision based on the data for the U.S. economy.
He does argue that the Fed under Powell and Janet Yellen before him and Ben Bernanke has failed to stick to its knitting, that it's had too broad a remit, weighed in on too many things.
You know, he says that price stability is the main goal and that the Fed should trim its wings and focus on price stability, and that's how you defend Fed independence.
On the petrodollar issue, and what that really is, is about does the U.S. dollar remain the reserve currency for the world?
And is this a world where people trading in countries that don't even involve the U.S., when India is doing business with Malaysia, do they use dollars or do they shift to something else?
When sovereign wealth funds have money they want to save, do they buy treasury bonds or some other kind of security?
So far, look, since the Iran war, the dollar's been up.
There's not so much a sign that that's cracking in a serious way, but there are real questions about is China, are other countries going to find workarounds that enable them to really supplant the role of the dollar in the world economy.
That is a live question, I think.
Back to inflation rate, Agaca, with a question from X. Does the calculation of the inflation rate include the impact of surge pricing, algorithm pricing, other new pricing methods?
Or is this, this is the cost of butter today and this is what you paid for it last month?
Yeah, in theory it should.
You know, properly measured inflation.
So think of the things where there is surge pricing, you know, car services, things like that.
You know, in theory, that should go into transportation costs and factor in.
And some things, look, air fares, hotels, those prices change all the time.
And you see that in the inflation data.
The inflation data for airfares, hotels, things like that do move up and down as prices do.
That said, measurement of inflation is a really tricky thing.
There's all these dilemmas on what do you do when there's quality changes.
So it's a kind of moving target trying to get the inflation data accurate.
And I think one thing Kevin Worsh said in his hearing is that he really wants to focus on better data, better private sector data, better use of data to understand inflation trends and what's the underlying pace of inflation, not just a few items that are swinging wildly.
Unfiltered Democracy Coverage00:02:39
Neil Irwin now has 51 appearances in the C-SPAN video library.
You can check them all out at c-span.org.
We always appreciate your time.
If you want to read his work, it's axius.com.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Half an hour left this morning before the House comes in.
We'll take you there when it does.
But in that half hour time, we'll take your phone calls in open form, and we'll also hear from two members of Congress.
Congressman Russ Fulcher, Republican of Ohio, of Idaho, will join us.
And Jim Costa, Democrat of California, will also join us a little later.
We'll be right back.
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Pre-COVID Policy Debates00:15:16
Half an hour left before the House comes in.
Open forum.
We're taking your phone calls.
Go ahead and start dialing in.
As you're dialing in, we're going to head up to Capitol Hill.
Joining us is Republican Congressman Russ Fulcher of Idaho.
Congressman, good morning to you.
I know it was a late night last night in the House.
One of the issues that you were voting on yesterday was that foreign intelligence bill, FISA, as viewers know it.
Where were you on that bill and how likely are you to see it again when the Senate takes a look at it?
Well, I opposed the bill and the reason that I did is there was no warrant for or requirement for a warrant for surveillance on Americans.
And that's been the big debate within the House on that particular issue, on the issue in general, I think.
But this did pass.
I think what's happened is the intelligence community has developed a system that is so broad, so sweeping, that it's very hard for them to issue warrants when they start including Americans within their sweep and within their search.
They just dig in deep and they don't want to do that.
And for some of us who like privacy, we've got a problem with that.
And so that's where this whole thing came down to.
It is going over to the Senate.
I'm hearing they're going to send that back on a 45-day review type of a situation.
But that's the debate and it did pass the House, but not with my help.
A three-year reauthorization.
Again, the Senate's going to take a look at it and we'll follow along on C-SPAN with the back and forth.
Let me come to the Farm Bill Congressman.
What do you think is going to happen with the Farm Bill?
A lot of viewers very interested in that legislation.
Well, that got used as a bargaining chip last night in some of this debate that we're talking about.
And my understanding is that's going to come back up again here.
But here's what you got, John.
You've got a $1.4 trillion bill, and about 70% of that, plus minus $1 trillion, is really for SNAP.
It's a food stamp program.
So you could argue, is this really a farm bill or is this a food stamp or a snap bill?
There's a debate there.
There's also the issue of E15, ethanol-15 versus ethanol-10.
Is that going to be part of this bill?
Is that not going to be part of this bill?
So quite frankly, until we see the final results, I don't know where I'm going to be on that.
But certainly our farmers need some of the programs that are in this bill.
But the problem is, is you've got so many other things.
That's the struggle.
Why is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SNAP food stamps, as you call them?
Why is it tied to these farm programs?
Why has that traditionally been something that's been voted on together?
Well, because that's the only way enough votes get culminated in Congress is the answer.
But the premise of your question is a very good one.
Some of us think we should separate those out, have two different debates.
They're two different issues.
But the short answer is, historically, the only way that gets passed is if you combine those two to get a bipartisan support.
But it's $1.5 trillion now.
John, this hasn't been passed for, I think it's eight years.
2018, I believe, was the last one.
And it was in the neighborhood of $800 billion.
The other thing that happened since 2018 was COVID.
And in COVID, the SNAP program, the food stamp program, really increased.
And so there's another argument for some of us.
Maybe we should make sure that goes back to pre-COVID levels.
So there's the debate, and that's why this thing is stalled out.
And as I recall, you're a member of Congress who is pushing for a one issue at a time voting mandate for Congress.
Explain what that is.
Every year that's the first bill that I launch.
And basically it says we should be dealing with one bill at a time, one issue at a time.
Just the germane content in that bill.
Don't combine different things in the same bill.
Don't have these big omnibuses because what happens is we have to make this decision, yes or no, on a bill that's got wildly different topics within the bills.
We should be debating these things one at a time, one germane topic at a time.
That's the most fair and the most reasonable way to govern.
Let me come to another topic at a time.
I know we have a little bit of time with you.
Pete Hegsteth's testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday.
What did you think of that testimony?
And are you concerned about this conflict running afoul of the War Powers Act as it approaches its 60-day mark?
I believe tomorrow is the 60-day mark of this conflict.
Yeah, you know, this is going to be an ongoing issue, and I just don't see how that's going to wrap up within the next couple of days.
However, this is definitely, I believe, going in the right direction.
By constraining the Straits of Hormuz, I think we're going to eventually just choke economically Iran into coming along with us on this agreement about no nuclear weapons.
So that's the hope as we go through all this.
I'm more concerned, John, about the overall budget proposal for the military.
Look, don't deny that we need it, but we also have a massive debt that we're trying to deal with.
And so how we come around, and listen, I want to support the president, I want to support our military, and I think that there's definitely some needs, but this massive budget, we've got to figure out a creative way to get some pay-for money and figure out how to cover that budget.
Is $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2027 too much for you?
It's a big number.
That's a big number.
But there's also some things we might be able to do to pay for some of that.
Goes back to some of those COVID dollars.
We've got a lot of COVID money that's still out there.
Maybe some of that needs to come back, be redirected towards military.
Two final issues for you.
One, your reaction to the Supreme Court decision yesterday on the Voting Rights Act for districts.
You know, isn't it a novel idea that we don't discriminate when we draw our boundaries?
You know, it's amazing to me how race gets thrown into these various arguments.
Now the latest is to use race as some kind of a boundary definition point within districts.
So I think the Supreme Court made a good call on that.
And look, that issue should have been put to bed a century or two ago.
It's 2026.
We don't need to be using race as an issue to draw boundaries for elections.
And then finally, sir, what should viewers know about former senator, former Governor Dirk Kempthorne, who died on Friday?
You know, he's fabulous, man, and a very good friend.
He was a U.S. Senator.
He was a mayor.
He was a governor, Secretary of the Interior, but more importantly, he was my friend and a very good man.
And so the world is at a loss today as a function of him not being with us, but he left a tremendous legacy with his work while he was on this earth.
Congressman Russ Vulture, Republican of Idaho, always appreciate you stopping by.
We'll let you get to your day.
Thanks, John.
Thank you, sir.
Your phone calls now.
Open forum as we wait about 20 minutes or so here until the House comes in for the day.
This is Michelle in Staten Island, New York, Independence.
Michelle, go ahead.
Good morning.
Good morning, C-SPAN.
Thank you so much.
C-SPAN is just better than any newspaper I could ever buy.
I want to say, I mean, it's open forum.
There's so much I could talk about.
Iran, Iraq.
And Michelle, we wanted you to talk about something, but I think we just lost you.
So we'll go to Darrell in Conway, South Carolina.
Democrat, go ahead.
Hello.
I'd like to see them get rid of Pete Hegsworth.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
There's too many generals and colonels and admirals that know a lot more than he does that should be the head of defense or secretary of war or whatever they want to call it.
Thank you for taking my call.
To Tennessee, this is Demarcus.
Good morning.
Hello.
What do you guys know about Tong-Tong-Tong-Tahor?
I have no idea what you're referring to.
Mason Dayton, Ohio, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Hello.
Thank you so much for C-SAN.
I really appreciate everything you all do on a daily basis.
I have two quick things to say about the interview you just did.
First, on the farm bill, the reason we have snap in the farm bill is because our farmers grow the food to feed people who live in this country.
The other reason we have this farm bill coming up is farmers have been devastated by the Trump administration getting rid of USAID because that was also a huge grow for our farmers.
So they literally buried our farmers under two very inappropriate cuts that just devastated our entire crops.
The second thing, real quick, is on the people and privacy situation.
Because of people making comments online, influencers, those online podcasters and whatnot, have had FBI showing up at their doors because of videos that they've posted on their opinion on what happened at the correspondence center.
And I'm talking at least a dozen have reported FBI showing at their house.
So the Trump administration is a laughingstock and we need to stop them while we can.
Vote Democrats for the spent terms.
Thank you.
Members of the Trump administration back on Capitol Hill today, 10 a.m. Eastern.
It's the Treasury Secretary Scott Besson.
He will be speaking at a financial literacy fair.
It's actually not on Capitol Hill, but it is here in D.C.
And we're covering it on C-SPAN 3.
You can watch it live on Capitol Hill.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegstath.
He'll be joined by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Kaine for a second day in a row of testimony on the U.S. conflict with Iran and the Defense Department's fiscal 2027 budget.
11 a.m. Eastern is when that's happening, and we'll go there live when they do.
Also, C-SPAN 3.
This is John in Massachusetts, Republican.
John, go ahead.
Thank you again.
We're back to the globalist plan of fascism.
The same fascism that funded Nazis on Wall Street are the same oligarchies that are still running the things today.
That's why we have Zionists in the Horn of Africa.
We're colonizing the rest of the planet because we want their oil and their resources.
Nothing's changed.
Brown people can't have any country anywhere where they could be at peace without colonizers coming in, taking over their land, colonizing it.
The profits go to Wall Street to the elite.
Now we have the Supreme Court who basically struck down any last bit of rights.
Now we got voting rights that are just disappearing.
We got an oligarchy here that's just raping and pedophiling children through international.
All right, John.
I think I got your point.
This is Marion, Waldorf, Maryland, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
My question was, with the amount of profits that the petroleum and energy companies are making during this recent spike in oil prices that was caused by our president, why isn't any politicians raising the issue of a landfall profit tax so some of this money could be returned to taxpayers?
Thank you.
That's Marion in Maryland.
We've got about 15 minutes left in our program this morning.
We had mentioned just a little bit ago Jim Costa, Democrat of California, joining us.
He actually won't be able to join us this morning, but we're going to try to reschedule that so it's just you and I for the next 15 minutes taking your phone calls in open form.
The House is going to be in at 9 a.m., and there is plenty on the agenda today.
The farm bill, very much on the topic of conversation for the House.
So you'll watch that on the House floor here on C-SPAN, or you can head over to some of those other hearings we've been talking about on C-SPAN 3.
This is Guy in Oklahoma, Independent.
Go ahead.
Hey, good morning, John.
Hey, Pete Hegseth, a matter of fact, he is the most underqualified, least seasoned, least experienced Secretary of War that we've ever had, no doubt, and probably the youngest.
I don't know about that for sure, but I would bet he is.
Versus, let's look at Lloyd Austin, the past Secretary of Defense, the most accredited, the most acclaimed.
He sat on the board of Raytheon and multiple industrial complex companies.
He was seasoned, experienced.
He was in the political realm.
So let's look at him, the most experienced one ever versus Pete Hegseth.
Lloyd Austin allowed an invasion at our southern border and lied about it for four years to us.
He allowed a Chinese spy balloon to zigzag across our country for two weeks and lie to us about it, said it was a weather bully.
You know, and look at, you know, I just, I can't believe that Pete Hegseth, let's look at him.
He closed the southern border.
He's taken out drug boats.
Look what we did in Argentina.
That was a miracle operation, a miracle operation.
We're the only people in the world that could have pulled that off.
And what we're doing in Iran, the fake news wants you to think we're failing Iran.
We've taken control.
We've blocked off the Puerto Hormuz.
We've taken the Strait of Malakalala down in Indonesia and also the Alabakban LR Strait in the Persian Gulf.
We now control and we've taken back the Panama Canal from China.
We now control the most critical four major shipping lands in the world.
And we're setting up for the Iran.
These negotiations, I think, have failed.
I think Trump's going to go in there now.
He's going to take out their infrastructure.
He's going to turn it back to the Stone Ages and their oil production.
We're days away from their thing clogging up because they're not flowing oil.
And I don't understand it, but it's going to, it settles in the ground.
It's hard to reprime the pumps to get the flow again and it clogs up.
They're going to lose 50 to 60% of their oil production.
And they're going to be forced to come to the table in the next couple of days.
And I think if they don't, they're going to be sorry for not making.
We've tried to be diplomatic with them for 47 years.
It's failed on every level.
Every diplomat, every administration.
Anyway, I think Pete Hegseth is doing a fantastic job.
Go, Pete.
Love Trump.
Got your point.
That's a guy in Oklahoma.
This is Alvin in Denver, Colorado, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Hi, John.
Good morning.
I'm going to stay focused, and I'm not going to react to that last caller.
I want to talk about your initial question this morning.
I'm a close to 30-year veteran.
I couldn't get in.
No, I do not have confidence in Pete Hegse.
Number two, I'd like to talk about that gaggle yesterday Trump had with the four astronauts.
Astronaut Meeting in Oval Office00:02:56
All that competence, all that togetherness, that smart, that intelligence.
The country was in awe for two weeks during that mission.
And Trump just squandered that during a 30-minute news conference, musing about he could have been an astronaut.
No, he couldn't have.
And, Alvin, do you mind if you mind if I jump in and show viewers a minute and a half and I'll come back to you?
But I want to give viewers a sense of that press conference with the astronauts if they missed it.
Well, thank you very much.
We have some people that have captivated the attention of the whole world, not just our country, the whole world.
And they're very brave, and there was a lot of rocket under them.
I never saw anything like that.
We were talking about it.
I don't know how they do it.
I wouldn't want to do it.
But it takes people like this to make our country great.
And again, I've never seen anything.
Everybody I knew they wanted to see the launch, and they especially wanted to see a successful landing.
And Jared, I want to congratulate you when you've done it, NASA.
I made a great choice.
I made a great choice.
And if you have any questions for any of us, feel free to ask.
But we're very proud of these people.
They have unbelievable courage, unbelievable.
A lot of other things, too, by the way.
To get in there, you have to be very smart.
You have to do a lot of things physically good.
So I would have had no trouble making it.
I'm physically very, very good.
Maybe a little bit of a problem.
I don't know, I'm sure.
We'll have to try it sometime.
Is a president allowed to go up in one of these missions?
We can get working on that, Mr. McCarthy.
We have no problem, right?
We're going to launch more rockets.
The opportunity.
We'll have to try it.
Congratulations very much.
And by the way, their families are over here, beautiful families.
And they're in the Oval Office and they walked in.
They said, wow, the Oval Office.
Everybody likes the Oval Office.
President Trump and the Artemis II astronauts from the Oval Office yesterday.
Alvin, go ahead, finish your thoughts on that press conference.
He ruined all that goodwill, John.
By the end of it, as you heard, he's musing about being an astronaut.
He's talking about the administrator's ears, a space veteran, probably one of the only competent people in the administration.
And the last thing I want to say, John, there was a gaggle before the mission, and Christina Cook said she was inspired by the civil rights movement.
What did she feel when she heard Trump proclaiming that he loved the SCOTUS decision limiting the Voter Rights Act?
That's Alvin in Colorado.
Royal Farewell to Trump00:10:18
Today from the White House, President Trump and the First Lady will bid their official adieu to King Charles and Queen Camilla.
The king and queen were visiting New York yesterday.
They're back in the D.C. area today for several events and will say goodbye to the president and the first lady for this official state visit when it comes to the royals.
This from the president's true social posts from yesterday, he is doing publicity for a book.
Robert Hardman has written an amazing book about the incredible life of the beloved and deeply respected Queen Elizabeth II in his research.
The president said, Robert discovers many interesting things about the Queen, King Charles, and other members of the royal family.
Robert's book, Elizabeth II in Private in Public, Her Story, promises to be a must-read, the president says, and can be purchased on Amazon and at major bookstores, congratulating the author on what he says will be a bestseller.
And the cover of the book there, that from the president's social media.
This is Bill in Big Sky Country, Republican.
Go ahead.
Good morning.
I'd just love to give a shout out to C-SPAN.
Two Saturdays ago, I was watching, and they announced that Trump would be signing an executive order for the use of the psychedelic drugs to treat PTSD.
And you guys cut over to it and you let the entire thing run for over half an hour so everybody could watch it from start to finish and hear what everybody had to say and then make up their own minds.
It's kind of what we do, Bill.
Yeah, but you know, back in 2015, Trump came to our town and put on a rally at our event center.
And I was working security at the event center.
So I listened to the entire rally from start to finish, about three hours.
I got home, fixed a tall, cool drink, sat down to watch the evening news, and they showed four clips, each one about four or five seconds long, totally, totally taking out of context of what he had actually said at the rally.
It was just disgusting.
And of course, with each one, they had a picture of Trump from the rally when he had kind of a frown on his face.
The next morning in our local paper, they had a big picture of him, again, right when they caught him with a frown on his face.
And it was an AP story that they reprinted that totally misrepresented everything he had said at the rally.
So I just really appreciate you guys letting that executive order signing run from start to finish.
Thanks a lot and have a great day.
Bill, thanks for the call from Montana to the Buckeye State.
This is Dana Independent.
Go ahead as we wait for the House to come in in just about six and a half minutes.
Good morning, Mayor.
Good morning.
Go ahead, and best to turn your TV down when you're calling in.
I have one question to ask, and it's a hard question for anybody to answer.
When you go for any job in Ohio or anywhere, they want to give you a drug test.
Am I correct?
And then if you go for a politician, no drug test.
How does politicians get out of drug test?
That's my question.
Good morning.
That's Dana in Ohio.
This is Scott in Wyoming, Republican.
Go ahead.
Yeah, John.
Thanks a lot.
I think Hegseth is doing a good job.
There's one thing I wanted to about what he does, and that's the hanky in his coat.
He always wears it, and it looks like a small American flag.
Now, I'm a flag waiver, and I don't wear suits, but I noticed, John, you got a hanky in your coat.
And as far as I know, the hanky is for an emergency cleanup job.
Like, say, you sneeze, you grab your hanky, and I think you understand what I'm saying.
I think he should just have, he should do what you do, John, and just wear a regular white or anything other than the American flag.
I've been waving the flag since I was in Cupscots.
And so I just want to express that to you.
Thank you.
That's Scott in the Cowboy State.
This is Jessica in the Land of Lincoln Independent.
Good morning.
Yes, I want to know why we don't have the Supreme Court justify why they overturn voting rights legislation.
Black people are going to be, their rights have been ripped away by this ruling.
And Robert's better explain himself.
And I want to know why we can't get rid of this orange cow in the White House.
Jessica, did you read the decision from the Supreme Court?
They post their decisions?
No, I did not.
So when you say, when you want to hear, have them explain it.
That's what they do when they post these decisions.
There's also dissents, and that was posted as well.
But you can see the explanations from the justices.
They write out their opinions.
Well, black people have now lost the ability to make any advances in seeing to it that their opinions on elections actually become law.
And it's not going to happen anymore because they no longer have power.
That's it.
That's Jessica in Illinois.
This is Evelyn in Baltimore.
Democrat.
Good morning.
Good morning, John.
I got one thing, two things to say.
One is Pete Hedsett reminds me of Barney Fife from Andy and Maybury.
And the other thing is the king and queen, him and Trump should get along very well because they both were adulterers and the queen was his Jezebel mistress.
That's Evelyn in Baltimore, Maryland, the New York Times today with several stories about the king and queen's visit, including the state dinner that was held on Tuesday night and the invitation list that came out yesterday for that state dinner.
Among those who were there, Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, Tim Cook, Apple, chief executive, plenty of members of Congress, members of the news media, Laura Ingram of Fox News, Jesse Waters of Fox News.
There was Rory McElroy, the professional golfer, Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots.
And a separate story, noting that all six conservative members of the Supreme Court attended President Trump's state dinner on Tuesday, honoring King Charles.
It was the night before they heard an important case about Mr. Trump's immigration policies.
None of the three liberal justices were present.
The New York Times story noting that the picture created by the partisan split with every Republican appointee in attendance and every Democratic one missing seemed at odds with Chief Justice John Roberts' off-stated message that the court he leads avoids even the appearance of political splits.
That's the story in the New York Times today.
This is Dave out of Lynchburg, Virginia, Independent.
Go ahead.
Yeah, we were talking about Pete Hakeseth.
I think he's an embarrassment.
Maybe he was one of the best Fox News hosts to be Secretary of Defense, but I don't think he's very right for the job, firing a lot of experienced generals and people he has no business being the supervisor of.
And I guess it suits because Trump is also an embarrassment to our country.
So that's all I got to say.
It's Dave in the Commonwealth of Virginia to Somerville, New Jersey, Republican Joe.
Go ahead.
Yeah, I think Pete Hakeseth is doing a great job.
He's well qualified.
He served his country quite a bit.
And I think he's doing an excellent job.
Because look who you had in there before him.
Under Biden, you had Austin in there, and he was nothing but a DEI.
And as far as Pete Hakeseth goes, he's pretty good.
I think he's doing a good job.
And as far as the Supreme Court ruling, I think that was excellent.
You got enough uneducated congresspeople in there that are black.
All right.
That's Joe in New Jersey.
Paul in New York, Democrat.
Go ahead.
Hello, it's me, Paul, in New York, Democrat.
I turned it on the TV this morning, and Donald Trump was on again.
And he frightened me.
I don't understand why he doesn't understand that he should be on TV once a year at midnight on Halloween, and that's it.
He frightens me.
Last Halloween, I would have sent him to Transylvania.
All right, got your point, Paul.
Paul's our last caller in today's Washington Journal.
Some notes on the schedule today.
The Senate's in at 10 a.m. Eastern.
You can watch that over on C-SPAN too.
Also at 10 a.m., Scott Bessant is going to be speaking about financial issues at the financial literacy fair are being held by the department here in Washington, D.C.