CSPAN - Washington Journal Open Forum
Aired: 2026-05-07
Duration: 05:59


=== Rich Don't Care About Country (03:19) ===

[00:00:00]  Listen to us.
[00:00:01]  There's no billionaires calling in complaining about what's going on.
[00:00:05]  They're happy as ticks.
[00:00:07]  We got to stop it.
[00:00:09]  They need to call in and complain, too.
[00:00:12]  Thank you.
[00:00:14]  On the Republican line in Telford, Pennsylvania, John, you're on Open Forum.
[00:00:19]  Yes.
[00:00:20]  Mimi, I was wondering, can you put on, like I just heard on, I guess it was CNN, Shell Oil, since the war started, has made a profit of $1.3 billion.
[00:00:36]  I wish that CNN would put these corporate people's earnings up, their quarterly earns, and let the American people see how we're being gouged and ripped off.
[00:00:45]  I mean, the other callers said, well, why should we tax them?
[00:00:48]  Because they're not investing back in the country.
[00:00:51]  They open up shop overseas.
[00:00:54]  They're not worried about us working.
[00:00:58]  All they're worried about is points keeping.
[00:01:00]  And just like the gentleman said, you ain't going to hear no billionaire calling up complaining.
[00:01:04]  And I'm a Republican and I voted for Republican.
[00:01:07]  But the Republican Party seems to be the party of the ultra-rich again.
[00:01:10]  We don't care about the working class.
[00:01:13]  All we care about is ballrooms and making money and this war with Iran.
[00:01:18]  We're in control, but the straits closed.
[00:01:21]  I mean, you're going to have to shoot straight with the American people.
[00:01:25]  So, John, no, I'm curious why you think that the Republican Party is now the party of the rich.
[00:01:35]  When did you decide that and what made you decide that?
[00:01:38]  Okay, let me, I'm 63, 63 years old.
[00:01:42]  I was always a Democrat.
[00:01:43]  I left the Democrat Party because I couldn't stand how far progressive they got.
[00:01:50]  And I always knew, and it was always known, that the Republican Party was the party of the rich, okay?
[00:01:57]  And then Trump was supposed to come and change that, and you know what I mean, and start caring about small business.
[00:02:05]  Look, Mimi, I made less, I worked seasonal, I made less than $20,000 and still paid a projective federal tax of over 6%.
[00:02:16]  So I don't want to hear that crap to people that, oh, don't you make this, they don't play.
[00:02:20]  Yes, I pay taxes.
[00:02:22]  Even though I made less than $20,000, I still had to pay taxes on the money that I made.
[00:02:27]  Okay?
[00:02:28]  So I'm telling you, the Republican Party is going to get robbed in November.
[00:02:34]  All right.
[00:02:34]  And are you voting Republican or are you voting Democrat?
[00:02:38]  I probably ain't going to vote at all, to be honest with you, because I'm disgusted.
[00:02:42]  The two-party system doesn't work.
[00:02:44]  It doesn't.
[00:02:44]  Look, we've gone bankrupt since what?
[00:02:47]  The World War II?
[00:02:48]  And we're 250 years, right?
[00:02:52]  And in the last, what, 50, 60 years or whatever, we've destroyed our country with debt.
[00:02:58]  $39 trillion in debt?
[00:03:01]  Are you kidding me?
[00:03:02]  How are you going to pull out of that?
[00:03:03]  So, John, you're usually when the rich don't care, all they care about is points keeping.
[00:03:09]  Mansions, islands, all this other stuff.
[00:03:12]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:13]  Okay, and John.
[00:03:16]  To get back to your first point about Shell Oil, so I do want to show that.

=== Columbus Over The Cliff (02:40) ===

[00:03:19]  That's CNBC, and that says this.
[00:03:22]  Shell tops profit estimates as Iran war boosts oil price, cut share buybacks.
[00:03:28]  It says oil giant Shell posted bumper profit $6.92 billion through the first quarter as the Iran war sent fossil fuel prices soaring.
[00:03:38]  The London listed energy major cut the pace of its quarterly buyback to $3 billion, down from $3.5.
[00:03:46]  The earnings came shortly after Shell announced an agreement to buy Canadian energy company ARC Resources in a deal valued at $16.4 billion.
[00:03:54]  CNBC has that, if you'd like more information.
[00:03:58]  Also, you might have heard the news that Ted Turner has died.
[00:04:02]  He was the founder of CNN, and he was on C-SPAN a lot.
[00:04:07]  He's got 46 videos in our library.
[00:04:09]  This is a portion of his conversation and Q ⁇ A with students at the University of Southern California back in 2008.
[00:04:18]  Take a look.
[00:04:19]  When you were 20 or younger, did you envision yourself or see yourself as being as successful as you are today?
[00:04:26]  No.
[00:04:26]  Okay.
[00:04:27]  I didn't, but I thought I was going to go as far as I could, as fast as I could.
[00:04:32]  So, but I didn't know where I was going to end up.
[00:04:34]  I was like Columbus, just like we started CNN.
[00:04:37]  When Columbus started out, he didn't know where he was going.
[00:04:43]  When he got there, he didn't know where he was.
[00:04:45]  And when he got home, he didn't know where he'd been.
[00:04:51]  You ever heard that one?
[00:04:53]  You did hear it.
[00:04:54]  Well, anyway, it's still good.
[00:04:56]  I didn't attribute that to me.
[00:04:58]  But this is a line I did come up with.
[00:05:00]  Life's like a Grade B movie.
[00:05:02]  You don't want to walk out in the middle of it, but you wouldn't want to sit through it again.
[00:05:08]  Good Ted Turner has died at the age of 87.
[00:05:11]  He was the founder of CNN.
[00:05:14]  Back to the calls to Nestor Stigler, Oklahoma Independent.
[00:05:17]  Good morning.
[00:05:20]  Buenos Diaz, Mimi.
[00:05:21]  Good morning, America.
[00:05:22]  This is Nestor.
[00:05:25]  $40 trillion in national debt.
[00:05:28]  For decades, they say that the cliff was $30 trillion.
[00:05:33]  Well, now we're over the cliff.
[00:05:36]  We've hit the wall.
[00:05:37]  They cannot fix the debt.
[00:05:39]  They're going to keep spending this money until we cannot certainly.
[00:05:44]  And we are going to leave our program, take you live to the UN, where the U.S. Ambassador to the UN is speaking.
[00:05:53]  Braltar in a cynical bid for leverage with the other side.
[00:05:57]  Collective punishment of the entire world