Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 01092020 20240713

Foreign affairs committee, ted yoho and Gregory Meeks. Later we will hear from the director of iranian studies at Stanford University. At Stanford University. [video clip] our Great American forces are prepared for anything. Appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world. Host from yesterday on u. S. Action toward iran. He discussed the killing of the iranian general and announced sanctions and vowed iran would never possess a nuclear weapon. This is the washington journal for january 9. Our first hour dedicated to your trumpts about president the administrations actions. If you support it, 2027488000 is the number to call and tell us why. If you oppose, you can do so at 2027488001. Perhaps you are not sure at this point, 2027488002 is the number to call. You can text us your thoughts at 2027488003. And you can cspanwj post on our Facebook Page at facebook. Com cspan. A 10 minute speech about yesterday from the white house laying out over the last couple days the administrations actions. Part of that speech not only dealt with the assassination, but also the topic of sanctions. [video clip] in recent days, he was planning new attacks on american targets, but we stopped him. Soleimani hands were drenched in both american and iranian blood. He should have been terminated long ago. By removing soleimani, we have sent a powerful message to terrorists. If you value your own life, you will not threaten the lives of our people. As we continue to evaluate options in response to iranian aggression, the United States will impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the Iranian Regime. These sanctions will remain until iran changes its behavior. In recent months, iran has seized ships in international waters, fired and unprovoked strike on saudi arabia, and shot down two u. S. Drones. Host david lynch takes a look at the topic of sanctions writing with the economy convulsed, any new financial pun amid punishments are likely to be symbolic. Coveredals are already by a variety of u. S. Five u. S. Al penalties that financial penalties that bar americans from dealing with them. Irans biggest Financial Institutions are covered by those measures, but other banks that concentrate on domestic, agricultural, and mortgage lending are not. Sanctions as the speech overall took place and after that, it was on the senate floor Chuck Schumer made comments about the president s statement. [video clip] the president promised to get the United States out of these forever wars, but the arrow is headed in the wrong direction. How many more is it going to be . How long will they remain abroad . What is their objective . How will we assure their safety . Will more be deployed in the weeks and months ahead . These are urgent questions. The Administration Must answer them. So far, there has been a profound lack of information provided to congress concerning what the department is doing in response to iran. I joined senator reid and senator your been in requesting regular documents detailing the number of troops the president has deployed and plans to deploy in support of contingency plans with respect to iran. We need to know if the administration is committing additional troops to the region and for how long. Our letter urges the administration to clarify to the American People and our let and our military that International Law prohibits the deliberate targeting of cultural sites and that such an order would be unlawful and should not be followed. The American People, rightfully, have serious concerns about war with iran and whether we are safer today because of this president s Foreign Policy, which is so often impulsive and erratic. I am afraid these impulsive and erratic actions throughout the world are making us less safe. Host members of the house and senate received briefings yesterday on the actions. Two of those members will join us in the 8 00 hour, one at 8 00 and one at 8 30. To the topic of overall strategy and what you heard from the administration yesterday, we are asking your thoughts. If you support it, 2027488000. If you oppose it, 2027488001. Perhaps you are not sure, call 2027488002. On our not sure line, robert starts is often massachusetts. Go ahead. Caller good morning, pedro. Can you hear me . Host i can. Thank you. Go ahead. Caller personally. I am democrat and strongly opposed to mr. Trump, sir. That being said, when it comes to Foreign Policy, in my own opinion, when obama was president and secretary john kerry at the state department, that. Poa, i was against my views on Foreign Policy, with respect to iran in my opinion, iran is the worst, the largest, etc. , sponsor and the proxies of terrorism whether it be threats to the middle east, u. S. , our allies in that region. Nd abroad taking outountry did the two generals, the iranians, i dont believe, i dont have the briefing information, but this is my bottom line point. Is president ve he i am going to proceed, sorry. Host you are not sure because of why . Caller because of this. Nom not sure because he has Foreign Policy. He is so erratic when it came to i willn and so support a hawkish view of iran. Pennsylvania, supporter. Good morning. In pennsylvania, supporter. Good morning. Caller i called on the support line. I support the country. We did have a deal and now that. He deal has been broken now that we have assassinated one of the leaders of iran, we are going to be backtracking now may not trust us deal. E we broke may not trust us. I support the country, but i dont understand why we our commit are allowing our commanderinchief to rip up deals our allies signed off on he expects nato to get involved. They signed off on the deal you ripped up. I dont understand. Host if you support what the administration is doing, call on that line. If you oppose, there is a line for you and if you are not sure, there is a line for you. Brian is next in kentucky on our support line. You are on. Caller from one president to another doing killing off our terrorist people. I am not understanding our whole society anymore. They have gone well beyond me. Host what do you mean by that . Offer did not obama kill terrorists . Did not bush kill off terrorists . Host so you are a supporter of the current strategy, then . Caller yes. Host why is that . Caller it has to be done. Our American People will still be getting killed over people. Host either way, if you are waiting to be online, if you would, turn down your Television Set and then you can focus on the conversation rather than focus on the television. In illinois on our oppose line, good morning. Caller good morning. I dont believe your question was is this a strategy. It is not a strategy. Appears to be like a loose cannon on a ship. He wakes up in the morning, he is very impulsive and he does what he thinks should be done. Generals. Consult our he should have taken time to develop a strategy. It is scary to think he could do Something Like this and not think of the consequences or even make a plan for the consequences. He doesnt even know what the consequences could be. Host what convinces you of that . Caller he hasnt mentioned any plan in his speech. All he talks about is killing one person. Killing one person is not a plan. Yesterday he spoke about sanctions and the desire for iran not to have a nuclear bomb. That doesnt constitute a strategy in your mind . Caller no. Host why not . Caller a strategy should be enumerated with conditions in each one and that is how you win a war. You dont win a war by killing one person. Host tom in california. Eric on our oppose line, good morning. Caller good morning, america. Action theis president acted. Legal toit ever been kill a diplomat . President trump killing this diplomat, he was under diplomatic passport. By doing this, he has now put the lives of all of our diplomats online. Then the real question becomes this policy. Iran sits behind the 33rd parallel line. Host he was not just a diplomat. He was tied to a force that sponsors a lot of terrorism. Caller if he was in another country looking at what the United States was doing, you can classify some of the stuff the United States does as terrorist on the opposite side. This man was part of their government. He was not like bin laden. A terrorist not part of the government that gave obama the Legal Authority to assassinate that individual. Host the Previous Administration used drone strikes on many occasions and the Bush Administration before that. Are you saying those are not classified the same . Caller those individuals never had a diplomatic passport. They wasnt. That is what makes it so different and so important about this individual. Lawton bin laden that gave the government the ability to assassinate him. Host in ohio on the line for yourrt i hope you said name right. Caller my name is karen. Host i apologize if i got it wrong. Caller i support President Trump. He is our president. I am going to stress that. I support him. We do not have to know as a citizen of this country what the president does for war. Some of the stuff should be kept secret so we can go in and do the strategies we need to. It doesnt need to be news media every day. Host do you see what is happening from the administrations action as a Clear Strategy . Caller yes. Host what makes you say that . Caller i trust of the president and i know about things going on over there and i have a family. Ember there let the president do what he needs to do. Everybody get out of his way and let him do what he needs to do. He went into do the things he needs to do. Host one of the things discussed yesterday by the president is the desire for other countries involved in the Iran Nuclear Deal to pull out of that deal in an attempt to create a new nuclear deal. Here are some of the comments for yesterday from yesterday. [video clip] thehe time has come for united kingdom, germany, france, russia, china to recognize this reality. They must break away from the remnants of the iran deal and we must Work Together toward making a deal with iran that makes the deal a safer and more peaceful place. We must also make a deal that allows iran to thrive and prosper and take advantage of its enormous, untapped potential. Iran can be a great country. Peace and stability cannot prevail in the middle east as foment iran continues to violence, unrest, hatred, and war. Send a clear must and unified message to the Iranian Regime. Your campaign of terror, murder, will not be allowed to go forward. Host this is bobby in virginia on the line for support of the president and the action strategy. Knowr i wanted to let you before the iran situation came up, i was against trump. Now that this situation has happened and all the stuff that has been going down, i am for i dont know what people are complaining about. He is the president , like that lady said and we have a responsibility to make sure iran does not move forward with any more terrorism. It has got to stop. If they get a nuclear warhead, it is too late. Now is the time to get them and hit them hard or go to the negotiated table and knock the stuff up because it is not good for the world, not good for the United States and not good for our military. Instance did this change your mind versus how we dealt with iran previously . Caller because President Trump is a loose cannon. He would go one way and the next way. They dont know what to think. Right now, they are thinking and nobodytrategy knows his strategy. Host because he described him as a loose cannon, you are saying that is a good approach . Caller yes, exactly. Before it was like they know what we are doing. They watch our politics, our news, they have their own cia and they think they are our equal, but they are not. You need to put them in their place. It is bad news for the world. Host on our oppose line, we will hear from larry in cleveland, ohio. You are on. Caller have you ever read the whereseven days in may we had a loose cannon president and the generals tried to take over the country and everything . We are perfectly set up for that. President trump is a perfect put in of a President Office and he is trying to be tough like i know more than the generals and everything. Wrong with the actions of recent days specifically in your mind . What was wrong with the actions toward iran in recent days . You do not take out a foreign minister, general of another country. Suppose they decide to take out general mattis . People. Killing host why do you equate general soleimani to general mattis . Aside from the title . Caller to the persian people, killing is killing. He is just like their general. His job is to destroy as many people as he can and that is what generals do. Host tony is next in massachusetts on our oppose line. Good morning. Caller how are you doing . Host fine, thanks. Caller someone needs to tell trump he is not the king of america. For some reason, he thinks he is the king and he can do what he wants to do and he is putting here. Us at risk dictators. He loves host how do you apply that to the iran situation . Caller if he is this going to take out someone without consulting when he has no military experience, first of all. President didious not have military experience either. Did you have those concerns . Caller no, because he would negotiate and talk to people when he made these decisions. This this person had been from norway or switzerland where people might be white skinned, would he have a problem taking him out . Anyone with brown or black skin, trump has no problem doing what he did. Host even though the assassination of general soleimani was accused of terrorist activity, you equate this to skin color . Ofler i have seen a lot documentaries and read a lot and i know we only hear what they want to see. Host i got you, but why do you associate this to skin color . He callsently everybody brown or black, he has a problem with that with people of color. If they were from a white country, would it be the same . I dont think so. Host we set aside a line for those who are not sure. Alabama. Rancis in caller let me tell you. I dont know, we spent so many years talking about the conscience of ones character host you are on. Caller i thought you turned me off. We seem to have susan the choice of the lowest common denominator of characteristics. When i got here 30 years ago, we had the same mayor. I have seen so many manipulators and politics. I am one of the children with the march. Didnt seem to understand. He never went through reasons. Everything before he it shows ignorance throughout the nation and i am so disappointed in all the efforts we made to get the right to vote because the people are too aigner and to appreciate it. Ignorant to appreciate it. Host a listing of the hardware available to iran. Graphics of some of the missiles available. This story also highlights the since the 1980s has developed one of the regions largest and most versatile missile programs. They have hundreds of short and mediumrange ballistic missiles. They see their force as an indispensable part of their. Ational Defense Strategy that is according to a report by the Brookings Institution last year. You can read more of that in the wall street journal this morning. Joe is next in tennessee, a supporter of the president s strategy. Good morning, joe. Caller good morning. Host you are on, go ahead. Caller hello . Host you are on, go ahead. Caller can you hear me . Host yep. Caller i am all for it. We have been fighting a ran and iraq iran and iraq for decades. I support him 100 . If they start telling everybody what they are fixing to do before they do it, how do we not know we have a democratic or republican, neither one. I am independent. Do we not know someone just like president clinton had that private server in her basement. More and more every day, i am turning into republican because i see trump doing something that no president has ever done. People jobs, taking. Are of sick people host in the case of iran, do you think further military action might be necessary in the future especially if more missiles are fired . To tell themneed you are not going to come over. Ere and terrorist us i believe what he had done and took out that leader, that is showing power. It is not showing you are the king of the world, but you are a president and you are not going to threaten the United States and other people need to start backing up this president. Something that no other president has ever done in history. Host joe in tennessee, a supporter of the president and the strategy and actions from the president on iran. Isd from wisconsin saying it freshening to see republican senators, around and see how this administration works and not being upfront with this issue. The Public People it was members of the house and senate receiving those briefings yesterday. Several of those members took ore the microphones republican senator mike lee from utah. [video clip] looked and expected to receive more information outlining the legal and moral justification for the attack, which was left somewhat unsatisfied on that front. The briefing lasted 75 minutes. This is not the biggest problem i have with the briefing, which i would add was probably the worst briefing i have seen at thet on a military issue in 9 years i have served in the United States senate. What i found so distressing about the briefing was one of the messages we received from was do not debate, do not discuss the appropriateness of further military intervention against iran and if you do, you will be emboldening iran, the implication being we would be making america less safe by having a debate or discussion about the appropriateness of further military involvement against government of iran. Andnd this insulting demeaning. Not personally, but to the office that each of the 100 senators in this building happens to hold. I find it insulting and demeaning to the constitution of the United States to which we have all sworn and oath. The prerogative of the legislative branch to declare war. Host on our oppose line. Caller this is turning into a driveby shooter. We use shock and awe on a lie and there comes another big lie. Host specifically when it comes iran caller it is ridiculous. Host why do you think that . Caller you would not drop a bomb on somebody for no reason. What was the purchase purpose . You have to know what you are doing before you do it. Here is a guy who has been protected all his life. He always wants to be like a tough guy. Illinois on the line who support the president and his strategy. Morning, pedro. I cannot say i support him and i cannot say i dont. Getting rid of people who make these bombs that really hurt them. , the other side, i think this was done because President Trump was going to be impeached. Nancy pelosi had a reason for not sending over the articles of impeachment right away. Somehow, i get the feeling she saw stuff coming and if she would have sent it over and they started debating this this week and trump did what he did, you would not hear any news about the impeachment. Maybe it is weird nancy pelosi has some sort of insight she sensed there is a reason i will hold this back. Host that is kathryn in illinois. For the first halfhour, we have been taking your thoughts on the strategy. We will continue for the next half hour. 2027488000 gave you support it. If you support if you oppose it, 2027488001. If you are not sure, it is 2027488002. You can text and go to our social media sites. House gop leaders have advocated for the most progressive defenders, jim jordan, doug radcliffe, and collins to help the white house counsel. Fellow gop senators expressed concern that the house led defense could offend moderates collins, susan murkowski, and the president has already won the backing of the gop base, though he and his team need to focus on ensuring republican unity. The president sending out a tweet on impeachment looking like this. Nancy pelosi does not want to hand over articles of impeachment because after these years, the investigations of crimes. Ion show no Mitch Mcconnell saying the majority of the senate decided the first phase of an impeachment trial should track closely with the unanimously bipartisan president that all 100 senators supported for the first phase of the clinton trial. Speaker pelosi will hold her News Conference at 10 45 today. Perhaps she will say more about the next steps releasing articles of impeachment. The president hold a rally in toledo, ohio. On cspane that live 2, cspan. Org, and our radio app. We will hear next from dottie, georgia. Caller hi. This is dottie. The only points i would like to of this goes back to the 1950s when we overthrew their government and install the person in there. If someonee feel came over here and got rid of our president and put in who they wanted . Then we would be fighting against them. I think the United States should get out. Host why do you not consider them terrorists . Caller because if someone had come over here and on the same thing that we did to them in the 1950s, everybody would be out in the streets saying they needed to leave. The only thing they are trying to do is get to the united and countries out of their area. Franklin miller has a piece in the wall street journal about hostilities with iran going back to 1979 saying with the killing of Major General soleimani, washington sent tehran a message it can no longer attack americans with impunity. The u. S. Has taken important steps to establish a credible deterrent. Death is the first time the regime lost something it valued. The Trump Administration was right to make clear america will. Mpose costs on the regime you can read more of that in the washington journal. Edwin is next in north carolina. Caller i oppose the situation theuse the u. S. Is not in assassination business. We have stirred up a bunch of peruvians overseas and we have stuff in this country. This president has not sacrificed anything. I sacrificed 24 years of my life serving the United States navy and he has not informed congress. The same situation on unemployment. Unemployment went from 4. 7 to 3. 5. Host back to assassinations, we have seen drone strikes go back two administrations previous. What changed now . Caller we need to have diplomacy before we use any kind of firepower. If that was the case, we would have taken out fidel castro. Host i am only highlighting that because you said america is not in the assassination business. Caller do you see large protests in manhattan right now or chicago or los angeles . We dont. This is ridiculous. This president has not sacrificed one thing. He has never served on active duty. Host tom on our support line, go ahead. Caller hi, pedro. Thank you for having me this little tod to bring a this host you are going to have to stop listening to the television and go ahead with your thought. Caller sorry about that, pedro. I was getting a lot of background noise. Think it was i do definitely support trump and the way he took out this terrorist leader, soleimani. People that are calling opposing trump, i am like you, i wish they would call on the oppose line and not the support line. I would like them to think about who attacked our embassy and who broke into the embassy over there . It was people from soleimanis group. I would like to know where is the sympathy for the contractor and the americans that were killed by soleimanis proxies over there. Cleardo you think a strategy is emerging when it comes to this administrations actions toward iran . Caller yes, i do. And i will tell you why, pedro. Taking out soleimani had to be a fairly quick, strategic decision. He did not have time to go to congress and tell them because they would have alerted soleimani for iran. Especially our politicians, as hatred as they are today. The strategy took out the terrorist leader coming over to iraq and i fully support that killed strategy was you our americans and you are going to pay a price. Host that is tom in north carolina. When it comes to politics, look for this today as far as the house is concerned, a scheduled vote on a resolution that would limit war powers particular when it comes to iran saying the vote would be on a measure that would require mr. Trump to cease all military actions. Such a measure could face an uphill climb. On wednesday, two republican signaled they were inclined to support it. Either way, it is certain to ignite a debate over mr. Trumps strategy and Congress Role curtailing the president possibility to wage war. The senators that would support ,t are mike lee and rand paul long vocal proponents they found the administrations presentation to be insulting. That drafted by tim kaine of virginia. From kentucky, this is brad saying he is not sure. Good job on pushing back in different places this morning, pedro. I suppose it is because they act through surrogates there seems to be a lot of confusion as to the level of terrorist activity has treated the world to over the past few years. When it comes to the you ran nuclear deal, people complain trump withdrew from that or got rid of it. He only did that because he could do that. Why could he do that . Because it was so weak of a deal, barack obama could not get his own senate to legitimize it with a vote. Perhaps it was not as good of a deal as we think or say. To criticize trump, pelosi and andcrats it seems odious overly political. Trump is obviously pursuing peace and however he is doing it, i am pretty much in awe. The situation with iran could have tumbled quickly into a connecticut war. Host let me rephrase a little bit. What is your level of comfort with the actions taken and what it might mean for the future . I do feel rand paul and mike lee, there is some credit if they are being told by briefers there is no room to have a discussion about things, i disagree with that. The fact you have taken out soleimani, that is fine. The u. S. Is not in the assassination game, i agree with that, but that is not what is happening. When we took out bin laden, i am whoty sure everyone celebrated and supported that his doore busted in and shot him in the head. That is like an assassination if you ask me, but that is not how i think of it. It was good to do that. It is gone it is good that we have done this to soleimani. Host that was brad giving his thoughts on the not sure line, which you can feel free to call as well at 2027488002. The Iran Nuclear Deal made appearances during the presentation yesterday and one of the things he did highlight was the creation of the deal particularly as it went back to the Obama Administration. [video clip] the Iran Nuclear Deal they were given 150 billion not to mention 1. 8 billion in cash. Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they chanted death to america. Americated death to the day the agreement was signed and then iran went on a by thest spree funded money from the deal and created hell in lebanon, syria, yemen, and iraq. The missiles fired last night on us and our allies were paid for by the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tighten the reins on their own country, even recently killing 1500 people at the many protests taking place all throughout iran. Expires defective jcpoa shortly anyway and gives iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout. Iran must abandon its Nuclear Ambitions and end it support for terrorism. Host david in the Washington Post highlights some of the funding issues the president has brought up saying it was the 150 billion figure that we released after they signed the nuclear cord. The actual amount they were able under 50 billion. The additional 1. 8 billion was funding the United States owed iran after military equipment was never delivered. It was january of 2016, not long after the deal was finalized, secretary of state john kerry fundsledging some of the that would be unfrozen could end up in the hands of irgc and other entities, some of which labeled terrorist are cap terrorist. Joanne in minnesota. Morning, pedro. I am an independent and i tried to look at all the facts on both sides of an issue, but i do support this. I feel we need to act with strength. For too long, many foreign did not believe he would do anything he said. I feel it is time we let them know we are against war and this was not a war, this was a preemptive strike against a terrorist and i feel he does have a strategy. I thought his speech yesterday was very good. He laid out what he is thinking, that he is not for war and i would like to make two more quick points. I have had three foreignexchange students from various countries who keep in touch and they loved this country. They are so happy. Like they said, all of us commenting, we dont live in iraq. We dont live in iran. We are armchair quarterbacks and if you talk to many people in this country, we are so glad we have a person. We have a person not supporting this issue. One more comment on the war powers they are going to vote on today, i think that is hurting our cause, hurting the administration, playing to other countries saying we are going to tie the president s hands. Trump doesnt do everything correctly, but i think he cares about this country and he cares about the world. He is not trying to be a king or a dictator. He is trying to do what is good for the world. Int that is joanne minnesota. That war powers resolution that is to be voted on, we will talk about that with two members of the Foreign Affairs committee. Democrat, toand a get their perspectives on the vote and the larger issues about iran. We showed you some of the stories from here in the papers nationally and we will show you headlines on how this is playing out for localities across the United States. In washington state, says she is not sure. Go ahead. Caller yes, good morning. I am first time caller and what i would like to say is this. I would not tie mr. Trumps hands. That would set a precedent for future president s. Vote for him. I do not like the way he does his job by going over peoples heads and then finding scapegoats when he gets in trouble. Anything within the constitution and went through the processes like they need to be gone through, rules, laws, standards, there is so much out there that is part of the problem. If you cannot go by rules and laws, what he is doing isnt legal. I dont understand. Host willie in georgia on our opposed line. Good morning. Caller good morning. Before we get into the deep in iran,this soldier the caller needs to realize you are not dealing with someone, the lady just said do not tie his hands. You need to tie his hands and feet and Everything Else because when he makes a decision that comes offthecuff, his chief of staff, pompeo said before he leaves office, he wanted to see this soldier wiped from the face of the earth. I dont support someone who would send sons and daughters into harms way. As a father with sons in the military, i do not support sending my sons out there on a mission that is not fair. I heard you give a lot of people a lot of time this morning on why they should not do this and do that. Iran has been a problem for many president s. I think president obama and his in a situation where they will control. The world signed onto that deal, not just america signed onto the deal and to have this president unravel the deal, not because the deal is good or bad, he is unraveling because of barack obama. This man in the white house is obsessed with president obama no matter what you say and what you want to say. To the deal itself, did you think it was good or bad . Caller the deal itself kept iran in position that they would not create problems. The money paid back was money on hold. They lied and sent the money was spent to shoot the missiles down. In georgia. S willie lets hear from eliot engel after those briefings that took place on capitol hill yesterday. What they heard and what they gained from attending the briefings. [video clip] the Foreign Affairs committee is going to hold hearings next week to try to get to the bottom of this. We have invited secretary pompeo. The American People have a right to know. Are you prepared to subpoena him if he does not attend . It is a possibility. We have not made a decision. Do you think the strike was justified . Do you think it was an imminent threat . We are told it was an imminent threat. I am not sure i am convinced about that. The person we took out is no sweetheart. I was no fan of his and i am no fan of the Iranian Regime. The question is do we want to into another american war . The last 20 years or so, we have been preoccupied. I am not convinced this is much different than what we experienced. What we are saying is we have a perpetual war that will never end and that is not acceptable to me and the majority of my colleagues. Host we will talk about that with our guests from the Foreign Affairs committee. Glenn, go ahead. It bothers me that i President Trump he has tried to do the best for america. Is allkeep remembering that the attacks president used, also remember the pallets of money sent to our and i think of all of soldiers coming home. From as far as a strategy this administration on iran, are you convinced there is one . Caller yes. There is a strategy of we are going to put pressure on you and , he even said it is a beautiful country and it can is going to continue to their shipping lanes, block everything they can and that he will constantly he is going to be there. Lauderdale, fort florida, on our not sure line. Go ahead. Special educator and i am hearing both sides. I am a nonpartisan. No Party Affiliation and some of the comments i am hearing from some of the other callers is starting to sway me to not supporting. My Biggest Issue is this and let me start by prefacing everything. I was a teacher at stoneman douglas, i have called before. I have a unique perspective on certain things. The president s action taking out soleimani . Not sure yet. Declare war belongs to congress and senate, not the president. I am a civics teacher as well and i teach this to my students. Do we have a right to take out people like soleimani . We should. He is a strict threat to the world. Was this strike necessary . We dont know because we dont have all the information, nor does the senate and congress. Host they both got briefings yesterday. Caller after the fact, though, and that is the problem. That is where i have a concern, whether or not this was smart. This what it wouldnt fall under article 2, powers of the president . Caller it does not. The war powers act, because he took out a highpowered military official who is the second in the nation without having a predetermined plan like every president before trump they are supposed to talk to senate and congress because there is more to be considered. The military goes after military attacks. They turn around and watch these guys and they get their information from the cia, fbi, and other intelligence agencies to find out who these people are, what they are doing, and whether we have the ability to take them out to preserve peace on a greater scale. Host that is kevin in fort lauderdale, florida. Lets hear from the House Majority whip yesterday on the briefings on the attempt or the killing of the iranian general. [video clip] i thought the briefing was secretary to have the secretary of state, secretary of defense and other intelligence officials walk through how long a history soleimani had of inflicting terror and murder not only to americans, but others, our allies in the region and the fact that he was plotting further attacks to kill americans made it clear it was time to take him out. The real question i would ask would be is the world a safer place without soleimani in it. Based on his own history as a terrorist, but also the things he was plotting against americans in the future. Yes, the world is a safer place with soleimani gone. The intelligence was laid out, not only why, but what the justification was. The president has the ability to take action against terrorists in iraq. President obama used that authority, which we supported. President trump used that authority to take out soleimani, and identified terrorist an identified terrorist. Very helpful to have this intelligence briefing. He clearly clearly a packed house. They came to hear the intelligence and ask their questions and i thought it was an informative briefing. Host two legislators will join us to talk about the briefing and other related issues. On our oppose line from alabama, james, good morning. Caller good morning, pedro. I dont agree with what the president has done because i have not heard of any in the net threat. Imminent threat. This president has separated parents from kids and everything and kicking everybody out of our country out of the United States. Fair is fair. If iraq does not want us over there, we should get the hell out of there. Host as far as the imminent threat, why do you not think that is the case . Caller i havent heard anything he has put out to make me agree or disagree because i havent heard anything about the imminent threat. Host david in alexandria, virginia, on our not sure line. You are next up. Caller i have a tendency to lean toward the disapproval side. The administration has not built diplomatic cabinets overseas. We have pushed away from our international friends. We have leveraged power to make moves we need to make and use a blunt object to do with things. How and when we did it was chosen poorly. Because we have limited diplomatic capabilities, we have the ability to plan a process or prepare for it ahead of time or understand the longterm ramifications of what has happened here. This administration keeps creating these same problems by relying on that hammer. That is not a smart policy. I dont think we have a policy other than that hammer we are left with. Goingdo you think that, back to iraq and afghanistan, applications of power in those two countries have produced anything substantial . Caller that has been difficult. With the cultural and religious , the middle east is a hard not to crack. Nut to crack. It is different with how people from the United States deal with things. It is very complex. We have seen some changes there. We have some approval. In line that makes it more difficult. Our dealings with saudi arabia, it is difficult. Where we have the hammer, we keep pushing away from our tipple medic tools. It has become more and more complicated. We will be left with fewer options and that does a great disservice to us in the long term. Host david closes out our first hour, talking about the recent days of iran. We will be joined by two legislators to talk about this and other issues. We will hear from ted yoho of florida. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs committee. Later on, also a member of that committee, greg meeks, a democrat from new york. Those conversations coming up. Sunday, on American History tv on cspan3, the 1999 interview with robert byrd. We have a great body for us. Is swornhich has testimony, already. It hasnt been crossexamined but it would be possible in my own mind for us to conduct a trial without having witnesses. Sunday on American History tv on cspan3. Our campaign 2020 live coverage continues today at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan two with President Donald Trump in toledo, ohio. And, on sunday at 3 00 p. M. On cspan. Watch live on cspan and cspan2, on demand at cspan. Org or listen on the go with the free cspan and radio app. Washington journal continues. Host this is ted yoho. He is a member of the Foreign Affairs commit he. Guest it is great to be here, pedro. Host what did you learn . Guest it was one of the best briefings we have had. I can say that by the amount of people that state and for the link they did. I cant go into the details length they stayed. I cant go into the details. It is classified. I felt better afterwards. We dont want a war with iran. We had an act and it was imminent. Host you cant talk specifics but as far as the idea of an imminent threat, can you offer anything you learned to make that case . Guest let me see how i can parse that. They have been collecting intelligence for quite a while. The better part of one year. It was escalating and getting to a point where it was imminent within the month of january. Host can you clarify further than that . Guest no. I dont want to go further than that. The things that were said, i cant go further than that. I feel comfortable with the emphasis that was put on there with the intelligence from the different agencies that did come forward. And the things they talked about that we knew something was getting ready to happen. It was a coordinated attack. Follow Qassem Soleimani and where he had gone, he had increased his travel rapidly to different areas. It looked like things were coming to a head. You are saying it was proportional in nature and necessary. Guest it absolutely was necessary. If you go back to bill clinton in the 90s and the book by robert patterson, bill clinton had an opportunity to either capture or eliminate Osama Bin Laden over 10 times. He chose not to. Had he done that, would there have been a 9 11 . That is not something you will ever be able to answer. Bush could have eliminated solel Qassem Soleimani. Obama could have. Neither one of them did. How may lives could have been saved. President trump absolutely acted appropriately. I am proud of the action that our forces did. How do you describe it as far as retaliation . Guest just to let us know that they retaliated. Did anything from the briefing convince you that more, similar attacks could take place . Guest if you listen to the comments, this was pretty much our response and it was going to back down from there. As hehope that this is did as he gets and it will slow down. And hopefully, we get to the negotiating table. President trump says i will meet anywhere, anytime, no preconditions. Host if that should happen, what should happen in a renegotiated deal that does not exist in the current form . Guest if you look at the jcpoa, i was there when we negotiated that with john kerry. That was a nonbinding agreement. It. Did not sign the ayatollah did not sign it. It was a nonbinding agreement. This is something in Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy that we have to get away from. To have our country bound by a president that the rest of the house or the senate does not way into, because it creates this kind of backlash. One of the things that was in there was the iaea was not allowed to inspect anywhere, anyplace, anytime. That was one of the biggest failures of that deal. They were Still Producing heavy water, beyond their capacity. Those are other things. We can go into more of that. Just those right there prevented them from getting a nuclear weapon. Host this is representative ted yoho with us. 202 7488000 four democrats. 202 7488001 for republicans. 202 7488002 for independence. Guest we want new war powers. We want that cleaned up. This is something from the 70s that was misconcocted. We have seen it abuse. The resolution coming up today resolution. It has to be voted on in the house. The democrats have the majority. It has to be voted on in the senate. There are several failures with it. One is, it is a nonbinding resolution. It is more of a messaging bill. If you read through that, it allows for our military to go after al qaeda and other things that are associated with al qaeda. It does not protect our diplomats. It does not protect american citizens. It says it will protect properties, territories, military assets and our military personnel. There are some failures in this. Than a messaging bill more anything else. At this point in time, when we have the angst and the tension in the middle east with iran and the United States, to saddle President Trump with a war powers resolution that says you have to come to us, i think it would send the wrong signal to iran. For that reason, we will not support it. Host if there is a change guest it is not just as president. Any future president , Congress Wants to give the authority to go to war to declare war back to congress where it needs to be. That got taken away back in the 70s. Host the war powers resolution, senators mike lee and rand paul would support a similar version in the senate. Mike lee says it was the worst briefing he has ever heard. How do you factor those in with what is going on then iran. . Guest they may have had a different briefing then we did. They were not in our room. If you look at the people who have been here, a lot of times ,hat you hear and dont hear this one was more entailed. I thought the answers were straightforward from what they could tell you. They are trying to find out if members can go in there and i look forward to seeing that. Host this is from tom. He starts us off with questions. He is in chicago, illinois on the democrats line. You are on with ted yoho, a republican from florida and a member of the Foreign Affairs committee. Caller thanks for your opinion. After hearing the stuff, my thisson was responsible terrorist guy, you mentioned his name. Anything. Id not say dont care what he is going to do. It is what he has done. General ana in iranian general in iraq. Everywhere he goes, stuff blows up. He was going to lead another attack that was in ghazi going to be another benghazi. Damnlee did not say a thing when obama dropped 26,000 bombs, when he overthrew libya. The gang of eight . Democrats inrust that room as far as you could throw them. Host let our guest respond. Guest i agree. When we went after Osama Bin Laden, we applauded president obama for doing that. It should have been done when we had chances earlier. Youwe waited on this, like said, there could have been another benghazi or 9 11. God forbid that happens again. President trump acted decisively. He acted like a leader and i think we are all better off for that. Host joe is next. He is in maine, on our independent line. Caller yes, ted. Guest yes, sir. Caller tell the americans how tvh you are paid to come to to lie to us. And i get paid nothing to come on tv. Caller say 174,000, correct . Host you have made that point. Caller the question is why is he lying to us . Takinge talking about care of people who kill americans . About the north koreans . Guest thanks for the question. North korea has to be dealt with. There are a lot of conflicts around the world. A lot of this is failed foreign policies from 10, 15, 20 or 30 years ago. This is why it is important that we get our Foreign Policy correct. So that we are not indebted from the nextistration to because of bad Foreign Policy. The jcpoa was a bad deal. The paris climate was a bad deal in that it strapped this nation, future generations on something that the president or Administration Says this is what we think is good but it is not voted on in the house and the senate. Sure ourve to make Foreign Policy is correct. If not, we will have this nonsense going on. It is time for america to lead. If you have good economic policies and trade policies, more importantly, you have Strong National security. As far as lying, i feel bad that you think everybody on tv or is a politician is lying. I feel bad for you. President announced more sanctions in iran, could they do more . Caller yes. Guest yes. Why is it just america sanctioning iran . We are Energy Independent in this nation. The oil embargo in 1979. We have been dealing with a radical group in iran since 1979. When is enough enough . We have to get this to a conclusion. We can pay down our debt and get some of the things we have to get under control here. China is our big threat. This is a distraction in the middle east. When President Trump called for nato to get involved, i thought that was a different strategy. I know those details have to be worked out about that. Host particularly with what he said about nato in the past, how does that factor in . Guest this is bad Foreign Policy that just builds up, year. When you get to a point where they are not paying their fair share, since President Trump has come in the office, nato has over 30 million. The most they have ever had. People realize they are writing and the president would not allow them to have that. If we can continue the and get other nations involved, putting sanctions on iran or north korea as joe brought up, it comes to a point where those countries have to respond and they can choose conflict or, they can say whats come to the table, lets negotiate and lets build prosperous economies for the people of our nation. Host julian is up next. You are on with representative ted yoho. Caller id like to know what your response is going to be when the hague files more crime charges for assassinating a foreign leader. Guest if they do that, all of the president s who have done that in the past, i dont think they will do that. Go back to Qassem Soleimanis track record. We know what he has done. He was building up, he ordered the attack on the embassy. How many people have died because of him . The ieds that have maimed the majority of our Service Members in afghanistan and iraq come from iran and they are under the direction of soleimani. You want to send some buddy like President Trump to the hague for war crimes when he limited a person that was doing terror around the world . I dont think it will stand and im not worried about it. Cyber threats, do you think that is a big concern . Guest no. I think that is a real concern and i appreciate you bringing that up because this nation does not have a policy for what a cyber is and what a response should be. We have a Cyber Response and deterrent act that will outline what an attack is and what a response would be. That is something this country needs to do. Especially as we get into the 5g networks that are coming out. Lets hope and pray that the United States and our Technology Companies are the ones leading that and not china. They took measures in selfdefense under article 51 of u. N. Chartering base. Guest this has come to a conclusion for this time. Let the sanctions work and lets renegotiate these things. You can see the people in a ran iran rising up as they do in 2009 did in 2009 because toxic there. Talkin we are seeing this in hong kong where depressive oppressive regimes are taking away the liberties of people. The iranian people are great people. We have some in the state of florida. Some great, productive members of society. That is what they want in iran. Why dont they have that, it is because of the ayatollahs that have been there for 40 plus years. Host we will hear from charles come on our independent line. Go ahead. Caller good morning. Guest good morning, charles. Caller i want to think you for your hard work in thank you for your work in congress. You went ahead and answered my question concerning cyber threats. That was what i was going to ask because, seriously, i was going to be concerned about the threat of cyber attacks. I would hate for them to hentai. Pt my han there is so much going on up here. We need to Pay Attention to things that are going to affect us as a nation. Not just right now, the timeliness of now but for future generations. Charles, i appreciate it. Say hi to your family in gainesville. Person tweeted why would he negotiate with iran. We have nothing left supporting us. Lee, iran, we pulled out of a deal that should never have been agreed to. It was not agreed to in the house. It was not agreed to in the senate. Over 400 people voted against this deal, republicans and democrats. That deal should never have been implemented. I dont want to rehash it being a bad deal. If you do policy right, it is something that will live beyond the president , as it should. Policy does not change with the wind or the tide. It is that stability so that our allies know where america is. They cant change the policy unless they go to both chambers of the house and we know how difficult that is. That is why it is important we get the correct policy. If we do that, this nation and the world will be safer. Our Foreign Policy has been so skinny or weak in the past 1520 thes, i will go back to last administration. It was very weak there. That has created so much with our allies. Preston trump has come in and he has been hard on nato. He has been hard on china and these other areas. You getrmath of that is a trade deal that is good. Those set up precedents for the future and we follow that and that will strengthen our relationship. We meet with foreign ambassadors all week long and we talk about these things. They say we understand that it is a new day in america and you guys have taken a strong stance. It has given them assurance. I think you will see better days ahead. Have you heard anything about the articles of impeachment being released to the senate . Guest no. I am not sure miss plosive wants them to go over there. I was against impeachment. You have heard all of the things out there. I think this was a disgrace and the service to the american to theand disservice American People and the constitution and i hope we never go down this road again. Jim jordan and others are making the president s case, do you think that is a necessary action . Nott if nancy pelosi does send the articles, it is not necessary. I would love to have jim jordan go over there. I think nancy pelosi has overplayed her hand and realizes what they have done has not worked. They cannot impeach him. She is obstructing congress right now. Should we impeach her . Maggie ineard from a orlando. Maggie in orlando, republican line, hi. Caller hello . Hi, mr. Yoho, you are doing a fabulous job. Guest you are so kind, maggie. Caller [laughter] think our president is doing a fabulous job. I wonder, is it possible to legislate Something Like no one over the age of 75, unless already in office, can run for office . I think these old people in their 78, 77 years of living have lost their minds. Guest im glad you did not ask me how old i was. I only have 10 years to go. I think that would be a restriction on free will. I think that is up to the voters to decide that. The federalistto papers by the founding fathers, we have term limits, we can illuminate people in congress or senate and it is called the elections. The house is supposed to be the most powerful branch of government and that is why they elections are every two years and every six years in the senate. This is where we have to have a well informed electorate so that they put the right people in or take them out of office when needed. I agree with you, there are some people that have been there a little too long and they may thing going on. L host this is marian from montana, saying i agree with President Trumps actions. With the sanctions, this is what needs to happen. If we put maximum pressure on their, we dont want to sanction anybody. Just a normal country and dont do the terrorist, the biggest states sponsor terrorism in the world. That does not fit into a normal, healthy world. If we can get them away from that and get the people of iran to stand up and support them by their electoral process, to where they go through and they vote and they get rid of it will be up to the people of iran to decide what form of government they want. It should be at the bottom up instead of a topdown nation of what kind of government you want. That go to the idea of nationbuilding . Guest no. I am against that. I dont think that is what our world should be. The role of the United States government should be to build stable governments that are in alignment with us. That should be done through trade deals. Our nations that are not quite there, it wont be as good. That country can change with their free will, not with us dictating. And have a incentivize. Deals heroor drake little trade deals. Host are just is retiring after serving four terms. Guest is retiring after serving four terms . Why . Said if serving four terms is good enough to washington, it is good enough for me. Host what was your greatest accomplishment . Guest staying married. No. I have a great relationship with my wife. We had a bill passed last gress called the bill that it is the biggest form to foreign aid in a good way in 30 years. Money into the usda for foot and mouth disease. That is a huge thing. If we had that disease in this country, it would be a big economic hit to our producers and exports of beef would stop today. Those are wins that we have had. We have had several other ones. It has been a great privilege in this. Tunity to be host biggest regret . Guest that we did not get more done. You come here to Fix Health Care or balance the budget. The Biggest Health care is appreciate i appreciate you bringing it up, our spending. Mandatory spending is one of those things that keeps growing and growing and growing and nobody wants to reform those programs. It is to make the programs where they are solvent for longterm, future generations. I biggest regret is the lack of political backbone of people wanting to reform these programs. You are a veterinarian by trade, are you going back to that . Guest i will always be a veterinarian. Host lets go to randy. Caller i wanted to start out with the incoherent Foreign Policy today of the Trump Administration and the art of the deal, it is just unfathomable that you would think this is comprehensive and you would think that is his this is in americas interest. You have been speaking for American People and the constitution, in which the Republican Party specs neither. This respects neither. This is what i am saying. When you say your policy today and trumps policy and foreign policies will benefit and your economic policies are going to benefit and we are stronger for it, everybody was be before this, eight, 10, 15 years down the pipe, the truth of the matter is that when bush went into iraq, the debt was 7 trillion. Guest right. Caller he put everything on the credit card from then on and through the Obama Administration, he was left with such a debt and overwhelming mess by george bush and the Republican Party that you people controlled his administration. The weakness in america is the american taliban, the Republican Party of the United States. Host that is randy from iowa. Guest i appreciate your input. I happen to disagree with you. If you look at the policies you are absolutely right. Those things went up under president obama. The debt did go up. They will go up under this president and the next one unless we deal with mandatory spending. Unless there is political willpower in congress to reform mandatory spending, this debt will go up. This, the interest on our debt is approaching 1 trillion. That is 3 of the gdp that is going to service debt. That is not buying new infrastructure. That is paying off debt. That is not a republican issue or a democratic issue. That is an American Issue where everyone going to washington ought to be challenged by the constituents on what they will do for spending. Law, if you are a telegraph editor in any town in america and cant find a job, you qualify for Social Security disability insurance. We dont have telegraph operators. If you are a baby seal killer, and cant find a job, you qualify. We put that in and people are like i am not sure i want to get on that when this is an election year. When you have politicians who are afraid to vote because of the next election, they dont need to be in washington. You arecare if republican or democrat, it is not President Trumps fault or president obama spoke, it is the American Peoples fault for sending people appear fault, it is the American Peoples fault for sending people up here that dont have a backbone. Host we will continue with Gregory Meeks. He will join us. Later on, and iranian studies director will talk about the relationship between the United States and iran. Tvthis weekend, book features three new nonfiction books. Saturday at seven a clock p. M. Eastern, National Constitution Center President and ceo, Jeffrey Rosen and Ruth Bader Ginsburg talk about his new book, conversations with our bj bg, herer life and r life and her career. To tell me the secret of a happy marriage. Bewas it helps sometimes to a little deaf. [laughter] that is advice i have followed in every workplace, including my current job. [laughter] at 9 00 eastern, breitbart. Com entertainment editor jerome hudson. Media andmainstream if its the political left in his book, 50 things they dont want you to know. It goes to the distrust you see in survey after survey. The American People dont trust the Mainstream Media is telling them the truth or the whole truth. Risenk that has led to the of new media. At 9 00 p. M. Eastern on afterwards, Peggy Ornstein discusses her book, boys and sex. Point has become the defective sex educator for a generation of young people because we dont talk to them as parents and we dont talk to them in school. Curiosity about sex is natural. Masturbation is natural and important. What is different for this generation is with the rise of the internet and the smartphone and the dropping of pay walls on rn sites, they can get a whole lot of things anybody wants and a whole lot of things that nobody wants at the touch of their phone. Watch book tv this weekend and every weekend on cspan two. Washington journal continues. Host Gregory Meeks joins us. A member of the Foreign Affairs committee. Good morning. Guest good morning. Host what did you gain from the briefings of iran . Guest not much. For the first time, maybe i agree with senator lee. There was very little of anything i did not already know. Day,ng the news of the there was no real information that was given out, other than a believe that there was threat to justice. I have lived that before. We have talked about the imminent threat in iraq with Saddam Hussein, which i voted no on because i have the opportunity to do some of my own investigation and to get in, at least at that time, i was able. O question individuals whether it was talking to other allies around the world, i came up with the determination that i should vote against the i war in iraq. The war in iraq. Here, we never had that opportunity. In iraq. Gainst the war here, i never had the opportunity. Seems to be moving back. There was an imminent threat, i said show me what the imminent threat was. That is what i thought we would learn. Based upon the information we received that i will not talk about in any specifics, but for me, host in a broad sense, nothing made that case. Guest nothing. Host did they offer a specific timeline or details . Guest to me, for them, it was just checking a box. That is something that was taken in a very serious manner. As a member of congress, i take my responsibility very seriously. The congress is a separate but equal branch of government. The oversight response abilities of the policies of the president. So, you come in and you know that there is 100 members of the senate and 435 members of the house. You tell us that they will only be there for an hour, to deal with these most important Foreign Affairs issues. Of that hour, 15 to 20 minutes of it is taken by presentations that they make. Members of congress do not have the real opportunities to ask the kind of questions that i think is important and necessary to have asked and answered by the administration. Top questions the in your mind . For me, i was standing on line to ask a question because the president said in his statement that he was going to go to nato. When you talk about iran and the threats of Qassem Soleimani to our european allies, i wanted to know who did the president talk to among our allies before the strike . Was there any conversation that was had before that . Was there anything that the tosident might have said know that he had met two days salmanith mohammad bin n. D Mohammed Binns i those are questions that i would like to have had the opportunity to find out. After the fact, because the president , throughout his administration i think it is a dangerous Foreign Policy when you ignore our allies and others. Then, after the fact, irrespective of what is important to them and how we can work collectively together as we were doing in the jcpoa and when you look at the fact that he was criticizing nato throughout his administration prior, he is going to try and say i will deal with nato. There is contradictions. I think hypocrisy that is going on. I wanted to address and ask those questions and get them answered. Host if you want to ask our guest questions, 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7488001 for republicans. Independents. For i want you to listen to what he said in the press conference and get your response to it. Hostilityp irans increased after the Iran Nuclear Deal was signed in 2013. Billion, given 150 not to mention 1. 8 billion in cash. Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they chanted death to america. They chanted death to america the day it was signed. They went on a spree funded by the money from the deal and created hell in yemen, syria, afghanistan and iraq. The missile fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tightened the rains on their own country. Even recently killing 1500 people at the many protests that are taking place all iran. Throughout iran. The jcpoa expires shortly, anyway. And gives iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakouts. Iran must abandon its Nuclear Ambitions and end its support for terrorism. Host representative meeks. Guest you know, i think that most of the American People are tired of this president. He keeps referring back to barack obama. It is obvious that we know what he has said about barack obama, even before he was president. Me being a new yorker, what he said, and i hate to bring it there, but about africanamericans period. But that is who he is. I am like nancy pelosi, i pray for the president , every day. His being athat narcissistic type of individual who believes this is the same person who said he did not need any intelligence from our Intelligence Agency. That he knew better than any of the generals. All of ouricized intelligence agencies. That is another reason why we need to know who said what, when, based upon that. Individuals who responsible to see whether or not iran was living up to the agreement, they were. This president came in with the mindset of making sure that he rolled back what barack obama did and put us in further danger. Are we safer now . As a result of the actions of the foreign policies of this president . The answer is no. He knows it. That is why he has to send more troops into iraq now. That is why our relationship with iraq and staying there is in jeopardy. Opportunitiese iraq has to gain Nuclear Weapons now is greater than it was when we had the agreement we were part of with the jcpoa. The fact of the matter is that this president s Foreign Policy has not made a safer. He has put us in greater danger. It has been a reckless escalation of hostilities that he has caused and have made us west safe. Host this is from bessemer city, north carolina. Mike, you are on with Gregory Meeks. Caller yes. I am a republican. Wasthing is, soleimani designated a terrorist by the Obama Administration. I dont know a whole lot about history but we tal took out yamamoto during world war ii. We shot him down in his plane. The only way to do it was telegraphs and telephones. Now, it is social media. You have people in your party, on the democrat side like omar who are, in my opinion, antiamerican and promuslim. Everybody sees it. When Sheila Jackson lee was talking about casualties, you could see omar in the back, laughing. Some people were doing some things, that is unamerican. Ok. guest you can be prois slim, projurors dust islam, h, ifewish, prosik someone happens to be a muslim and believe in islam, they are not antiamerican. If they happen to be christian, they are not antiamerican. We have a freedom of religion in this country and that is what is great about our country. Experiment that we know as americans. We have come along way as a country. That is why i love it so much because we have come back from times were individuals like myself did not have the right to vote. And we were enslaved. We have overcome that. That is why this is the greatest country in the world. To language that tries to separate us and tries to put us in scenarios where we were against of one another against one another because of what we believe. Talkr i like to impeachment. If you are a judge and you are working on a trial and your wife works for the defendant, should that judge recuse himself . Guest absolutely. I used to be a judge. Caller where does Mitch Mcconnell work . Guest he works in the administration. Caller dont you think that is a conflict of interest, if half of it is dependent on her employment with donald trump and she might be fired if there is a real trial, why hasnt any democrat in the house or any democrat in the senate or any of these reporters who are watching started a public, National Conversation about him recusing himself because of the conflict of interest of his wife and the income that is dependent on his wife staying employed with this president . He should recuse himself. He shouldoncur that recuse himself by his own statement and his own admission that he is going to work handinhand with the defendant in this case, the president of the United States. That says he is not going to be fair and impartial. As a judge or a juror should be. Each senator should stand and take the oath that they will be impartial. He has indicated he will not take that oath or violate that oath because he will have proceedings that he will work out with the defendants attorneys and the defendant, himself. He is advising the defendant what to do or what not to do. To be something that should automatically disqualify him. Nancy pelosi has been very clear and unambiguous about her position. She said the same thing to us what she said to the media. She wants Mitch Mcconnell to say what the rules of engagement will be before she sends over the articles of impeachment. Attorney onan any front, how would you go into an endeavor or trial without knowing what the rules are. . How can you prepare appropriately without knowing what the rules are . State what the rules are and we can move forward from there. Mcconnell is talking about what will we will go back to what happened with the clinton impeachment. That is like comparing oranges to apples. In the clinton impeachment, every witness had been heard, whether it was by depositions or if they had talked to the special prosecutor. This should be a trial for the truth. The truth means that anyone that has information, in regards to exculpatory orbe , we can get to the facts of the matter and not hide what the facts are. Host this was made argument was made on usa today. Whethereciding witnesses need to be called up to the house to present the evidence gathered by the house that justifies the impeachment. It is appropriate for the whether theydecide are needed to be heard from. Guest when you are prosecuting a case, we were setting up a grand jury. You dont have all of the grand jury. Thatave enough to sell there is probable cause that a crime was committed. And that the person accused committed the crime. You pass it on to a trial. In that case, you call all of the witnesses so that you can show what the facts were, in its two whether the person did or did not commit what they are accused of. We tried when we were doing the investigation on the house side, to get all of the witnesses in. There is one person that prevented it from happening. That is the president of the United States america. He hit andd kept documents. He told individuals that they cannot testify. There is one person that is blocking and trying to prevent evidence from being utilized so that we can get to what the facts are in the case. That is the president of the United States. If we want to get to the truth of the matter, we have to wea ther it. We should have those documents. , we know whatar he is trying to do. He does not want the facts to go out. He wants mcconnell to do a kangaroo court. Vindicated say i was. There is no indication without facts. If he wants to be vindicated, he should give up the facts. Allow individuals who were on the phone call, let them testify. Then we can get to the facts. If he is innocent, he is innocent. Host from red oak, texas, democrat line, david. Caller thank you. Representative meeks, i want to thank you for taking your overall duties seriously. I would say for the republican counterpart that called earlier, admirable admiral mia miyamoto was killed during war. Soleimani was not killed during war. When people are discussing whether or not the world is safer because he is not here, that may be true. How he was killed brings the world posted to war because he was the head of state and he was the general and he became a celebrity figurehead in that country because the United States illegally entered the war offraq in 2000 three, based of lies. Whenever your government 2003, based off of lies. Whenever your government says you should trust them blindly, you cant. Congress, wes to went into iraq illegally based off of alive. If the administration continues that overall projection and that overall course, we are going to continue to get into a much greater war. That is going to be world war iii. Iran has outmaneuvered the United States by having its overall strike against the United States. Host we will leave it there. We will let our guest respond to that. Guest i agree with him. We are not safer. We are closer to war. He has managed to unite them, now. Ouras alienated more of allies in that regard. Are we safer now . No. Are we closer to war now then we have been, yes. I agree with the caller. Republicanmaine, the line, we will hear from joe. Go ahead. Caller good morning, pedro. Am of republican that clown from florida. Host he is gone now. Youre on with greg meeks. Caller i know who i am on with. What we are getting from this gentleman is the truth, not the crap from the gentleman you heard from before. You know why i am never going to vote republican again . I have been lied to, repeatedly. Why would you believe someone who has lied to you a thousand times . His speech yesterday was full of lies. Isis is not, not 100 eliminated. Being lied to. I am sick of Mitch Mcconnell, who is a complete clown. Mr. Meeks, will you explain to the people how Mitch Mcconnell is trying to set up a Kentucky Company for uranium with the russians, could you explain that story to the American People, how he was trying to work with people who were sanctioned . Host ok. Guest i would say that i have severe differences with mcconnell. I think he should not be acting as the president s attorney. We talk about other governments where they are working in lockstep with the head of state, with no dissension. I think that is wrong. I think that the same thing is here. You find that individuals who the president is lying will try to cover up for him. I think the senators know who this president is. They told us. If you listen to the remarks and rollback the videotape and get the remarks of senator lindsey mark your ms are senator marco rubio, of senator , of senator mitt romney. They were telling the truth. They said donald trump was a con man. They said he was the worst thing for the Republican Party. That he was a racist. They said that he was an egomaniac. These are not words coming from me or democrats. This is before the democrats said anything about him. These are the words of republican senators, telling us, the American People, who the president of the United States is. I take them at their word. Host the war powers resolution, what is the value of it . Guest i think it is significantly important because, it is as the constitution says, when you talk about going to war and the declaration of war and power, congress should have that power. We should stand up and we should be fighting to make sure that we maintain the power that the constitution has given us. So, i wanted to do that under the Obama Administration. This is not something that is just democratic or republican. Isis something that i think responsible and most important for me as a member of congress. Yes, the most difficult decision that a member of congress has, definitely for me, is to determine whether or not we agree to send our men and women into a situation where they would be in harms way. That comes with the job. I dont want to give that up to the president or anyone else. I need to take my job seriously and that responsibility. What i took my oath of office four. That is what this bill is about today. Congress taking the sponsor really and saying we want the constitution to be upheld. We will limit the powers so that we dont have a dictator and have the checks and balances intended by our founding fathers. Host what makes the assassination and active war as opposed to something that falls under the powers of the commanderinchief . Guest i think there is a fallacy in their argument. They were trying to find a justification. Under this current act of which soleimanioving in, was part of the Saddam Hussein regime, that is what they said strike. Fy the you try to say to justify it that it was an imminent threat and there has been no evidence produced that could convince me or others. Therefore, it is almost a declaration of war by taking out someone else that was in the administration in the manner that we did. That is why dont democrat no democrat or republican president prior did that. That is why it is a reckless and irresponsible act done by the president of the unite states without the forethought of what takes place thereafter or in the years to come. Host in arlington, maliki, go ahead. Caller it is almost laughable that people on the right will be calling soleimani iteris. They have mentioned names like Colin Kaepernick and black lives leaders ofesta hatred. Also, this president for the last three years has gone on a diatribe on how the Intelligence Agency cannot be trusted and how they were part of a deep state coup and how they are not to be leave. Now, the same people are supposed to give credible toormation about a threat justify his assassination of soli money. Soleimani. Believe that his i dont believe this administration or anything coming out of Donald Trumps mouth. I will take your remarks. Is clear, hes right. Washington post, they have already assessed that this president has lied over 15,000 times. Those are facts. Dont get confused by the facts, i guess. Those are the facts. The facts are that this president , when he talked about charlottesville, he said there were good people on both sides. Those are facts. This president said that barack obama wasnt born in the United States. Those are facts. The president said that nato, we should get rid of nato. Nato is not what it should be, etc. Those are facts. The president it seems has been koreans. By the north those are facts. Russia, he does not hold them accountable for anything because even if you look at this struggle in the middle east right now, talking about iran, he beats up on our allies in says what they are not doing, but russia is the one that still buys oil from iran. He meets with the russians all the time. Never is that phrased as anything hardline with them. When you talk about those who are not our allies, he seemed to be much more friendly with them and working in a cooperative spirit than he does with our allies. Those are facts that, you know, the American People i hope look at. That is just what it is. Im not looking it up. Making itng it up. Im just saying it as it is. Host thank you for your time. Will talk about actions in iraq and the president s strategy, the things that were laid out in the conference yesterday, the reaction to it, for the next 15 to 20 minutes or so. You can call on the line, if you support these actions, 202 7488000. If you oppose them, 202 7488001. If you are not sure, 202 7488002 is the number to call. We will take those calls when washington journal continues. The house will be in order. For 40 years cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country so that you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Washington journal continues. For 15 minutes or so we will take your comments about what came out yesterday regarding iran and away going forward. You can make your comments at 202 7488000 for democrats, im sorry, 202 7488000 if you support these actions. 202 7488001 if you oppose them. 202 7488002 if you are not sure about the action. Here is a little bit from that press conference. You can see the whole thing online at our website. For a little bit from yesterday, heres President Trump. [video clip] irans hostility substantially increased after the foolish nuclear deal was signed in 2013. They were given 150 billion, not to mention 1. 8 billion in cash. Instead of saying thank you to the United States, they chanted that to america. Death tothey chanted america the day the agreement was signed. Then iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from in deal and created hell yemen, syria, lebanon, afghanistan, and direct. The missiles fired at us last night and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration. The regime also greatly tightened the reins on their own killing even recently 1500 people at the many protests that are taking place all throughout iran. Jcpoa expirestive shortly anyway. And it gives iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout. Must abandon its Nuclear Ambitions and end its support for terrorism. In the new york times, a little bit from behind the scenes leading to the decisions regarding iran. Earing on a video speaking video screen, gina haspel monitoring the crisis from Northern Virginia in the days sfore general soleimani death. She had advised President Trump that his threat was greater than that of the iranian response. Indeed, she predicted most likely the response would be missile strikes from iran to troops wereamerican deployed, the very situation that appeared to be playing out tuesday afternoon. Though she took no formal position about whether to kill general soleimani, officials listening to her believed that the cia thought it would it improve, not weaken security in the middle east. The idea of strategy from the administration when it comes to iran, your thoughts on that. When it comes to our support line in woodbridge, virginia, george, go ahead. Caller i dont know if anyone remembers when cut off he, tortured that assassinated. He was a head of state. The u. S. Helped the french to get that done. Soleimani, identified as a terrorist today, nobody cares about the embassies being attacked and the u. S. Citizens who have been killed. We are talking about soleimani as if he was a u. S. Citizen hero. He was not a hero. He has american blood on his hands. My life i cant hear any politician commenting about the american who got killed at the embassy. Ok, we will hear from rich in centreville, virginia, on the line for not sure. Good morning, rich. Good morning, how are you. One question, one comment. I would ask you guys to look into this, too. The decisionmaking process, why did they give him a bunch of options and than this one, the one that was most critical, he picked. I dont understand that. I heard a news report about that the other day. If you guys to look into that . Or have somebody who was a part of the situation room, how this whole thing was brought to him. I dont understand that. The previoust that caller mentioned, to. Too this guy that they killed, this americans that were maimed and wounded, does that mean that the Previous Administration didnt do anything about this and those folks were just Collateral Damage . What he didi think was right, im just not sure about the process and im not sure why obama and bush before him took it upon themselves to determine that a marine, or a soldier could get blown up and the sky could still walk the planet. Lets hear from emmett. Louisiana, on the oppose line. Caller it was the wrong thing to do. What goes around, comes around. Host why was it the wrong thing to do . You cant just go around blowing people up, you know what im saying . Its just not right. I mean, we go around hitting people, they start hitting us, you know what im saying . Trump can be got, too. Enough is enough. Host olympia, washington. Caller high. Im just, im proud that they are finally doing something. Its not just trump. President trump. Its his generals. His generals make the decision. , im just proud to be american. Host when you say finally doing something, what do you mean by that . Caller i mean we have a president and his generals who will do something. Its not just trump. But ultimately the president makes the decision. Caller thats right. But it takes a lot of people to bring the information to him for him to make the decision. Hear from austin, texas, on the line for those who are not sure. I think the problem is the American People. The American People elected out of the politicians and they are of theressing the core problem. The core of the problem is oil. Eastl, if the middle doesnt have oil, none of these problems happen. Guestwe heard a previous say that that wasnt an issue because we are becoming more Energy Independent. But still, the only reason we have these problems is because we are protecting the oil company. Transiting that oil out of the middle east. Host from jason, alabama, on the oppose line. Caller the idea that this itsident would replace negotiations with tweets and citizens cosign on that, its the most ridiculous thing in the history of the country, i believe. So, first off, i think we need to get that straight. Tweets are not policy. Especially at 5 00 in the morning, you are waking up and in between insults to don lemon and lebron james host ultimately, what does that mean about the lebron that irans strategy . He has no strategy, just like we saw in north korea and in china. With north korea it was lunch and love letters. H china it was twee speed tweets. In iran he pulled out of an agreement with other countries where they were complying. He substitutes that with insults and demeaning comments about iran and their leadership. Now, when they respond or do something he doesnt like, all trying ton now he is stand up to them . No, he provoked them all the way along. The moment that he pulled out of the iran deal that they were complying with and started doing what they agreed not to do, he was upset. Do notublicans and trump have a strategy, do not have a plan, and it shows every day in the twitter feed. They usually do polling on domestic issues, new polls taking a look at international issues, particularly the view of the president worldwide, saying that wednesdays poll found that the people in 32 countries, 29 of those expressed confidence in President Trump. 64 said they lacked confidence in the white house occupants. Standing in contrast to the final years of president obama, where a median of 64 expressed confidence in the trump predecessor, directing americas role in the world in a positive manner. They last conducted that survey in 2017. Robert, support line. Connecticut, hello. , i support donald trump. He does all the right things. Why was this instance right when it comes to iran . To tell you the truth, the guy has been an International Criminal for many years. , someoneto happen needed to stop it. Work to stop of International Criminal. You cant let him fly around the world, threatening and harming people. We have enough crime as it is in our own country that no one stops. Or a lackk of crime of discipline. Its just donald trump did the right thing. Thats the bottom line. Ok, emily, ashburn, virginia. For the line for those who are not sure. Good morning. Good morning, pedro. I guess the thing that is concerning to me is how polarized we are as a country. The complexity of the geopolitical landscape, our military has already been really overextended for the past, in my opinion, past several years. I think that there are threats, there are many threats. Country, to as a put ourselves in this position, it seems like that we should feel united and feel a sense of confidence moving forward whether or not something actually i mean sometimes it takes hindsight to know if something was the correct decision or not. I would like to think, i wish that i could feel like ok, there is some special information that we dont know about. That led to this action. There may or may not have been. But its hard, its concerning to me, i guess, that we are definitely not united as a country to begin with. And we have a lot of problems to deal with and, really, a finite amount of resources to deal with those problems. Of course, the military are doing a great job. But its exhausting to go from one conflict to another conflict. Ok. one more call. Crystal is in tennessee, a supporter. Good morning. Caller i find it amazing that know whaters want to trump knows. They are not entitled to that. Pelosi should not be entitled to that. Excuse me . Host i didnt say anything. Caller sorry. As far as President Trump provoking everyone, its insane that everyone has amnesia every day with the media. They have theat embassies. They forgot that trump has shown a great amount of restraint with north korea. With libya. With iran now. And he shows it every time. That whenever he was working with turkey and the turks, you know the left was just going no, no, no. Now that he wants to, that hes backing down, that he wanted this fight. No, he did not want this fight. They want the fight so that they can charge them with some kind of war crime or some other bs. Thats the only thing they want to do. Ok, crystal, tennessee, last call on this topic. Joining us from california right now, abbas milani, iranian professor. Udies thanks for joining us. Guest thank you for having me. Host what is the best way to view iran after the last couple of days . A shock in just had having its second person in that countries political structure , a country that was friendly to the United States. Leadership in iran feels rather strengthened by the show of emotion, the rather remarkable itw of emotion, given that was fueled and fanned by the regime, i think it was a rare and remarkable show of grief by the people of iran in favor of this general who, too many people in the United States and syria, lebanon, might have been the instigator of a lot of mayhem. To some in iran, he was a general. The regime feels strengthened. The democrats, the iranian thecrats who were fighting regime a few days before this, a few months before this, its probably the biggest demonstration against this regime ever in 40 years. The regime had to kill upwards of 1000 people, 10,000 people. They felt very threatened. Now i think they feel strengthened by this show of the now that the democrats have pulled their punch. My sense is that the demonstrations will come back, they are the results of rather remarkably bad economic situations, corruption, and cronyism. But so far right now, the regime is more powerful than it was 10 days ago. That mean, then, for the United States . Guest it means i dont think that the decision to kill soleimani was not thought through. Ramifications,al killing the official of another government i know the United States declared him to be a terrorist, but the parliament of iran Just Announced that the entire pentagon is a terrorist organization. They declared the entire u. S. Military to be a terrorist organization. It clearly doesnt give them the right to do any of this. The Iranian Parliament is a tool , otherSupreme Leader countries have serious parliaments. But im saying that if the rule hold, we going to cant make these kinds of judgments. Clearly had a lot of blood on his hand, i have no doubt. A lot of evidence of that. And he made it abundantly clear that his basic job in the world is to organize religious fervor in the middle east against the United States and, secondarily, against israel. He made no qualms about this. The question isnt was he a good guy and the United States shouldnt have taken him out. The question is, first of all, how do you go after somebody, what are the costs and consequences. Look at what has happened in iraq and their relationship with the United States. The United States has spent 2 trillion on this government to replace Saddam Hussein. A shiite majority in the government that voted to ask the that weretes forces essentially substantially responsible for this government staying power in the face of isis to leave iraq. These would have been i think protectable consequences if someone had asked me to go after soleimani in iraq, what would happen. I would have said many of these things would have happened. What happens now to the force in the arms that they supported in light of the new guest the soleimani deputy was appointed almost 24 hours after his death. He has been involved in many of the shenanigans. He was actually the person who helped organize the tens of thousands of afghan shiites and sent them to the area. I just saw tate of a very brave afghan woman, member of parliament, who said that soleimani since shiites into battle, 5500 have been killed. He was the commander, the person that organized it, might as well have been him who was defeated. I think they are going to go about their business, the thesess of creating proxies and using them against israel in the United States. Thate lacks the charisma soleimani had. He had a unique relationship with the Supreme Leader. Directly reporting to him. It was a very clear and affectionate relationship. Go back and look at the pictures. Nobody else i think in the leadership with whom he felt as close. Whose judgment he trusted. They are going to continue their work but it wont be as effective, i think, as it was, because of the personal aspect. Again, the Parliament Just yesterday increased the budget for the brigade to the tune of 200 million euros. But increased budget isnt going to mean that is all it takes. They have crossed some of their ability because of the personal contacts and personal relationships. Is viewed asimani a martyr, the set increase the potential for intensified attacks . Does that increase the potential for intensified attacks . Guest i would be surprised if it does anything other than what the Supreme Leader suggested. Was the executor of this policy, the architect of the policy was and still is khamenei. He has been the personal, direct. Ink, long before soleimani the head of has below in lebanon, saying that the dearest contact there was ayatollah khomeini. E is still in place while the effectiveness of the execution might have been diminished, the person in charge of this policy is in place. He has now decided, i think, that making that symbolic gesture of an attack on u. S. Bases, allowing the u. S. To know about it, intelligence picking up throughout it and evacuating as the decision to make symbolic gesture of revenge and then pulled out. Wisely, mr. Trump has decided to do the same. To begin to move on a process of deescalation. Our guest is the Stanford University codirector of the iran america project. If you want to ask them questions, 202 7488000 for democrats. 202 7488001 four republicans. For independents, 202 7488002. Before we take calls, you were in iran until 1986. What happened to bring you to the United States . Guest the atmosphere at the used university where i used to teach. The iranian leadership is almost all men, these gentlemen, women were deprived of top positions though they are 65 of college graduates. They decided to actually purge the university. They purged 40 of us from the faculty of 45. They brought me back after a year of throwing me out. Eventually they said you cant teach. I love teaching, i love my work. I realized i cant stay there anymore. Things were becoming increasingly fraught for my son, who was beginning to realize that this is a country in war. Remember, that was the time when Saddam Hussein in his brutality was attacking to run every night with missiles. I began to sense that my son was no recognizing the terror raining from the skies overnight. I decided to leave and have been here since. Our first call for you comes from the line for democrats. Terry, go ahead. Good morning. My question has to do with irans response to the assassination of soleimani. It appears that they were not goaded into doing something more than what they did. I say that as a naive person, but someone who does set common sense. We, the United States, the president of the United States is undergoing impeachment. His more would boost position to his base and to perhaps others than a war . The fact that they did respond in kind in a way that i think the president wanted kind of deterred the whole process of the United States taking another , thathat would be more would be more. Ill do respect to the president , he does seem to be somewhat narcissistic and megalomaniacal. He is somewhat of a dilettante. The fact that iran did not do made the more kind of president have to pivot. Take that andill let our guest respond. First of all, im not sure that the assumption in your question is right. I dont think that if the United States engages in a full regional war in the middle east, which is going to be a major human military and Economic Disaster for everyone, i dont think thats going to help him with his base. Part of what got him elected is the fact that he has been consistent on one thing. He wants the u. S. Out of these middle eastern wars, which he thinks are futile. He says we have spent 3 billion. Im not sure that that is correct. It is an old adage that foreign wars always keep the busy minds busy. Certainly, american politics right now is giddy with impeachment, polarization. One of your callers referred to it. Iranou are right, i think did show restraint in the reaction that it had. But you have to realize, the iranian economy, the iranian society, as i indicated, is very fragile. The iranian economy is very much ailing from corruption, incompetence, and added to that are one of the most remarkable and difficult set of sanctions that the Trump Administration has put on them. It has exacerbated an already exacerbated economy. Khamenei made the gesture, his base have been clamoring for revenge. On the other hand, he knew that if he attacked and killed u. S. , for example if you attacked a u. S. Base remember, he attacked and iraqi base that have u. S. Personnel. They could have hit one in bahrain. It is almost as close to them geographically as the space was. Then he would have awful war on his hands. He knew. All of the bombast, as some of you might have heard, if you attack us again we will take out , all of that i think is bombast. They knew that if they hit a u. S. Base, there would be full war. They didnt want a full war and i still dont believe that President Trump wants a full war. Host pittsburgh, kansas. Good morning. Caller good morning. We are not all ignoramuses here in the u. S. 26 years of the rule of the shot, enforced by some rock, trained by the cia and mossad in torture techniques. You know, a country like that, of course they only us but thats the only escape from that was in the mosques. You end up with a movement that is largely islamic. And when khamenei emerged, he was a deft politician who made sure that all the secular resistance was destroyed and we ended up with the islamic state. U. S. Is notw, the all powerful, either. The u. S. Has hollowed itself out in the last 40 years. We dont make hardly anything anymore. China is clearly the rising power. The israelis have an undue amount of influence over what goes on in the u. S. And trump is a tool of the israelis. Host on the topic of iran . That iran cannk come out of this positively . To say that iran is not democratic, clearly. The United States may not be democratic, its only barely democratic with similar pressures put against it. Host thank you, color. Guest you are absolutely right. The relationship doesnt actually begin and 53, though for 53 it is for many iranians is a pivotal moment. The u. S. , along with england, in the overthrow of the democratically elected and popular Prime Minister. Of course, recent declassified documents that have come from the United States detail the making it much. , more complicated, the situation, then it just being a cia coup. The caller is absolutely right. Think that the majority of the iranian people today are driven by that animus. That is what the Iranian Regime wants the world to think. In the shoeourself of an american, for example, who doesnt have a priority position , the average american would say that iranians responded by taking american diplomats hostage for 444 days. Iranians responded by helping soleimani organize Iraqi Shiites against u. S. Forces in iraq. That the majority of iranians are not driven by this kind of calculus. They, too, like the great majority of americans, arent ignorant. They know. And i think the way out of this mess is for iran to have a democratic government. People want to have a democratic government. The poll that was done inside of her run, not the kind of pull that you get from americans who ask iranians what they think. That every iranian knows that the phones and ron are all caps. But the phones the polls that were done inside of her run, less than 10 of the people are happy with the status quo. Those demonstrations came a year and a half after another round of demonstrations. The people in iran want change. The people in iran want to make the change themselves. They want to be the masters of their own sovereign domain. If the United States has a policy, i think, that helps the democratic process without interfering, without deciding who the next successor is supposed to be, it can help. To me the only way we will have peace in the middle east, the leeway we will have an iran that is lawabiding is for the iranian people to take over. I think that you were right to say the 1979 revolution was not supposed to create theocratic despotism. It was supposed to be a democratic movement. I have written about this. I have written a book on the shaw that describes this process in detail. Because of the strength of the religious network in iran, deafness, khameneis as suggested, he eliminated it all. People still want that democratic secular society, where man and woman are equal. Where a jew, a christian, and iranian, an infidel, they have the rights of citizenship. For iran doesnt engage in terrorism. I think that is what the majority of the iranian people want. To me that is the hope. Anything that delays the process is to the detriment of the region and the United States. Host we have a viewer on twitter saying that this guarantees iran develops a nuclear weapon. Is that a reality . Guest they have made two moves in the stretching. They are no longer abiding by the deal signed by the Obama Administration, the trump called the worst deal in history, it had flaws but i had critical support for it. I said that this is better than anything else out there. Iran withdrew from that and said that we are going to enrich uranium. Iran also is in the process of making a decision, maybe, to withdraw from nonproliferation treaties. Introduced to the parliament yesterday. To give you, again, a sense of shiftedian politics has , the person that introduced the bill had been seen as a moderate critic of the regime. He was the person that had most , ton criticized policies the extent that criticism is allowed in the parliament. He has now introduced a bill to have iran withdraw from mpt. Is it likely that they will go running towards the bomb . I dont think thats impossible to predict. I think they might be very well tempted. There were people in a run long before this, long before the hit on soleimani, from within the regime who said that if we had to bomb, the United States would be treating us the way it is treating north korea. Remember, north korea had several bombs. In the last few years, the last three or four years of the Trump Administration north korea has behaved at times very aggressively. They have not stopped their nuclear program. I am almost verbatim quoting papers in iran. They said that if we, too, had developed a bomb, they wouldnt be making these threats to us, treating us the way they treat north korea. So, any discrepancy that exists, and there are discrepancies that exist between the u. S. Treatment of north korea and the u. S. Treatment of iran is being used in a run by radical elements to say we should go the north korea away. There is evidence in the past to suggest that khamenei, the Supreme Leader, who has traveled to north korea, one of the few places he has traveled to, said that this is not a bad way to run a country. There is a proclivity to become a north korea when these demonstrations happened. Of theut down 95 internet. In other words they became almost as close to an isolated country behind the digital iron curtain as north korea was. So, these problems, i think, need to be considered when any decision is made about iran. Host missouri, democratic line. High. thank you for taking my call. I cant hear anything. Host you are on with our guest. Go ahead with the question or comment. Caller the comment is that we are giving the president too much credit for having a strategy for what hes doing. ,very country, iranian also they want democracy. Everybody wants freedom of speech. Freedom to go and come as they please. People who say they voted for the president , his constituents, who think that he is the leader of the free world when his Previous Administration, eqs referring to, tried to bring world peace by helping other countries. He tried to make our allies stronger and tried to show our adversaries that he could be fair and we would have a world of peace now. The people who still say, which i dont think the majority of americans are for trump. I dont even think its 20 . But whats coming on the air, and im listening to this man speak of a democracy in iran and america, all over the world, which we want world peace. We dont want a war. Leave it there. To the idea of potential democracy in iran, what was that around the religious hold in the country . I think it would take a to aition from this regime more democratic iran. This transition is not easy. Because, i think, of three factors. This is a brutal regime that still has the power to do violence against its people, as they showed. Killing upwards of 1000 people, thats not a joke. 10 days, 10,000 people would live bullets. People that were just demonstrating for economic grievances. The second is that they still have some base of support. This regime i think has only 10 that are satisfied with the status quo. Thats a very dedicated 10 . A 10 that is gaining economically anonymously from this regime. This is the 10 living lives of luxury beyond their wildest dreams. They are not quite a give up easily. Third, the reason the transition to democracy is going to be a little more difficult is iran is not in a vacuum. Iran is now befriending china. Iran is befriending russia. Iran just organized a joint Naval Operation for the First Time Ever in history in the persian gulf with china and with russia. Iran has just released a naval base in the persian gulf to russia. Navyinvited the chinese into the persian gulf. Very soon you are going to have Chinese Naval ships, Russian Naval ships, u. S. Naval ships, British Naval ships, Japanese Naval ships, all in the persian gulf. What is common between china, russia, and iran is that these authoritarian regimes that despise their leadership, despise democracy, the communist party of china, mr. Putin, mr. Khamenei have. Tried to create a digital iron curtain. Iran is ray much moving that direction. The people have difficult mountains to climb very much moving in that direction. They keep having people go to prison. They keep having people that leave the country in desperation. Iran is the number one country in the brain drain. The number one country whose best and brightest leave the country. Was ans ago there unfortunate crash of a ukrainian airliner. 71 iranians died in it. Whoe were several people were the top mathematicians, top computer scientists in the country that were going to , or had that in canada. Embedded in canada. Had been in canada. Host linda, king of prussia. Caller hello, can you hear me . Host we can hear you, go ahead. Caller very good. Professor, i have respect for you. Im a little bit worried about your safety. Verymy relatives, you are brave, leaving your country of origin, i support you. I support and am learning so much today from your perspective. You give this topic credibility because of your living in a run ran. Is it true that President Trump, and sense, accused president obama of giving iran billions of dollars . I think you may have twisted the truth of it. Is it true that the u. S. Did go iran billions of dollars . What is your opinion on president obama put paying the money back . There is some discrepancy on how much money was given to a run. President trump talking about 150 billion. There is some discrepancy on how much money was given to iran. Is talking about 150 billion. But there was a large sum that was owed to iran. It was owed and was a part of the agreement. The president also talks about 1. 4 billion in cash transferred to iran. It was a precondition for the signing of the agreement. Iran demanded that some of its debt should be repaid. It was interest that the United States owed. To have that money in cash on a plane was bad optics, i think. But it was money that was owed. I think that in that sense, to say that they shouldnt have given the money, thats a difficult question. They say, and i think again the Trump Administration is right, iran used most of that money not to alleviate the suffering of the iranian people. They used most of the money, the parts that they didnt steal, they used it to strengthen has below. They use it to fight in syria. Where i have a problem with that narrative, the Trump Administration, they keep pointing to that and isolating that from the more serious problem. The Obama Administration came centrifugesd 19,000 churning. They had 10,000 kilos of enriched uranium. Had a heavy water reactor in a rack that was working. By all accounts, iran was between six months 12 months away from having the bomb. The Obama Administration decided that that was the most urgent problem. They had to stop the bomb. If they didnt, i would not be surprised if israel would have decided to take on iran and tried to destroy the nuclear sites, which would have gotten us into a very serious confrontation. Made the decision, they decided to put all of the pressure, all of the possibilities and trying to reach that deal. In my view, trying to reach the deal on the issue. In my view having the deal was a good decision, but i think it was wrong to leave some things out. Wrong to have no discussion of the Iranian Missile program. You could absolutely predict that this was going to become a problem. It was wrong not to have the issue of human rights on the table. It was wrong not to have the role of iran in the region on the table. Those who negotiated the deal, i have heard from them repeatedly. Some of them have come to stanford. I have had the pleasure of conversing with them at stanford. They said they thought they couldnt do all of this. That the most important thing was no deal and they wanted to have it done. So, the notion that they gave money to go back to your question, i think thats true. The amount of money is subject to question. Was it tens of billions . Absolutely. 1. 1 4 billion . I figure was. Think it was. But it was part of a deal that all the whole was pushing back the Iranian Nuclear deal to a far, far more difficult place for them to break out. Host for our guest, abbas milani of Stanford University, we will hear from jason, independent line. Go ahead. Caller first, im grateful to speak with you, professor. Iran know people of that north korea is the most militarized border in the world before they go rushing to a bomb. Some people like to think that 4dplays for d chess chess. From hisot advice military commanders. What do you think the conclusion or result would be if thats u. S. Withdrew from iraq . Do you think that iran would create a proxy state, not just militias . Or do you think that the region might settle down . Guest i think that if u. S. Forces withdraw, we have to conclude that United States gave iraq to iran twice. First when the u. S. Attacked a rock and didnt have enough planning for what would happen afterwards. Iran very easily filled in the vacuum. Almost every Prime Minister that has ruled it a rack iraq since the death of Saddam Hussein has been a close ally of iran. Many of them have lived in iran as political exiles. To 1988ined from 1980 on the case, the 10,000 shiite radicals immediately went back. They have created an Enormous Network of influence. Its an interesting set of documents that they found about how intensive the iranian influence was and is on the iraqi government. But iran overplayed its hand. Overplayedleimani the shiite sectarianism. Just weeks before the attack on soleimani, iraqi politics was being absolutely turned topsyturvy because of in shiite beliefs against iran. This is one of the most respected ayatollahs in iraq who issued these statements that iranclearly meant to tell to stay out of iraqi politics. There are reports that at one point he demanded that soleimani leave iraq. Iranian diplomatic posts were burned by demonstrators. Many of them shiite demonstrators. All of that changed. , and if influence now rack is left to its own devices iraq is left to its own devices, it will be a furthering of influence. First and foremost by iran, which already has a deep and existing network of influence. And then the defeated but not read isis. I would not be surprised if u. S. Military leaves, and the military as we know has already isis infighting against order to brace for what they thought might be an iranian counterattack, isis would be the beneficiary. The narrative has changed. The parliament voted not to ask iran to leave, but asked in a nonbinding resolution. Symbolically, its important. Host mike, california, go ahead. Caller good morning, gentlemen. Quote a former american president , john quincy adams, who said that america does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well of freedom and independence of all, a champion and a vindicator only of her own. President reagan actually implemented this regarding apartheid in south africa. The most Popular Television program in apartheid south africa at the time, almost all tv sets were owned by White South Africans, was the cosby show. What happened there i think was something very subversive. The cosby show, with the extraordinary humanity of the players and that got through the heads of the White South African majority that these are human beings. Host we are running out of time. Can you make your point or question or comment for the guest, please . Sure, do you think this is applicable to iran . Guest absolutely, i think it is very applicable. What i said, the United States should help the democratic process, one thing i have always suggested is precisely that. The United States has a lot of appeal to iran. U. S. Culture has, universities have. Ironically, many of the children of irans rulers are now living in the United States, going to school in the United States. The United States has a great deal to precisely do in that sense. To offer in that sense. The persian voice in america has not been as effective as other channels, like iran international, which took over that audience share. But that was part of it. Travel of iranians to the United States is i think counterproductive. When the u. S. Was fighting a larger war with the soviet union, or even castro, dissidents could easily come to the United States. Its one of the only ways to get permanent records in the United States. Getting a visa was a foregone conclusion. At stanford, they have not been able to get a dissident give a talk since the ban was put in place. People that the United States says its your favorite, but is not giving. Ranians the chance to enter there were reports over the last two or three days that there might have been some iranian american citizens, people with american passports, held at some points of entry and kept for hours. That doesnt play well in iran. The regime uses this to say that american support for iranian democracy is hypocritical. Look at what theyre doing to other citizens. Look at what they are doing to you. Student from stamford, university, but getting accepted right now is extremely difficult. He worked in the got the visa come. S told that he cant this is the opposite of the kind of campaign that the u. S. Ran against apartheid south africa, stalinist russia, castro cuba. To opened states has its doors, in my view, to iranian dissidents and those who are not agents of the regime. That part of the culture war will be detrimental to the regime. Insistent regime so on creating this digital iron curtain . They know that the iranian people want to have the news, watch american television. Host got you. This was professor this is professor abbas milani joining us this morning. Thank you for your time. Guest thank you. A pleasure talking to you and your listeners. Host thank you. Resolution vote is set for the house today. Speaker pelosi will hold a press conference and will be essentially asked about impeachment and where they stand. For close to cspan. Org more information on those events. We have more information coming your way at 7 00 tomorrow morning. Right now, we take you to the house of representatives. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [applause]