Your family. You can start calling in now. One statistic on how americans are spending this holiday, one major survey found only 20 27 of americans plan to have the traditional thanksgiving meal people outside their household. The New York Times trying to break down that our data. That map shows the share of people eating thanksgiving dinner with people outside their homes. The darker the caller shading on the map, the larger the expected share according to that survey. As the map illustrates and according to the New York Times, there is a regional variation in thanksgiving plans, with people in some parts of the country more likely to gather with others. In vermont, only about 14 of households will be celebrating with people outside their household. In parts of missouri, more than half of the residents plan to. You can find that map at the New York Times. We ask you this morning about thanksgiving 2020. What are you celebrating, what are you thankful for, some responses already. This is what karin writes in this morning. Karen is thankful for the ladies i know who selflessly got behind a sewing machine and cranked out dozens, and often hundreds, of masks to distribute. They truly are lifesavers. Thank you. Dottie said she is thankful that i survived. Stephanie saying, i am thankful for my friends, family, food on the table, roof over my head, and trumps loss. This from william this morning, saying he is thankful that President Trump will be president again in four years. Some of the responses so far on social media this morning. We want to hear from you. Again phone lines split up , regionally. If you are in the eastern or central time zones, 202 7488000. If you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, 202 7488001. We will go right to john in minneapolis. Happy thanksgiving, john. Caller yeah, right. What a thanksgiving. I am thankful for what happened yesterday in gettysburg. I believe this is the end of the fraudulent president elect biden. I believe that in a couple of , weeks, the fraudulent office of the president elect will be no more. Last night i saw a little bit of the slug and slimeball and scumbag seth meyers on nbc. Perfect example of the anticulture at work and i hope very soon someone will wipe the host that was john in minneapolis talking about pennsylvania. A bit of focus yesterday on pennsylvania from the judiciary and also from the legislative branch. The Washington Post with a wrap up. A temporary order blocking further certification of Election Results was stayed yesterday on appeal from state officials who had already formalized joe bidens win in that state. The Washington Post saying it was a setback for the republican effort to invalidate votes in pennsylvania. On wednesday morning a commonwealth judge placed a hold on a certification process in pennsylvania for down ballot races pending a hearing later this week. State officials appealed to the pennsylvania Supreme Court. Later yesterday that triggered an automatic stay. They asked the high court to step in and dismiss the case and that is where this stands. That was happening in pennsylvania. Pennsylvania republicans sought to build reports for claims of fraud with a hearing in gettysburg, pennsylvania. Yesterday, there was reporting early in the day President Trump was going to appear at that event in gettysburg. President trump did not physically appear, but did appear via virtually through the efforts of his lawyers who were at that hearing. Heres a bit of what President Trump said over the phone at that meeting with Pennsylvania Republican legislators. [video clip] i will introduce mr. President. You are connected. [cheering and applause] thank you very much. I saw a couple of other great networks, but i really appreciate being asked to speak. I am in the oval office right now. It is very interesting to see what is going on and this was an election we won easily. [applause] official was on this morning on a important show and said there is no way trump did not win pennsylvania because the Energy Industry was all for him. I saw with my eyes what happened and he told me horror stories. Horror stories. This was a very sad this election was rigged and we cannot let that happen. We cannot let it happen for our country and this election has to be turned around. We won pennsylvania by a lot and we won all of these states by a lot. Host that was President Trump via phone in pennsylvania. Speaking of the president , other news from the desk of the president yesterday and from the twitter page of president. Yesterday afternoon the , president tweeting, Michael Flynn has been granted a full pardon. Congratulations to him and his family. I know you will have a truly fantastic thanksgiving. The president going on to say to his former National Security advisor, have a great life, general flynn. Reaction for members of from members of congress, republicans heralding the pardon saying he is an American Patriot who was shamelessly set up by the Obama Administration against donald trump. Congressman andy biggs saying thank you for pardoning general flynn. The republican from arizona. Bill johnson from ohio saying, a just President Trump pardons Michael Flynn. This served as a clear message to other officials supporting our officials would have unjust consequences. His pardoning ends a four year long ordeal. Nancy pelosi said yesterday, he twice pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about his dealings with a foreign adversary is an active grave corruption and abrasion a brazen abuse of power. This from ed markey of massachusetts, Michael Flynn is a criminal. Roger stone is a criminal. Donald trump is a criminal. None of them deserve to be pardoned. This from jerry nadler, chair of the house judiciary saying, Michael Flynn lied to investigators about communicating with a foreign adversary. That is a crime. Trump dangled a pardon in exchange for flynns noncooperation. This pardon is another stain on trumps rapidly diminishing legacy. Some reaction to President Trumps pardon yesterday. That is some of the news that has taken place in the last 24 hours. We are leaving this segment of the washington journal open for you to talk about thanksgiving day 2020. Phone lines split up regionally. If you are in eastern or central time zones, 202 7488000. If youre in the mountain or pacific time zones, 202 7488001. Ray in elizabeth city, north carolina. You are next. Caller hello. Thank you for letting me on. I am very thankful for this day and thankful for the blessings and freedoms that we still have. I will be celebrating thanksgiving with my family and i must add i totally agree with what the president said about what happened during the election. Totally agree. There has been hardly any News Coverage of the Dominion Software that was used to change votes. That is a fact that happened. Anyway, this is thanksgiving day. I am very thankful, very thankful, for thanksgiving day. We all can agree to that. Host that was ray. Dave in oceanside, california, thanks for getting up early with us. Caller hey. I would like to know why cspan is not covering all the stories about these people getting knocked off twitter. He just got knocked off twitter because he was talking about election fraud. Anybody talks about election fraud, twitter silences them. You need to go to parler. Cspan needs to get onto parler and give some other people a voice to respond to you that way. A lot of us are getting cut off. I have been cut off twitter two or three different times and had to start new accounts. Facebook cut me off. Anytime you say anything about elections, people cut you off and silence you. Host what did you say about the election the last time you got cut off twitter . I retweeted things either the president said or one of the officials from the election bureau. They would put a warning on it and say this has been disputed. Which is fine. Twitter should say this has been , shown false. That is a different story. If they say it has been shown false it is one thing. , but if it is disputed, that is just free speech. The state senator for pennsylvania that ran the hearing yesterday, he was tweeting about what happened during the hearing and twitter cut him off and knocked his whole speech down. He cannot even go on twitter and say anything about the vote count, about how it came in, how pennsylvania had more votes returned than they sent out. It seems like twitter is really starting to silence what is going on here. Host how much time do you spend on twitter or parler . How big of a part of a your communication is that . Caller sometimes an hour in the morning. I have a company that i get going every day. I do not do it on my phone. I do not have twitter on my phone. I never had facebook on my phone. I would use it. If im getting my stuff ready to go through quickbooks, i would have a second page open and i would breeze it. Im not a social media nut. That is what i am saying. If i am just on there just a little bit and they are knocking me off left and right and it really ticks me off. If somebody comes at me and says, this is fraud, we proved it. Im not going to tweet it again. That is one thing. What if someone says it is disputed, who the hell are these people to say that . Host do you think twitter and facebook are going to have as much influence in the next election as they have had in recent elections . Host if the caller if the senate allows them to. If these politicians allow them to, yes. Im telling you. When flynn was pardoned, all these politicians from the other side, pelosi and all them you just read them on air. They were nasty comments. Hes the devil, he was the traitor, this and that, when flynn just told fbi agent he did not speak to somebody when he did. Come on is that a big deal . , joe biden just did that before he got elected. He spoke to all kinds of foreign officials. If fbi agent walked up and said, did you speak to soandso . Biden isi do not think really with it because he is an old guy. He could make a mistake and say, i did not talk to him and he would be guilty of the same thing that flynn was guilty of. Host that was david in california. This is stephanie, ashburn, virginia. How are you spending thanksgiving . Caller i am spending thanksgiving by myself, but im still going to be zooming. I just wanted to say good morning and im so thankful god answered my prayer for the biden win and for the doctors and nurses that work so hard and are still working. My family and cspan keeps it real. Host that was stephanie. You bring up president elect joe biden. He gave a thanksgiving address yesterday from wilmington part , of his effort to offer his vision for what a Biden Administration will look like. Here is a bit of the president elect. [video clip] here is the america i see. I believe it is the america you see as well. America that faces facts. America that overcomes challenges. An america where we see justice and equality for all people. An america that holds fast to the conviction that out of pain comes possibility, out of frustration comes progress, and out of division, unity. You all know when our finest hours that is who we have always been. That is who we shall be again. I believe that this grim season of division demonization, is anding to give way to light unity. Why do i think so . Because america is a nation out of adversaries, but of neighbors. Not of limitations, but of possibilities. Not of dreams deferred, but of dreams realized. I have said many times that this is a great country. We are a good people. This is the United States of america. There has never been anything we have been unable to do when we have done it together. Think about what we come through as a nation. How many things we have come through. Centuries of human slavery, cataclysmic civil war, exclusion of women from the ballot box, world wars, jim crow, the Twilight Struggle against soviet tyranny that couldve ended not in the fall of the berlin wall, but in nuclear armageddon. I am not naive. I know that history is that history. But to know what came before, what has happened before can arm , us against despair. Knowing that previous generations got to the same universal human challenges we face. The tension between selfishness and generosity, fear and hope, division and unity, and what was it that brought the reality of america into closer alignment with the promise of reality . It sounds corny but it was love. Plain and simple. Love of country, love of one another. We do not talk about love much in politics. The political arena is too loud, too angry, too heated. To love our neighbor as ourselves is a radical act. It is what we are called to do. Host joe biden yesterday in delaware. Taking your phone calls on this thanksgiving morning. Joy is in philadelphia. Good morning. Caller good morning. I want to be thankful for the doctors and nurses that are really changing their holiday to take care of the sick people. I do not think people realize they do not think about those doctors and nurses taking care of everyone. A lot of hospitals do not have the space, they do not have the beds to take care of people. They are telling them not to travel. They are telling them not to travel. I look at the airport and people still are traveling. We have a lot to be thankful for. I am thankful joe biden did win the election and i would hope that the trump voters would just support him because i really think that he is sincere and wants to be a good president. Host on this program yesterday when we were having this , conversation, there were Trump Supporters who said that democrats did not get over 2016. Why should they support joe biden now . Why should they get over the results of 2020 . What would you say to those folks . Caller i would say to them, lets go back to 2016. Russia was involved in the election. The election was very flawed. They really did a job on hilary. They did the job on facebook. I went back and i even got off my facebook. In fact, i never was on facebook. They always tried to get me to sign up, but i saw it here from different people about these bogus stories that facebook had in 2016. They did a job on hilary. That is why flynn and all of them, that is why this is coming up from 2016. People need to go back. After 2016 we lived through four years of basically a showman. I really think we should move on because even in this election if you look, it was other places where trump tried to take the with kanye west, fox news, he had a whole propaganda channel. Host that is joy in pennsylvania this morning. Joy started talking about doctors and nurses and dealing with the ongoing spike in the pandemic. Heres the latest numbers from yesterday. United states yesterday recorded more than 2200 new deaths, the highest single day increase since may 6. The seven day above 1600. A figure comparable to that during the first case spike in cases. On wednesday alone, the u. S. 180 5000 new coronavirus cases, a number that dwarfs the number from may when the high point that the United States recorded was more than 33,000 new cases in a single day. When it comes to hospitalizations, at 7 00 p. M. Yesterday total hospitalization s in this country stood at more than 89,000, that also a record. This is david in the sooner state. Caller good morning, yall. I am thankful for this country. I have a request that yall have a program about respect, if you could. That is a word a lot of people i guess it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. I would like to recite my thanksgiving poem if that would be all right . Host go ahead. Caller it is called god bless america. Do we ever stop and think about our freedom here today . Weve heard the prayers so many so many times, god bless the usa. Do we stop to think about our countrys pioneers . The ones who came across and traveled . They roamed the land, they stood up for freedom, for god they made the stand. They said through him there would always be an abundance in this land. , hunger came they , did not lose their faith. God had brought them over here and would not turn away. Im glad they carried out gods plan. If they would have turned back who would came to this land . Who knows . It might be russia, china, or iran. Thank god we are called america, where the eagle flies free, we dont trust communists but god who lives in me. World, you see. We are free. Americans, please take a look at the world outside and see how our country started. God does bless the usa. That is it. Host thank you for sharing that poem. How long did take you to write that . Caller i wrote that back in 1987 when i lived in fort smith arkansas. , i am a poem writer. I have always been patriotic. My dad was a world war ii veteran and im the only one out of 11 kids that served in the military. I am a veteran. My dad was the only one out of 10 in his family. Something just dug into me. We are all america. Host thank you for sharing that this morning. You talked about respect. I would encourage you to stick around. We are going to have a segment today talking about the political divide in this country, but focused on efforts to heal it, to talk across the divide, talk about respect. That is it 8 45 eastern this morning. We will be joined by dave isay, president and founder of storycorps. We will talk more about his efforts a little later this morning. Hope you stick around for that. Lisa is next in shreveport, louisiana. Good morning to you. Caller good morning. I am thankful for my family and i am thankful for president donald j. Trump. Everybody please get on the internet to find out all your information. This is a coup against our president. Host where on the internet do you get your information . Where would you encourage people to go . Caller go to x22. Com, parler, theyre going to take us off. I have been doing this for three years. I am one of the patriots fighting for trump. You are going to see things youve never seen before. Get ready. This is a revolution. They are trying to take our president and our country down. Please go find out the news. You all are working for the cia. People are going to find out and they are going to be very upset. Host that was lisa in louisiana. Chris is in kansas city, missouri. Caller good morning. Host go ahead. Caller happy thanksgiving. I wanted to express what makes me grateful today. I was born into a country that had a principle that said all are created equal. Not since israel existed 2000 years ago when jesus was walking the earth did somebody come forth and really say to people, look we need to care about each , other. He said we need to care about each other and that includes the enemy. The beautiful thing about america is that when you consider all are created equal what that really means, that is the first encouragement that we get to really celebrate what it means to stand for freedom, individual freedom, and be recognized as an individual for the value you have. All are created equal means that, no matter where you come from, what your background is, we all start at the same place and that requires us to treat each other equally. When i see today people i do not know if people are aware but there are religious communities in the United States that are saying trump is part of a plan to bring jesus back to the earth in this generation. There are two or three people right now that are coming out saying trumps birth was preordained to save america. That trump is the savior of this era, the prelude to jesus returning to earth. The thing i am concerned about is christians are being told to equate trump being in office to being gods will and therefore if they do not vote for trump, they are voting against god. In a country that is supposed to have honoring all the created isare created equal, there no equality when we have religious leaders telling the people that if they do not vote for a certain person a certain way, they are going to hell. What really makes this bad for me, when you look at trump and his values, he is not a christian. He cannot represent christians and if christians would go back im an atheist. I am a constitutional socialist. I believe in the constitution and i believe in the values that jesus taught. As a result of that you cannot be sitting there having a leader that has the personal and social and political values that trump does and say that he is a christian. That he represents christian people. I do not care if he spouts the good old things about abortion and things like that. Those are buzzwords. Host that was chris in missouri on the topic of religion. News from just across capitol hill from the Supreme Court coming out last night. This from usa today. The Supreme Court placed religious freedom before pandemic precautions on wednesday night, temporarily blocking recent rules in new. Ork the conservative majority ruled 54. The limitations on houses of worship to 10 to 25 worshipers appeared to violate First Amendment free exercise clause. It was a reversal from earlier actions taken by the court in response to state restrictions. Usa today noting the justices previously refused to lift restrictions on churches in california and nevada, with chief Justice John Roberts upholding state restrictions. What has changed of course since then is that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and was succeeded by amy coney barrett, giving the conservatives the 63 majority. Roberts and the three liberal justices dissented from the ruling. That from usa today. Back to your phone calls. It is 7 30 on the east coast. Elaine in olympia, washington, thank you for being up early. How are you spending your thanksgiving . Caller i am spending it at home and i cooking my first turkey. Am i am 75 and lucky to be alive. The people contracting the covid virus, i feel lucky i have not gotten it yet. I do have some morbidity, but it is not really serious. It would be enough to do me in, im sure. I feel lucky i have not contacted it yet. Friend who died from it early on on april 1. It is a traumatic thing, but i guess we have to be thankful for the therapeutics and the vaccine and the way the United States did not fall apart when it came on. We were a Strong Enough nation that our unemployment is now taking a dive, but at one point it got down to 6. 9 . That is astronomical when you think about the devastating effect it has had on the United States. One thing i would like to say is i listened to bidens speech and i thought it was so hypocritical. Now they want to be respectful and they want to bring people together. Why didnt they think about that four years ago before all this turmoil happened and all this garbage they put us through . I just found it appalling. It was so hypocritical. Host that was elaine in washington. You bring up the Economic Situation in this country. Just a couple of stats to throw on that topic, including this yesterday released from the department of labor. Applications for state jobless benefits rose for the second straight week last week. Jobless claims jumped 78,000 last week to nearly 828,000. That is a big change. It was the first time filings had risen for two straight weeks since early september. It is the largest twoweek increase since april. That a look at new jobless claims. This a look at statistics on hunger in america. We talked about that issue yesterday on this program. The New York Times with some of the data. One in four americans with no work and children at home do not have enough to eat. That is the headline. Overall, the share of americans, all americans, who said they often or did not have enough to eat in the past week, 12 of all americans said that in response to Data Collected by the census bureau. Private sources said 16 of americans with children at home said they often did not have enough to eat. 25 of americans with children at home and no work said that in just the one city they looked at, houston, 21 saying in the past week they sometimes are or often did not have enough to eat. Just some stats. It was the Washington Post with that story today. Cos is in kokomo, indiana. Caller thank you for taking my phone call. I am blessed i am in america and saying my opinion to you guys. I just watched the speech by joe biden. First of all, he is the biggest hypocrite i can think of. If you go online, everything what he says is on tape. His tape is on google. You can call for joe biden fraud. It pops up and gives you all the tapes. Now he is talking about all the elections and all the stuff. That is why he did not campaign for his election. He knew he was going to get elected. Now he is talking about humanity because he wants to bring these illegal aliens over here. The second thing is when he left the office of obama he was making 400,000 a year. Now he owes 15 million and all these guys blaming trump. They think he is a liar and he just thinks about himself. He is the biggest hypocrite. Host cos, if tape on joe biden is something you are interested in, i would direct you to cspan. Org. The cspan video library. Some 1750 videos and counting of joe biden in the library dating back to 1983. You can watch him at events across the years on the senate floor, events at the white house. 1750 videos that you can search from. Tom is in paris, california. You are next. Caller good morning. I am thankful that [laughs] i would be thankful if the internet was never invented. There are a lot of crazy people believing some stupid stuff. The real reason i called in is because this would be a really bad precedent if donald trump to pardon tried himself. I do not think the legal system would stand for that, or the constitution. I do not see how you could pardon yourself. You have never even been indicted or under federal investigation, which he is not. Wow. Host what is your level of confidence in the Supreme Court right now . You are talking about constitutional issues that would go to the Supreme Court. Caller well, you know, i hope they would stand for what it is supposed to stand for, not get into the political arena. It is an iffy proposition right now to say whether they would go one way or another. But just the idea that if that president was sent to the world to say, i could pardon myself. Do you know how any court cases would be brought up for people trying to pardon themselves . Just because i say i want to be pardoned ahead of time . How does that work . Host back to the keystone state, this is robin. Caller happy thanksgiving to everybody. Host thank you. Caller i am thankful for my family, my friends, i am thankful my family has not caught the virus. I have had neighbors die from it which i was devastated over. I am thankful we have President Trump for the last four years. I think joe biden is going back to the obama years and obama came on tv talking about the hispanics voting for trump. Here we go. Now you have callers calling. They won the election and they are still talking about trump. They want us trump voters to accept joe biden . In this house, it is never going to happen. In pennsylvania, everybody in old forge wanted trump. Pennsylvania is the most crooked state for voting i have ever seen. God bless everybody. Have a nice thanksgiving and enjoy your president because hes not my president. Thank you. Host president elect biden gave that speech yesterday from wilmington, delaware. Vice president elect harris was in d. C. Yesterday visiting the central kitchen. One of those food banks here in washington, d. C. She took some time to speak briefly with reporters who had gathered. Heres a bit of what she had to say. [video clip] you had made contact with republicans. Does that include mcconnell . I cannot speak directly to that, but i will tell you it has been the priority for the president elect and me, from the beginning, that we intend to and will work across the aisle to deal with these most tractable issues affecting people regardless of who they voted for. The president elect and i take that very seriously. I am here to talk with folks who are feeding the hungry. You may have heard me say one in six families in america is describing their children as being hungry. One in five are describing an inability to pay rent. These are real issues and the folks we are talking about, whoever they voted for, deserve to have leadership that sees them through the lens of the life they are living regardless of party affiliation. We feel strongly about that. Host Vice President elect Kamala Harris yesterday at central kitchen. Back to your phone calls. Tom is in foley, alabama. Caller good morning. Happy thanksgiving. I would like to point out a few things. Im a simple man. Retired, no High School Education whatsoever, but i made it through to retirement, 30 years of work. How is it possible that we change our election laws months before the election and we have millions more votes than four years ago . It is baffling to me. Like i said, i am not a real educated man, but i know how to do a little math. Something is afoot. I have friends from mexico, el salvador, immigrants. Of course they came here with a were young just to get a job here when they were young just to get a job. I know this is what they believe. Why would anybody want to leave somewhere else to come to america if everywhere else is so great . America is great for one reason everybody has a chance. I would like to leave you with that. Thank you. Host this is briley in texas. Caller lord bless you. I am thankful for this nation. One nation, under god, that is what i am thankful for. I am thankful for my family and im thankful for the president that we have and that god has given us these four years. I am praying that god is going to work this out because i believe that the Democratic Party really stole the election. They have always been thieves and murderers. God bless you. Host this is david in flint, michigan. Caller good morning. Good morning, cspan. Im watching on the tv. Im thankful to be alive on thanksgiving day because i am over 65. I am 67 and god has blessed me to make it through this pandemic. I am even more excited about we have a decent, honest, christian president now. It is going to make my christmas happy, my new years happy. I believe america can start finally the races can start coming back together and showing love. I think it is such a blessing that satan was defeated and that we can move forward together. Just like biden said. I am even more excited that all the metro areas throughout michigan combined to put biden over in michigan by 150,000 people. I am excited. Thank you. Host a few more comments from our text messaging service. This is bob in missouri, i am spending my turkey day home alone and will look to see another day because i listen to doctors who know something. Pam in tennessee, i am grateful for my beautiful family. My good health and the country has remained a democracy. I sent love and sympathy to the president. She says he is suffering because his delusions ran into a wall of reality and to his poor, brainwashed followers. I hope they can find their own minds once they see how i president supposed to behave and how our government is supposed to function. This from wendy on facebook who says, i am thankful that through diligence and perseverance my mom and i remain covid free. Noting her mother turned 82 yesterday. Happy birthday. This is alan from little rock, good morning. Caller good morning. Certainly a great appreciation to david in oklahoma. We were both in the same territory once. Arkansas was divided and made oklahoma for the indian territory which is an incredible story for folks to look up. But im glad to get to call in and that i got through. I tried to keep some anonymity here. I think that might be lost and little bit more. I am a retired history teacher. But my thankfulness is to god and our lord and being born again. I did not plan on saying that this morning, but that is really it. I grew up in a Baptist Church with parents that took us every time the doors were open and knew all about studying scripture and by the books and learning them as baptists do. I was not born again until i was 30. That is really the basis of discussion about President Trump giving a pardon that comes directly out of scripture. We are all given that opportunity to be pardoned. Our lord paid the price for. My call is to point out that is the reason pilgrims came and i want to quote a brief reference the first governor wrote. His name was william bradford. Everybody can look this up on their own. It is bradford of pilgrim plantation 1620 through 1647. There are several links, but the one i am looking at is the first primary source out of illinois university. Host give us a brief reading. We have several more folks calling in. Caller sorry. It is chapter four im quoting from. He gave four reasons and i will take less than a minute to repeat the first three. The last one is the one i called to quote. It is the reason amy barrett was asked why is freedom of religion and not discriminating against it the first of the First Amendment . She did not know. I wanted to raise my hand and go, i know. They say in holland for 12 years, and they say the work is so hard that it is breaking them down. Many were starting to leave them. Others in england were stopping and coming over to holland because it was so difficult in work. Those of the first two reasons. The third is because their children were being drawn away by evil. Host what was the fourth . Caller licentiousness and dissolution of their children. They came to america to save their children. The last reason is they say a great hope that they had to lay such a Good Foundation or at least make some way for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of christ. It would even be a steppingstone onto others for such a great work. There is our history, our Christian Foundation of our country that we could be mindful of whenever we are asked to go to that quote. Host from the natural state to the mountain state, this is tom in marlinton. Caller im in west virginia, the mountain state. I am thankful for my health. I am thankful i voted for donald trump in 2016 and voted for him again. I think joe biden is going to bring this country back to where he is going to kowtow to china and iran. When iran detonates the Nuclear Weapons you can raise your glass to globalism. Happy thanksgiving. Host joan in new jersey. Caller hi. I would just like to thank cspan for allowing many people to voice their opinions. I hope you do not cut me off, but i would like to say to joe biden, i would like to ask this question. He invokes the name of god all the time. For god to bless us, keep us together. He is a roman catholic. He professes his faith. He goes to church. There was a priest and he would not allow him to receive communion. He has all these people watch him and follow him into the church. This is my question. How does he, a roman catholic, reconcile with god abortion . How does he do that . Look at his eyes and ask him, how do you, a christian, a roman catholic, reconcile that . I have one more thing to say. You have all the democrats, calling in from cnn and msnbc, and they constantly talk about the babies being ripped from their mothers arms at the border. Constantly. You hear that morning, night, and day about babies being ripped from their mothers arms. Let me ask you this. How do you reconcile the heartbeat of a baby being vacuum cleaned from a mothers womb and murdering it . How . How in good conscience could you say and ask god to help us . How do you ask god when you, the one thing the 10 commandments, thou shalt not kill. We kill babies every day. Every day we kill babies. Host that was joan in new jersey. A story from this past week from the religion section of the Washington Post on this issue you bring up. Catholics divided as bishops examine bidens abortion stance. That story from the Washington Post. David is an ap reporter that appeared in the religion section, but if you want to look it up, crary is the last name of the author. Anthony, youre next. Caller my name is anthony. I am grateful to be alive because this pandemic i am in a wheelchair. Im waiting to get to the hospital for an operation that might help me walk again. Because of the virus and everything it is not the time to go into a hospital. But i am grateful to be alive and being able to vote. I feel like i am part of america and not divided. I would like to see this country move forward. Host you say you are not divided. Do think this country is . Caller yes. I felt like i was discriminated against. Like there was no way i could move ahead with donald trump, you know . I did not see that. With joe biden i feel like i am part of america, part of the american dream, and i can move forward. America can move forward. It might be over for me because i am in a wheelchair and the stimulus package wouldve helped me if i wouldve gotten one. But im grateful to be here. Host thank you for the call. Angelica in herndon, virginia. Caller good morning. Happy thanksgiving. [indiscernible] host are you still with us . Caller yes. Can you hear me . Host go ahead. Caller happy thanksgiving, everyone. I feel like everybody just needs to get over the fact that biden got elected. I feel like when trump got elected, i felt the same way. Now that he is elected, when trump got elected, i respected that. I got over it. I feel like everybody just needs to get over the fact biden got elected. I am very thankful for my health this year because i did contract covid around may and i am a healthy individual. I go to the gym every single day. After i got covid i literally got a heart problem. I ended up with cardiac problems and for me to be grateful for even making it, it is crazy. You never think it is going to happen to you and it irritates me that everybody just thinks, oh, how come trump didnt win . It does not matter. It matters the fact that we are dealing with a virus right now and nobody is thinking about this. Host are you able to still go to the gym every day . Physically and because of shutdowns in virginia . Caller yeah. I am thankful for the shutdowns. I think our governor has done an amazing job and i applaud him. I feel like trump has not been giving the governors credit as he is supposed to as a president. It irritates me because you think it will not happen to you and when it does happen to you, you actually think, it happened to me. You never think it could happen to you. For the people out there, just be careful. Do not ever say, dont wear a mask just because your president says. Do not ever think it is not going to happen to you. Host back to the lone star state. This is kirbin. Caller i am very grateful the lord is in my life. I love all my fellow neighbors, brothers and sisters, and i am hopeful, hopeful that everyone will turn to the lord and give the lord his due time. Lord ande the lord his due time. People whoe that believe in the lord i know the lord is in control and put trump in office, yes he did. And he took trump out of office. Since he took trump out of office he is the same god. Romans 5 saying we cannot go against the law of the land, when trump was in office, when he had trump in office, youve got to understand he is the same god. You are fighting against him now. Youre fighting against god. Host one last call from sandra in the Yellow Hammer state of birmingham. Caller good morning and happy thanksgiving. Rebut the ladyo talking about the bible say thou shalt not kill. The bible also says thou shall that yout adultery and do not blame another person for anything because he does not blame you. He loves us. Lets not take on this subject this morning. Thank you for taking my call and have a wonderful day. Happy thanksgiving to you. Host happy thanksgiving. Our last caller and the second of the washington journal. Today including a discussion on the effectiveness of foreign aid, we are joined by matt warner of the atlas network. We want to thank our cspaners who continue to provide you an unfiltered view of government and politics. Nal continues. Host conversation on foreign aid in the time of covid. Matt warner, for viewers who may not know the atlas network, what is your mission and how are you funded . Guest nonprofit focused on supporting local organizations around the world working to increase Economic Opportunity for low income communities. Clear funded privately through fundraising from individuals and foundations that share our cause. Host nearly one year into the pandemic, how has that complicated the mission . Like many, we did Rapid Response looking for how this was going to impact the grantees around the world. We have a network of 500 think and welocal ngos, scrambled quickly to develop a Covid Response and Recovery Fund were goodre, not only organizations around the world able to continue good work but so many of them had important new plans in response to pandemic that met the needs of their local communities, so we worked quickly to make sure we were supporting them as much as we could. Host give a sense of the scale. How much does the u. S. Government spend on foreign aid and how much through american citizens privately donate to the ngo groups and organizations youre talking about . Guest foreign aid for the u. S. Tends to be around 50 billion each year. That covers a wide range of different things. 20 different programs in the u. S. That have something to do with foreign aid. The American People privately, in general, do 400 billion in charitable giving. That is not all going internationally. It is covering the same topics in the u. S. We have a lot of opportunity. Americans are generous. Where canestion is, your money do the most good . Question around the future of foreign aid. How can we do this better . There is debate about how much we should be allocating for foreign aid as a country. The more highstakes question is, how well are we spending it and where can we improve . Host explain the term the outsiders dilemma . Guest we talk about it at atlas network. It is a shared concept, if not in that name, in other names, which is, when you are trying to do good in the world, wealthy countries have resources and we have expertise. There is a type of knowledge we dont have. What the people at the local know aboutout their own cultures and histories and what those individuals know about their own values, tradeoffs, hopes and dreams for their families. That becomes very important if you are concerned about the efficacy of foreign aid, as outsiders, we can do a lot of activity but not only is it sometimes mismatched because we just dont know enough at the local level, but it can sometimes even do more harm than good, despite our best intentions. Host phone numbers for viewers to join us if you want to talk about u. S. Foreign aid in the time of coronavirus, split up as usual, 202 7488000 for democrats, 202 7488001 for republicans, 202 7488002 for independents. Matt warner is our guest, president of the atlas network, if you want to look them up, atlasnetwork. Org. Dilemma,hat outsiders give us an example of that happening in a recent crisis. Humanitarian for immediate needs and response or whether it is larger investments, the big institutions, world bank, usaid, we have a lot of ideas about what we think other people need. If you dig in to people who have spent careers on this, they are frustrated when they start to question whether what they are doing is working. Click example. In one of the projects in uganda, the experts from Columbia University and others said, it makes more sense for these local villages, instead of planting banana crops, they ought to grow corn. They gave them 300,000 in one village to switch their crops. Seemed a great idea. The initial hypothesis was right. They had a higher yield. Turns out there was no market for corn and the roads to get to other markets made it cost prohibitive and they ended up with a rat infestation because they had nowhere to store the extra corn. It was not something they were used to. It was a mismatch. Decisions were made by outsiders. That is not to say these are bad people coming in with, screwing up the local economy. There has been a big effort. The Paris Declaration was a big andering of oecd countries everyone signed on to say yeah, we need to listen to locals. There is a big difference between making some kind of gesture to include local voices in what youre doing and what we really need to do, which is shift leadership of Development Projects to local levels. That is why our model is successful. Our biggest project that does wheres dignity unbound, we recognize that Human Dignity of the individuals we are trying to serve and let them lead their success. It is really important. It is not just morally right, it is more effective. Knowledge of, again, what is the history . What is the culture . What do they personally care about . Know, we do you a lot in the world providing malaria nets. People use them, instead of on themselves, the use them for their goats. That is their livelihood. The use them for other purposes. We think, why arent they doing what we think they should doing . Should be doing . We dont know what their priorities are. The big shift has to go from large institutions, still and should provide expertise and information sharing and gathering and dissemination but driving change and making decisions has to be at the local level. Institutionsratic are the best approach, the best model for human rights and economic prosperity. Building those institutions and getting their is their choice. Ofcan support local capacity local organizations who have their own vision for how to get there. We have become much more effective at that using this dignity unbound model that we carefully evaluate and monitor the best local organizations in the world who know what Economic Opportunity looks like in their local context and we let them lead. They tell us what is important and we support it. Host some examples of the success. Callers on the line. Carrollton, georgia, independent. Caller [indiscernible] are you with us, jeff . Caller yes. I would like to know what is going to happen now that biden is back with china, north korea, are going to starve. Warner, what you are expecting from a Biden Administration when it comes to u. S. Foreign aid . Guest joe biden has years of expense in the senate experience in the senate, working on the foreign committees. He is no stranger to the way our institutions work. He has a lot of experience around the world. With any new administration, i notopeful we can focus on just the relationships that can help increase collaboration but that we can continue this important threat of, how do we support their vision for democracy and not ours . Away fromdivest power our own collection of wealthy, educated, outsider lead programs designed to solve problems . China continues to be an important topic. Meetinghad the big g20 where so much conversation was extending suspension, opportunities for potential restructuring of debt, even reduction of debt. Whether china will participate in that kind of activity is the big question. Hopeful, as with any new administration, it is an opportunity to start afresh, think seriously about what foreign aid in the 21st century needs to look like, now that we have learned, as outsiders, we are limited, and should not be just coming in, disrupting the the groundople on who may or may not consent to what we are doing. Host one example i read about on your website had to do with solar panels in puerto rico after hurricane maria. Talk through what happened. The typical challenge is when there is a crisis, we all want to help. There is an old saying. There are a lot of solutions that are simple, neat, compelling and wrong. These are complex places and economies. I am not saying we should not help. We have to be careful about it. When we bring in, for example, hey, we have a u. S. Company willing to give a bunch of solar panels for free. Solar paneldding companies on the ground who get wiped out because the market gets flooded with free solar panels materials. Message to share with your audience today. There is a difference between working to help people tolerate poverty better and working to help them escape poverty in the longterm. We want and during development. In emergency, there is going to be specific needs met now. Lets not fool ourselves into thinking that what we are doing when we do that is helping them become prosperous. That is just a bandaid. Bandaids can be important. Foreign aid apparatus needs to be thinking about how do we help them build their own institutions that protect democratic ideals and give people the most choice and flex ability . Crisis, this economic downturn, what people need is flexibility and choices. It is uncertain. Everybodynow how should try and get out of the current shifts in their livelihoods. They need as much opportunity as possible. Host a lot of calls for you, less than 30 minutes left with matt warner this morning, president of the atlas network. George, alexandria, virginia, democrat. How thei was curious speaker feels the actions we are taking to support u. S. Interests , mainly because, it feels like our country has a lot of problems itself and we are trying to decide how to support these countries and support our own country at the same time and there is a lot of issues there is a lot of problems regarding foreign aid, regarding how it seems to help other countries and not our own. What is our own self interest in this . Guest you have hit on an important challenge. A bit of aimes paradox. Iny times, what we are doing foreign aid, we do try to align with our own interests, which any Foreign Policy apparatus, it makes sense, it is not a surprise we would want to advance our own interests. Odds with, that is at the objectives of foreign aid in terms of helping other countries develop. For example, one of the things im concerned about, which is not new to joe biden, but certainly something he has american. Ut is buy i understand the sentiment. That sounds like a good idea. It actually works at cross purposes with supporting other countries. Is one of the. S. Worst offenders when it comes to conditional aid. We say we want to help you but all of your products have to come from america. That is our prerogative, our money. Lets not fool ourselves into thinking we are trying to help them develop. I would like to see a more distinct, sophisticated distinction between Foreign Policy and aid. What my focus is as a grantmaking organization investing in the development of other countries, is to expand an alternative to our current foreign aid apparatus. Toimately, it can get better paying attention to local voices and letting them lead. There is a lot we can do to continue to move the ball. Ultimately, the answer will be through the private initiatives of voluntary support, local Capacity Building on the ground because foreign aid will always be political. It will always have that cross section. Taxpayers, there is certainly nothing wrong with saying, we want accountability for our foreign aid dollars and we have people suffering at home. That can be a tricky thing. Moneytely, the amount of we are talking about relative to the broader budget, you always want to be cost conscious. The real highstakes question is, how we are spending it and whether it is doing any good . If we are using foreign aid, and we are not the only ones that do this, we use foreign aid as an opportunity to insert our own abroad,es and interests we can do that and there are going to be countries and political leaders in other countries that will happily take our money. Lets not be full into thinking what that is actually doing is helping that country develop longterm. Think about a country like tanzania. At different times, 40 of the government revenue has been foreign aid. What does that mean for budding democracies to increase democratic ideals, when the politicians are answering to foreign agencies and not responsive to their own people . It is a fair question. The biggest giver of foreign aid [indiscernible] guest we get a lot of flak because others do more as a percentage of their growth, their Gross National income. Int poor the next couple dollar amounts who are the next couple in line . Guest the u. K. Is reducing their commitment. They have set a threshold of 0. 7 of Gross National income as what they were going to be giving each year. That is going to come down to 0. 5 . The biggestnd away giver in dollar amount. Countries like scandinavian countries tend to hit as a proportion of their Gross National income, 1 , sometimes more. Host a lot of folks waiting to talk to. Tony, winstonsalem, north carolina, republican. Caller happy thanksgiving and for being there. How should i decide specifically when i give money whom i should give it to internationally . What do you think of charities that give cash to individuals with little Strings Attached . Very interested. Followed, Chris Blackman is a scholar who has mostly worked in conflict resolution but he has led the charge on trying to do research on cash assistance. It tends to be a better alternative to Traditional Service provision. It certainly helps shift decisionmaking to local people. I think that is a positive step. I dont think it is a longterm solution. For example, there are private portionirms who take a of their investments around the world and focus it on developing countries where they know it is riskier but they have a social conscience mission. That can be a great thing. But it is not really systemic change. You can bring in more investment and cash but what really helps an economy develop are the sort of democratic ideal institutions that protect the choice and flexibility. Quick point. One of the biggest problems in developing countries is what is called the shadow economy. There is a lot of market activity that helps people get by daytoday that is not part of the formal, legal economy. Supported awe plucky, modest think tank, not large institutions, local ngos recognize these problems and they advanced a rewriting of the rules so that microenterprise entrepreneurs could become formal businesses. The reason why that is transformative is you cannot grow as a business if you dont have legal protection. Many local police and bureaucrats know that it is not a legal business. They can take your stuff. They can find you. They can really harass you. Tension is really at the source of what sparked the arab spring in tunisia. People toeasier for drive their own economic success by taking away all of these burdens and checkpoints for rise, we think we are doing the right thing by giving bureaucrats a lot of control over what people are doing but what it ends up doing is keeping a lot of people out of the formal market, where they can never grow from a microenterprise to a Small Business to a medium business. You have these examples of countries where there are a few Big Companies and a lot of tiny tiny micro enterprises, many of them not enjoying legal protection. That is not a formula for success. Host pennsylvania, patrick, carnegie. Caller good morning, happy thanksgiving. Stunning when i listen to this narrative. Is very littled difference between our program and chinas. It is massively corruptive, designed as an apolitical weapon. It has been weaponized. It is weaponized by the cia, by the National Security state, weaponized period,. Guest criticism of the status quo is healthy. If you want to spend more time on it, there is Good Research out of harvard university, n, who details all the problems of the status quo. This is not shocking news. Most people in the Development Community know that they have problems. They know, for example, there is corruption on the ground. Aide is a lot of foreign that has a veneer of helping but it is really helping to support American Companies that have political connections. What all of this ends up meaning and my main message, i dont think it is the most important thing to strike down foreign aid or destroy it. The most important opportunity is for foreign aid to become much more limited in the types of activities it does and in taking on nationbuilding for other people. Just focus on gathering expertise, making available and supporting local capacity. Of aid examples projects, 30 of the intendant funds were taken as graft. They skim off the top. There is an example where 100 of funding that was supposed to go to schools not a dollar got to where it needed to be. There isk, ultimately, a limit to how successful apolitical operation is going to of locally kinds sensitive, nuanced problems. I am interested in building an alternative model. Foreign aid working to get, reforming itself to temper down our own designs on other countries and just focus on supporting local capacity to lead their own change. Host some news on the u. S. Foreign aid front, from axios, the acting administrator informed senior staff yesterday that he tested positive for coronavirus. Towas planning to travel honduras this week after the country was ravaged by hurricanes. The trip is expected to be off. Carolina,rie, north independent. Caller good morning. Just happened to come by this. Very interesting. I will be reading more about what you do and your alternatives as far as helping people. I want to make the comment that the comments you are making about underdeveloped countries, sound like our country right now. White people, specifically white men, have always talked about what others need but they dont want to listen to what others need. One of the main things you have to do is listen to women in the areas you are going to care for. Women are the root. Women know what is going on and care for their kids more than anything else. Thank you. Guest fantastic point. I think the future of development more broadly has to have a real reckoning around this question of who was calling the shots . I do not think it should be outside, educated, wealthy white men or anyone who is not part of the community and is not working for those democratic ideals that are inclusive and allow public participation. On the point about women, the fact is the more we can break down barriers for women to have equal access to the marketplace, that is one of the most powerful an economy to grow. In fact, because we support projects that locals bring to us we do not tell them what they supportedo we have many projects in south sudan, sri lanka, indonesia, other places where they are looking at breaking down barriers that have discriminated against womens participation in the marketplace. Host what is one of those Success Stories . Guest well, this get specific. In sri lanka, because of high taxes and tariffs on sanitary napkins, in rural areas women and girls were going without and missing school and work and sometimes dropping out or getting fired. Somesuccessfully reduced of those artificial increased costs that made these basic, essential products unattainable for many people. There is also, for example, in some places laws say women cannot work after 8 00 p. M. There has been great progress in beating back against these kinds of restrictions that really limit the opportunities for women to work. We are supporting a project in indonesia right now that, particularly in a time of pandemic people need to shift to a different form of making a livelihood, how to really nurture these micro enterprises that are often run by women, with her out of their homes or started to get online with air products. Ofre is the threat regulation that makes that harder and the things we have to isember about regulations rights the rules are often the rulesayers writes the are often the big players. Theseakes it hard for micro entrepreneurs who are trying to make a Home Business or what have you. When those are some of the most vibrant solutions to some of these problems. We have to make it easy. People in micro enterprises have to make money every day to survive. They cannot spend seven months to go to 16 different offices to get approval. They will stay in a shadow economy. In a shadow economy, they do not have legal protection. We need to bring women and men in on equal footing under the us,to tell us, show economic prosperity. There is other solutions where we come in from the outside and we think we know and say, ok, we need to train all these women on sewing. Nepals the example from where they told these women if they learn to sew, they could be successful. You ended up with a lot of people providing that service and not enough demand. Here is important thing you do not solve specific economic problems for other people because their own knowledge is a key part of that solution discovery. What we can do is support local institutions that systematically give people more access to the law,t, a quality under the and do not erect all these barriers the end up being a place for bureaucrats to bribe or abuse power. Host less than 10 minutes left with matt warner of the atlas network, president of atlas network. A lot of folks waiting to chat with you. Daniel in minnesota, independent. Caller hello. It is interesting because everything you are talking about it is like my whole life is been Something Like this. Doing and it is like i have a very good plan for stuff. [indiscernible] forests or wooded areas is a likeness of that. It would be for the world itself because that what we are missing. My father was a green beret. I far as war back in vietnam, was raised with just a mother, but it is striking how this is sort of interesting. Host we appreciate the call. The topic we return to from time to time always creates a lot of interest when we are talking about u. S. Foreign aid. This is kim cedar park, texas, a democrat. Caller hi. This does tie together and i will do this really simplistic. Jersey, youew wonder how biden can be most democrats are prochoice host let us move to the foreign aid conversation. We have matt warner with us a few more minutes. Caller this is foreign aid. It ties in. Hold on. Women, foreign aid for right . Zip it. Host we are listening. Caller you are not listening. We give foreign aid to womens organizations so they can get sanitation napkins, birth control, they can also prevent pregnancy. We are not for abortion. We just do not like that is not our business. Everybody should be responsible for their own health care. Women support all the backbone of economy. If women had the right to health care, which a lot of women in the field in texas, most women do not have insurance. Everybodyt gave sanitation napkins free. This is big expenses. This is foreign aid and we give away money to planned parenthood, but that is what im saying. It is all connected. You just automatically think we are for or against abortion. I had one child, one pregnancy. We are for not controlling other peoples lives so they can make the proper decision because it could be many things. Host we got your point, kim. We will let matt warner jump in. Guest i think the Common Thread there is that we have to have a humility about what other people and other cultures and other communities think is best for themselves and their families. Part of that is there is nothing wrong with having a hypothesis for providing health care basises on a as needed within our programming. But the big message i want to share today is there is a difference between foreign aid that is trying to make poverty more tolerable, and foreign aid that is supporting local vision for strengthening the democratic ideals that allow people to flourish and solve their own problems. I do not say solve their own problems because it is not my problem. I mean solve their own problems because they know better than i do what their priorities are and what their tradeoffs are. Onmodel is more focused lets, you know, instead of focusing too much on having political debates about foreign agencies, there are things they can do that would be smarter. Not doing so much specific Program Design from afar and imposing it. Just focusing on becoming clearinghouses and let other people do what they will. I am encouraging and we are a collection of interested donors and people, whether that is 100 or 1 million plus, to say where the local level are people working at systemic change they give more choice and flexibility . In covid, this is so important. Yes, the large institutions are doing everything they can to look at debt service suspension, maybe even debt reduction. But the more longterm strategy that is really going to work is supporting local efforts to strengthen the institutions. It is how wealthy countries got rich. Know, ant have, you overt industrial policy. We did not have one missing ingredient. I shared a common ideal will not say we were perfect but the point is to have ideals. That was that everybody is responsible for their own life and with that comes the dignity of respecting each others choices for what is going to make the most sense for them. That is where Economic Solutions and progress happens on an enduring level. Host during coronavirus how much money has your group been able to move to some of these local projects and think tanks . Guest on that particular fund about 1 million. We continue to do some of our related giving somewhere between 5 million and 6 million. One of the benefits that we offer the people who choose to support our model is that we have an intense monitoring and evaluation process for hundreds 500,ink tanks, upwards of and by think tanks i mean local ngos looking at systemic changes to the economic landscape. Optimize and make really careful investment where it is going to have a big impact whether that is on making it easier for people in the shadow economy to join the formal economy and grow their businesses, whatever those businesses might be. One of the temptations and foreign aid generally is for there to be one big solution. What is the missing ingredient . Chickenor chickens, some of these are at odds with the complexity of culture and history. Idiosyncratic. One of the thing we have to democratic ideals have been the strongest human rights model in the world. Working to is strengthen the individual public, their participation in designing their own futures, we can support that institutional change. But it has to be led, prioritized, identified by competent, trustworthy, local organizations and we are constantly bringing people in and out. If there are a lot of opportunities there are a lot of opportunities to help whether that is looking at our directory, 500 think tanks at atlasnetwork. Org. We care about their capacity growth. We are happy to see new relationships bloom directly with donors. I think the big message is during this giving season coming up now yes, there are many people suffering economically in the u. S. And these principles apply here as well. Recipients inrant the u. S. Doing good work on poverty. But there are things we can amount ofw with any we can deploy and get to where it needs to be. Host a good place to end the washington journalnnouncer continues. Host a discussion on this thanksgiving morning about political divisions and how to bridge them. Our guest is dave isay, founder and president of storycorps which started one small step. What is storycorps and what is one small step . Guest it is great to be here. Storycorps has been around a little more than 17 years. I was a radio documentary producer for a couple of decades before starting storycorps. Always interested in public service. How to use audio to make peoples lives better. You bring anyone you want to honor listen to their story, parent, or grandparent, you come to this booth and you are met by a facilitator who works for storycorps who brings you si