Transcripts For CSPAN Washington 20240704

Host good morning. It is friday, august 11. Consumer prices up 3. 2 compared to one year ago. House gop continues the probes into the biden family and military aid deployed to help with wildfire response. Those are a few top stories this week. What is your top story of the week . You to share your thoughts on our phone lines. Republicans, 2027488001. Democrats, 2027488000. Independents, 2027488002. You can text us at 2027488003. Include your first name and city, state. We are on social media, facebook. Com cspan. Welcome to washington journal where we start with the wildfires and tragedy unfolding in hawaii. Here is the Associated Press. Authorities update death toll working to identify bodies. It says that maui county confirmed thursday night the number of deaths increase to 55. Hawaii democratic senator was in hawaii and spoke about the damage done by the fires and is asking for federal assistance. [video clip] this is truly a all hands on deck situation and our people here who have not slept at all as they watch what is happening on maui. The Lieutenant Governor has mentioned and i thank her early leadership bringing all of us together and the governor who will land in hawaii couple of hours. We are all pulling together and 21st because i got this morning was from secretary mayorkas who assured me that they stand ready to do whatever they can to provide support. I reach out to the sba administrator because the businesses that have been devastated by these fires, i hope many of them will want to come back and get back to business and they will need the sba to provide the loans and other support. I have been getting phone calls from supporters from both the u. S. House and senate including chuck schumer, our majority leader, who has said to our entire delegation we stand ready. Please note every effort will be made to bring the federal resources. Host that was the senator of hawaii. You can see at the end of that portion images of the devastation. Here is the front page of usa today with a picture, the headline says national treasure, then ruin. It was that quick. As the picture of a 200 Year Old Church in lahaina, hawaii. That congregation celebrated their 200 anniversary three months ago. In washington post, at the syllable and fire scorched rally. The article says wildfire spanned by wind has toys toying communities for a second time in five years. Dozens are dead in this fire. The Historic Town has been all but leveled. Activists say that those of factors heightened fire risk and can trigger more disasters of action is not taken. Factors include spread of flammable not native grasses and a failure to manage the vegetation and harden communities against fire. In addition, changes in climate feeling stronger anger change that may contribute to conditions in hawaii. President biden discussed efforts to assist those in maui. [video clip] we just approved a major declaration for hawaii which will get aid into the hands of people desperate who need the help now. They have lost, and will has lost a a loved one, whose home is been destroyed will get help immediately and i direct that research the Emergency Personnel working at risking their lives. I just got off the phone with the governor this morning. I let him know i will make sure the state has everything it needs for federal government to recover. The fema administrator will be in maui tomorrow and i directed her to streamline any process with request for help and survivors which therefore federal assistant without delay. Fema is assisting disaster personnel and they will help survivors to get access to federal assistance. Anybody who wants to know out there were to go, this is televised, they can go to disaster assistance. Gov. Disaster assistance. Gov. To learn if youre eligible for assistance. Ive ordered all federal assets on the island including u. S. Coast guard, Navy Third Fleet and u. S. Army to assist local Emergency Response crews along with the hawaiian nation guard. We are working as possible to fight the fires and evacuate the residents and tourists. Host we are taking your calls on the top story of the week, what you thought was the top story, and regarding Public Policy the hawaii fire heres the washington examiner. By this is military aid to help with response. Since the 34 hours, President Biden ordered military aid to be sent to hawaii. White house issued a statement saying all available federal assets are being deployed to help quench the fire, conduct search and rescue, and evacuate hawaiian citizens. In other news, i want to share with you, politico and the headline is this, special Council Proposes january 2, 2020 for trial for trump on election charges. The aggressive timeline to put the alleged interference case first on trumped lists of upcoming criminal trials. The article says this, special Council Jackson is seeking to put donald trump on trial january 2, 2024 less than five months away on charges related to his bed to subvert the come to an election. The timeline will put the trial first on trumps crowded calendar of criminal proceedings and guaranteed excessive airing of the e allegations against him just before republican primary voters head to the polls. Also from politico is this news, james comer rolled out a new memo detailing foreign payments to the biden family members as part of a sprawling investigation. But the white house accuse the Kentucky Republican of moving the goalpost over the lack of direct payments to joe biden. It says the Kentucky Republican release a memo wednesday outlining the findings and so far on payments made from foreign entities or individuals in russia, ukraine, and pakistan to biden family members and in total according to the memo house identified has identified more than 20 million in payments from foreign sources or their associates. It says from the memo, President Biden defenders report a weak defense by setting the committee must show payments directly to the president to show corruption. It says this is a hollow claim, no other market will be afforded if the federal member accepted foreign payments or bribes. It says this, the disclosure immediately caught the intention of the white house and House Democrats who accuse the Kentucky Republican a movie the goalposts for investigation republicans characterize moving the goalposts of investigation republicans characterize about joe biden. Democrat says Committee Republicans release information on financial transaction that did not involve the president. If you would likeif you would lt memo i would encourage you to do that. It is at oversight. House. Above. Oversight. House. Gov. Regarding the memo i have a portion of what james comer said oh newsmax. [video clip] host i think we have that available . It confirms the president of the United States has been lying to the American People for years about involvement and family shady business dealings. We believe every person who wired the by this money for services we have no idea what they were for that joe biden in some form or fashion with every single one them even sitting down for lengthy dinners with the people. All of these people who sent the brightest millions of dollars are people who are in trouble is he some country around the world , usually their own country. They are all bad people. They are bad actors. All bad people. They are bad actors. And they are from adversarial countries from u. S. They all it needed something from the federal government. It is becoming more clear every day. The president s son was out front but jill biden was working behind the scenes communicating with every single one of these shady characters. You look at the money trail and i wonder what some of these people from foreign countries, why were they paying the biden grandchildren . I think that is more a part of the Money Laundering scheme per unit six different banks, major banks in america accuse the bidens of Money Laundering. Look at the payments we disclose, these payments would always go through one or two Shell Companies first. Look at the money that went to hunter biden for the car, the exact amount wired from the oligarch to a Shell Company at the Shell Company purchased the car. Never received the money directly. They always put it through a Shell Company first. That is called Money Laundering. We set up Shell Companies for sole purpose of Money Laundering, that is racketeering. Number of crimes the family has committed continues to grow on the weekly basis but the one thing that is most important to us is that jill biden knew who his family joe biden knew who his family was receiving millions of dollars from. Host we would like to hear what you think is the top story of this week. Inflation numbers came out yesterday. Here is the wall street journal. Kula july inflation of this storage of fed pause on race. Price pressure continue pulling. Fresh inflation figures show that leaders hearing the Federal Reserve from deterring the Federal Reserve from raising rates in september. A similar price index, measure of goods and services and prices across the economy, rose a mild 0. 2 in july, the same as in june. Core prices which excludes volatile food and Energy Categories also increase just 0. 2 percent in both months, extending a broader slow down in price pressures. The figures led to 3. 2 percent annual inflation in july, up 53 in june. Annual core inflation down to four point 7 in july from junes 4. 8 . This is an interview on the new cpi numbers with San Francisco fed president. She discussed the work if it has to do in stabilizing the economy. [video clip] i do know that theres a lot more information coming in between now and our next meeting and certainly between now and the year and i use the word information as to the data because i had an early part of your program that assessment with the fed looks only at headline whether that is inflation or labor market or housing prices, we are actually looking deeply within the data and asking questions like what our new rents doing, what would people feel when they released their first property, what do my contacts say if they will hire workers next year or coolingoff, how much price pressure to people feel when they are out in the marketplace. Those are all the information sets we have and to being data depend as of fed me you take that information in and to use it to project what you think will happen. As i look at that, i see slowing in the economy, but not there yet. Thats what my contacts across the district tell me whether i am in alaska, hawaii, california, arizona. I hear the same thing. Yes, the economy slowing down. It feels less frantic but it is still hard to find workers. If you are a worker, it is still hard to afford things. It is not really quite in balance and that is the work we continue to do as a fed. How we do that whether we raise another time or held rates steady, those are yet to be determined. It would be premature to project what i think would happen because theres a lot of information coming in between now and our next meeting. Host we go to your films now. Kamil in montana, independent. Good morning. Caller good morning. My story of the week is Climate Change. What happen in mably, my birth giver was there in maui, my birth giver it was in the town and theyre experiencing drought they have all that moisture created but they are drought. It should be a book of call that Climate Change is real. We should realize Climate Change is bad. It is not up to us as normal people to it, it is the corporations. They like to say we the people should have to do it read should be the corporations first and then as. Then there banana republics, they have banana there killing bananas and we are losing species of fruit and vegetables. Climate change will affect everything and call me, and this if you have to, but i think this radical stuff they could do. We have boomers who are just going to die off so they do not care about what is going to happen because theyre not going to have to experience that. We have people who fell in the hospital or had to go to a hospital. Host how old are you . Caller i am 33. Anyone who is around my age, run for office because we have the boomers in there theyre not doing anything. We have good people like Bernie Sanders but he is getting up there and we do not have a lot of young people to help and we need more young people to get out there and run for office because that is where the change will happen. We get our ideas out there because im tired of seeing the order people not understanding we have to do this. They do not care about our future. Host chris in maine, democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. I want to go back to the james comer investigation of the biden crime family. Every time a republican because in i would love for you to ask them what crime was committed and ask them, a bunch of money went to members of the family, what policy did jill biden enact , do or engage in as a result of money going to the family members. I would love for you to ask them this, voucher discussion it was in the white house working on the middle east he received 1 billion loan from cutter at a time cutter was under blockade by other middle eastern nations oddly just coincidently i am certain blockade was lifted just before kushner got 1 billion to bail out his his property which was completely dying. He only had about 50 of the money needed to cover the loans. Six months after leaving the white house where he was an official working for the people, got 2 billion from the saudi arabians. Then this year in march he got another few hundred million from cutter and uae. Republicans are worried about a few million that went to some biden family members . Biden has been in politics his entire life so it is no big surprises his family will play off of his name. I would love for you to ask those questions. Whenever someone says biden family, biden crime family, please tell us what crime that was committed and what policies changed from money that went not to him but his family. Host james in virginia. Caller the pact act. Refuse treatment after age 18. The gentleman that just the fbi just killed, they do in the check to see if you might be involved with the pact act . Being screwed over . It would be something to check on. Host did you apply for benefits . James is gone. John in detroit, independent. Good morning. Caller hello. Top story to me is this military coup in niger. I guess they are trying to kick out the french military. They got rid of their old president and one of our own diplomats victoria nuland, deputy secretary of state acting, think joe biden promoted her but she visited niger and she met with the military people who overthrew their president last week and i guess they did not really give her a warm reception and our country which are aid but now we are withdrew aid but now secretary blinken approves invasion by other west african country so that is what im looking at. Host here is the Associated Press on that situation in niger. The headline is western officials, want date killed the post president of any military intervention. It says they told top u. S. Diplomat that they would show the post president if neighboring countries attempted any military intervention to restore his role. They spoke to the ap shortly before the western blot said it had directed the deployment of a Standby Force to restore democracy. Zach is next. Harrisburg, pennsylvania. Mcgrath. Democrat. Caller thank you for taking my call. When it comes to the crime family, we got to a Supreme Court justice who has been running around for 30 years taken money. My thing is bidens plans through congress is what we should be talking about. We should talk about the fact that most of the money of these bills will go to red states because they are the poorest. As a reason why they are the poorest. There politician skim and lie to them. While we do not extend medicare and youre in texas or alabama . But you got close to 4 Million People living in poverty. Then when biden put these policies in place, hes thinking about these people. I am old enough to remember that what got dr. King killed was not that was when he decided he was going to get to mississippi and deal with the poor white people. He was going to bring hope to them also. That is what got king killed. To this day, these People Living in obscurity. Most of them do not have teeth and how Social Security say government this coming government that did not take away my Social Security not even knowing Social Security is from the government or food programs for children in the morning who may be their only mill of the morning. Yet they are supposed to learn, go through a whole day of school on one meal. Get off the biden crime crap because Everybody Knows trumps family has made more money in than anyone else. Host zach mentioned the supporting Supreme Court about the justices. The public at with this report fast thomases vacations, other billionaires who has treated the Supreme Court justice to luxury travel. Denise in indiana. Caller good morning. I have two points. I do not understand why a republican he is not a nominee but he is running for the republican nomination, Asa Hutchinson, has not beginning a lot of time on air. I think he has a lot of energy. His wife is very good speaker. She is eloquent in getting points across but the policies about what their policies would be. I for the both democrat and republican. I did not understand how republicans can stand behind donald trump when i admit i have never liked him but i did get him a chance and he proved everyone right. He said barack obama in the past should visit the families of the two people that died of a bollard. What about the Million People two people that died of ebola. What about the Million People who died from covid during his watch . That the evidence come out and read the constitution. Do they not know how to read, comprehend . It is not about being republican or democrat. It is not patriotic to the country and knowing with the constitution says and honoring it. Host speak at the former president , here is newsweek that headline this, trump pieces debate announcement. Says former President Donald Trump says he has made a decision regarding his precipitation dust dissipation in the debate and will announce it next week. The debate happens in about two weeks he could take a look. The interview with newsmax he mentions that. I put a poll up on twitter that at least two thirds of the people do not want you to do the debate because they feel it could be a set up. Are you concerned . When youre at 75, 80 and other guys at 0 , 1 . You do say what is the upside . Will i go up one point but they could go up, they are not dumb people. There senators. There are governors. I think you are good people. I have a problem with the debate. I would not sign a pledge. There are people on there i would not have had somebody i would endorse so they want you to sign a pledge but i can name three or four people i would not support for president. There is a problem. Can i ask . No, i do not want to do that, but there are people there, a lot of people would not endorse. Theyre not going to go anywhere. Theyre not going to get it. It is one of the requirements so you will not sign it . I have three or four people who would put these people as president europe at these people as president . Did you ever put these people as president . She is terrific. She has been a fantastic job. Are you going to run, she said no. Because nobody can beat trump. She said it. She is saying i hope the truth. Why would i run because no one can beat trump. No these people are wasting their time. Host here are some of the things we covered this week. The audio issue one vote and abortion politics. Inflation numbers came out yesterday. There are 3. 2 since last july. House Oversight Committee releases memo on payments to the biden family and the ongoing fires in maui that i to be contained. Elaine from texas, democrat. Hi, elaine. Caller ive been watching since 1979 and i wonder why is that biden is always the topic of the conversation. Why not ivanka and jarrett with the money they made and was not qualified to be in white house . If there have been obamas growth they would have run them out. Obamas girls, they would have run them out. Host dawn is a republican in california. Caller good morning. I love your show. What is so good about you guys, you that them speak their opinions even though their opinions can be full of especially this information. Ive been a long time republican. My parents, my family big republicans but i am tired i do not vote for trump in 2020 because im tired of the lies and someone out there who admits he is a pathological liar but the big think i am tired of us republican saying where the party of lincoln. We look at history, this office always been democrats. The south has always been the democrats. People Ronald Reagan started switching. The whole south democrat and now they claim the republicans but they are not. As far as the media keeps promoting donald trump whether he is a credible or not. You have stations like newsmax who they said they believe the election was the land they do not believe i didnt was the true president. This is supposed to be they said they believed election was stolen and they do not believe i didnt the true president. This supposed to be a new site. The media host you are a republican . Caller yes. Host did you vote for trump the last election . Caller no. I cannot vote for someone who is committed to a criminal. He was charged as a slumlord. He is just not a i followed him since the 1970s. Host will you support in the next president ial election . Caller the one i would like to see is kissinger. He was only on the january 6 committee. I really like that guy. I wish he was running. Chris christie is the only one i really support because he is standing up and speaking the truth and republicans chose do not want to look at the truth. I am really sorry that my party has gone the deep rabbit hole with the liar with it. Host donald trump is set to attend the iowa state fair saturday with an entourage of guests simply meant to get under the skin and the former president s top rival in gop primary. The nine photo republicans who snubbed desantis by endorsing tmpor president. Starting monday we will have a coverage of this years iowa state fair gop president ial candidates the governor of north dakota and miami mayor speak while one with the states governor kim reynolds about their campaigns and policy platforms that isoming up monday starting at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan now, and online at cspan. Orc. We will hear from other candides in prime time throughout the week. Including mike pence, nikki haley, and ron desantis. David is next. In georgia, good morning. Caller i never call it where you are on and i want to welcome you to the new cspan family. Host thank you. Caller the first discussion is about affirmative action and the discussion that it opened up White Privilege like the legacy people. I appreciate the people like the asians and hispanics and indian people who mostly benefited from it who are being honest about it. The think about that discussion is ages are looking at themselves that bringing up the i appreciate them being honest about like the family structure. This other think with the water front a brawl in alabama. Also of discussion about White Privilege. How whites are starting to tell you we are sick and hard of the stop. You have white people all over it now turn in their guns and getting folding chairs now. Last one lets do a discussion on cspan about what happened with kari irving. That was a very good topic to talk about. Gods people, indigenous, black people of africa and middle east. There was no one else so that i sleep pick lets talk about that there was no one else to pick so lets talk about that. Host dennis in ohio, democrat. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. My number one issue was just that she one that failed was just that, issue one that failed. The majority of the vote came from the no vote, northeast ohio and it is a big deal because thats the other think happy to hear in november because we have an abortion issue theyll be on the ballot and secondly, recreational marijuana. Im not too concerned about that. I am concerned about giving woman their bodily autonomy back. I was raised catholic. I am against abortions. Im also against the idea of forcing my opinion on a woman and whatever choice she needs to make for her life. That is the number one thing. Host lets take a look at senator sharon brown who was on msnbc and talked about that ohio issue. [video clip] this is four times the turnout the secretary of state predicted and the race was overwhelming. It was clearly about a rejection of the power grab politicians in columbus were making and voters it was about a portion and about the corruption in columbus and power grab by state officials with a huge turnout in compelling 14 point margin. Explain what you think happened. We are in the middle of august. It is a special election. It is a large chunk of ohios population that came out to vote. What did democrats do to get the message out . I would think it will always be confused as to what it was about. They scheduled the special election august after getting rid of august special elections earlier. But they thought nobody was going to turn out. When abortion rights was that the power grab for the future whether labor rights or Voting Rights or abortion rights, statehouse politicians one stick away with the power grab, the voters were also saying Work Together in the pack act, fentanyl, infrastructure which is what we have been doing in congress. I think voter spoke about that. You have to Work Together. No more oneparty rule. No more power grabs and that is what ive been trying to do through my career and i think voters are saying lets work that way instead of making one Political Party more and more powerful. Can you throw this forward to next years election . What the vote on issue one might press in ohio, state training more red . Im looking forward to a couple of things, doing what we need to do, fighting again against fighting to keep wall street executives accountable, fighting to get infrastructure and looking to november, working with abortion rights advocates to make sure we pass in november and then we go to next year. Host we have a tweet from senator Lindsey Graham from last week on the subject. He said the republican approach of supporting reasonable limitations banning lateterm abortions is the right approach. Democrats position allowing abortion on demand to the moment of birth is extreme and will put our country in the same category as china and north korea. Their pursuit this to us, more good news on the bidenomics. More devastation from Climate Change. What does the Republican Party have to offer except the chance to saying things about people . Rests, top story of the week, gouging inflation, get create gas out of control. America is suffering no matter what you hear. From susan b. Anthony director for public america says this, there are many pressing legislative issues for congress that does not have the votes at the moment but that is not a reason for a strong leader to back away from the fight. This is where president ial Leadership Matters most. Karen calling from arkansas, republican. Hi, karen. Caller hi. Thank you for having me. On Asa Hutchinson come up with you dream it was in he put all those buses and mobile homes out there but we wasted money on Asa Hutchinson, when katrina was in, he put all this buses and mobile homes out there and we wasted money. They have not that the brains to run the country. Host jay in illinois, independent. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Im not big on politics. I think most of the politicians are paid. It looks to me like donald trump lukes is running away with things. I travel for a living and i can tell you from going to the restaurants and stops, 90 of people i talked to are so upset with the government, they feel trump was cheated with the corruption in d. C. It seems like we are getting closer to civil war. There are so many hot buttons out there you do not want to go into some of the places and talk about politics or politicians. It is a heated topic in the country. The only way we change this is if we put term limits on politicians first. Maximum of 12 years no matter what they do. No pensions. You want to come and serve, serve, but that you do not get a pension to go back home. I think theyll be the way to do it. I know in illinois, we have a governor who is off of the rose. Rails. We are the abortion capital of the u. S. 22 is said we did over 2. 3 million abortions. Our government gives a people away like crazy. Im not against ukrainian people but we need to put this stuff at ballot measures. Do you want to get 1 billion to this group . You want to give 1 billion to that group . It should be up to the taxpayers because there are no governmentfunded programs. Every program the government uses as funded on the backs of the taxpayer. But they do not want to tell the truth about it. There were to say if we had all humanitarian needs touch, we would not have rapid drug use. We would not have homeless stats and people in this country will be taken care of first instead of sending all the money to foreigners. I think the thing that would really help the u. S. Is if we had torn limits on politicians. Term limits on all the politicians. Host earlier this week talking about former President Donald Trump january 6 related indictments. It was his attorney who attended the clarify trumps request of Vice President trump on january 6. We spoke with former president mike pence and asked about the assertions made this last week to all the president did was ask him to pause certification on january 6, 2021. He told me quote that is not what happened. Your response. That is not what i said but that is ok. What is it you believe happened between the president and Vice President . Do you have fear of the Vice President being called as a witness in the case . Know, the Vice President will be our best witness. I said the ultimate ask of Vice President pence was to pause the count and allowed the states to weigh in. What ive said is consistent with what Vice President pence is saying. Reason why Vice President pence would be so important to the defense is the following, he agrees that john eastman who give legal advice to President Trump was an esteemed legal scholar. He agrees there were election irregularities, fraud, unlawful actions at the state level. All of that will eviscerate any allegations of criminal intent on the part of President Trump. But bryce Vice President believes these issues needed to be debated on january 6. He openly called for all of these issues to be debated and objected to in january 6 proceeding. President trump believed following the advice of john eastman who is the legal scholar, these issues needed to be debated at the state level, not the federal level. There was a constitutional disagreement between Vice President pence and President Trump at the bottom line is never in our countrys history has those disagreements been prosecuted criminally. It is unheard of. Host marie in mississippi, democrat. Caller i want to speak on Climate Change but a different direction. I was listening to the gentleman from montana about a heat drought there. This has been festering in my heart for 18 years. This month 18 years ago was we saw one of the worst disasters in this country, hurricane katrina. I remember watching when they went through. Those people were marked mocked by a lot of people around this country while they were going through what they were going through. There were mocked by the president of this country. If it was not for the general who was there, you had military people who had ar15s on families and children was going to shoot them if he had not stop them. Sean hannity brought general manager of the walmart in the city at that time on fox news and interviewed him trying to convince that man how he needed to press charges on those people that were getting bread and food on the water. He need to press charges. The man said why would we do that, there all customers. They do anything in the stores. His people had water past their chest. I did not come of the show with the religion but the bible say god is not mocked. A man called in and said on cspan and said he contacted the federal government said he had a vote at his house and said i can go and help for you to transport some of the people out there. He said they told him to state where we are and we will come to you. The men said they gave him 25,000 for his boat and it never left his house to help the people. During that time i say god is not pleased with this and every time i hereby disasters around this country that is going on, the floods, hurricanes, i think back to that because i knew in my spirit god is not pleased. George bush needs to repent to god first. Host earlier this week President Biden talked about what he is calling the existential threat of Climate Change and what his is doing to combat it. [video clip] we have seen historic floods. More intense droughts, wildfires, spreading smoking haze. Thousands of miles. Record temperatures affecting more than 100 million americans this summer, over 110 in phoenix for 31 straight days. Extreme heat is americas number one weatherrelated killer. Extreme heat kills more people than floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes combined. It is threatening suit the farms, forests, and fisheries that so many families depend on to make a living but none of this need to be inevitable. From i started by administration, who taken an unprecedented action to combat climate crisis. Last year, i saying largest climate bill in history not only in u. S. , but visually the history of the world. The biggest investment in common conservation and department of justice ever, anywhere climate conservation and Environmental Justice anywhere in the world. It is many parts. It will say working families thousands of dollars a year if they start rooftop solar and also conserve energy. It includes record 720 million for native communities to ease impact of droughts, rising sea levels, burning Clean Electricity to tribal homes. These measures put us on track to cut emissions in half by 2030. We are well on our way. Host that was President Biden tuesday create cant sent us this. He says malley tried proves the world is on fire and we are on the verge of environmental collapse and conservatives continue to deny and or pretend the environment is not an issue. This is richard who says i wrote in Mitch Daniels in 2016 and 2020 as i could not make myself fill in the circle was auxiliary, trump, or biden. I would welcome a third choice. This is from jimmy who says the lack of concern about our National Security based on open border policy by compromise president taking bribes for his family members think accounts. Bank accounts. Host sharon in delaware. Caller good morning. I was appalled when i heard your democrat callers say trump should be shot. I dont know the fbis listening and taking notes on this because i am quite sure theres a way to get in touch with that lady but that was really an awful thing. As far as our country is concerned, without all the gun violence going on and family members with all of the gun violence going on and there be shot dead at the day and she has the nerve to talk about and hope that happens to somebody. That is horrible. We are all gods children create for her to do that is really appalling. As far as our president goes, President Biden, the Climate Change im sure is one of the nine wonders he was talking about the other day. As far as he is concerned, i believe he had to drop out twice for running for president in the past because of lies he tells. We are not in a good situation here in the country and we have to keep our eyes on china, russia, and ukraine. Thank you. Host marty in washington dc, independent. Caller good morning. I talked to a number of my friends. This week the incident that occurred in alabama is one that has to be examined a little closer. For a number of black people across this country, it has been a source of pride because it goes against the narrative that for much of this countrys history that black people have accepted the racism that is been thrown against them. As we saw in this incident, there were a number of folks who came to the aid of a black man who was being attacked physically by a number of white people. For a lot of us, we took a look at the incident and especially seeing the comments and things on social media, this is an incident that needs to be studied much further. It goes against the narrative that has always in the history of the country theres always been resistance by black people to the racism we have had to endure. This is one the latest incidents and it really does it could be examined host host a lot further. It could be examined a lot further. Host from the washington posts the judge hos hearing in trump election case. The u. S. Judge overseeing prosecution for allegedly cruelly conspiring to overturn bidens election victory is set to preside in the first hearing were prosecutors and former president s this morning in d. C. Trump is not excited to attend the proceeding. It has been called to resolve an early battle over limiting the former president and his defense can potentially reveal about government evidence in the case. The dispute over proposed protective orders threatens to delay the prosecution handover of materials and the setting of a trial date with special Council Jack Smith team as proposed for january 2. Host ben from south carolina, democrat. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I am very grateful that cspan is doing an outstanding job that they are doing. I think the dummy and down of america dummy inc down that down of america, this is what you get. This issue reminds me of the do not cause cancer argument. You have a lawyers and doctors that are being paid by the cigarette industry to promote the lie. Fossil fuel companies supports democrats and republicans so when the Supreme Court ushered in citizens united, corporation, that their money into the race. It is a shame. In my mind, we need to get back to primary education. It is ok to lie. It is acceptable you have a president that tells 40,000 lies for a period over four year term. We need to get back to teaching civics so we can have an informed electorate. Right now we do not. I find ironic the colors of the two parties, red and blue, reminds me of the bloods and the crips and thats what we got, gang warfare. If you are a republican, you have to say biden is not doing a good job. We need to get back to education. Host we got it. Ray, a republican in kentucky. Good morning. Caller good morning. I hear everyone calling. This president talking about Climate Change and global warming. Has any people listen to look up the news about the volcanoes last january they erupted under the water and the ocean . They said it would change the climate temperature for the next five years at least. Ive not heard anybody mention that at all. Where do you get your news from . Just one source . I do not understand. The other thing is ecuador. Yesterday a guy running for president down there was assassinated word has it by our cia because they do not like him. Host where are you hearing it was the cia that assassinated him . Caller wordofmouth. I guess people come up with things. Just like what they did in the past, cia use to assess and the people around the world. Hubby still do they probably still do. Host lets talk to elizabeth, democrat in maryland. Good morning. Caller good morning. I was just i would like to say one of the top news stories of the week is biden making a National Monument out of the land in the grand canyon. I thought it was a great thing that he did for everyone in the country and especially the Indigenous People who live around there. Preserving the grand canyon. The next thing i want to talk about is the 2024 election create 24 election. Cornell west is running in the green party. He cares about poor people, housing, food stamps and everything. He will make a great thirdparty candidate. Thats who im going to vote for. Host one more call from tim ischemic from tim in michigan, republican. Caller my main concern this week would be the gentleman that got unalived from the fbi for making the claim for threatening Jill Biden Joe biden. It is a serious think and puts a lot of scare enter the country as a whole. That means, this is going beyond of what i have ever seen in my 57 years of living. That is not good. We need to definitely lady says something about shooting donald trump and with this a long time, people can just say what they want which we do have the freedom of speech for the problem is that it is going way too far when these people can do what they want to do and threaten people and go on and shoot them. Thank you. Host coming up on washington journal, new republican magazine Senior Editor Alec Sheppard joins us talk about another busy week on the campaign trail and later dr. Joel zinberg discusses his groups new report on reforming the cdc announcer this yearbook tv celebrates 25 years of nonfiction authors. From the 22nd year in a rowboat tv is live. Since 2001 book tv in partnership with the library of congress has provided signature, indepth, unindirect did coverage. Featuring nonfiction authors and guests. Watch for all day coverage saturday of the National Book festival. You will hear from keynote speakers. And former nfl player arthur of the yard between us. The National Book festival schedule is online at tv. Org. The National Book festival live, saturday beginning at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan 2. Announcer sunday night on cspan q, chief White House Correspondent the rise to greatness 1936 through 1986 talks about the first of his twopart ir graffiti of the Supreme Court soviet justice. I think he recoiled from the excesses and taking the law into their own hands. All of that shaped him in ways that made him a better judge and justice. So that you cannot understand how he got to be few he is without understanding the elements of his career. Announcer sunday night at 8 00 eastern on cspans q a. You can listen on our cspan now at for all of our free podcasts. Announcer cspan now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington live and ondemand. Keep up with live floor proceedings, campaigns and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips area you can also stay current with the latest episode of washington journal and find scheduling information for cspan tv network and cspan radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts. It is available now you can download it free today. Cspan now your from receipt to washington front row seat to washington from anytime anywhere. Announcer washington journal continues. Host we are back now with washington journal. Alec sheppard is our guest. We will talk about campaign 2020 four and other views. Welcome to the program. Guest good morning. Host good morning lets talk about campaign 2024 how are things going in light of President Trump legal problems and President Biden low popularity ratings. Guest things could change but nothing has changed so far. As candidates come into the race, we will probably see another drop and we have not seen the basic change. Joe biden remains a popular choice, but no republican candidate has been able to really hit at Donald Trumps lead. It seems like we are in a holding pattern. That may change regarding on whether or not donald trump shows up. I make it pessimistic that we get a competitive republican primary. You may not see the dynamic between the trump and biden rates which they are headtohead with about 14 right now. We may not see that n early part of next year. That could change in our editorial meetings. People get mad at me about my pessimism about his race altering at all but what we see right now is the same thing over and over again. 50 republican want donald trump and the rest is split between an array of candidate. I would like to host i would like to remind viewers if they want to call in or make a comment our lines are divided by party affiliation. Democrats 202 7488000, republicans 202 7488001, independents 202 7488002. And you wrote a article called this is 2024 best chance to take trump down. And what is your recommendation to the public field to narrow that gap and to either catch up or overtake the former president . Guest the republican candidates are caught in a trap where broadly speaking the republican electorate leaves innocence that donald trump is a legitimate president and there were an array of problems none of which were true about the way the election was run. At the same time they believe that this brought prosecution against him and it was motivating. When you have republicans who believe joe biden was the legitimate president or that he lost the election, there is a concern about his growing list of legal problems and right now it is usually ron desantis or tim scott. And the issue we have is coming out and saying that donald trump lost that usually results in a firestorm for the former president. You end up getting a target on your back. At the same time, you will not end up convincing anyone. This is the only way they can get ahead. When you look at the end of last year after the midterm elections when there is a clear dynamic of candidate that Donald Trump Endorsed that are badly a wide sense from republicans and among Republican Voters that it is time to move on, polling showed that they want someone who is not joe biden or donald trump to run. So i think they are facing a problem that they need to go and convince voters that donald trump is an electoral liability. For independent voters who see the polling so far, they see this. They are not doing it and they are worried about the impact that will follow. Uc a slowmoving thing where Chris Christie has been one candidate that has come out and gone aggressively against the former president. Others are waiting for the shou chew drop. Ive covered Donald Trumps entire political career at this point. Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing will happen unless republicans start to go after his clear electoral will electoral liabilities. Host is that your view if you were advising the candidates . In 2016 did attack donald trump and it still did not work. What do you recommend . Guest it was late in the election not until march or april. And that is the same as marco rubio and trump back and forth on a tuesday. And that was a little late at that point. And you look at trumps greatest decisions here and his greatest liability was after the 2022 midterm elections. This is where you get into a problem. Everyone thinks they can draft off of donald trump. But that is a crater i think to some extent, maybe i am playing into it but this may be a widespread smoke filling of the room where only trump and republicans and conservative elite got together and had a plan and acted in a concerted manner against him that you would see movement here. What we see now is a strange dynamic for the primary election or somebody wins a slight majority of the vote. And they have a candidate by more than 30 points not being attacked. And then i think it comes from a place of fear. The only candidates are the ones like Chris Christie who have nothing to lose. We are at a point where whether or not donald trump is there. And we need to try to convince voters that you are a viable alternative was not just trump but other candidates as well. Host i want to touch on the New Hampshire rally with the former president talking about his mounting legal issues. Here it is. How can my corrupt political opponent, cricket joe biden put me on an Election Campaign that i am winning by a lot but forcing me nevertheless to spend time and money away from the campaign trail to fight bogus made up accusations. I am sorry, i will not be able to go to iowa today or New Hampshire because i am sitting in a courtroom listening to bull shit because his attorney charged me with something. Terrible. [applause] host what do you make of that . The continued strong support and even more support that donald trump gets from his legal problems . Guest he is skilled at using himself for a med afford. That is what you see a metaphor and that is what you see here. That he is being unfairly targeted ad supporters who are also facing down the problems of the liberal establishment and so on. One of the things i think is interesting, he used to talk more about issues that more directly affect other people in and he used to talk a lot more about the economy in particular and also immigration. We are not seeing the same level of focus on actual issues at this point. We are seeing this kind of it is like the end of lenny bruces career where you get along stretch of reading from his own legal cases on the campaign trail. I am skeptical of the viability of the longterm electoral candidate especially he should go back and win those that he lost in 2020. It has been a powerful case and i think he is making it. It is not accurate. Merrick garland who is the attorney general is extremely reluctant to investigate donald trump. That was necessitated by trumps own president ial announcement. He has made this into the effective argument. And hes putting time into the idea that he will come in and clean house. That is part of the electoral in 2016 but what was not as important that this exists and now it must be taken down and be replaced with someone that is important to him. Theres a lot of doubt about trumps early 2025 ambitions and yet it remains a strong argument. And that sets the tone for the rest of the field. Even when republican candidates expressed concerned about the indictment that donald trump is facing. They go out of their way to say they are politically motivated by prosecution, but they are what they are not saying is that these are liabilities for a potential candidate. They even say as Chris Christie has, that it is not just that trump is being taken out of the campaign trail, but in many cases it is a document case in particular and these are liabilities of trumps presidency as well. Things they brought on he brought on himself like failing to return documents. Host there was a New York Times siena poll that came out last week that said biden failed to win the majority from nonwhite voters who have not graduated from college. What is the root cause there . What is going on . Guest its one of the interesting questions going into a 2024 election. Maybe there is a widespread frustration. That biden did not fulfill the president promise as president and part about was the promise of returning the country to precovid levels. It is also the frustration that it has to do with inflation and that the Biden Economic agenda did not work as well as promise and i think many noncollege voters feel less by the country itself and they do not feel like joe biden has done enough to express support or work hard enough to bring programs and other policies. It is still a large question and i think it gets to one of the most interesting questions as we head into the election. Can joe biden bring the turnout we saw in the 2020 record turnout . With trump you made the support among independents and swing voters. Trump has shown time and time again or in the last two elections that he can bring voters out to vote for him that others cannot. They do not show up in the midterm elections but they do vote for him. He brings out the traditional democrat voters, biden. And it seems like a handful with arizona and georgia, but black voters in particular will be important for winning those states. Host lets look at remarks made by President Biden on wednesday about his agenda and biden makes. The Financial Times and wall street journal have started to call my plan bidenomics and initially i do not think it has a great deal of respect. With all respect toward them, our plan is working. It is working. The economy has grown. It grew faster in the last quarter than anyone expected. We traded over 13 million brandnew drops created over 13 million brandnew jobs since i took office. 90,000 new jobs right here in new mexico. 800,000 manufacturing jobs nationwide. 800,000. Where is it written that america cannot lead the world again in manufacturing . We are going to do just that. These are facts, it is not a hyperbole, we created more jobs in two years than any president in American History has in a fouryear term. Unemployment is below 4 . The longest stretch in 50 years in American History. Not only have we covered recovered all the jobs we lost in the pandemic, we have more jobs than we had before the pandemic. Host what you think about that, as far as the improving economic numbers. And bidens Approval Rating on the economy does not seem to be moving. Guest yeah this is one of a more interesting questions in the in the post via economy is stupid area. We see an attachment to economic numbers that tends to be almost be democrats are more likely to view it positively when a republican is president. And we think we will see the core argument that biden makes in 2024 that he is a steward for the economy. He and fellow democrats have managed the economy better been republicans and that it is growing. The numbers remain good although there are warning signs that wages are outpacing inflation again. And the Unemployment Rate is low. And that the recession has dominated the last 18 months or so and it has dissipated. And you see a similar argument in 2016 where obama started after the Great Recession saying i am the right person to do that. And what democrats run into is a problem with a lot of voters hearing that and they say that is not right for me. They may be outpacing inflation, but not for a long time. And the policies pushed by joe biden and a number of state usually led by democrats other means like the special election referendum it does not always resignation. I think the core message is not an emotional appeal and in some ways it is a problem where voters here it and they say you are saying this is good right now but it is not so good for me. But with that Approval Rating and bidens struggles that point to other areas. For instance, personally getting out of afghanistan the kind of thing that you could make the electoral argument that the problem is the disastrous pullout is where this dip started. Similar with the war in you in ukraine. And that support has pushed into this decline in recent months. What do you see is the biden makes message is what is left. That is what the biden people say over and over again. Host lets take our first caller from virginia, republican, james. Good morning. Caller good morning. Inflation, 11 , 9 , i did not know about you, i did not get a . 44 pay raise over the past years. The second thing is, biden is just lost. If you want to talk about the insurrection, 2019 and 2020 we had they say this corruption is called harassment. Those are there word. And when you look at this, january 6 i am sitting here thinking what was trump going to do . [indiscernible] he is taking over the government and we are going to listen to him. All for the state. This is bogus. This is nothing but political. Nothing. You get the eight challengers to trump that all say the exact same thing to trump. Everything. Would you rather buy a real or fake [indiscernible] . Guest on the last point i feel like a broken record. The candidates are not differentiating themselves. I think they are afraid for the most part. One thing biden will run into over and over again is wage growth is starting to outpace inflation. That started six weeks ago. They may have Credit Card Debt in the u. S. Right now in part because of inflation. I think that is some cognitive dissonance that biden and the democrats are going to have to deal with. They have not found a way to square that circle and no democratic candidate has that has run on this good for the economy message. Host those go to jerry in new jersey. Democrat good morning. Caller good morning. A couple questions i have for you i think mansion now is coming out and he looks like he is going to run against biden on the independent ticket. I do not know how thats going to go or how it will help biden. I believe one of the reasons democrats are running scared is that there will be investigation about biden. And even though the media does not want to talk about it, it is coming out and its going to be bad. I think biden is going down the. And i think this is happening. I think there i am concerned because a lot of time they overstep. They put so much effort out there are truck to come to biden and people are getting it. So, yeah, it is not working full. Host alright lets get a response. Guest i think with mansion concerns i dont think anyone in the biden camp is sweating it. And i would say also part of what he is trying to do is he a concerned about reelection. The governor right now is quite popular. They mention in their report earlier this week that they see people running talking about positioning themselves for West Virginia voters is not because of biden lacking. On hunter biden in particular i think these will be liabilities for the administration which is a big problem. They have not found a way to talk about it. And that these are influent schemes here to some extent or there is a sense that hunter biden was going around and telling people he had access to the president. There is no evidence to anything like what republicans are saying, but it does look bad. It looks bad given the extent of what they talk about the things donald trump children were doing during the administration. And they kind of hand wiggle out of the concerns thanks to the part that they have over exaggerated with their political witnesses and what they have said. At the same time, what we see here is it seems sleazy and a lot of voters see it that way. Given the fact that the Biden Administration the president in particular have not found out a way to talk about these things. Host republican, ohio. Good morning, ads. Caller the trippy the clip you just showed, i was 30 years in the military, where is the faxed fact checker in this administration . You watch reports leading economist of the world, everything he says about the jobs for jobs 90 came back after covid was lifted. That is 90 of the jobs he counted. The few jobs he did not come back with his administration are right now the biden and the democrats. You add them up. This is the thing, no fact checker, that is a blatant lie. 100 . The guy lies about everything. Go back 35 years how about when he plagiarized all of his speeches when he ran for president. This guy cannot run the tell the truth for nothing. Trump is pounding him every day and everyone in the country knows that the country was great for four years straight. The military was strong that now everything is a complete disaster. My neighbors are democrats and i get along with them well they complain about everything in our country going on for two years straight. And i am listening to them. Then they Start Playing with trump and the republicans and i am lightweight a minute our borders are deflated. Look at these hypocrites, they have they want 15 billion of our money to bail them out . Host ok that is a lot there. It you talked about the border in lets start with the economy and jobs numbers. Guest jobs numbers are difficult to talk about because of the Global Pandemic at the very end of the administration. I think they have papered over some of that when they talk about the Unemployment Rate jumping way up. However, when you look at the underlying numbers, they look pretty good. Theyve been pretty good for the last year or so especially when you compare them to the worst predictions that were being made by economists who were convinced we would be heading into a recession until 23 months ago. We do run into the same problem that i was talking about earlier where if you go around saying the economy is great they say the economy is not great for me. Those people are right to say that because we see an increase in quality. Not just incrementally but exponentially for decades now. And the Biden Administration has not been able to reverse 40 years of problems there. The answer is quite complicated but i think the city is being overrun by immigrants or migrants in particular is not true. Host we got this post where one says as long as women feel threatened by abortion ban and losing their rights over their bodies, republicans are in trouble. How big of an issue do you think that will be . Guest i think it is become one of the most important issues in american politics. Voters will come out and support referendums and fight back against referendums with abortion. But there have been efforts by the states that make it harder. And republicans want to make it so they can enshrined the strict abortion bands in six weeks or total. Those have all gotten shot down. I think these things may get slightly exaggerated you have a ohio election on tuesday which was obviously a huge win for prochoice supporters. Others rejected the effort against change. And they raise the threshold to 50 . When you look at where people are voting, it is interesting right there in the rust belt close to pennsylvania, they went or for donald trump in 2016. Those really came out rejecting this referendum. However, i think what we are seeing is voters are still more inclined to vote in support of abortion right and shoot down these kind of efforts to make it harder to alter efforts that are taken by a republican state. We saw this with ohio area and this is with Sherrod Brown having a better chance of holding onto his seat in 2024. I am not so sure. We have not seen in democrat voters voting for Democratic Candidates. We are not entirely seeing a strong shift. I would let i would not look at the data and say that 55 of ohio has said that when they will back Sherrod Brown or joe biden. There is the larger issue the democrats have a brand problem with voters and that may be especially true in these states like ohio which was obviously the most important. Now it is a red state. They are struggling to impact those now. But even with the ammunition of the appeal of roe v. Wade. Host lets talk to jared, independent. Wilmington, delaware. Good morning. Caller good morning. I just wanted to speak first of all that the extent we are dealing with an uneducated part, you look at the democrat demographics of the Republican Party, it is mostly uneducated people. Middleclass working people. They have progress of the republican parties. What i wanted to say was i was reading over the Trump Indictment which i am sure few people have done. And in the first or second page it states that he was able to live. My question is, we are going to allow politicians to lie and say it is ok. The First Amendment tells us that political people can lie to us, how are we ever expecting our citizens to vote correctly or vote with knowledge and understanding of what is going on obviously media is out to make money but i do not get it. If people are flocking to donald trump, obviously there are crimes committed. So my question is do you, is it equitable for trump and biden to run against each other and biden to come out on top or do you think we are doing this political speech where everybody is lying and nobody is telling the truth. Host what do you think . Guest with the indictment, one of the defenses trumps lawyers have offered is that essentially all politicians lie and manipulate the truth. And that donald trump was simply just doing that. It is worth noting as well he is not being charged with lying. Essentially there are quite a bit of false statements included in the indictment but there is largely supporting evidence of what it involves. And they focus on these efforts that trump manipulated from the department of justice. I think what we see here is political culture where you very rarely face consequences for speaking falsely as trump did about the 2020 election. This is a culmination of that effort with trumps case. It is something that is terrifying when you think about the way American Media and democracy works. He created his own reality and everyone follows behind it. You see that with fellow republican candidates in the 2024 election, you see that with the Republican Party republicans and republican rightleaning media sources as well. And i think these prosecutions to some extent are an outgrowth of that. But at the same time, if you do for instance lie about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, the lies lead several thousand people gathering at the capitol and violently attacking Police Officers. I do think there need to be consequences for that and american democracy needs to have a guard rail on norms that weve had for so long of protecting the basic pillars and foundations of the country. Our prosecutions the best way to do that . I dont know. But when you have a system like this under attack, you need to find a way to hit back. One thing i would add that has concerned me more broadly is as the indictments pile up, some of them are stronger then the most recent one which revolved around the election lies being the strongest and most compelling. Im not sure that voters will see these indictments as being separate. Like the one in new york, that was filed first and may go to trial first. They are the result of the attorney general running and they reliable rely on novel legal strategies. It should one of the things that should concern democrats is people want to see some form of consequences of what happened after the 2020 election. They will see this political one and the ones that are stronger legally speaking. As all being part of the same legal due to use a bad metaphor. And i think that happens more as we head into the 2024 election. Host one says in my opinion most of the republicans are running to be trump vp not running against him what do you think of that . Guest i think essentially that is the only conclusion to derive, i do not think maybe that is why nikki haley is running, but i do not think that is why most of them are i dont think they wake up and say every i hope to be trumps Vice President and watching mike pence is political career he is a cautionary tale. But i think it is a decent way of explaining the dynamics where everyone is being subservient to donald trump and as the color mentioned earlier, they sound like him. And a couple weeks ago there was a theory along long time ago that the best way to be trump was a city without trump and you could adopt his policy positions and sound like him and go after the cultural war issues, but if you had the same time showed that you were more effective and you could go and actually do these things, you would not get derailed all the time by storms at 3 00 in the morning and investigations. By impeachment and voters responded to that. What they wanted was a more effective trump. We are not seeing any evidence that that is what voters want. And trump is the real deal to a lot of voters. He can go out and show that he is a fighter. Ironically it is the fact that he is still erratic and consistent that proves his authenticity when someone like ron desantis has done damage by sounding inauthentic. Soundbite driven. What we have not seen yet is being able to figure out how to counterbalance this type of narrative. I think everyone with what they are really waiting for which i do not think will happen is that trumps legal problems will be so great that they will be forced to drop out of the race. Or that the bottom will fall out. I think one of the more interesting candidate headed into the primary campaign will be ted scott because he offers a contrast temperamentally. He is not trying to sound like donald trump. With the policy, hes been the same way every republican is. He is not so far off. Im curious to see if that type of dissident stars to resonate with Republican Voters. Again, it is not that they are trying to run to be his Vice President , it is that no one can differentiate themselves from him and no one is willing to attack. Host Chris Christie is very different from trump what you think of his chances and why he is not moving up in the polls . Guest he is not connecting with voters the poll numbers are low. This is a larger problem where the narrative is still that Chris Christie is semidisgraced former governor of new jersey who also was a close ally and some would say confidant of donald trump and that is in the tail end of this administration. But i think this is not landing yet. That he is not necessarily the right person to deliver this. And he is seen as an avatar for republicans by a number of voters. What you need to see is someone with more credibility. I am not entirely sure sure who that is in the race. Pop caps perhaps ron desantis but we see that some voters are viewing him negatively as well. Host we have a republican caller next. Good morning. Caller good morning when hay every morning that people, that no one get killed because i retired from the military quickly in this 30 years, he says he is voting to support trump. A 30 year retiree supported trump, but trump is the one that took 30 years from the military housing to build the ball. The wall. And i must bring this out that trump was spewing all of the lies to judges, lawyers, he is calling them a racist. He is races, but if a black man says it is racist it is not. And as far as the incident down there in alabama, i dont know what happened. As long as that is going to be there, white people, a lot of white people have no good space. So black authority or black people. I will not be protected because of just an ordinary citizen. What i would propose then i need protection. I have to go into hiding. Why would i want to vote for that guy . Host all right. Ralph mentioned the border wall and trumps promise originally to build a wall. Has he been mentioning that . Has he been talking about continuing to build the wall . Guest it has come up last but that is important because the Trump Campaign has been myopic in recent months and since he assumed the presidency. One thing i think voters responded to in 2015 and 2016 was this air of nonchalance about his candidacy. Even though he was uttering comments about immigrants and in particular and a lot of people. But it was that error that he really did not care and he is not troubled by the normal pieties that affect other candidate like jeb bush or ted cruz. There is an allusion to his candidacy that the rallies could be quite scary. For a lot of people that were there they were fun because nobody cared about these. He shouldnt even care about the Political Correctness or whatever you want to call it. But what you have seen over the last now almost eight years is that is slowly being stripped away. Then he just talked about himself. He talked about his legal problems. His self himself. The immigration is still part of his campaign and it was the centerpiece and arguably the reason why he sort of took off in 2015. But it also points to another issue that republicans are having. I was talking about how joe biden has a shrinking campaign where he cannot really point to a lot of areas of success that register with people in legislation. A lot of people dont know about it. Republicans have a similar issue in that they face a campaign against biden in the first two years of his presidency and there is inflation, crime and the crisis at the border. What we have seen over the last year or so is all of the crises starting to dissipate. And this situation of the border makes it hard for biden adoption of the controversial trump arab program has calmed down considerably. Inflation is getting closer to the 2 target that the fed would like. It is close to an acceptable target which i think is 3 . And crime that you see in cities like new york there are a bunch of Democratic Candidates that base their kate Campaign Around the perception of the rise in crime as much as the reality of it. And considerably, this is to some extent that trump is out here that he can always go out and point to areas that hold up this indictment and say they are trying to come after me because they want to get after you. But in terms of policy, we are not seeing a lot of policy conversation on the right right now. That is the extent to which these criminals themselves think they have taken over. It reflects the fact that donald trump talks about the policy less than he did in 2016 and 2017. Host we are out of time. Alec sheppard is a writer at the new york new republic. You can view his work on new republic. Com. Up next joe member joy owed discusses his report on confirming this cd from forming the cdc and the Lessons Learned from the covid19 pandemic. Stay with us. Announcer this yearbook tv celebrates 25 years of books and authors. From the 22nd year in the in a row we are live at the National Book festival. Since 2001 book tv in partnership with the library of congress has provided signature, indepth, uninterrupted coverage of the National Book festival during nonfiction authors books and guess book guests. You can watch the live coverage of the National Book festival. Hear from chasse and buttigieg, from his book i have something to tell you for young adults and former Football Player author of the yard between us. See the National Book festival schedule online and book tv. Org. The national but as the bull live, saturday, beginning at 9 00 a. M. Astern on cspan two. Announcer sunday not on cspan q a, chief White House Correspondent james rose and author of scalia, rise to greatness 19361986 talks about the first of his twopart biography of the late Supreme Court associate justice in the leah. Scalia was from the excesses of the antiwarism in the late 60s. The unrest. For silent debate and all about all of that shaped him in ways that made him a better judge and justice. You really cannot understand how he got to be Justice Alito without understanding the elements of his academic career. Announcer james rosen with his book scalia on q a. You can listen to q a and all of our podcasts on cspan now our free video mobile app. Announcer listening to programs we cspan radio for your Smart Speaker just got easier. Tell your Smart Speaker play cspan radio. You can listen to Public Affairs and events throughout the day. And you can catch washington today with a fastpaced report for the stories of the day. This into cspan anytime just tell your Smart Speaker play cspan radio. Cspan powered by cable. Announcer cspan campaign 2024 coverage is your front row seat of the campaign. Speeches and events to make up your own mind. Campaign 2024 on the cspan network, cspan now our free video mobile apps or anytime online at cspan. Org. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Announcer washington journal continues. Host we are joined by dr. Joel zinn berg. A Senior Editor and also the former senior economic general counsel for the council of economic advisers from a trump administration. Welcome to the program. Guest thank you for having me. Host we will talk about your ideas on the reform of the cdc, but lets get an idea of your medical background and that competitive enterprise inches to institute and their point of view. Guest ok i practice surgery in new york city for about 30 years. General surgery and oncology. I have a background in law and Public Policy. I taught at Columbia Law School university on medical and policy issues that involve law and medicine. I worked at the council of economic advisers senior economist and i was general counsel they are as well. I was very involved in helping formulate some of our decision papers and the chapters of the economic support of the president. Currently, i am at that Competitive Enterprise Institute which is a libertarian think tank. It deals with trying to remove unnecessary and harmful bureaucratic obstacles in our economy. I also i am the director of American Public health in america. And the Paragon Health institute which is a new health policy. A Research Center that is trying to improve health and lower costs by empowering patients and encouraging innovation. Host i want to show you a clip from june of this year. This was the outgoing director of the centers control prevention at the time. She had her decisionmaking during the covid19 pandemic and testified in the House Oversight subcommittee. Lets take a look. Guest throughout my tenure is cdc director, i use the facts available and emerging data to inform realtime policy decisions. Rarely did we see new scientific findings that were immediately and unanimously clear. In the cdc, we have a strong commitment to acting quickly with transparency when new science gives us better ways to protect the public needs of the most vulnerable. For example, when two studies were released in march of 2021 where we could reduce the size of schools from six feet to three feet we updated the guidance for weeks after our initial effort. Fortunately, today we know so much more about this virus than we did when it first emerged. In 2023, we believe the darkest days of the pandemic are now part of our history. Despite the important accomplishments and improvements to our Public Health capacities, expandability to collect and share high public data. And Public Health infrastructure, cdc still has more work today to. I have continued to make improvements based on what i have seen. In april 20 22, i address the Lessons Learned from covid19. Increasing accountability and how we deliver information to america. As we continue this internal eternal war we need to better position the cdc for success. In closing, the Infectious Disease warnings that i have seen as director should be a warning to us all. We are once again faced with opportunity. Collectively, we should focus our work on moving the agency and Public Health forward. Our response to the next invention infectious threat response to how we come together and supporting a more prepared america. Host dr. I want to get your reaction to that and i would like to remind our viewers if you would like to call in you can ask lessons and make a comment about this subject of reforming the cdc. The numbers are republicans, to a 274 8001, republicans democrats 202 7488001, republicans 202 7488000, independents 202 7488002, and we also have a line set aside for medical professionals 2027488003. Guest we have responded to many dramatic communications from data and so on. The real pressure is wide. What i did with my colleague of paragon drew keyes was to set out and look at the history and organization of the cdc and look at the pandemic performance to try to figure that out. What we found was a major problem was called mission creep. The cdc has grown into a diverse set of centers and programs disconnected from one another. The most of which have very have very little to do with the mission that is supposed to be combating Infectious Diseases and stopping outbreaks from happening. You have programs that have very little to do with that. Some of them have very little to do with medicine at all. You have a situation where just a small fraction of cdc resources are devoted to combating Infectious Diseases. One has no more than 8 . We think the lack of focus on Infectious Diseases let the cdc unprepared to combat the pandemic. Once the pandemic arrived, they are prepared in combating it. Host your report talks about refocusing the cdc on Infectious Diseases. What other specific recommendations do you have for the cdc . Guest what we uncovered and detailed in great length during the report is there were multiple areas where the cdc was looking at other things through its core mission. Many of the things are actually duplicated in author agencies in a government. For example, the cdc has one of the biggest centers can get chronic diseases. Things like cancer, heart disease, stroke and various other neurological diseases. They are all this same things that are duplicated in other agencies. The nih and there are institutes there that are established before the cdc got into those business areas. They are very wellfunded we are suggesting that you do not need this duplication and it is unknown and distracting. We think that Congress Needs to act and look carefully at what the cdc is, how it is organized, its structure, and as i mentioned, this mention i think was aided by the lack of congressional authorization. What i mean is that our constitutional system, congress has the power to spend. They generally exercise that in a twos step process. They authorize measures that set up or extend or modify programs and agencies. That sets out the goals of the agency, the organization of structure, and followed by an appropriation that provides the funding. Very little of the cdc is authorized. What has happened it has grown up haphazardly with things being a pool from all over the government primarily in the executive branch where the cdc was created not by congress but by the executive branch at the Disease Center in 1946. And it has grown by accretion with all sorts of things being thrown into it that do not belong they are. We think the Congress Needs to go through a hard work of a stepbystep process to authorize agency. Put things in there that belong and take things out that do not and may be moved things from other places in seen in the cdc and also in they need to set up good guidance procedures in the cdc similar to what the fda has. Making sure that the guidance cdc issue is scientifically based. Theres been opportunity for public comment, that people know it does not have Binding Legal authority, just advisory. Primarily setting up to ensure the public that this is scientifically based and it can be relied on. That is a great casualty at the pandemic. It is undermining public trust in the cdc and it has undermined public trust and willingness to follow the cdcs recommendations. Host i want to read you, before we take calls, and opinion by the Public Healthor at George Washing university and have you respond to her comment. What are your views on that and the reduction in funding . Guest the cdc, dr. Walensky referred to this, they did its own review of what went wrong called moving forward. Unfortunately, i think they misdiagnosed the problem they had. They said they had problems with communication this was brought on by insufficient funding and thats the common bureaucratic trope. They say we need more money and what we are proposing is instead of blindly increasing the amount of funding, look carefully at what you need. Childhood vaccinations are very important and the cdc should be focused on that but there is a whole host of things they should not be focused on which is distracting them from the important initiatives like childhood vaccinations. During the pandemic, that moving forward report boasts that in april, 2020 one, shortly after dr. Walensky came into her position as the director, she was bringing on programs dealing with systemic racism and ensuring that Health Equity would be infused throughout these the agency. April, 2021, we were struggling to rollout the vaccine. Less than one in five people in the United States revaccinated. Thats when the cdc should be concert fitting on vaccination, not rolling out trendy things like social justice and Health Equity and they shouldnt be concentrating on other things, things we detail in the report like Climate Change in gun violence all of which may be important but they really arguably dont belong in an agency that is supposed to be protecting the country from Communicable Diseases. Host lets talk to the callers. Id is up first, independent in georgia, good morning. Caller good morning. I im curious if your guest took time to think about the impact of the trump decision to close the Pandemic Response office in the cdc that they had the ability to respond effectively. Im also wondering if your guest honestly believes that two of the most pernicious diseases in our american society, racism and greed are not worth studying because in my mind, they definitely impact things like Health Equity. When more women of color are dying in childbirth and people are not supposed to have dish are supposed to have healthy lives and access to health care, it seems like things we really should be considering and im curious about how this analyst sees all of these issues. Host what do you think . Guest thanks for that question. The reality is, there is this canard that somehow a Pandemic Response unit was shut down and its the discussion the centers around the National Security council. I was there. I was at the white house during that time and the folks at the National Security council who formerly were in this Response Unit didnt go anywhere. They were in the unit. One of those people approached us at the council of economic advisers about doing a study dealing with vaccine innovation to combat upcoming pandemics. We were looking at influenza back in the summer and fall of 2019 but we issued a report dealing with vaccine innovation to combat upcoming pandemics and we talked about how there was a need for Public Private partnerships. Thats precisely what happened in operation warp speed. The end result of that is that you had a new vaccine in 10 months time which is an unprecedented short period of time to create a new vaccine for a novel disease. There is nothing wrong in that regard to what was going on in the trump administration. Its just not true that there was some dismantlement of an important Pandemic Response unit. Your caller talks about all sorts of important priorities. And they are important but the point is, do they belong in an agency whose primary mission should be combating Infectious Disease and combating upcoming pandemics . I would argue no, they dont and they distracted the agency from performing the functions properly. We all suffered as a result and what we need to do is refocus the agency on those priorities so that when we have the next pandemic, and there will be one and i can tell you when but there will be a new pandemic. So that we are prepared to combat it. Host i wanted to show a reuters article about that claim about trump firing the entire Pandemic Response team in 2018. That has been determined as partly false. Alan is calling from east chicago, indiana, democrat, good morning. Caller good morning and thank you for having me on. I am a big fan of this show. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. I wanted to ask about the pandemic preparedness Response Team and the plan. I remember trump was asked about that and he said i didnt do that, that was john bolton. Apparently, they did in the head of it left. That was what happens to the plan, i dont know. Because of the tax cuts that trump put in, he had each Department Taking at least a 5 cut in their budget if not more. The health and human the seas the cdc has 16 centers around the world but they got cut back to 10 and one of the centers wuhan, china, before the pandemic . And it had to shut down. It mightve been a mistake in hindsight. I dont know. Finally, with the response, i think it was in response to covid19. He said he was made aware of it and decided not to tell the American Public because we couldnt handle it. Then he called it a democratic hoax. We kind of got off to a slow start with it and he certainly mishandled it all and you talk about distribution, i congratulate them for the warp speed vaccination, yes, wonderful job, fantastic but he had no Transition Team and would not work with joe bidens team because he was mad about the election. He didnt pass on anything to joe bidens people. Host lets get some response. Guest again, going back to the question of cdc funding, the cdc was better funded during these last few years than its ever been in its history. It got a loan in 2020, about 7. 5 billion dollars in additional appropriations which is almost doubling its budget. Its not as if they were strapped for resources. The question is what did they do with them . How did they handle that and the fact of the matter is, if you are distracted from your primary purpose, if you are looking at other things like gun violence and systemic racism when you are in the biggest Public Health crisis of the last 100 years, there is something wrong with that. Im not just saying its completely a lack of focus, there were certainly a level of incompetence and there was also a level of political influence. There is no question at various times, the cdc seemed unwilling to look dispassionately at the Scientific Data on things like School Reopenings and they seemed to be very willing to listen to influence from teachers unions and other Interest Groups about keeping schools closed when it was pretty clear early on that the young people were not particularly susceptible to this disease, being in school did not pose a threat and schools could be reopened. The problem is, as we detailed in another report called freedom wins, the cdc unfortunately abetted the sorts of lockdown measures which we document in that report as having little to no influence on Public Health but they had tremendous negative impact on the economy and on education. Unfortunately, we will have to live with those results of kids who had fallen way behind in reading and math scores were decades to come. Host sarah is a Public Health professional from georgia, good morning. Caller good morning and thank you. I live here in decatur, georgia and im familiar with the work of the cdc and i think your guest, there is always room for improvement and there should be a review of what was done and what could have been done better and i think cdc has made efforts to do that. I think the refocusing on getting cdc back to its roots of Communicable Disease which is true and thats how it started, its history was to deal with that. And talking about other agencies could do things but i think there is real value in what cdc does for other conditions, taking a Public Health approach that is not strictly medical that the other agencies do not do. I know the nih is wonderful at Clinical Research and addressing the basic science of Health Problems but cdc in its support, its mission is to help Public Health and help the public and i think your guest should probably mention the majority of the funding that comes into cdc goes out the door to the states in the local Health Departments for them to have an impact on Public Health and i think that should be knowledge that its not strictly just looking at Communicable Diseases which they have and have a great history of dealing with that and other important outbreaks and diseases in this country. The pandemic, there were lessons to be learned and i think they are working toward that. Strictly refocusing on Infectious Disease would be shortsighted and not help local communities, giving vaccines at the local level. The cdc pays for a lot of those to go out the door, pays for the chronic disease programs that are housed in Health Departments and local areas the other agencies just dont do. Before reforming it and throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i think we should look more at the more recent history of the cdc in the good work cdc has done and some of those areas. Host what do you think . Guest thats a great question. The problem is, the cdc failed in some of its basic functions and you talked about the state and local authority. The cdc had a data system that was supposed to communicate with states and warned them about incoming travelers who should be looked at and potentially quarantined. They were supposed to keep states and local Health Authorities apprised of whats going on. That system was never really functional. It went offline completely in february, 2020. When Public Health authorities at the state level at the cdc what they should do with incoming passengers, they said let them go. This notion that the cdc is informing governments of important things is true. They are supposed to, but they really did a poor job. All of these other things you refer to are important issues. But why should one of the biggest centers in the cdc be looking at chronic diseases, things like cancer, diabetes, arthritis when you have specific institutes in the nih that deal with those, that were established before cdc got into those areas and have bigger budgets in those areas than cdc. Nih, by the way, just like cdc, spends a lot of money sounds a lot of money out the door to researchers and Public Health officials elsewhere. It would seem to me to make sense that making a slightly different emphasis between the two agencies but when i put them together with a belong . Why have the cdc going into areas like gun violence and racism where it has little or no expertise and where there are other agencies involved and where other nonhealth edges other nonhealth agencies are involved to deal with violence and legal issues. Why not have that agency look at it when you have experts in the government presumably in other agencies and you are just duplicating the work there . Its great to say they are doing important work in these other areas, but not if it distracts them from what should be their core function. I think all you need to do is look at the last three years and youll see the cdcs performance was so poor that it needs to be refocused. This is something that Congress Needs to do. And needs to do the hard work of doing this because the agency will not do it on its own. They are rarely willing to reorganize or downsize. The cdc 20 years ago after his poor performance during the anthrax scare, tried to reorganize but it met with lots of institutional resistance and it had to abandon that effort. The cdcs own moving forward document is misdiagnosed what problems are and is not really offering a blueprint for moving forward. Host lets talk to jeff in bayville, new york, independent. Caller thank you. I would like to point out that the World Bank Published a graph taken from Johns Hopkins that compared the mortality of the United States with south korea. The basic take away was that there were five times as many preventable deaths in the United States compared to south korea during the entire course of the pandemic. There were 18 times more deaths in the United States during the first year of the pandemic. This informs us of a lack of what needs to be done to revamp the entire Public Health infrastructure. If we take a look at how this was accomplished, we can learn what we can do to do the same. If we dont take advantage of the evidence there is to get the best outcome, we are really missing the boat and focusing on just the narrow scope of the cdc. Thats an extremely Important Organization and moving the chairs around to make that more efficient is missing the point if we dont actually focus on what actually needs to be done and then work from that point to revamp the entire Public Health system so we fare better in the next pandemic compared to what south korea was able to achieve. Host what do you think . Guest as the question points out, we need to learn from the pandemic experience. As i mentioned, the other study we performed called freedom wins, we looked at we didnt look internationally although we did talk a little in that study about sweden. Sweden was much maligned for not being willing to impose lockdown measures. Sweden kept its schools open throughout the pandemic with no masking involved. Sweden had very little in the way of closures of restaurants or public accommodations and performances and things like that. Yet, sweden did as well as most european countries. What we really looked at in depth was what can we learn this country based on the different approaches, different states took. What many people dont realize is that in this country, Public Health has always been the realm of state and local governments. Its not particularly been a federal function to deal with Public Health. The federal government can perform important things and its supposed to by providing funding or providing data like issuing guidelines. Those are things the cdc is supposed to do but did a poor job. When we looked at the different state approaches and looked at the severity of their lockdowns as measured by an independent index maintained by oxford university, what we found is that taking the extreme approaches of Closing Everything down, places like california and new york took, did not improve your health as compared to a place like florida which was much more open and while they close things down initially, they reopened its schools much earlier than anywhere else with no really bad health effects. They had a much more improved economic outcome and much improved educational outcomes. We can learn from international comparisons. We can learn from domestic comparisons as important we do so. Host lets talk to dana next in frederick, maryland, republican. Caller good morning. I have two questions wasnt the first coronavirus that started a biological weapon used in warfare . The second question is, the three vaccines that we received, isnt there a percentage that it caused some serious medical problems . Thank you. Guest i dont know there is any proof that thats the case. If you are talking about the class of coronavirus, you need to go back to whats called the original sars virus. There was also the mers virus. Thats why the virus thats involved with this covert outbreak is called sarscovi2. Those two viruses, sars and mers were far more lethal thankfully then sarscovi2 prove to be. I did not read anywhere that those were engineered by a weapons. We have a controversy as to where it started. There is a lot of suspicion in some cases wellfounded that it resulted from a lab leak in its possible it leaked from a lab where the virus was manipulated to give a Certain Property that made it more infectious. Unfortunately, we will never really know the answer to that i believe because the chinese have destroyed a lot of data and have been unwilling to be forthcoming with information from the wu and lab. We know from the structure of the virus and we know from the fact that the first people who were ill were some of the workers at that wuhan laboratory. Its highly suggested that this came from the wu him lab. I dont know i dont think it was a bioweapon per se but we have suspicion that it came from a lab. Host cincinnati, ohio, tanya is on the line for democrats. Caller good morning. The first thing i would like to say is to the host. The hostess, im sorry. That is that it is time, definitely time for you guys to do fact checking. I know it cant be done in real time but overnight it could be. People who called the day before, their comments need to be checked because you sat there and read from an official document that said that the pandemic and Communicable Disease office that was set up by obama was disbanded by trump. But your guest went right on saying the same thing that there was never any office like that and it didnt happen like you didnt read anything, like you didnt say anything. Thats why people are so confused. The next thing i would like to say is that the cdc has been politicized. Somebody is knocking on my door oh my goodness we know the whole thing was confused by trump saying that you could use a disinfectant and people didnt know what was going on. What would have happened better if the republicans and the democrats, if the republicans had come over to the democrats and president and actually work on this problem . People got confused from the beginning. They didnt know what to do and what to believe. The whole thing got politicized. Host lets get a response. Guest i think weve touched on this issue of the Pandemic Office and ive addressed that before and the thing you read from reuters address that. The folks in that office remained at the national and they remained doing their jobs and they were available to address the pandemic. There is an important issue with dealing with whos in authority when we are dealing with pandemics and these national emergencies. If theres one thing we learned from covid is that there is a whole host of agencies and there are unclear lines of authority. This is something we say in our report. Congress should be tidying up. You have whats called asper which is an Agency Within hhs and its recently been upgraded to an office within hhs and is supposed to do with Public Health risks and pandemics and take charge. You have that, you have the cdc, you have the fda, nih and dr. Fauci was leading one of the divisions of nih, the National Institute for allergy and Infectious Diseases. That was unclear who was in charge. An important take away from the pandemic has got to be that Public Policy has to be made by the public officials. It cant simply be turned over to Public Health officials. They have their point of view and they have an agenda but they are not necessarily seeing the big picture. They have to be available to advise the president and other decisionmakers but the president and those decisionmakers have to be the ones making the final decision, balancing the benefits and cost of taking certain Public Health decisions when we know they have that economic outcomes and we know they may have bad educational outcomes. Thats part of what i think congress has to do. It has to clarify the lines of authority. Its getting harder and harder because we now have a new office of pandemic preparedness within the white house. A we haverpah which is a new agency the goes along with another research agency, dealing with biologic threats. We have a pleura for ration of agencies all presumably addressing the same issue but its not clear whos in charge or who should be in charge when an emergency happens. Thats part of the refocusing effort we think congress should be involved in. Host lets go to tim bob in california, a medical professional. Caller am i on . Host yes, go right ahead. Caller i think youre doing a wonderful job and good, am a registered certified emergency nurse and navy veteran and now im in Nurse Practitioner school. I read about the singlepayer Health Care System. I was frontline emergency room registered nurse during the pandemic. I dont know where you were but i saw a lot of disinformation amongst my patients and the population thats mostly political. We had the highest infected rates in the state of california , bigger than San Francisco and l. A. County. Im sure you can understand that the fostering of misinformation about the seriousness of pandemics in medicine in general added to that. I am still in the er. The pandemic is not over. Also, the failures of our Systemic Health care system continues on. We continue to see disparities of our poor Health Care System like poorly managed chronic diseases, copd, diabetes, diseases of despair such as fentanyl overdoses and phenyl os and whatnot. I write a lot about singlepayer health care in school. I am sure you have heard of the commonwealth study. Host we are running out of time unfortunately. Lets get a quick response. Guest im not sure exactly with the question is but if the question is is singlepayer health care the solution . No. The leading proposal from Centre Sanders would impose a system that is unprecedented in the world, a system where there is no private Health Insurance allowed and you cannot find that elsewhere in the world, even a place like england where it has its much loved National Health service, about half the population or more has private Health Insurance. So i do not think that is the answer. As far as medical misinformation, that is true, there is medical misinformation from all sorts of places, but one thing we found is that people are actually pretty good at responding to health care threats and they often will respond before government can take action, so many of the times, people are good at assessing if they are at risk, we knew early on the elderly people are at risk from covid and elderly people avoided going to public places, began staying home, began to stay home from going to work. All without Government Intervention and Government Intervention unfortunately in much of health care ends up making things worth worse rather than better as we documented in that freedom wind study. Host doctor, i want to try to get in one more color from a medical professional in philadelphia, pennsylvania. Very quickly, please, ken. Caller good to hear from you and your expertise. I have a few quick points and i would like your quick response. On the masking and distancing issue in the schools particularly, related to risk for the teachers more than to kids a danger. Although when a single kid came down with a multisystem vasculitis from covid, even though it was rare, you have to admit that is a devastating effect and diseases are only rare for people that do not have them. The other key point i want to ask you about was the lack of a push to develop medication for covid early on and no concerted effort was applied to looking at different medications, even in cocktail form. I think that was a great weakness in the cdc effort. I want your response on that. The issue of whether there is a new pandemic on the way, i think it speaks to where covid19 came from in the first place, we need more on the chinese research. Finally, vaccine and their risk, i think we need a concerted effort in looking at particularly cardiac adverse effects from the vaccines. Host theres a lot there. Guest multiple questions. I will try to address one thing that i think is important, that the cdc really failed i thought fundamentally in failing to conduct studies early on during the pandemic when they had the opportunity to elucidate who is at risk, what measures need to be taken, what measures will be effective, what preexisting medication will be effective. This is what they should have been doing but they really were not doing. I do not think it is an accident for example that cdc Data Collection was so haphazard and unreliable that most people in the country began to rely on the Johns Hopkins data board the data dashboard, compiled by graduate student from Johns Hopkins. So they were not relying on the agencies that are supposed to be doing this, and much of the information we got about risks and benefits of different approaches, they were coming from overseas, places like israel, like sweden where they were studying what happens in school. And the schools were open, no masking, and there was no increase in risk to anyone in school. In particular to the teachers. There was no increase in incidence of covid among teachers. Host and dr. Joel zinberg, im afraid we have to cut it out there because we are going to lose your signal. You can find them at cei. Org. Guest thank you for having me. Host coming up, more of your phone calls, we will return to our question at the top of the program, what is your top new story of the week . You can call us on the lines on your screen. Republicans, 202 7488000. Democrats republicans, 202 7488001. Democrats, 202 7488000. An independents, 202 7488002. We will be right back. Announcer this year, book tv celebrates 25 years of presenting nonfiction books and authors. For the 22nd year in a row, book tv is live with the library of congress National Book festival. Announcer since 2001, book tv in partnership with the library of congress has provided signature indepth, uninterrupted coverage of the National Book festival, featuring hundreds of nonfiction authors and guest. Watch saturday as book tv once again brings you live, all they coverage of the National Book festival. Guests and authors include librarian of congress carla hayden, Justin Buttigieg on his book i have something to te you for young a dollar else and then rk russell. See our complete schedule online at booktv. Org. The library of congress National Book festival, Live Saturday beginning at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan two. Announcer sunday night on cspans q a, james rosen, author of a leo, rise of greatness, talks about the first of his two port biography of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a. Scully i think recoiled from the access of student Antiwar Movements of the late 1960s, the unrest. The silencing of debate, and all of that shaped him in ways that made him a better judge and justice so cant understand how we how he got to be Justice Scalia without understanding the element of his career. Announcer james rosen with the book scalia on cspans q a. You can listen to cspans q a and podcasts on our free cspan now app. Cspan now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington, live and ondemand. Keep up with the days biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u. S. Congress. White house events, the courts, news, and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips. You can also stay current with the latest episodes of washington journal and find scheduling information for cspans tv network and cspan radio, plus a variety of compelling podcasts. Cspan now is available at the apple store and google play, download for free today. Cspan now, your front row seat to washington, anytime, anywhere. Announcer washington journal continues. Host welcome back to washington journal. I will be taking your calls until the end of the program. A quick update on the situation in hawaii, from the star advertiser, a local hawaii paper. The headline, 55 confirmed deaths with upwards of 1700 buildings destroyed on maui. The article says firefighters brought the vicious log fire to 80 protect 80 containment, three days into what may be the deadliest disaster in the state history, a catastrophe that brought frustration to the service on whether there was sufficient notice to residents of the area to evacuate. Maui county officials raised the death count to 95, an increase from wednesday. The governor expect that to keep climbing. Also in the news from politico, biden seeking 40 million in emergency funds for ukraine Disaster Relief. That total includes 13 billion in military aid to ukraine as well as billions of dollars more in funding to replenish a dwindling pot of federal Disaster Relief according to two people with knowledge of that. And we will go to randall in north dakota, democrat, good morning. Caller i wanted to make a quick comment about your recent guy there, the doctor. You had a call earlier make a mention about vaccines. I think in some ways cspan has become the twitter of the cable news network. It has in many ways, that the stream is so open and uncontrolled, that these people like the doctor who was obviously was in the trumpet ministration and he was there as a political hack job against the cdc. One of the first things i think cspan should ask everyone who comes on your show, who pays your salary . Where does the money come from . Where you have come here to represent yourself as. That is pretty much i hope you will take input to that statement. Host appreciate the input. Fabians in new york, republican, good morning. Caller good morning. First time caller, happy to be on cspan. I want to touch a few notes. I will start with the guy on the cdc. I wanted to ask a question about why they in new york have approved overthecounter birth controls. I think it is a horrible idea and now youths start to have sex unprotected and they go into the stores and get these birth controls. The guys will influence the girls to go get it and the girls will know it is there and they will get it and everybody will be having unprotected sex. Earlier, there was a caller who talked about republicans being uneducated and they are more educated than the republicans. I dont know about that. What i do know is that supporting donald trump does not mean you are racist, does not mean you are uneducated, and i think the attack on trump right now is the saddest thing to happen to the country because it is all a political thing. Thank you for having me on your show. Host jerry is an independent in new jersey. Good morning. Caller good morning. This thing with the montgomery brawl that happened last saturday, all of the scrap shows that dr. Kings socalled dream sadly is never gonna happen in my opinion and i dont know why policies on both sides of the ill play on pandering to dr. King when his dream has been dead basically for the past 20 plus years. Same thing over and over and it is sad. I do not understand why this country needs to be having this discussion as far as im concerned. Host joel is in Santa Barbara california, democrat, good morning. Caller how are you . Just a couple things, i was surprised this morning you would show a clip from newsmax and give it that platform like that is actually news. That is straight up right wing propaganda, even worse than fox. Quickly, i was a lights on conservative ever since 2016, i deftly pushed it deftly pushed me to the left and when we look around, it is clear, i study economics with my degree. When reagan came into office, the top policy for the tax policy for the elite was 70 . Now people like bezos and mosk and Warren Buffett pay 1 or 2 taxes. That is why we used to have funding to keep this country and keep our middleclass and do everything and now it is just the idea that lets deregulate everything and nobody pays taxes. Look around, there are Homeless People and people are hurting. We are the only modern country in the world that does not provide health care. That ghoul you had on earlier, he was a lying chill. That would make a big difference. We have a Mental Health crisis. Do they want to give Us Health Care . Of course not. You are my favorite person. Have a great day, america. Host leo, illinois, wrote publican. Caller good morning. We have a new disease in this country and i was there to the gentleman in california who asked the doctor, questioning a doctor, where was he during the pandemic. It wasnt a pandemic, it was a military biological weapon, period. I was in atlanta, i happened to get pulled over in my license was expired and i got locked up in rows well i went to Fulton County and what does this have to do . I was in a bullpen with 100 other people for three days, for three days they gave us shots and took us out one by one, they had all these desks and little cubicles. I was so tired in and out because of three days a prima snow sleep, i must have got at least 20 or 30 shots. Host shots of what . Caller i dont know because after that happened they strip you from your paperwork and everything and try to hold onto paperwork with 100 people in a cramped space. Once you got out of the bullpen. X points, and this is a comment ago, my girlfriend was pregnant. My son was born at Northside Hospital and when i saw Robert Kennedy junior the other day, i had a panic attack. He mentioned thermos all, it is mayor curie, a preservative put in shots that my son was given. My son has fullblown autism and has never said a word in his life and he was born at Northside Hospital in atlanta, so i was there. My son has autism and he has never spoken a word, it was from the mercury. Host how old is your son, leo . Caller 23. He was born in 2000. But we were down in 1999 when he received i think like 20 shots or 14 shots within like six months of his birth. So for the gentleman, that is what is going on now. This gentleman in california, i understand he is a nurse or whatever but youve got a doctor and i was there. This thing with autism and the vaccines, i dont know. Thank you, that is my comment. Host rory in massachusetts, independent, good morning. Caller good morning. Thanks for cspan. I was calling in relation to the doctors or person that was on before, relating to the covid and other illnesses that are coming in nowadays. My concern is, on the news, i am in massachusetts, and in the news in the past couple days, our governor is taking in migrants and they are not vetted as far as im concerned and they are asking the people to open up their doors and take migrants into their homes. And i am very concerned that they are not vetted and have the proper immunizations to put their children in our schools, in our workplaces, and in our homes. I think it is a very serious thing to do, and i am overwhelmed about it. One more thing, since biden will not close the borders, i am asking all the democrats to put their banners and signs back up in their yards so the migrants know where to go for housing, food, and money. Thank you. Host there is another story i want to make sure you are aware of, the front page of the New York Times this morning, it says u. S. iran risen her deal brings five americans a step closer to home. The u. S. And around reached an agreement to win the freedom of five imprisoned americans in exchange for several jailed iranians and eventual access to about 6 billion in iranian oil revenue according to several people familiar as a first step in the agreement which comes after more than two years of quiet negotiations. Iran released five iranian american dual citizens into house arrest, and heres a quote from secretary of state antony blinken, this is just the beginning of a process i hope and expect will lead to their return home to the United States. There is more work to be done tax lead bring them home. My believe is this is the beginning of the end of their nightmare. Margaret is calling from florida, democrat. Hi, margaret. Caller yes, i am totally off subject because i just turn the tv on to get your phone number. I was wondering, are you folks having anything on long covid . Host while we take that as a recommendation and we will akin to that. Anything else you wanted to say . Caller no, i just was wondering because im one of the thousand that have it and i would like to get in touch with the nih to be tested and get into the clinical trials. Host all right, maryland, michael, republican. Good morning. Caller good morning. Thanks for having me. I just want to make two points. Especially after hearing most of these people this morning, our leaders leadership seems to hate us. Everything they do they do it against us. There is no arguing that. It seems like on every front whether it is the border, whether it is on lockdowns or covid or vaccines, our leadership hates us down the line. They have been working against us for years now, it has been getting worse as i have been getting older. It is unbelievable the state our country is in today. I almost do not see a future for my own kids and i feel bad for them, at least not a future in this country or any western nation because of the leadership and direction we are going. Im not talking about International Affairs because this whole thing with ukraine, that is a way to blow a way to blow bunch of our money, stuff that we could use here, our resources. We do not need to be an empire, we need to take care of the people in the country who are americans and not give hotel rooms to people that just showed up or give preferential treatment to those people either. That is my comments, keep that in mind, everybody. Our government hates us. Host a couple programming notes i want to make sure you are aware of, the first is this years National Book festival begins today. The librarian of can featured authors will be there start the festivities. Ilhave live coverage of in ceremony room the library of congress begi at 7 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan, cspan now, our free mobile video oine at cspan. Org. Senator chris coons and john cornyn and jim ris guest discuss National Security on reign guest guest efforts in congress as part of this years aspen security form in colorado. The topics include the Russia Ukraine war, china, and blockade on military promotions in the senate. You can watch that at 9 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan, cspan now, and online at cspan. Org. Robin in new york, independent. Caller hi. I was a democrat for quite a long time and i will explain why i left. I was in new york city yesterday and the confluence of antivagrancy laws, i was waiting for my bus in Port Authority and they were trying to get me to not sit on the ground. They wanted people to sit and line their luggage up and walk 15 feet away to sit in a chair in Port Authority. I love new york city but one of the most dangerous places in the world, they are so upset when people being homeless with people being homeless and i did not move. I said im not leaving my back unattended. The woman could not get the words out but i know she first said i see a seat to 30 feet away. I said im not leaving my back unattended. That is why i left the democratic party, there is no place host who are you supporting . Robin. Who are you supporting in the next president ial election . Have you made up your mind . Caller thank you. Host ok. Robert in tuscaloosa, california, good morning. Caller two points. The european democrat who said the signs up in the yard, so greens could come take their home, the immigrants doing that earlier, Indigenous People would have their homes. And then the gentleman on talking about health care on the Republican Party, talking about turning into the state, can you imagine what would happen in alabama when they want to turn it over to the state for health care for people . [indiscernible] and imagine what it would be like if they were to turn it over to the state of alabama. America would get no health care, all of them will die. Thank you for allowing me to make a call. Host scott in illinois, republican. Scott . Caller hello . Host hi. Caller can you hear me . Host i can. Caller good morning fellow patriotic americans. I want to touch on something in illinois. I just got garage vandalized again and im a senior citizen, via nonveteran. I called two Police Officers that came to the house and they said it is getting worse, it is getting worse. The safety, i asked them about the safety act the governor signed into law and he said they are getting out of jail. No cash bail now. You only gotta create murder is the only way to lock you up. They dont even have the paperwork done. Now i hear illinois will hire Illegal Immigrants to be Police Officers. Let me tell you, if a guatemalan tries to arrest me for a speeding ticket, im not going with them. I urge all young people to get out of this state while you can. The state is falling apart. Gas just went up another . 30 per gallon, 40 since last week, . 30 this week. What is this inflation . We cannot afford this stuff. Steaks are 25 per pound. Everything is crazy. I want to say this state, being a democratic controlled state, i live in Southern Illinois and it is mostly republican. We have no control because chicago kills us in population. I moved down 40 years from upstate new york and it was the same thing with new york city. Upstate, we are all respectful elderly people, we take care of our neighbors, and new york city it is a garbage pit. Look at it, people. We need new leadership in this direction. Host joe is in oklahoma, democrat, good morning. Caller hello. Host hello. Caller im watching the watching you on tv but i have you muted. [laughter] i want to talk about hawaii. I have not heard anything about maui turning into total destruction and nobody has brought it up, and instead we had to relitigate the covid thing forever and ever. Im tired of hearing about that. Im worried about the people in hawaii and what they are going through. Nobody else seems to give a darn. You know what i mean . Host we do give a darn and we were talking about it and here is the Associated Press, following their live updates. The maui mayor says the area does not resemble the town he knew after the fires. It says that the mayor surveyed the damage on thursday. He said the closest thing i think i can compare it to is perhaps the war zone and may be a bomb went off. James is next in atlanta, georgia, independent, good morning. Caller yes, i hope you will let me say what i have to say. There are so many desperately important topics but you spend so much time everybody has to say good morning back to you. If you would just be tell people to please pull ahead, maybe the people will figure out we dont have time to the pleasantries. Then they would get off the air and let someone else Say Something that matters. Thank you so much. Goodbye. Host i didnt hang up on you. Tom, buffalo, new york, good morning. Caller good morning. Im on Social Security and i get a small pension of 350 per month. If i purchase something, i use my credit card right out of my checking account. Im not having any problem whatsoever, gas go up here, price of food is pretty high but im making it through the month to get my next check and im not really having the problems where you hear a lot of people saying you cant make it. Maybe you should readjust the way youre doing things. That is all i have to say. Host all right, tom. That will be all for the calls we got today. Starting monday, coverage of this yes iowa state fair. The gop president ial candidate governor doug burgum of north dakota and miami mayor frenchs suarez will speak 101 Franci Suarez will speak with kim reynolds about their campaign and policy platforms. That will be monday starting at 9 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan alsosn now, our free mobile video app, or online at cspan. Org. We will hear from other candidates by the way prime time to run next week including mike pence, nikki haley, and ron desantis. Follow cspan. Org for all of that information. That is all the time we got for todays washington journal. We will be back again tomorrow morning, 7 00 a. M. Eastern live here on cspan. Have a great day, everybody. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] stival begins today. Ook the library of congress and featureduthors will be there live coverage of the Opening Ceremony begins at 7 p. M eastern on cspan, cspan now, and online at cspan. Org. This year, book tv celebrates 25 years of nonfiction books and authors. Book tv is alive with the library of Congress Book festival. Since two thousand one, book tv, in partnership with the library of congress, has provided signature, indepth, uninterrupted coverage of the National Book festival. Watch saturday as book tv brings you all day coverage of the National Book is book festival. Guests and authors include paula hayden and former nfl player rj russell. See our complete National Book festival schedule online at book tv. Org. The festival Live Saturday beginning at 9 a. M. Eastern on cspan two. Sunday night on cspans q a, newsmax chief whites house chief White House Correspondent max rosen, author of the books glia, talks about antonin scalia. He recoiled from the excesses of the student Antiwar Movement of the late 1960s. All that shaped him in ways that made him a better judge and justice. You cannot understand how he got to be Justice Scalia without understanding his academic career. James rosen with his book