we'll be eating our own seed corps and that will be dangerous for the future. i do agree we need better methods to harvest the great work that's done and move forward. that shouldn't be at the expense of that fundamental research. because other people can't do it in the way that we can. >> well, i think the sign of any good panel is we leave questions on the table. and i know i see a number of hands up, but in the interest of keeping us on schedule that will have to be the last question. i want to ask you to join me in thanking our panelists and thank you for the discussion. >> thank you, rebecca and rob. we'll take an extremely short break. just long enough to remove a couple of chairs and then we'll be right back with our

discussion with senator sasse. thank you. i look forward to being back with you.

live coverage of the national security and foreign policy occurring after a short break. matt thornberry and senator ben cardin and the rest of this conference will be in the c-span video library later today. go to c-span.org. the conference as i said will be resuming shortly. nebraska republican senator ben sasse will be the speaker and he'll give a portion on middle east challenges. then at 1:45 this afternoon, a foreign policy preview of the first 100 days of the incoming

trump administration. coverage will wrap up at about 2:45 eastern.

while we wait for the next discussion on the foreign policy and national security conference to continue, as the trump cabinet begins to take shape earlier today the president-elect named stephen mnuchin to be treasury secretary. he spoke with reports as he arrived for meetings at trump tower this morning. here's a look. >> [ indiscernible ]. can you just go over some of the points, how you'll work on the economy, tax cuts for the middle class, for the rich. >> sure. absolutely. let me just say i couldn't be

more honored to serve the president-elect. i have had the opportunity to work with him through the campaign. i couldn't be more excited to work with him in the administration. and our number one priority is going to be the economy, get back to 3 to 4% growth. we believe that's very sustainable and focus on things for the american worker. that's absolutely our priority. >> talk about bringing money back, talk about how you get corporations like apple that have billions of dollars -- [ indiscernible ]. >> well, our priority is the tax plan and the tax plan has both the corporate aspects to it. lowering corporate taxes so we make u.s. companies the most competitive in the world. making sure we repatriate trillions of dollars back to the united states. and the personal income taxes. we'll have the most significant middle income tax cut since reagan. we're going to incorporate the child care programs. this is going to be a tremendous

boon to the economy. >> explain how your experience both in hollywood and on wall street will help you at the treasury department. >> i would -- >> many people say you don't have the government experience that's necessary. >> well, let me first say, what i really have been focused on is being a regional banker for the last eight years and i knows what it takes to make lopes to small and mid market companies and that's the focus. making sure we scale back regulation. >> lastly, if you could talk about infrastructure. you're going to be in charge in terms of building roads, building bridges. how will you go about doing that? a lot of republicans aren't willing to spend the kind of money that mr. trump wants to spend. >> well, it's a big priority of the administration. we need to make sure that we're built for the 21st century that we have roads and bridges and power grids and infrastructure that support this country and that -- >> great to be here --

>> we're back for the national foreign policy conference. next is nebraska senator ben sasse as he discusses middle east challenges. >> kind of misspent my youth, both being graduate students and ph.d.s in american history in the same alma mater at yale. for my struggling, aspiring graduate students who may be out there, working towards your ph.d. we're living proof there is life after graduate school. >> have a backup plan. >> both of us had to have backup plans, i think. i was of that vintage. i got my degree a few years before senator sasse back when dinosaurs walked the earth and when the academic job market was so bad we literally had a publication called the silver lining which consisted of faculty obituaries around the country. i'm not making that up, it's true.

we're going to talk about a really important subject today, about american exceptionalism and retreat of the west. senator, i wonder if you could unpack the subject a little bit. when people use the term american exceptionalism i think they tend to talk past one another in the sense that it has been used both as a descriptive term to analyze those things that make the united states different and separate it from other country's historical experience. but it's also used in the sense of america's mission abroad. and what exactly the nature, if there is such a mission what exactly the nature of that mission is. i wonder if you could tell us how you think about american exceptionalism and then we can go from there. >> you bet. thanks for having me as well. obviously the term has been used

lots of different ways and the u.s. mission in the world in general boast 1945 and maybe in particular in a more contested way post 1989 and the end of the cold war, it's been complicated and contested and there's a lot of interesting and debatable things we should talk about related to that. the u.s. is kind of unique place in the world since world war ii, but i think it's important historically to understand that what the word -- the term american exceptionalism used to mean and i think it should mean again partly because it provides a meta level of agreement, it's a historical claim about the american founding. i think it was really sad and i don't -- i'm a very conservative guy, but i'm not particularly partisan guy. so i don't say this to sort of open by taking a shot at president obama, but i thought it was particularly sad in the run-up to the 2012 election when president obama was being

interviewed one time and he was asked do you believe in american exceptionalism, and if you watch the videotape you can see the president's wheels turning in his head as he thinks what to say. it felt like what he was thinking, of course i can't say i believe in american exceptionalism because that sounds parochial in a way that's arrogant and maybe ethnic or race based or something. and yet, you could also hear him heading towards the election, i'm not supposed to say i don't believe in it either so he pauses for a minute and he says, well, of course, i believe in american exceptionalism, i believe in american exceptionalism in the way that the greeks believe in greek exceptionalism or the brits believe in british exceptionalism, you should be thankful for what you inherited from your grandparents and that's true. but american exceptionalism is something else. it's a recognition of the fact that the american founding was a truth claim about human dignity.

margaret thatcher used to say that all of europe, every european country is a product of history, but america is the only nation a product of philosophy. the american founding is a claim that rights come to us from god via nature and government is a shared project. government isn't the author or the source of our rights. government is an american secular tool that we the people build together but rights predate government and government is a claim about human dignity. when you look at human history there are flirtations with this idea. greek city states for a while in the early modern period. swiss city states have talked about human dignity as a foundation for commonality and community. but by and large throughout history, people have assumed that the world's a broken and dangerous place so you need government to protect us and provide stability. whoever has the stability,

whoever has the monopoly on violence we should be grateful for them. we should sit back and supplicate before the king to see what rights he grants us. the government came first, power came first and the powerful out of their beenough asense granted rights to people. and people are created with dignity. we should secure the rights together as a people. now we get to -- i'll stop here, but we get to the role about what should be the role to advance that truth claim and versus the responsibilities of this nation that shares this as a truth claim and therefore the basis of our own power internally. then we should debate to advance it externally. >> before we get to that external administration which i think will be the part of the discussion which is i think of most interest to the audience, i want to stick with the little bit of the theme of what separates the united states and its experience from that of other nations. you have touched on i think the

important point of the founding and the self-understanding that the founders had of what they were doing that was quite different. because they're very, very conscious of the fact of what they're undertaking is different from what has happened in the past and it's antecedents in the ancient world, in the renaissance world demonstrated how frail and difficult the undertaking was. but there's another i think important element that emerges out of this that's not irrelevant i think to our immigration debate and also to the larger mission debate which is what does it mean to be a citizen of the united states and in that i believe we are exceptional as well. because most other countries in the world, citizenship is rooted in blood and birth and in our country, it is rooted in adherence and allegiance to a set of philosophical prem sises and -- premises and those

documents that enshrine those premises. i wonder if you want to comment about that. how different is that from the experience of other countries and where does it put us in a world where ethnosectarian differences are a huge part of the drivers of conflict around the world. >> yeah, great question. first let's acknowledge two things. one that this inheritance is a pretty special thing. it's extraordinary that we have the shared sense of what america means and we should recognize what great peril we're in right now because we don't really have the shared sense. polling data would show that our young people really don't know this history. we haven't done civic or culture cat akey this, and we haven't talked about what this idea

means, to have a creedal nation. and the founders as as you said recognize this is a hard thing to do. to build republican government, small "r," is historically rare and bizarre. and the founders didn't know if they thought this would really work. there was a lot of debate and for good reason. i mean, obviously the revolutionary war doesn't end in 1776 the year that kids have locked in their mind. but by the early 1780s and it looked like we'd win the revolution or the brits would be distracted enough that they wander away and their fighters lose the war, so we experiment with the articles of confederation and we arrive at this moment in philadelphia in 1787, 1788. we're 12 years past the declaration of independence and they're still working through the ideas. american kids should read the federalist papers. they should know what it meant

to the people in the past and as lincoln and others have said the idea of the constitution being a silver frame around the golden apple which is the big truth claims about human dignity that are in the declaration. we aren't a nation rooted in blood. we aren't a nation based in ethnicity. as a seriously conservative guy, i get disappointed and angered and saddened all the time to hear current media analysis of the political spectrum that somehow breaks down by race, class and gender all over the place. you wake up and you see a ticker on the morning news almost every morning, demography is destiny for america. that means elections will be determined by a person's skin pigment. which ever way it goes based on pigment or ethnic coalitions that are built, which ever way it goes america died. because america was an idea that was about something much bigger than what tribe you come from.

we actually think the greatest things in life are the textured relationships you have with your family and your friends and the dignity and the importance of your local work as you try to serve out of a life of gratitude. try to serve your neighbors and build a better mousetrap and wrestle through important questions about mortality and heaven and hell and all the important things in life are local relational things that are based on ideas and persuasion and government isn't the center of any of that. government is a means to an end. and our government is a smaller issue than the american idea that is that set of things and truth claims that we believe about human dignity that unite us. right now, we haven't been having that conversation for 50 years. and i'll pull up here, but to think back to president reagan well before he was republican president reagan, before he was a republican governor of california, the democratic labor

union organizer who talked to the factory workers about what america meant. this is not a republican or a democratic claim. this is a unifying claim. that reagan said, in any republic, you're always only one generation away from the extinction of freedom. the only way that freedom in the american understanding goes on is if the next generation comes to own it. we're not doing that right now. 41% of americans under age 35, 41% of americans under age 35 tell pollsters now that they think the first amendment is dangerous. because you might say things with your freedom of speech that hurt somebody else's feelings. actually, that's the whole point of america. that we can say things that hurt each other's feelings because we believe in the dignity of the person, that we want to persuade them or be persuaded by them and we'll try to have a community that's free from violence. so we can wrestle together as people with questions that are more important than power. power is a means to that end.

>> i think as conservatives we also believe in prepolitical things. and that politics is not the be all, end all of life. it's one dimension of life, but not the only one. >> just underscore that thing, believing in prepolitical things is an essential element of being a fully participatory american. i have on my twitter profile, i'm a husker addict and what i mean the dwight eisenhower line that every american adult should understand themselves as a part-time politicians. people who have my calling for a time that think being a politician is the be all and end all of their identity they're not worthy of this job and of this service to the american people because politics aren't the center of life. yet american adults on farms and ranches in nebraska today that are fully loving their neighbor and serving and maintaining the polity and passing it on to their kids can't be totally

disengaged either because we all share this project. >> i'm grateful to hear you say that as someone who's in a mixed political marriage it helps me get through every day. so thank you. i do want to come back to you now i think reverted twice to polling data about young americans and the weakness of their grasp of the fundamentals. not just of american exceptionalism but the founding and the political institutions and our system of governance. i want to come back to that at the end, but before we get there, what works either of history or political philosophy have you found most illuminating and enlightening that you found -- that has been more most important to you in your understanding of american exceptionalism. >> i mentioned the federalist papers, everyone ought to read them and wrestle with federalist 10. the federalist arguments ought

to be -- to become a part of things we wrestle with as parents all the time. as we're teaching our kids. but i'll go to democracy in america in toqueville. if you ever had it assigned in the class and it felt daunting to get this 1,500 page assignment from the professor and the ambassador joked that we're both his torians together, actually before we came out here we were in the greenroom in the back. five of us had history ph.d.s which meant that one of us was employable. when i was in the grad school at one point, the chronicle of higher education came out with a special issue. it had a picture on the front of it, it was the pvc pipe and it was where they interview for jobs and literally the headline on the chronicle of higher education was in the pit at the american historical association, would-be historians beg for jobs

they don't really want. my wife cut this out and hung it in our kitchen and said get a backup plan fast. but if you ever had a history professor or a political scientist or a history in lit kind of class and they assigned democracy in america and you looked at it as a daunting 15,5 -- 1500 page book, rip the front page off and it was written as a bunch of travel reports. as toqueville tried to explain what was happening in america in the late 1830s and 1840s, back to europeans who couldn't make sense of this experiment. this experiment in republican government, this experiment in self-governance, what made it the case you had a canal revolution? that you had a pro toe railroad revolution, it was the putting out sort of production revolution that wasn't the factory system, but it was something that was going to

approximate a moving assembly line. you had this massive economic innovation happening in the 1830s and '40s. the europeans didn't know why. they said the americans we thought the people were founded on the idea they'd have pluralism and they believe all these crazy religious things they're not going to kill each other and they'll have cultural diversity and pluralism and now all of a sudden they're economically productive. how do we make sense of that. toqueville's first thesis was if you understand economic ingenuity they must have better planners than we do so we'll go to washington and find out where the central planners reside. they write back, this is kind of a swamp and the people aren't that interesting or creative. you know, not a lot has changed. and ultimately they said, this isn't the center of america. the center of america isn't here in the compulsory power center that is washington and there were 25 states at this time and

toqueville travels to 17 of the 25. he writes back and he essentially says, i found the meaning of america, i found the center of america. it's the rotary club. it's actually where people come together, they're not isolated individualists, but they don't believe government power, but they believe in community and they believe in persuasion and they believe in building better products and services and having someone build that thing. they believe in that community. there was a tragic line five years ago where it was said, i don't want to beat up on the second democrat, but it was barney frank. let's not mention it. he said, government is just another word for those things we choose to do together. no, it's not. community is another word for things we choose to do together. government is another word for compulsion and there's compulsion that's necessary in the world, but we should move

cautiously. so i think democracy in america is a great little snapshot of all of the little platoons where thick and rich life is lived in america and has been. >> i think the now pretty well documented decline of mediating institutions that toqueville identifies as the engine of america as you were describing along with some of the other phenomena that you mentioned earlier i think when taken together really are troublesome in terms of the future of what we call the exceptional america that the founders created. let's now turn to that question of mission. it's always been a tension i think in american thinking about this. on the one hand, the founders were not only aware of the frailty of democratic institutions and for that reason came up with the republican remedy as the federalist papers call it for the frailties of democracy, but they were also very mindful of the fact that

they were inhabiting a world of nondemocracies and that it would be very difficult in the long run for the united states to prosper and survive in a world that remained nondemocratic world. now, the tension in that was, you know, how do you particularly as a small not, you know, that -- not that strong country, you know, how do you lead a world revolution of democracy? you don't. on the other hand, as adam said in his 4th of july speech, you're the well-wisher to all who want democracy and the tension between how much we should intervene to help other democratic forces in the world has really been there since the beginning. and it's very much the animating force for what we do during world war ii, world war i and

ii, and the unique growing place since 1945 that you've identified earlier. how do you -- if you -- when you go to nebraska, when you speak to constituents, and they ask you about america's place in the world and what our mission if we have one is, how do you describe it? how do you -- how do you talk to them about it? what do you find when you go there when you talk to constituents and what ought those of us who both believe in exceptional america and an america that is engaged in leading in the world, what work do we have to do in the wake of this last electoral cycle? >> great question. and let's start and i certainly do when i engage and listen to nebraskans and wrestle through the questions with them, let's start by rejecting silly false choices. so the idea that there's a choice between isolationism and some sort of mushy

internationalism is crazy because they're horrible ideas. if you look at some of the polling data right now, one of the tragic things that's happening is we're deciding that a continuum we have across right versus left on domestic policy issues. i think one simple way to think of right versus left over 50 to 75 years has been mouch -- how much governmental -- federal governmental intervention do you want in the economy? so you could have a debate about the minimum wage. this not about limited government. this is small to limited government. it says we don't believe that the government comes first, we don't believe in totalitarianism. so small versus medium is an important debate about economic engagement by the federal government. foreign policy shouldn't have -- your foreign policy views shouldn't have to be immediately tailorable and alignable with that. we see right versus left on domestic politics are seeming to embrace silly views of foreign policy on both sides that don't always make a lot of sense.

so i'll cite a bit of polling data from pew last week or two weeks ago. when asked on the eve of the election trump supporters versus clinton supporters do you mostly identify with this statement, other countries should solve their own problems or the u.s. should help others to solve their problems. first of all, kind of a silly statement, right? but if you're going to take it at face value, 56% of clinton supporters said the u.s. should help. well, let's take apart why that doesn't make sense. help how? and are there any limits on how we would help because there's certainly limits on our capacity and our means. but on the other side, only 25% of trump supporters said the u.s. should help in the world. and the assumption behind the question seems to be that there's a choice that if you help in the world that means you're rejecting tackling our own problems at home. i think one way to kind of map this is to a more sophisticated

debate would be idealism versus realism in foreign policy and also there we should recognize that the right answers in the long term recognizing that the world is becoming a flatter and flatter space are going to be that realism done right is still going to affirm lots of long term value propositions about the rule of law, about stability, about how when you make pledges to allies they know they should trust you and that your enemies should fear you'll keep your word and conversely idealism done right is always going to be bounded by a sense that the world is broken and there are going to be a whole bunch of things that are beyond your ability to anticipate. and there are unintended consequences from all action. what i try to do as i wrestle through the questions with nebraskans is say, let's recognize there is no withdrawal from the world that could possibly be cost free for us. the distinction that we all learned on 9/11 is that al qaeda

and the taliban were different entities and yet we the american people hadn't thought about before what a post 1989 world looked like where nation state actors were not the only actors who had the global reach. the taliban was the government of afghanistan and yet they didn't have a monopoly of violence, and yet al qaeda was able to kill 3,000 americans. do massive harm on our economy and transform a whole bunch of aspects in the way that americans thought about the world over the coming decade. yet, they were a pretty small organization and only enabled by the fact that there were vacuums of ungoverned space in afghanistan. well, guess what? if you look at a globe of the world today if you're nerdy parents like, we make the runs get the globe and we spin it and we talk about their neighbors and what their local economic production looks like, and something about the history.

it's rough to be our children i acknowledge. but about a third of all countries on the globe that we treat as if they're countries, about a third of them aren't really countries. two-thirds of the places on the globe are countries as we think of them in a post west failian way. most are a jump ball and if more and more ungoverned spaces expand you'll have more consequences at home for us in terms of loss of life, in terms of battle of jihadists here. in terms of economic implications because the world is flat to quote tom friedman. with need a foreign policy that's engaged and starts with a question of what is the long term interests of the 320 million people that the american politicians are called to serve? and that involves a respect for human rights and the rule of law. so it's a more complicated

question than mushy internationalism versus quick isolationism. >> i want to touch on something, and i know you have to get back up to the hill to preside so i hope we can have time for one or two questions before we lose you. part of the proposition that we are different appears to be being undermined by the fact that many of the same forces that seem to be coursing through the body politic in the united states this year have been coursing through the body politic in other countries. and just as a proposition, you know, our former yale colleague jeremy suri wrote a book about 1968 which may be the previous point in history where similar kind of forces were moving across the globe affecting the way that countries thought about their international role. i have in mind, you know, sort of the rise of populist

movements in eastern europe and central europe, the brexit vote and of course the trump phenomenon here. some of that suggests that to me anyway that our political system may be in a deeper crisis and the political system that we associate with the west, with democracy may be in deeper crisis than we realize. part of it is what you have talked about in terms of the polling data. there's also very disturbing polling data that younger folks not only don't see the importance of free speech, but they said didn't care if they lived in a democracy or not. which i find, you know, enormously troubling. before the actual election was held in november, there was a lot of focus on our party. and the crisis that it was in. and a lot of discussion about how our party was going to --

you know, implode or explode or break up the coalition, couldn't, you know, hold together. and the trump nomination was proof of that allegedly. now in the wake of the election, you know, we look around and the republican party seems dominant. they control -- they will as of january 20th control the white house, the senate obviously which republicans held, and the house during the eight years of barack obama the democratic party has seen an enormous decline not only in the number of members of the house, but of the senate. governorships, state legislatures, et cetera. some people are talking about a 50 year republican dominance. the focus now is on the democratic party and its dysfunction and questions about whether in the absence of the impact of the clintons, whether the party will lurch to the

left. something along the lines of the labor party in britain. it seems that both parties remain in crisis. they're both in crisis throughout 2016. they remain in crisis and our political system is going through the adjustment of crisis because of the process of globalization that may last for, you know, five, ten, ten years. it may take that long to unwind. how do we go through that crisis and assure that we come out the other end as a vibrant democracy and that democracy doesn't end up being on -- in retreat around the world as compared to the enormous advances, you know, it went through in the '80s and '90s? >> lots of meat in that question. let me agree with the horror about the young people data that shows somewhere between a third and a half are drifting toward indifference to whether they live in a democracy. but let me outbid it with one

bit of horror to show our historical amnesia and the lack of civic education that we have. and we don't another three hours or we could talk about the goofiness of a lot of the media coverage of castro's death, because it's a way of showing how little shared understanding of where we are in history. about a third -- i think it was 32% of millennials in a poll in october said that they believe that george w. bush had killed more people than stalin. a third of american millennials. stalin killed around 50 million people. so we have big problems in terms of what we're not teaching. but i think that anybody who says they know what comes next in partisan politics in american life five, ten years in the future is smoking something because the reality about the undercurrent of all of these movements right now is that automation is transforming the economy and the nature of work

in arguably unprecedented ways in human history. right, when hunter gathers became farmers that became disruptive. we didn't have an alphabet for what it looked like as a disruption for people, but in the transformation of work for this moment is the 50 to 75 year period that was industrialization. and it was remarkably unsettling for people to go from almost everyone inheriting the farming job of your mom and dad and grandparents for generations to now go to the city and have to get a totally different kind of job in a big tool economy. as disruptive as that was, it was, it spawned progressiveneis under roosevelt and others but once you got the new job you tended to have that job until death or retirement. what we're going to have now is everybody losing their job,

every three to five years for the rest of their existence. we have never had 40 and 45 and 50 and 55 -year-olds having to get a new job. if you lose your job now at age 55 you never get employed again. in the future that's not going to work because it will be all of us and that's hugely -- there's tons of human turmoil, we can talk about charles murray and putnam and the j.d. vance's new book on the shrinking of the institutions, but we're not talking about the underpinning of that, and the nature of work from stable life long jobs to unstable occasional part-time flex jobs where everybody is going to have to become a life long learner. so we haven't talked much about trade, but when people feel about anxiety right now, they're trying to project the things they're worried about on trade. trade is a big deal.

where i'm from, there's a pretty broad consensus that trade is a big deal. if we had more trade with asia, nebraska which is the -- you know, we're known for our corn and football, but we're the largest cattle state in the union. in nebraska, if there's more trade with asia, you'll end one a cheaper silverado and we'll end up with more beef markets for export. so trade is a win-win for nebraskans. trade is a win for all consumers nationally. trade is a net win for producers nationally but they're geographic and sub sector folks who suffer under trade. we don't have good trade mitigation policy. it's a much smaller topic than artificial intelligence, than machine learning and machine automation and the transformation of the economy. we can talk about a specific factory moving from ohio or indiana to mexico. and the jobs that might be saved or lost in a move like that. but the much bigger long term

factor is that each of those factories has so many fewer workers. we are talking about 7% of the u.s. workforce now working in industrial jobs and we're not wrestling with any of those questions and neither political party has an answer. so people who reduce this immediately to right versus left are shortsighted and sniffing something that thinks that this town is made up of a whole bunch of geniuses who know how to s centrally plan 20, 30, we can't. >> you can see why senator sasse is one of my favoriters. i think we have a minute or two for questions. please introduce yourself and keep the questions in light of the senator's time constraints short and that they have a question mark at the end. >> what he's saying, sasse is 99th in seniority so he has to preside over the senate whenever anyone else doesn't want that and that's lunch. so that's why i have to be on time.

>> first of all, thank you for spending your time with us. i'm here with the duke university, alexander hamilton society. also as one of the millennials i would say that we do not believe the things that you have been saying horrendously about our generation, but i would like to ask, in this very layered and complex world, how -- you mentioned how you teach your kids about different countries. i think that's amazing. how would you you know teach our generation how to handle this new complex and very different world specifically to college students like us? >> thanks, great question. we do have a weird experience with our kids because i live in nebraska and commute every week and i bring which ever kid mom is most sick of for the week. they come with me. so my 13-year-old is here today. i won't point her out because mom must have banished her from the home last week. i think the most important thing for secondary education and for

college students is that we need to make the flip from viewing schooling and education as s synon synonyms. school advances education and sometimes distracts us from actual education. we're entering a world that people have to become life long learners. it's going to have to become a much more sophisticated approach to the way you build networks and to the way you acquire new information. and frankly to the way we reacquire an ability to have long cycles of learning that aren't driven by whatever gadget in our pocket is buzzing. we think we have switched from one social media platform to another one in four minutes and we need to have a lot more thinking long ability and read texts again. and right now, we're not developing those habits of mind and discipline that are necessary for people who are not going to finish learning. at age 18. you'll have to learn a lot longer in the future.

as education is radically underperforming in america, grade 13 would somehow solve this problem. if grade 11 isn't working very well, i'm not sure why we think a universal one size fits all grade 13 would work as well. around policy conversations that are too regularly stuck in 1965, the high-tech revolution is creating lots of opportunities for disintermediation and digitalization that goes beyond what is saying, and should be supplemental and not displacing in the long term. but are able to go faster than our policy discussions, which are clunky and stuck at half a century ago. things as basic as the gaughan academy, we could go through lots of different places where online education is not going to be a substitute for world view forming things that need to happen in community and in relation with real teachers and with peers and with people who care about the big and true and

the good, true and beautiful kinds of philosophical questions you're wrestling through to root your identity and your world view. but lots of things that are more like accounting. there could be new skills acquired much more rapidly in online and hybrid learning environments and there are tools available that we didn't envision five years ago. >> as you can tell from that answer, senator sasse is way more tech savvy than i am. if you have not seen him reading mean tweets about himself, go to youtube because you're in for a treat. >> i would like to call on my former colleague in the reagan administration, bud mcfarland. >> senator sasse, thank you very much for not just today, but for every day that you serve here. it's really a blessing for all of us. this isn't about today foreign

policy for mostly, but however, in the context of idealism, realism, and real things we're facing i believe in the years ahead in the middle east, has sa lust among the sunni arab states for an equivalent capability in nuclear power generation, ostensibly, but of course with the potential for weapons systems. if you believe the rhetoric coming from saudi arabia and the vision 2030 of the deputy crown prince, if you believe how president al sisi's rhetoric calling for reform of islam and seemingly having the grand mufti behind him. to what degree can or should the united states encourage mr. ben

salman, the deputy crown prince, be helpful in enabling the industrialization and the move away from oil and to what extent can we imagine the possibility of forging a collective security organization within the middle east that might really deter and in traditional ways avoid conflict between iran and its neighbors. so this is more than a three-credit course, but i'd be grateful for your comment. >> thank you for your question and your past service as well. let's start by saying that iran can never become a nuclear power. iran is the world's largest state sponsor of terror and we should declare unequivocally that they can never get access to nuclear weapons. so much of the current short

term and midterm crisis in the middle east is driven by the fact that people don't know where the u.s. is going to land and have it known for five to eight plus years so you have a middle east where we can talk in lots of technical details about how we got to the agreement that we have. i was opposed to this agreement. i think one of the things that's missed when we get straight to the fight about whether people were for or against the joint agreement is the fact that we stop talking about the broad ee sanctions regime against iran for all of the other things that they do. and we should recognize that when iran is sowing the discourt they're sowing all over the region, just to put one data stamp on what happened in syria. on the eve of the syrian civil war there were 21 million people in syria. only about 11 million people in syria live in their homes now.

estimates vary but around 450,000 people have been killed. almost half of the 21 million people have been displaced from their homes and about half of that half has been displaced beyond their border, then you think of the millions that are bunched up on the jordanian border. i was with king abdullah and he was talking about how many cool systems there were in jordan that had more syrian kids than jordanian kids in the school systems. just try to imagine that wherever you're from, pick any town or suburb in america and imagine all of a sudden a majority of the kids in that school with from brazil and the complete transformation of local culture and politics and the risk of jordanian collapse, those kinds of pressures are all over the middle east and what did we decide to fight about a lot in the u.s.? whether or not the 10,000 syria refugee number should be 10,000,

should be zero or should be 60,000. we had a fight that was about symbolic things. that were important things as well. the u.s. government is not competent to do the vetting of a bunch of people who may be infiltrating alleged syrian refugee pipelines and be intended jihadists claiming to be syrian refugees but we also knew that there were a whole bunch of women with -- breast-feeding moms with babies in this population and we were debating 10,000 versus zero versus 60,000 when none of it had anything to do with whether or not we had a long term vigs for the region and the role of the russians and the iranians in the destabilization of the region. here's the simple fact. as the civil war was unfolding, our allies didn't believe our red lines were real and our opponents didn't think we meant anything we said either and that our red lines would be real. i think adult leadership in the

world goes slow before you ever do anything that approximates drawing a red line. and if you draw a red line you've already plotted chess moves three, four, and five. so we need to rebuild a foreign policy where we're credible and trustworthy and choose our objectives in a cautious but but if we choose them we mean them and our allies know they can rely on us. so many of the saudi and egyptian issues you mentioned are partly driven from a state of vacuum where no one knows where the u.s. is going to land. we're out of time here so i won't comment on any of the likely policies in the incoming administration but we're obviously at a personnel is policy moment. and i think most of us should be hopeful that the new president-elect will be populating his administration with people who are cautious, responsible adults be who takes

words seriously because our allies and opponents do and iran cannot become a nuclear power and our allies in the region should know that we would never allow iran to become a nuclear power. >> senate or sasse, thank you for taking the time today. [ applause ] >> thank you for moderating such a great conversation. we're going to take a very short break and be back in just a moment with the general. please sit tight. thank you.

[ indistinct audio ] [ indistinct audio ] a short break in this national security and foreign policy conference, earlier conversations again with the house arms services committee chair mack thornberry and senator ben car ddon. senator ben sasse and the rest will be available on cspan.org. the conference resuming shortly

with a discussion on middle east challenges. we'll have live coverage when it gets under way. we'll be back at 1:45 with a foreign policy preview with the first 100 days of the trump administration. the conference closes 259:45 eastern. georgia republican congressman tom price was nominated yesterday by president-elect trump to head up the health and human services department. he's expected to talk about the budget process this afternoon and we will have live coverage on c-span 3 starting 3 ining 3: eastern. house democrats are holding their leadership election and we know leader nancy pelosi continues in her position. she beat out her only challenger, congressman tim ryan, of ohio. the vote was 134-63. congressman steny hoyer and jim clyburn maintain their current leadership posts as minority whip and assistant leader respectively.

[ indistinct audio ] >> before we go to the next part of this discussion on national security and foreign policy, we'll go live to the u.s. capital where house democratic leaders are about to come to the cameras to offer statements after their leadership elections earlier today.

>> we're expecting remarks from house democratic leaders in just a couple of moments here as they have once again elected nancy pelosi as the minority leader for the 115th congress. we expect to hear now from ohio congressman tim ryan who challenged nancy pelosi. the vote was 134-63.

>> first i'd like to start the member who stood beside me, marcia fudge and ed pearl mutter who nominated me. we knew it was going to be an uphill battle, we only had a couple weeks to put this together but i think we did a pretty good job, my staff, my members who came out publicly for me and i think quite frankly we got the message out that we wanted to get out and that's that as democrat wes need to talk about economics, it's the issue that unites us. many of you have heard me say this a million times in the last two weeks and i believe in the my heart that if we're going to win as democrat wes need to have an economic message that resonates in every corner of this country.

we come out of this leadership election united as democrats to take on the challenges that we immediate moving forward so, you know, i'm disappointed because i like to win but i think it was a great discussion, but i think the party is better off. i'll be happy to take questions. >> reporter: what message do you think it sends that about a third of the democratic caucus who voted voted for you? >> well, i think you will speculate about that but i think it says that, you know, talking economics, people i think understood that that message is very, very important to us as democrats, especially leaders on the front lines in some way representing the 30, 40, or 50 seat wes need to pick up. so i think the message resonated and if you heard marcia and eddy nominate me, they talked about that, us being able to compete

in every district there the united states. with an agenda that resonates. >> reporter: did you get any reason on why you didn't get enough votes? why people voted against you? >> i didn't ask anybody. i didn't want to have my feelings hurt any more than they already were. and let me say, leader pelosi has been here a long time, she has a lot of friends, this is her caucus, clearly but we had an opinion and we wanted to make sure people heard it. >> reporter: do you think the message is getting through to the leadership? you talked about coastal parties. do you think the message about the heartland is getting through to the leadership? >> i think so. i think having a vote of 63 other members agreeing with the message i would say the leadership understands that there's a good many people in the caucus who want the message to move in that direction. >> reporter: do you agree that your effort was pathetic?

>> not pathetic. i'm proud of having 63 votes. chad? >> reporter: one democrat who supported you comes from a rural area saying there is no greater divide between the urban democrats and the rural democrats and by elected pelosi who got 24 votes more than six years ago that this doesn't address the problem. that you've lost the conversation that you said she can't go into certain sbrikt d and run, you can, but that's still a problem. >> well, we are going to compete -- at the end of the day we have to figure out how to win. i tried to add to that conversation. now we are a united caucus and we'll try to figure out how to win. >> before tim continues let me say this because i'm hearing the tone of this and i don't think it's fair. we did not lose today. today we won. we may not have won the position but we won a caucus.

we have now a leadership that listens to what we are saying. we are now a leadership that wants to be more inclusive and include more people from the caucus. we have now a leadership that wants to hear what we have to say, what we think went wrong, how we fix it. he didn't lose today. today we made a caucus and we're responsible to its members. and so for that i congratulate him. one-third of the members of this kaurks h caucus had the courage to come out and say we needed to change and i congratulate all of them. and for those who vote our leader, i think that's great, she's wonderful. but when i go home people are going to ask me what did you do to make this better. doing nothing doesn't make it better but today we won because they hear us. >> reporter: mr. ryan, do you personally have confidence that nancy pelosi could bring this party back to the majority.

i. >> yes. >> reporter: why? >> because we're going to work our butts off to make that happen. part of this campaign was to help energize a lot of people that want to get out there and contribute and i know walking out of that room today that we have a more energized caucus than we've had, we have people who have a lot of courage to step up and say to the leadership what marcia just said and how important that is so our prospects have improved because of this conversation. as i said from the very beginning. we're a family and sometimes families have to have tough conversations. you can go back to the first couple interviews i did. nobody wants to have them, we try to delay those conversations, we try to ignore them for day, weeks, months and years sometimes, but every single time you have that conversation, that tough talk you come out of there stronger and whether it's a personal relationship or a family event like this, and i think we come out stronger than we went in. >> reporter: who is the future of the democratic party?

>> i haven't thought about that kas kasie. >> reporter: is it nancy pelosi? >> well, yeah, to some extent, this is our leader. this is who our caucus chose and we'll support that. >> what s that the problem democrats have in a nutshell, who is going to lead the party for the next four years? >> we all will. i think now is time when everybody has to step up which was part of why i wanted to do it. you see this crew here, a lot of young members stepped up, went public which is unheard of in a political caucus for young people to stand up. >> reporter: how do you think white working class voters who voted for donald trump if your leadership is san francisco and new york? >> we have to figure that out. that was my case that i made we didn't win the day today.

but as marcia said the conversation is shifting to a more economic conversation that will help us win the house back. >> reporter: are you confident your voice will be heard in this caucus moving forward? >> yeah. yeah. all right, thanks, we have to get back and vote.

[ indistinct audio ] [ i dndistinct audio ] >> so the headline is current minority leader nancy pelosi continues in her position as the minority leader in the 115th congress. her only challenger, congressman tim ryan who you just heard. the vote was 134-63. congressman steny hoyer of maryland remains as the minority whip and congressman jim clyburn

of south carolina is the assistant leader heading into the 115th congress. now, we are hearing minority leader pelosi is expected to come to the cameras. she'll be talking about her role and the election results. of course we hope to bring that to you shortly. we also want to let you know we are planning to return to the national security and foreign policy conversation that we have been showing you. it will last until about 2:45 this afternoon. right nower in a discussion on middle east challenges and we are hoping to be able to get to the remainder of that discussion after we hear from minority leader pelosi when she comes out to the cameras.

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[ indistinct audio ] >> still standing by waiting to hear from house minority leader nancy pelosi, newly reelected house minority leader. the associated press has a story about it. house democrats reelected nancy pelosi as their leader today despite disenchantment among some in the caucus over the party's disappointing performance in elections earlier this month. the california lawmaker who has led the party since 2002 turned

back a challenge from ohio congressman tim ryan. the secret ballot vote was 134-63. we need the very best to lead us, congressman adam schiff of california told democrats in nominating nancy pelosi. "no one is a better tactician than nancy pelosi." the 76-year-old california democrat was forced to promise changes to the caucus to answer complaints from lawmakers who are fed up with being shut out of the upper ranks of leadership, especially in the wake of a devastating election that installed a republican monopoly over congress and the white house. a half dozen democrats delivered testimonials to nancy pelosi in nominating speeches but the disenchantment was evident. i thi "i think tim ryan would be a great leader, he's a new generation and he would appeal to a lot of millennials and young people in this country" congressman steve lynch of massachusetts said as he headed into the session. we are waiting to hear from nancy pelosi as our cameras are still live on capitol hill.

it should be in just a couple of moments.

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>> the results of elections for house democrats have democrats elected nancy pelosi as chief democrat in the house. we hope to hear from her in just a couple minutes live on capitol hill. congressman steny hoyer of maryland is still the minority whip. jim clyburn elected as assistant leader. the lone rival to nancy pelosi's reelection was congressman tim ryan of ohio. he came to the cameras a short time ago to talk about his challenge to the current leader and what it means for the party. >> first i'd like to thank these members who stood by me, marcia fudge and ed perlmutter who nominated me. clearly this didn't turn out the way we wanted it to, we knew it was going to be an uphill battle, we only had a couple weeks to put this together but we i think did a pretty good job, my staff, my members who came out publicly for me and i think quite frankly we got the

message out that we wanted to get out and that's that as democrats we need to talk about economics, it's the issue that united us. you've heard me say this a million times in the last two weeks and i believe in my heart if we're going to win an economic message that resonates in every corner of this country. we come out of this leadership election united as democrats to take on the challenges that we need moving forward. i'm disappointed because i like to win but i think it was a great discussion for us and honestly i think the party is better off so i'm happy to take any questions. >> reporter: how is this different? >> reporter: what message do you think it sends that about a third of the democratic caucus voted for you? >> well, i think you all will speculate a lot about that but i think it says that talking economics people i think

understood that that message is very, very important to us as democrats, especially leaders on the front lines and in some way representing the 30, 40, or 50 seats we'll need to pick up so i think the message resonated and if you heard marcia and eddie nominate me they talked about that, us being able to compete in every district in the united states with an agenda that resonates with the american people. >> reporter: did you get any reason on why you didn't get enough votes? why people voted against you? >> i didn't ask anybody. i don't want to have my feelings hurt any more than they already were. and let me just say, leader pelosi has been here a long time. she has a lot of friends, this is her caucus, clearly. but we had an opinion and we wanted to make sure people heard it. >> m>> reporter: do you think te message is getting through to the leadership? you talk about coastal parties. do you think about t methe mess

getting through? >> i think having a vote of 36 other members agreeing with the message i would say that the leadership understands that there's a good many people in the caucus who want the message to move in that direction. >> do you agree your effort was pathetic? >> next question. >> not pathetic. i'm proud of having 63 votes. chad? >> reporter: i had one democrat who supported you, comes from a rural area saying there is no greater divide between the urban democrats and the rural democrats and by electing pelosi who got 24 more votes than six years ago, that this doesn't address the problem, you've lost the conversation that as you said she can't go into certain districts a districts. >> well, we are going to compete -- at the end of the day we have to figure out how to

win. i tried to add to that conversation, now we are a united caucus and we're going to try to figure out how to win. >> i'm hearing the tone of this and i don't think it's very fair. we did not lose today. today we won. we may not have won the position but we won a caucus, we have now a leadership that listens to what we are saying. we have now a leadership that wants to be more inclusive and include more people from this caucus, we have now a leadership that wants to hear what we have to say, what we think went wrong, howie fix it. he didn't lose today. today we made a caucus and we're responsible to its members and so for that i congratulate him. one-third of the members of this caucus had the courage to come out and say we needed a change and i congratulate them, and for those who voted for our leader, i think that's great, i think she's a wonderful leader but when i go home people are going to ask me "what did you do to make this better?"

doing nothing doesn't make it better. today we won because they hear us. >> mr. ryan, do you personally have confidence that nancy pelosi can bring this party back to the majority? >> yes. >> reporter: why do you have confidence? >> because we're going to work our butts off to make that happen and it's not just leader pelosi. it's a team and i think part of this campaign was to help energize a lot of people that want to get out there and contribute and i think there's -- i know walking out of the room we have a more energized caucus than we've had. we have people who have a lot of courage to step up and to say to the leadership what marcia just said and how important that is so i think our prospects have improved because of this conversation. as i said from the beginning, we're a family and sometimes families have to have tough conversations. you can go back to the first couple interviews i did. nobody wants to have them, we

try to delay those conversations, we try to ignore them for days, weeks, months and years sometimes but every single time that you have conversation, that tough talk, you come out of there strongerened whether it's a personal relationship more to a family event like this, and i think we come out stronger than we went in. >> reporter: who is the future of the democratic party? >> well, i haven't thought about that kasie. >> reporter: is it nancy pelosi? >> well, you know, yeah, i mean to some extent -- this is who our caucus chose and we're going to support her. >> reporter: is that the problem democrats have in a nutshell? who's going to lead the party for the next four years? >> we're all going to participate. now is the time when everybody has to step up. which is part of why i wanted to do this. you see this crew here, a lot of young members stepped up, went public which is unheard of in a political caucus like this for young people to stand up. so we have a lot of people ready

to participate. i'll take one more question. >> reporter: how do you connect with white working class voters who voted for donald trump if your leadership is from san francisco and new york? >> we're going to have to figure that out. that will be part of what we have to figure out. that was my case that i made. we didn't twin day today but as marcia said there's more people who are participating. i think the conversation is shifting to a more economic conversation and i think that will help all of us and that will help us be able to win the house back. >> reporter: are you confident your voice and ideas will be heard moving forward in this caucus by pelosi? >> yeah. yeah. all right, thanks, we have to get back and vote. minority leader nancy pelosi expected to appear before reporters here in the capitol in just a couple minutes. members are wrapping up elections for other house

leadership positions. and kellyanne conway tweeted out just a short time ago in what could be seen as a little bit of a dig "what a relief, i was worried they had learned from the elections and might be competitive and cohesive again."

as house democrats continue to fill their leadership positions, the incoming trump administration works to bring in new heads for cabinet posts and today donald trump named see te mnuch mnuch mnuchin. and he also nominated steven scare mucci. he spoke with reporters. >> with secretary designees at fox, wilma ross and see the mnuchin. they will work in conjunction with mr. trump. secretary of labor, of course, so we're super excited about it. i can't think of two beater

people to help prosecute the trade but also his future tax plan which will be the first order of priority for the secretary of treasury. >> reporter: [ inaudible question ] >> well, listen, i know steven will come down and talk to you guys at some point. i think the way we'll try to design the plan is make it as revenue neutral as possible. one of the big things that happens with these tax studies is they're not dynamically scoring them so when you get tax cuts that can filter down into the population you'll pick it up on income taxes. as an example, if you keep 1,000 jobs for the carrier corporation and you leave them in indiana, well, that's an increase -- at least not a decrease in your tax base so the idea is to use the tax policy to create more middle-class jobs and to create wage growth for the working class and so the combination of those two things, i think, you'll see with dynamic scoring

that we should have a revenue neutral -- excuse me, deficit neutral or possibly even a reduction of the deficit if we handle this properly. remember, another thing about our tax policy is we're going to repatriate trillions of dollars off the shore of the united states, bring it back here to help our manufacturing base and, again, with an extreme focus on the middle-class and working class families. >> reporter: in terms of this deal with president-elect -- this arrangement the president-elect is talking about with his business, do you think people will be confident there's no conflict of interest? >> 1,000%. what i also say, we're talking about steven and wilbur this morning but you should focus on don mccann because he is a phenomenal lawyer, the new white house council is working alongside of the president-elect. i think the tweet this is morning are indicating that the president-elect has the confidence that i'm it rating to you about that policy that will be put in place. >> reporter: are we just talking about handing the business off to the children? >> you know what?

i don't want to steal mr. trump or the children's thunder on that so let's wait until december 15. what i want to assure all of you is that we'll get this right for the american people. at age 70, after having this phenomenal life and building this phenomenal business and this great tower, he's going to be 100% focused on working for the american people and for the united states. >> reporter: is there any word that the carrier deal with set a precedent where companies expect a tax break? >> well, companies should expect a tax break. i mean, the whole purpose of what we're doing here is we have the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world and so what we've got to do is bet those corporate tax rates down to a competitive position so that if you're a cfo or a ceo of an american corporation and you're looking at the way you'll allocate your capital, you'll make the decision to allocate the capital into the united states. so i'm hoping every ceo in america is getting the beacon signal from the new trump administration that we're open for business here in the united states and we have to get american people back working in

american jobs. so i do hope that that is the case. i hope that's the signal. >> reporter: can you give us any detail of what the president-elect will be focused on specifically today? >> no. to be candid i haven't seen his schedule. i don't know. >> reporter: do you know how much of carrier deal was frump or pence? >> well, first of all, the vice president-elect is still the current governor of indiana and as you know, as president-elect he doesn't have federal powers at this point so he was really using his moral suasion with carriers. so i think the governor was heavily involved in making sure there was a package of proposals put together for carriers to incentivize him to stay. you're probably aware they'll lose about $65 million by keeping those jobs in the united states but they see a lot of public relations benefits to that and they also want to send a message to people that we're all going to work together on behalf of the american middle-class. >> and the secretary of state

pick, what's your sense of how many people are still in the running? are you advising the president-elect in any particular -- >> that's sort of out side of my purview even though i'm on the transition team, i've been more focused on the economy. i'm good friends with several candidates, including governor mitt romney and general david petraeus is a close personal friend of mine and i just want to say about all of these people is that they're right in there consistent with what mr. trump said to us on the executive committee is that he wants a plus-plus players and you can see from a governor romney or general petraeus, they both fit that. their transcripts are a plus-plus, let's put that way. >> reporter: [ inaudible question ] >> you have to remember, both these guys are -- they do fit the outsider bill in the sense that they've never worked in washington so what i would say to you is what we're trying to do with the transition team level is we want to put a great

blend together in the sense that some people are insiders and understand the system and some outsiders and creative thinkers, out-of-the-box thinkers and disrupters, if you can get that blend right then you'll be able to affect change in washington. if you put too many of one or the other you have status quo providers well, nothing will change. if you have too many status quo disrupters, washington is a very healthy immunological system. you'll see organ rejection if you put too much status quo disrupters. so we're trying to get that right. which is why i think the picks of stephen bannon and reince priebus are an indication that we'll do that. these guys are working terrifically well together. reince knows the ropes in d.c. and steve has a sense for the american people and what's going on in the heartland. >> reporter: is this going to be a populist administration? >> well, it depends on how you define populist. if you're faulki italking about

administration that's focused on the potential for the united states and the potential for the american people and what mr. trump wants to be president for everybody -- which includes the working class and the middle-class -- then by that definition, it depends on what your definitionmisnomer to that definition that's somewhat of a pejorative. i don't see it that way. but the people i grew up with, which are the working class people of the united states, they need a break and we need to switch them from going from the working class into the working poor into what i call the aspirational working class which my dad was a member of. i'll take one more question, i have to go upstairs. >> reporter: what are the key factors affecting dynamic scoring? >> well, okay, so basically all that dynamic scoring means is we'll lower the taxes so if everything stays constant then obviously you'll have a reduction in revenue. but if you start to filter through multiplier effect of us lowering the taxes which means there will be an increase in jobs which mean there is will be higher income taxes for the

workers, there will be more jobs coming back into the united states. the combination of those dyna c dynamics as a result of those lower taxes should lead to greater growth. what's interesting about taxes -- and business people understand this better than most -- taxes are a price for services. so we have to be careful about when you're a politician just raising taxes, you're raising the price for those services and if those services are not worth the price you're charging, guess what happens? people start to defect from your services. they'll move out of state, they'll move their companies or factories off the shore of the united states. we want to let the american people from the ceo to the common worker know we're open for business. guys, thank you. >> good to see you. >> i wish we could have an election everyday so we could have the press everyday. is it still morning? no. good afternoon, everyone. in a short period of time we will have election of our full

leadership and we'll all come out but it's taking a little longer so i thought i'd just come by and tell you how exhilarated i am by the strong vote i have that from my colleagues as we go forward. they have honored me with this leadership role and as speaker in the past and that's exciting but today has a special excitement for me because i think we're at a time where it's well beyond politics. it's about the character of america. and how we go forward in our caucus to put forth our values which are what unite us as a caucus to differentiate between us and the administration that will come into washington in january to take that message clearly to the public is something that i is of historic challenge the american people

see the urgency. we have a responsibility and we embrace the opportunity that is presented. we know how to win elections. we've done in the the past, we will do it again by making that differentiation. but, again, this is so much bigger than politics. it's about the character of america. it's a a responsibility to the people. our obligation to our founders, our gratitude to our men and women in uniform and our respect for the aspirations of america's children and our families. so i have a special spring in my step today because this opportunity is a special one to lead the house democrats, bring everyone together as we go forward. my heart is broken that we did not win the white house this time. that is -- it's a pain and not

for me personally but for what it means to the american people. so i would trade anything not to have this opportunity of opposing an administration. where we can engage, we will. is where we need to oppose, we will. but nonetheless this does afford an opportunity so that the congressional democrats can go forward and remove all doubt that never again will we have an election where there's doubt in anyone's mind where the democrats are when it comes to america's working families. so with all of that, we'll be back soon with our full complement of the leadership, but i wanted to just congratulate tim ryan on a good race. i look forward to working with all of our colleagues from the beautiful diversity of our caucus to put forth a message

that does connect with the american people. thank you all. >> reporter: madam leader, one question. >> i'll be back. i'll be back. two-thirds. >> reporter: two-thirds? >> two-thirds, i said to you. >> thank you.

c can. house democratic leader nancy pelosi you heard a few moments ago talking about her

win as minority leader for 115th congress. she did say elections for house democratic leaders are still going on and we do expect to hear from those leaders as they are elected in a couple moments. we plan to bring live coverage of those remarks to you here on c-span3. now, if you're watching live coverage on foreign policy and national security that started earlier this morning, we've been recording the segments that you were not able to watch live and we will have it for you later on the c-span networks.

while we wait to hear from the rest of the democratic leaders for the 115th congress we'll show you a segment now from this morning's washington journal on the issue of fake news. >> new york is max reed, senator editor for magazine's select all section of the website. mr. reed is here to talk to us about the topic of fake news. mr. reed, good morning. >> good morning. >> could you talk to us about -- you wrote a recent piece taking a look at the idea, the title saying maybe internet isn't a fantastic tool for democracy after all. can you give us a sense of what led you on your writings about this topic of fake news? >> sure. for the last three decades, it's been sort of a silicon valley gospel that the internet is a tool for democracy for civil

rights, freedom of speech, freedom generally. that's been true in a lot of situations. you look at the beginning of arab spring, revolution, social media allowed those protests to flourish in public spaces. a lot of people organization and talk to each other. in the last six or seven years we've seen this rise of populism around the world, autocratic, populist often racist, kpen f xenophobic leaders, not just europe but southeast asia. one thing that seems to be clear across the world, these leaders use the internet, whether intentionally or because their supporters are on them to target critics, harass journalists, organize their own populist results. it's a moment to take a look at the internet and think maybe

this myth we've been talking about, how and why the internet is a tool for democracy isn't true. one sort of powerful component of that is what has been labeled broadly fake news, which are these highly misleading, oftentimes completely untrue stories put out by hyper partisan scam news sites that circulate woodley on social media and there doesn't seem to be a lot of control over how and why those stories are debunked, whether or not they should be allowed on social media. one infamous example, an article circulated before this election claiming the pope had endorsed donald trump, which, of course, he did not. that was shared by hundreds of thousands and probably seen by millions across facebook and twitter. >> so when it to comes to looking at these sites, you cited one example. is it equal opportunity when it comes to people putting this type of information out there?

>> well, everybody likes to share and read news that confirms their own bias. it's a human thing. it's true there are fake news sites, facebook pages that skew toward the liberal side of things. i would perpetuate my own fake news if i said this didn't go right. conservative pages tend to have more false or untrue information on them. you epa look at some of the reporting on this, when you talk to entrepreneurs with fake news sites they tried to put sites together around hillary clinton, bernie sanders, but donald trump produces them the traffic to make big profits. >> we have a listing of some examples of what one professor at mary mack college, she compiled a list of websites she would classify as fake news

amongst other things. give us examples. what are websites your familiar with when it doss fake news. >> i'm happy to list names. a lot of them you haven't heard of before, set up on the fly in the last year, year and a half. oftentimes by people not even in the u.s. a recent article in buzzfeed about the country of macedonia where apparently there's one city where a bunch of college students and teenagers are setting up these websitings to make money to buy themselves music equipment. one thing facebook has done -- not just facebook but google, made it easier to put to an official sounding website. a website like ending the fed.com, which i think most people would not recognize as a news source is turning over unbelievable traffic, any sort

of legitimate institutional news organization would love to have simply by posting fake news like the pope is endorsing donald trump. the broader definition of fake news, the one that might include incredibly hyper partisan news likeke breitbart, that would include truth out on the left, breitbart on the right. those sites would hate to be put in this category because a lot of what they write is true but taken from ab extremely partisan viewpoint. joining us with the idea of fake news, written several pieces about it from magazines. if you have questions 202-748-8000 for democrats, 8001 for republicans, 8002 for independents. tell us all about the section for new york magazine. >> we like to cover technology from a cultural perspective, to lot