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tv   Washington Journal  CSPAN  July 30, 2016 7:00am-10:01am EDT

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view join us us. kurt volker and ivan land. --eland. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] you, good morning to hillary clinton is in pennsylvania today with the running mate, tim kaine. appeal to working-class voters by highlighting her middle-class childhood. meanwhile, donald trump has push to renegotiate trade deals and limit immigration. our question to you this morning is, which party do you best represent america's working-class. here is how we are breaking down the phone lines, if you make less than $20,000 a year call
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(202) 748-8000, between $25,000 and $50,000, your number is (202) 748-8001, if you make more than $50,000 year you can call us at (202) 748-8002. you can also find us on social tweet us your thoughts and find us on facebook. donaldllary clinton and trump has been trying to ramp up their efforts to appeal to america's working-class custom he was donald trump's latest ad. [video clip] lies the the glitter stark truth. hillary clinton's america, things get worse. taxes keep rising, terrorism spreads, washington insiders remain in control. americans lose their jobs and hope. in donald trump's america, people are put back to work. e american dream is achievable
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again. i am donald trump, and i approve this message. host: hillary clinton accepted the nomination for president from the democratic party on thursday night. here is her making a direct appeal to the working-class. [video clip] willt's begin with what we do to help working people in our country get ahead, and stay ahead. i don't think president obama and vice president biden get the credit they deserve for saving us from the worst economic crisis of our lifetime. [applause] >> our economy is so much stronger than when they take office. nearly 15 million new private sector jobs, 20 million more americans with health insurance. an auto industry the just had
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its best year ever. [applause] >> now, that is real progress. but none of us can be satisfied with the status quo, not by a long shot. we are still facing deep-seated problems that developed long before the recession and stayed us through the recovery. the country talking to working families. many who feelrom that the economy is not working for them. some of you are frustrated. even fr. -- even furious. you know what? you are right. lot ofow, an awful people feel there is less and less respect for the work they do, and less respect for them, period. democrats, we are the party of
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working people. [applause] >> but, we haven't done a good enough job showing we get what you are going through. we're going to do something to help. host: which party do you think best represent america's working-class? hillary a little bit of clinton's acceptance speech at the democratic national convention. also play donald trump's latest he would boost jobs. here is an article from "the atlantic." an story says there is undercurrent of concern that something old is being lost in the democratic party in the celebration of the new. public a medic democratic party opened to all races, genders, sexual orientations,
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welcoming to immigrants and champion diversity may not have preserved enough room for the working-class white voters who anchor the party from andrew jackson through lyndon johnson. been theers haven't party center for years except for bill clinton in 1996. no democrat has won more tha 40% of white voters without a college education cents 1980 according to media examples. while running just enough above the national numbers among working-class whites in the key midwestern battleground states retaining the advantage in those pivotal state. we are taking your phone calls this morning, let's start with michael in maryland, good morning to you. caller: hello? host: which party do you think best represents the working-class? caller: democratic. host: why is that? caller: it seems like they have a plan. trump, i don't understand what he is saying. betweenis is you make
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$25,000 and $50,000 a year, and feel like you're part of the working class? caller: yes. host: what do you do? caller: i work for the federal government, cod. host: our next color is mark -- caller is mark from philadelphia. go ahead, good morning. caller: good morning. host: which party do you think best represents the working-class best? caller: definitely the democrats. it is pretty simple. take detroit, president obama. mitt romney was talking about a controlled anchorcy and that kind of stuff. look at michigan. they have indicted those state employees, low-level grunts. he real culprit is the
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governor snyder, a republican. host: mark, do you think the democratic party has done enough to explain its message and connect to workers? caller: yes, they have. is eating up the oxygen with this totally ridiculous slogans and unrealistic plans with tariffs. i think hillary has a very measured, intelligent program. i don't know. i guess people want to hear bernie's nonsense on the left. they like his nonsense on the left, blaming banks and wall street. trump on the right is blaming politicians. exceptas no one to blame the person looking at you in the mirror. if you cannot compete in this economy, that is just the way
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that it is. don't blame anybody for some hillary is just trying to aid people to find jobs. from that is mark, philadelphia first of our next color comes from hollywood, florida. cindy, this is you make less than $25,000 a year, who do you think best represents you? caller: my answer to that question is neither. , actuallytwo laws both republicans and democrats to do that. it is those three laws that are the problem. atyou want the minimum wage $15 an hour, the only people to get more money is the government. on it, it is $123 more out of your pocket to the
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government. god only knows what they will spend it on. your ownf you making decisions about what you need. here is the law, i don't know the name of this act. it was not passed by this congress. this act was a financial law that has to do with the currency. it a sickly says that the -- basically says the dollar you earn today next year's worth less money. it will be about $.90 on the dollar, maybe less. it will beter that worth about $.80. the value of what you do today decreases over time. really doesn't matter, but if it doesn't matter you really shouldn't be doing it. everybody should be doing something that matters. your compensation should matter as well, and not decrease over time. it took both republicans and
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democrats to pass that law. that is your problem. that is why your money doesn't buy anything. until they fix that, raising the minimum wage, all this other stuff, is not going to work. they did it once, already. it didn't work. it raises thee price of everything and you increase poverty. money wealth is when your buys the things you need for you not just those, people who work for the government. host: all right. caller: i am sorry, but i sent them a thing about building a national floor panel for, making it a constitutional amendment, what would be a three-bedroom two bathroom average standard would be $25 a month to
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matter how much wattage you used. host: all right, we hear your thoughts this morning. let's move on to georgia, herbert is calling there. good morning to you. caller: good morning. now, thati am retired is why i make less than the money. -- the peopleut there, the people there, the hour, that is minimum wage. you of congress with republicans and democrats making $174,000 a year. that is not including expense accounts, and others. thinkwhich party do you is best positioned to improve
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the situation of people making 725 an hour? caller: democrats mostly, watch what i'm saying. democrats help the middle class. one person who unionized america. they made it -- when the unionized america that is when the salaries went up. legislators never passed bills until people started to organize. take theshouldn't legislature to organize people to organize. -- theseon should know corporations know they're making huge profits. why should you wait for the thernment when they know money they're making. they're making a record number of profits. you know one thing i found about it also? been in this little town now first of many of the small towns in georgia, and
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chamberppi, tennessee, of commerce controls the salary. most of these people are making $7.25 an hour. we have the biggest chicken factory in south georgia. guess what? they come here because they don't have to have that competition. now: all right herbert, let's get some perspective of farmville, virginia. brought me -- rodney is on the line, good morning. go ahead with your thoughts. who best represents the working class? democratsthink the represent the best working-class. if you look back during the bush administration before president obama took over, the world was in turmoil. i am a construction worker. timeslaid off three during the bush administration.
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the housing, the type of work that we did, the projects were down. when obama got into the presidency, things picked back up. i think the democrats of the best working-class. host: how has worked been for you sense than? have you been able to find a job that is steady since the recession? caller: yes, i have. i think president obama and mr. biden has some a great job. i think hillary clinton will do a good job. really don't think donald trump move forward to for people to get better jobs. i definitely think the democrats would be a better working-class. host: all right. now here is a story from im economy- a gr report plays into trump's hands. for as clinton is hoping
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stronger economy. a donald trump's version of a crippled america -- she got grim news on friday morning within a report showing the economy grew quarter, in the second a sluggish pace for an expansion that is durable but also deeply dissatisfying to most americans. the details provide first-quarter growth down to 8%, showing an economy dangerously close to stall speed in handy donald trump a talking point. the story appeared in politico. now to joseph, in chicago, illinois. good morning to you. caller: good morning. you know, i think the democratic party best represents the working-class voter. about white working-class voters, and 2008 president obama had a problem
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with the white working-class voters. people wondered why the obama campaign couldn't attract working-class voters? to me the issue is not what is wrong with the obama campaign or the clinton campaign, the issue is what is going on the white working-class voters? they can't seem to find a home in the democratic party. they say that it is because of the diversity of the party itself. theuse, in 2011, if republican party had not blocked the american jobs act, the economy will be doing a lot better. host: a quick question for you, do you feel the democratic party has done enough to reach out to white working-class voters? caller: well, i look at it this way. when the economy crashed into thousand eight, it affected
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every group of people. it affected asian american workers, and hispanic american workers, and african-american workers, and white american workers. so, why is it that these other groups feel like they have a place in the democratic party, but white working-class voters are excluding themselves? host: all right, next up steve from dover, florida. between 25000 and $50,000 a year. good morning, steve. what the problem is this $7.25 wage is way off the line. hour and werean
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talking with $16 and already have $12 first of this is five dollars more than the usa. you know what? you go there, people say it is expensive. it is not much different. if you go to europe, where i came from. the same thing, nobody is hungry, everybody is driving cars. i said then why are you complaining? you have two cars and a house, this is a democracy. you know, this and that. host: what industry do you work in? caller: i am retired right now. i am 72. i am getting sick of when you see the republican -- if you think about seven or eight years backward, who destroy this economy? republican, or democrat? just ask yourself. let's not talk of what happened 80 years ago, but we should talk about it.
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years ago, but we should talk about it. host: that is steve from florida. let's hear from cindy in inglewood, new jersey. cindy earns over $50,000 a year. good morning. caller: good morning. the last color just said 8 years ago, where were we? we are now under 5%. i work for the automotive industry. finishinging, he just the gdp -- it is better going up then back for stuff that is my comment, have a nice day. host: all right. w, donald trump was campaigning in scranton, pennsylvania earlier this week. he talked about hillary clinton's comment on coal miners. [video clip] >> hillary give a press conference in an area where coal and the different things that we love wasn't so important, right?
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she figured should make the statement and it wouldn't get back to west virginia. it got back to west virginia, and to pennsylvania, and ohio, and a lot of places that she d idn't want to hear that message. she said she would put the coal mines out of business, no good. we had an event, at a big, massive place, it was beautiful, in west virginia. the place was packed. outside, they had at least double the number. it was love. i saw some of the miners. when you think, of leaving are going to another place it may be doing something else that of this? they said mr. trump, we love mining. we love doing it. this is our livelihood.
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this is what we do. we don't want to do something else. i said, i love that. i can understand that. i love that. [applause] in, because we will put you back to work. here are some more statistics from the story in the atlantic. it is the post republican national convention poll released on monday was directly at the anxiety in the democratic party. trump had big leads among 39college whites, cnn polled percentage points. the cnn poll touchup attraction only 69% of non-college-educated white men but also noncollege educated white women. on twitter we have this comment. when hillary is forced to confess the extent of the confessions -- concessions she
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expects white workers to make they will all flock to trump. turning now to montana, or is that missouri? i think steve is calling. caller: yeah, that is missouri. i don't know if a lot of people know this. the message -- massive immigration started under ronald reagan. when clinton got in there was more jobs than we knew what to do with. that has a lot to do with not so much raising the minimum wage as i work for a company they make $50 billion profit in a year. it is a trucking company, nonunion. do you think they sure that with us? no way, it doesn't work. you need strong unions. why dor comment is,
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these politicians have to take lie detector tests, drug tests, evaluations? i think donald trump acts like he is on drugs. host: all right, that is steve from missouri. let's move on now to walter from indiana. go ahead. caller: thank you very much for taking my call. i think what we have to do is ask ourselves a question, how is a job created? if we believe the government, these people that wear three-piece suits can somehow create a job, then you have to ask yourself how. if you look at the real with creating a job or what you have to set up an environment that is conducive, you have to have low taxes. you have to have fair, but not too stringent epa regulations.
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you have to be job friendly. you have to have products that need to be sold and products that need to be made. all of those things work hand in hand. if we look at states that are run by conservatives, i'm out here in indiana. taxes york, my property you couldn't even hang close out on the close line the backyard because there were rules and regulations. i had to work two jobs. out here in indiana, my property taxes are under 2%, $300 a year for an acre and a half of property. very low crime, no vehicle inspections. our property taxes, income, everything is low and controlled. we ask ourselves how is a job created? nothing can be produced in less there is a demand for that. in order to make that demand accessible have to make things lower and cheaper. host: are you still working or have you retired? caller: i just retired two years
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ago. l equipment ande delivering factories for years. it comes down to common sense. republican, conservative, or democratic thing. when you look to a party that says i will give you free things, there is no such thing as a free lunch. do, i wasing that we watching this morning, the white people, the hispanic people, the gay people. i served in the military for all americans. what we have to do is say we're all americans, we're in this together. stop segregating and putting people in little boxes. most of the problems will be have decent jobs. if you turn around and say i will raise the minimum wage, how absurd -- do you think a cheeseburger that costs three dollars will now only cost three dollars? they don't understand capitalism, or the business owner. cups, you leftie
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a raise the price of that. then it will cost 15. it comes down to how people -- if he ask a person how do you think a job is created? host: the hear you this morning. luke is calling from louisiana. caller: this thing with the minimum wage, i mean, my first 3.30 an hour.3 host: what were you doing? caller: flipping hamburgers. if you're 30 or 40 years old and a career and are still working you minimum wage job, didn't advance your career any kind of way. up.have to work yourself if you try to support a family on a minimum wage job you have advanced your
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career and he kind of way. host: both hillary clinton and donald trump have called for increases in the minimum wage. donald trump calls for $10 minimum wage, what does that mean for who you might support? you can't raise the minimum wage that much. it has to stay where it is. like the gentleman just said, the previous color. in of you raise the wages the prices of everything else is going to go up. all right, that is luke from louisiana. we turn now to glenn from florida, also calling on line for those making over $50,000 a year. good morning. caller: how you doing? host: good. caller: with this whole , democrats would be
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better for the economy for some republicans only know how to do one thing when it comes the economy, then that is reaganomics. the collison before how do you create a job? reaganomics is the reason why we're in this depression based on what george bush did. if you consider who got us out of the hole was democrats. they asked mitt romney what is her economic plan for america? he would not say what it was, but it was going to be reaganomics. that is all republicans know how to do. donald trump, who has yet to say what he is going to do. i don't think he understands how this government works, what do the exact same thing as what george bush did. he will lower taxes for the they and get the money, will trickle down economics. that is why we have all of the jobs overseas right now. it killed the manufacturing base
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because reaganomics is what is going to happen. it,oesn't matter who said reaganomics is how they will run this country. they know nothing else. host: glenn, do you consider yourself part of the working class? caller: yes i do. the way i look at it is everybody has to work. youoesn't matter whether make $25,000 or $50,000 or $200,000. you still have to go out there and work. everybody will not make a lot of money, the way people expect. said, anhe last person older worker, you don't have that base anymore. now the economy is service based. if you are not computer savvy or tech savvy, you will be behind. what the country has to do is make sure that you accommodate for those people that actually need to find work that may not
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have a skill. consider the fact that you are this country being service based, the manufacturing base is gone. you call customer service, you get a foreigner on the line that will take your customer service. your computer, anything. all right, that is glenn from florida. earlier this week joe biden talked about the democrats effort to reach out to working-class voters. [video clip] >> you are talking about a guy right now who is connecting with those workers in scranton, pennsylvania. he is connecting with those white working-class voters in a way that you have your entire career. and in a way that hillary clinton is not. you can just look at the numbers right now. why is that? living in pennsylvania, ohio,
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or michigan. i, think there is two reasons. one, i think the democratic party overall hasn't spoken enough to those voters. they have done the right thing, but haven't spoken to them. example,want in, for if there is a cop in america that doesn't support me i don't know where it is. i'm not being facetious list of these are guys i grew up with. overwhelming support from the african-american community. how can that be? there's nothing special about me. i talk to those cops. i keep in contact -- >> have democrats stopped talking to white workers? >> i think we have asked of the reason israel we of been consumed with crisis after crisis after crisis.
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host: a few more comments from her. one person writes the gop best represents the working-class, democrats best represent those on food stamps and those who are always looking for freebies. another tweets the republican party best represents the people working in glass skyscrapers to send jobs to other countries. james in fort worth,, texas is our next caller. caller: the democratic party without question supports collective bargaining. without collective bargaining you don't have a middle class. without a middle class you don't have a tax base. the fella from indiana talk but how you create a job, that is one way. also, it is how you distribute the profits. where did the profits go? the republican idea of all the profits going to investors in upper management and stiffing
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the worker for the last 40 years has eaten the seed corn. at the same time, they reduce the amount of federal income that business creates for about 37% to about 11%. of course the government is broke. the working-class is not there to pay taxes, blue-collar workers of america has no income and are not paying taxes in. catse have got the fat sitting up here in the republican party saying all you do is give us another tax break. it doesn't work. host: all right, that is james from fort worth, texas. the next caller is from alabama, and that -- annette is on the line. caller: some of your callers come i don't understand what that every four years the democrats at the same playbook. they make everything him wing conspiracy and attack the party. 80's, so muchthe
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has happened since then. such as unfair trade deals, nafta, we had a manufacturing company. it left after nafta. little by little, it went to mexico. this is what has crippled america, the loss of industry. even hillary, she called tpp, th e gold standard. then she backed down because a lot of republicans are calling them out and saying we will look at this again. so now she says i don't like it. yet, her good friend let it slip. he said, don't worry she will pass tpp. this is what we are facing. start sticking -- stop sticking to party. host: it says are you make between $25,000 and $50,000, do
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you consider yourself part of the working-class? partr: i consider myself of the working-class. what which alas question? host: who represents you best? [laughter] caller: eight years of obama, because he is the president. it is not personal. how much better are we? even hillary said her first hundred days she's going to focus on 15 million people who came here illegally. agian, -- again, the middle class, the poor, the lower income, they are still in tehe back of the line. black america is suffering more with high unemployment. many of them live in poor neighborhoods run by gangs. we have a heroin epidemic. she wants to focus on 15 million illegals. when will the average american come first? next up, shirley from
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clinton, maryland. what these a this morning? caller: i support the democrats. i say this because eight years ago, unemployment was at 13%. were 800 jobs being lost per month. that is a fact. that tells me that republicans are not helping us in the working-class. around.ere messed many private companies went overseas. even today you have a lot of private contracting in the government. that means the working-class is shut out completely. one thing i must remember is the democrats in office they were social security and medicare and medicaid. they passed the disability act. they have come up with affordable housing. eight years ago, i don't know
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how many people lost their houses. rost: do you feel you personal situation has improved since the recession? caller: yes, i do. my house went underwater. becausem above water, of the policies that have been put in place since the democratic party has been in office. my situation has improved tremendously. host: all right, next up from colorado. good morning to you. toler: hello, i wanted comment on the coal business. the caller previously, or the trump, what he is saying, it is an example of how out of touch
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with reality he is. it is total insanity. coal is out the door because of climate change. it is out of touch with what is really happening. tois a delusion of people what is going on. also, the gentleman the talked about creating jobs, and supply and demand. hillary clinton is talking about jobs that have been typically created by the government, that is infrastructure. it is almost without a doubt needed. it will help tremendously. she is talking about a financial industry that cause the downfall perhe 800,000 jobs lost month. she wants to extend regulations to prevent that from happening again to that we, the taxpayer,
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do not have to bail out that industry again. she is also, what i love, she is going to the source of the problem, that is providing debt-free college to students to prepare them for higher paid jobs. anne fromthat is colorado. c-span will be following hillary clinton and tim kaine on the trail campaigning in columbus, ohio on their bus tour across america. he will be airing their speeches and rallies. you can watch it live on c-span, you can catch it on our website. you can listen to it on c-span radio. we have time for a few more callers. we want to know which party best represents the working-class. from alabama, good morning to you.
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caller: thank you for taking my call. the 25,000, and a retiree. i am on disability. but the problem is, it is not getting solved, the problem about the wages. we were0's, making more money. saying you party up, ande prices go another tried to help people. if you put more money in the economy, that is more taxes coming. that can create better jobs and roads and stuff. it is in denial. i don't think that is right. , if youabout people in the what is going on
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republicans in 2000-2008, these people had to get. host: that is harold from alabama. here is an opinion piece written in "the washington post," written by the author of a memoir. the title is "how the white working-class lost its patriotism." the feel trapped into seemingly unwinnable wars in which it is proportionate share of the fighters come from neighborhoods like ours. in an economy that fills -- fails to deliver the american dream. kentucky and west virginia were recruited in my grandpa regeneration. another a ghost towns upon shops or cash for gold traders. working-class expects
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the children to live less prosperous lives. his economic to the schism brought with it -- cynicism brought with it the feeling that the country would believe in is no longer to be trusted. george w. bush had few fans in 2010 thanks to the sluggish economy the many blamed on him post a minimum bill clinton but many more saw him as a symbol of american moral decay. we loved the military but have no patton figure. the space program long a source of pride has gone the way of the dodo, and with it the celebrity after not. for people in my community losing something akin to a religion. jeffrey from west palm beach, for its our next caller. good morning to you. caller: well, i definitely
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represent the democratic party. people seem to forget that in the bad times that the republican party was the one of shut down this country. when we were having a hard time already. that goes to show that they have no care for you, first of all. the country has gotten a little bit better under the obama administration. wage, i seenimum nothing wrong with raising the minimum wage. no matter how much the item you want, if you wanted, you will buy it. if you don't, you will. -- you won't. host: it also says here you make between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. you consider yourself part of the working-class? caller: yes i do. host: what does that mean to you? caller: it means you have to
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work for what you want. you have to get out there and get it yourself. there is nothing wrong with working. it all depends on what you do. or can make a dollar last, spend it quickly. when you have a person that is asking everybody for a dollar, if he asks 300 people he just made $300. you think of doing that everyday. he doesn't go to a nine to five or has to pay insurance. at he is asking everybody for dollar. you do that every day he's making more money than the person that works every day. right, that is jeffrey from west palm beach. a next caller is james from maryland. caller: thank you for taking my call. the republicans always believed the economy starts and ends with what can i get from the land?
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it is all about technology right now. guess what, not even silicon valley. are into new businesses. to keep talking about coal mining? are we serious, in 2016? this isn't the way that it used to be. we keep thinking about regulations. there are more regulations. all of a sudden, guess what? silicon valley is thriving. they would decide to build in indiana? california they can find good workers, smart, intelligent folks.
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you know, i don't understand these people at all. host: all right, we hear you and if you are driving please be safe. our next caller is mark, from chicago, go ahead. caller: there is no question that the democratic party represents the working-class. by working-class, some work with their hands, others with their minds. we are all workers. first of all, the right to work laws they have in the 26 states in the southern part of the united states to even honor the minimum wage. they pay an average of $.75 an an hour.4.75 policies the republicans have have caused this problem that every time president obama puts for the working bill or theastructure bill
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republicans refused to pass it. it didn't put in and in that would retrain people, they cut back on everything. today he was elected they said they were going to stop him from being a good president. host: do you think the democratic party has been enough to explain its message to its voters? why do so many working-class voters, according to polls, support mr. trump? caller: first of all, you have a group of people that are working with their emotions, as opposed to reality. the democrats are fearful of explaining to them that the republican party is in control of the house and the senate. they are the ones that of stopped all of the jobs. they stopped all of the economy most of the close down the government.
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he don't care about anything other than holding their position. their desire is to retain their position. host: all right, we hear you this morning. let's get in a few more callers. for those between 25000 and $50,000 a year, good morning. caller: i think the democrats are selling everybody a bill of goods trying to tell us that they will give us free college. there was nothing for free. they are planning on raising taxes. when you raise taxes, that puts less money and makes less money available for new businesses to be created. the talki about infrastructure for the president obama had the senate and house years, iirst two thought they did all the infrastructure. that is an of the bill of goods. the government was shot down democrats did not agree with the republicans on obama care. they did not want to have those special clauses removed.
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then, the previous color was correct when she said hillary is focusing on illegal immigrants. that is wrong as well. there is no way we can vet all these people, then close down the coal mining industry because of global warming? yet, you will have coal mining and other countries. we are just putting a noose around our own economic and that based on politics in getting people emotionally and pretty much hate republicans. democratsple say that of the party of love. yet, they're the ones that hate trump. host: next up, from west orange new jersey, go ahead. just sayi, i wanted to that i believe the republicans are for the working-class people. because, all these people this bama, whatat say oa
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is he working for? the wages have stayed the same pretty much sense 2007. what is better now than it was in 2007? what has he truly done? they're talking but fight in the 1%, hillary will take on the 1%. she has $43 million from wall street funded. how will she fight these people? all right, that is from new jersey. our last caller for this morning's segment is from san antonio, texas. you get the last word. caller: thank you. i think of myself as an american first. i am an independent republican, if there is such a thing. anas born poor, we had outhouse when i was in first grade. i made to the middle class america through an education.
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in the early days, the democrats did help with the unions. but the unions got greedy. when a garbage man makes $35 an hour and an educator makes $35,000 a year there is something wrong with that. i think we shouldn't have the thinkment -- i thnk t-- the churches and your family should help each other. each person is independent and you feel better about yourself. let's all just be americans and help each other. renee from san antonio, texas. that is it for our segment on the american working-class, next up we will talk to a columnist for bloomberg. she will discuss how both parties are trying to bring back in 1933 law known as glass-steagall. the recount the foreign-policy
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analyst about donald trump's comments regarding nato, and russia's role in the dnc e-mail hack. we will be right back. ♪ >> donald trump and hillary clinton made the republican and democratic national convention to a must see on tv. we will show you many of the most talked about speeches from cleveland and philadelphia. democraticu will see speeches by michelle obama, bernie sanders, bill clinton, joe biden, michael bloomberg, tim kaine obama, chelsea clinton, and the acceptance speech by hillary clinton. you will see speeches by rudy donald trump junior, chris christie, ted cruz, eric trump, mike pence, you got the
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trump, and the acceptance speech by donald trump. 8:00 eastern.t at sunday morning, on c-span, the radio app and c-span.org. >> this sunday night, journalist and author joshua kendall dads,ses his book "first parenting and politics." >> looking at fathering is trying to capture the complexity of human beings. fathering is a way into character. to think this is a bad guy or a good guy. to see that many of these men who have been president had different parts. they were compartmentalized up some of them could be very and some to be really disappointing and horrify us. >> that is on c-span's q&a.
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>> washington journal continues. host: our guest now is a columnist with bloomberg, previously she was a senior editor at "the atlantic." she is also a writer for "the economist." megan, thank you so much for joining us this morning. guest: thanks for having me. host: you are here to talk about glass-steagall, this has recently popped up for a issue for democrats and republicans. what is it? guest: it is much more complicated than you would think. depression, the passed a series of reforms. everything from the banking system, and other things. there were actually two it was namedl's,
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after the legislators that pushed it. one of them we don't care about. it was small banking acts that no one cares about. the second one, however, did a bunch of things. it fixed interest rates. it allowed and made changes to the federal reserve's over market committee. the thing people are usually talking about when the talk the separation of commercial and investment banking. like j.p. morgan and morgan stanley, that used to be one bank, but were split up during the great depression because of this regulation. theoryng is, there was a of how this meant the banking system safer. it didn't really turn out to work in practice. so, what happened over the years was various components of this still parts ofre it that are there. on the other hand, the fixed
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interest rates, those were repealed back in the 70's. the 1980's, rather. bout bringing a back the separation but that it was kind of dying for a lot of the 1990's. it was completely written out of the law by the act in 1999. that is one reason it became such a political foot wall in the democratic primary. host: this was a law that was crafted post depression. part of it was repealed in the 1990's, why is this an issue today? thet: because we have financial crisis. almost no people who study the matter think that it is a good idea. hadurned out -- if this directly led to the financial
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crisis in the way that a lot of it -- the bring back glass-steagall people think. we would expect to see that the problems would've shown up in hybridaken hybrid -- big banks. that was the opposite of what we saw. it appeared in institutions that were created by glass-steagall. bear stearns, morgan stanley, lay investment p banks. to a last pure play investment banks, goldman sachs and morgan stanley had to convert themselves to normal cover banks because that was what they had to do to get access to the fed discount window. that kept them liquid and kept them from going under. so, you know, if this had created the problem, it would've showed up in citibank.
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instead, it showed up on the other side. the banks that survived this best for the hybrid banks that have been created by the repeal of -- the repeal of this particular provision. host: our viewers can join in the conversation. democrats at (202) 748-8000, republicans at (202) 748-8001 and independents at (202) 748-8002. you can send us your thoughts on twitter, and the talking but the glass-steagall act and calls to bring it back. who is calling to bring it back? in the republican platform now, bernie sanders was a big fan. i think the attraction of bringing back glass-steagall is not that it is a effective, it is that you can explain it really easily. unlike a lot of banking
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regulation, you try to go through capital requirements and explain that to anyone and about three words in their eyes have glazed over. hand, other glass-steagall is a easy to explain. we break up the banks. we make them smaller. that is an easy thing to understand. there is a separate argument, we break these lines of business off. that is a really really easy thing to explain. these often get a political life beyond their actual policy usefulness because it is the sort of thing where you can go and say i did this. if you go to voters and say on the negotiated hard tier one capital requirements, no one understand what you are talking about. host: but why both republicans and democrats? it seems like this is an issue that bernie sanders has championed, and elizabeth warren. democrats, but why republicans
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also? guest: i think what we are seeing as we are in a populist moment. we dealt with the financial crisis, we are coming out of it, but the fact is we have slow growth. we have an aging society. if youkforce shrinks and are in your 20's and taking on a high risk entrepreneurial product with a high potential payoff, you could be rich for decades. if you are in your 50's, you have more to lose, less to recover, and less time to enjoy being rich. all of those things are contributing to a lower growth rate but there is obviously a hangover from that. while people in washington still have their jobs and their incomes are ok, people outside of washington do not feel the same way and they want answers.
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people within the system often do not understand what they are saying. explaining those issues to people outside the system is nearly impossible. is, politicians look for how do i satisfy this demand for something that i can show you i did something? even though we have, dodd frank was a mixed tag but we have done things to make the banking system safer, they are so hard to explain that politicians go back to voters and say, here it is. host: what is it that a bank would not be able to do if glass-steagall were reinstated specifically? guest: for one thing, you cannot have federally insured deposits in the same arm -- this is sort of the major political talking point -- right now citibank has a bunch of federally insured deposits and it also has --
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host: customer deposits. guest: but they also do investment banking things. you would not be able to do those in the same bank. honestly, i think that the difference that you would see would not be particularly large. again, this is the sort of thing that intuitively makes sense if you do not know a lot about the banking system. the world is too complicated for anyone to understand every issue. intuitively it seems like if these big banks have customer insured deposits than they are going to get a bailout from the government. bear stearns, lehman brothers did not but morgan stanley and goldman sachs did and merrill lynch had an arrangement. the fact is, all of these systems are interlinked. there is no way to get around that. in the great depression there
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was no federal deposit insurance. that was one of the great revelations fdr had after the crisis. , theirere local banks biggest investors were local people. the contagion can spread so quickly from bank to bank. money market mutual fund accounts were not federally insured and the government went in and temporarily insured them because the contagion can spread from market to market. the real truth is that if there is another crisis, and there probably will be sometime in the next 70 years because as the world changes, it gets more complicated. bankers mess things, consumers mess things -- bankers miss things, consumers miss things. host: gary from orchard park new
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york. caller: the american people this morning as you said, what is glass-steagall, they would not have the slightest idea. it is an important piece of legislation that has been on the book since white, 1934 -- since what, 1934. since that time, wall street ranks have been lusting for the elimination of the glass-steagall law because they wanted to get their hooks into those federally guaranteed bank theunts so they could play las vegas casino gambling picture again. congress and so forth have not then able to pull it off since 1934, who brought
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it about but a democrat who holds himself out as representing the working people, bill clinton. the wall street banks were grateful for bill clinton for pulling that off. clinton, asllary you know who is running now, correct me if i am wrong, i have not heard her ever say, my husband made a mistake, respectfully, he made a mistake and as soon as i am in office i'm going to start to reinstitute the glass-steagall law. host: megan mcardle? guest: honestly, people have talked about this and she is in an awkward political position. i honestly do not think that hillary clinton believes that bringing back glass-steagall would make the banking system safer and she is pretty much in the consensus with most experts. we did not see federally insured
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deposits playing a big role in the 2008 crisis. problems appeared in other sectors of the banking market and in some cases, resulted in the government going in and providing guarantees that had not been there in places like the money market, in order to stop exactly the kind of bank runs we saw in 1929 in 1930. -- and 1930. the arguments for big banks are andlemented -- complicated, you can go either way about whether it is efficient. a lot of the things that people think come from big banks do not necessarily come from the big banks themselves. people assume if the banks are bigger government will need to bail them out. governments were tiny in 1929 in the government did not ail them out. the risk was in the market, not in the banks themselves.
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it was the fact that everyone in the market had taken basically the same leveraged that on real estate -- leveraged bet on real estate and the system was dangerously compromised. the kind of technical things we do do not look like they have a big effect. things like capital, those things we do think are going to have a meaningful effects because it is harder to take those massive bets all at the same time. host: next is rick from ohio on the independent line. good morning. we havethe problem that right now the second is that you have somebody from bloomberg news on here trying to explain the banking system. reality, if you go back to the constitution, the constitution says only congress can print money. so you go to the federal reserve, a lower interest rates
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13 times in the year and are printing nothing but fake -- to try totry to manipulate the global economy. what this lady says is that what 1934ned with clinton, in roosevelt said wall street could not touch the bank money, pension money, or your insurance money. clinton said, we are going to do away with that so they stole $10 trillion, five -- 5 trillion from banks, and you keep on talking about banks. there are no banks. i am 60 years old and i grew up in detroit when they were a banking laws and antitrust laws in place. this is where c-span is going to be forced to hang up on me as we have to talk about jpmorgan, citigroup, aig, and goldman sachs, and those are run by jews. host: i am going to hang up.
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megan mcardle? guest: i am not sure where those numbers came from. i am actually kind of not sure what the question was. host: let's look at this, this is a new york times op-ed from hillary clinton in december where she put forth her plan on how to intervene in wall street. she said her comprehensive plan would include reigning in financial institutions and her plan proposes legislation that would impose a new risk fee on large banks. it also includes strengthen a the volcker bill by closing loopholes. she says her plan also goes beyond the biggest banks to include the whole financial sector. the return of a
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depression era rule called glass-steagall which separated traditional banking from investment banking. but many of the firms that contributed to the crash in 2008 were not traditional banks. it is i think most of somewhat along the lines of glass-steagall, which is things are done because you can explain them not because they are necessarily going to work. the vocal rule is something we tried. it turned out to be extremely hard to find a real line that will work with the rule. the difference between yourietary trading, where are trading to make a profit and making a market, which is where you come in and hold securities and sell them eventually. a customer wants to buy and there is no buyer immediately so you buy and hold that security and sell it later.
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that is the difference between, those two things. we can kind of say, i know it when i see it but that is not how our regulatory system works. you have a hard and fast, and the lines turned out to be harder to draw than we thought. money so itnt needs is as good a place to get money as any. bankers i think would disagree with this but in general, i do not think this is likely to make much difference. but i will say that one of the things we have seen is since dodd frank, since the financial crisis is that they are banks have lower costs of borrowing because people assume they will be first in line for bailout. if the government wants to call that money back, i do not think i will sleep easier at night knowing my bank account is safer. host: jim from the republican
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line is on next. caller: you made an interesting point, your guest did how the nonbanks, bear stearns, lehman brothers, aig fell in the banks did not. before the repeal of glass-steagall in the early 1990's as entities started trading collateralized debt operations. when the banks got into that that number swelled because banks threw money at those investments, and that is what toppled those other non-bank entities. i think you need to realize that in other words, before the banks got into it, the big banks were allowed to get into investment banking, they were trading those assets and it was not until the banks got into it that it ballooned and swelled those investments to the points where those other entities when everything finally hit the dust
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and could not hold up, that is what knocked them out. for you to say the banks did not have a problem an act like they were not connected with this and did not need to be bailed out the lies the fact that citibank would have gone under without the federal government shoving money into the tarp program. saying is thatm the problems showed up elsewhere first in the banking system. if glass-steagall where the problem you would have expected the problem to show up in the banks that have it. insurance --erally insured deposits is causing a lot of people to argue, if it is calling banks to say i have insured deposits i do not care anymore, i'm going to take wild risks and i can do anything, i do not think that works. the first reason is the insurance is for the deposits,
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not the bankers. look what happens when the fdic goes in and resolves a bank. they shut it down and the managers lose their jobs. maybe they will get another job and maybe they will not. it is not a great thing on the resume that you ran a bank that failed. we are treating those deposits as if -- lowers the cost of capital but making them more willing to take risk, i think that is not really proven. the second argument is, the depositors because they are insured are not taking care to see that their bank a sound. i also really do not think that works because partly we know the experience of the banking industry in 29 -- in 1929. you're talking about banks in local communities where the people who have the biggest deposits are the local rich people. they know what the companies were doing, they knew it was a
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good risk. the banks still failed. they are failing because some bank in austria went down and it rippled into new york and the rest of the country. those kind of issues make the system different from other kind of systems. no matter what we do, there is always a risk. if you think about what the banking system is, i want to borrow short-term. i want to lend short-term and borrow long-term. i want a 30 year mortgage but do not want a lock on my bank account for 30 years. banks exist to transform the short term loan that i make, they transform that money into a long-term loan. now there is a mismatch. the best illustration of this is in the movie "it's a wonderful -- whenen jimmy smits
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he says he wants his money back. there is always a risk in that transition because more people might want their money out band can get it. because of that, the interesting thing that the financial system it is very different from any other kind of system, is that -- two things actually. if someone thinks your bank is bad, your bank is bad. if enough people believe your bank is insolvent, it does not matter if it is solvent, it could go out of business. there is a contagion issue. you really do see in the situations that a perfectly sound bank can get taken down by the fact that other banks have failed, and these things have massive ripple through. that is why i think we are never working that risk around -- out of the system. the great thing about fdr is he
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figured out, how do you get rid of most of that risk? first of all, to regulate banks but second of all, you are looking at more of that systemic contagion and trying to contain it. you say the government is guaranteeing the accounts and that has been an incredibly effective tool. the united states invented it and we should be proud of it. the majority of people do not like it because they feel like we are rewarding people for doing something stupid and doing something wrong. that is a real hard sell that sometimes you have a choice between being successful and being right. risk andook a bunch of they are all out there walking around. the fact is, most of them did not commit criminal offenses. they were just down.
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people make the same bet homeowners did and they did it in a stupid, wild, overleveraged way and i could name 90 things if they had not done the banking system would not have failed. if people in the united states have not bought houses for twice with they were worth, the system would not have failed. before 2008 there was a phenomenon called the great moderation, which was the idea that the fed and regulators in general have gotten so good at regulating we would not have bad crises. there were phd dissertations written on this and i remember talking to a prominent economist after that, i do not know what happened to those people. we all got stupid. it was not like there was one group, the bankers did everything and the rest of us were sitting around and amy smart and lies.
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-- around and were being smart and wise. the housing system, i do not think that caused the crash. i do not think that that works. when i do think works is saying, this was a collective insanity and you have to remember, it was worldwide. when you have expectations -- explanations there rely on glass-steagall, but no one else has this, why was there a housing crisis in spain? why did iceland have so many problems? it was the inter-linkages that caused so many problems. york jill from hudson, new is our next caller with the democratic line. caller: megan is exactly right that it is the investment banks that failed in 2008, however i think the issue is that people are looking at the concentration
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banks.th in a few large if you allow investment bankers to play in other aspects of banking, it is an unfair advantage against the smaller local banks. but there ist, more to that. it is part of the whole populace thing on taking on the concentration of wealth. it is similar to the trade issue. people are dreaming -- blaming economyade pacts on the on the state of the economy when you look at the history of successful economies, they always import more than they export because they have a driving domestic economy by their goods. people who think this will be a panacea for the economy are absolutely wrong. it is usually foreign countries
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that do not have a good economy that have to export. york.joe from hudson, new let's get another caller, ryan from eastern washington calling on the independent line. caller: good morning. i wish we had this discussion going pretty primary, primary,sing -- pre pre-caucusing before we made our votes for the current candidates. i would will -- i was wondering if megan could tell us the outcome of reenacting the glass-steagall act, if this scenario would result in when the tpp gets enacted. my 1992 we go there,
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presidential nominee was bill clinton. he told me we would take money out of politics. in his second term, thein his se the report that our national debt would go from red ink to black ink in 2007. nine/11/2001, the big banks slashed everyone's line of credit. in the bush term, we received a couple of $500 checks per household as tax rebates or went to fived gas dollars a gallon in 2007. we've refinanced for low $2500,t at the cost of when all we were doing was going for lower interest rates, very well established with the financial institution. host: we will have to leave it
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there bank and turned back to our guest. megan mcardle, there have been changes made since the early 1990's. what has been done to address the issues in the financial system? guest: that is a whole other show. testing,the stress capital requirement, a hold wide panoply -- a whole wide panoply of things that are done. host: under dodd frank? guest: much of it under dodd frank. part of it is a change in the regulators. when they think things are safe they are less scrupulous. dodd frank also did a bunch of random things like regulate the fees that credit card people can charge retailers. they propose this as very friendly with the retail industry. there are a bunch of different
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things that were stuck all in one package. we have made the banking system safer one of the things that you have to remember, one of the things that makes the banking system safer is having people who have been through a crisis. it sounds terrible. there was actually some really interesting research from vernon economist, and they did asset markets. what happens if you get people trading, it is on computers but they are trading for real money. they create a market in a lab in the assets that you can buy have an uncertain payoff. what happens in these markets and what they say is they get bubbles. every time the same thing happens, they get a big level and the only way according to one of the economist to get the bubble go away, is you have the
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same people playing together a couple of times. the second or third time they start to realize what is happening, they recognize the signs and they stop it. if you look at what happened in the great depression, we see that things like u.s. savings rates go up and people become more conservative about buying assets so the stock market is depressed. bankers become more conservative . there is regulation as well as a personal factor. right now i would not expect to see another crisis in the banking system. banker incomes have gone down. the banks themselves are more conservative, more worried about risk. , i regulators are there also do not want to say they do not play a role. get morethat people conservative makes it look like the regulation is a little bit more effective than it is. wilmington, from
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delaware, on the republican line. caller: good morning. the price of gold is going up a bit, so watch those italian banks. there is a big problem with the italian banks and i was mortified when they removed glass-steagall. i should be able to put my money in the bank. i am 75, disabled, tired, without worrying about it. i think two or three years ago i called the fdic and guess how much money they had in it? two and a half million dollars. we would have to start printing money like crazy. either way, i may vote for trump. undecided although i did vote republican for ron paul a few years ago. guess what brought hit their about -- and i am jewish.
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host: let's get another caller in, vera from flushing, new york. caller: we do kindly explain to right role he played in the housing bubble? what is aig and what role did they play? considering the bailout -- host: we have to give our guest some time. guest: a derivative is a security that derives from other securities so if you take something like the obligations,d debt basically you take an existing mortgage bond and chop it up. you say the mortgage bond has a range of possible payouts so i am going to make a new security with a bunch of mortgage bonds
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sitting in a pool. i'm going to say, these guys get the first payoff, and you allocate who takes the losses. the cheapest and jump list tranches they are called, take the losses. you are creating a synthetic mortgage bond. this is one kind of derivative. a derivative can also be something as simple as i have an option to buy, an option to sell. is it means is that it itself a contract related to some other security, it is not a security all by itself. what role did it play? i think it absolutely magnified -- if you look at the junk mortgage bonds that people were looking at, there was a fixed supply of having derivatives allowing you to be able to
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increase the size of the bet you would take. host: linda from florida on the independent line. good morning. caller: i would like to first say that the american people instinctively are not quite as stupid as portrayed. politician, a corporate or wall street representative telling me how , it is and things are indication of the scam. host: that is linda from florida. megan mcardle, your final thoughts. guest: that is a common sentiment and we know that in our own lives, whatever we do is complicated. why can't you just? there is a good reason.
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doing, wet is we are know it is harder than it looks from the outside. that is the thing that politicians and people that politicians want to regulate have to deal with. people want something they can understand. the banking system is important to our lives and we want something we can understand. when something is very difficult to understand there is a temptation to say, it must be easier than that. as you know in your own life, it is not easier than that. it is incredibly complicated and difficult and i do not think we will find perfect answers. host: megan mcardle is a columnist for bloomberg. next we will be talking to two foreign policy analysts on nato. trump's comments on first kurt volker will join us , he will on ivan eland
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talk about the need to change the focus of the u.s.'s role in the world. we will be right back. ♪ the c-span bus is in philadelphia, pennsylvania to ask people about the democratic convention and the issues most important to them and the presidential campaign. >> i am gina harris from district 43, los angeles, california. my delegate experience has been a learning experience, one where i have learned the true inner workings of how my party works. it is something i am excited to share my experience with the world. i want to be thankful for the
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people who elected me to come here and be your voice. >> i am chris from the ohio delegation. to mest important thing as education and education of inner-city black youth. the lack of education and school systems should improve. ohio,ically, cincinnati, the graduation rates are low and the literacy legs are very grow -- literacy rates are very low. >> i and 17 years old and the youngest member of the california delegation. i got involved in the delegate process because was expired -- inspired by my grandfather, which led me to lead -- fight for what is right and stand for the voices of those who were not
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voiced. that is what i am doing at the convention and i hope to represent the youth. >> this is my first convention. i have been working steadily for hillary for eight years to get hurt in the white house and that is why i am here. it is my passion, absolutely. >> my name is morgan johnson from ohio, i am a delegate for bernie and i am 21 so this is my first delegation. i am really excited to be here. my generation and the millennials, we are about the same size as the baby boomers and it is important for us to show out. i am looking forward to the rest of the convention. >> voices from the road, on c-span. >> washington journal continues. host: joining us now to talk about the u.s.'s policy toward
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nato and russia is kurt volker, a former u.s. ambassador to nato between 2008 and 2009, and executive director for the mccain institute for leadership. caller: thank you for having me. you start by telling us what exactly is nato and what is its organization? caller: it is -- guest: it is an alliance of countries that work together to protect each other. an attack on one is considered an attack on all. if there is such an attack, everybody is supposed to respond and the idea is it would deter anybody from doing it. it was fnded in 1949. and world war ii largely maintain their capacity to work together. they became concerned about the
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rise of the soviet union so 12 canada, western european countries banded together to form nato in 1949. 1980's,ined in the germany and the 1950's, turkey and greece. after the fall of the berlin wall in 1989, countries in central and eastern europe who had been occupied by the soviet union decided they wanted to be democracies, market economies, and they wanted to be secure so they petitioned to join nato. 1997 theywhile but by let in the first three. in 2002, about seven more baltic states. it still serves the same purpose today, due to her any threat two deter any-
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threat from anybody. in --the ethnic cleansing and it still deters any threats from any central attackers. donald trump has been very vocal about his thoughts on nato. here's a little bit what he had to say. to makep: we are going our country still strong and renegotiate our military deals. i am taking a lot of heat. we have 28 countries and nato. there are five that are paying their way. the others -- because you do not get it straight. they say donald trump does not like nato. i said it is obsolete. wolf blitzer on cnn asked me a question, he said what do you think of nato? said, nato is obsolete because it is not covering
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terrorism. and everybody smiled, laughed, thought it was funny and three days later they were saying trump is right. it is not covering terrorism. , check out theer wall street journal. the front page, nato to open up terrorism division. i said, great. host: we are speaking with kurt volker, a former u.s. ambassador to nato and also now works for the mccain institute on leadership. what are your thoughts when you hear that clip? he sayson of the things have a pretty solid basis in u.s. policy. by complaining how much nato countries spell on -- spend on defense, that is what we have heard for the last 20 or 30 years.
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gdp is said to target 2% of to be spent on defense and as he said, not every country meets their target. we would like to see a lot more countries spend more on defense. host: here is a chart we have from publication defense one that shows how much countries spend on their own defense, nato members. the united states lays the way at 3.6% of the budget. greece, poland, the united kingdom, and estonia are 2% and the others are lagging. guest: he is talking about terrorism a lot in that clip, that nato does not do a lot about terrorism. the only time that nato invoked its collective defense guarantee, what were you -- what
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we were talking about, was after september 11. after the u.s. was intact -- was attacked nato said they wanted to support the united states in supporting these terrorists, and ended up running the mission in afghanistan. there are ways that nato has dealt with terrorism for the last 15 years already. when you talk about national intelligence on a domestic basis where countries are watching what is happening inside their countries, when you talk about counterterrorism units operating inside nato territory, as are not things nato is doing but by individual member states, not as a collective nato activity. nato is looking outward at external threats for the most part rather than looking inward. host: you can join in the conversation with kurt volker. democrats, your line is (202) 748-8000 if you want to call in.
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republicans, (202) 748-8001 and .ndependents, (202) 748-8002 you can also send us a tweet. if nato is primarily an external facing organization, is donald trump right it is sort of obsolete? guest: i do not think it is obsolete at all because just because the soviet union has gone away does not mean the ofeats to security democracies in europe and the united states have gone away. we still have lots of threats, and nato is a very important vehicle for bringing all of those countries together, coordinating our efforts, and making a stronger in how we respond. of course we would like to see the load balanced out more, but we benefit, the united states benefits tremendously from having secure democratic market economic space from having
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countries that are willing to go with us to kosovo, bosnia, afghanistan. when we see a need for u.s. intervention in the world, the only countries that have reliably been willing to do that have been our nato allies. and they bring genuinely military capability. it is still substantial compared to anything else that is available so we derive a lot of benefit. mary from coronado, california on the democratic line, go ahead. caller: i was just listening about nato and the map and we are the biggest country. we are the leaders of the world so is in it, that is why we put more money into it? others are smaller countries and they might not have as much money as the united states. terms, thebsolute u.s. is always going to be putting in the highest number of
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dollars but what we are looking at is percentages. if the u.s. is putting in a certain percentage of its gdp, what nato has agreed on is that everyone should put in the same percentage at a minimum, which is 2%. having agreed on it, only five countries actually do but they are trying to equal it out. from fort is jack meade, maryland on the independent line. caller: my question, mr. ambassador, as a former american soldier having been stationed in europe we worked with nato partners quite often. the, i donderstand not want to call it an tag and is him, but the posture against russia seems to have outlived the original alliance's purpose. the soviet union the longer exists and rather than turn russia into an ally we seem to
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have alienated them by incorporating new member states that are encroaching on their borders. i do not understand the purpose for nato existing or why russia has not been brought in. guest: it is really fundamental to understanding what is happening. 1990's, starting in 1997, nato created a permanent joint council with russia to try to work together on all sorts of activities like search and rescue, peacekeeping, joint exercises, missile-defense, we did all kinds of things. in 2002 we turned it into something called the nato-russia council with the same goal. nato has consistently wanted to work together with russia. the problem is russia has not wanted to do that. they prefer to view nato as a threat and have adopted an approach toward the post-cold
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war settlement in europe. they have invaded georgia. georgia is not a nato member, but they have invaded one of their neighbors. they just did the same thing in ukraine in 2014, invaded, and x crimea still occupied. they have built up their military significantly. the have threatened to use that against nato members. , haveuzzed our aircraft threatened nuclear use against denmark, violated several engraved airspace and -- behaved aggressively toward nato. nato has had to respond. from 1999 to relay the last year, nato has dramatically cut its defense expenditure. the u.s. has dramatically reduced its military capability in europe. nato is an a strong downward
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path in terms of military posture. we allowed other countries to join to be part of a secure community but had has nothing to do with nato's posture toward russia. russia has chosen to view this as a hostile approach, but somehow the countries being safe are hostile toward russia, and wants to put pressure on this and reverse this. with the military actions russia has taken in the last few years, or even going back to 2008 in georgia, countries and nato's east are very worried. you are very worried about what russia is up to and you cannot depend on yourself. you depend on nato. the allegations that russia is behind some of the hacking we have seen, does that
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say anything to you about the status of u.s.-russia relations? guest: russia has adopted a hostile approach toward the u.s. and nato for some time. , and asas also adopted water mayor putin said, he the soviet loss of union and does not believe the eu should exist. he has used russian means, whether it is business deals, bribery, intelligence services, drop again i, anything he can use to try to influence politics and decision-making inside nato countries. we have seen it in germany, hiring the chancellor of germany to become the head of a north stream gas project. we have seen other sweet business deals that have benefited politicians. russia provided funding to marine le pen's party in france.
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they have been creative and aggressive at trying to influence politics, and part of that is the cyber world. we saw them use cyber attacks when they invaded georgia. cyber attacks against estonia after they moved a statue honoring russian soldiers that fought in world war ii. we have had reports constantly of russian and chinese cyber attacks against all sorts of entities and institutions in the u.s. what i am struck by in all the news coverage, it is not that russia did this. we should all expected. what is surprising is we are acting as though, we had no idea this was possible. that thisthoughts might be something that could happen to other servers as well. of course they would try to do this and they will only release information they find beneficial in terms of creating a result
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they want to create. host: next is james from south bend, indiana on the republican line. caller: good morning, mr. volker. , stay outhington said of other country's wars and entanglements. how do you feel on that? eisenhower, the u.s. military complex will bankrupt america, 19 trillion in debt. and also the bible, last but not :1, the ultimate cause of all war is greed and corruption. how do you feel about those men and that biblical quote? guest: one can only admire george washington and when we were creating the united states at that critical moment, i think he had a wise vision for how to protect ourselves. at that time the u.s. was
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relatively weak, european powers were fairly strong. the u.s. was born in the midst of the hundred years war and it was a very prudent and effective approach to keep the u.s. out of those things to the greatest extent possible. we did not live up to that overtime because we ended up being a much more powerful country with interests all over the place. we have the war with mexico in the 1840's and ended up acquiring a lot of territory in the wars against the indians. we ended up as a colonial power in the philippines, that was a different era. today, i look at the u.s. experiment, the values the u.s. is founded on, these have produced the greatest benefits for our country that humanity has ever seen, and also benefits for every other country that adopts and shares these countries.
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we are part of a much larger global community in which countries share these values. to go back to world war ii, just a handful of countries where this was true and now you are talking about over 100. this was quite an accomplishment and it is a shared interest to keep that safe space, not to be aggressive or involve ourselves but makepeople's wars sure we protect i space where our values are ascendant because that provides a greater environment for the united states. you have to remind me of the other parts of the question. host: the biblical verse. guest: i think there is something to that. i am not a biblical scholar but i look at russia is -- i look at what russia is doing. it is being run by a small group of people who are working for their own power and their own wealth. ist russia is working to do
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control the fates of neighboring people. russia feels it is its right of say-so over those countries. that is something i think is reprehensible and i think we should not support, and in fact we should support those people in those countries who want to be free, prosperous, and safe. host: john from franklin, tennessee. on the democratic line. caller: how are you today? guest: fine, thank you caller:. think:my question is, i nato should change its -- because it is a worldwide defense organization now. i cannot see why we do not invite pakistan and india and maybe saudi arabia and egypt into this organization because we have problems all over the world. .t is not just russia
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and your comment about russia being aggressive, we are just as aggressive. we cyber attack them, it is just not in the news. host: how is nato membership determined? members themselves so nato can only make decisions by consensus. with 28 member states, not in a grow was just invited to join so it will become 29, but it takes all of those states to agree we are going to allow another country to join. nato is not in the business of seeking new members. it has always been other countries outside of nato who of the want to be part club because we want to be safe and part of the collective defense community. that is why it is going to stay focused on europe and north america as a geographic area
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because that is what the european members and canada want it to be. .t is very like-minded it is democracy, market economies, countries that have developed economies, a shared thatry together, and creates a character of the organization that keeps it north atlantic. your caller is exactly right, because of nato we do not have the same kinds of security threats and problems facing europe that we used to have and we do have them in other parts of the world. what the united states has done over time as work ad hoc with coalitions of countries when there is a security problem that we feel we have to get involved with. we have made mistakes, obviously, that when we do that we look for coalitions of countries. it is those that he had suggested. in afghanistan we had to work closely with pakistan.
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and saudi arabia we had to work restoring sovereignty to kuwait. very closelyjordan on the war against isis right now. in east asia, where allied with japan. we are renewing our basing in the philippines. very actively focused on trying to preserve the freedom of navigation in the wake of china's military claims. we are working with countries outside of nato on other security issues, but i do not think we can create a global organization like that. i do not think any of those states, whether it is the europeans wanting the middle easterners or vice versa, i think it is seen through a regional prism. victor from windermere, florida on the independent line. after the attacks in
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france and germany, that should have triggered a nato response. they are saying there is only 15,000 isis fighters. army, if he took about 4000 from each country it should be able to wipe out isis. it should not take this long. a lot of world war ii vets say they would have wiped them out in two weeks. guest: i completely agree with you, i think it was a missed opportunity with the way nato works because -- with the way nato works. because they took place in france, they have to invoke article five and they did not want to do that. they preferred to deal with it as a national matter domestically and to engage abroad to the extent they are doing that, on a national basis, and not to invoke nato.
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nato has not taken any steps as a result of the attacks. i think it is a missed opportunity because nato could do more. when it comes to fighting isis in syria and iraq, you raise a much bigger issue think you are right about. they are not that big, they are not 10 feet tall. we have much more capability and we could take them out if we want to. host: how should we do that? guest: the reason we are not doing it is because it would involve significant numbers of ground forces. you cannot just bomb them, you have to take over the territory and establish a governance that becomes stable. that is what we tried to do in iraq. we did not have the patience for it and it went back to pieces again. i would argue with isis behaving the way it does towards women, towards christians, towards
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other religious minorities, and with the effect it is having on creating a larger middle east conflict between sunni and shia, i think it is tremendously important we should be organizing an effort with countries in the middle east and perhaps with native support to remove isis and do it decisively. we are not willing to because of what the costs would be. host: michael from salt lake city, utah on the republican line. caller: i would like to ask, when ukraine changed their government forcibly and they ,tarted to lean toward nato everybody felt like they might want to join nato. one of the problems i saw was that the whole southern coastline of ukraine covers the black sea. , or did have ase base in crimea at the time.
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that is the only access that russia has to get to the mediterranean through the .osporus strait i think russia panicked and said, we are going to lose -- if they go to nato we are going to lose our access to the black sea possibly. i wanted to get your opinion on it had some if effect on what is going on right now. guest: there are a lot of things and it is a great question. yes, russia has a substantial notary based in crimea which was part of ukraine and i think we consider legally to be part of ukraine even though russia has occupied and annexed it. what happened in the revolution and the ukraine is this -- there were protests against president yanukovych.
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ownilled about 70 of his people and the parliament in ukraine impeached him, saying this is a travesty. he fled to the country, went to russia. there was no violence inside ukraine after that and they were forming a transitional government. that is when you had russia support insurgent groups in ukraine who took over crimea, took over eastern ukraine, provided intelligence officers, trainers, equipment, regular military forces to break up ukraine. the narrative that russia tells is this was a revolution from the west. it is just not true. what they link it to, and what the caller did as well, this was linked to nato membership. nato did not offer membership to ukraine. ukraine was told not now. we understand that is what you would aspire to, you want to be
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a democracy and a safe country, but you have got to work toward that because you are not there. nato put ukraine on hold. the european union meanwhile was still talking about associating ukraine with the eu and they also said no. i should rephrase that. yanukovych, the president of the ukraine said no, we do not want to associate with the european union and that prompted the eu to say, we are on hold, and that prompted the protests in the ukraine. that is what spurned the whole crisis. i would not say that putin panicked. i would say he saw an opportunity. host: our last caller is greg from florida calling on the independent line. go ahead. caller: mr. ambassador, it is
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great hearing your thoughts. my question is based around the financial load of each country. what are the ways we can get nato members who do not meet their financial responsibility to meet that standard? magic if there was a formula for this, i am sure we would have found it. every country is sovereign and independent and makes its own decisions, so we cannot compel them to spend money on something any more than a foreign country could compel us to spend money on something we do not want to spend money on. so we talked to them, browbeat them, complain, put out charts, on.this is what is going but ultimately they make their own sovereign national decisions. trend hasgly, the changed in the last few years and instead of it being a beinge, after 20 years of
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an decline it has flattened out and in some places gone back up. what has caused that has not been the u.s. but russia. their behavior has caused countries like latvia, with the to look athe u.k. their spending. host: that is kurt volker, former u.s. ambassador to nato. they give for being with us. guest: thank you. we are going to continue our discussion of foreign policy with ivan eland. he has agreed with donald trump to some degree and will talk about the need for the u.s. to change its focus in the world. we will be right back. ♪
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prison in iraq. deal of was a great nudity and it was cold, it was december. the image of a number of men chained to their cell door with their hand between their legs, which was forced standing. donald rumsfeld says, he stands at his dense -- his desk all day. i can say seeing someone in a forced standing position has nothing to do with standing at a desk. it was torture. and churchill's strained relationship is the subject of nigel hamilton's book commander in chief. it examines the military and tactical frustrations between fdr and british prime minister winston churchill. go to booktv.org for the complete schedule. >> washington journal continues.
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host: continuing our discussion of u.s. policy toward nato and toward russia. our guest is ivan eland, a senior fellow at the independent institute and formally a director of foreign policy at the cato institute. he worked as an investigator for the house foreign affairs committee. and you so much for being here. guest: thank you for having me. nato we are talking about and u.s. policy toward russia. explain to us first what the mission of nato is and whether that has changed. theoretically, nato is supposed to be a collective defense organization which means an attack on one is an attack on othernd that means countries are supposed to pool their resources to defend themselves. in reality, the u.s. has always been the 800 pound gorilla.
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that countries of europe gleefully went along with invoking nato, which is the only time it has ever been info, the article five commitment -- , the articleoked five commitment, it has basically been the u.s. defending everybody else. the u.s. provide 75% of all the defense budget in nato, and the mission was originally to go against the soviet union to provide deterrence of an attack. the soviet union went away and nato had to find a new mission. extorted expanding and say russia is mad -- it started madnding and now russia is saying a hostile alliance has marched closer to its borders. the border with the baltics are right near russia and poland is right near russia, so this alliance kept creeping forward. host: and the huffington post
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you wrote an opinion piece called, how about an exit from nato and other military alliances? explain that. guest: the u.s. traditionally avoided alliances because we have a unique security situation. we are away from the world centers of conflict. we have huge moats that defend us. we have weak and friendly neighbors and since 1945, we have had nuclear weapons and the most capable nuclear arsenal and world history. we are intrinsically very secure so the question is why do we want to get in permanent to entangle in wars all over the world. we also have alliances all over the world in east asia. we have an informal alliance with israel and the middle east
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and saudi arabia, so we have taken this pax americana that started in the 1950's and we dominate the globe. the problem now, we are $19 trillion in debt. man,00 in debt for every woman, and child. entitlement crisis because baby boomers are retiring and social security is going to run out of money. we have a lot less finances than we used to. we account for about 16% of world gdp that we spend 38% of .he world's defense total our defense total is $600 billion and russia spends 1/10 of that. china, which is the biggest country, spends one third of that. we are the dominant power. it is really a question of, do we need to retract and have a period of renewal because our economy is really what drives
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all other forms of national power, military, cultural, diplomatic power. we need a strong economy and we are sending this -- we have almost 800 military bases in 70 countries and it is not needed anymore. host: is it your position the u.s. should no longer be a member of nato in particular, or that we need to rethink all of our defense alliances around the world and maybe plow through the others as well? guest: nato is the jewel in the crown, so to speak. the other point is that nato was created when there was rubble in western europe after world war ii when we were scared of the soviet union, even though they were as devastated as any country. we were scared they were going to invade western europe. france,e countries,
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britain, germany, the netherlands, they were very devastated. in the 1960's, these countries had all become very wealthy and our allies in east asia had the same problem, they were devastated. they became wealthy but we still provide a defense. this is an unequal alliance. the u.s. is providing the security. when the ambassador says it is all for one, one for all, we are the 800 pound gorilla and we take these countries along like afghanistan and libya, but it is u.s. power. the reality is they are windowdressing on it. they do provide some capability but only countries like written in france. want to let our viewers know we are taking your calls. you can call in on the democratic line at (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001 and
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independents, (202) 748-8002. you can also send us a tweet. it's here from chris in silver spring, maryland on the republican line. caller: good morning. tin and theay that pu anti-west movement have evolved from the bosnian coast and intervention from nato. it seems like russia and china are on an imperialist track and they are forming an access. .- axis i think the importance of nato reassessment is crucial at this time. i will hang up and listen. guest: the caller makes a good point in that nato is sort of constraining our policy because really, what we probably should be doing with a rising china is actively courting russia and trying to peel it off as nixon
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try to peel off china from the soviet union. we need to be probably more friendly to russia. that is hard. i do not agree with putin's incursion and annexation of crimea and incursion into the ukraine. you have to recall he is probably a product of the expansion of nato. right after the wall fell down and the soviet union fell down, russia was very receptive to the u.s. and we should have expanded nato. if you want to expand nato, include russia. they want to talk shop. i think you would have had a different outcome. host: does russia meet the requirements? guest: those are artificial. turkey is sliding doubt the precipice toward authoritarianism. russia is less authoritarian
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than saudi arabia and bahrain, and equally authoritarian with the united arab emirates. i think it is a little bit sanctimonious to say that russia putin is a dictator and nobody is apologizing for that but i think we have to look at the roots of that. or russiaiet union had formed an alliance and taken in latin america, the united states would not like that at all. we have our own sphere of influence and big powers usually do but we do not like to talk about that. russia has been invaded by the mongols, the swedes, the germans twice, they fought with the polls, and they have a bad geographical situation. we have a great geographical
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situation and are probably the most intrinsically safe nation. russia, it tends to make them more autocratic as they are constantly threatened. we saw that in germany and world war i and world war ii, they had more authoritarian leaders. britain on the other hand is an island. where did we get all of our democratic values? we have an even better situation than britain does. i think our flexibility has been impaired by a lot of these alliances. i think donald trump is right that nato is obsolete and some of these other alliances are obsolete. there is no reason we cannot defend these countries if some up,at, big threat comes that i think we need to be the
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second line of defense rather than the first line of defense. i think we probably need to modify nato or get rid of it. host: thomas from cleveland, ohio on the democrat line. caller: i agree with the comments this gentleman made wholeheartedly. i am a veteran and i think the whole ukraine problem was caused ,y the europeans who wanted they saw the future and they saw reallyto could not be prolonged for too long because of the debt situation in the united states. and another thing i would like to say, as a military veteran during vietnam, this country has never seen more. war.s never seen we have seen two buildings attacked and it was devastating.
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we have outlined baltic countries that could cause military conflict with the united states with no problem from us. we will be john into nuclear war behind nothing that was a direct threat to the united states, by some decision by some nationalist made in some country far away from the. guest: i think the caller has a point. the baltics are indefensible without nuclear weapons and some of the countries that are far forward, it is going to be difficult to defend them because russia has local superiority. we have the most powerful military sources in human closer,but russia is and that matters with military power. we have allowed a lot of these countries to come in and a lot of our allies in every theater, they are always wealthier than the opposition. for instance, south korea has 40 times the gdp of the north.
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the european union has roughly 8% -- eight times the gdp of russia. these countries need to do more to defend themselves. we heard the ambassador say that arden sharing has been an issue or 20 to 30 years -- burden sharing has been an issue for 20 to 30 years and nothing has been done about it. this is something that is not going to happen because alliances always have a free riding problem. the smaller countries always say, let's let the big country take care of it. ist: the united states facing a threat from terrorism and it is a global threat as well. how should the u.s. seek to combat that risk when outside of an alliance structures such as nato or other partnerships? good, itto is not very has not done much on terrorism.
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as donald trump pointed out, they are trying to do something and they would say this afghanistan nationbuilding exercise was designed to do that . i think it is just a bog. in thisreally need country is not necessarily european countries the countries in the middle east and eastern agent -- asia. we can exchange intelligence and do not need to have a formal alliance. even if we need to take military action, you put together a coalition. the iraq war was not nato because hardly anyone would participate with the u.s., only britain and spain. also these alliances can drag you into war. remember in world war i nobody really wanted war but they had these entangling alliances that forced them into war. alliances can be negative and in flexible, especially when things
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change. it in peds your flexibility. impedes your flexibility. we have never got much from allies as far as opening markets. they never have given us even trade concessions. canave traded trade so we keep our military bases, which makes no sense, i do not think. i think we need to rethink these things. host: natasha of santora, michigan on the republican line. caller: good morning. i just came back from visiting a and i'mn estonia surprised at how many people in those countries speak russian. that is just an aside. i am a student of russian history. i just finished reading a book on catherine the great and in the back there is a
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chronological table. in 1774, there was a war between russia and turkey. , and russia gained lands northwest and became a protector over crimea and the orthodox balkan people. that was in 1774. in 1783, the annexation of crimea began. 1784, the trading of constantinople, turkey accepts russia's annexation and grants the blackaccess to sea, which they need because as you had mentioned, their misfortune of being sort of landlocked. 1791, the turkey yields all
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the lands to russia and asserts there right over the crimea. the crimea belonged to russia. s had palaces there. until 1954 when nikita khrushchev became president of the soviet union. tot: we are going to have leave it there so we can get back to our guest and some other callers. do you have any thoughts on her comments? making theink she is point that crimea has been in russia for a long time and was just transferred by chris child's in the -- khrushchev in the 1950's. crimea is an important country to the soviet union. it is an important agricultural,
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very important for russia. i think basically, we see russia nearg back some of its abroad in crimea. most of the people that want to be part of russia, eastern ukraine, they speak russia. ike do not condone that i do not invasion but i think the reason he did ukraine is because he fears ukraine will enter nato, and that is along the invasion route traditionally that has been a problem for russia. we always look at these things as offenses but he probably has more excuse for invading crimea then we did for iraq. has recently alleged russia is behind the hacking of democratic national committee e-mails. what does that tell you about russia's relationship with the u.s. and the u.s.' relationship
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with russia? guest: they have sophisticated cyber authority so i think it was them. whether they are trying to manipulate or do espionage, all countries do espionage. the u.s. cannot be too sanctimonious because the cia did that for decades and is still doing it. russia argued they did it in ukraine because the ukrainian government flipped from a pro-russian government to an anti-russian government, and that is what triggered the annexation of crimea and meddling around in eastern ukraine, to keep ukraine out of nato because i think the russians were scared ukraine would go into nato. ukraine, as i say, is very important not only strategically and economically that culturally to russia. as far as the election goes, i do not approve of them doing that because i do not think they
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should try to monkey with our elections, perhaps we should not monkey with other country's elections as well because the u.s. has done that a lot with the cia. the technology has changed but it is still happening. host: james from richmond, virginia on the independent line. caller: good morning. i would like to back up just a little bit on the history and remember when -- and i was a great republican and a ronald reagan guy until i found out that he was the one that put bin laden in power and started the drug war. ,nd that we are still fighting and it took obama to get rid of bin laden after we dumped him after he got russia out of afghanistan. i am a full supporter of nato voted forresentative
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our military to spend more money and if we wanted to get things under control and get our budget under control, why would we ever give the military more money than it needs? the world has changed. we do not need tanks and all these other things. now we need to go with drones. somebody,ob a-bomb on we do not expect them to retaliate. if my neighbor came and did something in my yard, i would probably do something in his yard. we hate need -- we need to have a strong military. think the caller has a point, we have created some of these threats. i would say carter started aiding the move has you dean and reagan ramped it up -- the mu
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jadeen and reagan ramped it up. i think donald trump is onto something. i do not agree with all of his policies like banning muslims from the u.s. because that is counter productive. he said something interesting that no other candidate has said to my knowledge. if we saw the regime change over seas we will see less blow over from terrorism. i think we should probably spend more time making the department of defense into the department of defense instead of the department of offense or department of defending other countries that are rich enough to defend themselves. i think we have lots of terrorist low back because of that. crofton,n from maryland on the republican line. caller: national defense, foreign policy, the economy, all
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of these things i think donald trump is head and shoulders above hillary. hillary has never accomplished anything. what she has gotten herself involved in, this has all contributed to our weakening position in the united states at home and abroad. if people have to be nuts you think there is any choice. hillary is a loser. host: ivan eland, is there a danger if nato were to unravel or america were to leave that alliance, that the external threats would then emerge? in other words, they have gone away because of nato's strength and if nato goes away, russia and others might pose a stronger threat. think if that happens i we have rich allies they can pay for their defense. if somebody else is going to do it, if i pay your rent for you
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you do not have any incentive to pay it so it is the same thing with alliances. if we do the heavy lifting, which we do, and dress it up as being in our own interest what we are really doing is being the big man on campus. we get influence. what does that get you? it does not get you trade concessions. we are paying for all of this. -- they know know about education and things that they have experience with but nobody really knows whether you should be in an alliance. most people do not have the foggiest clue because they are not effected. the have no experience that the government does these things. i think we need to rethink some of these things and trump is being useful in this campaign and bringing up some of these issues. hillary is making the case that trump is dangerous, that his
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personality is dangerous. but on the other hand, he could say, she is much more hawkish than i am. usually it is the republican candidate who is more hawkish so he could make the argument, you are dangerous because you are going to continue these policies. she took a look at what we did in iraq and was an advocate of getting involved in doing the same thing in libya. we overthrew the dictator and got predictably tasked because these countries are drawn on the map. really, we are getting more involved to in and i think the russians are right. he is the only thing between us and isis taking over, or al qaeda taking over in syria. dictator bututal at this point, isis is so terrible.
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i think it is a regional threat and they failed to recruit people here so they are depending on these loan while for tax. they are -- lone wolf attacks. stability. least host: next up, jeff on the independent line. caller: i have a question about what effect nato is having on our security. i agree that our economy is our power, and to that extent, we have to rebuild our economy. many people talk about the deficit as being a big effect on our economy. i wondered, does your guests have any comments? mike mullen, the former joint chiefs of staff chairman,
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said the economy is the most critical thing to our national security. kuester has had some effect on spendfense, but we still $600 billion, 37% of the world's total right there in one country. we spend massively compared to other countries, and most of that is not for the defense of the u.s. you could argue that some of it is counterproductive if you are getting blowback terrorism on u.s. soil or even against u.s. .mbassies abroad we need to recalibrate and think what we are spending this on. is this really defense spending or is it an informal empire of military bases, alliances, and interventions, of which the u.s. has done more than any other country in the post-world war ii period. we have time for one more caller, and that will be valerie on the line from new jersey.
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we will end with you. caller: i have a quick question and a brief comment, and i'm only sorry i did not get it in for the other guest because i think he was less political, a little more neutral. given the overall vast majority of seeming ignorance to these issues, the american caller seems to be calling in with virtually no clue. tanks, aree think any of them pushing to get more of this into the public education and, like, the civic's sphere of our public education? it seems to me we do not have an informed electorate. the government and special interests can pretty much run roughshod. guest: i think that is true. people do not know as much about
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war and policy and defense as they do about other issues because it just does not of act them. far away. my institution tries to do that. there are other think tanks in washington that try to do it. many of the think tanks in washington accept the status quo. you hear that we have to keep doing these alliances because we have done them, they become an end in themselves. but alliances are supposed to provide security, and if they are not doing that or they are costing too much, i think it is time to at least relook at them, and i think that is the value of trump's comments. i am certainly not h from -- a , but i think it is a good issue he has raised, and it is at least worth debating what we should do about these alliances. guest: --host: thank you for
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being here this morning. coming up next, we will open up the phone lines and you can call in on any news of the day. you can start dialing in now. the numbers are on your screen. "newsmakers" on c-span interviewed governor terry mcauliffe. here is what he had to say about hillary clinton and donald trump. governor mcauliffe: we could have more states in play than we have seen in a very long time. you heard talk about arizona. you heard arizona say he is in a very tough race he originally did not think he would have. looking at the senate map, the opportunities that exist for us in north carolina today, which has been more difficult recently. georgia presents a huge opportunity for us going forward. >> there may be more states in
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play this year, but can democrats win if they lose pennsylvania and ohio? governor mcauliffe: that makes the map much more difficult, and i think that is what the trunk campaign-- the trump is trying to figure out. virginia very solid right now. numbers have consistently been up for us in north carolina and florida. tight but in our favor. they are looking at those numbers, trying to figure out how they work those working-class white males to the gear out how to bring them to their side, to make them angry comeo get them excited to out and vote for them. i think you are exactly right. but i do believe pennsylvania -- i just was with the governor of and so you yesterday. i asked him that question and he said, "trust me, we are going to win pennsylvania." hasonly hope donald trump
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is to take a couple of the states away from us. we are going to work very hard in those states. narrator: "washington journal" continues. host: we are taking your phone calls and comments for the rest of the show. here are the lines again in case you missed them. you can send us a message on twitter. share your thoughts and comments about any of the topics we have discussed this morning -- u.s. policy toward nato and russia, which policy stands for theworking class, glass-steagall act, or any other .tems in the news in "the new york times" voter id laws take a beating in the u.s.. here's the story.
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meanwhile, from florida, here's a story in "the tampa bay times." it says it's likely florida became the nation's zika ground zero. governor scott said -- phone callso your now. stanley from west point, mississippi, is our first caller for this segment.
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he is calling on the democratic line. good morning. i just want to make a comment about nato. i think it is very obsolete because turkey is openly hostile to the kurds, who are supposedly our best allies in northern syria. a mutually exclusive kind of situation there. also, i think the whole thing in syria boils down to the fact that aside sells his oil to put and buys his guns from couldn't putinad sells his oil to and buys his guns from putin. stephanie from pennsylvania is our next caller on the democratic line. caller: i think some of the best ideas that have come out of this election is -- i think it is
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bernie's -- is there should be free community colleges across the country. i'm not sure about going beyond the community college thing, but 1172 are i think 1000 counties in the united states, and i think every one of them should have free community college for everyone just as a matter of course. thisve to remember that country really started taking off and education started really once the common man got a free education. thank you. host: how far are you from philadelphia? caller: i am in the middle of the state. did not go to the democratic national convention? have you been to any of the campaigns tops?
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-- campaign stops? caller: no, we are in the middle of the state. pittsburgh is on one end of the state and philadelphia is on the other end. the rest of the state is what they call the great republican arm belt in between. that is stephanie from the middle of pennsylvania. to let you know about our upcoming programming, if you missed any of the speeches from the rnc or dnc, you can catch them tonight. we will be featuring speeches from the democratic national .onvention that will begin at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and sunday, we will feature speeches from the republican national convention airing speeches on melodia trump, senator cruz -- melania trump, and others. you can catch up with your convention news in case you
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missed it over the past two weeks. sarah from fort lauderdale, florida, calling on our independent line. good morning. caller: i would like to make a couple of points. first, i wish you would have the author who wrote "the art of the deal" for donald trump. first of all, donald trump is claiming he wrote it, and that he has been saying wrote it and had to pull the information out of trump. night, he was on and said that he was so worried that he painted all as beautiful picture of donald .rump to make money he said he had suffered emotionally from it, regretted and then when he
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heard that he was running for president, he said he had to come out and tell the people and that heno soul has to be constantly applauded from the outside because he has nothing inside. i would like to know the story 's upbringingmp that would cause him, you know, to be this way if this is true. sarahall right, that is from fort lauderdale, florida. here is a story that was in "the new yorker" magazine from the july 25 issue. the title is "donald trump's ghost writer tells all." clayton, northom carolina, is on the independent line. good morning. yourr: i was listening to
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previous guest talking about crimea, that it belonged to , but he did not say that mainly russian people live in crimea, and as a result, 25 million russian people russia.es outside that's why i think the right thing would be to talk to russia so they would allow all these russian people to go back to russia and to become russian citizens. otherwise, they will be pushing their territories when they leave that to russia. does not wantin it. he took crimea because the pressure was too much. there was 98% of population and they were all russian. so if he would say you can come to russia, we will give you
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russian citizenship, then the pressure would not be as much. we hear your thoughts. next up is a danny from muncie, indiana, on the democratic line. go ahead. calling to, i was make a comment. a lot of people are talking .bout hillary being such a hawk does it make common sense to anybody that all the things that she is wanting to do here in the united states, that it sounds like she is planning to go to war with somebody? know that she is not the only 1 -- she can't be -- that made that decision to go into .ibya or to iraq george bush talked them all into .oing to iraq
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that's about all i had to say right now. thank you for taking my call. host: next up is bill from leesburg, georgia. go ahead. my comment is dwight d. eisenhower said that the military complex would bankrupt the nation. well, it has. we should have never went into iraq. george washington said we would toe an insatiable desire rule the world. thomas jefferson said any government large enough to give you all you want will take everything you have. outally think we should get of nato. i think nato is obsolete. i think trump is right on that. even though i do not agree with everything he says, i think he is right on that. those are my comments. right, we hear you.
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our next call comes from florida . curtis is on the independent line. caller: thanks very much for taking my call. i wanted to comment on your last guest. his comments were somewhat dismaying to me and somewhat following a familiar script. he said during his presentation that he was not at all a surrogate to trump, and i would agree with that from his comments. he sounded more like a surrogate for proof -- four putin. as being about trump very useful for this campaign. i would characterize trump as a useful idiot, and all of his descriptions were things putin would embrace. leaving nato and the moral
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equivalence he has drawn between previous u.s. actions with current russian aggression around the world, so i was dismayed by many of his comments, and i would be very interested where he gets his funding from and if any of it comes from sources in the former soviet union. thank you very much for taking my call. dave from washington, d.c., not too far away, calling on the democratic line. how are you doing? caller: i'm doing fine. how are you doing? host: good. what's your thought? caller: i tend to agree with the last caller. notdn't -- you -- putin has necessarily demonstrated his worthiness as an allied. invadedadly, he has georgia and the ukraine. its defense budget continues to
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increase to fight a falling ruble and crashing oil prices. this is an expansionist power, that we really cannot regard as one that is ready to allied with us, so we need nato at the russian border more than ever by rotating forces through national basis, increasing the level and realism of exercises, and ensuring that russia understands are sacrosanct, that they are a true red line. i share the concerns of the previous caller. we know that the independent is atute conservative/libertarian think tank, so i'm concerned about this message, concerned about the support for trump's alliance with putin. those are my thoughts this morning. that is dave from right
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here in washington, d.c. here's a story from "the new york times." it says --
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marjorie from hartley, delaware, is calling now on the republican line. go ahead. yes, hi. my question is regarding the tpp, the transpacific partnership agreement, of which there has been a lot kind of talking around this so-called trade agreement that i understand is really not that much of a trade agreement, but supporters did have a lot of signs against the tpp, against thetrump is tpp. i believe hillary has always now she ise tpp, and stopping just to save face. supposedly, this agreement was negotiated in secret by u.s., japan, mexico, canada, australia, and seven other countries. there's also two other agreements that kind of back that one up.
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and it does, to make a long story short, threaten each country's legislative sovereignty in that it could rule, like, 50 three nations. i'm just wondering why we hear about the tpp being spoken of, but nobody knows for sure, i don't think, what is in it. certainly the public does not know. next color is ivan from euless, texas, on the democratic line -- our next caller. caller: i'm calling about jobs in america. i lost my job in 1985. it was sent to singapore. it's so sad because all the people's jobs are gone. china made a deal with the .overnment
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what we sold the steel to them for, they gave them a nickel more, the government, to balance us.their loss underpricing it's sad -- all these jobs are gone. what are we going to do? is moving to plano, texas, so they don't have no import. they made all of their money. ill adelphia has moved into the goodd states, and it is for american jobs, but what are we going to do, people? you know? article on "the washington post" the headline -- "how the tpp became the most divisive policy in the democratic party." the story says --
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daniel from riverdale, georgia, is on the independent line. go ahead. good morning. the first guest you had was talking about the u.s. got started during the war between .ritain and france
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a lot of people do not realize george washington only wanted to serve one term, but he found out jefferson and madison then went .o france and the british so he started writing his farewell address. hamilton talked about foreign entanglements. we have to remember russia was invaded by napoleon. thomas jefferson in 1800 got the louisiana purchase, and remember how much that extended slavery. he also mentioned the war with --polk's war with mexico. it also extended slavery. also one last thing -- after germanyr ii, france and all over started their health care. remember, truman tried to get us to do it, but congress just like
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now, just like they did woodrow wilson after world war i. for some reason, america cannot seem to pull the trigger on things that are going to help all its citizens. thank you. mike from corpus christi, texas, on the republican line. good morning. caller: i have some concerns about our relationship with .ussia i realize the cold war is over. it has been over, but states with intelligence power will their tradecraft of spying on each other. that is just good tradecraft. you never want to cut off your eyes and ears. i think we should be careful not to alienate russia so much when it comes to diplomacy because, as we have seen, russia and china are working together in the south china sea doing military operations right now, routine training operations, and bigou put those two
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sleeping giants together, they essentially outnumber us eight or 10 to one. i know we have a big scourge of terrorism and that we should attack it and defeat it by all means necessary, but we should also remember that isis and have also attacked places in russia, and i think it would be healthy for us to try to keep our diplomatic lines open with russia just because if we all put our heads together, really, defeat isis really fast if we had all those three dogs on the same chain basically. is mike from corpus christi. our next caller is from pleasant view, tennessee. ray is calling. good morning to you. good morning. my statement and question has to do with the wall street to the twons
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nominees. one, it is record that the hate funds have donated $48 million to hillary clinton and $19,000 to donald trump. that makes a statement. also, i think donald trump needs get hillary clinton her past, everybody knows it, and do what he is going to do, to make this country, like he said, great again. also, donald trump needs to understand that the working people is who he has got to persuade. host: albright, that is ray from tennessee. ,e had time for one more caller and that will be will from north carolina on the republican line. go ahead. isler: yes, my concern
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china. nixon went into china and opened the doors for us to trade with china, but ever since we have been trading with china, we have lost jobs and lost products to china. the only people making money are the rich people that can afford to send a business to china for them to make -- to sell those products back. as they get those products, they stop producing them for the original business and start putting them on the market as .hina -- chinese products the pacific trade agreement is going to exacerbate that problem. that is will from north carolina. we have to leave it there because we are out of time. our guest tomorrow will be jim barnes discussing the status of
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the presidential race. we will also have on matthew skyte jansky -- matthew rojank from the wilson center. he will discuss the a legend hacking of dnc e-mails by russia and also the status of u.s.-russian relations. we will see you tomorrow. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] on the, a discussion impact of millennial women on the 2016 presidential campaign and then a discussion on proposed changes to the criminal justice system. after that, hillary clinton's campaign manager discusses strategy and the importance of