big dig myself out of the washington swamp. >> i resisted. i just spoke in general terms about what it was like being in the white house. and then i told him the story about being in the room. during this unusual exercise. i told him you can't use it. there were only these two women in the room. who were doing this, these two guests, and there was one or two staffers, and mrs. clinton. if you use it, everybody will know that i was the source. and i was very worried about that. but i trusted him. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's "q&a." >> "washington journal" continues. host: again we look forward to your calls in this last 2425 minutes of the "washington journal." you can talk about any topic you like. in "politico" and elsewhere we're starting to see this story

develop. the g.o.p. leader, bob michael, who political calls the face of -- bob michel, "politico," has ied' tinge of age of 93. -- has died at the age of 93. he spent 38 years in congress. more than half in party leadership. no house republican has held the republican leadership post longer. michael's death is sure to trigger a host of memories, all the morel vant because of what washington has become in the years since. bob michel has died at 93. we imagine the flags will get lowered at the capitol sometime later today. we'll watch for that. here's a tweet from john boehner, the former speaker of the house, who is now retired. bob michel was a gentleman and statesman. served in the armed forces. public office with distinction, dignity, and grace. blessed to have known him. you can read more at "politico"

and elsewhere about bob michel. go to our website, c-span.org. if you type his name. bob michel, in the search bar there, you'll come up with any number of events on him. to paul first. calling from denmark on the line for others. good morning. caller: good morning. is the lady still there? host: she has left. bronwen maddox. are you free to comment, sir. caller: it's a question and a comment. the question is, when the pundits says that the europeans are afraid of donald trump, is she talking about the politicians or is she talking about the people? because most of the people we know are not against donald trump. and comment is, it's amazing how supply germany, france

weapons to saudi arabia who hates homosexual, etc., no problem dealing with the saudis. and little bit of historical fact is the british parliament is not the oldest perilment -- parliament in the world. ansk parliament. host: john is in mitchell, south dakota. what's on your mind? caller: yeah. help was calling to clarify some things. there's a lot of twisting around o avoid the situation. if you just take two simple steps it would help. people will understand what's going on. last e, is to go to powers dot org. a video on the right-hand side

called last hours. it's only 11 minutes long. step two, go to arctic-news. look at the data. and it explains. that's arctic news bald spot. that explains the situation. why so many people are moving from the equater. and why there's so much war going on. and eighty oil industry and the to banks are in a big fight and i guess that would be my comment. last hours. and arctic news balanced spot. host: joe on the line from connecticut, independent. good morning. caller: how are you. host: doing fine. caller: i just -- i think there's some misunderstanding what the founding fathers had in mind. i would quote john jay, who in

the federalist number 2 said, providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, one united people, a people, descendent from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government. very similar in their manners and their customs. and i think that's one of the problems with these many immigrants. they come here and they really don't want to learn the language. and they don't want to fall into our customs, which i think they should. thank you very much. host: thanks for calling, joe. if you are a watching of the u.s. senate, you might know that they are still in session. it's just about 24 hours now they have been in straight. what they have been doing all night is speaking about the nomination of scott pruitt to be e.p.a. administrator. senator jeff merkley of oregon on the floor now. democrats have been talking in turn throughout the night.

you can continue to watch on c-span2 today. there will be a vote on scott pruitt for e.p.a. chief at 1:00 today. we have a short piece of video from last night where democratic senator ed markey of massachusetts, sort of summed up the concern and the frustration of democrats over the process. here's a look. senator markey: we're six minutes to midnight on thursday night, the vote is now scheduled in 13:05 here on the senate floor. these emails are going to be released next tuesday. so that they can be a public examination of them sew finally determine what is the relationship between scott pruitt and these industries who he will be given responsibility to regulate. what are they hiding? why are they rushing? why won't they give the american people the ability to find out

what is in inside of these emails before there is a vote here on the senate floor? because once that vote takes place, he will be the head of the e.p.a. and then we will find out what conflicts may exist. what relationships may exist. what decisions have been made. but, no, the senate leadership will not give the american people the respect they deserve to ensure that all of that information is out of public but, no, the senate viewing. host: vote scheduled on pruitt at 1:00 eastern time today. that's what the date time expires. you can watch it on c-span2. related headline, judge orders pruitt to turn over thousands of emails, this is part of what senator markey was talking about. and they write, giving new feel to critics notwithstanding they halt the vote.

he was ordered by a judge in oklahoma to turn over thousands of unseen emails related to his communications with the oil and gas industry. decision from oklahoma district ourt judge timmons came -- hours after mr. pruitt, oklahoma's attorney general cleared a parliamentary vote which supports strongly breaking along party lines. watch that vote c-span2, 1:00 today. dominick, on the line from new york. republican caller. caller: how are you doing. i watch the conference yesterday with president trump and the man's doing everything he said to do. i live in a place in new york, last year nine kids died of an overdose of heroin. i moved up here 21 years ago. you couldn't buy a marijuana joint. but yet the kids are dying from hair win. they busted a kid in the high school with 80 bags. they tried him with intent to sell, but he says, no, no. they told me to give it away.

just give it out. he got intent to distribute. the problem is the border was screwed up. bonnie frank and chris dodd -- barney frank and chris dodd bankrupt everything. we couldn't get work. six million constructions out of work. it was a big mess. the democrats walked us down a dead end. now you have a president that's doing the right thing and the democrats don't want to give him a break. i listened to nancy pelosi the other day and i'm saying this is the same woman that when they raised the gasoline price from 98 cents a gallon in new york to $4.49 a gallon to debate monkey bites. to today they never debated it. the whole thing, let's give this guy a chance. let's put america back to work. s far as the refugees from the middle east, we have to know who is coming into this country. we have to keep america safe. have a good day. host: you too, sir. thank you for calling. viktor on the -- victor on the

line. democratic caller. what's on your mind? caller: good morning, america. there's a lot of things on my mind. first of all, i like to talk he asked president and a question on the campaign trail of african-americans to lure their vote. weasked what in the world do have to lose with voting for donald trump. there's so many things that we have to lose with donald trump. it's so frightening to black americans that it is completely unreal. first, freedom. second, health care. and what do i mean by -- let's just talk about freedom.

donald trump has put together a cabinet of people that -- oh, my god. jeff sessions. jeff sessions, if anybody doesn't believe that jeff sessions is a racist, they are out of their mind. jeff sessions is going to do everything he possibly can to black votes, what's going on with that is absolutely another thing that's just insane. backor black votes donald trumt and allow for this to did on -- go on is very frightening that you could be cast off the voting rolls because of name similarity . i don't see how that's american. host: thank you for calling.

let's hear from steve calling from sweden. good morning. caller: how you doing. it's afternoon here, actually. i'd like to talk about trump's foreign policy. and what people seem to be missing in his change, in his approach. ow, russia, for him, is not an economic step to america. american jobs are not flowing ver to russia. so he sees china as the one that is endangering the u.s. economy. and so why should he spend all this time trying to aggravate russia. russia is not -- he thinks he can -- i think he believes he can solve the situation in crimea. which belonged to russia. all the time until 1956 or

something when khrushchev gave it to the ukraine. the people that live there are russian. that's kind of my comment. no one seems to have been addressing that part. host: thank you. caller mentioning national security. james ma t. the defense secretary is taking part in a -- james mattis, the defense secretary is taking part in germany, he spoke a little while ago. here's what he had to say about nato. >> to confront the threats facing our alliance we must recognize just strategic 8 -- strategic realities but also political. president trump came into office and thrown now his full support to nato. he, too, espouses nato's need to adapt to today's tradge situation for it to remain credible capable and relevant. further, as the minister noted last week, it is a fair demand that all who benefit from the best alliance in the world carry

their proportionate share of the necessary costs to defend our freedoms. and we're committed to passing those freedoms intact to the next generation. the message i delivered in brussels was expected. it was well received by my fellow defense ministers as you heard a moment ago. and aligned with the message of secretary general. i stand here with you. i'm confident that our alliance will be unified in meeting today's security challenges. and i'm also confidence that the alliance to plan this year, including milestone dates torques make steady progress toward meeting warsaw and wails commitments to carry our fair share of the security burden. ladies and gentlemen, the transatlantic bond remains our strongest bulwark against instability and violence. nato exists to protect our way of life, to include the free exchange of ideas that

characterizes this annual conference in one of the world's great cities. here i am confident that we will strengthen our partnerships, confronting those who choose to attack innocent people or our democratic processes and our freedoms. host: you'll be able to watch that full speech by the secretary. and the panel discussion we're getting as well with senator john mccain later on the tv schedule and on the online schedule later. here's a photo in the financial times in the meantime. secretary of state rex tillerson meeting with his russian counterpart. this is in bonn, germany yesterday. first meeting. it was high level contact between russian and u.s. since president trump became president. that's a photo in the financial times there. "washington times," president to craft a new immigration executive order they write that the president tells us yesterday he will issue a new executive order on extreme vetting that will tailor his immigration policy to comply with adverse rulings.

insisting he'll be able to get just about everything done that he intended with new scaled down guidelines. coming along the way. charlotte, north carolina nrk, thank you. democrat. caller: how are you. good morning. i have a number things i wanted to say. number one, on immigration, i think that donald trump is being a little hard on immigrants, quite frankly. now, do i want to say that i am for the wall simply because i think we need to keep the drugs and cartel out of this country, period. and i mean that because we have a great problem with the border security. but as far as the hardworking, decent illegal immigrants that came to this country to escape poverty or death or whatever they came here for, which is probably mostly for those reasons, i think we need to take a little leniency . it seems like if they think that

they can expel 13 million people from this country, i think that they are going to find that's going to be very difficult. and it's just going to create chaos and unrest and more protests. it would make more sense to me to have some sort of guest worker program that they could work for two years at a time or something with option to renew it and maybe after eight years or so they could earn their way to citizenship that way. and it wouldn't just be given to them, but that way you wouldn't have to separate families and children. these are for the decent latin people. not talking about the thugs. send them all back by all means. host: thank you for calling. robert's on the line from brooklyn park, maryland. republican. what would you wow like to say this morning? caller: hello. i'd like to talk a little bit about the foreign aid that the united states gives to other countries. it seems like we give billions to all these other countries of the world and i have never heard an audit or ever seen anything that any of them billions ever

do exactly. and i don't know why that is. none of our congresspeople have ever talked about t i watch the news all the time. it seems like that never comes up. why is that? we give billions and there is never any kind of checking up on all that money we give out to all these foreign countries. i'm wondering is it worth it? host: thank you for calling. we'll have time for a couple more calls. want to remind you as we kick off the presidents' day weekend, going to let you know that c-span has released its third ever historian survey of presidential leadership. came out this morning. can you read the whole thing at c-span.org. nearly 100 presidential historians took part in the survey. they ranked the 43 former presidents on 10 different attributes of leadership. here are some of the results. abraham lincoln receives top billing with george washington, f.d.r. and teddy roosevelt in the top five with eisenhower and during the top five for the first time from number eight.

he moved up a little bit. more information from the poll. survey of historians, former president barack obama enters the ranks for the first time in the number 12 position. george w. bush moved up three spots to 33. the biggest drop in this year's rankings, andrew jackson. he was number 13. he was number 13 in 2009. and now stands at number 18. he's gone down. again you can watch the survey. read through it yourself at our homepage. and "washington journal" in sunday we'll have a round table starting at 8:00 eastern time with three academic advisors who worked with us on this project. uglas brinkley, ed gergmedford. they'll talk about their aal sifments at c-span.org. watch sunday at 8:00 here on c-span tv to learn more. of time to enty take your questions on this new

presidential historian survay. third one ever here at c-span. john, you are caug from conway, south carolina, republican line. hi. caller: hi. how are you. of time to take it i just had a couple of comments to make -- i just had a couple of comments to make about president trump. i keep hearing people saying that he's racist. i haven't seen that. i just don't understand where they are getting it from. i have never seen him come across as being racist. another thing that shocks me is that whenever you hear debate about his policies on immigration, you never hear the key word mentioned, illegal. he's not against immigration. he's against people coming into this country illegally and then trying to suck the system dry when they don't have it coming to them. america doesn't owe the entire world a living.

that's the way i feel and i think a lot of other americans. thank you very much. host: thanks for calling. palmdale, california, democratic caller. caller: hi. how are you? i have so much to say. i wouldn't have enough time. i would like to show my appreciation to president obama for his eight years of service to this country. he brought us from the brink of a recession back to -- i gained a lot of equity in my home that i lost a lot in. when someone rescues you from a burning building, be appreciative regardless of their skin carol. their prior caller from north carolina, he probably don't see racism because he probably never experienced the other side of racism. when we have a president who, to most black people frankly reminds us of 1930's adolf hitler, the campaign, the 2016

campaign, kind of reminded a lot of us of 1936 germany, to make america great again kind of has its ring of make germany pure again. and then the erratic, like the press conference yesterday. ok, that's all i have to say. thank you very much. host: thank you for calling. janet from wisconsin independent. good morning to you. caller: good morning. i just got a thing to say in regards to our -- i'm american native. i am german, i am irish, and i am black. the only thing that brothers me so much now in my 70 years the drugs. i just lost a grandson in regards to drugs. we have to get the drugs out of the united states. whatever has to be done has to be done. president trump is not, i don't

think, against immigrants. he, to me, get the drugs out of here. we are killing our children, our grandchildren, and something has to be done. thank you very much. host: thanks for calling. on to carla now. carla in north carolina. republican caller. welcome. caller: thank you. ood morning. my pet peeve is mainstream media. host: how come? caller: we have a right to free speech, correct? but you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater. but here we had the mainstream media that is putting out all these lies. the illegals that trump is wanting to get rid of are criminal illegals. not just illegals, but the criminal illegals.

he's not racist. he is wanting to help the black families. he's wanting to help the hispanic families. he's wanting to help everybody. this man has given up everything that he had to be the president of the united states. he has sat back and he has watched us be destroyed. and he couldn't take it anymore. so all i have to say to all your listeners, do not listen to what the lies are being pressed. find the truth. do your research. and that's all i've got to say. host: that was the voice of carla who gets the last word this morning from north carolina. thanks to have been who called in this morning for these three hours. we'll be back as we're every day. we'll be back tomorrow. 7:00 eastern for another edition of the "washington journal." in the meantime enjoy the rest of your friday. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017]

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> former house minority leader bob michael has died. he was a world war ii veteran who was wounded at the battle of the bulge. he graduated in peoria, illinois. he served from 1957 to 1995 and was minority leader from 1981 to 1995. in its obituary of the illinois republican, the associated press, his skill at seeking compromise with the democrats was critical in helping ronald reagan and jomplet h.w. bush pursue their agendas during their presidential terms. bob michel died this morning at ge 93.

c-span today is releasing the results of our survey of his torians on presidential leadership -- historians on presidential leadership. they rate on 10 leadership attributes and has overall rankings for each president. it's all online right in front our homepage at c-span.org/presidentsurvey2017 with the rankings, individual leadership characteristics, information on how the survey was done and which historians weighed. in is the third survey that c-span has done on presidential leadership. starting from 2000, 2009 and again this year. on thunder sund's "washington journal," historians will weigh in joining us to discuss the 2017 historian's survey of presidential leadership. that's live on c-span beginning

at 8:00 a.m. eastern sunday during "washington journal." >> watch c-span as president donald trump delivers his first address to a joint session of congress. president trump: this congress is going to be the busiest congress we've had in decades. >> live tuesday, february 28, at 9:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and c-span.org. and listen live on the free -span radio app. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies, and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> president trump has nominated seema verma to be administrator of the centers for medicare and medicaid services services. the senate finance committee held her confirmation hearing yesterday. she said she doesn't support turning medicare into a voucher

program but she declined to say where she supports raising medicare's eligibility age or allowing the government to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices. senator orrin hatch of utah chairs the nearly three-hour hearing. senator hatch: the committee will come to order. i'd like to welcome everyone to the -- to this morning's hearing. today we'll consider seema verma to serve