here is some of our live coverage. a.m. eastern on c-span, the wilson center takes a look at the state of u.s. china relations, followed by a discussion on the prospect of peace talks in yemen. at 6:00 p.m. eastern, the french embassy in washington dc holds a forum on the role of international organizations like nato and their impact on global affairs. on c-span two, the senate is back to continue debate on a criminal justice reform bill. on c-span3, there is a "washington post" event with speakers including senators mark warner and todd young. coming up on today "washington on -- thethe latest likelihood of a shutdown with jennifer shutt.

then rob montz on the power of the presidency. later, judith shulevitz from to talkantic" joins us about her piece on how digital assistants like amazon's alexa are impacting society. ♪ host: good morning. tuesday, december 18, 2018. the senate in at 8:00 a.m. with weekly party strategy lunches. we are with you for the next three hours on the "washington journal" and we begin with the topic of criminal justice reform pretty yesterday the senate move to final proceedings on a prison reform bill known as the first step act. we are asking you to join the conversation. what changes do you think are needed give us a call on special phone lines this morning.

if you have experience in the criminal justice system, whether you have been imprisoned yourself. the phone lines are 202-748-8000 . all others can join in at 202-748-8001. you can catch up with us on social media. on twitter it is @cspanwj. on facebook it is facebook.com/cspan. you can start calling in now as we turn to todd ruger for more on the first step act. what exactly would this build would do if it is passed -- passed by congress and signed by the president guest: good morning. the bill has two main components. one would make changes to the federal sentencing laws and how much time a prisoner would get in prison -- that would be the front end when they are going to prison and then there would be back end changes when someone is

leaving prison, that would be the other half of the bill, .hanges to the prison system the first part would reduce the length of sentences so people would be staying in prison for shorter amounts of time and in the prison part, they would be getting treatment and job training and stuff like that to ease their way back into society. both of these provisions are in to maked sense going the whole system more fair. also to reduce the prison population and make the country safer because, in theory, people would commit fewer crimes when they get released from prison and it would reduce the cost of risen, which has gone up to over $7 billion in year and for a lot of people, it is a fundamental fairness of the system.

that is all part of -- what that provision would do is to stay connected with their family and community so when they do get released, as ,5% of federal prisoners do they would have more of a connection, more of a support so they would not recommit crimes and go back into prison. the other parts are like job training so they have something they can do to support themselves so they don't have to commit a crime to get food and drug treatment so they don't get -- into the behind.2 million people

since 1972.rease .he 180,000 federal inmates the peopleest: of already in prison, few would be affected. a lot of these provisions would be more forward-looking. from now on, what people would be facing when they are facing a judge under the crimes. the backers of the bill in advocacy -- advocacy groups off -- there is a group that would like to get rid of mandatory minimum sentences altogether. there are a lot more modest -- it reduces by

five years. there is a provision that would give judges more leeway to use a safety valve to use for more nonviolent drug offenders so they could get reduced sentences under what the -- are the mandatory minimum sentences. this part of the law to stack firearm offenses onto first-time offenders and make prison second to his -- sentences that are long. there is one that would make a provision that would make retroactive a law that reduced the sentencing disparity. in 2010, congress decided they wanted to equal those out. there were disproportionate

sentences. congress changed that in 2010 going forward, but not for the people already sentenced under the laws before 2010. the 180,000 federal prisoners when you talk about this reducing the prison population, are there estimates about how far the number could be reduced --how many inmates this could impact? guest: right, there are estimates somewhere in the thousands of prisoners. when states have done this, -- theyr example actually closed down prisons because these programs were so successful. the federal system in america, most prisoners are in the state system. it would reduce prisoners, but i

don't think you would see under this bill sweeping changes that empty freckle -- federal prisons. host: how much opposition are you expecting to see on the floor this week? guest: it is interesting, the backers have said they have had a super majority of support for years and that they would be able -- if they got a floor vote, they would be able to get this through and last night they had a procedural motion. there is one amendment with three different parts from senator tom cotton of arkansas and senator john kennedy of louisiana. cotton says this bill allows for early release -- are serious nonviolent printed -- prisoners and he wants to limit the type of people who could be released early under this bill. john kennedy said similar bills .ould decrease public safety

their changes are what some of the backers call poison pill and they think it might fracture what has been a hard-fought compromise bill. it appears from the strength of the vote last night that there is support to pass this out of the senate. -- jared kushner has been a supporter of this recently and it looks like it is on a path to where it might brother -- become law. host: when are you expecting final vote in the senate? guest: that has yet to be hammered out. a lot of senators were talking about votes today on the amendments. if they decide to go to any other amendments that have been filed, there would be a final bill sent to the

house. host: appreciate your time this morning, thank you for walking through the bill with us. guest: thank you for having us on. host: we are inviting our viewers to have this conversation on criminal justice reform happening on the floor of the senate this week. we want it to happen this morning on our phones. perhaps you have been in prison, a member of law enforcement, 202-748-8000 is the number to call. let us know what changes you think are needed. all others can call at 202-748-8001. that debate happening on the floor of the senate. theing about some of concerns of those backing this bill. [video clip] >> this bill will not allow dangerous, violent criminals to be released early. that is pure fiction. not everyone is eligible to earn

credits that lead to early release based on participation in these programs i talked about. thatbill lists 48 offenses disqualify offenders from earning timed credits including crimes like murder, specific assault,- specified carjacking that results in injury and death and unlawful possession or use of a firearm. simply put, we use the most modern social science evaluation tools to find out who is at low risk of reoffending and these are the ones who get the benefit of these programs because we think these are the ones most likely to have a good outcome and not end up back in prison. more from the debate on the floor as we go through our program. what changes do you think are needed in the criminal justice system?

i am calling -- the changes i see that have already mitigated -- a working class of people should always think these people coming into the community -- back into the need the age of writing skills and application job training and vocational training and high education training should be allowed for them to deal with the community .gain system go back to what they call rehabilitation

incentive. incentive -- then they don't have to look over their shoulders at two advocates of people, law-enforcement and what they call outlaws. host: what is the best incentive on the way out? is it education and the chance of a job on the way out? caller: it is great for that. i work with guys all the time and they tell me, i can't get a good shake with the application because i put on the application i have been incarcerated. a long time ago, we had -- reportvalues where to his parole officers and the parole officers report to him on the job.

live -- not like the regular persons in the homes, but the project areas. workthey come home from and the guys say, what have you been doing all day? i have been on the job, working, trying to support my daughter. i said, you are not making more money. he said, i don't care. i have benefits and i have something to prove to my family and myself. if we can place them in the working community or working facility. is also inll maryland, prince frederick, maryland, experience with the

criminal justice system. go ahead. caller: yes, sir. i was a retired police officer and i think this is probably one of the bigger mistakes they have been making. it opens the door to so many things possibly going wrong. taking -- talking about people incarcerated in locations that is more convenient that they live in, you are not taking into consideration the gang influence and the corruption within the prisons and smuggling in narcotics. many of the people that are on that side of the criminal justice system. is -- the people that don't understand that lifestyle. if you grow up in the inner-city in some of these places, you hear they take pride in the fact

their murder rate is high and drugs are flooding the street. moreyou try to make life convenient for them, it is a bad situation altogether. host: do you think we lock up too many people? not at all. i think we watered down our criminal justice system altogether. when people establish these penalties, it is written and they will advertise that we have sentenceimum mandatory or if you do this time, you will have 10 years in prison or five years in prison. sentence thef you doi have watched it we first thing a criminal attorney does is offer to -- a plea in a situation where they dismiss any

drug charge where the criminal will plead guilty to the lesser offense so there is no gun attached to the sentencing guidelines. the first thing they are going to do is offer to plead guilty to the drug charge. thathappens so prevalently the criminals are counting on saying it is a non-violent drug charge. it is if you dismiss everything that went a long with it. the fight or whatever incident caused it to come to attention. host: this is mark from pennsylvania. go ahead. caller: good morning. it was interesting to hear the last caller call in about how he thinks they don't get enough time. my son got way too much time. he never had a crime in his entire life and he was 20 years

old and put away for 10 years. -- he said some people that are violent drug offenders and committed many --mes get many and no time no crimes and people who go away -- there is a lot of reforms that need to be made, especially in the prosecutorial. he mentioned plea deals and such. sometimes they charge people with crimes they haven't done to get them to plea to things they did not do, as we see with the mueller investigation. it is a mess from start to finesse and i thought that was bad enough they had people pleading guilty they did not do so they would get charged with more crimes. host: is your son still in prison? caller: they just put him in jail recently and he was supposed to be on a 3 to 6

guideline and they put him in jail for 10 years on a first offense. it is a mess because they have a lot of private prisons not run by the state and they are a mess. they have them locked up like 23 hours a day and they let them -- him get out for an hour sometimes. he has been to another one before he went to this one and it was the same situation. the state prisons are run better where they have more programs for the inmates so they can rehabilitate themselves and so forth. these private prisons, they are a mess. there is a lot of improvements that need to be made so these people can come out and be decent human beings. he had a high level military clearance. he was not some run-of-the-mill

criminal. if he was on the top of his game with a masters degree and he is now.il for 10 years it makes no sense when they would do that to somebody when there are spaces that need to be filled with people like the other guy described. gang banger criminals that live this life their entire lives. host: thank you for telling us about your son. this is the lead editorial from the philadelphia inquirer posted last night about the first step act. this is how they end the editorial, the bill only impacts federal prisons which houses less than 10% of all incarcerated people in the united states. widespread meaningful reform will require similar reforms for the sentencing up state crimes. the first step act is a triumph. congress will not only bring change to federal prisons, but restore america's confidence in its ability to do its job. our representatives should

support the bill. we have been talking about the reaction on capitol hill and the debate that has been happening not just this week, but previous weeks as the bill worked its way through the system. this is senator john kennedy of louisiana talking about how his state tried to reform prison and criminal justice and the impact he saw hoping congress doesn't repeat some of the same mistakes that happened in louisiana. [video clip] were my state, some people scared and rightfully so they might become victims of violent crimes. on the justice we promised to victims like mr. presley watson child. you want to put a price tag on justice? have at it. i don't. louisiana --d in

they don't have parents anymore. took care ofkins that. .e should have been in jail i just want to implore my colleagues in the senate to please think about more than criminals and the money. of thebout the lives victims as well because they are supposed to count, too. host: john kennedy, republican of louisiana. more reaction from other members of the senate, including kirsten gillibrand sang the first step act is just that, a first step toward criminal justice reform. i am calling on justice -- congress to take it a step

further. deeply discriminatory cash bail system. that was our tweets from earlier. what changes do you think are needed in the criminal justice system? phone lines for those who have experience in the system and all others. jamie in maryland, go ahead. think: i wanted to say i to fix the problem, it has to be addressed from a different angle . that receive it dism is probably -- recivi is probably the biggest problem. people are being painted with broad brushes and cases are really being -- the amount of time to correctly punish or censor someone. a lot of people are not getting a fair shot at that because they

are so overwhelmed with cases. one of the previous callers spoke of the plea deals and these kinds of things. some people are unfairly treated by plea deals and some people are given too much mercy. i think the way to address it all -- we understand that condition -- what i mean by that is a lot of us are products of our environment. a person that is in a certain environment, they are going to of fallinger chance into the criminal justice system than maybe somebody that is in a better environment. reducenother thing is to recidivism -- just like in the

state of maryland, once you do your time and you serve and all of that and your probation is done, there are some things you can get expunged. a lot of things, you cannot get expunged right away. in the state of maryland, on many things -- within the first seven to 10 years, it is almost unheard of. a lot of times you have to wait until 20 years or up before you can successfully get a pardon looked at. host: this is barbara in new york city. go ahead. caller: thanks, c-span, for covering the senate. i watched the vote yesterday. the vote started at 5:32 p.m. and then somewhere around 6:00, everything stopped. i did not know what we were waiting for and about an hour

.ater, rand paul showed up i am wondering if you know what that delay was. why were we watching for an hour. c-span showed the vote as 82-12 the murkowski voted and next thing i know, the vote changed to 82-11. what happened with the vote? did somebody change at -- or was it wrong to begin with? host: the final vote, 82-12 is the official vote, the one up on the senate's website. we will cover the senate when it is in session. i am not sure what that specific delay was prayed perhaps they were waiting for a senator to come to the floor. i know debate started last night. the debate can continue ahead of the final vote. debatel see more

throughout the day on the amendments we were talking about earlier. caller: my question about the point c-spane showed it as 82-12 and it changed to 82-11. the last couple of things -- the gentleman talked about making life more convenient for incarcerated people. my understanding says they can be incarcerated within 500 miles of their home. how far is 500 miles from where you are in washington, d.c.? that doesn't seem very convenient. it also includes a provision for people to be released with a chronic ankle bracelet for which they have to pay $25 a day. we know rich people don't go to prison. how are these poor people supposed to pay $25 a day for an electronic bracelet? host: on the electronic

monitoring, a column from the hill newspaper by vivian nixon, a pastor, with concerns about that issue -- that digital monitoring. she writes with the introduction of constant digital monitoring in the -- first step would a technologically driven invasion of privacy into the homes and at the expense of some of america's most undersold -- underserved households. already devastated by mass criminalization. judges discretion for the drug safety valve and replacing mandatory life sentencing. that is part of her column in the hill newspaper. her concerns the first setback doesn't go far enough. caller: thank you for taking my

call. worrying -- the american people i feel like others have to have enough right -- host: we will keep the discussion to the criminal justice system and reforms you are looking for as the senate is having this debate this week on the first setback. ron in washington, d.c., go ahead. caller: how are you doing, pedro? good morning, america. awanted to say receive it is recidivism is not just the reason people are going to jail. they are stuck in situations at home that makes them go back or

give them no opportunities to be successful when they get out and -- may not have been their own choosing because they have to feed their family or do whatever. it is tough to survive because of the job situation out here. in 10 years jobs ago, 10 years ago. the same amount of jobs are out here. things have changed in many ways. fella -- he i am sorry, i am driving and confused a little bit. host: be careful, ron. caller: right now, pedro. the fella that said he was a police officer in these people

are prone -- these people have situations. not everybody is in jail. 90% of the people in jail are in jail because of one mitigating circumstance in their life. they may have lost their jobs, the extra income or whatever. that causes them to go out and -- to stay it took in a warm shelter. ryan in kansas, experience in the criminal justice system. caller: good morning, c-span. good morning, america. my concern that i see. --the way, i am glad to see many of the problems are within the state system. one big barrier i have seen with

reform has been the power of the police unions and other organizations that profit from more incarceration, less incarceration such as the for-profit prisons as well as the electronic monitoring systems are typically profit motivated. problem that brings into the system and helps prevent legislation -- reform legislation from being passed is the influence of money. privatization generates money that allows the police unions to hire lobbyists, electronic monitoring companies to hire lobbyists and it goes on and on. the influence of money and private interest has entirely

corrupted this, particularly at the state level and made reform very difficult. another thing i am noticing is the politicians, for whatever reason, and i think it is because of money, politicians are simply not listening to the people in many states read i live in a red state, kansas. demanding medical marijuana and cannabis reform in general on a massive scale and yet, we see no movement. i contribute that only to the influence of big money. host: you are talking about state prison populations. here is a map showing imprisonment rates in state per 100,000 residents in the state. louisiana leads all states with more than 750 people in prison per 100,000 members of the

population of the state of louisiana. you can see the darker states with the larger imprisonment rates. kenny is next. go ahead. caller: good morning. that previous caller was inolutely on the right track regards to influence and power. wealthy people are very ambitious and more often than not, they will try to control distribution of the money. talking about electronic monitoring, that is absolutely right. more often than not, they are creating vacancies. toare exposed -- supposed expect the koch brothers or someone else is sympathetic to a population that has been incarcerated for years. then what happens? -- stay prisons are

open based on their populations that the -- they charge the state a certain amount of dollars to keep the prisons .illed more often than not, they pay more to house a prisoner than they do to educate children in certain states and counties across the country. host: this is marion on facebook. her suggestion says end for andit prisons, legalize pot expunge records for all incarcerated and make the bail system go away or adjust by income and economics. straightals would go and stop doing bad deeds, they would not have to worry about sentencing guidelines. we are having this conversation about criminal justice reform. what recommendations, changes would you make? phone lines, if you have experience in the criminal justice system, it is 202-748-8000.

all others can call at 202-748-8001. it is just after 7:30 on the east coast and want to update you with some of the other news on capitol hill including the announcement by senator lamar alexander, republican of tennessee about not running again in 2020 or it his statement saying i will not be a candidate for reelection in 2020, the people of tennessee have been generous electing me to serve more combined years as governor and senator than anyone else in our state. i am grateful and it is time for other people to have that privilege. i have gone to bed most nights thinking i have. i will continue to serve with that spirit during the remaining two years of my term. that is senator lamar's announcement. tennessee coming off an election in which there was an open senate seat. senator bob corker announced his retirement before announcement. the 2018 election and now congressman and

senator elect marsha blackburn will take that seat. she is a republican. also, plenty of news yesterday on the russia investigation front, including a number of reports released by the senate intelligence committee in the investigation of russian campaign interference during the 2016 election. russia engaged in an all-out social media campaign on donald trump's behalf and continue to support donald trump after he took office. that story noting -- one of the reports from a company called new knowledge, a cyber security company said the operation began in st. petersburg in 2013, more than 1000 people gained -- engaged in around-the-clock operations first targeting ukraine and well before the 2016 u.s. election, american citizens . the scale of the operation was unprecedented, reaching 126

million people on facebook and 20 million users on instagram. they uploaded over 1000 videos on youtube. the report says there was a clear bias toward trump in the operations and the agency posted no pro click and content on except forr facebook one post encouraging muslims to attend a rally for her. this from the front page of the washington post, federal prosecutors unseal an indictment on monday charging two business associates of michael flynn with acting as agents of the turkish government, describing in remarkable detail how the three attempted to persuade the united states to expel a rival of .resident erdogan a tweet from the president just now, the president saying the biggest outrage yet in the long winding and highly conflicted

mueller witchhunt is the fact 19,000 amended text messages between peter strzok and his fbi lover lisa page were deleted. it would explain a hoax under protest. that is the president under -- on twitter a minute ago. the fbi investigation surrounding them is also the focus of questions to fbi director james comey on capitol hill yesterday testifying behind closed doors. here is a picture of him entering one of the closed-door meetings yesterday with house members. house republicans questioning him as he met for a second time on capitol hill. he came last week to testify about fbi investigations when he was head of that agency. we will be talking about some of james comey's comments and reaction to them.

back to your phone calls keeping this first hour focused on criminal justice reform with the first step act on the floor of the senate. we want to hear from you about what changes you think are needed. nick has been waiting in illinois. go ahead. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i don't really think there needs to be a whole lot of changes. i want to get to a quick point. i heard from adult when i got up. raising ourwith boys, our daughters to be good people in this country and go and be taxpayers and achieve better than what we had. if you are man enough to do the time, -- crime, you are man enough to do the time. you cannot lame democrats or

republicans or cops for your deeds in this country. you are making a full of yourself, not -- fool of yourself, not this country. i am from the metro east of st. louis, look at our area. it is terrible. blaming everyone else for your problems is this country's problem. start raising your children and do better for yourself and have a good day. host: to athens, georgia, experience in the criminal justice system. caller: good morning, john. how much do i love c-span? i love c-span. i love america. that guy who got off the phone is right. from december to i have never been convicted of a crime and i was forced into a plea deal.

i have four more points i want to make. host: go ahead and make one or two more. caller: the second point -- the first point is the whole process has been compromised. the whole criminal justice system has been compromised. a lot of these people glorify the criminality and it shows when you get up close and personal with these people. thirdly, the decadence of entertainment, leisure, and pleasure is destroying the united states of america. everybody wants me. it's all about me or it i want to this and nobody is taking responsibly for their own actions. if you want to resolve the education,es, it is

education, education. people who are educated don't go down the path of criminality. that is what i saw firsthand. thanks john, love c-span. in charlotte, north carolina, experience in the criminal justice system. caller: yes, i am an attorney licensed in tennessee. i did my internship at the public defender's office at what is called the jail docket. gentleman or ladies who are arrested and cannot bailout, they sit in the jail docket and await their first hearing. the number one thing i see we need to start with is changing the bond system. somebody else was talking about privatization. if people cannot bond out, they cannot help themselves. it was clear to me how many

people were suffering from mental illness or simply could have paid to bond out. if they were able to, they probably could have helped themselves more by meeting with an attorney. we are all paying to house those people. then we have a public defender system that is overworked and underpaid and we really need to address that. host: can i ask a question about the bond system? there has been people saying we should do away with bail in the present system. is that something you would go as far to support? think: i would because i it levels the playing field. the biggest problem i see is the difference between defendants who have money and those who don't. if we can start to take the money out of the system, that will level the playing field. host: you were going to make another point before i cut you

off. go ahead. caller: i was talking about the public defender system. we have got to figure out a way to give people more quality defense. the public defenders i know are the best attorneys in the united states, but they are overworked and underpaid. we have got to fix that system and the last thing i was going to say, the caller who called about taking personal responsibility, you have to understand how many of these people that are arrested and sit on bonds and cannot bond out have mental illness. it is not because they did not have a mother or father, it is not because they don't know right from wrong. so many of them are suffering from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness and the rest of them need rehabilitation. we are not providing that. most of the countries around the world don't jail people anywhere near the rate we do and to say we need to arrest more people is never going to solve the underlying problem.

host: we have already talked a little bit about the size of the u.s. prison population. here is another way of looking at it. this chart from prison policy.org breaking it down. we talked about the about 180,000 convicted federal prisoners and there is another 51,000 people held by federal marshals that could be immigration charges, drug charges, or other charges. these prisons account for 1.3 million prisoners. anotherils holding 615,000 people. the u.s. prison population increased by 1.9 million since 1972. we are asking for your recommendations for reforming that system. frank in northport new york, good morning. caller: good morning. can you hear me ok?

host: yes, sir. go ahead. caller: my comment is about white-collar crime. back in 2008, bernie made off's embracement -- imprisonment was a combination of a lot of things going on in wall street and a lot of rage about what was going on and yet, none of those folks apparently went to jail. i could not tell from your chart how many white-collar criminals there are in the prison system. my guess would be the percentage is a whole lot less than the mostly mentioned drug and violent crime such like that. i am wondering if that is ever a society,ange, as if we are ever going to look at people like bernie made off who .s clearly a socio-path if we are going to look at people like that as being

criminals, exploiting people and taking advantage of people the way he did is far more detriment to stealing a couple of items from a house. i am not saying that is right, i am just making a comparison and i don't really hear much emphasis on that. we look at people who are successful and assume they are successful because they work hard. that is not always the case. host: let me give you a little bit more all the numbers on convicted federal crimes from the prison policy.org chart. -- prisonpolicy.org. 80,000 people convicted of drug crimes. 11,000 of property crimes. 13,000 for violent federal crimes and 66,000 public order crimes. that is the breakdown of that nearly 180,000 number. in park ridge, illinois. go ahead. is waiting in park

ridge, illinois. go ahead. the gentleman from maryland, you are not a product of your environment, it's because of how you are raised. i was raised in one of the toughest parts of the -- chicago. however, i am a retired -- i --ped guard early presidents u.s. presidents prayed early release can work, but it has to be earned. i understand crimes against persons is very, very tough. we need to keep the bail system because we need to protect. the first line of defense, we lost two more police officers last night. chasing, shots fired, recovered a weapon. we have two more dead police officers. if you are going to commit the crime, you have got to serve the

time. it should be reviewed and i understand that. these second guessers aren't your quarterbacks. thank god they are not running this country. host: have you studied the first step act and what do you think about this legislation. it passed overwhelmingly in the cloture vote. what do you think will happen? we lost gene. marshall in ashburn, virginia. hi. caller: i had a misdemeanor marijuana charge and i had to serve 30 days in a local jail and touching on the point of the previous callers, even still after all these years, five or six years, it pops up on background checks and so, it is one of those things where even if you do your time, you pay for it even if it is 10 or 15 years

later. these things come up. i think there should be something where after a certain time limit if no one has been in trouble, they should be able to .ave that expunged i think it would help a lot of these guys out. even me. host: a few more comments from twitter and facebook. too many things have been criminalized and too many crimes made subject to incarceration. jeff says punishments that fit the crime, not divided by race. punishment said -- should also be rehabilitation oriented. eye doesn't work. phil on facebook saying stop giving white-collar crimes a free pass. marvin in virginia, experience in the criminal justice system, go ahead. caller: good morning, everybody.

i agree with a lot of that has been said this morning. i did 9 years in prison. if you cannot do the time, don't do the crime. prison is not for old people and it is not for the weak. if you are not ready to rumble, get smarter about what you are doing. said, when i was doing time, it was different. it was before the crack babies were entering the system. they treated us like men and they gave us a choice. we could educate ourselves or not. much like -- i was fortunate --e brothers like malcolm x i was introduced by a good librarian, a prison librarian to different books you never get to see and this educational system and i got inspired and it

changed my way of looking at myself. education is the key, but without access, these kids are never going to look at themselves differently. think peopleg, i could do is remove the stigma from prison. iter a guy does his time, should not be a question on any employment application. i could see if he is on probation -- in the system now. that could be something to use against somebody. think that would do wonders -- it is still all up to the individual. the human spirit is miraculous.

there is nothing that can hold you back. conviction impact your ability to vote in virginia? caller: sure. it impacts a lot of things, but i did not let it stop me. i probably could vote -- i don't believe in politics. i really don't have much faith in that. i should not say that on this channel. host: you can say whatever you want, marvin. appreciate the call from richmond, virginia. sabrina and maryland. good morning -- sabrina in maryland. good morning. caller: i would like to piggyback on a few things. the first thing i would like to say is the -- the lady that commented about bond, no bond, i don't think that is a very educated thought.

give everybody know bond that committed a crime and they had to wait until they ended up in court. maryland, it could be a year waiting to go to court. why would you want somebody to be not bonded out where they could do another heinous crime. with no bond, that doesn't make any sense. host: the point the caller was making that somebody who was wealthy enough to pay the bond could be out where the other person had to stay in jail and she did not think that was fair. caller: i understand that and that is true. that is the luck of the draw. you have some people go to bales men.t -- bails women can be sentimental. we can witness another woman cry and say she could have been out with her babies. again, you did the crime.

what goes along with it? bail. if it were not that serious, you could be let out on your own recognizance. commissioners are making a decision based on the crime, not based on your income. about the brother that said educated people should not go to prison. i have been to prison. that is not true. i have been locked up with lawyers, doctors, state troopers. educated people, no, it is all different kind of situations that can put you in prison, not become -- because you are a -- of lack of education. as far as the brother talking earlier about when you get out of prison that the probation officer should come to your job, i don't think so. when i got out of prison, i sat down with my probation officer

and said, i don't need you coming to my job maybe -- making people leery and making people google me. that could jeopardize your job. i was a sales consultant. i did not need him coming to my job jeopardizing my job. i think as long as you bring a pay stub showing you were working and not committing any other crime, following up with your probation officer or perot -- parole officer, that is all that is needed. i agree with the fellow who said .ou need more rehabilitation when you first get out of prison or jail, you should not go back into the community. you should be in a halfway house for maybe a year. host: marshall, clearwater, florida. experience in the criminal justice system. just a few minutes left in this

caller: segment. caller:so much this morning and so much of it is true and so much of it is uninformed. i want to take just a slight twist here. offender.victed sex unfortunately, the criminal justice system is so tainted toward this. another thing unfortunate is we are talking about reforming the federal justice system. , youyou showed your graph showed it is a small slice of the pie. unfortunately, i have never had any experience with the federal justice system. with the state justice system, if you have the money, you can afford a good attorney and you can buy justice. host: that is marshall in florida. on that topic, this is one of the recent lead editorials from the washington examiner. i am sorry, an opinion column

from angela from the washington examiner. she writes about the first step, this is an exceedingly rare policy situation in which the federal government is ahead of the state governments. every state legislature has either just convened within the --t few weeks or will can be will convene in early 2019. there is so much progress to be made, but not until all 50 states take the next step. isabella, go ahead. caller: i have been a family lawyer since 1974. what i have seen it -- is the crushing impact on families of prisoners. i am talking about lifelong -- not just emotional, but educational -- just

in nonviolent drug offenses, people have lost housing and the opportunity to get loans for college. in some states, they have lost their right to vote. we need to get rid of .rivatization totally also, reduce the prison population. that is unconscionable. people who are nonviolent offenders should not be behind bars. bars should be for protecting society from pedophiles, murderers, rate this -- rapists. i agree with the people who said white-collar criminals are getting away with it. i don't think they should be in jail. i think jail should be a first report for people who are dangerous and a last resort for

people who refuse to comply with laws and are dangerous in other ways. c-span, you do a wonderful service and i -- i criminal justicem of our system soon and we can convert all those empty prisons into housing for our homeless population. thank you very much. caller.abella, our last stick around today. we will be joined by cq roll tol reporter jennifer shutt talk about the latest on potential government shutdown now just days away. and later filmmaker rob montz will be here to talk about his documentary "trump as destiny." we will be right back.

♪ the very government under which we live was created in the spirit of compromise and mutual concession. >> thomas jefferson questioned the need for a senate. >> the framers believed. >> let's follow the constitution. >> the framers established the senate to protect able from their rulers and as a check on the house. >> the fate of this country and maybe even the world lies in the hands of congress and the united states senate. the senate: conflict and compromise. a c-span original production. exploring the history, traditions and roles of this uniquely american institution. wednesday, january 2 at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span.

c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979 c-span was created as a public service america's cable television companies and today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress. the white house. the supreme court. and public policy events in washington, d.c. and around the country. c-span is brought to by your cable or satellite provider. washington journal continues. host: jennifer shutt joins us now, reporter for cq roll call. she has been tracking the shutdown ahead of friday's midnight deadline. what's the latest on the state of the negotiations and who is actually doing the negotiating? guest: the current state right now seems to be sort of a staring contest between senate democrats, house democrats and the white house.

we know they have been in conversation for months now about how to address border will bending. -- border wall spending. it seems like right now we are in the final days heading into that deadline and there's a little but of confusion about who is supposed to be talking to whom and when they may be getting together with staff to write legislative text. senator schumer basically said republicans are nowhere to be found where republicans are saying it's up to senate democrats and the white house to negotiate this. it seems like there might be a lot of crossed wires right now. host: who is actually doing the negotiating at this point? is this staff talking to staff? are there telephone calls happening in the background? guest: there's a lot of issues that are still being negotiated in the final seven bills that are not the border wall. those staff talks continue

between republicans and democrats in the house. very in the weeds policy stuff as well as the bigger picture items like whether or not the 2020 census is going to be allowed to have a citizenship question. there's talks on those issues but it seems like boardwalk's really just congressional leadership in the white house at this point. host: the house doesn't come in until wednesday. are there some tea leaves to be read in terms of the timing of what that means for the negotiations? guest: i don't think so. appropriators and their staff are still around. the people who need to be here are here. you don't necessarily need rank-and-file members. host: what about the timing of this? tothere actually enough time work through the process and get it signed by the president by

midnight on friday? guest: it depends on what the deal would be. if you want all seven of the , reallyending bills make sure there is no typos, you do need a couple days to do that. we are really getting into the final hours. if we don't see some type of tentative agreement by wednesday afternoon we are looking at either a very quick continuing resolution or a partial government shutdown. host: for a temporary extension is there any reliability that trump would actually sign that? as he thrown that he wants the billions or he won't sign? guest: president trump is really an uncertainty here. don't know what he may signed or agreed to if they sent him some temporary spending bill.

if he would veto that puts mitch mcconnell and speaker ryan in a very difficult position to override a veto or that the shutdown begins -- let the shutdown begin. host: with the rank-and-file want to override president trump? guest: nobody wants to discuss it. it's very politically divisive and problematic. host: jennifer shutt with us until the bottom of the hour. we are talking about the shutdown showdown. friday at midnight is the timeframe the white house and congress has to come up with a spending bill or else there will be a partial government shutdown. republicans (202) 748-8001. democrats (202) 748-8000. independents (202) 748-8002. take us back to the white house meeting last week with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi and the

president. what that meeting did to the state of negotiations on this funding bill. guest: i still haven't gotten a good sense of whether or not that meeting helped or hurt them. both president trump and democratic leaders needed to show their bases that they were going to fight for their key priorities. for president trump that is a border wall. something he promised vehemently on the campaign trail. he said mexico would pay for it. schumer and pelosi feel this money could be better spent on programs. that meeting held the little bit to get everyone out there and show their respective parties that they were fighting. of actually working through negotiations idle the get help us at all. host: do you think that's what both sides were planning to do in that meeting? guest: i think there was some

hope from schumer and pelosi that they would be able to get a real negotiation going and get some type of handshake agreement. when the white house pool was brought in and kept in the room so long i think they started to realize it was going to be a bit more of a political reality show that serious negotiation. host: did both sides know that was going to happen? guest: i don't actually know. i haven't gotten confirmation if there was agreement ahead of the time -- ahead of time about the pool being in the room. host: the agencies that are still waiting funding. department of agriculture, department of commerce. department of justice. several smaller agencies. what is funded through next year? big issues arely mostly funded. the department of ed's. department of labor, health and

, army corps of engineers, energy projects. the entire legislative branch. congress and their staff won't be affected by the shutdown. host: these agencies are starting to come up with their shutdown plans. can you paint a picture of it for us? it's going to be department by department and agency by agency. there is exempt and nonexempt federal employees. anyone who is exempt needs to report to work. they may not get paid on time. department of homeland security roughly 90% of their staff reports to. length of thehe shutdown your still going to have tsa doing airport screening. one of the things that we would expect is if there is a shutdown when there is some type of legislation to reopen those departments there's almost

always a provision for back pain. back pay. host: has that ever not happened? guest: i don't think so. at least not the more recent shutdowns. about 400 20,000 employees of those agencies that would be impacted are considered essential exempted from the shutdown. the fbi would also continue to work. the atf. the dea. we are talking about the deadline that is quickly approaching. midnight on friday. taking your questions and comments with jennifer shutt of cq roll call. he adores up first from massachusetts -- theodore is up first from massachusetts. independent. caller: i'm making a comment about building a wall has never accomplished anyway of curtailing invasion. ask china. and another thing is that if you

go to dr. trump with a serious condition, he will put a band-aid on it and say that will do for now. when the actual problem is never addressed. and that is that central america as a whole needs america to help it out of the situation that causes them to come to this country in the first place. not my comment. thank you very much for accepting me. -- that's my comment. thank you very much for accepting the. host: the state department would deal with some of these issues. guest: a lot of state department staff doing serious international work are exempt. they will continue to work. one of the interesting points that the caller brought up is for security versus border wall debate that we have seen republicans and democrats having for months now.

several republicans don't necessarily think you need a physical structure throughout the entire border. there's a lot of discussions about technology and other aspects that are not a physical barrier that could enhance border security. oft: talk about history funding for a physical barrier and how much agreement there has been in the past before we got to this point? guest: the fiscal 2018 on the bus that president trump -- omnibus that president trump signed into law on the spring -- , usually the full $25 billion to build the wall. you can't get all that done in one fiscal year. he accepted it at the time. we are getting to the point where he wants to see many more than he could get.

or a continuing resolution for homeland which would keep the 1.3 billion level through fiscal 19. host: mary is next. democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. my question is the federal retirees. today get their checks to next month -- checks next month? host: retiree paychecks. guest: i believe so. this won't impact social security, medicare or medicaid. those programs are on autopilot. that definitely will not be impacted by this. paula in d.c. democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i am in hr director at a federal agency. my comment is that being involved in several shutdowns over the past few years with

democratic and republican administrations, it really is a not only is it ofruptive, but it is a waste federal employees's time. a poor use of a federal employees time ramping up to the shutdown that either occurs or and being in human resources it a major major upset to my work, my daily job in order to prepare for a shutdown. comment.st my host: are human resources staffers at the agency that you

work in considered exempted? are you essential versus nonessential? caller: we are considered nonessential. i work for a small agency. in ifrole is to come there is a shutdown to make sure there is an orderly shutdown. i am to be on call if necessary to return to work if needed to bring more people back. host: when you return to work, how easy is it to pick up where you were after a shutdown? caller: it really depends on the agency. the agency where i am now, i think it's a smoother transition between both issues. previous agencies where i've --ked, it's literally been

it's been -- just very cumbersome to reboot after a shutdown and get things going again. of course you have to. but it takes a lot -- that's another part of the effort that's involved in these things. shutting down and coming back to reboot. host: jennifer shutt. guest: this is one of those issues that while a lot of the discretionary budget has been funded for fiscal 2019 thirst a lot of uncertainty -- there is still a lot of uncertainty. it's the holiday season. people have plans. potentially nonrefundable flights. this is creating a lot of uncertainty and frustration within that section of the federal government. host: james, independent. go ahead. caller: i'm also a federal employee. essential.

i've been through shutdowns before. they're fine with me. i'm essential. i don't care. i think the wall is absolutely necessary. i'm not a republican. but there 7.7 billion people on the plane. -- planet. the vast majority are poor. we're going to have 10 billion people by 2015. trump's position on border security is absolutely necessary for this country rightly concerned what i he out of progressive left which is essentially an open borders position. left says it's not open borders but when they push for abolition of ice they are essentially fighting for open borders. i think we need this wall. how much are you having conversations at the office about this issue? caller: people talk about it. about the wall?

we do not discuss politics at work. i do not discuss politics at work. frankly -- you know washington. we all do. this is not a pro trump crowd down here. i do not discuss politics at work. host: anything you want to add? guest: not really. host: lee roy is waiting period democrat. go ahead. caller: if congress didn't get paid, there would be no shutdown. it doesn't affect them. it affects the average worker. more importantly, people seem to forget that during trump's campaign, he promised that mexico would pay for the wall. i don't understand why they are forgetting this is something he said. when president obama got into the affordable care act, they never let him down when they said, you said we could keep our

doctor. no one is holding trump accountable for he said. x ago would pay for the wall. if congress didn't get their paycheck there would be no shutdown. the: you mentioned legislative branch spending bill is already funded through next year. time whenbeen any congress didn't get a paycheck? guest: i don't know. the shutdowns earlier this year were pretty short. in hours. measured i don't particularly believe those were situations that overlapped with the legislative branch is pay schedule. let's talk about the end of your tax package. -- end of year tax package. worked into some sort of deal that goes with federal funding? guest: i think those are going

to stay separate. there's just not enough time to negotiate both of those things in a way that both parties can agree with. especially considering democrats are going to be taking the house in january i don't think they want to see another republican tax package move through with just days left in the session. host: you don't expect to see any tax extenders? guest: we could definitely see tax extenders. i thought you were referring to the tax -- house bill. i am not very familiar with the vendors -- extenders. i have been focused on spending. austin,ke is waiting in texas. democrat. good morning. usual: i'm confused as but i'm also scared because the other day i heard john cornyn on

the floor of the u.s. senate saying that his prison reform packages based on the great visionary leadership in texas regarding prisons and i think, wow, i didn't realize we had that. i look at the prison systems and weaid well, here in texas have to keep those prisons full. because those private person companies have to get paid. -- prison companies have to get paid. we've got our entire criminal justice system is dependent on these full prisons. we also have our security system dependent on drug trade. all the money that they are myzing in drug trafficking, convoluted inking on it will bore everyone so i will cut right to it.

you just have this portable, --y need it in order to keep somehow or another they think a stupid wall is going to keep 7 billion people out of the country. that's ludicrous. mike in austin, texas. chance that the debate and final vote on the first step act may be impacted by these negotiations on the spending bill? i don't think so. it seems like following last night's procedural vote there's enough to get this through. they're just winding down the clock and potentially looking for a time agreement for a final vote in the senate. i don't anticipate it overlapping. right now with the spending is still in the negotiating phase. in the criminal justice bill is done. it just needs the votes and the

move to the white house. host: gary is waiting in ohio. good morning. good morning. my only concern is the wall. i would like to see why don't they just take half of what the illegals cost taxpayer american citizens. just half of it. it would pay for it. numbers i got was 100 and dollars a year. billion paid for the wall. host: where do you go for your numbers on this? caller: i went to sherrod brown. i contacted his. 355 weeks in a row at 6.8 years. host: are you watching here in

the final days of these negotiations? if you could have an interview with anyone who would be to figure out what's going on? guest: i would like an interview with the four corners of congressional leadership. host: explain that term. guest: speaker ryan, leader pelosi, leader mcconnell and schumer. they really have to reach the final agreement on this and i'm always curious if they get off on side topics in these negotiations or how they get to a final agreement. what the trade-offs are for each party. how they get president trump on board. host: is there a rank-and-file member that you would be watching that you think might be able to trip up the deal that the four corners of congressional leadership comes up with? guest: at this point especially

in the senate we are reaching the point where we have time and concerns. to get legislation through the senate before the deadline you're going to have to go through the unanimous consent projects -- process. any one senator will object. i think we know who the typical problematic senators are. host: what are you go ahead and name some. guest: this is when we'll start checking in with senator rand paul. it's a little bit difficult now as we don't know their -- whether or not there is going to be a continuing resolution or real bills on the floor. there's a few others that we watch from both parties who could potentially object to unanimous consent and then push us into an hours long shutdown. host: explain how that would work. the clock starts ticking if they can't move it through unanimous consent in the senate. guest: they have to move through a clock thathere's has to wind down unless both parties agree to yield back time.

the 30 hour is hard to say exactly that it would be 30 hours. it can move a little bit less than that. based on a lot of things in the senate. it's hard to set an exact time. is where 30 hour rule we are right now with the first step act after cloture was passed last night in the senate before the final vote. kevin in manassas, virginia. republican. go ahead. caller: the wall is a great fake idea and the reason being is there's no policy that stops illegal immigrants from coming to this country. you can build a wall, build a alligators, they're just going to come to the border and apply for asylum. becausesn't stop that everybody gets due process. you can't build a wall unless you have the policies and laws behind it. it's a waste of money.

i don't understand. host: what do think would be the best way to address the situation? caller: absolutely immigration reform. for years. i work for dhs. i've been in the immigration business for 20 years. you must change the laws and policies. host: what are two ways you would change the laws and policies? caller: you have to look at how asylum is processed. everybody that comes to this country gets due process. that's fine. i understand. that's the rule of law. the critical -- credible fear interviews, you really have to look at where they're coming from. these are failed nations. el salvador, guatemala, honduras. the information we receive from those countries is piecemeal at best. it's hard to adjudicate anything that they say because they don't have the systems that we have in place. do you trust the information that you are giving? you have to change the way we conduct asylum.

we also have to look at the visa applications that we get and how we give them out. that is also very questionable. i really wish c-span would have not just pundits but people that actually deal in immigration and understand lisa and the corporations -- visas and corporations and how they like -- apply. we need 100% total immigration reform. i'm not talking amnesty. a merit-based system is the only fair way to do this. fixuild a wall doesn't anything. these are failed nations. they are going to keep coming and they can continue to come because it's legal. waiting in is also virginia. caller: you guys are focusing on the horse race which i understand. i lived in the d.c. area my whole life. but a lot of people listening aren't from here. i would love to see the government shutdown.

i would like to see it shut down around here.ve i grew up in maryland. i moved to virginia and in virginia i'm in a business where i'm not with the government. butn't get federal money to the thing i sell, people have to get loans and 99% of the people who buy what i sell work for the government. and they make a lot of money. for these nothing jobs. people i deal with work for the government and they make $180,000 in year for some administered of. they're probably implementing some of ministry liberals that these big departments -- administrative rules that these big departments push out. i think we should shut down half of it. more than half of it. shutt, one poll that came out this morning

having to do with the shutdown. i want to get your sense on how much the leaders are looking at the poll numbers. this is from usa today. 54% to 29% of those surveyed in from usa today and suffolk university say they oppose the shutdown that president trump is threatened by a newly two to one margin. 43% would blame the president and the gop. 24% would hold congressional democrats responsible. 37 -- 30% would blame both sides equally. both sidesink obviously pay attention to the polls the come out throughout the process and one of the things that i would be really curious to see is if the poll happened right before tuesday's meeting when trump said he would be happy to claim the government shutdown as his own. that was a very interesting statement for him to have made and it frustrates a lot of republicans on capitol hill who

don't want to have the blame for i was speaking with tom cole's and he made the point that the 2020 elections are pretty much as far away as they could possibly be from this government shutdown. if there arening not long-term impacts because it is about a of the discretionary budget. if that is really going to resonate with voters in 2020. shutt for cq roll call. thank you so much. up next, filmmaker rob montz will be here to talk about his documentary, trump as destiny. why the reality show presidency was inevitable. atlantic magazine writer judith shulevitz will be talking about alexa and the impact of other digital assistants and what they're doing to society. stay tuned. ♪

>> the very government under which we live is created in the spirit of compromise and mutual concession. >> thomas jefferson questioned the need for a senate. let's follow the constitution. >> the framers established the senate to protect people from their rulers and as a check on the house. >> the fate of this country and maybe even the world lies in the hands of congress and the united states senate. the senate: conflict and compromise. a c-span original production. exploring the history, traditions and roles of this uniquely american institution. >> please raise your right hand. >> wednesday, january 2 at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span.

>> sunday on q&a. wall street journal columnist holman jenkins talks about his work in politics during the trumpcare. -- trumpet era. -- trump era. the center of be attention. i don't think he's a racist. i think the way he looks at people everyone is either a friend or an enemy. think the america thing is an idea that i think he holds dear, that our country has been shortchanged and is dealing with the rest of the world and that reflects in trade policy and immigration policy. things that in the minds of many of his orders in middle america. i think that is to a degree a sincere set of beliefs on his heart. -- part.

>> washington journal continues. host: our next guest leaves the office of the presidency has grown too big and it is no longer what the founding fathers envisioned. will's amazing what people take for granted. all of our politics. the press conferences and the pageantry. it all rests on a simple horrible truth. groominge's a colossus your country. a flatly unconstitutional viciously anti-democratic monstrosity. i'm referring of course to the presidency. >> they are like crazed people. i like that. rob montz is former

director of libertarian reason magazine. take us back to the constitution. what the founding fathers originally envisioned for the office of the presidency. guest: if people want to watch the full documentary they can just go to reality show president.com. it's run by youtube channel they should really check out. will findst people the original conception of the presidency wholly unrecognizable. it was purposely an extraordinarily modest office which shouldn't have come as a surprise given that the founding authors -- fathers had just shaken off a monarchy. they have seen what happens when you concentrate power in an individual office in a way that can be exploited. when they created the executive they specifically very tightly limited powers. the president supposed to execute the laws that are passed by congress.

--has some basic hearing boring bureaucratic rules to -- roles. acting as a correction against the populist passions. if congress goes wild the president can stem those. but that's it. how long did that vision for the office last? guest: about 150 years. obviously there's some presence that strained against it. abraham lincoln suspends habeas corpus over the course of the civil war. in almost every instance when the president exceeds his powers those limits very quickly step back into place. as i talk about in the documentary, the person who really of shoes and a profound and fundamental transformation is fdr. host: how? guest: it's basically the combination of and public trauma through world war ii and the great depression. charming immensely

aristocratic demeanor. high emotional intelligence. and the technological component can't be downplayed. the invention of the radio and the ability to have a president that can directly connect with every individual voter. chats, heside develops an extraordinarily strong unprecedented and intimate emotional connection with individual voters. host: and you think that's dangerous. guest: it was very promptly proven to be dangerous. that enabled him to radically expand the use of executive orders which up to that point had basically been used for minor tricks to the bureaucracy. to the federal bureaucracy. he issues thousands of them including in the wake of pro-harbor an executive order in turning 100,000 japanese americans on the west coast of the united states.

if you go back and read the media coverage at the time, there was an astonishingly little public pushback at the idea that our president could wentterally order that into thousand innocent civilians be thrown into cages. that shows you how concentrate power makes the system more vulnerable to abuse. host: the name of the documentary, trump as destiny. why the reality show presidency was inevitable. where does donald trump fit into all of this? guest: i don't think he's a fluke. i don't think he's an historic anomaly. i think trump or someone like trump was inevitable given the grotesque set of expectations we have now attached to this office. what trump gives us is what we say we wanted. good and hard. kind ofwithout any rhetorical pretences. that he will just sell himself as the kind of chief officer of the american economy.

he sells himself as our superhero warrior against our enemies. he will sell himself when the time comes to be the nation's healer and the savior of our soul. he basically takes what we say we have wanted and compresses them. he filters those through his atlantic city real estate hustler sensibilities. we might not like what we see but this is what we have been asking for. less of a represents break from barack obama as is commonly assumed. i think there's a lot more commonalities than people want to admit. montz talking about his documentary. republicans (202) 748-8001. democrats (202) 748-8000. independents (202) 748-8002. ahead and start calling him now. you made this for the moving picture institute. what is that? guest: the foundation.

they run a youtube channel called weave the internet tv. it's a politics and comedy to breakhat tries these need partisan tribal divisions that have become standard issue in american politics. when i was making this documentary i would tell people that if i'm doing my job i will piss people off of every partisan political persuasion. because frankly really doesn't fit into the little travel narratives. it's not as simple as people think it is an pointed out certain nuances inevitably makes people uncomfortable. host: when did you start making documentaries? agot: five or six years through the moving picture institute. my first documentary was about the mechanics of the north korean propaganda apparatus. so i only do crowdpleasing topics. the first one was in january. i have a production company in washington, d.c. refused interview was with gene book who wrote a brilliant

before barack obama took office. it was an extraordinarily precedent diagnosis of certain trends holding in american politics. the: bring us back to american politics -- did you have this back then? guest: it was of profound symbolic importance that we elected a black resident. -- president. it was also clear the resident -- rhetoric surrounding the office exceeded that. the messianic tones. intoxicating iconography. can go back and look at all of the advertisements particularly during his 2012 election campaign and it's all about how no president has faced such challenging times and no man except for barack obama is well-equipped to handle them. host: do you think most americans are ok with the current relationship between the president and the public in this emotional connection that you were talking about? guest: i thought so given that

they keep electing these guys to office. given the response of the documentary i think that i put my finger on something that has been bothering people in a very nebulous way. it's like they knew that something was wrong but didn't know what it was. what i'm trying to do is articulate that. i want to allow viewers to respond. teresa is the first from tennessee. republican. go ahead. caller: good morning. trump is exactly what we wanted. we knew everything about trump when we voted for him. we know about the women. we know about the payoff. we knew he wasn't perfect. but trump is exactly what we wanted and he has exceeded every bit of our expectations. the media covered up for obama so much and obama was so fake and corrupt and did things in the dark.

at least we know what trump is. know what he is and he loves this country and is doing everything for this country and that's why they are out to destroy him. and we still support him. i think the question serves as evidence for my point. i think there are a lot of trump voters that knew that he's of the scoundrel. but why did they excuse it? they excused it because they thought that he would in the most vague sense of the spiritual redemption of make america great again whatever that means, a lot of people were willing to excuse it because they thought that he would turbocharge the economy and make them rich. that's just part and parcel of this whole cult of the presidency which is the notion that the president is the chief executive officer of the american economy. the trump has individual responsibility for the direction of a extraordinary complicated

multibillion trillion dollar american economy. which of course he doesn't. this notion of needing to attribute economic performance to the guy who holds that position in the white house is just a common assumption and i think a lot of people willing to excuse what he was because they expected him to make it rain. i think that she is actually right though about the media giving a pass to barack obama. absolutely. specifick about one example. donald trump routinely called the media the enemy of the people. that's not good. that is corrosive rhetoric. initiatedarack obama or espionage act prosecutions against journalists and leakers than all of his predecessors combined. how often did you hear that covered the media? or how often was barack obama portrayed as someone who was a champion for journalistic

freedoms while his lawyers are rapidly going after jim bryson at the new york times for getting leaked documents? the point is presidents can get away with that kind of abuse and that kind of expensive executive power because they're able to cultivate this mistake -- mystique which incapacitates people's critical faculties. host: debbie in north carolina. democrat. good morning. caller: what a great topic and please forgive me if i babylon but please -- babel on -- babble on. but please allow me to get my point on. a lot of what he is saying is true. this is what i'm getting from you. we the people are looking for a savior. someone to fix it. somebody to make it right. somebody to make us feel better.

for me in a nutshell, donald trump is not my savior. choose just -- he is just someone putting off this to supposedly run domestic and foreign affairs and keep the balances of power in place where we don't go to nuclear war. however we live in a frightened society. people are afraid to instead of looking to a savior there looking to donald trump to fix it. and i'm sorry, it's wrong. the young lady that spoke before me said we put him. i didn't vote for donald trump so keep it on yourself. i didn't vote for him. i voted for someone that i thought had the wherewithal, the understanding of government. the understanding of foreign affairs and how things work in the world. unfortunately donald trump doesn't possess those characteristics. so he's all over the place. and he's not listening to anybody but his inner man. i totally agree with the gentleman when he said that the -- donald trump is not a racist but i will say whatever you need me to say for you to be on my

side. host: rob montz. guest: is well put. -- it's well put. this entire notion that every four years our job is to make sure we elect the right alpha male superhero savior to solve the country's problems is a fundamentally undemocratic notion. that's not what democracy is. that's as i call it like a soft monarchy. what we are voluntarily doing is outsourcing democratic agents. when in fact what democracy is this every single day doing the grubby sometimes boring sometimes frustrating work of staying informed about issues and holding all elected officials accountable. it means being informed about your local city council campaigns. which again if you are well informed about that and have strong opinions about it it's probably not going to get you much social media affirmation.

but that's what democracy is. host: where do you think you would have an on this issue had hillary clinton been elected president? guest: i think i would have been in the late discussed. a lot of it for the democrats is there are enthusiastic about expanding executive power which i know hillary clinton would have been. they just don't talk about it openly. if donald trump has any merits with them is he is just forcing us to confront her cicely what is that we've said without any of the niceties. athout him being charming some georgetown cocktail parties. in louisiana, independent. good morning. this is cool. you've got a republican, democrat and independent that are just of tailing and taking everything years ring. listen. my biggest concern is that i'm 61 and the social, political,

economic, judicial foreign-policy issues are so complex that i'm ready for trump to do something that would really be reality tv and that's maybe have some sort of situation where he uses his authoritarian powers to say i'm calling for a martial law situation because the financial situation is so complex to the people. the educational situation is so complex. the news media is so complex. the deep state is so complex. in the hollywood narratives are so much against me. that i think we need a three to five to tenure period to have a national international conversation about what we believe and why we believe it. where we come from. where we are now. where we want to go in the future and how we might get there. and i think there's millions of us who would start the civil defense movement from the bottom up if the military would help from the top down to say we

really want a fair discussion. host: rob montz. guest: given the way the trump talks about the office and american democracy, i certainly am sympathetic to the worry that he would engage in some sort of tyrannical activity. here's the interesting kind of ironic twist to all of this. trump at least rhetorically is the pure grotesque extension of trends that have been building in this office for 100 years. use of therump's formal powers of the office, he's actually one of the least active presidents we've had probably since before fdr. there's a lot of take flashy executive orders like the muslim travel ban that gobble up a lot of attention. as far as the rate of the use of executive orders and also through shuffling through legislation through congress, trump is actually extraordinarily inactive. the things that he likes to do

our the image making. he loves holding big rallies. he loves the confrontational press conferences. he loves sending the viral tweets. actually doing the hard concrete either policymaking is of no interest to him or he and his team are incompetent at it. and that actually fits with this thesis in the sense that now you have a president which is almost entirely rhetorical. almost entirely about this nihilistic entertainment. it's completely detached from any hard-core policymaking. it's all just about feeding this 24 hour vicious nihilistic new cycle which is excellent at. host: you mentioned the president's team. how much of that team is devoted to image management? is that different from previous white house teams? guest: as i point out in the usa today article, about a third of the white house staff is exclusively devoted to image management. and that has held constant for

50, 60 years. that they very specifically craft oftentimes has extraordinarily little to do with the actual hard-core public-policy accompaniments of the guy who holds that office. virginia is next. waldorf, maryland. democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. the policymaking that rob is things -- the environmentale impacts that trump is reversing. as the executive office really have the power to override the court? it doesn't seem like that office actually holds that by the constitution. host: rob montz. guest: i can't speak on those specific issues. as we have seen with deferred action for children, the daca

ruling, was clearly impose unconstitutionally by the obama administration providing temporary legal status tickets that were brought here by illegal undocumented immigrants. sayingtime everyone was the white house definitely can't just order this unilaterally. but very quickly once trump took office we learned what the dangers are of having the white -- inmake policy and on unconstitutional unilateral ways -- the president medium immediately rescinds that order. what you get is a lot of policy instability. these are not running through the appropriate delivered of branches. they are happening willy-nilly in unconstitutional ways by whoever happens to occupy that office. that has a lot of negative effects. obviously president trump has quite a bit of power. but the point i'm making is he

oftentimes access if he doesn't -- acts as if -- he will complain about certain departments as if he is not the guy that runs the. he doesn't seem to be all that interested in the exercise of formal power which maybe is cold comfort for people who think is going to usher in an authoritarian dystopia. would require some legislation and policy and he doesn't seem particularly interested in that. his entire sell to the american people was an extra nearly savvy mix of portable security and economic populism. that stuff, the economic populism dissolved on content soonest -- contact as soon as he takes office in the white house. decisions to a standard issue reaganomics republican establishment and they abandon all the promises he made on the campaign trail. what does that say about how much he is committed to particular policy outcomes? host: only about five minutes left with rob montz.

jeff is waiting in nebraska. republican. go ahead. caller: i agree with a lot that you said. there's no doubt that it's been a chaotic two years. however, to say that he hasn't gotten a lot of things accomplished, that's just not correct. what i would like to know is the press. know and before trump we all knew that the press was biased in one form or fashion and the only when we had on the right-hand side was fox. there's no western now in anybody's mind and i don't think -- this point in history has told us that our press is crooked. that they will give us whatever they want that side to hear. and there's no doubt in anybody's mind. and i don't know that that's ever going to go back. any other way than the way it is

now. host: i think i would take issue with the categorization of fox news is the only independent unbiased we operation in this country. press asbout the crooked while somewhat hyperbolic i do think it gets at an essential point which is -- they will pretend as if they are critical of the president. but i think that they love that he's constantly feeding them things to put on their stations. complicitare equally in this constant suffocating churn where if you are even a slightly engaged american citizen you can't go more than six hours without hearing about president trump. and that's because donald trump knows how to play the new cycle and because the vast majority of pundit media journalist

complex here in washington, d.c. is more than happy to play along with that game because it drives cliques and views. it is ain that sense corrupted industry. when it often means is that issues of genuine moral importance go wholly ignored because they are not to living. -- titillating. i think there crooked in that way. the power ofs of the office of the presidency, do you think this is a one-way my joke but not really joke answer is the only solution is establishing a fourth branch of government which is a purely symbolic royal family. like something they have in the united kingdom. where you have queen and her family who are just the depository for all of the people's hopes and dreams. they serve this necessary symbolic purpose but they basically have no formal powers of government.

i've begun to see the merits of such a system. i'm happy to nominate kanye west and kim kardashian to occupy that office. we can have a national ballot to determine who it is. that's a joke but not really a joke. more realistically i think the answer about whether or not this is a one-way street unfortunately is yes. it's yes in the sense that it's not as if democrats have learned from the last two years that maybe we have an investing too much in this office and that ourselves the american people is that we are going to drain it of some of its formal powers and symbolic importance. democrats are saying we need to get our own superhero savior in that office to counteract the other bad guy. still the same simple hero and villain's narrative. cleveland, tennessee. republican. go ahead. guest totally doesn't get about donald trump. donald trump was trying to pull us back from what europe is

becoming. a socialist style government. and he is totally against that. i think he's doing a good job. the reason i like donald trump is because he sounds just like me. bull.t want any out there to try to tell me something like the clintons would do. so that's why i like donald trump. host: rob montz. guest: for someone who is so viciously opposed to socialism, donald trump is what attracted to socialistic domestic policies. he imposes billions of dollars of tariffs on chinese products. and in the way he decides to cleverly counteract the profound economic costs of those dumb trade policies is to create billions of dollars of subsidies for the affected parties here in america.

authority happened under his administration. that is straight up economic engineering. that is socialism without the branding. caller, the fact that he thinks that trumpism libertarian hero is proof positive of my point. you get so attracted to symbolics, you do not actually questions about whether the concrete policy achievements. tell viewers where they can find your work again. .comt: realityshowpresident and it runs on we the internet tv. host: we will look for your other documentaries. caller: thank you. host: coming up, magazine writer judith shulevitz will talk about andrecent piece about alexa her impact that she and other digital assistants are having on society. we will be right back. ♪ [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] ♪ >> the first government under which we live was created in compromise and the mutual concession. >> thomas jefferson questioned the need for senate. >> let's follow the constitution. >> framers established the constitution as a check on the house. and lies in the hands of congress and the united states senate. the senate, conflict and compromise. a c-span original production exploring the history, traditions, and role of this uniquely american institution. >> please raise your right hand. >> wednesday, january 2, at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on

c-span. wall street q&a, journal columnist talks about his work in politics during the trump era. >> he wants to be the center of attention. ado not think he is racist. everyone is either a friend or an enemy and you can change categories very easily. he holds no grudges. thing is anfirst thatthat he holds dear, our country has been shortchanged and its dealings with the rest of the world and reflected in trade policy and immigration policy, the things in the minds of many of his ard, so thatave he is a sincere set of believes on his part. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern on c-span's q&a.

c-span, where history unfolds daily. c-span was created as a public service. today, we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington dc and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. "washington journal" continues. host: judith shulevitz joins us now from new york and she is a contributor for "of the atlantic " and explore the technology behind digital assistants. start by explaining what digital assistants are and how prevalent they are in society. guest: my piece was specifically about voice activated digital

assistants. i was talking specifically about those canisters or hockey pucks or little devices we have in our homes that we used to help us cooker play music on or make calls on. those are the first items that we are bringing into our homes that are voice-activated, and in the piece, i go further and talk about the future of these, and we will beginning more and more and they will move into the internet of things. we will be talking to our refrigerators, our cars, and all these things will be talking to us. we are inis about how the first stages of bringing these things into our homes. host: who is most likely to be buying these things right now? how are they using them? basically, people who

tend to be first adopters of technology are the first of buy, but quite a few young families are buying them. my own daughter-in-law bought one and she is a two and a half year old at home. i said why did you do that, just that it allows me to play music without having to open up my computer, because when i open it, my son things i'm going to play a movie. it allows parents to do things about having a screen. to keepho want screenings out of their houses are surprisingly the wide demographic buying these. host: do you own one? guest: i own two. i like my google assistant, just going to put in a plug. in part, because he is a chipper male voice that makes me smile.

andle knows a lot of things has a slightly better and more intelligent user interface then alexa. i use it to find out the weather and get answers to questions, but i keep it turned off a lot. researching this piece made me paranoid. have thealready internet at our fingertips on our smartphones and we can download any thousands of apps. is this technology that much of a leap forward? guest: right now, no. toadd what are called skills your digital assistant, you have to go to your phone and download things. so, no, but that will change. what i argue in my piece is that the switch from eyes and fingers to ears and voice is a qualitative difference. the reason is the voice is

different from the eyes. when you hear of voice, you voice, i mindhat and intelligence beyond what these devices currently have. you cannot help it. you are evolutionarily designed to do that. giving these devices voices gives them an upgrade. it causes us to see them is more than they actually are. one of the theses of my pieces is that the robots are here, they do not have bodies, but voices. voices are more insidious and intimate than voices with bodies would be. host: and anderson headline today on this topic, consumer robots are dead, long live alexa. talking about the prevalence of these devices. we are having a conversation with judith shulevitz and if you

want to join the conversation, if you are in the eastern or central time zone, (202) 748-8000, mountain or pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001. you know thattz, google and amazon are pushing these devices to last holiday season, they lost the money on some of the discounts. why are they doing that and where they seeing the technology going? industry observers speculate about that, we do not know. they see them as loss leaders. they want to hook you to their these voices as moving to the internet of things -- your cars, your whatever it is, refrigerators, stoves, per will bepliances, they

hooked into the google's ecosystem or apple ecosystem. whoever wins that market wins the war. that's where the money is going to be. host: before we get there, there are hurdles they need to overcome. start with the privacy hurdle. the stories of these devices recording conversations they were not supposed to be recording and sending them out to contact. how are they dealing with privacy? guest: they do not actually want that to happen because they do not want you thinking about how much they are listening. alexa has to have some year is out there to hear, alexa, which turns it on. it is not streaming that what it here is to the cloud, it is

staying on the device. once you start interacting with your device, it is streamed to the cloud. reputabled more companies give you ways to delete what is on the cloud. most people do not bother and it lives on the cloud for a long time. we do notanies say, sell that information to third parties. they do not need to, they are really big and can monetize it themselves. less reparable companies may start selling it to third parties. they are collecting data on what you are talking about, what you are interested in, and as they collect data on you as you browse. it is the usual privacy invasion. the more it goes into different parts of our home, the more it is going to be listening to us. we have to be very careful about what we are giving up which we tend to not be. we just click on that, i agree button. on another level, the security

on these devices is terrible. we have already had examples of people hacking into baby cams and collecting information on the movements of your baby which is scary. the companies are not sending these things out with any kind of security so the ways in which malfactors, bad actors could hack into our homes are terrifying. host: i want to let you chat with our callers. on. in florida, you are guest: good morning, america. i have a question. i do not have alexa, i have a cell phone. notice whend i, i i call, we talk about issues. the other day and it is happened with other things, but the other

day i was telling it is her it waslling really try in my house and no sooner did we get off the phone did an advertisement on my phone came up for lips. i had noticed the irony. i was just talking about this and then there was an advertisement. our phones listening to us like alexa? guest: that is a really good question and i've asked that and they all say, no, that is ridiculous. the possibility is that it certainly is. as soon as you provide information to a company like that, that information can be sold instantaneously. it all happens algorithmically, so it is definitely possible that your phone is listening to

you, sending information to the cloud, and that is being bought by third parties, advertising sellers who are marketing it. it is possible. i've not been able to confirm that it has happened. industry people roll their eyes so i do not know what to tell you. host: go ahead. something to think about before you bring all of these things into your home. these things are coming into your home whether you like it or not. they're going to be made with voice interactive devices and they are going to become the industry standard and so the question is, how are we as a nation going to ask congress to regulate these things and to regulate the privacy. right now, it is the wild west. host: we want to listen to our viewers this morning in this segment. give us a call, (202) 748-8000 in eastern or central time zones, and (202) 748-8001 if you

are in the mountainous pacific time zones. anotherhulevitz, category of youtube videos that we see in regard to these devices in wind they misinterpret something we ask them to do or something we say. they misinterpret something we asked them to do or something we say. tost: it is incredibly hard program a computer to have a conversation. it is something that people of and working on for 50 years. there been great leaps in natural language processing. computers are getting ever better at understanding the context, but they make all kinds of bloopers. is most famous and viral one a two and a half-year-old trying "twinkle,xa to play star." little

somehow, alexa interpreted that as various pornographic suggestions. the machine is suggesting sites, and the parent is going, no, n o, stop, stop. alexa can misunderstand things and i do not think that is alarming. what is alarming is when alexa starts to understand all too well. a third of my piece was devoted to artificial emotional intelligence. already, and that is when a robot or computer can understand the emotional content of your voice far better humans can using machine learning and to big data. the understanding that these machines have two detected the voice will ber

used to program emotion into the voice of the digital assistants, and then will have seemingly meaningful conversations with our devices. they will seem to understand us and that will be interesting. it will have a lot of power over us just like any active listener has power. host: up next, from indiana, good morning. caller: hello. you, ist calling to tell smoked since i've been a young fellow and i still smoke today. that wantese people to bring religion into this thing as far as legalizing it, they got no room to talk about nothing. they need to keep religion out of it. host: we will stick to a discussion about digital assistants this morning since judith shulevitz is only with us for the next half hour.

her piece and -- her piece in lantic, alexa is a humble servant, very soon she could be much more. joseph is next in massachusetts. caller: i think she is right on the ball. finally found one person who is standing up and analyzing these things. thank you very much. guest: thank you. host: how may people are ouryzing the impacts that interaction are having on not only our technology but our emotional lives? aret: a lot of people analyzing the technology. the emotional components is really interesting and has not been well covered. it is a new field and people do not know about it. there is a good story behind its invention. there was a female engineering 20 years agomit

realized and studying the neuroscience of decision-making to try to get computers to store data and a more intelligent and she was reading about the roles of the emotions in decision-making and she realized that computers needed emotions. she invented a field that could have been called emotional computing, but she did not want to be that woman in the m.i.t. engineering department, so she called it affective computing. that was 20 years ago. by now, there are companies all over the country that are using this ability to analyze emotion in your voice, face, and the body language and use it for all sorts of purposes. medical uses, there are all of of psychological, psychotherapeutic applications of this, machines that can

understand what is going on to -- with you, cars that can understand that you are agitated and distracted, so they can half drive themselves, they will not hand over the car to you if you distraught or drunk, so this is being used for good and a lot of ways. but it could be used for ill. the powers understand you better than you understand yourself is a lot of power. when they start using that power lusion ofm the il understanding into these devices that will be ubiquitous in your home, car, and office, that is handing a lot of power over to robots. i do believe these are robots. i think we need to think about that. that is the piece that people are not thinking about, and i am proud of making that a big part of my piece. host: i want to talk about the power of us to be confused by whether we are talking to a robot or another person. this is a link that was included

piecesof "the atlantic" about google duplex. a computer calling to make a hair appointment but sounding very human. listen to the conversation. guest: that was in my piece. >> hello, may i help you? >> hi, i am looking for something on may 3. >> sure, one second. >> mhmm. >> what time are you looking for around? >> at 12:00 p.m. >> we do not have a 12:00 p.m. available. -- closest we have is one 1:15. >> do you have anything between 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.? >> depending on what service, what services you looking for? >> a woman's haircuts for now. >> we have a 10:00. >> 10:00 is fine. >> what is the first named?

>> first name is lisa. >> perfect, i will see lisa. >> great, thanks. host: talked us through that technology a little bit and the concerns about it. guest: that is so great, the reason i like the uptalk, the way the women's voices go up at the end of the senses. and -- the end of the . -- sentences. boo thata big boo google made. the industry went nuts because it betrays the trust that we want to have with our devices that they are going to acknowled ge that they are devices and not try to fake us out.

basically, this is all out there already. google is going to use it in relatively benign ways, and lots of other companies and actors are not. snippet of your voice or a voice and make it sound like you, and have you say all kinds of things. not a human voice but i machine generated voice and to make it sound human and do a deep fake. that exists with facial technology individual technology. this is scary stuff because it is facing the line between real voices and machine generated, and if you want to talk about "fake news", this takes it to a whole new level. another area in which congress ought to get involved, regulators ought to get involved, and start thinking about what we are willing to let people use and not use. how we are willing to let companies take us out. host: about 10 minutes left with

judith shulevitz talking but her piece with "the atlantic." carl has been waiting in a new hampshire. good morning. caller: hello, how are you? host: doing well. caller: my comment is that i look at it and i tell educators that 20 years from now, we will be graduating kids out of the eighth grade, and that will be the end of high school, and then we will send them to computer school for a couple of years that they can learn how to push they got theirw phone right there, they ask you any question, they can give you any answer they need -- it will be perfect. we will save a time of money and we will have these people and the teachers when i have to work very hard. what do you think? are, certainly --

artificial intelligence is being used and you would like to think that their own the people who program. education, i do believe, requires the human touch, but how that is going to be evolve as devices become more savvy is the question. those who can afford it get education from other humans and those who cannot hold in depth doing a vocational education by way of distance learning penned by way of these devices. i think there is some think -- something to your dystopian vision, but i do not think it is going to happen in 20 years. ofo worry about the decline the humanities in favor of the computer science and engineering, but what you are talking about is not going to happen just yet. i really do not think you can robot yet.ren via

host: adam is up next in washington dc. caller: you just took the words out of my mouth. when it comes to computers, everybody's biggest fear is that something matrix is going to happen, but aren't thses -- these computers only able to do what we tell them to do? ofwould take some type consciousness or drive, but these computers are only doing what programmers tell them to do -- am i correct in that? thank you for the topic. [laughter] guest: that is the question. that is the whole question. they can only do what humans do, but highly trained humans can tell them to

do all kinds of sophisticated things. they can program them without the rhythms that reflect their own biases, and there is a lot of discussion about sexism and racism in algorithms. google searches my response to your name -- respond to your name and decide it is a black or white to name and start serving you data or ads that make assumptions about that. even thoughhat there is human intelligence at the back end, computers can do a lot that is worrisome and it does once again need to be regulated. far as the matrix goes, i do not actually believe this myself but there are people out in silicon valley who are awaiting what is called a singularity which is the moment when computers become so intelligent that we can no longer understand them and will simply be working for them. will be able to upload

our consciousness and two machines and we want a longer need our bodies. this is two certain people in silicon valley, are -- this, to people in silicon valley, is a utopian vision. these are machines that we invented that we control, but if we want to control them, we have to have laws. we have to privacy laws and other kinds of regulations. i urge everyone watching this program to think about making this an issue that you actually vote on. host: joe waiting in tennessee. caller: j, you are the best. one thing to keep in mind is that these devices are all manufactured in china. if you think that the chinese

government does not want to listen in on what is going on here, you are in complete denial. the woman with -- that was just arrested, the ceo of huawei, she was accused of the manufacturing cell phones that are listening on on what you are doing and transmitting it to the cloud. g -- a database established in china just for this type of thing. that is something to keep in mind and i will never have one in my house. and thanks. host: judith shulevitz? guest: i do not think that china has chips and everything. these things are manufactured all over the world at this point. i do think that we have been very lax and united states on

cybersecurity. we have dropped the ball. senator mark warner has been aing around promoting cybersecurity doctrine in which carefullyo think more about what kind of technology and privacy we are going to allow into our homes, offices, and personal devices. think -- i do not see it as widespread as the caller, but we need to have policies that take this kind of security risk into account. host: will is in charleston, west virginia. caller: i had a question. in west virginia, our state constitution calls for certain protections around things you check out from a library. do you see may the information collected by these devices

bringing about similar legislation? guest: i hope so. i hope you are right. i had not thought about the connection with the privacy over what you check out from the library as being used as a model for what we could have in terms of cyber privacy, that is interesting. we can gain hope ownership over our personal information as they are doing and trying to do further in europe, for example. this should just simply be owned and sliced, diced, and sold by commercial entities and subject to subpoena by the government. areink all of these things scenarios that we are beginning to understand and once again, we need to have at the minimum the intoty to choose to opt that we rather now

only have the ability to opt out which tends to be very well hidden. we need to be emulating the europeans but the going even further, no question. host: the peace in the november issue of "the atlantic, alexa, ." uld we trust you the author is judith shulevitz. thank you for your time. guest: thank you so much. host: until 10:00, we will talk about former fbi director james comey's testimony on capitol hill and particularly his comments calling on republicans to quote, "stand up" the president trump. want toortantly, we hear your reaction, republicans, democrats, and independents can start calling in now. we'll be right back. ♪

the first the government under which we live was created in the spirit of compromise and mutual concession. >> thomas jefferson questioned the need for the senate. >> the framers believed. >> let's follow the constitution. >> the framers established the senate to protect people from their rulings and as a check on their house. >> the fate of this country lies in the hands of congress and the united states senate. conflict and, compromise. a c-span original production exploring the history, traditions, and roles of this uniquely american institution. wednesday, january 2, at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a

public service by america's cable television companies. we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy events in washington dc and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your cable or satellite provider. "washington journal" continues. former fbi director james comey was on capitol hill yesterday. he encouraged republicans to quote, "stand up" to president trump. here is one of the headlines from after his closed-door testimony yesterday. and we will talk about some of the reaction, but we also want to hear from you. republicans call in at (202) 748-8001, democrats, (202) 748-8000, independents, (202) 748-8002.

it was a part of a busy day on capitol hill. other news on the russian investigation coming out ofterday including a pair briefings from the senate intelligence committee from the highly anticipated report. the story noting that the senate released a pair of reports monday that russia engaged in an all out social media campaign on donald trump's behalf. the report from new knowledge, one of the groups that was thatd to help write report, said that operations in russia began in st. petersburg in 2013 with more than 1000 people engaged in round-the-clock influence operations, first targeting ukrainian and russian citizens and well before 2016, american citizens. the scale of their operations was unprecedented reaching 126 million people on facebook, at least 20 million users on instagram.

point 12 million users on twitter and they uploaded over a thousand videos to youtube. towardss clear bias president trump in the operation. they posted no pro-clinton content on instagram or facebook, except for one post encouraging muslims to attend a rally supporting clinton. otherews and a view headlines, this from the mueller pro. flynn accused of illegal lobbying in turkey. that is the front page of "the washington post." charging two business associates of michael flynn acting as agents of the turkish government describing and are markable detail how the united states to expel a rival of their turkish president. so we are going to focus on comments yesterday encouraging republicans to stand

up to president trump. here is a bit from james comey after the closed-door meeting. [video clip] >> another day of hillary clinton's emails and steele dossier. this while the president of the united states is lying about the fbi, attacking the fbi, and attacking the rule of law in this country -- how does that make any sense? republicans used to understand the actions of the president and the words of the president matters, the rule of law matters, and the truth matters. where are those republicans today? at some point, someone has to stand up in the face of fear of fox news, fear of mean tweets -- a stand up for the values of this country and do not slink away into retirement, but stand up and speak the truth. i find it frustrating to be here to answer questions about things that are parlous important than the values that the country is built on. host: some of the reaction immediately from the white house

press office, sarah sanders with her tweets yesterday evening -- republicans should stand up to comey and his tremendous corruption from the fake hillary investigation to lying on the pfizer abuse. the country ofid service by firing him and exposing hamper the shameless fraud he is. that man is up next, livingston, new jersey. democrat, good morning. diane, livingston, new jersey. i think it is a shame and disgrace that republicans lewd jobs,n with his all of them. his campaign have been lying to their contacts to russian, they have to denigrate

our department of justice. doesn't it dawned on trump's supporters that it is his men it now that he appeared to at -- to fire everyone that was in the obama justice department, he smears good men like robert mueller who is that purple heart, he denigrates our thecial system saying that pfizer judges were fooled and tricked and asked if he really think he is going to for the american people and the justice department? it is his justice department that is not pursuing killer is emails. if you watch -- pursuing hillary's emails if you watch. when they talked about the cost of the mueller investigation, it turns out that he actually made money because of all of the tax cheating and the bank fraud that

has gone on all around donald trump his whole life. host: this is coleman in maryland. beler: hi, my comments would -- i cannot understand and i am so confused about this system that we are in right now. how can we have a president that will have a lot of respect for russia, for north korea, for detectors, but no single respect for the justice department of the greatest country on the face of the earth ? the surprising part of the whole he gave the wife of the senate majority leader a position and for that reason, i see that as a bribe.

making get incapacitated to even speak out against trump for any reason. this is corruption that is going on. the life of the senate majority leader is a servant on that. america has been sold. it is a shame. host: that is coleman in maryland this morning. the want to join the conversation, republicans, (202) 748-8001, (202) 748-8000 democrats (202) 748-8000,, (202) 748-8002. emergingjames comey from the close a door testimony yesterday with the two house committees calling on republicans to quote, "stand up" to president trump, it was his second day of closed-door testimony before the committee hearings. monday, the six-hour hearing

happened behind closed doors and james comey insisted on transcripts to be released thein 24 hours and that was same arrangement that he had for his previous day of testimony which occurred earlier this month. james comey testified, congressman jim jordan was on fox news and talked about what he expected to hear in his upcoming discussion with james comey. [video clip] >> i think i'm going to ask him about that comey memo. he did seven different memos back with the president and chief of staff, i will have questions. andthing about jim comey, for him, it is all about jim comey. he thinks the rules do not apply to him. he says he got away with not following the rules when they interviewed mike flynn, and

there is a host of other things that just were not consistent supposed to doe things all the way back to when he took the assistant away. all of those things plus some specifics in the comey memos is where i will focus. >> when he came out after seven hours in front of you guys last week, he said, they are still asking me about hillary clinton's emails. i guess in his mind, that subject was closed and he was right not to recommend going after her. >> we are more focused on the russian investigation, but you have to look at the contrast. think about this fundamental thing. he called the clinton investigation a matter. and seven different times in the comey memos when he is talking about president trump, he referenced the fact that president trump was not under investigation, but he would not say that. he led the country to say that.

that she allowed the country to say that. to believe that he is. it is all about jim comey and i think he mishandled both investigations all the way through. your reaction on phone lines from republicans, democrats, and independence. natalie is an independent in washington dc . caller: thank you. we really have to look at who is running and what power is being displayed. senate mcconnell of the hands to doto his whatever he and his supporting republicans have done. he kept a supreme court seat open from virtually a year and then comes out and thinks that the democrats are being obstructionists. this man has taken the power and he sits there now, will not to bring issues to the floor with

both the house and the senate have asked to be debated. that is the person we have to look out for. person inis a vile our country. he is one who is leading the way to fascism. i suggested they do that. host: you are calling in on our lines, why are you an independent? caller: i am independence because i would like to see us truly have a country that is quote unquot somewhat balancede. years ago, i was a republican and now, look what has happened? up and down the east coast in the middle of the midwest, where is there a decent speaking republican who cares about this country. not one. it has become transactional which is exactly why this man

who was sitting in the oval office, the thief of the world, the vilest person i've ever met in my 90 years on this earth, there he sits. if people do not to wake up, that is where he is leading us that totalitarianism. mitch mcconnell are the ones we have to watch out for. what has he done for kentucky? the state that has the worst in terms of people being taken care of. no medicare, no nothing for them -- that is where we have to watch. host: natalie talking about republicans in the senate. james comey calling on republicans to stand up to president trump. there will be one familiar face in the senate to will no longer be there. that is senator lamarr alexander the republican of tennessee.

he announced that he would not -- the president said he may have his mind in august while he was fishing in canada, and he concluded that his three terms in the senate and one as governor is enough. he says he is adding that it is to step in.ther years willing to work with us some democrats and a close ally of mitch mcconnell. he served as the chairman of the pensions committee and he was at the center of the unsuccessful 2017 push to repeal and replace the portable care act. decision means that the second time in two years, tennessee will have an open u.s. senate. bob corker announced the last year that he would retire at the end of this year. back to your calls, rachel on the line from texas. caller: i want to say something that is beginning to -- i am

nervous. trump was a was telling people that they did not have to talk, he had pardoned -- he could pardon them. for someone to say some like that, it just made him look so guilty. everyone does not want to do anything to try because he thinks he is creating jobs. this was something that was put on ya'lls show about two months ago from the labor girl of labor statistics -- i'm sorry. host: that's ok. that thehe last months obama was in office, there are created andn jobs the first 21 months that trump was in office, 4.05 million jobs were created. trump is not telling the truth, he did not create more jobs.

i just want something to be done. he looks guilty. peopledicted eight already for what? they trumped, that is what happened. i just hope they finish the investigation. host: leslie is a republican in new jersey. caller: i just had a comment that i'm so pleased to hear that some of these people from all over the country are watching c-span, but they are not really paying attention. if you really listen to what is going on in congress and the senate, you can see that there is such a power struggle. it is more about power than the people. the democrats are afraid of losing their stronghold, and anybody who voted democrat has voted for socialism. that is a fact. when i heard bernie sanders is safe for himself that he was a democratic socialist, i almost hit the floor.

the -- in america with common core, they do not teach history like they used to. , and i kneweighbors that they voted democrat because this is a democratic state, but i asked them, do you know what the ussr is. and they said what? so nobody is teaching these kids to know that that is socialism. if you have not visited a communist country, you have no idea what it is like. for everyone who is so pro-democrat in the democrat want to globalism which is another total control, i am just shocked that the people are not paying attention to what is really going on. host: wendy in utah, democrat. caller: yes, i am totally appalled at how trump is handling our affairs.

the previous caller, republicans said that democrats are not paying attention. democrats are paying attention. i've been paying attention all along. i totally think that trump is vil. agree with the other democrat caller's and independent callers, that he is lying all the time. he is attacking our justice system. i totally agree with comey, i do not know why republicans have to have this review of the clinton emails. i was watching a rally when trump indicated to russia to go after hillary's emails. he is talking to the russians under oursians

noses and people are not paying close enough attention. i'm appalled that to mr. mcconnell on the fact that his wife has a position in the administration. really fearful that we are on the road to totalitarianism. the fact that the republicans say the word socialism because they really know what the word socialism really means -- it means the government has control of production. i do not think this country has fear of being socialist. it is not that way, it was not built this way, and they need to get a lot more educated. host: wendy in utah this morning. president trump is certainly paying attention to the ins and outs of the mueller investigation tweeting about it today. the is one of his tweets, biggest outrage yet in the long winding which -- witch hu

nt, is the fact that 19,000 betweenssages zok at his fbi lover, lisa page, or purposely and illegally deleted. would have explained the whole hoax, which is now under protest. michael flynn will be in court today for sentencing in the investigation that went into the mueller investigation to his past deeds. appearance will be viewed as a key milestone in an investigation for 19 months with an increasing vitriol from the president. the president also tweeting about michael flynn this morning saying, that -- good luck t oday, michael flynn.

the great and highly successful political campaign. there was no collusion. that is the president on twitter this morning. reaction to all of this and in particular, james comey calling on republicans to quote, "stand up" the president trump. joe is a republican in pennsylvania. caller: good morning. comey asked republicans to stand up to donald trump but, obviously with all of the howction of all documents, investigations were handled, the wasler probe -- the probe started by fake information from the dnc. how can you say that all of this is fair? we are wasting time and money and that is only meant to hold back president trump from doing the things that we all need done . in fort lauderdale,

florida, and independent. caller: how are you? i want to say one thing. in the last 20 years, we've had oy network running this country. the reason i say that as i was over in china in 1995, i had a driver and interpreter and my driver had to hold his hand on the worn to move all of the cars. there were no cars. the following year, i went to russia, and the russians can only buy food on monday, this on tuesday, that on thursday, and they were treated like garbage. we were 100% and they were zero. ok? i've traveled to 140 countries around the world. i've watched our country go down, down, down and the rest of europe go up, up, up.

for example, to go to the university of miami, it costs $62,000 a year. itgo to public college, costs approximately $30,000 a year. every kid is going to build roughly $100,000 or over. it is disgraceful. and seniors are having a hard time. what i mean by the good old boy all of the politicians are taking care of themselves and their job, when they get elected, is to help people, period. all of a sudden, trump comes in -- and if you would have told me to even think of voting for trump, i would've thought you were crazy -- he tries to break up the good old boy network and the republican party and the elite, and the democrat party hate him. wake up, americans.

network has boy taken our country down the river. we are in serious trouble. germanyame back from and over in eastern europe, and it is absolutely beautiful. i was in milan, we had a lecture over in italy, and we had a lecture and the kids get free college education and healthcare . i raise my hand that i said to the person talking to us, how much you pay and taxes and he said, 35% a year. we have been given a big snow job. look at the deficit in our country. look at how long we have been in afghanistan. 17 years. disgraceful. all of a sudden, somebody comes in and tries to break up the bureaucracy, and people are him out of there because they want the good old boy network to continue. host: that your points.

-- got your point. liz in california. caller: i just want to clarify a few things. a lot of people will indicate that the good old boys. callers game on and blast our president. do the research. go back and find out to are the owners of media, who are the owners and who are their connections. put out the truth and that is what our president is doing. he is being blasted the way he allnd all corners and aspects on both sides of republican and democrat side. if you guysd and did not follow him, he did not even want to raise his aunt to do the comment to republicans. you know why? because he is in the middle.

he has already seen both sides. orse that are independent democrats that want to keep blasting cam, get off the news and go do your research. is public information understand. then we will understand other things. who is connected? if you are over 50 and understand the true democrats, they are even falling apart because socialism is trying to be taken into account now. one avenue of criticism this morning of the president comes from patty davis, the daughter of ronald reagan. there is an inherently parental role to being the president of the united states. the person holding the office is supposed to know more than we do about the dangers of the world and is supposed to keep us

from falling. what happens when the president is the biggest child in the room or any room? i'm not sure the country has fully comprehended the damage being done by a president to his misbehaving so frequently, it it is a new story when he does not. davis's column, "the washington post. steve, you are up next. caller: i've been listening to some of your people calling in people that are on the republican side, they are talking about socialism. i cannot believe these people have got blinders on. youyou want to talk about socialism, the guy from florida ,entioned, free education paying 35% in taxes. this is what the democratic party wants to do all along.

, theo help the people kids, got to college, go to where they got to go and the a good citizen and working citizen and provide for their families. you want to talk about socialism, if you think socialism is so bad, socialism is something to do with your social security, your medicare, things that you work for, that you put into the system that you get back when you get older. trump is trying to take all that down. man is a criminal. you people that are praising him , these are republican, fbi people and justice department people that are trying to innovate him, not democrats. democrats are just listening to

call me, it -- to james comey, a republican, where are all the good shepherd's? host: our last call in today's washington journal but we will be back here tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern 4:00 a.m. .acific in the meantime have a great tuesday. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] >> coming up live in about half hour discussion on u.s. china relations over the past year and whether they can be described as a new cold war hosted by the wilson center and washington, d.c. live at 10:30 a.m. and more

live coverage from the wilson center with a look at yemen and possible peace talks to end its civil war. interventions by saudi arabia, , live at 2:30an eastern. the french embassy hosting a discussion on the role of international organizations like .ato and their impact on peace we will hear from the french ambassador to the u.s. live at 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. you can watch online at c-span.org and on the free c-span radio app. funding runs out for several federal government agencies friday night at midnight unless congress passes legislation. no agreement among the house, senate and white house. president trump's request for funding a border wall between the u.s. and mexico. the house meets tomorrow for legislative work with both scheduled in the evening. the senate is in session today working on criminal justice reform. you can watch the house live on c-span and the senate on c-span2

. >> when the new congress takes office in january it will have the youngest, most diverse freshman class in recent history. , livengress, new leaders on c-span starting january 3. ♪ >> the very government under which we live was created in the spirit of compromise and mutual concession. >> thomas jefferson questioned the need for senate. >> let's follow the constitution. >> the framers established the senate to protect people from their rulers. and as a check on the house. >> the fate of this country and maybe even the world lies in the hands of congress and the united states senate. >> the senate, conflict and

compromise, a c-span original production exploring the history, traditions, and role of this uniquely american institution. >> please raise your right hand. >> january 2 at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. us --jennifer shot joins jennifer shutt joins us. a deal that needs to come together. what is the latest on the state of the negotiations and who is doing that negotiating? guest: we know they been in conversation for months now about how to address border wall funding, whether they will do what .6 billion dollars or somewhere between that and $5 billion. it seems like right now we are in the final days heading into that deadline and there's