george will. [applause] george: the book would make wonderful christmas cards. [laughter] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org >> we are going to stay at the texas tribune festival and take you live to a discussion on domestic terrorism. we will hear from former homeland security under president obama. live coverage. >> we don't have one labeled as such and talk as a panel whether that is an important gap that needs to be closed simply for the symbolic purposes and the things that follow from the symbolism but some of the terrorism statutes in title 18

actually do apply to domestic trim scenarios. the question is when can the federal government get involved in charging? f it's a terrorist attacks but involves explosives, federal officials, transportation hubs, in those scenarios, federal law can be charged in those scenarios. the practical gap, there's two, guns and other forms of violence . domestic terrorism using the most common method of attack would be guns, that is not covered at the federal level. secondly, you may have heard of something heard the material support statute. it gets complicated. the one everyone has heard out that flat out supports to a foreign terrorist organization that has been designated as

such. we don't do that with domestic terrorist organizes. that is a separate gap and whether any of these gaps should be closed and i think we will talk about. you mentioned federal, federal, federal. where there is a murder using a vehicle or a gun or an edged weapon, states will prosecute that. >> there's no scenario involved in active violence that is going to violate general purpose state laws. in our most recent tragedy here in el paso, there are capital murder charges have been filed by the d.a. doesn't matter that we can't file a domestic terrorism charge in order to seek the death penalty. >> going back to previous cases of mass violence in the united states, there has been talk about what needs to be done and not much has happened because of that. lisa, you wrote that regarding

domestic terrorism, it's time to turn from talk to action and confront this threat. what specifically do you have in mind? what should be done to fill some of these gaps that bobby mentioned or other elements of domestic terrorism. . ken who had my role and that piece you wrote was really about calling on all of us, political leaders, citizens, to put aside political and part aside the partisanship and do our duty as we how we put it to focus on the most urgent threat we have as a nation, gun violence, mass violence, russian attacks on our democracy, all of those things that we need more bipartisanship and nonpartisanship. on domestic terrorism in particular, i think there are

few things we should do, we need to call it by its name and i would cite a good move by department of homeland security just last week in issuing a strategy paper that says in quite clear language from the department of homeland security, domestic terrorism and mass attacks are as great a threat as foreign terrorism. that is given the headlines and the incredible tragedy that communities like el paso, dayton and others have faced has been apparent but hasn't been said enough certainly by the federal government and experts at the federal level. so we have to call it out. i think we need to put it on the same priority list. we have to put it on the same plane as foreign terrorism, which is not to say we should be ignoring or downgrading our approach and our focus on

foreign egg domestic terrorism. there is a lot of you namity on this panel on that score but we need to recalibrate. leadership gets to one of the things that we need to do and ne is a path to domestic terrorism. mary has written on this. but doing that, i think will apply the same moral to acts of violence that are directed with the intent to intimidate a civilian population, the same program that we have for foreign terrorism. we also need to restore the job of the homeland security and counterterrorism adviser in the white house. so that role, the one i had has been downgraded. the person who serves in the now

downgraded function of that job i think has been put into witness protection after he had to make a statement about the whole sharpeygate. >> there is a position but doesn't report to the president. >> correct. they are calling the homeland security adviser and he has been downgraded. what does this mean? is this bureaucratic baloney? no. when i was in that role, the idea was and president bush started this to have one person operating at the most senior level in the white house whose job it was to focus 24/7, wake up every day and focus not on the next summit or foreign leader engagement but on reports to the homeland and i did, which is why president obama gave me

the name dr. doom, every time i saw him, i was bringing him bad news. structure matters and how you spend your time matters. i met with him every morning in the oval office and briefed him on terrorism threats, cyberthreats. terrorism was always at the top of the list. it means there is focus in the white house at the top at the leadership level. means that you have somebody in the white house that can convene the cabinet, operating with my level with the empowerment from the president of the united states to coordinate our response to on terrorism events in this country and abroad and coord fate policy. ou need to have that policy in one person. other things that need to be done, funding in communities and grassroots efforts to intervene

when people are going down the bad path. >> if any of you in the last couple of years read or heard anything about the need for a domestic terrorism -- you have been beating this drum for a while. tell us what specifically do you have in mind? what would a federal domestic terrorism statute have and what's the benefit of doing it? >> i tell you, i was thinking about this and lisa was before me holding the role of assistant attorney general, we were thinking a lot about domestic terrorism and whether there was a gap that needed to be filled. in august, 2017, most of us in this room recall the rally in charlottesville which ended with a vehicular domestic terrorist

attack and ran his vehicle killing heather and wounding dozens of others. and i watched that and i saw what happened and i thought this is the same kind of terrorism that we have been seeing across europe and other places on behalf of foreign terrorist organizations like isis for the last couple couple of years. the vehicle had become a weapon of choice in the lot of attacks in u.k., france, germany. i immediately wrote about it that very next day to say we have a gap in our statutes because if this person, james beforein charlottesville he committed his attacks like the shooter in el paso had pledged before he committed his attacks, i can guarantee either or both of them would be charged with crime terrorism. or attempting to attack on

ehalf of a foreign organization. crimes are away of expressing their condemnation of activity ta is beyond what is permissible in a society of laws and of the rule of law. so there is that moral aquifflens si in the way we approach terrorism. people will say is it just that? a lot comes from that. >> but you need to know what the threat is so you can appreciate

and understand even if you don't appreciate the efforts that law enforcement and our intelligence community and our government put forth to combat that threat and more importantly the way that you as community members can be aware of the threat and looking out for things you might see in your own community. we know in the area of international terrorism that as many as 70% of the cases, there was a family member, a friend, teacher, coach, religious leader who saw something going wrong in that person's life before they decided to commit a terrorist act and the same thing holds true when we are talking about attacks that are not based on a foreign terrorist organization but on ideologies, extremist ideologies, whether it is white supremacist, which is the most thal ideology and has been

that way or animal rights extremism. when you commit an act of violence in order to intimidate or coerce such terrorism. the gap is two-fold. right now and you will hear this a lot that there are 51 crimes that would apply to domestic terrorism but those are very specific, involves use of explosives or attacks on u.s. government property or officials. no crime that applies to use of a weapon to commit a mass shooting to intimidate or coerce if it is not tied to a foreign organization. there is no crime that would apply to stockpiling weapons intending them to be used in committing a mass shooting for ideological purposes. so as i could seef of a statute and i talked with people on capitol hill and civil rights and civil liberty groups and i have been trying to talk to as

many people i can to see if we can't have a proposal that sort of satisfies all the concerns. the basic outline of this would be that you are criminalizing things of violence, murder, kidnapping, assault with a dangerous weapon, aggravated assault, but when done with the intent to intimidate or coerce would influence government, and when done in the united states or u.s. territories, this would be terrorism within the territorial jurisdiction of the u.s. and i say that because it would also apply to a terrorist attack on behalf of isis al qaeda. crime of violence here in u.s. to intimidate or coerce. it would form a predicate for law enforcement to use the types of tools they use to combat international terrorism, we can talk about those, online,

undercover sting operations. and i understand that but first are aimed at prevention. there is a predicate and can do some of that now. but when they know this is the statute that they are predicating their investigation on, it gives them a wealth that is more direct as opposed to calling it something else in order to use those tools and allow for the criminalization of the stockpiling of weapons, knowing and intending that those are to be used in committing a crime of terrorism within the u.s. jurisdiction. and that is probably more complicated than we want to get involved with here. but you may recall u.s. coast guard lieutenant was recently arrested for stockpiling arsenals, assault rifles and other weapons and written

extensively where he would be accumulating weapons and targets and ultimately a series of mass shootings. because there was no applicable federal crime he was charged with possession of a silencer, unlawful possession of drugs and had drugs in his home and unlawful possession of a firearm by a drug addict. these are all max five years offenses. those are minor offenses and they are not crimes of violence. the magistrate judge ruling on whether to detain him prior to trial said i'm not going to be able to detain him. you have not charged him with a crime of violence. it was appealed and the district judge said i will detain him but it is a serious concern when you commit a e wants to

mass attack. last thing and i know we need to move on. what about hate crimes? the government has been more aggressively using those recently. the u.s. attorney john bass after el paso say, we are investigating this like domestic terrorism but he said so we will be looking whether to charge him with a hate crime and you might think why that? he didn't have a terrorism offense and hate crimes can fill that back. the tree of life synagogue shooter has been charged with hate crimes. but they aren't going to fill that gap and serve a different role within our criminal justice scheme and we can talk about that. t that is one option a fruitful option and good option that is being used. >> there is the mechanics of

government which is how does the federal government and might surprise you that amounts of money and resources are dedicated to resources and yet, we have nick here who wan the national counterterrorism center, was the deputy before that and have said that absolutely none of that time was directly focused on domestic terrorism. nick, how does the public understand how the national counterterrorism center wasn't focused on this threat? >> i'm the nonlawyer of the bunch here, but i would fully subscribe to the set of comments made before me that we need a better legal framework. the way our government approaches the set of domestic challenges that we face is different than the way we approach our set of international terrorism concerns

and a couple of things that happened in the last couple of years that brought that home to me. when i would go abroad and meet with my counterparts and think about international versus domestic terrorism and would look at me if i was bringing a lexicon to the table because they didn't make any such divide but talked about terrorism and the kinds of terrorism. why are you americans complicating this by thinking of it in two different ways. when i thought about the tree of ife synagogue massacre and i thought how are my friends and colleagues in the house responding when an event happens like that. i knew in the white house situation room sitting along side mary and lisa, we would have kicked and swung into action if there was an individual tied to isis or walk, the c.i.a., every national

security agency would have been around the table with us trying to figure out what piece of this can we help solve or address. on the other hand, as soon as that person is identified as being a domestic terrorist and al qaeda, to isis or all of us pushed ourselves back from the table and said f.b.i. over to you. and it becomes an f.b.i. malter to treat as a law enforcement set of challenges and i don't say that in any way of being critical. we tend to leave them alone on the playing field when dealing with this set of issues. to their credit they are ramping up that game. you have seen f.b.i. officials talking about that, but i think the rest of the government may need to catch up in temperatures of its ability to contribute to solutions. >> why is it important to have a

whole of government approach in that area? >> one of the things we learned in the entire period since 9/11, no one tool in the tool box is actually sufficient to deal with any of our national security problems. we couldn't bomb or fight our way out of our international terrorism problem nor northern aid. intelligence was part of the equation. the same is true with domestic terrorism. the department of homeland security has stepped up its game with the document last week that acting secretary released that says that the department of homeland security will be approaching this set of domestic terrorism issues with renewed urgency. will that follow with resources, programs, personnel and dollars all of us bureaucrats sue as

metrics to find out if you are serious and i thought about my own organization, the national counterterrorism center and i thought all of that effort and energy that created that after 9/11 and told in the early days focus overseas. focus on this international terrorism problem. and that is living where we live today makes no sense. why would you have your counterterrorism organization with some of the best mind and access to the best information on terrorism-related matters and wall them off from this set of terrorism concerns that we agree is at the top. if you go around to american communities right now, including texas, you have the right to be inspired by isis and al qaeda. the approximate threat is posed by individuals motivated by white supremacist ideology or

anti-semitism. bringing it into the f.b.i. is not a silver bullet and doesn't mean the good guys are here and we'll fix the problem but it comes closer that whole of government approaches to these solutions. if you are dealing with these solutions, whole of government means the department of health and human services and could bring mental health resources to bear and the department of education being part of the equation because some of this stuff is happening in our schools, middle schools and high schools. whole of government is what you ought to be demanding whether democrat and republican and some of us have been talking about that. >> back to you, lisa, you have written about the importance of getting cooperation in working with social media companies to talk about the environment that breeds domestic terrorism. how can we build on that model of working together within the

government, sometimes well, sometimes not and build on those successes to improve that relationship with the private sector? >> there are so many of the same threads that all of us have seen in the international terrorism front in the fight against al qaeda, the fight against isis that are now going to the domestic terrorism fund. nd the individuals are getting radicalized the same way in the domestic terrorism context and you have seen now unfortunately for years with regard to isis. when i served in the white house and working closely with mary, nick and others, we were really focused on this problem of individuals radicalizing online d isis literally abusing social media platforms which was

designed to promote free speech, promote community, free expression and literally being abused and turned to a completely opposite purpose by radicalizing and inspiring individuals to violence and spew hate and to inspire actual attacks. we are seeing that now in the domestic terrorism context and it makes sense when you think how much time we all spend online. the same individuals who are disaffected, who are looking for some sense of community which by the way is why i hate the term lone wolf, whether they are nspired by isis or white spreemsy. they are looking for community and finding that community in a hate-filled place online. how do we combat that?

we have to work with those who know these platforms best. it's what we found in the isis example. we found government was not the best messenger when it tried to counter messages whether from kluxklan. e ku what we have seen is social need yeah companies doing a much better job at policing and rod rating contents from groups like isis and taking that off platform, sharing nore with the government and making sure that information is coming down from places like facebook and twitter. we have to do the same thing when it comes to violence, extremism that comes from domestic grievances. that is easy to say and lot

harder to do. it is a lot more complicated when it comes to domestic grievances and it should be because we live in a country prioritizes privileges and protects free speech. so -- i don't say to minimize how complicated it is but we need to agree it's a problem worth solving. >> i'm going to do something as a moderator that is difficult. i'm going to get personal and try to generate tension. bobby, working at this university, you are working with the lyndon johnson affairs. johnson said you do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harls it would cause if improperly administered.

mary made a great case for federal domestic terrorism statute and what should it include. what are the dangers in legislation that is perhaps rushed through which is hard to imagine, but legislation that has pushed through, what could ome from this? >> i was a little nervous. what mary is talking about not surprisingly is sensible and well considered, but that's not what could be enacted. what could go wrong at the federal level, couple of possibilities and i will channel some of the feedback that i give when i talk about the same ideas and you will hear pushback. one concern found in federalism and as we pointed out, we are not talking about a situation

where stuff isn't criminalized. there are some federal statutes, but always state statutes. there is a question that makes some people nervous from the expansion of the reach of federal criminal law and federal jurisdiction in some cases. that is a little overstated here but there are concxds con teches about why federal law should supersede. the bigger concern is one that i think is unlikely to materialize but we hear members of congress mention it as a possibility. i mentioned that with foreign terrorist organizations, one of the most powerful tools we have statutes. rial and it becomes a crime to give any sort of aid to them and even to become a member of the group. t is banning the organization.

at least as importantly, the policy can of worms, the pan dora's box you are opening up by that so is best envisioned we have a ban mechanism. and you had an idea of what extremists these groups might get the ban. and those view points and they've got this tool. is it possible they might start banning groups that they think are outrageous. some things are possible we may not want to see happen. i was testifying in congress about this in tuesday in the senate homeland security committee. i want to put a plug in for that

mmittee having taking a very nonpartisan. i went to washington and it was ok. quickly. came back i see no sign we are going to go there but it comes up and people say fill in the blank ought to be designated a terrorist organization. doesn't mean they want to pass on the material support statute. >> it's exactly those concerns that complicate the job that i was just talking about when it comes to online. how do you -- one person's organization or category of speech that is offensive to one and odious to many people may be

perfectly acceptable in a free speech context. >> thought about this between good and bad legislation and the dangers, the first amendment concerns, the freedom of association concerns. talk through that, how do you respond to somebody that that is too hard to get that mix right. >> i can create the tension myself because i had it in a lot of other conversations. nothing that i have been writing about or suggesting would designate these domestic groups and bobby is referencing some people on capitol hill who said why don't we do that? most lawyers think that is a bad idea. the first amendment challenges would be insurmountable and you would be left with a small fractions of organization, an organization that only engaged in violence. but it would be pretty easy for an organization to say, we do all these other things, too.

hateful speech is protected by the first amendment. imminent violence is not. on social media, where do you draw that line that somebody might be saying over the nternet that is horrible and hateful, but if it doesn't incite imminent violence, it probably is protected. to go back to things in a federal statute, i have met with groups and they are opposed to it because for one significant reason and that is the distrust they have in law enforcement. they are worried that if there is another statute created that the f.b.i. and other law enforcement will abuse that statute and they will frankly target their resources to things that could be labeled a threat, but that are not the real threat

that we are facing right now in america. and certainly, historically there have been instances of that happening typically in communities of color in vulnerable populations and we are probably aware of those abuses and i think it's a legitimate concern and i don't downplay it for one minute. so my question then when i'm talking to civil rights and .ivil so yearly reporting by the f.b.i. by d.h.s. to congress public open. there is no reason this would need to be classified. the number of investigations, terrorism investigations, they are opening, are they resulting in criminal charges. the number they close by category. islamic extremist, animal rights

terrorism, and arcist extremism. the categories that would allow the american public and congress to see, lault, are you putting your resources toward the actual threat? are they commensurate with the threat? if they hope 100 cases of terrorism and 10 are white supreme the speaker pro tempore:. -- another possibility that i have suggested that in congressman schiff's bill is to have the privacy of civil libets oversight board to review the use of this statute after a period of time that is enough for them to have some data to collect because we would get much better data. right now we have horrible data. he best data are from like anti-defamation league. it's not from governmental organizations because there is no clear reporting of it.

but these kinds of things, privacy and civil liberties oversight board has been used in the recent years to usually to review surveillance programs and to give it a good hard look, a bipartisan committee. i met with their staffers recently and what are the concerns of this program. is it being administered correctly and legally and what could be done to provide more transparency to the american public about how these authorities are being used. and one last thing, i often hear about the creep into this new statute unlocking additional authorities and sometimes people are thinking foreign intelligence authorities. but right now when we're talking about crimes occurring in the united states, we are talking about using criminal tools,

criminal tools that already exist, jike undercover operations, sting operations, title 3 warrants when appropriately predicated, subpoenas, the same kinds of things that law enforcement use to investigate other crimes. it doesn't create any new investigative tools but would allow those tools to be used and this they can be used, but it would make a better fit. and when it comes to what law enforcement is driving toward. >> nick, i want you to reflect on that. >> sliver of good news from this conversation is that there is room for bipartisan common ground on the set of issues. i have had serious conversations with staffers from both sides of the aisle, like bobby, where in hearings you can see common

grouped, democrats and republicans want to improve our statutory framework. this is not like the gun issue. there is a problem solving sense. there are problems and mary ticked through those but it is a real debate about people who want to get to a set of solutions to put us in a position to do than use these crimes of violence. it doesn't make sense to call these things normal crimes of violence when they are carried out on behalf of a hateful ideology. >> one of the unheralded successes of the national counterterrorism center is the interaction with state, tribal entities. we are sit here in texas, what could the federal government do and applying it to domestic terrorism issues. >> that radicalization process

that we talked about earlier in the conversation, we spent time, energy and resources looking woman young man or young was becoming radicalized and that process unfolds the same way. .ore or less the same way so there is a lot of learning that is going on in the federal government and ta can be shared with state and local law enforcement and doesn't have to be on burdenened by classifications. and what it does it puts us in a position where communities can be the first line of defense. communities that will typed they are the ones who see, appreciate, understand and can predict where these incidents will happen long before federal law enforcement. that is not a slam against the

f.b.i. or federal law enforcement exathes. these individuals grow up around us in our communities and we are most likely to be equipped and say something appears amiss and that person looks like to be headed in a bad direction. and we can use tools that can kick in before the crime. the tools you use before the crime are the ones you want to be having. jim comey would say, if i'm involved, it's already too late. you can't back your way out of charging someone with a crime. you can divert someone who may be consuming hateful ideology but haven't gotten to the point of picking up a weapon and doing something about it. the federal government can do more. >> let's hear what you are curious about. phrase your question in the form f a question and not a speech.

-- howdy dy [inaudible] >> [inaudible question]

>> domestic terrorism statute and signalling it needs to be a priority for the intelligence community. the lead domestic intelligence organization is the f.b.i. importantly it is part of the justice department. it is intelligentered to oversight and civil liberty questions, reporting to congress, et cetera. so, first and foremost, because of all the things that bobby and others have said about the real dangers of getting too far afield when we are talking about speech that is protected by the first amendment, you want it to be intelligentered to a structure. but what it would do is signal to the intelligence community including the f.b.i. that this is a priority. they have established since 9/11 a tremendous set of relationships with state and local law enforcement as well as community organizations. as nick pointed out and as mary

said, the individuals who are going down a dark path and end up committing these heinous abts of violence and some cases massacre, are among us. none of us would be advocating some type of report on neighbor structure, but what we are talking about here is being aware and understanding that the solutions to this are going to come from communities. those communities have to work with state, local and federal government entities, law enforcement that informs what the intelligence community is looking for. >> i use a lot of those anoneous online forums and you see a lot of that stuff there. others. go on whose responsibility is it to

regulate this that these hate groups can enjoy? >> who has the duty of monitoring online content? >> i'll start and let others jump in. lisa led our engagement with the last administration to get our arms around the problem with the jihadist set of issues. it was a challenge. give ourselves a b-minus or c-plus. and it is harder to do it in the space when you are talking about offensive stuff but if it's not tied to a foreign terrorist organization, it's harder for us as a government to expect that companies will take that material down. you have to put the burden on the companies. they are the ones maintaining and profitting from the platforms. the good news is i think they are beginning to accept that

responsibility. you are starting to see a migration of people who worked for people like us to go work in those companies. while i hate to see those people who are capable civil servants, i want people working at facebook and google because they bring a sense brilt of national security and community safety to those companies that might not exist in quapts that you want otherwise. >> there is no entity within the federal government or any state and local government that i'm aware of whose responsibility and authority is to monitor any online platform of the type that you described. that is a direct answer there. there's lots of good reasons for that. but that's why the own us needs to be on the companies that operate those platforms and needs to be on the communities

and users of those platforms and needs to be a lot of communication with government and the law enforcement community based on what you are seeing there. >> just one quick point, there is a lot of confusion about this is the basic point. but the first amendment only applies to government actors. so private social media companies, they can ban anything they want and will not violate the first amendment. just like you in your home can ban somebody from your home if you don't like what they are saying. restaurant aside putting aside racial discrimination and things like that. the social media companies look to government as a crutch because they want government to make them do it so they can say to their users we are being told to do this. they are stepping up and do the right thing and monitor a little bit better.

on this lot of work and the problematic speech online, the bigger platforms are all into varyying degrees and actively in trying to figure out a good way forward. that's not where the worst conversations are taking place. it is taking place in marginal platforms. as it gets further and further into the dark corners it's harder for the hateful ideologies to find certain audiences but gets harder and harder to spot them and for relevant government actors to see what is happening. >> so you are talking about daily stormer, right? an actor that does not want the government to help it and won't listen to the government. i see daily stormer when

searching a jewish issue. how do we counter when the tech companies are not being good actors? >> to the points that you are making, the platforms, the search engines have to see it in their business interests which means their users and consumers need to demand that of them. if they see it in their business interests to push those search results down. >> there is a cross-cutting concern that we can take a lesson from the f.b.i. successes in spotting americans who have been radicalized by the islamic state. when you go through the past few years and the investigations, the opening investigative shot was somebody saying publicly in a place ta the f.b.i. could observe it, something on social media that drew attention. as the conversations that are most frightening go into

encrypted channels that aren't immediately visible to the public, but there are a loss of investigative. less inspiration but less inspiration to watch the scarier conversations. >> thank you for joining us again. so, i actually worked in the intelligence community for seven years -- i have a question, i know terrorism and radicalization doesn't fester in areas where the overture window doesn't expand to come up against that. what would your recommendations be for either the government or us as individuals to shrink the overtone window enough to where radicalization doesn't seem acceptable? >> how do you stop radicalization? >> i think understanding the drivers of it would be a start, although, i don't think any of

us up here are social science activities. we have all studied this a bit. but it's to be -- i can't emphasize enough that it has to be very ground up and not government down as lisa mentioned earlier. when the government underlisa and president obama and nick's good leadership tried to invigorate a program that was called countering violent extremism, we got push back from communities who felt they were being targeted. targeted and so mentioned, nick support for grassroots organizations. there are organization like life after hate that work with people that have started on that path

towards violence and you know, the communities coming together to talk together about mao they can spot the pre-occursors and what they can do. better educational opportunities, better job opportunities, feeling more like you are a part of the community, welcoming communities, communities that don't make people like they are outcasts. someone who ends up committing a terrorist attack, just like who attackmitting a domestic will see these are people who are in search of something that was bigger than themselves because their own life was not fulfilling. we need to provide more things that people can get behind. we have climate change and all kinds of stuff that people could et behind instead of violent

extremism. >> you have worked about radicalization. you could fill this room. take out the classified in your mind, but what you can talk about, what are the ways of cutting off the radicalization process? >> it ends up being grassroots involvement and early involvement. we talked about the d.h.s., department of homeland security's strategy that they issued on domestic terrorism. one simple metric to measure whether this administration or future administrations is serious about dealing with this problem and are they willing to fund grant programs to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. this is not going to be solved with one big high dollar ticket from washington. there are nongovernmental organizations and organizations that do this work in a community setting and only can do it if

given the resources to do it. giving it to a group in chicago, boston is going to be far more effective than having some big program run out of washington. when you give grants out to organizations, you sometimes are going to fail and people won't use it perfectly appropriately. that to me is the cost of doing business and something we ought to accept and that's my metric. >> final add-on. the oversight window, the outer boundaries in what is acceptable discourse and the fair playing field. top-down isn't the solution, but it can make things much worse when rhetoric and shifting towards more extreme ideologies. that's got to stop.

>> please join me in thanking our guests. [applause] [captions copyright national able satellite corp. 2019] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org

>> we'll have more coverage from the texas tribune festival this afternoon. coming up, we'll hear from texas

land commissioner, george p. bushers and historian and author . live coverage from austin continues at 3:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. two republicans are challenging president trump for the party's nomination in 2020. former massachusetts governor bill weld, and former illinois congressman joe walsh, discusses the trump presidency and how they would tackle issues. they spoke at an event hosted by business insider. that's tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. earlier today, hillary clinton talked about the house democrats' imimpeachment inquiry and the whistleblower complaint against president trump. this event was held at georgetown university. mrs. clinton: of course we all know she's just announced an impeachment inquiry on the president on the basis of evidence that he betrayed his oath of office to uphold the constitution and protect and

defend our country. he has turned american diplomacy into a cheap extortion racket. he has den graded, and let's be hovente, stabbed in the back the career foreign service officers who served bravely and selvesly no matter the politics of the administration that they are working under. and now they are caught in the crossfire. i was proud to serve with foreign service officers and civil servants at the state department and i know firsthand that they deserve the support nd gratitude of all americans. [applause] now sadly, we've known who donald trump is for some time now. we knew he was a corrupt businessman who cheated people. we knew that he and his campaign invited foreign adversaries to

tamper with our elections. and now we know that in the course of his duties as president, he's endangered us all by putting his personal and political interests ahead of the interests of the american people. but this is ultimately about much more than donald trump. it is about us. it is about who we are as a nation. history is being written and the world and our children are watching. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> these remarks focus on u.s. foreign policy in the middle east which he said is a destructive force in the region. this is about 20 minutes.