over by special counsel robert mueller who was appointed in 2017. watch live coverage of the hearing beginning at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, on demand at c-span.org or listen live wherever you are on the free c-span radio app. ome on our facebook page as well. we'll start with a column in "the washington post," posted last night, printed this morning in "the washington post," and the headline, online, america is at a low ebb, shaken by multiple blows, and trump adds to the distress. this is the state of the union, as the nation reels from multiple blows, each

one arriving with swift and overwhelming force. long-standing, untreated inequalities have been exposed anew, and they in turn have highlighted the country's real vulnerabilities. what has been just below the surface, known but barely acknowledged, and rarely addressed seriously, is now impossible to ignore. your thoughts on the president's leadership, 202-748-8000 for republicans. 202-748-8001 for democrats. nd all others, 202-748-8002. politico is writing this morning about what we can possibly hear from the president in the coming days and the debate over that inside the white house. the white house divided on trump addressing racial tensions. they write that as protests continue to flare across the country, president trump and his top aides can be settle on the next steps the white house should take to ease tensions after the latest death of an african-american man detained by a white police officer.

white house chief of staff mark meadows has been pushing for the president to deliver a formal address to the nation, to emphasize his support for law and order and police officers, the familiar trope for the republican party and one that typically plays well with its base. they write that trump senior adviser and son-in-law jared kushner, along with several other top aides, argued against such a move, fearing the tone could alienate key voters ahead of the november election, including african-americans, whose support the administration has been trying to court. politico writes that an address would also detract from the president's message of trying to restart the economy as quickly as possible, allies say. the president's last formal address in mid-march from the oval office dealing with the growing coronavirus crisis was not viewed internally as a success. since the white house had to clarify several points from the hastily written speech, which trump appeared uncomfortable delivering. your thoughts this morning on the president's leadership,

we'll show you a headline from "usa today" and read more of this in a bit. susan page, their chief washington bureau chief, i should say, trump is failing the text of leadership. that's the headline of her piece this morning. dalia first up in miami, florida. good morning. go ahead. caller: good morning. i just want to say that president trump, i agree with him, and i'm very glad that he's the president. lead e of being able to the country was obama. ok? an tough ahas grown and grown and grown, and no one wants to o anything about it. down near miami last night, by 10:00, the city was quiet. the night before, they had 57

arrests. only 13 people lived in miami. they tried to loot last night a c.v.s. store. the police moved in, wouldn't allow it. there was no soft touch. the cities that have the problems are the mayors that are run by democrats who are liberal, like that idiot in new york. thank you very much. host: she mentioned the word antifa, the president yesterday commenting about that, tweeting about that. the "new york times" writes that the president said his administration "will be designating antifa has a terrorist organization," referring to the shorthand for anti-fascists. but they write antifa is a movement of activists who dress in black and call themselves anarchists, not an organization with a clear structure that can be penalized under law. moreover, american law applies to terrorist designation to foreign entities, not domestic groups. by targeting antifa, however, mr. trump effectively paints

all the protests with the brush of violent radicalism without addressing the underlying conditions that have driven many of the people who have taken to the streets. from the "new york times," this is elaine, next up, democrats line in st. louis. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you so much. i just wanted to start off saying that c-span is such a wonderful service. thank you so much for all of the programming. just last week, c-span3 covered an excellent program that talked about violence in america. it's in our blood. america started in a violent nature. we respond to violence. what's happening now, unfortunately, has been bred throughout history. i can't remember the name of the program, but it was on c-span3.

nd it broke it down. but i can understand why the reason why people are looting. the whole idea that we've been quarantined at home, sheltering in place, and mitch mcconnell refuses to give support to the average joe, that is disheartening. host: elaine, do you think that looting is more of a reaction to the pent-up nature of the shutdown over the last few months, rather than the anger over the killing of george floyd? caller: i think it's -- i think it's both. it's a sign of helplessness. we really don't have any honest truth about the pandemic,

whether we should -- we shouldn't wear masks, the next month we should. and i understand that we're learning, but the president has silenced dr. fauci, who i really did trust. you feel like you're in limbo and then when you see that they're rushing to open have hing and you don't -- if you are low income, you on't have a job to go back to. and you do -- you're doing a little bit better on unemployment insurance, but you hear the republicans saying, oh, no, we want to get rid of that. and they want to continue to to large ollars companies. host: ok, elaine, we're going to go to our republican line next and hear from david in texas. caller: good morning.

as far as trump making a speech or anything else, i don't think that's going to matter. the democrats are going to hate him no matter what he says. they still think he's a traitor, treasonist, russian stooge, no matter how much new stuff comes out. the media is going to report their predetermined slant, so 90% is going to go that way, and more than half of the newspapers, probably three-fourths of the newspaper articles and opinions you're going to read are going to paire it back. so again, what's the point? what happens, what he does, and hopefully getting some of the democratic mayors -- because probably 95% of mayors in america are democrat. certainly 95-plus percent of the large cities have been run by one party for a hundred years practically. that's probably the biggest single reason for the economic mess that the cities are in, which is, in my opinion, more

to do what w what's going on, the economic issue than the racial issue, although they're both connected. the lady was just talking about republicans not wanting to help people out, mitch mcconnell this, mitch mcconnell that. that's poppycock. the republicans, i have a small business, none of my clients paid me for 3 1/2 months. the republicans and the trump administration have done an absolutely unbelievable job of pushing money out into the economy. i listen to c-span a lot. they had a report out that said that, in fact, it was on one of the financial shows that said that wall street was going up right now because one of the key statistics they looked at was people being late on their rent, that was only 2% over prior quarter, and that's because so much more money has been pushed out. the unemployment part really isn't against people getting unemployment. the federal part that was kicked in was in large degree because the states couldn't get -- here's a computer system

couldn't mail in such a way to make sure people got what they were earning before, so in most cases they got paid more than before, which makes it more difficult to get people back on their job. that's the issue there. but nobody's trying to keep people from, republicans or anything else, they're trying to get the money out as fast as possible. the democrats have held things up for at least two weeks, back at the time when it was super critical. i was right at the point getting the p.p.e. when it ran out of money and then i got to sit on pins and needles waiter for nancy pelosi to come on again. host: david from texas. politico in their playbook today, about a potential address from the president, further comments from the president. david kind of reflected this. they say ask yourself this, if you don't like the president, is there anything he could say that you'd be satisfied with? if you like him, is there anything he could say that you would reject?

miamisburg, ohio, next, your thoughts on the president's leadership over the recent days in response to the unrest. go ahead. caller: well, i don't know. i'm just a dumb tennesseans. i was born -- i didn't see a black person till i was 12 years old. and the way that they treated them at that camp, they beat him down in the barrel and then kicked the barrel over. they

you can see the bottom and drink from them. we have iron ore mining, the steel was used to build this country. we are a top agricultural

producer and home to a higher concentration of fortune 500s and home to the mayo clinic. we innovate. we are passionate people. back to that statistic. as governor i like to talk about this and the things we say. we don't just rank near the top on educational attainment, we rank near the top on personal incomes and life expectancies. one that came out a while back. we ranked second in a survey of the 50 states and second in happiness behind hawaii. if you take a deeper look and feel it -- peel it back all of the statistics are true if you are white. if you are not you rank near the bottom. what this week is showing all of us is those things can operate at the same place. we cannot continue to say we are a great place to live if your neighbor because of the color of their skin does not have the

same opportunity. that will manifest in things that are the small hidden racism's and it will manifest itself in a child of color not getting the same opportunities or a black community not being able to acquire wealth through homeownership because of lending practices. as we all said last week the ultimate end of that type of behavior is the ability to believe you can murder a black man in public and it is an unusual thing that murder charges were brought days later. again,would like to say i would like to thank everyone who participated in our ability to restore trust tower streets, it was complex and difficult. that simply gets us back to a place where we were before and that place is not good enough. that place is not one that will

get us the solutions. morning onou this washington journal about president trump's leadership in response to the crisis. for democrats. (202) 748-8001 for democrats. independents (202) 748-8002. if you would like to send us a tweet we are @cspanwj. theiet says, i don't blame president for covid-19 or george floyd. impeachment, china cheating, covid-19, police brutality. the trump response to the violent protests in american cities this weekend has largely been to blame democrats for not doing more to get tough with protesters in their state and cities. leadership?

he is cowering in a bunker eating fast food. is hunkered, he down in the bunker with bone spurs syndrome. trump is in his safe space, the secret service took him there. >> station, this is houston. are you ready for the event? >> houston, the expedition 60 through crew is ready for the event. >> please call station for a voice check. >> station, how you hear me? jcpo, loud and clear. >> we will start this off with a question from twitter. it is from rick. when they opened the hatch did dragon have that new car smell? [laughter] >>