watch live coverage of the hearings friday on c-span and monday on c-span2. on-demand at c-span.org or listen live wherever you are with the free c-span radio app. guest of the morning is karen tumulty. post. with the washington good morning. guest: great to be here. i wish i was actually there. host: so do we. to have aharris had goal going into the speech last night, what was it, and did she meet it? guest: first, she had to introduce herself to the people who were watching because she ran for president but she did not do well. she did not get as far as iowa. i think that -- even then, i covered that campaign, and she really never talked as much as

some of her advisers would have liked about her life story. that is the first thing she did. the second thing she did was what she is going to have to do between now and november, which is try and make the argument for a joe biden presidency. effectiver speech was on both of those counts. power last lot of night with president obama. i think she did what she needed to do. host: usually vice president's are seen as hatchet men or hatchet women. do you think she waited into that yesterday -- waded into that yesterday? guest: i think that is one of the big reasons she is on the ticket. ne in the has sho senate has been in hearing rooms. she is a prosecutor and sounds like a prosecutor.

got a sense of things to come last night with that as well. host: do you think she has been this process into about her time as attorney general come about her time in those instances? how do you think? ? that impacts are going forward -- how do you think that impacts her going forward? it was explored when she ran for president, but it is going to come up again. it has been interesting to watch the trump campaign attacker. they are attacking her as having people asard on attorney general and a prosecutor but then they are attacking her as some kind of fuzzy headed liberal. i do not know that they necessarily feel like they are going to have to make a coherent argument against her. perhaps they are speaking to two different audiences. she is being attacked from the

left and from the right by the trump campaign. int: you wrote earlier on, looking at kamala harris when it comes to the nomination, the idea of money and what is brought into the campaign. guest: it was extraordinary. joe biden has never been a fundraising superstar, but in the past few months he has achieved something pretty close to parity with the trump campaign, which has been extraordinarily successful at fundraising. thehe first 24 hours after biden announcement that she would be his running mate, $26 million came in. our is over $1 million in from six-figure numbers of new donors. these are people they can go back to again and again for

money between now and november. host: if you want to ask our guest questions about the events of this week when it comes to the democrats, (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. independents, (202) 748-8002. let's look at joe biden. what is expected tonight? that he has got to show -- i think the case against donald trump has been laid out pretty clearly by the democrats this week, so i think that joe biden is going to have different. he is if donald trump and the democrats' argument has led us into a period of darkness, donald trump is going to have to shut -- joe biden is going to have to show us how he takes the country back into the light. that is going to have to be both because of his personal quality but also he is going to have to

give people a sense of whether he has a real vision. one of the ways he is being attacked by the republicans is as some sort of patsy for the left wing of the party. he has got to leave people tonight with a clear sense of what joe biden's mission is. i think the most important audience he will be speaking to -- he has a pretty healthy lead in the polls, but he is going just -- to be speaking to those soft biden supporters, people who still might change their minds or might not even show up to vote. i think that is his most crucial audience tonight. i do not expect some kind of big convention. i think you will be trying to -- he will be trying to build the foundation under the support he has already got. host: at the same time he does that, he has to appeal to those who supported bernie sanders

during the campaign, elizabeth warren as well. what faces him as he tries to not only holds to his own personal vision but also progressives who will try to push their vision on him? guest: i do not think that is good to be the problem, at least .etween now and november i think the party right now is very united. lotie sanders himself did a of the work to make sure that would happen. i was at the convention four years ago, and the hostility from the sanders supporters on the convention floor was palpable. clinton think the people thought bernie sanders did as much as he could have to tamp it down. i think he has now, and i also personalre is a relationship and warmth and chemistry between bernie sanders and joe biden that never really

existed between bernie sanders and hillary clinton. the proceedings themselves, you have looked at a lot of these conventions. return from the days of old as far as the party is concerned? not a big fan of what in person, old-school conventions had become. masses -- ssentially mese. messes. tv audiences had been shrinking. tv networks were carrying less and less. they had not been instrumental in picking a nominee since 1952. the other purposes they were supposed to serve they were not doing either. i do not think it was that easy to drive a message. if you go to them, you discover

what they really are our weeklong parties paid for by lobbyists. i think they will return. i am inches to see how republicans do this next week. -- anxious to see how republicans do this next week. you are going to see some of the innovations we have seen this year carry on. a lot of people love the roll call of the states where instead of having people in silly hats, half of them intoxicated from the most recent lobbyist party they had been to come a to go and see all these places, to see the vastness and diversity of this country was a lot of fun. host: you mentioned the republican convention. president trump will travel outside of scranton today to talk about joe biden -- the case against joe biden as he is going to lay it out. what do you think of those

tactics as the dnc is still going on? have you seen this before? guest: i think it is probably smart. there have been people over this impolite -- politics these days are not polite. this is donald trump's style. host: if you want to ask our guest questions, you can do so on the line. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. democrats, (202) 748-8000. s, (202) 748-8002. you can also text us at (202) 748-8003. there is a lobbying made as far as the voting process is concerned, this year being different than any other. what do you sense will happen by november? guest: i think the postmaster general has backed off of some of the things he was doing.

i think the democrats -- you could hear it starting with michelle obama's speech. the real name of the game for them is going to be just making vote, thatvoters they vote early and necessary they get to the polls physically. they are going to have armies of lawyers watching every single polling place they can get to. that this alarm over election security is justified, but it is kind of a double-edged sword for the democrats

that donald trump was the first president ever to come to office with no government or military experience. the idea of the experience was tainted by the idea of being an insider in the swamp. i think a biden is also going to sort of make an appeal to people and say, maybe we do need somebody who has been around for a while, who knows people, who can make the whole machine work again. from patrick,next south carolina. independent line. caller: i had a couple of questions about joe and the democratic convention. the number one question, they had not said a whole lot about

the stuff that's been going on with all these riots they hadn't -- all thesething riots. they hadn't mentioned anything. i am concerned about that. another thing i wanted to bring up was, i know several people that have had aneurysms, brain two.ysms, and joe has had nobody has talked about that. i had a brother than had one, it eventually killed him. i don't care what anybody says. thank you. t: if i can address both of those questions, you are correct. when joe biden was a senator in aneurysms,d have two

that as you said, are diagnosed on the alto to table, but since then, we have seen them as chairman of the senate, chairman of the foreign relations committee, another run for president. eight years as vice president. that that is going to be his answer to questions such as these. the riots that have been taking place, i do think they have been addressed in the convention. certainly, president obama took on forcefully less with the with the democrats are framing last night. what the democrats are framing it as is, the two parties are going to frame this their own way. again, we will see in november who's got the case here.

host: in that interview you did that resulted in the story was jennifer o'malley, you express euro to -- you express your adult son works for the biden campaign. st: quite recently, it is a very low-level job. he actually was hired by the campaign, the dnc. it is a research assistant job. felt that as a journalist, i covered politics or 40 years. i think anyone that wants to go back and look at my coverage over the 40 years will see it's been very consistent. but i felt that as a journalist, even though it is a very low-level job and a very recent my dutyt it was ethically to disclose this. i have now disclosed it twice in my column. he's an adult. he can make his choices for his career. but again, he is not in any kind of decision-making capacity.

host: i people have questions about conflict of interest. how do you address that? again, he is an adult, making his own decisions. again, i think that we have seen this quite often in the past with journalists. washington is a small place. we have seen journalists married to people who work for ministrations. ministrations -- for administrations. i felt that ethically, it was my duty to disclose this. again, people can take a look at my coverage and they can decide i am beingves if fair and if i am being consistent. i am in a billion columnist. host: the democrat line, good morning. caller: i would like to know your opinion on joe biden's

experience being a past vice president under barack obama. he is coming into his similar circumstance. in 2008, we were in a recession. barack and biden were able to come in and work us out of that. also, we were dealing with the ebola pandemic, or epidemic. they had a playbook for that. i was wondering, what is your opinion on that? would that experience helped -- help the situation he is coming into now? i was really interested in seeing how this obama-biden worker ship was going to work. the main reason that i think joe biden was on the ticket initially was to address people's concern that barack obama didn't have enough experience.

you are right. i think that ebola never got to our shores, and biden was in charge of the massive infrastructure projects that were put together to address and help the economy through this. it is also sort of interesting 2013,all, i think it was when we were heading into what they called the fiscal cliff, the deal that got us out of that was a deal that was worked out by joe biden and mitch mcconnell, because he had been in the senate for so long, that he actually had a personal relationship with mitch mcconnell. now, is that sort of thing likely to happen? maybe not. we are deeply polarized and divided right now as a country. but something in me really doesn't want to think that personal relationships, on some

level, might still matter, as well. jason up next. republican line. your run. >-- you are on. caller: my question is about the enthusiasm gap. donald a report that trump supporters that expressed high enthusiasm have a high desire to get out and vote for him. on the other hand, i see polls that say that joe biden supporters like him, but they are just not enthusiastic about getting out in getting to the polls. you watch such a ho-hum convention, ho-hum because of the virtual style of the convention. i have been to conventions, they are great for building enthusiasm. that is kind of portrayed to the audiences that watch. how does biden get over this enthusiasm gap when there is no convention springboard?

thank you. first of all, the convention springboard, the old convention bounce, that doesa bout not last very long. i think also, the enthusiasm gap has closed significantly. i was recommending you take a look at our poll of last weekend. it really does look like the democratic -- the way u. -- the way you ask this question, there are different ways that bolsters look at it. how enthusiastic are you about this candidate? how likely are you to vote? i think that gap has closed significantly. know how thist convention is being perceived outside the hall. i have been to 14 of them. it is raucous,,

sometimes so loud, you feel like the walls and floors are shaking. does not convey outside the hall and television. earlier, the television audiences are getting smaller and smaller because networks are carrying less and less of these conventions. i'm sort of skeptical that the old conventions, you know, that they themselves were useful as perhaps they were in the era of when you would actually pick the nominee and sometimes be running mate -- the running mate would be announced at the convention. that is what ronald reagan did in 1980. there is no suspense anymore to conventions. i think they are going to have to evolve, and not just because of the fact that we are locked down in a pandemic right now. lessons tohere any

be gained, things you can see from the amount of democrats who voted for hillary clinton for years ago versus said group of people and the potential to vote for joe biden? guest: joe biden's negatives are not as high as hillary clinton's were. the trump campaign is going to be spending a lot of time and effort to drive those negatives of between now and november. because president trump has never had an approval rating that's got over 50%. so i think that a big part of their strategy is going to be to drive joe biden's negatives th -- negatives up. we will have to see. host: the democrat line. good morning. i want to ask a question about the guy talking about the enthusiasm gap. i and 67 years old.

i am going to crawl out of bed to get to the pool to vote. for the guy who called from south carolina, about the fighting in the writing, -- and the rioting, i would be more concerned about guys coming into a church and shooting people praying, and showing their love. people are shooting -- police are shooting people trying to run away from them. virginia, will when theretell me are good people walking in charlottesville, virginia, that are neo-nazis, close-ups clans -- kkk members. will they listen to you? >> the question is very much the

counter argument you are going to hear. i think the mention of charlottesville is really interesting. because one joe biden announced he did itacy, h with a video that began with these images of neo-nazis marching in charlottesville. that was the opening of joe biden's announcement video. the idea of restoring what he calls the soul of america, i think, has been the undergirding of everything else about his message. see whose voters are more motivated to get to the polls this fall because given how divided and polarized the country is, given how few states are going to determine who wins this election and the electoral college, it really is going to come down to potentially your

field-goal team. who gets those people one by one to the polls or to get them to cast their ballots early or to mail them in or however your state allows for them to vote. host: we saw that joe biden and, harris, their first joint interview is in people magazine. press access,to should there be more access at this point? iest: i'm a journalist and think there always should be more. that's something that i think you do have to give. to give president trump four. he has been more accessible to the media than any i have ever seen. i thinker or worse, people in the white house would say. but he is out there all the time. on the one hand, he denounces

the media as the enemies of the people but he does seem to enjoy being out there and talking to he seems to enjoy even the combat and the give-and-take. host: one more call from the independent line. hello. educated'm a college suburban registered independent white woman. this is the demography they say they want to vote for them. i don't understand why the democrat party thinks we are so stupid. we had a wonderful candidate intel see gabbard, and i'm going to vote for trump, even i would have thought seriously about voting for her but instead, you prop up this guy who clearly does not know where the heck he is or what he's doing and you want us to buy into the fact that this is a guy that can lead

this country. those of us who know a little bit of morality would never vote for her because of her past. we didn't vote for hillary because she stayed married to a serial rapist and you think we are so stupid we are going to fall for joe biden, who obama only put on the ticket because he couldn't find any butter -- any butter -- anybody dumber or more of a fraud than he was. certainly have your views, but i think if you look at the results of the 2018 election, you will see those congressional races, the democrats do have a very, very strong advantage with college educated suburban women. this selection of the candidate is a result of a primary process and joe biden one. host: what are you watching for

on this last night? caller: i'm really looking for again, i think the challenge here is going to be for joe biden to leave people at the idea that this is not just about getting rid of trump. joe biden himself has a vision. think and you have heard that in the calls here. in this speech tonight and in the three debates he has with donald trump, people are going to be watching to see if they want to elect somebody who will be 78 years old by the time of next inauguration day. certainly ronald reagan faced some of the same questions and he was only 69 at the time. and he essentially put them away with one strong bait performance against jimmy carter. thinghink that is another

people will be keeping their eyes on and tonight, probably even more importantly than good debates are going to -- debates are going to be the big opportunity for joe biden to put those concerns away. att: you can read her work washington post.com. thank you for your time this morning. as the trumka serves president of the afl-cio come here to talk about the role of unions in campaign 2020. good morning. what is the message to your members? guest: vote early. get out and vote because the rules of this economy determine the winners and losers and the people we elect determine the rules. it's time for those rules to be changed so that working people, all working people have a real opportunity to succeed in this country, so we need to get out and vote. to the trump comes

administration, how has it impacted union members like the ones you serve and what will become different if joe biden becomes president? ourt: i think all of members had high hopes for president trump because he said the rules were unfair, change the rules to work for you, but then he didn't do that. he did the exact opposite. he got a national labor movement remember when-- he was running for candidate of president the first time, he said wages in this country are too high. he has done everything he can in his administration with his handpicked judges to make sure ande wages don't go higher get depressed. so that has been tough. he's taken over time away from millions of americans, he's failed to protect us during the pandemic and literally hundreds of thousands of our members have

been exposed to and gotten covid-19 and died from covid-19 to recognizeefuse how bad this pandemic was and issue a work place safety standard that can protect workers. host: before the coronavirus, we saw low unemployment and wage growth in some sectors. does that mean the president was not on the wrong track? host: he was on the wrong track even before that. to having rules that hurt them. he immediately reduce health and safety standards, he immediately theted defunding osha, agency in charge of taking care of our health and safety, there were fewer health and safety inspectors in its history. osha has issued only for

violations, even though there have been thousands of complaints. he attacked the overtime standards and everything that would help workers rages -- workers wages. companies who created subsidiaries overseas so the supply chain could leave out of the country. there's been more outsourcing under him that we have seen in a long time. right,toric was always but his actions never followed that. when you look at what he did, it has been harmful and hurtful to workers and destroyed a lot of lives and livelihoods, quite frankly since him taking over. host: your organization supported joe biden. what did he promisor should promise to be opposite or at least different from donald trump? guest: first of all, let's start with the pandemic. i think joe biden understands the way that donald trump never has and still doesn't that the

test and only way to fix the economy is by beating the pandemic. and he will do that. he will fight and beat the pandemic. he also understands the importance of a job that's more than wages. it's respect and dignity. joe is a blue-collar guy. he grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. he understands the importance of a job. us.now him, he knows he's been working to give workers a fair shake for years and i think he will do that on trade, tax and the bills that impact workers wages and livelihood. our guest is with us until 9:30. if you are union member and want , we have aestion line for you. it comes to trade and

specifically china, what should joe biden's approach be versus the approach the president has taken to china? guest: the president has taken the approach that he can be china head-on alone. let me give you an example of why that has not worked and will not work. china has created an overcapacity in steel and aluminum. the president can go after them and say we are going to implement tariffs on you but all china does is send the products to other country and they come in the back door to us. that's not going to fix the overcapacity problem that they create by cheating. that's going to take a group of allies. it's going to take all of us, the economies of the world getting together, europe, australia, japan, other countries around the world saying to them, you are going to play by the rules and play fairly or we will stop you from playing that way because they have been cheating.

there's no question about that and they have been hurting american workers and workers everywhere quite frankly. what he should have done is take a multilateral approach and he has not done that. host: is joe biden's approach multilateral? will that offer a course correction to china's practices? we get athink when coalition put together that includes europe and japan and asia and australia and other places around the world, china won't have any choice but to start complying and playing by the rules everybody else plays by. and if they don't, it will economically hurt them severely. host: as far as the trade agreement we currently have with mexico and canada, should joe biden hold on to the usmca? guest: yes. we made this into a good agreement. when that agreement first came back, it was horrible. it was unenforceable, it had no workers rights and it, it would have made it -- would have been

nafta light. but we and our allies in college -- in congress, nancy pelosi, sherrod brown, forced the administration to renegotiate. we went back and negotiated a good deal. tradenow, it's the only deal or one of the only trade deals that really does take care of workers rights. we created some innovative things in that agreement. we forced him to do it. i do give him credit for at least taking on the task, i think you get some credit for that, but when he came back, it was just a bad deal and if that was the best he could do and just said yes, it would have been horrible. herunenforceable trade that workers on both sides of the border. host: let's hear from viewers. the first is a democrat from cincinnati, ohio. good morning. it's an honor to speak with you. every time i've heard you speak, you are really good and i

appreciate your work. i worked at a union for 30 years and the union really help us. how can we get back to having and backboned jobs of what really made america great? better wages him a better working conditions, and now we have had decades where the working-class people, wages are flat and how can we get back to where we were with good unionized jobs? worse than flat. they've actually regressed a lot of places. and you're right, after world war ii, the american labor movement tilt the middle class. we raised wages in industry after industry, not just manufacturing, but everywhere else. that govern labor

relations in this country were written in the 1940's. obviously significant stuff has happened since the 1940's. for the last four decades, the rules of the economy have been designed for workers to lose and every -- for the rich corporations to win. as a result, you have an inequality of wealth, inequality of opportunity, and inequality of power. corporations got too strong and workers got to week. so we have to reverse that. if you are going to change inequality of wages and opportunity, you have to adjust the inequality of power in the best way to do that is to change the law. there's a law on the books right now passed by the house of representatives that would readjust the power and give workers a chance to organize and have a voice on the job. when workers get a voice on the job, they can bargain for better

wages, better health conditions, pensions, things like this. wealth the country creates get spread out a little more fairly. right now it's all going to the people at the top when it needs to go up and down and more people have the power of collect of bargaining would get that. last year andtudy 60 million americans say they would join a union today if given a chance. but they can't because of the laws. an entire industry, billion-dollar industry has been the designed to prevent workers from having a voice on the job. if ever there was a waste of money, that is a waste of money because if workers get more of a voice on the job, we do better and when workers do better, the country does better because 72%mber, our economy is driven by consumer spending. when workers have money to spend, the economy grows.

when they don't, the economy cannot grow because there's no demand. change the laws, pass the proactive and you will start to see a big difference in the economy. host: a union member from speedwell, tennessee. go ahead. caller: yes. at one time, you are president of our union, you and debbie away. obama and biden destroyed that whole thing. i will be voting for trump. as a lot of people will that were in the union. i'm sure some will. they did the last time as well. but look, it wasn't obama and biden that destroyed the coal industry. if you look at it right now, under president trump, more power plants and mines have closed than any other president before him, so you can't just say it was obama and trump. that's my union. i'm a third generation minor. both of my grandparents, my dad,

his brothers, my uncles were all coal miners. it hurts to see what's happening. but you can't claim them and simply say that's why i'm voting for donald trump. donald trump has been bad for workers. he has heard us. he hurt collective bargaining. if you believe in your union and you want collect the bargaining to be strong, he has a group made up of corporate lawyers designed to bust unions. that is the nlrb right now. he has changed the rules to hurt us. so if you really care about your union and really care about building wages, you want to rethink what you are talking about because it's simply not so. from anotherear union member in new york. caller: good morning. union forin the almost all my life, 30, 40 years. i was chief steward in my

workplace, local workplace for 35 years. negotiations with the service employees, i did service work and one of the things i can tell you is i did mechanic work, i haven't seen a piece of american steel in this country in 20 years, 30 years. it all came in from canada and everywhere else. many negotiations in the last 15, 18 years, i don't know if you can know or can answer, but if you know what vita hiring is, please answer that to me basicallybut it ruined our job because they hired people that were not citizens of the united states. the union told me as a chief steward, sign them up. what do we sign them up for? dues. the american people didn't get

to work, we took 50 some jobs and a year and half liters, we found out -- year and half later, we found out they weren't even citizens of our country and that put people out of work. that points out a bigger problem right now. the immigration policy in this country is broken, not because you have workers trying to make a living, but because they can bring in workers legally, legally at lower wages. they can bring airline pilots in and pay them one third of what they pay a pilot in the united states that has a union job. the whole immigration system needs to be fixed. we've tried to look at that a couple of times and we have gotten a lot of resistance from the republican side of the table because they like having those people out there that can lower wages, especially when you can do it legally. you bring somebody in and the

employer holds the green card. the worker says these are unsafe conditions, i need to change this. they say you're fired, i've got your green card, i can bring in another one. after that happens a couple of times, people start to understand they can't complain, that they are captive that way. that's the system we have, the broken system that we have that absolutely needs to be fixed and we want to work with both sides of the aisle so that it is fair and whenever there is a shortage of workers, they can be brought in, but they should be brought in with fair wages and benefits so they don't drag down the standards but actually maintain the standards we have. host: on our independent line, jeff from california. i formed a labor union , and had ah, no help

second heart attack while fighting for it. no support from other unions. it is a non-afl union. contract, the new rules coming out about andtation on new members elections and all this sort of stuff, it can be one, but we ?ave to have our lines where is our jimmy hoffa? what does he do? you just hear the criticism. where's the passion? i'm willing to have a heart attack, i'm willing to die because i believe in the union. we can win it, but we've got to wholeter and this

election is about workers and i still have yet to hear a platform -- has biden endorsed the proactive? guest: he has indeed. if you look at the democratic platform, i was one of the drafters of it and it's one of the most progressive platform for workers eve seen in the history of any party, i can guarantee you that. i'm sorry that you have had a heart attack and your passion is very important. but here is what is going on right now -- there's more collective action in this country right now than we have seen in years. people are coming together because here is what workers told us. they said we don't believe the economic system is working for us and they don't believe the political system is working for us, so we are going to join together. they started joining together to do stuff and get stuff done. we got the most progressive platform on behalf of workers that any party that

has ever drafted because workers demanded it, because we stood up, stood together, and said you have 40 years, been pushing us to the background. for 40 years, our wages have been flat. we are tired of that. we contribute more to this country than anyone. we wake this country up every day, we make a run, we fix her when she's broken, we defend her when she needs defending and her to bed every night and deserve more. as a result, they are at the front of this parade, not the back of this parade and i'm excited because young workers are involved. black lives matter is a movement of people coming together and the #metoo movement, that's people coming together to say we can do better because we can do better. this country is still the greatest in the world, the greatest in the world.

now all we have to do is make sure it's the greatest in the world for everybody, regardless of the color of your skin, who you worship, who you love or where you live or what your dad or mom do. i'm really excited about that. i have not seen this kind of collective action in a long time. host: you won't be surprised by the wall street journal -- there assessment of the biden economic plan. they recently said the plan is misunderstood as obama highway of bernie sanders. of berniey way sanders. conservatively estimated, his labor proposals are the most pro-union since the 1935 wagoner they wagoner act, saying will multiply -- they say the u.s. economy will have a growth spurt as the pandemic ends, no matter who wins the election but over time, these destructive policies will lead to slower growth. how would you respond to that?

it's the wall street journal. what do you expect? it's going to help unions, we are going to negotiate better wages for workers and the economy is going to change. the amount of inequality is going to street. for the wall street journal, it's not that kind of economy. but for the rest of us, the economy that takes care of the rest of us, not only those at the top, but those at the bottom and gives everyone an equal opportunity to succeed, that's the economy we want and the wall street journal proved it for me. host: if they say it's going to lead to slower growth, does it affect things you are worried about for workers? guest: i don't know when the last time the wall street

journal was right about what's good for the economy. look at it this way. our economy is 74% driven by consumer spending. that means 74% of the people don't have money, they don't spend, they don't create demand, the economy shrinks. when you get that her wages, you spend more and that's what creates jobs. they may like it when the top 1% is doing great and buys the wall street journal every day. readof my members don't the wall street journal. they read the local newspaper, they get their news from other sources. they have been wrong before, they are wrong now. the best way to grow an economy is to make sure the vast majority of people have money in their pockets, not just the top 1% or the corporations. it's for workers. workers that are right now essential workers, stocking grocery shelves, in emergency rooms taking care of patients,

other people are out there, firefighters, officers, all of us rightey are saving now. give them some money. the unemployed, we got 30 million unemployed right now. becauset $600 expired mitch mcconnell would not pass the heroes act, epi estimates that's going to cost about 2.5 million jobs. moremeans 2.5 million people will not be working. a union member from smyrna, georgia. caller: thank you for taking my call. thank you for speaking truth to ther, talking about inequality of wealth on the fact that black lives do matter and that joe biden has built a coalition of all workers.

oshasue is with the covid,nes in regard to it's alarming, the lack of enforcement or guidelines put in place to protect us workers and union members. i'm an air traffic controller myself. it is really concerning that the fight on the republican side is to work for immunity for these corporations. it feels like we have no one in our corner fighting for us. my question to you is what are you guys doing to spread awareness on procedures that need to be put in place to have a safe work environment?

what are you doing to spread that message to ensure people are complying with those restrictions? because there's no enforcement, no penalty. corporations do whatever they can to pay the least amount of money and the result is all of us workers and union members are the ones who are exposed to covid. host: thank you. guest: he makes a good point. right now, workers are, particular essential workers, are getting covid because there isn't a standard. let me go back and frame that for you. one president trump took over, there was a pandemic task force that had all the agencies together to take care, but they disbanded that immediately. there was also a workplace infectious disease standard that was there and he got rid of that. then he started defunding osha

so that fewer and fewer inspectors, and right now, they have the fewest inspectors they've ever had in its history. and during covid, it has been totally nonexistent. it has been a wall. it has issued for violations for covid to protect workers. been nonexistent. that means we have had to do it, workers have had to do it themselves. in some instances, we negotiate with our employers to get help, and some instances, we've had to provide personal protective equipment to our members because their employers would not get it and osha would not require it. just this past tuesday, there was a meatpacking plant in pennsylvania where one of the inspectors witnessed them violating the covid standard rules the department of labor put out. way.are voluntary, by the those are the standards this

secretary of labor we have uses to justify not issuing a real standard that is enforceable not just by osha but workers themselves. as a result, more people are going to get sick. issues peoplep back to work in that issue -- that industry, the meatpacking industry. he doesn't issue anything about health and safety standards, no standards at all. so we have been negotiating, we've been forcing them, we've been educating people about them. osha has been absent, we are considered expendable, the senate -- they send us back to work in industry after industry with no protection, no ppe, standards we can enforce and as result, hundreds of thousands of workers have been infected. thousands of died. unnecessary.lly he considered us expendable. we are not expendable.

we are essential and what he doesn't understand and what joe biden truly does understand is untiln't fix the economy you fix and beat this pandemic. donald trump never understood that and still doesn't understand it. as a result, we have been the casualties. host: let's hear from oklahoma, republican line. jack, go ahead. sure if that old boy there even knows what he's talking about. the unions are a joke in this country anymore. they fire people, replace them with mexicans, illegals, and then they turn right around and tell us how we like it. kamala harris, i'm disappointed in her. she said joe biden was a racist.