>> all "q&a" programs are available on our website or available as a podcast at c-span.org. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> coming up today at 10:00 a.m. eastern, live coverage of the conversation on the 2020 presidential election and the candidates's foreign policy. this is hosted by the atlantic council. then, a discussion on college voters and their potential impact in this election year. with coverage begins at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or on the free c-span radio app. >> this morning, the former fema director discusses the role the covid-19 pandemic and recent natural disasters. also open the books.com founder discusses a recent report that

details federal spending of unused congressional appropriations. we also take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" is next. ♪ social justice and police reform protests continued over the weekend in cities like portland, oregon, kenosha, wisconsin, and washington, d.c. so too did the arrest and violence, including the shooting death of an apparent supporter of president trump. good morning, it's monday, august 31, 2020. welcome to "washington journal." this hour we will talk about the protests, the violence in those cities and elsewhere. the lines to use, republicans, (202) 748-8001.

democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents and others, that's (202) 748-8002. we welcome your comments by text, (202) 748-8003. tell us your name and where you are texting from. on twitter the handle is andanwj, facebook.com/c-span for your thoughts as well. we will keep you informed and let you know that the president's plan to travel to kenosha in the -- and joe biden's plan to travel for the first time in quite some time. our first topic in the first hour, "the washington times those quote reporting unrest in ."ties becoming more heated and pro-trunkters demonstrators clashed, leaving one man dead in sparking a round of finger-pointing at the national level as president

trump blamed local officials for allowing violence to surge." local reporting from "the oregonian" this morning -- portland,mayor of

yesterday, held a news conference with officials and others. here's what he had to say about president trump and his influence in portland. [video clip] >> president trump, for four years we have had to live with you in your racist attacks on black. early we learned about your sexist attitudes towards women. we have had to endure clips of you mocking a disabled man. we have had to listen to your anti-deming attic attacks on journalists. we have read your tweets slamming private citizens to the point of receiving death threats and we have listened to your attacks on immigrants. we have listened to you label mexicans rapist. we heard you say that john mccain wasn't a hero because he was a prisoner of war. and now you are attacking the veryc mayors and

institutions of democracy that have served this nation well since its founding. do you seriously wonder, mr. president, why this is the first time in decades that america has seen this level of violence? it's you who has created the hate and the division. it's you who have not found a way to say the names of black people killed by police officers , even as people in law enforcement have. and it is you that claimed that white supremacist are good people. your campaign of fear is as anti-democratic as anything you have done to create hate and vitriol in our beautiful country. you have tried to divide us more than any other figure in modern history and now you want me to stop the violence that you helped create.

what america needs is for you to be stopped so that we can come back together as one america while recognizing that the must demand that all people, black, brown, white, every color, from every political persuasion, pull together and hold all people accountable in stopping racism and violence and that we together are peaceful, again, under new leadership that reflects who we really are. we, the people of this great nation. the mayor of portland, ted wheeler, late yesterday. president trump tweeting practically at the same time. saying --

host: our first hour this morning, your thoughts and comments on the violence over the weekends. first we hear from aaron on the independent line, massachusetts. good morning. make sure that you mute your television and go ahead with your comment, please. caller: what do you want? it's just kidding -- i'm just

kidding. do you think the violence will end after president trump is elected? i think not. it doesn't have anything to do with allah to. does it? ill? -- bill? host: go ahead. caller: i asked you a question. timothy,will go to republican mine. caller: yes. i feel that these protests are not doing anything and i feel that the mayors are breaking the by letting these protests go on. i feel the democrats are behind all this. host: democrats behind all what? all the um,the, ah, uh, protests and stuff like

that. they don't like the president in office. and, um, it's getting ridiculous. businesses burnt out and everything else. ah, it'snk, disgusting. host: ok, lines for republicans, (202) 748-8001. lines for democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. "trump to visit kenosha in wake of police protests." "unrest has surged in the wake of a police shooting of an unarmed african-american man, jacob blake --

governory evers, the of wisconsin, issued this --

the governor of wisconsin. let's go to danielle, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i just had a quick comment, because i actually just got off from work at franklin square on the covid unit. so i have been up all night.

but the callers that don't in theand why democrats majority african-american communities feel the way they do about president trump. likenot that we just don't this guy. for years, leading back to his father and his practices in real estate, he has exhibited racist ideologies and actions and it has affected people's lives, even down to the policies he has , as well as the policies that mitch mcconnell has left on his task for years that just piled up that he won't even acknowledge. that is why people are so upset. when you are asking for something nicely and people tell you know, no, that's ok, then

you get more forceful. it's ok, it's not really happening. at some point you have to address. people are in the streets because we have asked, begged, cried, marched, sang. we have done movies, shows, history lessons. how many different ways that do you want people to say please stop killing us in the street at allow us to process -- allow us the process that you afford to other people. when you have leadership say -- we back the blue and disregard the feelings of all of these people who have been hurt for generations, it makes you want them out of office. host: doug is next. republican mine, california. go ahead. , california. go ahead. caller: good morning. i was watching the mayor of portland.

that was a purely political screed that had nothing to do with anything going on in the streets. i understand what the previous caller just said to. people want action on the part of their government leaders. but one of the actions that government leaders have to take is to maintain some kind of semblance of order. if you destroy your city, if you destroy your neighborhood, then you have got nothing left. there's nothing left. so, i don't understand why .anting order is a problem we can address these issues and i think people have gotten the message. cities, you destroy most people say that's not what i want, that's not how this is going to get resolved and they simply stop listening to you. thank you. that, the lead

editorial in "the wall street journal" addresses some of what they talked about. write,in failure," they the mayor and the governor -- host: on the independent line,

acting key, maryland, mark, go ahead. the portland mayor was very articulate and expressing himself. he's talking to the tone of it. that we feel, the people of this country. i know that different divisions, democrats, but you know what? at the end of the day he didn't win the majority. i don't want to make this , iversation all on trump just think that we are in -- he's just not making anything better. and he can make it better any time he wants. anytime he wants. consciously, he's making a conscious effort not to do anything about it. not to heal the country. it's embarrassing.

it's hurtful. it's insulting. it's just so many things. so many emotions, the lack of is, it's,t he chooses i'm having trouble even articulating this stuff. and i will say this, also. i'm not forg -- and violence, no one is. or they shouldn't be. who are the people making such a big deal of some materials from buildings, windmills and stuff like that, they are putting more value on that stuff then dealing with the actual issue that people are trying to get to the other side on. is anyonederstand why just not focusing on exactly what people are frustrated about and simply choose to do something about it.

all right, matt, republican mine, virginia. disagree withrly your previous caller. obviously doesn't understand what it is to build a business, as an example. so, many businesses, small companies, particularly white, hispanic, have been destroyed as a function of what these people are doing. should we treat them as petulant children, as they are, and do the right thing, or should we pretend that, treat them you .now as poor people maybe we should throw them some money or some other benefits. the bottom line is they are destroying property, they are destroying businesses. you know, peaceful protests, absolutely. that's part of the fabric of the country.

wesome extent that's how create change in the country. but this kind of behavior is beyond the pale and it is not something that benefit anyone. it doesn't do them any good, it doesn't do the country any good. it certainly doesn't benefit the people whose lives they have put andhe line, those companies businesses and so forth, to grow their cities, where they are tearing it down. host: all right, matt. headline in "the washington post ," in that they write that "this week both trump and biden will move to address the protests in a more prominent way. trump is set to travel to wisconsin, where the shooting of jacob blake, a black man, was left -- left him paralyzed --

host: we will show you the statement by vice president biden in just a moment. first, on the visit to wisconsin, the current -- the reaction here from congressional black caucus chairman, chairman bass. [video clip] onhe's traveling to kenosha tuesday to survey damage from the recent riots. what effect do you think it will have? good or bad? >> i think his visit has one

person -- purpose and one purpose only, to agitate things and make it worse. what happened in portland, you saw a parade of trump supporters actively shooting paintballs at peaceful protesters. the president in my opinion encourages that. he actually retweeted the people firing paint guns. he only means to agitate things. he is campaigning and it's clear that his campaign is a throwback to law and order of the past and he's going to do everything to disrupt law and order. >> and just to be clear, we don't know where the violence is coming from because there are protesters on both sides of the issue. we don't yet know what happened in portland. the former should vice president, joe biden, also i think the vice president, as i understand it, is going to be speaking out very

soon. whether he goes to kenosha or not, i don't know, i know he's going to follow medical advice first. one thing i don't think should happen is i don't think using kenosha in a way to campaign, which the president is doing, and the tweet that he put out, you do see people firing on the protesters, firing paintballs. i think that his motivation is directed only in one area and it to theto ring a resolve situation, it's not to look at police abuse. it's not to do any of that. >> but are you -- host: headlines from nbc and the statement, "the deadly violence that we saw overnight in portland is unacceptable, shooting in the streets of a great american city is unacceptable. i condemned the violence unequivocally. i condemned violence of any kind on the left or the right and i

challenge --

host: that from joe biden. more of your calls, comments, and it's as well here at c-span wj. up.: indiana, next howard, on our democrats line. caller: good morning. the points are as follows. protest in america is a proud tradition that we should all embrace and honor. violence and writing -- rioting

should be universally rejected and condemned. and third, we shouldn't conflate the two. and we do that continually. even in your presentation, we all do this, we talk about the protesters as if they are enacting the violence. they are not. there are infiltrators and anarchists embedding themselves within these groups and they are causing the violence. that has police action two important elements. police should, first of all, provide an environment where protest should take place. second, they should control and eliminate the violence. that's a police action, not the protesters. we shouldn't conflate the two. all of this will continue to go forward, the violence and the protests, until we resolve the fundamental inequities in this country. and that is that we have had

african-americans, i'm african-american, who have and lost their economic wealth, it was stolen from them and it has to be returned. the economic wealth, many scholars have devoted a lot of scholarship to this. it there's a way to do this but it will be significant. upwards of over $10 trillion and it must done. otherwise this will never resolve itself. we have to work through the accumulated injustice in the u.s. that we are still living with and must be resolved. otherwise we will continue to have this. but we should not conflate peaceful protest with violence and riders. those are different elements. don't conflate the two even as you speak about it. you should not conflate it.

you should keep those things separate. point, here'sd's how "the wall street journal" reports this morning on their front page. "protests, clashes, drawing in kenosha, wisconsin. -- wisconsin." mary, democratic line, good morning. caller: good morning. where do i start? first of all, i can announce word minority. i'm not a minority, i'm a human being that can vote. let's get to this. when it comes to protesting, we as black people know that we haveng that we are had to die in protest for, just to get to where we are now. and we are still protesting. john lewis is the perfect example. everything that we are, we protested, we died. we died for the right to vote. for the right to read. for the right to marry whoever we wanted to.

we died for the right to have a driver's license. we died for the right to ride around in the streets. we died for the right to buy a brand-new car and not be pulled you to be asked -- did steal this? and we are still dying. the protests are always going to go on. racism must be profitable. every time we try to get somewhere, racists come in and they stop it every time. and donald trump is nothing but a racist. he has nothing left. he is losing. losing badly. and it is said that when the enemy is losing, they double lies.n a, anarchy, he is hitler's right now -- hitler right now. he's feeding the fuel by hit going to the protests. host: pompano beach, good

morning. caller: great callers, there. how ridiculous can they be? president trump is responsible? these people -- look, there has been some kind of racism all my life, i'm 67 years old. now they want to blaine trump and his father. oh, my god. protesters. aren't they are rioters. they are killers. whathey think -- you know they are doing? they are reelecting my president trump. for that i'm glad. they will reelect him. because people in this country hate riots. they do. look at 1970. sent in thexon national guard into kent state

and of there about three or four, i think, students were killed by the national guard and there was a bit of an uproar about it. in 1972, nixon was reelected in a landslide. he won 49 states. americans hate riots. this will not stand. charles blow, "the new york times," writes a bit about the law and order stance of president nixon. "one could argue that trump's law & order mantra has its roots in the richard nixon success of the 1968 presidential campaign. reported at the time, it was --

particular,tland in a text hear from ray. here's what ray says.

to lakeland, florida, sean, independent line, good morning. caller: good morning. how are you doing there, sir? i don't know if president trump is a racist or not, but i will say that he's the world's greatest used-car salesman and he has sold a lot of people some stuff. when you look at the thing, you talk about protests. thatd it absolutely ironic these people all come on here and say that these people protesting is the worst thing in the world when -- what was the boston tea party? wasn't it a protest? didn't they destroy property? i'm just trying to figure this out. people keep saying it's

un-american when it's the most american thing that you can do. it's this thing where people seem to have this, where they question violence, or at least i have a violence when it comes from black people. no one seems to have a problem or says anything about violence when it comes from white people. what are they protesting? they are protesting the violence going on from the police. the reason there are protesters, please listen, the reason there are protesters is because every time that a police shoots somebody, nothing happens. individual. this it's that it has been going on forever. all the way back as far as i can remember, i'm over 40 years old and my whole life, it's been documented. i'm talking about from all the way back to the nwa song about the police. host: in terms of that issue,

adding on the police reform and the social justice issue on that, in particular is that getting lost in the wake of the violent incidents? is, they are playing politics with it. this is why i'm independent, honestly. no one is trying to fix anything . you have the democrats saying there is a problem with, we are going to jump on that and say defund the police, just call the money. then you have the republicans come in saying, we against that. they rioting in the streets, we need more police. the issue is the police are going around killing people and when they kill people, nothing happens to them. and nobody is trying to fix that. lot ofe got a whole people running to the election ballot. these people hate the fact that there is no law and order when

we talk about the killing people. areother people said, we going to defund it law & order because it is corrupt. acting secretary chad wolf making the rounds yesterday, including "this week" on abc. asking about federal law enforcement support in cities like portland, here's what he had to say. [video clip] >> i believe all options continue to be on the table when it comes to portland. what we have seen in wisconsin at other places, those governors stepping up, calling the state national guard. we are sending in law enforcement officers as well. portland again continues to refuse any type of federal assistance to bring the violent activity going on or just over 90 days now to a close. the citizens of portland want this. we need to bring normalcy back to portland and if the state or

local officials won't do it, they need to ask for assistance. >> do you have a message for the trump supporters that we saw parading into portland last night? we have images of them seeming to file -- fire paintball and pepper spray. >> my message to any individual, any group, if you are going to protest, first amendment right, please do that peacefully. once you cross the line into violence, that is what is concerning to the department of homeland security and it is what i'm vocus on. we need to bring violence in our cities to a close. host: president trump heading to kenosha, wisconsin on tuesday. "biden to deliver remarks in pittsburgh on trump's america. " athens, caller is in georgia, independent line. caller: how much do i love c-span, bill?

listen, you guys do a wonderful andon the democrat republican conventions. i got a chance to look at those future speakers. i'm getting a lot of questions are from a lot of people about who brian lamb is. he's a creator, founder, and former chair and ceo of c-span. he created c-span, this wonderful platform we have for the united states of america back in 1979. he later came in with c-span2, 1987, the senate coverage, following it up into thousand one with c-span3, history television. for those of you who are wondering why i always praise brian lam, he's the creator and found her give us the opportunity to express our ideas and be the american citizens that the founders created. go ahead, sir? host: you go ahead, to the subject. caller: to the subject, bill, in

my personal opinion, the american people are suffering from some sort of retardation/mental illness and ad with mental abuse tote fiend attitude. these protesters, excel luxury to be out here protesting. i can't protest, bill. i got to work, i've got responsibilities to pay attention to. president trump hasn't done anything to you guys, personally . you are filled with emotions and you are upset because the media has charged you. you guys have got to critically think about how better your life is here in america here in 2020. focus on your family, your god, your future and your retirement and let the chips fall where they may. vote, do your civic -- civic duty, but you can't be upset. the democratic party, the red --

they don't owe you anything. it's a white country for white people and the minute you realize that, you will be in a better mind state. thank you so much, bill. i love c-span and i'm proud to be an american. columbus, ohio. marie on the democrats line. columbus, ohio, you are on, go ahead. ok, sheila's next up, oklahoma, republican line. caller: i love that speaker that was on just before me. if everybody could kind of do what he said, this would be a better america and more peaceful right now. i'm calling about the protest, sir. in portland,en getting out there to protest with the protests. even after his city and businesses have been burned.

a lot of those places employed white and black people and their lives now have been destroyed. supporthow can they their families? they allowed their city to burn and they did nothing about it. i listened to the democratic convention. i heard nothing about the protest. nothing. but after it showed in the polls that people were concerned about it and they were listening to trump, all of a sudden biden decides to get out and talk about the violence and everything. it's hip hop or c. trump is not think causing this violence. it's the people that does it. of the people that take the gun that does the killing and everything. and we just need to stop it. a peaceful plan now in place for portland, that is wonderful. but they might need some

national guard to come in. take a look what happened to kenosha, when they brought in the national guard, that helped it. they might need reinforcement. anyway, i love america, to. i love c-span. thank you so much that we can come in. i can talk to my neighbors and everything, but this way we get to voice something out loud. because i'm never going to go to a protest. [laughter] we can, but that the message is being lost and it is not being lost by the peaceful protesters. it's not being lost by the black people, i want you to know it. our a lot of those people doing the protests are being brought in from other places. they are white. whites, you got to stop it. that's all i know to say. i'm getting kind of emotional, thank you for allowing me to talk. host: on your one point about

people coming in, this is a fox news roof work. arrest, sees 100 and 75 102 had addresses listed outside the city." from "the milwaukee journal "kenosha mayor -- mayor and state governor urged trump to reconsider." here's what senator ron johnson had to say yesterday on open state of the union." [video clip] hewhat happened is that found out law-enforcement were looking for help, he called the president and the president responded immediately saying what can i do to help. he offered to bring in the national guard. >> given everything you are saying -- >> unfortunately, our government turned it down. >> given what you are saying -- >> would you prefer --

>> agitating ideas -- >> that's, that's, that's how you are defining it. >> there's no other way to see it. it's very different from what you said. >> the way, let me finish, the way you stop the violence, stop the rioting, is you surge manpower resources, citizen soldiers, national guard, and you overwhelm the number of rioters so they can't riot. you protect the constitutional right to peacefully protest and it doesn't turn to riots. i also have to point out that at some point in time peaceful protests become a seizure. kenosha, yesterday, the downtown is boarded up. those businesses are shuttered. they can't operate. can earn a living -- in my >> part of the problem -- >> we also have to stop the seizure on our cities. >> that's fair.

>> it's very fair and needs to be said more often. >> we saw two people killed by a trump supporter in your home state of wisconsin, in kenosha, last week. the deaths do appear to be the result of clashes between the right and the left. doesn't the president have a responsibility to call out violence regardless of who is committing it? >> and the governor has a responsibility to accept manpower -- >> i'm asking -- >> so the citizens don't believe they have to protect their own property and take matters into their own hands. >> i'm asking about the president. >> what the president did was offer to surge manpower resources so the violence could end. the governor didn't accept. that night tragically two people lost their lives. i'm not for vigilantism but i'm not sure that's what was happening. people felt that the governor

and local officials, they were looking for help. the governor didn't accept the help. so, people took matters into their own hands. that's what happened. people died. host: the headline from "the ," in the video taken before two people were shot, "kyle rittenhouse circulates among the men --

host: wheel here from salem, oregon, next. john, republican line. caller: high, thanks for taking my call. one question i have, did the governor of wisconsin send the same letter that he sent to trump, did he also send it to biden? my understanding is that biden is scheduled to be in wisconsin on wednesday. my guess is that he probably did not send the same letter to biden. ok? one complaint i have with c-span. how to beur guys' s quicker on the button with people saying that trump is hitler's. it does nobody know good. and here's the question i would

like to see you ask. if someone calls trump a racist, why do so many black leaders work with trump in the white house? kingice of martin luther meets with him almost on a weekly basis in the white house. is she a racist? is she denying that trump is a racist? i don't think so. she knows trump. she knows trump is not a racist. yet you get so many people saying trump is a racist. and as far as the mayor portland? he's a joke. he's an absolute joke. quick on pulling the trigger up anomebody tries to set occupy zone. he will shut that down but yet he won't put in place a curfew to stop the violence. him and of the governor brown both have responsibility on their shoulders to stop the rioting.

host: all right, andrew is next, staten island, new york. good morning. >> good morning. i would like to reiterate something that someone said earlier concerning first amendment protests and how we understand it originating. via the boston tea party. ae boston tea party was not nonviolent protest. they actually destroyed the property of other people. any affluentt see americans participating in that particular incident. the only incident that you see during that time with african americans participating was during peaceful protests. he was one of the first ones that was killed by the

government who were in opposition to that particular peaceful protest. far as peaceful protests are concerned here in america, i can only trace it back to the civil rights movement and during that time when the peaceful protests came out, you had the anti-peaceful protesters who were majority caucasians who guns, theseh so-called militias, killing individuals. those are the facts of our history. that the denial that caucasians are the ones that are violently going out these problemsng

of destroying property and killing individuals, that denial goes to the core understanding of the separations of different races here in america. thank you very much. host: on twitter -- line,on the republican alexander city, alabama.

linda, go ahead. caller: high. a c-span junkie. love you. host: great. caller: no one wants to talk about the democrat cities where they black citizens are not safe . these democrat lead cities have kept their black communities, they have neglected them for way too long. these citizens are kept in poverty by democratic mayors and democratic leaders. it's there for all to see. it's a fact. i'm not making it up. chicago, philadelphia, baltimore , shootings are going on all the time. innocents dying by flying bullets. two years old, three years old, all ages. it doesn't matter. these families have to bury their loved ones every weekend as innocents die.

i just don't understand why this doesn't get the attention that it should. where is there justice? where is there peace? matter? black lives if black lives matter, the way they say, go to these neighborhoods in protest. finally, give these black americans a chance to have justice and peace. prove it by demanding change for these cities. what they are doing now, to me, is just going around and around and around, blaming police, blaming white people. what happened to george floyd is horrible. what happens when a police man murders or maims another, the policeman should get the full effect of the law, go to jail for life, whatever, he deserves it. but that doesn't solve -- i really believe that if they straightened up these cities that are led by democrats,

that's a fact, go to chicago, demand that these people now get a chance. no more failing schools, no more drugs, no more gangs and violence they have to put up with. bringing joeue is biden out on the road. president trump has also gone out to kenosha -- has also mentioned going to kenosha on tuesday. from politico, "biden forced to play on trump's turf." they write that "the violent scenes in kenosha and other places are shifting the debate --

.ost: that from politico floyd, white cliff, democratic line. go ahead. morning.ood thanks for having me. 50's, soen, i'm in my i've been around since the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 60's. what i'm seeing right now is really disturbing. , breonnat because

taylor, shot by six cops in his house. what if brad pitt was laying on the ground when samuel jackson [indiscernible] what would happen if three carloads of black guys shot brad pitt in the middle of the street , or leonardo dicaprio or something like that. these people are here protesting for a reason. they are not out here to burn down buildings. they want the violence to stop. it's not just against black people, it's also against white people. but other people are not even looking at what's going on. it's mostly white people out with "blackting -- matter"r signs signs.

they are shooting gas at white people, too. they really, they act like they don't care anymore. i said this, talking about the democratic cities. bills sitting on the desks of mitch mcconnell right now, not being addressed for anything. he don't even care. he wouldn't even let barack obama put a person up for the supreme court. come on, people. wake up and quit talking and start getting involved, also. did halff barack obama the stuff that president trump did right now, it would be an uproar. my god, it would be terrible. i would like somebody to comment on some of the things about the senate and the congress. mcconnell will never do anything. headline over the

weekend on the decision from the director of "national -- director of national intelligence to end security briefings. "the decision to halt classified exposess to congress the fundamental tension about who needs to know the information -- host: director radcliffe was on the sunday shows this weekend. here's what he had to say about the decision. [video clip] >> i reiterated to congress look, i'm going to keep you fully informed as required by the law. but we are not going to do a repeat of what happened a month ago. at the request of congress we will brief not just the oversight committees, but every member of congress.

when we did that, maria, i said the only thing is you keep the information private and within in its within one of the briefings ending, a number of members of congress went to a number of different publications to leak classified information, again, for political purposes, to create a narrative that simply isn't true. that somehow russia is a greater national security threat in china. so, i'm going to continue to keep the promises i made, follow along, keep congress informed, but we have had a pandemic of information being leaked out of the intelligence community and i'm going to take the measures to make sure that that stops. more calls,le of here. burlington, vermont, zach, independent line. good morning, c-span. thank you for taking my call.

i would like to ask the question, though, in wisconsin, the wisconsin police department, they shot jacob blake seven times in the back. seven times. and they feel like it was justified because they believed he was reaching or thought he had a knife or something like that? this kyle rittenhouse, i mean he walking down the street with a long shotgun. i don't know what kind of weapon it was, but it was a long gun and killed two people. two people. i won't, i'm asking can the police department be brought up on hate charges? i mean, it's like because they are inciting this. this guy committed a crime. he committed murder. and nobody seems to be looking at that. host: here's twitter --

from byron,hear independent line in columbus, ohio. to your producer, i suffer from a double hemorrhagic stroke, that being said that i stutter and stammer. as an independent, i have made up my map -- my mind that i'm going to slightly pull in biden's favor. i will say this, trump and the republican party highly exaggerated these protests with the percentages of people that

are doing the routing, the looting and rioting. thisthe biggest city in country, for example, 8 million people, new york city, and this is just wikipedia information. information, during their protests in june and july, arrests and0 implemented a curfew around june orand had another about 1500 2000 arrests. you are talking about a city of 18 million that is minuscule, less than 1% of one present. exaggerated by fox news and trump and this campaign. make the white vote, which has never voted for a democrat since 1968, this is to make the white vote the

overwhelming majority of our apprehensive and suspect of black lives matter and other protest groups. host: there is more ahead here on "washington journal." in our next segment, we will talk to the former fema director craig fugate and talk about fema's role in the covid-19 response and recent natural disasters, including hurricane laura. later, openthebooks.com founder adam andrzejewski will talk about a recent report that details late fiscal year spending an unused congressional appropriations. that is ahead. ♪ >> tonight on "the communicators," texas republican congressman will her talks about cyber issues facing the u.s. and why he thinks china want to

surpass the u.s. as a super powder. that superpower. surpass39, they want to the united states. that is 100 years of communist rule in mainland china. the way they are going to surpass the united states is by being a leader in future technology, ai, quantum, 5g. that is why they have been stealing intellectual properties, that is why they have been bullying other countries in order to buy their products, and that is why they are trying to be a leader in these technologies. >> on tuesday, treasury secretary steven mnuchin testifies before the house oversight and reform committee on urgent need for coronavirus relief for children, workers and families and a limitation of key

stimulus programs approved earlier this year. .atch live coverage >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are joined next by former federal emergency management agency administrator craig fugate. thank you for being with us on "washington journal" this morning. guest: thanks for having me. host: a number of items on our plate including the covid-19 response. first, to the response to hurricane laura. the hurricane coming effectively the same week marking 15 years since hurricane katrina. what lessons do think fema and the federal government learned in terms of response to hurricanes in particular? guest: i think the biggest lesson was that we don't wait until we are asked to start

getting ready. to be ana, there seem lot of confusion about the governor having to make requests and what fema's role was going to be. congress, after katrina launched substantial legislation. governors are going to be is he dealing with this. the federal government doesn't have to wait. we start moving resources and i think you see this response has increased. we are not waiting for these assessments. you talked about states being prepared and fema being prepared, but what about individuals? do you think u.s. households are better prepared than they used to be to handle things during a natural disaster? guest: we get better at some things and not as good in others. if you look at what has happened in hurricane laura, we were fortunate. there seem to be very low

loss-of-life due to the impacts of the storm. a lot of people heated the evacuations even in the time of covid. unfortunately, we have seen a lot of deaths associated with carbon monoxide due to improper use of generators. we have to continue to increase the lessons we learned. even after a hurricane, it can be dangerous and deadly for people in the recovery process. one headline says calamity visits again. last week, the whole hurricanes shaped up to be a one-two punch. it didn't work out necessarily, but there were two major storms hitting the gulf coast. in your experience, have you ever seen a season as busy as this in terms of hurricanes? guest: so far, yes. florida got hit with four hurricanes in 2004. in 2005, we were using the greek alphabet. we are not even in the peak of

the hurricane season. we still have a long ways to go, but it has been very active so far. laura, aular, with very early hurricane. oft: the former director fema talking about response to hurricanes, covid-19 pandemic and wildfires. we welcome your comments. one line for those of you in the eastern and central time zones, one in mountain and pacific. what does your organization do? guest: basically, policy and communication. we do a lot of work in the flood space talking about how to look at flood policy going forward. our national flood insurance program. it has a lot of challenges, but

more importantly, as we continue to see increasing flood risk, we still see a lot of folks who don't have flood insurance. we see that a lot of our infrastructure isn't keeping up with increased flooding risk. host: an covid-19 response, what was fema's role as one of the lead agencies and responding to the pandemic? guest: it changed. our plans in planning for pandemics is based upon what we have learned with h1n1 and ebola was that fema would play a role, but it would be a supporting role to the lead agency, which would be services. --a's task was consequent concentrating on the consequences of the pandemic. we saw early, it seemed that was not what the plan was going to be. fema was put into the role of coordinating a lot of the resource requests to this. that put fema into an area that it had done a lot of resources, but these were resources it

didn't have a lot of experience with. there was a period there with both hyper demand as well as fema having to literally play catch up to the resource requests. host: you're talking about personal protective equipment and things like that? guest: everything from the ventilators. probably the biggest thing we identified as one of the big shortfalls was the ppe, particularly, the medical grade n95 masks. had seen this previously with ebola and others on a much smaller scale. we knew ppe was going to be one of the items that in a pandemic, was going to be in huge demand. i think that is one of the challenges. no one really thought about how big the number was going to be about how much you needed. it seemed like everybody was grabbing whatever they could to try to meet the demands of what

was occurring. host: what was on the books in terms of that response and plan? how much to the federal government have stockpiled or should have had stockpiled in preparation for something like this? guest: the national stockpile was never designed for a pandemic. they were designed for point specific disasters, bio tax, something geographically limited. we really look at the national stockpile as a pushback. when dealing with a pandemic, ideally, you would contain a and have a few cases or areas being hit and that would be a geographically based response. it also meant that if we didn't get containment, things like the defense production act had to be evoked early to start folks prioritizing and coordinating additional production of ppe, most of which was overseas, and looking at how you would

increase domestic production while maximizing -- again, every country was competing for these resources. without domestic production capability, we fell behind and it was difficult to get caught back up. our lines are regional. on that defense production act, the president was called on to use that for production of essential material. do you think the administration should have acted sooner on that? or acted more broadly in implement thing that act? where we are at now, it is an easier question to answer. we should have turned it on earlier. it is a huge impact on disrupting supply chains. in many cases, you are not sure how much you are going to need early on. by the time you know you need

it, it is usually too late. one of the lessons i think we are going to come out of this is how do we increase domestic production of some of this ppe, how much we should maintain the stockpile and what is the best way to leverage the defense production act when you're not sure how bad it could be. host: doesn't a little bit kobach to the individual and family preparation for these sorts of things in relation to hurricanes? guest: again, when we were talking about originally, the whole issue with covid-19, it was a novel virus, which meant we had never experienced it before and would constantly learn. we started out with social distancing and washing our hands, and then we added masks. we have learned this is a fairly significant airborne threat. that ability to provide those supplies, in the beginning, was very short. now that we are starting to get

to the point that we have enough, it is important that people wear a mask in their outdoor activities when they are meeting other people enclosed spaces. wearing we maintain masks and social distancing, the slower the outbreak is spreading. host: let's go to calls and hear first from gary in east brunswick, new jersey. go ahead. caller: thank you very much for picking up. i am 82 years old. i live in east brunswick, new jersey. i want to complement the mayor of east brunswick. he is a physician and a great mayor and a great leader. i want to also thank the police brunswick and the emergency management coordinator. i spent 50 years and the health care field.

on the editor of a textbook in that field. and the editor in chief and founder of a journal. i have to complement these men for the outstanding jobs they have done during not only the pandemic, but also the storms a couple weeks ago. the leadership, one of the great mayors of the county of middlesex in the state of new jersey, active in the board of education, an elected official and now the city mayor of east brunswick, knows exactly what to do together with the emergency management coordinator who has been one for 38 years. i, myself, have bought masks from the pharmacy and give them support people, given them to small retail shops. i also am the one that called the governor's office of the state of new jersey on april 1 and told the secretary and the state health administrator if the governor does not issue and

a proclamation to wear a mask, i will call the community called diseases center, which he did issue with a few days later and his office called me and then, i called safe in shoprite and told them if they didn't shutdown the salad bars, there will be a price to pay. host: i will let you go. guest: again, we are seeing across the country, the pandemic reached to every community. it wasn't uniform. this has moved into rural america, middle america. what started out being an east coast and west coast epicenter has spread. unfortunately, we have seen some areas do very well and be aggressive in our measures. other areas didn't seem to have the same leadership or desire to do some of these things. their cases skyrocketed. concord north in

carolina, republican line. go ahead. caller: i was just wanting to know when he thinks about the cdc coming out and saying 94% of the virus was misrepresented. they are saying only 6% had the virus and they have made that public. and how it has changed to the world. i just don't understand that. the cdc. made that clear. 94% were misinterpreted. so far, the medical establishments and looking at how they are counting deaths, over 180 thousand people have died of the virus. that is more than we have seen from a lot of other causes. average loss of life from traffic crashes every year is about 50,000. we know that covid doesn't

affect everybody the same. supery cases, we have the spreaders who are not even displaying symptoms. the mortality rate for covid is significant for those that do have conditions. and in some cases, even young people and children, we are seeing deaths associated or related to the covid infection. a line for those of you in the eastern and central time zones. and pacificmountain time zones. our guest is craig fugate. on the wildfires in california, wildfires stretch capacity showing the number of acres burned in 2020 and still early in the season at fairly record levels. it is sort of a triple punch here with the fires out west, hurricane season still well underway and the pandemic still going on. of fema ever faced the sort

crises on multiple fronts like this before? guest: not with the pandemic. hurricanealt with season and wildfires coexisting at the same time, but a lot of what fema does is in support of our states. i think there is a tendency to think that fema is the only organization tourist bond. -- two respond. host: we go to our independent .ine caller: the collins are east coast, west coast and text. i am an independent. , in regards becomes to covid-19 and storm threats.

back in 1938, there was a massive storm that came up the east coast. had the best scenario for the where a bermuda high dropped and spinning clockwise and another front spinning counterclockwise that pushed the storm 55 miles an hour up and hit up in vermont as a category one. back in the late 90's and early 2000's, there was another storm that had the exact same. it jumped into the carolinas, but 24 hours later the jetstream in and 24 hours later, the bermuda high have dropped down and you could have had an identical effect to the 1938 storm. if you had a catastrophic storm, such as in 1938, which could

have repeated itself, with the covid-19 preparations, along with such a catastrophic storm hitting long island and destroying long island, because it was all agricultural land back then, would fema be able to handle that? again, fema is just part of the team. when you get into high population areas, there is a lot of challenges but also a lot of resources from state and local governments. he brought up a point that in dealing with covid and hurricanes, we are going to have to look very carefully on making sure people understand the risk from hurricanes is primarily water. if you look at the hurricane center data and looking back at storms over centuries, the leading cause of death is drowning or water related trauma. we want to remind people that if you are in a evacuation zone,

the biggest risk is going to be drowning and water related traumas. we stony people to evacuate even in the era of covid. the reason we think the loss of laura was low was the number of people who did he the evacuations and moved inland. the most important thing to remember is that covid is bad, drowning is worse and we need people to evacuate if their communities are threatened by these hurricanes. host: i think we started out by saying the number of deaths was around 15 or 16 mainly from carbon monoxide poisoning. guest: this is something i really saw in florida in the 2004 hurricanes. we had more deaths after the storms then we did from direct impacts. things like generator safety. a lot of times, people just don't use generators. they forget that generators produce carbon monoxide.

we remind people to keep those things far away from your house. don't put them in your garage and don't run them in your home. make sure the exhaust is pointed away from the house. the problem with carbon monoxide is that it is odorless and deadly and often one of the most common events we have seen with generators. improper placement and running those generators when carbon monoxide gets into the home. host: let's hear from the gulf coast. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm talking about fema, the storms and the fires that have been going on and coronavirus. i don't blame that on our president. i blame it on the presidents that were in office way before us. they could have caught onto all of that in time. it was like the election is and donald trump and

obama and allowing them to come over. it wasn't his fault, it wasn't nobody else's fault but the government. it is like i said, i've been fighting with the government for years over fema. i lost three trailers, three vehicles. i didn't get nothing back because i didn't have no address. what do you do about that? you can't keep fighting them. so what do you do? i believe donald trump has done more for us than obama. host: did you lose these trailers in one particular storm or where these several different incidents? caller: storms. i'm still fighting it. it is like i said, i can't get no help down here because the way it is with the justice department and fema, if you don't have a current address or a permanent address and it was my permanent address, it was just my name wasn't on the box. host: we will let you go there.

any thoughts? guest: this was something we have run into before where we have had people who are impacted because of oftentimes passing property down. we basically came up with a way to work around that so we could help folks. generally, if we can make it work, we do. isetimes the challenge getting help the people that need it versus making sure that there is not fraud in other circumstances. if that is a legitimate complaint, hopefully that is something we could figure out how to do. the goal wasn't to keep you from getting assistance, it was to get assistance to as many people as possible. host: the new york times has a piece on hurricane laura. they write "in the working class neighborhoods in and around lake charles, louisiana, how

difficult the path ahead would be became clear. the storm inflicted was so severe that it will be an immense undertaking just to clear debris. beyond the physical labor, residents were also stepped into the thicket of bureaucracy with insurance claims and application for government aid. inspectors surveyed more than 200 damaged homes and issued more than $650,000 in assistance. is that pretty typical in terms of this be the reaction of officials in issuing that assistance to folks that have had damage? guest: you could have written that article about a half-dozen hurricanes i have been involved in. is aftermath of the storm bureaucracy you have to wade through. one of the challenges i had was

trying to reorient. we have so many moving parts, whether we have insurance. fema says it is based upon a demonstration of needs. congress did not intend that fema would be the first payee. at, do you you look have insurance, do you qualify for a small business administration loan? if you do and you had eligible losses, what can fema do? fema only provides reimbursement for uninsured losses. when there is not another way, whether a law or other program that can meet that need. next up is vivian in california. caller: good morning. i would like to remind america that ever since president trump took office, he promised he was going to do away with the affordable care act. he has worked on that for some

time and we will -- he will continue to do away with it. another thing i would like to mention is this is an impeached president and they still want to put him back in office. i don't understand that. if he can do away with it, people are in deep trouble. he promised he had a better plan , but that never materialized. host: you testified before congress in july on response to the pandemic. fema hade felt like awarded contracts to some companies not capable of fulfilling them. guest: this is based upon our past history. based on what we saw in the 2017

hurricane. once fema has exhausted the -- there is a lot of things to make sure you have done. once you have run out of those and you're looking for anyone, it turns out, the system can be that peopled in with intentions of delivering resources will bid all of these contracts. some people find the markups they can get can be lucrative, so they will bid on the contract to see if they can find the products and services. ultimately, you don't get anything. the only good news is that very rarely does anyone receive payment for that. marie endorses after they receive product. it does mean that unfortunately, it slows out -- it slows down.

that affects their ability to support their partners. let's hear from jacob in florida. i was getting confused about everyone in the world and people seeking out god's faith. i don't understand that. everyone says the cdc says to do this and the cdc says to do that. togod almighty tells me offer my body a living sacrifice to him. when you're telling me to put a mask on my face, i serve the public in a supermarket. i am there all day wearing a mask. i can't breathe. all day. they must have cut me off. host: craig fugate.

vice president biden has said he would issue a national mandate. guest: i would defer to the science, but increasingly, more and more researchers are saying not just is particulate. this is airborne. much smaller particles of staying in the air much longer and that social distancing and handwashing just isn't going to cut it particularly enclosed or confined spaces where it is difficult to do that. masks have been shown that where we do have that high compliance that we do see a corresponding reduction in places. the more that we can get mask compliance is socially and people understand why we need to be wearing them and when it is appropriate to wear them and when it is not necessary, unfortunately, i think this is not something going away soon.

even with a vaccine that is approved, it will take time to connect people vaccinated that we could potentially get away from wearing masks. it is part of our new reality and how we protect ourselves and others. the more we have compliance with that, the more people that willingly wear the mask, the safer everybody is in the managed -- the better we can manage. we still continue to see more cases. that is slowing down our ability to slow down the -- build back the economy. the corps of engineers having a role. will fema have a role in this region of vaccines? guest: no.

i can't say for certain what they are looking at now, but we used what were called the whole of government of all of the federal agencies that would have some role in rolling out a vaccine. we wereat this when dealing with h1n1 in 2009. fema's primary role was generally going to be supporting the other lead federal agency with logistics and things like that. that remains to be seen, but i would caution people, warp speed in vaccine production doesn't mean the same thing to a lot of people. if you are listening to dr. fauci and others that they may have a good candidate that can go through the process approval this fall, the distribution and production will still take time that we now have an effective vaccination program. host: back to calls. john in minnesota. i am living in

minnesota, but i do have a house in florida. i can't afford the homeowners insurance any longer. a little bit worried about climate change and the rise in sea level. host: is that on your florida home? caller: right. any response? been a bigrance has issue in florida particularly after hurricane andrew and we had a lot of major insurance companies merely go bankrupt or leave the market.

rates have gone up and this is a reflection of market prices and what it takes to ensure the risk of living in florida, particularly along the coast. a challenge i think we are going to see increasingly faced in other parts of the country. one of the hardest economic impacts after the storms is the availability and cost of insuring homes in these high-risk areas for these types of storms. as we are seeing more powerful storms and frequent storms, that is not just going to be an issue in florida, it is going to be an issue along the coastlines. i think this is probably one of the things that is people wanted climate change, the insurance markets are actually reflecting increasing cost what climate

impacts look like. onis pricing itself affordably. host: is it a big congress that decisions about local land decisions, where people build, close to the water, etc. are made locally? they are made by the state and yet response in terms of insurance or emergency response is expected from the federal level? this is something that i don't think people quite understand. pays for these losses during disasters. it begs the question of why we seeing all of this insurance particularly in government? what we have done is transfer a lot of the risk that local and state governments make on these decisions to the federal taxpayer. on the macro scale, we have set the price so low that many cases, we are not seeing much change in behavior.

enabling.ses, we are we have to look at individual homeowners that have already built and live in these areas and how we manage. we have to really talk about future development and rebuilding in these areas. stop building,e but we have to stop -- start building differently and building for the future. it seems we are running into these events that are always record-setting weather events, but our infrastructure was built from the past and hasn't even been maintained. host: would you say the same is true for where people choose to build in places like california and closeness to high burn areas? guest: there has been a lot of study done on white people, why we are seeing increased growth in these areas. a lot of it has to do with the

price of housing and urban areas in california. people have moved out to find affordability. it is a challenge that when we were building for our past, as the future is now here, climate change isn't something that is going to be 30 or 40 years out. we are seeing impacts now. we didn't build for it. we are going through this very difficult, somewhat dangerous timeframe of how do we deal with what is already built in these areas, but more importantly, how do we rebuild and build new in these high-risk areas and this new reality that we have for climate impacts? from vanessa in mississippi. good morning. caller: good morning. concern is about this pandemic disease. what are we supposed to do when

we have kids? host: what are you supposed to do with your kids, is that your question? caller: yeah. with education and stuff like that. [indiscernible] and worry about everything else. host: have your kids come back to school? caller: no. host: vanessa in mississippi. anything to add? guest: it is a difficult decision. are seeing particularly now in colleges that returning to campus has brought on new covid cases. there is a lot of people saying kids are not really affected by covid. we are saying that that is not exactly true. situation that some parts of the country are in better position with much lower and others are

looking at distance learning. i think long-term, we need to think about not just taking how we educate and applying learning to that, i really think about how we provide learning effectively, particularly in rural america. think about how we can start bringing education to kids and parts of the country where they may not have access to that. on howan break the code they get broadband to all children, children with disabilities sometimes as a challenge. we want them in school. with covid, that may not be practical. it is not an easy answer. i think one of the tools we need to look at improving as broadband for all america and really looking at how we improve digital content and provide that in ways that not just during covid, but during other times, we can provide quality education

to all children in this country. host: next up is tom in virginia. caller: thank you guys for having me on again. c-span, you guys our national treasury. i'm going to lay this all out for you. the cdc has come out saying it is virtually impossible for you to catch covid-19 airborne. you've got to have symptoms. yet to be caught -- coughing, sneezing, you have to put droplets oliver surfaces. if you are asymptomatic, is virtually embossed for you to infect everybody. people like this guy have caused so much terror in america. i'm in a hotel last week and i see a woman sitting by herself wearing latex gloves, a face shield and a mask. there was nobody within 150 feet of her and she is on her own own. she is protecting herself from her own phone. this guy is sitting here talking about the consequences of global warming.

this pandemic is being used to terrify america. that is a fact. go look at the cdc. this guy cannot provide you the sourcing for anybody by name or website of where it says that covid-19 is spread airborne. if that was the case, listen very closely, since the beginning of this thing, i have literally only worn a mask in an -- i haven't worn it more than an hour in the entire time. i train elderly people on firearm safety. whole rooms full of elderly men and women who are terrified of all of this other social engineering that the liberals are responsible for. no one has covid-19. york, other hand, in new the mayor deliberately infected

almost 50,000 elderly people with covid-19 resulting in their deaths. young people will not die from covid-19. host: tom, we will let you go. your response? guest: 108,000 deaths, numbers going up. college football games canceled, college teams having to quarantine players. the death rate is not going down. the best protection we have short of a vaccine is social distancing. wearing a mask and taking the precautions to keep from spreading covid or getting covid. ont: question for you twitter. hurricane proof rebuilding's required when insurance companies pay out to rebuild? awayare during their money and building back the way it was when it was destroyed.

we need to do better. guest: we have seen that in florida and other states where they did improve. we have seen reductions in losses from these storms. in some cases, even our building codes are behind. companies pay for what is called insurance cost. if there are newer costs, it will be upgraded to those, but there are a lot of places in the country that don't have military codes or current codes and the insurance company will only replace what the local building codes require. host: headline from a newspaper. hurricane the third strike for this ravaged family. that white house issuing a statement saying the president is committed to deploying the full resources of the federal government and rescue those in distress and restore disruption

to communities and infrastructure. in your experience either this has fundingyear, for fema ever been an issue. guest: back during hurricane irene, we ran out of money. people forget that we got pretty low. at that time, in the aftermath of that, speaker ryan and then jack lew came to an agreement on how to fund fema for future disasters. outside of the worst catastrophic disasters, fema has been well-funded. congress has been willing to refund fema. we haven't seen fema in that situation again. again, fema is well-funded for what we would consider the average of our hurricanes and earthquakes and fires and congress will step in when they need to for additional funding.

peoplehat we say to having issues with contractors. who should they go to first with rev response? generally, it is going to be local officials. licensing boards or state typically have the responsibility to address those. host: let's get one more call from beverly. hello and good morning america. to ask donald trump if he would stop spreading the corona because he is not letting nobody wear masks. the diversity is so bad in america already, but now, there is violence because of a simple

mask. it is just so bad. and use your all common sense and find a mask that does work for you. and even put some gloves on if you are in a big crowd. it will help you. thank you. host: craig fugate, any final thoughts. guest: the 1918 pandemic, we saw similar backlash against masks. i think that is just something we have to deal with by education. most, it is probably our effective tool right now between social distancing and wearing a mask. wearing a mask cuts down on the spread. it is going to be key to keeping our economy recovered and it is going to be our best tool this year. a mask is not just a political statement.

your about keeping you and loved ones safe and community safe and getting our economy going again. host: our guest, the former fema administrator, craig fugate. always a pleasure to have you with us. more ahead here on "washington journal." coming up next openthebooks.com founder adam andrzejewski will talk about a recent report they unusedt looks at congressional appropriations. later on, more of your calls and comments as "washington journal content -- journal" continues. ♪ >> biden's record is a shameful roll call of the most

catastrophic blunders in our lifetime. his entire career on the wrong side of history. >> our current president has failed in his most basic duty to the nation. he has failed to protect us. he has failed to protect america. and my fellow americans, that is unforgivable. presidential debate between president donald trump and former vice president joe biden is tuesday, september 29 at 9:00 p.m. eastern. watch live coverage on c-span. watch live streaming and on-demand as c-span.org or listen live on the free c-span radio app. >> you are watching c-span, your unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television company as a public service, and brought to you today by your television provider. tonight,, on "the

communicators," texas republican will hurd talks about cyber issues facing the u.s. and why he thinks china wants to surpass the u.s. as a superpower. >> by 2040 nine, they want to surpass u.s. as the sole superpower. that is 100 years of communist rule in mainland china. to way they are going surpass the u.s. is by being a leader in future technology, ai, quantum, 5g. that is why they have been stealing intellectual properties. that is why they have been bullying other countries in order to buy their products. that is why they are trying to be a leader in these technologies. congressman will hurd on "the commute to gators."

-- the communicators." on tuesday, steven mnuchin testifies on the additional need for economic relief and the implementation. >> "washington journal" continues. host: as the federal government approaches the end of the fiscal year, we are joined by openthebooks.com founder adam andrzejewski joining us to talk about their recent report. good morning, how are you? guest: great to be on the program. host: tell us about your organization. a nationalaunched on basis about five years ago. our mission is to post every dime online in real time. rs followedour audito

up with 41,500 freedom of accusation -- acquisition requests. host: you got involved in this how? what is your background and interest in federal spending? guest: i am a business guy. ick in 1997, my brother and founded a publishing company. fundd yellow page directors for small communities. i had the blessings and good fortunes 10 years later, one year before steve jobs invented the iphone, to sell my shares at a multiple never to return. i got involved in public policy and politics. my father, as a conservative democrat had run against one of the most popular illinois republicans in history.

george ryan was eventually governor and was one of those illinois government that served time in federal prison. 1978, i was in the second and fourth grade and father instilled in me public service when he ran against george ryan. after i sold shares of my company, i looked around and i see a silver bullet to end the corruption. time, i metrse of formerl people like senator tom coburn from oklahoma and we took our illinois lessons on transparency across the country. host: an part of that is the report your organization just issued titled "the federal government's use or lose it findings pre--- spending spree. how the federal government spent $91 million in september 2019." why is it a spree?

guest: about one out of every six dollars in contracts at the department of defense goes out the door in the final 30 days of the fiscal years. federal agencies, 67 of them, spend on their presents this year so they get the same or more money out of congress next year. this --big problem when when the federal agencies can't even spend all of the money congress is throwing at them. host: your report says 91 billion dollars in september 2019. to be clear, september is the last federal month of the fiscal year. is that an unusual figure? guest: it is up significantly from 2015. we have been looking at this since 2015.

out $61en, it was ab billion. $97 was the peak of billion. last year, it ended up going a little bit backward to $91 billion. i think that is because of the political pressure all of us have put on this. in the president's budget to congress in february this year in a new chapter on how to eliminate wasteful spending, he highlighted our oversight report and said it was a priority of the ministration to stop this practice. joni ernst a year ago wrote the legislation to stop this year and spending spree. 1, adam smithuly out of california, powerful jammin -- chairman of the armed services committee and reauthorization act said we need

to stop the use or lose it spending at the pentagon that goes on every single year. there is bipartisan support for this measure now. host: let's open up our phone lines because we are starting to get lots of calls on this. one call for democrats, one for republicans and one for independence. just to talk about the numbers in your report, this federal spending numbers september of 2019, nearly $24 billion was spent in the final two business days of september last year. september 30 broke all records at $12.2 billion. september 27 recorded $11.6 billion on federal contracts, there were $91 billion spent on 642,000 transactions an average 21,418illion on

transactions each day during a two-year period september 2018 and 2019. the spending totaled $28 billion. it is worthwhile noting that you talked about the defense, the biggest about -- amount of money spent in september of last year. for guns,n dollars ammunition and other weaponry. did any of that surprise you in terms of the amount they spent? the numbers are dizzying. it is a tremendous amount of money. here's what everyone needs to understand. a lot of it was wasteful spending just to spend on these budgets at the end of the year. a wall of it was borrowed against our national debt. now, our national debt is rivalry $27 trillion. host: let's hear from rob in

hometown, illinois. republican line, go ahead. caller: good morning. love cruising your website. my question is about a controversial state rep from the state of minnesota, it seems like a lot of stories are swirling around her financing. i was wondering if she was doing anything fishy with her campaign contributions or whatnot? . basin --at our investigation didn't cross was individual members of congress. there is a bill to stop using or lose it spending in the house and the senate. the white house guys committed to it and the powerful democratic chairman in the armed

services committee said he will back it as well. host: if they adopt it, it might put you out of business in terms of this annual report you do. host: that would be a great thing. here's what we found this year at the department of defense. last year, it made national news on your program when we discovered $4.6 million was spent on lobster palen sno wcrab in the fiscal year. year, the numbers on the lobster tail and snow crab are million.the same, $4.6 the distribution on what was spent on lobster versus the crab are much different. this year, we are choosing to highlight the $88 million spent by the pentagon on public relations. last year, they spent the million dollars on professional bull riders association.

this year, they are just spending a lot of money overall on general advertising for the includingtes military on specific contracts on social media to promote their air and water shows eerie -- shows. host: democrats line. caller: about the fiscal year spending, this gentleman is totally correct. there is nothing wrong in what he said. i used to work for the elementary school back in the early 1990's. , end-of-the-year, i'm talking about schools now. he never mention the schools when he was talking to you, but your teachers are all the time out there wanting more money because they are on strike or whatever. during the end of that year, i happen to be there. they have thrown out thousands and thousands of books, desks, you name it. we had to go and clean and pull everything out because they had

to spend the extra money they had. we are talking multitude of things they got rid of, desks, you name it. they threw everything out. you spend all of your money for that here, you get more the following year. every year, they keep adding more to their budgets because this is what is happening in the schools. and this is the early 1990's. host: adam? experience we an hear about at every level of government across the entire country. last year, coming onto c-span, we took 17 calls. there were a lot of callers that complained about what was going on in their local me miscible governments and school districts. people that work in state government have called in. we heard last year from somebody that had worked in coronado, california for special forces for 23 years and said it was

criminal what was going on at the department of defense in the end of your spending. this is a common refrain. unfortunately, public executives at all country and public executives at all levels need to crack down it. host: are all federal agencies, they have to spend that money at the end of the fiscal year or do some of it carryover? there are certain agencies like the department of justice, like transportation. they get some flexibility. 50%.get to carry over 50% of what they don't spend. across allple federal agencies, end of year infrastructure. is about 12% on the year. however at the department of justice, it's only 3% on the year in part because they have

this carryover provision. so there are interesting public policy fixes that can be brought to bear. the is what mac thornberry, republican ranking member wanted to get this amendment in for the department of defense so they could carryover 50%. very reasonable and unfortunately it did not go into that bill this year. host: let's hear from sabrina in asheville, north carolina. caller: i was wondering if you could give me some advice. i am concerned about how much money is being taken by the child support system and is unaccounted for. i kinda feel like they are robbing the american people because they are taking the federal income tax return from the lower income levels and basically they are taking all of moneyres money -- poor's

and putting it into the government system. i was wondering if you had any advice to me on how i can possibly get them to stop doing that. guest: i'm unfamiliar with the details on that. generally what i would like to say is all of these examples of the end ofer it's your spending spree, every single dollar that's wasted on standup desks, lobster tail and snow crab, public relations, the purchase of unnecessary vehicles to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at the end of the year every year, every single one of those dollars is a dollar that can't be spent on somebody that has true needs. and that's why i think it's incumbent on all of us to raise our voices on a bipartisan basis and they and of is enough.

stop christmas in september for federal contractors. host: of you are in provincetown saying, didn't the grace commission address this same problem years ago? guest: that's a great question and the grace commission probably did address this. the end of year spending spree has been going on for decades. our organization has made this front and center and now there is some bipartisan agreement to stop this thing. important that it's to bring the heat to congress because they write the rules, they can crack down. the caller has a point that vendors are also culpable. we took a look at the top three vendors last year. they are all defense contractors. it is boeing, united technologies.

the top three contractors spent $175 million on lobbying last year. five years,rse of they spent $175 million lobbying congress and they took about $12 billion on use it or lose it spending at the end of the year. so that was about one out of every five dollars that went out the door in the last 30 days went to these three defense contractors who had spent a tremendous amount of money lobbying congress over the course of the last five years. host: they top the list of the top 10 federal contractors as of september 2019. one in every $40 goes to just 10 contractors. mentioned boeing, united technologies, lockheed martin. we will hear from paul in indianapolis. caller: good morning.

i was an auditor with the department of defense for 25 years. this problem continued. one of the biggest reasons for that is the money goes from ofgress to the department the army. the army splits it out, but the army doesn't send all of its money to its subordinates. downach level as you go also keeps a little bit set back. at the end of the year they've got all these reserves that have to be spent so they all get crammed down to the lowest level and the lowest level has their wish list. they haven't been able to fund those wish lists because they are ranked by priority. all of a sudden their buses are just raining money down the tree picking offy start their wish list. probably the best way to solve

this is to have somebody review the wish list so there's nothing on the wish list that you don't really need. because a lot of times, the third number was furniture. a lot of times furniture and office that hasn't been replaced for 50 years is way down on the priority list. come time at the end of the year when all the reserves are being dispersed or obligated, they need to buy those. that's their chance to buy that furniture. see furniture jump up because it's always low priority until they have too much money. that's probably one good way to control. you're always going to have this problem because they are required to keep reserves at each level and those reserves have to be liquid catered by the end of the year. host: adam andrzejewski, your thoughts.

in the armed services committee hearing on july first, republican congressman from california paul cook. he's a retired marine officer. he said that it's criminal. he said he participated in it when he was in the marine corps as an officer. he said i will probably burn in hell for this. nobody stopped it and it has to be stopped. in the data we reviewed, one out of every seven contracts that the pentagon let's on the year goes out the door in the last 30 days. that's no way to run the finest military in the world. and i would feel a lot better about their spending if the pentagon could simply pass their audit. they've only had two audits. the trump administration mandated the pentagon have an audit.

they were supposed to have an audit since 1990. so for the past two years they have flunked their audit. 1400 auditors spend 12 months. the audit costs a billion dollars in the pentagon flunks it. host: you have mentioned this bill by senator joni ernst a couple of times. the end of year fiscal responsibility act would limit agency spending to know more than what usually spends every month on average. the limit only applies to discretionary spending and exempts entitlement payments like social security and medicare and national security related expenditures. where does this stand? you mentioned there is a version by dan crenshaw of texas. where is that mission? -- measure? guest: the bills haven't been moved or called for markups in the committee and things like

a 99%his is probably issue with the american people. you can't spend more in the last two months of the year than an average of the last 10 months. i can't come up with a more reasonable bill that in the early years of this would stop this at blow off excess spending spree. it should be picked up and considered. host: carolyn in mount vernon new york. caller: i would like to say that when president obama was in debt clock on the c-span every day. this president that is in office now, the debt is three times when president obama was there. we never see the debt clock. and i would also like to say

please have dr. joy degroot on who can speak to race relations. thank you. andrzejewski, do you want to address the mounting debt? last three presidents have not performed well on spending. george w. bush took over the national debt was about $4.6 trillion. by the time he left office and turned it over to barack obama, it was over $9 trillion. when president obama left office it was about $19 trillion. after four years of the trump administration, we are approaching $27 trillion. numberidents in the last of years have not performed well on spending and debt issues. host: our that adam andrzejewski -- our guest adam andrzejewski is with openthebooks.com. we welcome your calls and comments at (202) 748-8001

republicans. (202) 748-8000 democrats. others (202)and 748-8002. because of the significant spending in response to the pandemic, a report says the gao more than half of covid-19 government contract are not competitively awarded. they say the ongoing pandemic has led to a surge in spending among federal agencies, particularly those with health and emergency response missions. your thoughts. guest: it's a great study. happens at we feel the end of your spending spree. think about this. 21,000, there's over

contract transactions being executed in the federal agencies. those can't be done on a frugal basis. those terms can't be type. this can't be getting a fair shake for the united states taxpayer. it's too much money going out the door too quickly. there's a lot of things the federal agencies can do. one of the largest offenders this year amongst the federal agencies was the general services administration. purchasesnk-and-file that can be used by bureaucrats across the board in many federal agencies. they could use the latest in technology. i'm talking about a dutch auction, a reverse auction. where among qualified bidders, the terms of the contract go up and qualified aiders on an online auction are able to bid down the cost of rank-and-file goods and services. the $300 billion spent on clothing, that can be dutch

auction. you have a lot of vehicles and transportation. there was a quarter billion dollars worth of vehicles that were purchased last year. that can be put up for dutch auction. you have food items. there was a half billion dollars worth of food items. those things can be put up for dutch auction. savings out of that technology can rival 40%. let's go to george in jacksonville, florida. on the thanks for being local show. i'm an engineer. i've had some medical training. power companyur and other power companies have changed our smart meters three times. these are radio meters and they cause health problems. complain about it and they put another one of the same crime on it -- same kind on it.

we could cut our health care costs in half if we got rid of the radio type which hurt people plus there is a complementary thing for doctors and it's been approved by the fda. it uses the same technology with good frequencies. at howt really upset congress didn't seem to have the ability to work through these things and find out what the best choice is. guest: that's for sure. congress needs to get back to its auditing function. like healther area care costs. medicaid and medicare last year admitted that they improperly and mistakenly paid out 85 billion dollars. $67 billion of that was overpayments. the 20 largest federal agencies last year admit that they mistakenly and improperly paid out a billion dollars to dead people.

$10 billion mistakenly paid on social security. incredibly in the social security database, there are 6 million active social security numbers of people aged 112 and over. there's only 40 of those people alive in the entire world. so there's a lot of waste in the federal government. what federal agency is running well? i cannot point to one. host: brian in pennsylvania. independent line. , tony in tampa. go ahead. caller: i just want to say to andrzejewski, in your opinion, has nancy pelosi destroyed trump on every budget that has been signed including the shutdown? trump is collecting all this

money from tariffs and selling our oil over the world and nato paying their fair share to europeans. that debt hasy grown under this president. it's almost impossible to believe and then printing money to boot. i just don't think he's done a good job at all with this spending and when you look at it , we hired him to do two things. build a wall and get rid of obama care. and with the house and senate for two years and the amount of money he spent to be bragging about 300 miles of wall which 197 of it was rebuilt, i just -- i voted for the guy and i'm just saying i don't see him as the smashing success all my friends and a lot of trump supporters see him as. guest: i think your characterization of the first two years of the administration was spot on.

it was paul ryan in the house and mitch mcconnell in the senate. we are running a trillion dollars national debt ahead of a pandemic during boom times and i was on c-span and i was issuing the debt and spending morning on c-span back last fall. we see at the same way on debt and spending issues. specific to nancy pelosi, she always wants to spend more than what the republican senate wants to spend so i think that's where you have the tension. on her coronavirus bailout bills, she came in with $3 trillion and it was a 3000 page bill. mcconnell came in with a lot less, 900 page bill. they settled in the middle for and billion worth of a loud a lot of those bailouts on what they decided unanimously, no one voted against it.

the president signed it and a lot of those bailouts went to pete that had business getting a coronavirus bailout including the wealthiest colleges and universities. andargest colleges universities with the biggest and down mentz, a third of a trillion dollars in endowments. a billion to read dollars in coronavirus bailouts and they didn't need it. host: here is brian in pennsylvania. caller: i would like to give you guys an information not -- an observation i had. in the 70's i was charged with buying a oscilloscope because we had a piece of equipment that needed service. i tried to buy it in late august. the salesman said unless i really was in an emergency situation, he'd rather put off until october because he had a deal with all the government

units that were buying their equipment in september. and that was many years ago. guest: your experience rings true. we have found that veterans affairs, and they were audited by the federal auditing agencies like the gao. in 2017, there was a facility in a rush to get the dollars out the door, they violated all the rules. there was no review, there was no approval. they bought a duplicate surgery robot. robot ate 84th surgery this v.a. medical facility and the total cost on that was $2.3 million. host: about 10 more minutes with our guest, adam andrzejewski. we are talking about the new report on the federal

government's use it or lose that spending spree. how the government spent $91 billion in 2019. democrats, (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8002 independents. $74 billion of that is just five departments. 57 .5 billion, hhs five .75, veterans affairs 3.8 billion. security 3.5. rob is in new york city. democrat line. good morning. go ahead. you are on the air. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. we hired this so called

businessmen. the virus didn't hit until his fourth year. in office. to straightenears out the debt and the deficit and nothing happened with building infrastructure, roads and bridges. it was all lipservice. and as far as i'm concerned, the virus didn't hit for the fourth year. more on secret service. i remember they wanted to crucify clinton for a haircut where air force one had to land in los angeles and the republicans were saying how much gasoline that it used. he's a fraudulent businessman. he leased out his name on buildings in new york city. the businessman that he's pretending to being. and by the way, he could not legitimately manage a giant

health-care crisis. but what he could do was to pretend that he could manage a giant health-care crisis. and by pretending to manage the government and handled the coronavirus, the virus became much worse. and he is still pretending that he is managing. he rehearses how he's going to pretend to be managing. host: rob in new york city. adam andrzejewski, any thoughts. guest: that will all be worked out at the ballot box. here's our review at openthebooks.com. we are a public charity. there is an iron wall between public policy with us. we don't engage in the campaign. ,ut both sides on this issue republicans and democrats should be able to get together on this.

health, their largest expenditure was $120 billion on public relations. i think that's wrong. that drives people crazy. that's using our tax dollars taxpayers to convince taxpayers to spend even more taxpayer money on larger budgets next year. at hhs, here is an expenditure we are trying to get to the bottom of. and they have been unresponsive. we noticed in september of last year towards the end of the year, they spent $32 million on an all hazard ventilator stock pile. we want to know whether those ventilators were ever delivered for $32 million and so far, we have heard crickets. host: bobby asks this. is all end-of-the-year spending considered wasteful? no.t: the military spends money on

missiles and ships and vessels and it's not wasteful. here's another thing they spend money on. they spent a million dollars on lack coffee and it was general patton who said he could not fight the world war without black coffee and so that's probably a million dollars at the pentagon in the war agencies spent on coffee. host: pat is on the republican line. caller: you are faulting president trump for a trillion dollar deficit when he came into office. spending even flatline , and agency spent a billion dollars this year. you say we are going to give you a billion dollars next year, they will say that's a cut because you are not keeping up with inflation. how do we control spending that way?

guest: with the republican congress and paul ryan in the house where the appropriations bill comes from, they took all of the obama administration's discretionary spending and put it on steroids. they added $320 billion to obama era spending. peoplerevenues, castigate the president for the tax cut. if taking a look at the revenues. revenues actually rose after the of cut but spending went out control on a bipartisan basis. we't have a tax problem, actually have a massive spending problem. after the pandemic it should be obvious to everybody that we are spending a tremendous amount of money that we don't have. borrowing and bonding our future generations to pay for this spending and it's not right. host: what's the solution? pay down the debt

after that kind of spending? guest: this is a big problem. during boom times when they were adding a trillion dollars a year, we said what happens when we had a crisis. now we've hit the crisis. the first thing is you need to take a look after $3.6 trillion thrown at the problem, let the money work through the system. a lot of this money has been allocated and hasn't even been spent yet. let this money work its way through the system. doesn't need to bailout should give the money back. word expose of nonprofits that were receiving coronavirus bailouts that had massive endowments. of a trillion dollars in

endowments were allocated for coronavirus bailouts and they didn't need it. institutions like the met in new york city with a massive endowment. they don't need a bailout. you've got the paycheck protection program. we mapped all of that by zip and we called out for instance kanye west. he says he's worth $1.4 billion and his sneaker company received between two and 5 million of coronavirus bailout money. if you don't need the money, send it to the treasury because we are borrowing and bonding future generations on the national debt. host: let's hear from roger in hawaii. caller: i was calling to see if we could as taxpayers since it's

our money being spent ridiculously, can we hire mr. makehere to go in and necessary cuts and changes and be a worker for us, the people who are paying all this money that's being spent? guest: i appreciate that. i think we need a forensic audit in every single federal agency. what's a forensic audit? it's deep. it's evidentiary. whether it's misspending, improper payments, we need to claw them back on behalf of the hard-working american taxpayer. host: in fort lauderdale, florida. caller: thanks for c-span. ok.

funny that thery guy before me called and said how can we hire your speaker to work for the government and yet it was the perfect opportunity, that was his chance to say i ran for governor and you guys didn't want me to work for you. where he got beat very badly back when he was a tea party rush limbaugh guy. saying the government spends too much money and pointing out all these programs, which is true. there is always lots of money lost in there. but then -- guest: i just want to cover that. i did run for governor in illinois, the super bowl of and 2010., in 2009 i have since sworn off politics. we actually did pretty well. i was endorsed by one of the greatest champions of freedom

and liberty in this when he first century. he was the nobel laureate in 1984 and he helped found solidarity in poland. and theainst the best brightest, we came within 5% of beating them, i lost but i ran onto things. every time online in real time, aggressive transparency followed by forensic auditing. we have taken those ideas writ basis.n a national we believe that transparency will revolutionize united states public policy and politics and you are hearing a little bit of that today on the program. andrzejewski, you can read more on openthebooks.com. more of your calls ahead. we are going to talk to you the remaining half hour about the protests over the weekend. the violence that took place

over the weekend and your thoughts and recommendations and comments. (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8002 independents. ♪ >> tonight on the communicators, texas republican congressman will hurt talks about cyber issues facing the u.s. and why he thinks china wants to surpass the states as a superpower. >> they want to surpass the united states of america as the sole superpower in the world. why 2049, that's 100 years of communist rule in mainland china and the way they are going to surpass the united states as the sole hegemony in this world is by being a leader in future

technology. ai, quantum, 5g. that's why they've been stealing international -- intellectual property, bullying other countries in order to buy their product, and that's why they are being a leader in these kinds of technologies. ont: congressman will heard the communicators on c-span2. tuesday, steven mnuchin testifies before the house oversight and reform committee on the urgent need for additional coronavirus economic relief. coverage beginning at 1:00. >> washington journal continues. host: for the remaining half hour, your calls and comments

over the weekend protests. (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8002 independents. president trump heading to kenosha, wisconsin. here's the reporting. the kenosha mayor urged him to reconsider. let's hear from slidell. willie, go ahead. caller: i'm 79 years old. vietnam in 65. i'm not an off-the-cuff guy. the police brutality and what's

going on in this country, if somebody killed my son, that policeman, i would hunt him down and kill him and that's the only way this will stop. host: this is virginia. republican line. caller: i would like to know, is curious if the fbi investigating these people that are rioting and causing all this havoc. and if they are, why aren't they convictednd tried and instead of set free. to do it again. the whole thing is ridiculous. host: fox news reporting that arrestedr the weekend 175 protesters so far. president trump tweeting about .hat city's mayor

on the violence and the shooting that left one man dead in portland. ted wheeler thanks to this lawless situation. recover --ll never he tried mixing with the anarchists and agitators and they mocked him. we have only been there with a small group to defend the u.s. courthouse because they couldn't do it. the radical left democrat mayors like the dummy running portland unwilling to lead or speak out against crime will never be able to do it. from the mayor ted

wheeler of portland. >> the tweets that he's been putting out attacking democratic mayors, attacking those who are trying to bring resolution to the violence in their local communities. bringing us together and help move through this difficult situation and instead he chooses to play petty politics and divide us. connecticut.haven, good morning. caller: wrote i have a couple things to say. trump has been talking about order.e and law and have committed crimes.

of it.hould stay out this is about trump's reelection. host: president trump tweeted about the situation in portland, saying portland is a mess and it has been for many years. if this mayor doesn't clean it up we will go in and do it for them. the didn't insist on having national guard, there would be no kenosha right now. there would have been great death and injury. philip is next on our independent line. caller: i want to make a couple of observations. violence -- i

look at how i was treated at the end when new people came in and had their own agenda at the government. there's not too many smiley occasions being president. that job requires the person to be on the job almost 20 hours a notdedicated to servicing just the rich. people, i go into people's and put the little buoys and things like that. oties and things

like that. people have got to get a rational stupidity -- stability on fairness and justice. that was met with opposition from the leadership of this country. people going out to protests and bringing arms, there was a voice that came over an intercom of the police saying you can come in here with guidance, we appreciate you. it's just topsy-turvy mixed up. people are confused. they don't really have any bearings. they go after people based on their political beliefs or they're just spiteful and there's no equality here and we just need to start over i think. nancy in texas, republican

line. caller: i'm just wondering why it took your station so long to report on this violence that's been going on for over four months. people are dying and your station has done nothing. it?: in terms of discussing caller: you haven't even brought it up. i watch your show every morning and you have got up everything but the violence and the burning of the buildings. people's businesses being destroyed. all of a sudden you are talking about it after almost five months. what is going on with this world and these channels. are you another cnn? host: former vice president joe biden will be on the road. first time he's been out since the beginning of the pandemic. ins is the headline

politico. be inis planning to wisconsin on tuesday. joe biden traveling to western pennsylvania, giving remarks on how donald trump has made america less safe. forgoing the chance to deliver that in wisconsin. we will have live coverage of joe biden's speech today, 1:30 p.m. eastern here on c-span. joan in rochester, minnesota. caller: i'm just concerned because it seems like the blacks and white people are being pitted against each other like dider's did -- hitler before the second world war with the germans. threateningesident confrontations with the military or national guard. on,e all this is going

there's activity in the background that we don't seem to know anything about. southern priority defense league has written that there are 970 974 hate groups in this country. it's not the protesters who are trying to do something right for their country and they certainly wouldn't be burning up their own neighborhoods. with is something wrong this government. there is something wrong with this man who sticks his nose in and keeps agitating people. and we should protest the white house is what they should protest. host: there were protests over the weekend near the white house. the washington post masto --ter, five arrested in d.c.

metro center, five arrested in d.c. demonstratorsmed fireworks. president trump tweeting more about the demonstrations and protests going on across the country saying this. the radical left mayors and governors of cities where this crazy violence is taking place has lost control of their movement. anarchists and agitators got carried away and don't listen even -- anymore. charlie on the democrat line. go ahead. the president seems to be using this term anarchists a lot and calling the people of black lives matter anarchists

and all this kind of thing. it's kind of funny. it's kind of rich because the anarchy started with the republicans saying that reagan is the problem with everything. believe in our government because it's based on the people. it is supposed to be all the people current -- collectively. the government just deals with ignoresper centers and the other 99 percent. if that's not some form of anarchy or oligarchy, i don't know what is. anarchist is being mislabeled. too many people are being mislabeled as anarchists these days because the real anarchists are in the white house. host: mclean, virginia. good morning. caller: i want to make a couple of comments.

the statues that are coming down in the buildings that have been set on fire. have been white supremacists who have been arrested by the fbi for burning these buildings, for burning the police station. for shooting a federal police officer. fires to buildings and destroying public property, but they are blaming the black lives matter movement. you don't hear much about that because it is white supremacists that are doing that in the hopes of starting a race war. fbiher thing in 2006, the released the report that white nationalists were joining the police station in the military. they said if it went unchecked that it would cause a national security risk. not only did it because a rational -- national security but it also caused an

international security risk because america has lost its credibility because they have eye.d a blind america going to war to stop protesters or to protect protesters or to stop rogue governments and all this corruption, we are doing it right now. our credibility is gone in the world. is jean in yorktown, virginia. caller: your last three guests have hit the nail on the head and they were all white. they are so right. of course you know black lives matter. what i'd like to say also is all 2017 whenarted july

president trump stood at that police academy and told police andcers to rough them up of loitering and rioting andgangs -- gangs. joe biden and kamala harris can get it together. i'm going to ask all of the people, all of you out there, black, white, asian, stop the loitering. peaceful march. do this in memory of the people that have died. speech inmean the 2017? at a police academy? caller: it was in new york. july 28. i went back and referenced it. that's when all of this started it.

previously that the military and the police academy or all of those radicals. those are the ones with the groups that have signed on with the police academy and the police station. but people stop it, let biden and kamala bring peace and they will. host: president on the road speaking at some smaller rallies . friday night in new hampshire. he will be touring in kenosha, wisconsin. of biden'se coverage speech this afternoon. the ratings are in. biden's speech tops trump in the tv ratings. viewers thanw more trump according to research data. 21.7 million viewers watch mr.

biden's speech well 19.9 watch mr. trump's. numbers can indicate which party has a higher level of enthusiasm. the only night where gop had more viewers than the democrats on tuesday night. let's hear from joann in southfield, michigan. hello and thanks for taking my call. i agree with donald trump. all, he reached out to this mail. several times. donald trump tried to address the issue. they wasn't believing that. they said that the polls are tightening so they showed they

are only interested in doing what they are doing. trump said the national guard had been the solution in the past. the riot was spared because of national guard. the leadership thinking something is wrong with the national guard or there something wrong with the new mayor isthis may or -- an idiot. it's his fault that it's out of control. not donald trump. host: let's hear from a caller in portland. to make twould like comments living in portland. first about our mayor. i'm kind of fed up with the matter eric -- with the rhetoric. haven't been a fan of his in the past, but he does not have the tools that he needs to take care

of the problem. portland typically does of multi-jurisdiction policing whenever there's protests and stuff. the surrounding jurisdictions have pulled out of it. is also not getting support from the oregon state police or activating the national guard. .he did it for 15 days the federal guys to protect the federal building and things ramped up the the group of protesters that are down there. it's an area they come to every night. was thepen this weekend trump caravan came through. they came from outside of portland. they terrorized the city. they went through the city and ended up downtown.

host: did you get a chance to see the caravan of trump supporters? caller: i did see them. you: what did you think as saw the trucks go by? caller: since trump has been in office, as a black person, anytime we see someone like the trump signs or the red hats, you get that clutch pearls type feeling. it was one of those things i just kind of paused like let me go the opposite way because i was in my car. you could tell they were up to trouble. people in the back of trucks, yelling out the windows. it was like they were creating chaos. host: they drove through the city. from across the columbia river? or did they come from? caller: they started in clackamas county which is right

outside multnomah county. it's probably from downtown a 35 minute drive. host: ok. people were aware ahead of time that this caravan was coming through? or this was something you just encountered. caller: i just happened to encounter it, but the police were aware of it. other people were aware because they were putting it online and stuff. the proud boys are a group that's in vancouver, washington. they tend to like to hold rallies. they've started this thing where they are holding rallies on the right across from the -- most of the peaceful protesters out there supporting black lives do it during the day. people that do it during the night are different group of

people. host: you expressed your disappointment with the mayor. what do you think has to happen to stop these groups that you pointed out from being violent? caller: i have been disappointed with him in the past. i can say recently i'm a lot more proud only because he's out there in the community listening to people and trying to resolve it. you're not seeing that from some of the other city commissioners. we've had a revolving door of police chief and stuff so this new police chief has only been there since the protests started. from him and our governor not to get along. he just needs backup. everybody needs to be on the same page. last year he had a coalition to deal with the protests and they went away fairly quickly.

this year he is not getting the support he needs to create the coalition. host: he's not getting the support from the local law enforcement? caller: the local police agencies around, she did it for 15 days. she did release a statement overnight saying she's going to stand -- send state troopers back into portland. input as aciate your resident of portland. we will go to marianne in lakewood, new jersey? i can't believe all the things i'm hearing against trump. i want to remind them as far as what they are saying he has done, he has never told the police department to go after the black lives matter people. we had a president for eight

years that divided the rich against the poor, the blacks against the whites. was more interested in the terrorists and traitors than anyone else. he put more terrorists back out onto the battlefield to kill our men, women and anyone. trump is trying to pull them back. not only that, the redline about the children that were getting killed. did obama take care of that redline that he put? no. he went to putin. that is supposed to be trump's friend, but it was obama that went to putin. you don't hear about those bombings anymore, the chemical bombs that killed all those kids. damnso fed up with you democrats and i used to be a democrat, i'm 83 years old, do

not tell me i'm a racist because i have 19 grandkids and we are of a mixed culture here. mixed. i'm telling you. who'sgot black, hispanic, from brazil, who is from costa rica, whose puerto rican. i have all this mixed. i even have a great-nephew that is an eskimo and his sister is russian. so we are a mixed culture family. i came from redhook projects in brooklyn and we were mixed there. next in will go to mary columbus. independent line. caller: i do want to touch on the last caller. mindful ofto be very my rhetoric. african-american woman in an interracial relationship who has a mother-in-law who is racist but yet you have mixed children, i don't think just

because you have a mixed family means that you are not racist. it means your children are not racist. it is disingenuous for trump supporters to sit there and say the democrats don't care about the violence or black lives matter or burning down buildings. and that democrats are inciting violence and so forth when we have a president who literally ran on violence. supporters tohis kick people out of his rallies, to not be nice with them. for the cops to not put their hands over their heads. he said when the looting starts, the shooting starts and he knows where it came from. doingws exactly what he's and even if whatever he's done in the past is in the past, this is the moment where if you really meant well, you would step up.

like the mayor in portland. some of his rhetoric was a bit intense, he said let's have a donald trump -- we are good together and immediately trump tweets out the hateful stuff. you are the president of the united states, not trump country, not trump city. this is the moment that you step up and say let's forget everything. clean slate. instead of doing that, more hateful stuff. i want to give him a chance. that makes no sense. but as a black woman when you say, go back from where you came from, every black person knows what that means. for you to assume that they are not from america because of the color of their skin, what other reason can you have to assume they are not from america? of comments on

twitter before we wrap up trademark says, where local law they should find and prosecute agitators. no one should enable violence, period. and another mark, who says democrats have allowed the riots to go on for too long. police are told to stand down. this has been going on for over 90 days in with nothing happening. the mayor is not doing his job. in albany, louisiana, betty, , republican line. caller: i am 75 years old and i have never seen anything like this. they turned right and wrong on its head. this protest, it is not protest when you burn something down. all right? it is not protest when you kill somebody or you spit in people's faces. nobody has shown, except one

channel, what happened after the republican convention where they --rounded the congressman the senator rather, rand paul, and threatened him. is that what you agree to? all of these people who are calling in this morning. and i notice there are three or four calls, democrats, two independents. where was the republican line? i did not hear an equal balance of that. really the media is downplaying the violence. somehow or another, it becomes trump's fault. it is not his fault. it is the mayor, the governor. these are the people who were elected to keep law and order. host: all right, that will do it for the program this morning. thanks for all your calls and comments this morning. we are back tomorrow morning