poverty in countries impacted by the coronavirus. president ofore the organization's latest effort to heal the political divide in the u.s.. washington journal is next. ♪ host: good morning. thanksgiving day across the country as we show you the sun beginning to rise of her union station in washington, d.c. pandemicspike in the canceled or socially distant gatherings, and the economic downturn, we are asking to hear from you this morning about what the holiday means. how are you celebrating and what we might be giving thanks for? eastern or central time zones (202)-748-8000. mountain or pacific time zones (202)-748-8001.

at can send us a text (202)-748-8003. if you do please include your name and where you are from, otherwise catch up on social c-spanwj and on facebook. happy thanksgiving to you and your family. you can start calling in now. one statistic down how americans are spending their thanksgiving. only 27% plan to have the traditional thanksgiving meal with people outside of their household. the new york times with a map trying to break down that data from a survey of some 150,000 americans. that map showing the share of people eating thanksgiving dinner with people outside their homes the darker the color shading.

as the map illustrates there is a substantial regional variation with some people much more likely together with others. 14% ofs of vermont, only households will be celebrating with people outside their household. in parts of missouri, more than half of the residents plan to. we ask you this morning about thanksgiving 2020. what you celebrating, what are you thankful for, some responses already. karen is thankful for the ladies i know who selflessly got behind a sewing machine and cranked out dozens, and often hundreds, of masks. they truly are lifesavers. thank you. thankful thate is i survived. stephanie saying i am thankful for my friends, family, roof over my head, and trump's loss.

william saying he is thankful he will bent trump president again in four years. we want to hear from you. phone lines split up regionally. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, (202)-748-8000. mountain or pacific time zones (202)-748-8001. we will go right to john in minneapolis. happy thanksgiving, john. caller: yeah, right. what a thanksgiving. i am happy what happened yesterday in gettysburg. i believe this is the end of the fraudulent president-elect biden. in a couple of weeks, the fraudulent office will be no more. a little bit of the slimeball and scumbag seth

meyers on nbc. perfect example of the anti-culture at work and i hope the soon someone will wipe -- host: that was john in minneapolis talking about sylvania. a bit of focus yesterday on pennsylvania from the judiciary and the legislative branch. the washington post with a wrap up. a temporary order blocking further certification of election results was stayed yesterday from state officials who had already formalized joe biden's win in that state. the washington post saying it was a setback for the republican state. on wednesday morning a holdnwealth judge placed a on a certification process in pennsylvania for down ballot races pending a hearing later this week. state officials appealed to the

pennsylvania supreme court. later yesterday that triggered an automatic stay. asked the high court to step in and dismiss the case and that is where this stands. that was happening in pennsylvania. pennsylvania republicans salt to build reports for claims of fraud with a hearing in gettysburg, pennsylvania. yesterday, there was reporting early in the day president trump was going to appear at that event in gettysburg. president trump not physically appear, but did appear via virtually through the efforts of his lawyers who were at that hearing. here's a bit of what president trump said over the phone at that meeting with pennsylvania. >> i will introduce mr. president. you are connected. [cheering and applause] >> thank you very much.

i saw a couple of other great networks, but i really appreciate being asked to speak. i am in the oval office right now. it is very interesting to see what is going on and this was an election we won easily. [applause] official was on this morning on the important show and said there is no way trump did not win pennsylvania because the energy industry was all for him. i saw with my eyes what happened and he told me horror stories. this was a very sad -- this election was rigged and we cannot let that happen. we cannot let it happen for our country and this election has to be turned around. we won pennsylvania by a lot and we won all of these states by a lot. host: that was president trump

via phone in pennsylvania. speaking of the president, other news from the desk of the president yesterday and the twin page the- twitter president tweeting, "michael flynn has been granted a full pardon, congratulations to him and his family. i know you will have a truly fantastic thanksgiving." former on to say to his national security advisor, "have a great life, general flynn." reaction from congress, republicans heralding the pardon saying he is an american patriot who was shamelessly set up by the obama administration against donald trump. sayingsman andy biggs thank you for pardoning general flynn. the republican from arizona. phil johnson from ohio saying, a just president trump pardon michael flynn.

the served as a clear message to other officials supporting our officials would have unjust consequences. fourpardoning enza fo year long oh deal. hecy pelosi said yesterday, twice pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi about his dealings with the foreign adversary is an active grave corruption and abrasion abuse of power. this from ed markey of massachusetts, michael flynn is a criminal. roger stone is a criminal. donald trump is a criminal. none of them deserve to be pardoned. this from jerry nadler, chair of the house judiciary say, michael flynn lied to investigators about you getting with the foreign adversary. that is a crime. trump dangled a pardon in exchange for noncooperation. this pardon is another stain on trump's rapidly diminishing legacy. some reaction to president trump's pardon yesterday. that is some of the news taken place in the last 24 hours.

we are leaving this segment of the washington journal open for you to talk about thanksgiving day 2020. phone lines split up regionally. if you are in eastern or central pacific, (202)-748-8000. mountain or pacific (202)-748-8001. city, northbeth carolina. you are next. caller: hello. thank you for letting me on. day very thankful for this and thankful for the blessings and freedoms that we still have. i will be celebrating andksgiving with my family i totally agree with what the president said about what happened during the election. totally agree. there has been hardly any news coverage of the software that

was used to change votes. that is a fact that happened. anyway, this is thanksgiving day. i am very thankful, very thankful, for thanksgiving day. we all can agree to that. host: that was ray. dave, oceanside, california, thank you for getting up with us. caller: hey. i want to know why c-span is not covering all the stories about these people getting knocked off twitter. anybody talks about election fraud, twitter silences them. you need to go to parlor. c-span needs to get onto parlor and give some other people a voice to respond to you that way. a lot of us are getting cut off.

i have been cut off twitter two or three times and had to start new accounts. facebook cut me off. anytime you see anything about elections, people will silence you. host: what did you say about the election the last time you got cut off? retweetedretreated -- something the president said or one of the officials from the election bureau. they would put a warning on it and say this is been disputed. which is fine. say, this has been shown false. that is a different story. if they say that, it is one thing. but if it is disputed, that is just free speech. the state senator for pennsylvania that ran the hearing yesterday, he was happenedabout what during the hearing and twitter

knocked his whole speech down. he cannot even go on twitter and say anything about the vote count, how it came in, how pennsylvania had more votes returned then they sent out. it seems like twitter is really started to silence. host: how much time do you spend on twitter or parlor? how big of a part of a communication is that? caller: sometimes in our in the morning -- an hour in the morning. i have a company i to get going. i do not have twitter on my phone, facebook, parlor. my stuff ready to go through quickbooks, i would have a second page open and i would breeze it. i'm not a social media nut. that is what i am saying.

if i'm just on their a little bit and they are knocking me off left and right -- and it really ticks me off. if sunday comes at me and says, this is fraud, we proved it. i'm not want to tweet it again. but if it is disputed, who the hell are these people to say that? host: do you think twitter and facebook will have as much influence in the next election as they have had in recent elections? caller: if this and allows them to. if these politicians allow them to come yes they will. i'm telling you. parted all these politicians from the other side, pelosi and all them -- you just read them out loud -- they were nasty comments. he's the devil, he was the whenr, this and that, flynn just told fbi agent he did not speak to somebody when he did. is that a big deal? joe biden just did that before

he got elected. he spoke to all kinds of foreign officials. said, agent walked up and did you speak to so-and-so? i do not think biden is really with it but he could make a mistake and say, i did not talk to him and he would be guilty of the same thing the flynn was guilty of. host: that was david in california. stephanie in ashburn, virginia. how are you spending thanksgiving? caller: by myself, but i'm still going to be zooming. i just wanted to say good morning and i'm so thankful god answered my prayer for the biden win and for the doctors and nurses. my family and c-span keeps it real. host: that was stephanie. you bring up president-elect joe biden. he gave a thanksgiving address yesterday from wellington. part of his effort to offer his

vision for what a biden administration will look like. here is a bit of the president elect. [video clip] >> here is the america i see. i believe it is the america you see as well. that overcomes challenges. an america where we see justice and equality for all people. an america that holds fast to conviction, that out of pain comes progress, and out of division, unity. you all know when our finest hours that is who we have always been. that is who we shall be again. season ofthis grim vision, demonization, is going to give way to light and immunity. why do i think so? because america is a nation out

of adversaries, but of neighbors. net of limitations, but of possibilities. not of dreams deferred, but of dreams realized. i have said many times this is a great country. we are a good people. this is the united states of america. there has never been anything we have been unable to do when we have done it together. think about what we come through as a nation. how many things we have come through. centuries of human slavery, cataclysmic civil war, women for the ballot box, world wars, jim crow, the twilight struggle against soviet tierney that could've ended not in the fall of the berlin wall, but nuclear armageddon. i am not naive. i know that history is that -- history. ,ut to know what came before what is happened before can arm

us against despair. knowing previous generations got to the same universal challenges we face. hope, division and it thatnd what was brought the reality of america into closer alignment with the promise of reality? it sounds corny but it was love. plain and simple. country, love of one another. we do not talk about love much in politics. it is too angry, too heated. to love our neighbor as ourselves is a radical act. it is what we are called to do. host: joe biden yesterday in delaware. taking your phone calls on this thanksgiving morning. joy is in philadelphia.

good morning. caller: good morning. for theo be thankful that arend nurses really changing their holiday to take care of the sick people. --o not think people realize they do not think about those doctors and nurses taking care of everyone. a lot of hospitals do not have the space, they do not have the beds to take care of people. they are telling them not to travel. airport and people still are traveling. we have a lot to be thankful for. i am thankful joe biden did win the election and i would hope the trump voters would just

support him because i really think he wants to be a good president. host: yesterday, when we were having this conversation, there were trump supporters who said that democrats did not get over 2016. why should they support joe biden now? why should they get over the results of 2020? what would you say to those folks? caller: i would say to them, let's go back to 2016. involved in the election. the election was very flawed. they really did a job on hillary. they did the job on facebook. i went back and i even got off my facebook. in fact, i never was on facebook. they always tried to get me to

sign up, but i saw it here from different people about these bogus stories that facebook had in 2016. they did a job on hillary. that is why flynn and all of them, that is why this is coming up from 2016. back. need to go lived through four years of basically a showman. i think we should move on because even in this election if you look, it was other places the trump tried to take vote. news, he had a whole propaganda channel.

host: joy started talking about doctors and nurses in dealing with the ongoing spike in the pandemic. here's the latest numbers from yesterday. the united states recorded more than 2200 new deaths, the highest single day increase. above 1600.y cases broughtng the death toll -- spike in cases brought the death toll. 85,000 new cases dwarfs the number from may when the high point that the united states recorded was more than 33,000 new cases in a single day. when it comes to hospitalizations, at 7:00 p.m. yesterday total hospitalization stood at more than 89,000, that also a record.

this is david in the sooner state. caller: good morning, y'all. for this country. y'all havequest that a program about respect, if you could. that is a word a lot of people -- i guess it means a lot of things to a lot of different people. i would like to recite my thanksgiving poem if that would be all right? host: go ahead. caller: it is called "god bless america." weaver stop and think about our freedom here today, we've heard the prayers so many times, god bless the usa. do we stop to think about our

country's pioneers? the ones who came across the , they roamed the land, they fought for freedom forgot that made the stand. they said through him there would always be an abundance in this land. -- hunger cameme they did not lose their faith. he brought them over here they did not turn away. i'm glad they carried out god's plan, if they would have turned back who would came to this land? who knows? it might be russia, china, or iran. thank god we are called america, where the eagle flies free, we don't trust communists the god who lives in me. see.ade this world you

we are free. americans, please take a look at ee hauerd outside and sa country started. god does bless the usa. that is it. host: thank you for sharing that poem. how long did take you to write that? caller: i wrote that back in 1987 when i went to arkansas. . am a poem writer i have always been patriotic. my dad was a world war ii only one out'm the of 11 that served in the military. ofdad was the only one out 10 and his family. family.

something just dug into me. we are all america. host: thank you for sharing that this morning. you talked about respect. i would encourage you to stick around. we will have a segment today talking about the political divided this country, but focused on efforts to heal, to talk across the divide, talk about respect. that is it 8:45 easter this morning. we will be joined by dave isay, president and founder of storycorps. hope you stick around for that. lisa is next in shreveport, louisiana. caller: good morning. and thankful for my family i am thankful for president donald j. trump. everybody please get on the internet to find out all your information. this is a coup against our president. host: where on the internet do

you get your information? where would you encourage people to go? parlor,go to x22.com, they're going to take us off. i am one of the patriots fighting for trump. you are going to see things you've never seen before. this is a revolution. they are trying to take our president and country down. news.ut the you are working for the cia. people are going to find out and they are going to be very upset. host: that was lisa in louisiana. chris is in kansas city, missouri. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: happy thanksgiving. express what makes me grateful today. i was born into a country that had a principal that said all are created equal. existed 2000ael

years ago when jesus was walking the earth did somebody come forth and really say to people, we need to care about each other. he said we need to care about each other and that includes the enemy. the beautiful thing about america is that when you consider all are created equal what that really means, that is the first encouragement that we get to really celebrate what it means to stand for freedom, individual freedom, and be recognized as an individual for the value you have. no matter where you come from, what your background is, we all start at the same place and that requires us to treat each other equally. today people -- i do not know if people are aware -- but there are religious communities in the united states touted saying trump is part of a

plan to bring jesus back to the earth in this generation. are two or three people coming out saying trump's birth was preordained to save america. that trump is the savior of this era, the prelude to jesus returning to earth. the thing i am concerned about is christians are being told to equate trump being in office to being god's will and therefore if they do not vote for trump, they are voting against god. in a country that is supposed to have honoring all the created equal, the wrist no equality when we have religious leaders telling the people that if they do not vote for a certain person a certain way, they are going to hell. what really makes this bad for me, when you look at trump and his values, he is not a christian.

he cannot represent christians and christians would go back -- i'm an atheist. i am a constitutional socialist. i believe in the constitution and the values that jesus taught. as a result of that you cannot sit there have a leader that has the personal and social and political values that trump does and say that he is a christian. that he represents christian people. i do not care if he says the good all things about abortion and things like that. those are buzzwords. host: that was chris in missouri on the topic of religion. news from just across capitol hill from the supreme court coming out last night. the supreme court placed religious freedom for pandemic precautions on wednesday night rarely blocking recent rules -- temporarily blocking recent government houses

of worship. the conservative majority ruled 5-4. the limitations on houses of to 25ip is now 10 worshipers and it was a reversal from earlier actions taken in response to state restrictions. justices noting the previously refused to lift restrictions on churches in california and nevada, with chief justice john roberts upholding state restrictions. what has changed of course since then is that ruth bader ginsburg died and was succeeded by amy coney barrett, giving the conservatives the 6-3 majority. roberts and the three liberal justices dissented from the ruling. back to your phone calls. it is 7:30 on the east coast.

elaine in olympia, washington, thank you for being up early. how are you spending your thanksgiving? caller: i am spending it at home and cooking my first turkey. i am 75 and lucky to be alive. the people getting the covid virus, i feel lucky i have not gotten it yet. morbidity, but it is not really serious. it would be enough to do me and i'm sure. i feel lucky i have not contacted it yet. i had one friend who died early on on april 1. but ia traumatic thing, guess we have to be thankful for the therapeutics and the vaccine and the way the united states did not fall apart when it came

on. we were a strong enough nation that our unemployment is now taking a dive, but at one point it was 6.9%. that is astronomical when you think about the devastating effect it has had on the united states. is thing i would like to say i listened to biden's speech and i thought it was so hypocritical. be respectfulto and they want to bring people together. why didn't they think about that for years ago before all this and all thisned garbage they put us through? it appalling. it was so critical. host: that was elaine in washington. you bring up the economic situation in this country. just a couple of stats to throw

on that topic, including this yesterday released from the department of labor. applications for state jobless benefits rose for the second straight week last week. jobless claims jumped 78,000 thatweek to nearly 828,000 is a big change. it was the first time filings had risen for two straight weeks since early september. it is the largest two-week increase since april. that a look at new jobless claims. this a look at statistics on hunger in america. we talked about that issue yesterday on this program. the new york times with some of the data. one in four americans with no working children at home do not have enough to eat. that is the headline. americans,e share of all americans, who said they

often or did not have enough to eat in the past week, 12% of all americans said that in response to data collected by the census bureau. private sources said 60% of americans with children -- 16% of americans with children at home said they often did not have enough to eat. 25% of americans with children said that ino work just the one city they looked at, houston, 21% saying in the past week they sometimes are often did not have enough to eat. just some stats. it was the washington post with that story today. cos is in kokomo, indiana. caller: thank you for taking my phone call. blessed i am in america and

saying my opinion to you guys. i just watched the speech by joe biden. he is the biggest hypocrite i can think of. if you go online, everything what he says is on tape. his tape is on google. call for joe biden fraud and pops up and gives you all the tapes. all thes talking about elections and all the stuff. that is why he did not campaign for his election. he knew he was going to get elected.

humanity talking about because he wants to bring these illegal aliens over here. is when he left the office of obama he was making $400,000 a year. owes $15 million and all these guys blaming trump. and heink he is a liar just thinks about himself. he is the biggest hypocrite. bidencos, if tape on joe is something you are interested in, i would direct you to c-span.org. the c-span video library. counting ofdeos and

joe biden in the library dating back to 1983. you can watch him at events across the years on the senate floor,, events at the white house. 1750 videos that you can search from. tom is in paris, california. you are next. caller: good morning. i am thankful that -- [laughs] i would be thankful if the internet was never invented. there are a lot of crazy people believing some stupid stuff. is real reason i called in because this would be a really bad president if donald trump try to pardon himself. i do not think the legal system would stand for that, or the constitution. i do not see how you could pardon yourself.

you have never even been indicted or under federal investigation, which he is not. wow. host: what is your level of confidence in the supreme court right now? you are talking about constitutional issues that would go to the supreme court. know, i hope you they would stand for what it is supposed to stand for, not get into the political arena. proposition right now to say whether they would go one way or another. but just the idea that if that president was sent to the world to say, i could pardon myself. do you know how any court cases would be brought up for people trying to pardon themselves? i say i want to

be parted ahead of time, how does that work? host: back to the keystone state, this is robin. caller: happy thanksgiving to everybody. host: thank you. caller: i am thing for for my family, my friends, i am thankful my family has not caught the virus. i have had neighbors die from it which i was devastated over. i am thankful we have president trump for the last four years. i think joe biden is going back to the obama years and obama came on tv talking about the hispanics voting for trump. here we go. now you have callers calling. they won the election and they are still talking about trump. they want us trump voters to accept joe biden? in this house, it is never going to happen.

pennsylvania, everybody in old forge wanted trump. pennsylvania is the most crooked state for voting i have ever seen. god bless everybody. have a nice thanksgiving and enjoy your president because he's not my president. thank you. host: president-elect biden gave that speech yesterday from wilmington, delaware. vice president elect harris was in d.c. yesterday visiting the central kitchen. one of those food banks here in washington, d.c. she took some time to speak briefly with reporters who had gathered. here's a bit of what she had to say. [video clip] >> you had made contact with republicans. does that include mcconnell? >> i cannot speak directly to that, but i will tell you it has been the priority for the president-elect and me, from the

beginning, that we intend to and will work across the aisle to deal with these most tractable issues affecting people regardless of who they voted for. the president-elect and i take that very seriously. i am here to talk with folks who are feeding the hungry. you may have heard me say one in six families in america is describing their children as being hungry. one in five are describing an inability to pay rent. these are real issues and the folks were talking about, whoever they voted for, deserve to have leadership that sees them through the lens of the life they are living regardless of party affiliation. we feel strongly about that. host: vice president-elect kamala harris yesterday at central kitchen. back to your phone calls. tom is in foley, alabama. caller: good morning. happy thanksgiving.

i would like to point out a few things. i'm a simple man. retired, no high school education whatsoever, but i made it through to retirement, 30 years of work. that wet possible change our election laws months before the election and we have millions more votes than four years ago? it is baffling to me. like i said, i am not a real educated man, but i know how to do a little math. something is afoot. mexico, elnds from salvador, immigrants. of course they came here with a were young just to get a job -- here when they were young just to get a job. i know this is what they believe. why would anybody want to leave

somewhere else to come to america if everywhere else is so great? america is great for one reason -- everybody has a chance. i would like to leave you with that. thank you. ley in texas. bri caller: lord bless you. i am thankful for this nation. one nation, under god, that is what i am thankful for. i am thankful for my family and i'm thankful for the president that we have and that god has given us these four years. i am praying that god is going to work this out because i believe that the democratic party really stole the election. they have always been thieves and murderers. god bless you. host: this is david in flint,

michigan. caller: good morning. good morning, c-span. i'm watching on the tv. on thankful to be alive thanksgiving day because i am over 65. i am 67 and god has blessed me to make it through this pandemic. about we more excited have a decent, honest, christian president now. it is going to make my christmas happy, my new year's happy. i believe america can start can start the races coming back together and showing love. i think it is such a blessing that satan was defeated and that we can move forward together. just like biden said. excited that all the metro areas throughout

bidenan combined to put over in michigan by 150,000 people. i am excited. thank you. host: a few more comments from our text messaging service. this is bob in missouri, i am spending my turkey day home alone and will look to see another day because i listen to doctors who know something. pam in tennessee, i am grateful for my beautiful family. my good health and the country has remained a democracy. i sent love and sympathy to the president. she says he is suffering because his delusions ran into a wall of reality and to his poor, brainwashed followers. i hope they can find their own minds once they see how i president supposed to behave and how our government is supposed to function. this from wendy on facebook who says, i am thankful that through diligence and perseverance my mom and i remain covid free. noting her mother turned 82

yesterday. happy birthday. alan from little rock, good morning. caller: good morning. certainly a great appreciation to david in oklahoma. we were both in the same territory once. and madewas divided oklahoma for the indian territory which is an incredible story for folks to look up. but i'm glad to get to call in and that i got through. tried to keep some anonymity here. i think that might be lost and little bit more. i am a retired history teacher. godmy thankfulness is to

and our lord and being born again. i did not plan on saying that this morning, but that is really it. churchup in a baptist with parents that took us every time the doors were open and knew all about studying andpture and by the books learning them as baptists do. again until i was 30. basis ofeally the discussion about president trump giving a pardon that comes directly out of scripture. we are all given that opportunity to be pardoned.

for.ord paid the price my call is to point out that is the reason pilgrims came and wanted -- i want to quote a brief reference the first governor wrote. his name was william bradford. everybody can look this up on their own. pilgrimadford's 1620 through 1647. is the i am looking at first primary source out of illinois university. host: give us a brief reading. we have several more folks calling in. caller: sorry. it is chapter four i'm quoting from. he gave four reasons and i will

take less than a minute to repeat the first three. the last ones i called to quote. it is the reason amy barrett was asked wise freedom of religion and not discriminating against it the first of the first amendment? she did not know. i wanted to raise my hand and go, i know. say in holland for 12 years , the face of the work is so hard that it is breaking them down. many were starting to leave them. others in england were stopping and coming over to holland because it was so difficult in work. those of the first two reasons. the third is because their children were being drawn away buby evil. host: what was the fourth? caller: lie sentient and

dissolution of their children. they came to america to save their children. the last reason is they say a layt hope that they had to such a good foundation or at least make some way for the propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of christ. it would even be a steppingstone onto others for such a great work. oure is our history, christian foundation of our that we could be mindful of whenever we are asked to go to that quote. host: from the natural state to the mountain state, this is tom in marlinton.

caller: i'm in west virginia, the mountain state. i am thankful for my health. i am thankful i voted for donald trump in 2016 and voted for him again. i think joe biden has got to bring this country back to where to chinang to kowtow and iran. ran detonates the nuclear weapons you can raise your glass to globalism. happy thanksgiving. host: joan in new jersey. caller: hi. i would just like to thank c-span for allowing many people to voice their opinions. i hope you do not cut me off, but i would like to say to joe biden, i would like to ask this question.

god alles the name of the time. us, keep usess together. he is a roman catholic. he professes his faith. he goes to church. there was a priest and he would not allow him to receive communion. he has all these people watch him and follow him into the church. this is my question. catholic,e, a roman reconcile with god abortion? how does he do that? look at his eyes and ask him, a romanou, a christian, catholic, reconcile that? i have one more thing to say. ,ou have all the democrats msnbc, in from cnn and

and they constantly talk about the babies being ripped from their mother's arms at the border. constantly. you sure that morning, night, and day about babies being ripped from their mother's arms. let me ask you this. how do you reconcile the heartbeat of a baby being vacuum cleaned from a mother's womb and murdering it? how? how in good conscience could you say and ask god to help us? when you, the god one things the 10 commandments a, thou shalt not kill. we kill babies every day. every day we kill babies. host: that was joan in new jersey. a story from this past week from the religion section of the washington post on this issue you bring up. catholics divided as bishops examine biden's abortion stance.

that story from the washington post. reporter that appeared in the religion section, but if you want to look ry is the last name of the author. anthony, your next. caller: my name is anthony. i am grateful to be alive because this pandemic -- i am in a wheelchair. i'm waiting to get to the hospital for an operation that might help me walk again. because of the virus and everything it is not the time to go into a hospital. but i am grateful to be alive and being able to vote. americaike i am part of

and not divided. i would like to see this country move forward. host: you say you are not divided. do think this country is? caller: yes. i felt like i was discriminated against. like there was no way i could move ahead with donald trump, you know? i did not see that. with joe biden i feel like i am part of america, part of the american dream, and i can move forward. america can move forward. me because over for i am in a wheelchair and the stimulus package would've helped me if i would've gotten one. but i'm grateful to be here. host: thank you for the call. virginia.n herndon, caller: good morning. happy thanksgiving.

[indiscernible] host: are you still with us? caller: yes. can you hear me? host: go ahead. caller: happy thanksgiving, everyone. everybody just needs to get over the fact that biden got elected. i feel like when trump got elected, i felt the same way. now that he is elected, when trump got elected, i respected that. i got over it. i feel like everybody just needs to get over the fact biden got elected. i am very thankful for my health this year because i did contract covid around may and i am a healthy individual. i go to the gym every single day. i literallycovid

got a heart problem. i ended up with cardiac problems and for me to be grateful for even making it, it is crazy. you never think it is going to happen to you and it irritates thinks,everybody just oh, how come trump didn't win? it does not matter. it matters the fact that we are dealing with a virus right now and nobody is thinking about this. host: are you able to still go to the gym every day? physically and because of shutdowns in virginia? caller: yeah. i am thankful for the shutdowns. i think our governor has done an amazing job and i applaud him. trump has not been giving the governors credit as he is supposed to as a president. it irritates me because you

think it will not happen to you and when it does happen to you, you actually think, it happened to me. you never think it could happen to you. for the people out there, just be careful. do not ever say, don't wear a mask just because your president says. do not ever think it is not going to happen to you. host: back to the lone star state. in.s is kirb grateful thevery lord is in my life. neighbors,my fellow brothers and sisters, and i am that everyoneul will turn to the lord and give the lord his due time. people whoe that

believe in the lord i know the lord is in control and put trump in office, yes he did. and he took trump out of office. since he took trump out of office he is the same god. romans 5 saying we cannot go against the law of the land, when trump was in office, when he had trump in office, you've got to understand he is the same god. you are fighting against him now. you're fighting against god. host: one last call from sandra in the yellow hammer state of birmingham. caller: good morning and happy thanksgiving. rebut the ladyo talking about the bible say thou shalt not kill. the bible also says thou shall that yout adultery and do not blame another person for

anything because he does not blame you. he loves us. let's not take on this subject this morning. thank you for taking my call and have a wonderful day. happy thanksgiving to you. host: happy thanksgiving. our last caller and the second of the washington journal. today including a discussion on the effectiveness of foreign aid, we are joined by matt warner of the atlas network. ♪ on thanksgiving weekend, we want to thank c-spaners throughout the pandemic, working remotely and in the office, continuing to provide you an

unfiltered view of politics.

announcer: washington journal continues. host: conversation on foreign aid in the time of covid. matt warner, for viewers who may not know the atlas network, what is your mission and how are you funded? guest: nonprofit focused on supporting local organizations around the world working to increase economic opportunity for low income communities. clear funded privately through fundraising from individuals and foundations that share our cause. host: nearly one year into the pandemic, how has that complicated the mission?

like many, we did rapid response looking for how this was going to impact the grantees around the world. we have a network of 500 think and welocal ngos, scrambled quickly to develop a covid response and recovery fund were goodre, not only organizations around the world able to continue good work but so many of them had important new plans in response to pandemic that met the needs of their local communities, so we worked quickly to make sure we were supporting them as much as we could. host: give a sense of the scale. how much does the u.s. government spend on foreign aid and how much through american citizens privately donate to the

ngo groups and organizations you're talking about? guest: foreign aid for the u.s. tends to be around $50 billion each year. that covers a wide range of different things. 20 different programs in the u.s. that have something to do with foreign aid. the american people privately, in general, do $400 billion in charitable giving. that is not all going internationally. it is covering the same topics in the u.s. we have a lot of opportunity. americans are generous. where canestion is, your money do the most good? question around the future of foreign aid. how can we do this better? there is debate about how much we should be allocating for

foreign aid as a country. the more high-stakes question is, how well are we spending it and where can we improve? host: explain the term "the outsiders dilemma"? guest: we talk about it at atlas network. it is a shared concept, if not in that name, in other names, which is, when you are trying to do good in the world, wealthy countries have resources and we have expertise. there is a type of knowledge we don't have. what the people at the local know aboutout -- their own cultures and histories and what those individuals know about their own values, trade-offs, hopes and dreams for their families. that becomes very important if you are concerned about the efficacy of foreign aid, as

outsiders, we can do a lot of activity but not only is it sometimes mismatched because we just don't know enough at the local level, but it can sometimes even do more harm than good, despite our best intentions. host: phone numbers for viewers to join us if you want to talk about u.s. foreign aid in the time of coronavirus, split up as usual, (202)-748-8000 for democrats, (202)-748-8001 for republicans, (202)-748-8002 for independents. matt warner is our guest, president of the atlas network, if you want to look them up, atlasnetwork.org. dilemma,hat outsiders give us an example of that happening in a recent crisis. humanitarian for immediate needs and response or

whether it is larger investments, the big institutions, world bank, usaid, we have a lot of ideas about what we think other people need. if you dig in to people who have spent careers on this, they are frustrated when they start to question whether what they are doing is working. click example. in one of the projects in uganda, the experts from columbia university and others said, it makes more sense for these local villages, instead of planting banana crops, they ought to grow corn. they gave them $300,000 in one village to switch their crops. seemed a great idea. the initial hypothesis was right. they had a higher yield.

turns out there was no market for corn and the roads to get to other markets made it cost prohibitive and they ended up with a rat infestation because they had nowhere to store the extra corn. it was not something they were used to. it was a mismatch. decisions were made by outsiders. that is not to say these are bad people coming in with, screwing up the local economy. there has been a big effort. the paris declaration was a big andering of oecd countries everyone signed on to say yeah, we need to listen to locals. there is a big difference between making some kind of gesture to include local voices in what you're doing and what we really need to do, which is shift leadership of development projects to local levels. that is why our model is successful. our biggest project that does

wheres dignity unbound, we recognize that human dignity of the individuals we are trying to serve and let them lead their success. it is really important. it is not just morally right, it is more effective. knowledge of, again, what is the history? what is the culture? what do they personally care about? know, we do -- you a lot in the world providing malaria nets. people use them, instead of on themselves, the use them for their goats. that is their livelihood. the use them for other purposes. we think, why aren't they doing what we think they should doing? -- should be doing? we don't know what their priorities are. the big shift has to go from large institutions, still and should provide expertise and

information sharing and gathering and dissemination but driving change and making decisions has to be at the local level. institutionsratic are the best approach, the best model for human rights and economic prosperity. building those institutions and getting their is their choice. ofcan support local capacity local organizations who have their own vision for how to get there. we have become much more effective at that using this dignity unbound model that we carefully evaluate and monitor the best local organizations in the world who know what economic opportunity looks like in their local context and we let them lead. they tell us what is important and we support it. host: some examples of the success. callers on the line. carrollton, georgia,

independent. caller: [indiscernible] are you with us, jeff? caller: yes. i would like to know what is going to happen now that biden is back with china, north korea, are going to starve. warner, what you are expecting from a biden administration when it comes to u.s. foreign aid? guest: joe biden has years of expense in the senate -- experience in the senate, working on the foreign committees. he is no stranger to the way our institutions work. he has a lot of experience around the world. with any new administration, i notopeful we can focus on

just the relationships that can help increase collaboration but that we can continue this important threat of, how do we support their vision for democracy and not ours? away fromdivest power our own collection of wealthy, educated, outsider lead programs designed to solve problems? china continues to be an important topic. meetinghad the big g20 where so much conversation was extending suspension, opportunities for potential restructuring of debt, even reduction of debt. whether china will participate in that kind of activity is the big question.

hopeful, as with any new administration, it is an opportunity to start afresh, think seriously about what foreign aid in the 21st century needs to look like, now that we have learned, as outsiders, we are limited, and should not be just coming in, disrupting the the groundople on who may or may not consent to what we are doing. host: one example i read about on your website had to do with solar panels in puerto rico after hurricane maria. talk through what happened. the typical challenge is when there is a crisis, we all want to help. there is an old saying. "there are a lot of solutions that are simple, neat,

compelling and wrong." these are complex places and economies. i am not saying we should not help. we have to be careful about it. when we bring in, for example, hey, we have a u.s. company willing to give a bunch of solar panels for free. solar paneldding companies on the ground who get wiped out because the market gets flooded with free solar panels/materials. message to share with your audience today. there is a difference between working to help people tolerate poverty better and working to help them escape poverty in the long-term. we want and during development.

in emergency, there is going to be specific needs met now. let's not fool ourselves into thinking that what we are doing when we do that is helping them become prosperous. that is just a band-aid. band-aids can be important. foreign aid apparatus needs to be thinking about how do we help them build their own institutions that protect democratic ideals and give people the most choice and flex ability? crisis, this economic downturn, what people need is flexibility and choices. it is uncertain. everybodynow how should try and get out of the current shifts in their livelihoods. they need as much opportunity as possible. host: a lot of calls for you, less than 30 minutes left with

matt warner this morning, president of the atlas network. george, alexandria, virginia, democrat. how thei was curious speaker feels the actions we are taking to support u.s. interests , mainly because, it feels like our country has a lot of problems itself and we are trying to decide how to support these countries and support our own country at the same time and there is a lot of issues -- there is a lot of problems regarding foreign aid, regarding how it seems to help other countries and not our own. what is our own self interest in this? guest: you have hit on an

important challenge. a bit of aimes paradox. iny times, what we are doing foreign aid, we do try to align with our own interests, which any foreign policy apparatus, it makes sense, it is not a surprise we would want to advance our own interests. odds with, that is at the objectives of foreign aid in terms of helping other countries develop. for example, one of the things i'm concerned about, which is not new to joe biden, but certainly something he has american.ut is buy i understand the sentiment. that sounds like a good idea. it actually works at cross purposes with supporting other

countries. is one of the.s. worst offenders when it comes to conditional aid. we say we want to help you but all of your products have to come from america. that is our prerogative, our money. let's not fool ourselves into thinking we are trying to help them develop. i would like to see a more distinct, sophisticated distinction between foreign policy and aid. what my focus is as a grantmaking organization investing in the development of other countries, is to expand an alternative to our current foreign aid apparatus. toimately, it can get better paying attention to local voices and letting them lead. there is a lot we can do to continue to move the ball.

ultimately, the answer will be through the private initiatives of voluntary support, local capacity building on the ground because foreign aid will always be political. it will always have that cross section. taxpayers, there is certainly nothing wrong with saying, we want accountability for our foreign aid dollars and we have people suffering at home. that can be a tricky thing. moneytely, the amount of we are talking about relative to the broader budget, you always want to be cost conscious. the real high-stakes question is, how we are spending it and whether it is doing any good? if we are using foreign aid, and we are not the only ones that do this, we use foreign aid as an opportunity to insert our own

abroad,es and interests we can do that and there are going to be countries and political leaders in other countries that will happily take our money. let's not be full into thinking what that is actually doing is helping that country develop long-term. think about a country like tanzania. at different times, 40% of the government revenue has been foreign aid. what does that mean for budding democracies to increase democratic ideals, when the politicians are answering to foreign agencies and not responsive to their own people? it is a fair question. the biggest giver of foreign aid -- [indiscernible] -- guest: we get a lot of flak because others do more as a percentage of their growth,

their gross national income. int: poor the next couple dollar amounts -- who are the next couple in line? guest: the u.k. is reducing their commitment. they have set a threshold of 0.7% of gross national income as what they were going to be giving each year. that is going to come down to 0.5%. the biggestnd away giver in dollar amount. countries like scandinavian countries tend to hit as a proportion of their gross national income, 1%, sometimes more. host: a lot of folks waiting to talk to. tony, winston-salem, north carolina, republican.

caller: happy thanksgiving and for being there. how should i decide specifically when i give money whom i should give it to internationally? what do you think of charities that give cash to individuals with little strings attached? very interested. followed, chris blackman is a scholar who has mostly worked in conflict resolution but he has led the charge on trying to do research on cash assistance. it tends to be a better alternative to traditional service provision. it certainly helps shift decision-making to local people. i think that is a positive step. i don't think it is a long-term solution. for example, there are private

portionirms who take a of their investments around the world and focus it on developing countries where they know it is riskier but they have a social conscience mission. that can be a great thing. but it is not really systemic change. you can bring in more investment and cash but what really helps an economy develop are the sort of democratic ideal institutions that protect the choice and flexibility. quick point. one of the biggest problems in developing countries is what is called the shadow economy. there is a lot of market activity that helps people get by day-to-day that is not part of the formal, legal economy.

supported awe plucky, modest think tank, not large institutions, local ngos recognize these problems and they advanced a rewriting of the rules so that micro-enterprise entrepreneurs could become formal businesses. the reason why that is transformative is you cannot grow as a business if you don't have legal protection. many local police and bureaucrats know that it is not a legal business. they can take your stuff. they can find you. they can really harass you. tension is really at the source of what sparked the arab spring in tunisia. people toeasier for

drive their own economic success by taking away all of these burdens and checkpoints for rise, we think we are doing the right thing by giving bureaucrats a lot of control over what people are doing but what it ends up doing is keeping a lot of people out of the formal market, where they can never grow from a micro-enterprise to a small business to a medium business. you have these examples of countries where there are a few big companies and a lot of tiny tiny micro enterprises, many of them not enjoying legal protection. that is not a formula for success. host: pennsylvania, patrick, carnegie. caller: good morning, happy thanksgiving. stunning when i listen to this narrative. is very littled difference between our program and china's.

it is massively corruptive, designed as an apolitical weapon. it has been weaponized. it is weaponized by the cia, by the national security state, weaponized period, . guest: criticism of the status quo is healthy. if you want to spend more time on it, there is good research out of harvard university, n, who details all the problems of the status quo. this is not shocking news. most people in the development community know that they have problems. they know, for example, there is corruption on the ground. aide is a lot of foreign that has a veneer of helping but it is really helping to support

american companies that have political connections. what all of this ends up meaning and my main message, i don't think it is the most important thing to strike down foreign aid or destroy it. the most important opportunity is for foreign aid to become much more limited in the types of activities it does and in taking on nationbuilding for other people. just focus on gathering expertise, making available and supporting local capacity. of aid examples projects, 30% of the intendant funds were taken as graft. they skim off the top. there is an example where 100%

of funding that was supposed to go to schools -- not a dollar got to where it needed to be. there isk, ultimately, a limit to how successful apolitical operation is going to of locally kinds sensitive, nuanced problems. i am interested in building an alternative model. foreign aid working to get, reforming itself to temper down our own designs on other countries and just focus on supporting local capacity to lead their own change. host: some news on the u.s. foreign aid front, from axios, the acting administrator informed senior staff yesterday that he tested positive for

coronavirus. towas planning to travel honduras this week after the country was ravaged by hurricanes. the trip is expected to be off. carolina,rie, north independent. caller: good morning. just happened to come by this. very interesting. i will be reading more about what you do and your alternatives as far as helping people. i want to make the comment that the comments you are making about underdeveloped countries, sound like our country right now. white people, specifically white men, have always talked about what others need but they don't want to listen to what others need. one of the main things you have to do is listen to women in the areas you are going to care for. women are the root. women know what is going on and

care for their kids more than anything else. thank you. guest: fantastic point. i think the future of development more broadly has to have a real reckoning around this question of who was calling the shots? i do not think it should be outside, educated, wealthy white men or anyone who is not part of the community and is not working for those democratic ideals that are inclusive and allow public participation. on the point about women, the fact is the more we can break down barriers for women to have equal access to the marketplace, that is one of the most powerful an economy to grow. in fact, because we support projects that locals bring to us

-- we do not tell them what they supportedo -- we have many projects in south sudan, sri lanka, indonesia, other places where they are looking at breaking down barriers that have discriminated against women's participation in the marketplace. host: what is one of those success stories? guest: well, this get specific. in sri lanka, because of high taxes and tariffs on sanitary napkins, in rural areas women and girls were going without and missing school and work and sometimes dropping out or getting fired. somesuccessfully reduced of those artificial increased costs that made these basic, essential products unattainable for many people.

there is also, for example, in some places laws say women cannot work after 8:00 p.m. there has been great progress in beating back against these kinds of restrictions that really limit the opportunities for women to work. we are supporting a project in indonesia right now that, particularly in a time of pandemic people need to shift to a different form of making a livelihood, how to really nurture these micro enterprises that are often run by women, with her out of their homes or started to get online with air products. ofre is the threat regulation that makes that harder and the things we have to isember about regulations

rights the rules are often the rulesayers -- writes the are often the big players. theseakes it hard for micro entrepreneurs who are trying to make a home business or what have you. when those are some of the most vibrant solutions to some of these problems. we have to make it easy. people in micro enterprises have to make money every day to survive. they cannot spend seven months to go to 16 different offices to get approval. they will stay in a shadow economy. in a shadow economy, they do not have legal protection. we need to bring women and men in on equal footing under the us,to tell us, show economic prosperity.

there is other solutions where we come in from the outside and we think we know and say, ok, we need to train all these women on sewing. nepals the example from where they told these women if they learn to sew, they could be successful. you ended up with a lot of people providing that service and not enough demand. here is important thing you do not solve specific economic problems for other people because their own knowledge is a key part of that solution discovery. what we can do is support local institutions that systematically give people more access to the law,t, a quality under the and do not erect all these barriers the end up being a place for bureaucrats to bribe or abuse power. host: less than 10 minutes left

with matt warner of the atlas network, president of atlas network. a lot of folks waiting to chat with you. daniel in minnesota, independent. caller: hello. it is interesting because everything you are talking about it is like my whole life is been something like this. doing and it is like i have a very good plan for stuff. [indiscernible] forests or wooded areas is a likeness of that.

it would be for the world itself because that what we are missing. my father was a green beret. i far as war back in vietnam, was raised with just a mother, but it is striking how this is sort of interesting. host: we appreciate the call. the topic we return to from time to time always creates a lot of interest when we are talking about u.s. foreign aid. this is kim cedar park, texas, a democrat. caller: hi. this does tie together and i will do this really simplistic. jersey, youew wonder how biden can be

most democrats are pro-choice -- host: let us move to the foreign aid conversation. we have matt warner with us a few more minutes. caller: this is foreign aid. it ties in. hold on. women, foreign aid for right? zip it. host: we are listening. caller: you are not listening. we give foreign aid to women's organizations so they can get sanitation napkins, birth control, they can also prevent pregnancy. we are not for abortion. we just do not like -- that is not our business. everybody should be responsible for their own health care. women support all the backbone of economy. if women had the right to health

care, which a lot of women in the field -- in texas, most women do not have insurance. everybodyt gave sanitation napkins free. this is big expenses. this is foreign aid and we give away money to planned parenthood, but that is what i'm saying. it is all connected. you just automatically think we are for -- or against abortion. i had one child, one pregnancy. we are for not controlling other people's lives so they can make the proper decision because it could be many things. host: we got your point, kim. we will let matt warner jump in. guest: i think the common thread there is that we have to have a humility about what other people and other cultures and other communities think is best for

themselves and their families. part of that is there is nothing wrong with having a hypothesis for providing health care basises on a as needed within our programming. but the big message i want to share today is there is a difference between foreign aid that is trying to make poverty more tolerable, and foreign aid that is supporting local vision for strengthening the democratic ideals that allow people to flourish and solve their own problems. i do not say solve their own problems because it is not my problem. i mean solve their own problems because they know better than i do what their priorities are and what their trade-offs are. onmodel is more focused let's, you know, instead of

focusing too much on having political debates about foreign agencies, there are things they can do that would be smarter. not doing so much specific program design from afar and imposing it. just focusing on becoming clearinghouses and let other people do what they will. i am encouraging and we are a collection of interested donors and people, whether that is $100 or $1 million plus, to say where the local level are people working at systemic change they give more choice and flexibility? in covid, this is so important. yes, the large institutions are doing everything they can to

look at debt service suspension, maybe even debt reduction. but the more long-term strategy that is really going to work is supporting local efforts to strengthen the institutions. it is how wealthy countries got rich. know, ant have, you overt industrial policy. we did not have one missing ingredient. i shared a common ideal -- will not say we were perfect -- but the point is to have ideals. that was that everybody is responsible for their own life and with that comes the dignity of respecting each other's choices for what is going to make the most sense for them. that is where economic solutions and progress happens on an enduring level. host: during coronavirus how

much money has your group been able to move to some of these local projects and think tanks? guest: on that particular fund about $1 million. we continue to do some of our related giving somewhere between $5 million and $6 million. one of the benefits that we offer the people who choose to support our model is that we have an intense monitoring and evaluation process for hundreds 500,ink tanks, upwards of and by think tanks i mean local ngos looking at systemic changes to the economic landscape. optimize and make really careful investment where it is going to have a big impact whether that is on making it

easier for people in the shadow economy to join the formal economy and grow their businesses, whatever those businesses might be. one of the temptations and foreign aid generally is for there to be one big solution. what is the missing ingredient? chickenor chickens, some of these are at odds with the complexity of culture and history. idiosyncratic. one of the thing we have to -- democratic ideals have been the strongest human rights model in the world. working to is strengthen the individual public, their participation in designing their own futures, we can support that institutional

change. but it has to be led, prioritized, identified by competent, trustworthy, local organizations and we are constantly bringing people in and out. if there are a lot of opportunities -- there are a lot of opportunities to help whether that is looking at our directory, 500 think tanks at atlasnetwork.org. we care about their capacity growth. we are happy to see new relationships bloom directly with donors. i think the big message is during this giving season coming up now yes, there are many people suffering economically in the u.s. and these principles

apply here as well. recipients inrant the u.s. doing good work on poverty. but there are things we can amount ofw with any we can deploy and get to where it needs to be. host: a good place to end the conversation for today. matt warner is president of the atlas network. atlasnetwork.com, we appreciate your time this morning. guest: thank you for having me. host: up next, we are joined by dave isay, founder and president of storycorps. we talk about the effort to heal political polarization in the united states. we will be right back. ♪ announcer: the u.s. supreme

court hears oral arguments in on monday.w york they will hear whether president trump has the authority to exclude undocumented individuals living in the u.s. listen to the oral argument live at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org/supreme court, or the c-span radio app. ♪ announcer: american history tv on c-span3. exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. coming up, saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern, an interview on leadership with james baker, who served as secretary of state under george hwb bush and is ronald reagan's chief of staff and treasury secretary. at 8:00 p.m. eastern connecticut state university professor on

the close and rumored relationship between prominent mid-19th century politicians. james buchanan, elected the 15th president in 1856, and william rufus king who served as vice president under buchanan's predecessor, franklin pierce. sunday at 6:00 p.m. eastern on american artifacts we explored jfk assassination records from the national archives include an iconic artifacts such as lee harvey oswald's rifle, the magic bullet, and the eight millimeter film of the assassination taken by abraham supe. a virtual tour of the ronald reagan presidential library in california. exploring the american story. watch american history tv this weekend on c-span3. ♪ washington journal

continues. host: a discussion on this thanksgiving morning about political divisions and how to bridge them. our guest is dave isay, founder and president of storycorps which started "one small step." what is storycorps and what is "one small step? " guest: it is great to be here. storycorps has been around a little more than 17 years. i was a radio documentary producer for a couple of decades before starting storycorps. always interested in public service. how to use audio to make people's lives better. you bring anyone you want to honor listen to their story, parent, or grandparent, you come to this booth and you are met by a facilitator who works for storycorps who brings you inside. you sit across from your grandmother, you are in complete

silence, it is a sacred space. listen andtes you ask questions. it is just two microphones and you look each other in the eyes. as you know i microphone gives you the license to ask questions you do not normally get to ask. from the beginning of storycorps people thought if i had 40 bits left to live, what i say to this person? at the end of the 40 minutes you get a copy and another stays with us and goes to the american folklife center in the library of congress. your great, great, great grandkids can know your grandmother through her voice and story. because of the nature of what happens in these booths, it started in grand central then expanded across the country, we are collecting the wisdom of humanity. we have about 650,000 participate so far. it is the largest collection of human voices so

far. we are a public service and nonprofit. we are here to serve people. one of the things we are encouraging a thanksgiving, and if you go to the google homepage there is a link to this. we are encouraging people for interviewing a loved one. this is the year we need to stay socially distant from elders, loved ones, people with pre-existing conditions that make them vulnerable to covid-19. ifare encouraging people, you cannot be face-to-face with a loved one, to record an interview. we have a special platform. up until covid hit all of those 650,000 people who participated did so face-to-face. today, tomorrow, saturday, sunday if you cannot be with a loved one, we are suggesting you record an interview over our

special platform and preserve it at the library of congress. tell that loved one they matter to you. they will not be forgotten by listening to them and asking import questions. these are big like questions like how do you want to be remembered, who should you kindness in your life, what was the happiest moment in your life, hardest time of your life? the hardest questions. at thego to google, bottom under the search bar, you can record an interview. meaningful -- they take 40 minutes. have a meaningful 40 minutes with some who matters to you. that is a history of storycorps. "one small step" is very different. we have been thinking about this for years. since before -- maybe about five years. how do we deal with the

crisis of contempt across the globe? is there a way to throw the storycorps methodology, which is about connecting people, at this problem and try to make a little bit of a difference? came up with something called "one small step." our oath is that we do no harm. we have been testing this intensely for years. we have worked in about 40 cities and again, i know i am giving viewers who do not know about storycorps a lot of information, but before "one small step" it had always been between loved ones. you and your grandmother, you and your kid, you and a friend. this puts strangers across the political divide. people who have never met before for a session not about politics, but to get to know each other. in the intro you talked about healing the country and i think that is an overstep. it is really about building a

little bit of social capital. taking one small step away from the of this we are facing because democracy cannot survive. you and your viewers do not need to be told what's happened the last few years. we used to disagree with the people across the divide. there are studies that show we hate and fear our neighbors more than our traditional international adversaries. things have gone a little bit bonkers in the country and this is just one small solution to try and help us see each other as human beings again. groun not about finding common ground. we know the harm dehumanizing others can do to society. we are in four cities now, but

anybody across the country can do it. you can also go to our website to find out how to sign up. our dream is to convince the country it is our patriotic duty to see the humanity and people. the hardest thing we have ever tried to do, but given the state of the country, we are going to take a swing at it. a very long answer to your quick question. host: finding common ground and the one small step model conversation we are going to have for the next 35 or 40 minutes. let me give the numbers for viewers to call. ,emocrats (202)-748-8000 republicans (202)-748-8001, independents (202)-748-8002. dave isay, you gave the explanation and let me give viewers an example of one of these conversations you created in one small step. this is a conversation between two participants who

participated in birmingham, alabama. [video clip] >> an example of how i think my personal belief structure differs from the perception of my belief structure, right? my wife and i for years led youth group in our church. would participate in the march for life and somehow, because i would be outward with this idea that i would like to see a world where abortion is no longer an nowon, that one stance i am somehow this radical evangelical trump supporter. >> i see. >> something that drives my belief is the same thing that drives my belief that we should take care of abandoned refugees at the border, the poor and sick in our own neighborhoods, but that is not the public persona of what somebody who goes to d.c. to march for that is. >> that is exactly why i wanted to do this. i will fully admit to having had that bias before. it is also worth mentioning --

please do not run out of the room -- i worked for planned parenthood. >> i cannot talk to you anymore. [laughter] deck is my blood going. none of us are simple enough to be throwing the bucket. we are just too darn complicated for that. i think we could do a better job of realizing the nuance. >> nuance i want on a bumper sticker. [laughter] i think the end result of having these conversations and storytelling needs to be that. people are so many things. being disabled as part of my identity, but just a part. going to the march for life is part of your identity, but not the whole thing. >> right. >> you are a father, husband, and i think if we can remember that we have is conversations, we will get somewhere. host: that was from "one small step" from participants in birmingham, alabama. dave isay, how do you find these participants in are these

people, if they're willing to do this program, are they willing on and that common ground start to what you're trying to do? guest: people find us. att happens is you sign up storycorps. you can also go to onesmallstep.org. you fill out a questionnaire and talk about your politics, yourself, and we use this to match you with another participant. you also write a little paragraph about who you are. that is what is sent to your partner. justet your partner's bio, their first names you cannot look them up, and then you read hemr partner's bio to t and they read it to you. a study for more and common, which is an

organization that studies polarization, that says there is an exhaustive majority of 89% in the country who are tired of the divisions under looking for a way out. i would say they are within that 89%. that is most of us. on probablys built the most studied theory and history of psychology called contact theory. the 1950'sloped in and says under specific conditions if you bring two people who are enemies together face-to-face for a meaningful conversation, that feeling of hate can melt away and something can change. if you do it wrong, you can make things worse. but if you do it right, something extraordinary can happen. i think that as what we have. there is also the recalled brightness theory that says there are two conditions for tractable conflict which is what

we are moving toward. two conditions for it to melt away. one is that people are completely exhausted. i think we are getting there in this country. the second is that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, i way to get through it. just in a small way we hope one small step is a way that people can take a step, a courageous step, toward each other. people have said it is hard to hate up close. i think what we have seen over and over is the truth of that. we want as many people in the country to sign up. yes, the people who do this are primed to want to listen to the other side, but i think that is the vast majority of the country. it is just the people on the hard edges. interesthere are some who haveo interest in listening to others. host: plenty of callers.

we start in missio michigan with tonya. caller: good morning. i wish i would have the book available now. someone that was a professor in some california college or university and his theory for talking to people is to talk to them about something they like. when you open a conversation you find some sort of mutuality and then you can develop your discussion further. but if you go after a person with hard i like this or you are wrong, you are never going to succeed. i've been trying to follow that. it is very difficult in this

time because i am absolutely amazed at how one person can alienate half of the country practically. it is a terrible thing that families cannot meet and enjoy one another's company. through the years we've talked about politics and religion in such, but i have never seen anything that has engendered such hate and animosity as i see now. it is a shame. i wonder if you might have some thoughts on how to correct that. thank you. i enjoyed this topic very much. c-span, we love you. host: thank you, natasha. love to you as well in michigan. guest: that advice is absolutely right. that is how one small step works. i want to say if you want to onen up, go to take

smallstep.org. the goal is not to argue about politics. we ask them not to talk about politics. it is just to get to know each other. that is why we call it one small step. topics into the harder of politics is difficult. if you do talk about politics, we suggest you come at it in a slant way. questions would be what is it you think the other side does not understand about your side? what do you respect about people and the others? those sorts of questions. what you read was completely right. nobody has ever screamed, yelled, called somebody a nazi or snowflake or whatever name and changed their mind, ever in the history of humankind. the only way we can begin to see and hear each other is by listening. that is the core of what

storycorps is about. it is in the initiative about listening to each other. show dave, we are going to on the screen some of the primary questions that one small step participants are given in these interviews. we will put those up as we hear from jb in arkansas, a democrat. caller: good morning. i imagine half the people listening to the show today probably believe that this country was involved in some kind of international conspiracy to fix our elections. judging by the callers that we had the first hour i just want to make one simple point. i will get off the phone after that. if that was actually true, you would see the justice department, the fbi, the cia, the top level of this american

government involved in trying to find out if that was real or not. you do not see that. you see five private lawyers led by a man who has not been in a courtroom in decades backed by a president that -- i think it is paranoia. he believed he could not lose unless he was cheated. go ahead? host: let me ask you -- will go ahead. you said your point is what? caller: you see all the top levels of the u.s. government looking into this. questions thate participants in the one small step program, one of the primer questions is, do you feel misunderstood by people who have different beliefs than you? have so? caller: i feel misunderstood, yes.

i think they are misunderstood. it does not make sense. the claim about this national conspiracy -- nobody is checking into it. have you seen bill barr lately? host: that was jb in arkansas. dave isay, what you take from that? it is a little bit off topic for one small step. aughs] people are angry and i think we do not understand each other. the question is can we sit together and start getting know to know each other like human beings? i am sure the person we just heard has an interesting life story. if he could sit with someone who has different political views and maybe thinks the election hisstolen or whatever concerns are about how people

see things on the outside, if they could talk a little bit about their lives and who they care about and their kids and grandkids, maybe they could have a conversation about the election that was a little bit different than just shouting at each other. out, as weuld turn heard in that clip, a little bit of nuance to everybody's beliefs. who knows? the way it is going in the country right now is not working and this is another way of going at it. it is about having the courage to listen, having the courage to listen to people who are different. host: barbara in north carolina, you are next. caller: good morning. mi there? host: yes, ma'am. caller: thank you, c-span. loved natasha. is that her name? she had everything involved in communicating.

i think the end of the conversation is really education. i think c-span and the storycorps needs to go to the mountains of north carolina and talk to these people. i know you mentioned you do go around in buses, but i think it is the core of everything to communicate. peoplenot hear from you and a lot of people in this area do not get internet. how can they even get tv? line isthe bottom really education. we need to focus on that. thank you. host: that was barbara in north carolina. banner elk north carolina in the western part of the state. i will pull up the map so viewers can see where it is as we hear from dave isay. guest: i think barbara is right.

because of the virus there is no getting into the mountains for face-to-face conversation, but we hope we will be able to reach people all across the country. i think part of the problem in the country's people feel like they are not being listened to. likeuntry is people feel they're not being listened to. listening is one of the best ways to show respect. , our goal isains to get as deep as we can into the country. education, ims of think this is more social and emotional learning education. helping us build those muscles of compassion and empathy for one another and we live in a world where there is a multibillion-dollar paid industrial complex. it is incredibly profitable to hate.ows and sow

there has to be a counterbalance where we can find the humanity in each other. host: do you think we would be better off without twitter or facebook? guest: i am not on those platforms. [laughs] i do not know facebook that well. seems to be a really dangerous tool and obviously it just has huge effects on our brain chemistry. every time you write something nasty about someone the more likes you will get. you get dopamine hits from that and it is a little bit of a casino in our brain. it seems like twitter is probably pretty harmful. host: back to michigan this is

margaret, a democrat from detroit. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. i really appreciate you guys because you keep it real. my thing is this. we can learn from kids. along, theyo get love each other, there is no animosity and anger, ok? but adults, there is the anger coming from, love? understand because somebody does not agree with you -- you have siblings, cousins, uncles and so forth, right? they do not always agree. kids do not always agree, but know do n but they do no

their part of the human race -- know they are part of the human race. that is all i have to say and thank you for having me on the phone. host: dave isay. very: that is the storycorps call. elders andning to collecting the wisdom of humanity and i think that is an example of listening to wisdom. she is right. we have a lot to learn from kids. we have a lot to learn from each other. thingsthink one of the one of the things we want to do with one small step is remember that none of us is the worst thing you have ever done. try to see the best in others and that is something that kids have the ability to do up until a certain age. .e should be reminded of

one of the lessons of storycorps -- the traveling around the country recording stories of regular people everywhere -- is that when we are recording these interviews between grandparents and grandkids, kids and their parents, we have facilitators who work for storycorps who are in the booth. they call a bearing witness. we have had hundreds and hundreds of them as we worked with hundreds of thousands of people across the country. when they come back to for aorps after serving year or two years if you ask them what they learned, everyone gives some version of the anne frank quote that people are basically good. there is truth to that. that is a piece that we need to remember and again, seeing the good in others and remembering that there is a light in all of

us and trying to help that flame burn is bright as possible. one way to do that is by treating one another with dignity always in respect always. host: back to the mountain state, this is carl in west virginia. caller: good morning. democrats havet, got to be vicious when it comes to politics. if you do not agree with my philosophy, you are a racist. they are throwing that around so much it does not mean anything anymore to me. for a lot ofedia this going on because the majority of the mainstream media is one way. our kids in school are being taught the socialist philosophy.

difficulting pretty to even have a conversation with a democrat. the first words out of their mouth if you do not agree, you are a racist. it is getting to be a bad situation. i am 82 years old. i was a democrat when i was a young person. there philosophy was pretty good back in those days. now it is if you do not agree with me, i will hurt you. i will go to your house, i will demonstrate in front of your house. i will create a commotion your neighbors will want you out of the neighborhood. to. is what it has come it is crazy and i just hope,

well, i agree with president trump because he did a lot for the blacks in this country. it because thew mainstream media do not tell us. host: dave isay. guest: again, i hope you will go to one small step.org to sign up to participate so you can test your theory. i hear a lot from the media about what one side is like and what the other side is like. we do not spend enough time actually having face-to-face conversations. go to take one small step.org to sign up and have a conversation with some of the across the political divide. maybe we'll be what you think, maybe it will not. one of the reasons we are alive is to be surprised. areously both sides convinced of certain things about the other side. the caller just articulated it beautifully. a lot of this is fueled by the

media. the question is, is it really true? what we want to do is find that bypassing they messages we are getting from the media about who the other side is in finding out whether it is true and having face-to-face conversations. what you think. people are complicated and that is the beauty of life, getting a chance to engage in those complications and be surprised. i didn't interview a couple of weeks ago and it was my first 1 -- i did an interview a couple of weeks ago and it was my first one. sitting across the political divide so i would not normally get to talk to, and being thoughtful and listening is just a thrilling experience. it is exhausting. but most of these interviews and the same way. we have done a lot of testing

and now we have launched. it ends with the two people almost always saying, can i have your phone number, whenever going to have dinner, we need to do this again, we need to keep talking. i think storycorps and one small step are projects of hope. do not give up hope. host: was surprised about that person you set across from? well, i did it through videoconference because all of these are video calls now up until the pandemic is over. ease of the the conversation and how much i liked her and how much she liked me. she sent me an email afterward. i gave her my email and she said, for that one hour i felt respected. i felt recognize and i felt hurt and it felt good. rd and it felt good.

feels -- itgood it is not every conversation, but it is a lot of them. life in a bit of a new way is thrilling. how draining it is, it takes courage to listen. boy, it is worth it. host: we listen to gary and fletcher, north carolina, independent. caller: good morning. famous prejudice caller, gary, i was listening to his program and one of the things i was trying to do when i spoke to heather mcgee was doing something like this. host: for folks who do not remember, remind folks about that call and why you called in that day.

and heathergary and iwas on television wanted to express my views and i had prejudiced feelings about people. because of what i had seen and what i had learned, i am afraid that what i experienced people are experiencing now. the gentleman who called and said people are yelling at me in doing this and acting that way. he is developing prejudices against these people right now. guest -- youre a guest on television is really doing something to try and bring up a remedy instead of fortifying these feelings. he is trying to break down some walls. this.needs to be more of i think this could really work. thathing i worry about is

-- people call into c-span. i love listening to black colors, different points of ands -- black callers listening to different points of views, but i think we should get into the nixon crannies of the areas that could use it. oks and crannies of the areas that could use it. host: how would you suggest they do that? where should one small step go? guest: they should get people who dress and look like some of the people that we do not agree with or are afraid of and have them sit across tables and talk to people instead of beating on cars are yelling in people's ears with bullhorns. that really is not working. group -- ia diverse

am intrigued with the demeanor of your guest and there are some people who would blow it off. he's just not their cup of tea. diversify have to within his own program. i would be a helper if you wanted it. i would like to get in touch with him sometime and offer what i have learned. i'm still friends with heather mcgee and i'm fixing to call her and wish her a happy thanksgiving now. anybody can look up that interview on the internet. i am very familiar with it. it may be one of the most famous moments in c-span history. know if you can talk to

jen, the producer, but if you could leave her your email address, i would love to be in touch with you and figure out something to do with you and heather. i agree. we work everywhere with people trying to get the message out. we are a public service. we want to reach everybody across the country. ,e are doing everything we can liberal radio, conservative radio, tv, we have an ad council campaign. that is the group that did smoking sensation. you are going to see those all over the place encouraging people to listen. it is not a perfect analogy, but there are analogies with smoking. at one point it was cool and sexy in that it was not. right now treating each other with disrespect, being cruel to each other, not listening to each other, putting each other

down is cool and sexy. at some point treating each other with dehumanizing each other was cool and sexy. point hopefully it will not be. that interview with heather something we paid close attention to four years ago and we appreciate your courage and i think that is fantastic that your calling her on thanksgiving. essence of one small step. host: it was august 18 that gary called in. if viewers want to check that out, gary, are you come to both if i put you on hold? you can give your email address. caller: absolutely. you have made my thanksgiving. host: thank you, gary. stand aligned. guest: i was thinking about that interview before he came on the ar because it was such dramatic and important moment. to havelly honored

talked to you. happy. host: stephen is next out of maryland. wondering if you voted for donald trump because i think that is really where the healing of the political divide is going to have to come. like in the conversation there may be placing a burden on people who happen to listen -- who have to listen to racists all the time empathize with racism. people are tired of listening to racists and being led by them and having them be their president. negotiating between who is more racist and less racist. i think that is where this done amongst to be white people.

they need to educate themselves. it has been 400 years. you can read a book and learn about the university of north carolina leasing slaves to students. you can learn about how instead of fighting the takedown of confederate statues -- how the confederacy lost and stop waving the confederate flag. this provocations what causes undivided. now it is a situation where you want the people who, for the last four years, have to educate or listen to people who lost the popular vote but took the electoral college.

divide isructural imposing a racist system on a population of people that you are saying needs to heal from a political divide. host: that is stephen this morning. dave isay. guest: i appreciate that call. first of all, we have all kinds of guardrails up. this is not about any kind of -- i do not want to even say the word healing. it is just about having a conversation. nobody is forced to do this. if there are people who want to do this, who are interested in getting to know people across the divide -- some people are not interested. there is no pressure on anybody having to do this. your point is well taken. one small step is not about racial reconciliation or not. we are not equipped to do that. the issues you bring up are deep and complicated and it is not a one small step. it is not a piece of one small step. again, i think what one small

step is looking at -- i do not want to overstate the problem -- but just listening to these calls we are getting there. dehumanization and the dangers of a society dividing into us and them. we know the results of that. in germany, the nazis used to lessjews and other people than human. slavery is an example of when a group of people is dehumanized. what happened in rwanda and we are not there in the country yet, but it is a very dangerous road to go down. this is about people. it is not about healing, not about coming to common ground, it is just to human beings who have the courage to want to see the humanity and one another and find out who this person is. taken and one small

step might not be for you, but if it is, i hope you will sign up and participate. i know weme ask you, originally had you booked until 9:30 eastern. there are a lot of calls and callers want to chat with you. can you stick around? guest: happy to. the gary call made my day. [laughter] virginia,antown, west and independent. caller: thank you for taking my call. what youto ask you envision in terms of this approach of dialogue, moving into other spaces of society. whether it be in the workplace, whether it be at the shopping center, and even online. met advice would you give to and others who are interested in

this approach of dialogue? not necessarily in the storycorps space. guest: i am not a psychologist. i am not an expert on resolving conflict, but i appreciate your question in common. i think my advice as a civilian to your question -- my life, to some extent, i know it very well but i think the lessons from storycorps can be applied everywhere. key -- ine of the think about what the founding principles of storycorps were. toe of those are just things hold onto if you can. that includes assume the best in others. you look at the ground rules of what has to happen, and this goes back to

the previous caller, one small step interviews have ground rules. you do not shout, you do not yell, you do not curse, you do not talk over other people. are being treated the way you would want to be treated is a way to do this. i have to say, i keep coming back to the word courage. it is really not courage in your workplace and other places. take a deep breath. know what your intention is in a conversation and dive in. i do believe -- and this is the lesson of storycorps. you could say, john, you are asking early on if there is a selection bias, you could say the same thing with storycorps full-time at the beginning that there was some kind of a selection bias when we were in the hundred thousands. this idea of the basic goodness of people, there has got to be a truth to it. i know it's not what we see when

we look at most channels, and i know we are not talking about c-span. most of the messages we get are not about the basic goodness that is inherent in all people, but the lesson that we have learned in our corner of storycorps is that it is true. i think we are just kind of telling truths that are true here. we will keep telling them until there is no breath left in our bodies. we cannot give up hope. we cannot give up hope in other people. we have to move forward and look toward each other and take one small step toward each other, or else this country -- there was an article last week saying -- i talked about this as a moonshot full-time how can we as a country ever accomplish anything that is big in any way if we are at each other's throats? it is not going to work. we've got to find a way to find the humanity in each other, find the best in each other to move forward. i hope that is ok.

host: earlier you talked about the dangers you see in social media. do you watch much cable news come and do you think there are some of the danger there? the one person on the face of the earth since the pandemic has not turned on the tv. i don't watch tv. the work is pretty intense with storycorps. whove two little kids, one had covid for a long time. so i have not watched tv. i don't tend to watch tv news at all. so -- but from what i understand, you know, people are know, incentivized, you the more that you make your side theylike everything that say is correct and that the other side is evil, the higher your ratings are going to be. so every incentive is toward

this kind of depolarization in the country and dividing us. i have no doubt that that's what happens all the time on cable tv, and we are human beings and it is understandable. but it is not necessarily that it is not healthy, it's not ok. in some ways there is a public health campaign because this kind of conflict and hate -- it is extremely stressful. you can hear it in the voices of your callers. distress, andreal we get paranoid and it is just -- it is not good, it is not good for us, it is not good for the country, and we have to figure out something to turn the tide. host: let's try to get some of those voices in. frank, pennsylvania, a democrat. thanks for waiting. caller: ok. hi, dave. you know, i think at the bottom of this, the big problem we have the very unhealthy

divide between the haves and the have-nots in our economy. that's what's making people angry, and they don't even realize it. you know, we need some real economic reform in the way of and, you know, we need to stop shooting at one another here. and bring to people's attention the simple fact that the economy is way out of whack with the haves having too much and the have-nots don't have enough. and the have-nots don't know what hit them. this needs to be corrected. host: dave eisai. -- dave isay. right now it is a zero

sum game. it is more important for people important whats your party does than defeating the other party. it has become a shootout, and again, that is not healthy and that is not going to move the country forward. i am not a political scientist. i'm not an expert on politics. i am an expert on my small corner of the world on storycorps, which is about humans connecting. i think that what you are saying is, you know, that these are just kind of evident truths. at eachn, if we are other's throats, there is not much that we can do as a country to move forward and create this more perfect union that we all must happen.that

we have to figure this out. vickie, wendell, north carolina. thanks for waiting. caller: thanks for taking my call. i'm curious -- i love the idea of what you're doing, and i think at least somebody is doing something. i have been completely devastated since the election. i'm glad that biden won, but i feel now prejudiced against people who voted for trump, and my problem isn't really political divide, it is i feel like that the people who voted for him do not care about the truth, don't have morality, believe -- they don't live in reality, having believed all the things that he said, and i'm trying to reconcile my feelings about all this because i'm finding myself very upset, feeling like i don't know my country anymore. guest: that is a good reason to

be upset. thank you for the kind words. i'm sorry that you are in distress. i don't know the answer except that we have to do something, as you said, and i hope that you takeonesmallstep.org. i hope you will talk to someone. i don't know if it will be satisfying. i hear that you're in a lot of pain. it cannot be any worse than what you are feeling inside right now. we have to figure out a way to reach out to each other and find out -- remember, we listened to that clip earlier and there are so many clips like that where you have a pro-life person, someone who worked at planned parenthood talking to each other who became friends afterwards. i'm sure that both of them would have had that kind of distress that you are expressing before they had that conversation. it is not the answer to everything, but i hope you will and and be a part of this that it gives you some peace,

and maybe things that people who the person that you meet -- if you do multiple conversations are not exactly what you think, and maybe you would learn something new, and maybe it will bring a glimmer of hope back. cannotocracy also survive without hope. don't give up hope. you go, for folks who want to participate in storycorps, explain how they can do it via google. getting reallys complicated. we have two things to talk about. one is storycorps, the broad effort that i founded many years ago, and if you go to google today, underneath the search bar , it will say on your desktop recorded loved one with storycorps. just hit it, and it will tell you how to record an interview with your grandparents. that uploads to the library of

congress, so your great great great great grandchildren can get to know your grandmother through her voice and story. all of this is about listening, respect, dignity, recognizing the poetry, the grace and the beauty that is hiding in plain sight all around us if we take the time to listen. that's if you want to interview a loved one. if you want to be part of a political piece of this, one small step, changes across the divide getting to know each other. that is not on the home page of google. you have to go to takeonesmallstep.org, and we will match you with someone across the political divide. everything is done ritually to be safe because of covid. once week -- done virtually to be safe because of covid. once we have the vaccine, we will go back to doing it live. interviewing a loved one, whoever you are going to call in, so many people feel lonely and isolated today, a very weird and difficult thanksgiving for

so many. by interviewing them and asking them about their life, it mind -- it reminds them that they matter and they will be forgotten. i promise two things. you will learn things about a hell we -- no matter how well you know them. you will find out something that you never knew, no matter how well you know them. the second thing i promise is you will not regret it. i have people coming up to me before the pandemic, living in a different type of world. every day people come up to me and say i wish i interviewed my grandmother or my grandfather, but i waited too long. i wish i interviewed my brother, but i waited too long. i hope is that storycorps will -- long enough that no one has that regret. the last caller was crying about how painful it is for her in this country right now, and we have heard a lot of pain in these phone calls. this is not ok, and we have got to figure out some way to see

each other again. i hope that this methodology that we have developed helps us take one small step again in -- awayh other from this hopelessness and despair that this country has fallen into. isay,thank you, dave storycorps founder and president. let's have another conversation down the road. guest: i would love that. happy thanksgiving to you and your viewers as well. about 20 minutes left in our program today, and we will return to the topic that we began our program with. simply asking you, in mid the spiking coronavirus pandemic, we want to hear about how you are celebrating the holiday, what it means to you this year. what you might be think for four. phone lines, the numbers are on your screen.

we will be right back. announcer: book tv on c-span2 has talked nonfiction books and authors every weekend. coming up this weekend, saturday, at 9:00 p.m. eastern, former president barack obama reflect on his life and political career in his newly released memoir "a promised land." sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern on afterwards, -- on of --words, "the author "monopolies suck." she is interviewed by david mcloughlin. at 10:00, former appellate judge douglas ginsberg and his book "voices of our republic" examines the constitution through the eyes of legal scholars. watch book tv on c-span2 this weekend, and watch in-depth life

sunday, december 6 at noon eastern with our guest, african-american chair -- chair of african-american studies at dash university, eddie claude jr.. announcer: tuesday, steve mnuchin and jerome powell testify before the senate banking committee fulton we will provide an update on emergency measures to provide relief on the economic downturn about the coronavirus pandemic. tuesday on c-span3 come on demand at c-span.org, or listen live on the c-span radio app. washington journal continues. host: about 15 or 20 minutes left in "the washington journal," asking you for your thoughts on this thanksgiving morning, in this strangest of years. we want to hear from you. regionally, eastern,

202-748-8000. mountain or central time zones, 202-748-8001. molly roberts has the column in the washington post, "we can't save this thanksgiving." she talked about the traditions this year. she says we have been asked so many times to scale down all aspects of our lives for eight months that you would think scaling down thanksgiving doesn't come that would come naturally. many of us have been missing seeing family for months now and we have been missing seeing friends, too. obviously we don't like change when changing is in our choice, but yet we have changed already. that is why it hurts so much. these changes were daily adjustments. we noticed them but as a steady accumulation of evenings spent in indoor silence come up solitary strolls through the neighborhood, on the edges of a sidewalk.

thanksgiving is the day. we only get it once every year, and we are not getting it this time. suddenly the sum total materializes for us as empty seats and a long table. that from molly roberts in onay's "washington post." the gatherings at tables today. only about 27% of americans plan to have the traditional thanksgiving meal with people outside their own homes. that from "the new york times" and their survey of 150 thousand americans, conducted within the past two weeks. turning the phones over to you to end our program today, mary in south dakota. you are up first. caller: good morning. host: go ahead, mary. caller: i am actually spending the day alone. i am 66 and i have family in the my daughter went to a

wedding last saturday, so i will not spend any time with her because she has been exposed. i am going to make some food and share it with my ex-husband and his wife. i will probably go for a walk with my dog at some point, with my husband and their two dogs. ratein a place where the is sky high and and just keeping very say. i am just grateful for my health and i really want to be careful about not being exposed, not spreading this to anyone else. there are only a few more months to go, so i can hang in there. host: mary, things for the call. n from santa fen en new mexico. caller: happy thanksgiving to all. this morning i woke up at 5:00, and at 6:00 after going around,

getting coffee, i attended mass on television, on ew gn. read the proclamation that george washington wrote in, i believe, 1869. i believe that is the year. people should look that up. it is incredible. it is beautiful, inspirational. host: is it the 1789 one? guest -- caller: it is the 1780 91. he said our unity is in god, and fort washington hit the nail on the head. if i might paraphrase. that idiom. but anyway, it is just so beautiful, and i think if we

would look that up and reread it and come together and find , inngth and hope in that that proclamation. mountvernon.org is a good resource for anything george washington related. this is the thanksgiving proclamation of 1789. i want -- i won't read the whole thing for our viewers and probably won't do it justice, here is a bit of what that proclamation said in 17 89. from george washington. "now therefore i recommend and assign thursday, the 26th of november next to be devoted by the peoples of these states to the service of that rate angler is being who is the -- that great and glorious being who is the significant author of all that was, is, and will be, that we may all unite in rendering unto him sincere thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country, previous

to their becoming a nation. for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interposition's of his providence, which we experience in the course and conclusion, with a great degree of tranquilly, union, and plenty, which we have enjoyed in the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled, established constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, particularly the national one now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty which we are blessed, and the means we have for acquiring and diffusing useful -- useful knowledge and a general fall the great and various favors which he has been pleased to confer upon us. ." philadelphia, good morning. you are next. good morning. just want to say thank you for c-span.

it is a beautiful day. people thatup, some corona close to me recently, and it is just -- on this thanksgiving day, you just pray that things get better. this morning i got multiple calls from people that didn't have employment and didn't really have any way to get anything on this thanksgiving, so just being thankful for what you have. work to youind of do that you interact with folks as much as you have today? caller: i am a community activist, and a lot of people have reached out just because they don't have, and so many have lost their jobs or their know,ave folded, and, you

they are really worried because they don't have virtually no income. thanks for sharing your story this morning. inhleen, across the state pittsburgh, pennsylvania, good morning. caller: good morning, happy thanksgiving. i am thankful for the fact that i live in this beautiful country , but i wish we could be united like we were after 9/11. i may not agree with your opinion, but i will fight to the death for your right to have it. freedom of speech is important. another thing, hatred breeds lack of compromise. let's stop the hatred. it is breaking my heart. the country is being torn apart, and i love this country. thank you. host: kathleen in pittsburgh. this is lisa in texas.

you are next. good morning -- caller: good morning, happy thanksgiving. i am thankful that i get to spend thanksgiving with my two granddaughters that i am raising, and i am thankful we will have food. i will not do the traditional thanksgiving because i am not with my entire family. gentleman that was on previously, if we would go by 2 -- "if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, i will hear from heaven and forgive them and heal their land." i pray next year -- i am thankful for what i have, but i pray next year that this country comes back together and heals

from the division that we have lived through. not just the covid-19 and the family members we have lost, but also just the division. we are all one people. host: that is lisa in texas. this is shelley in eden, utah. good morning. are you with us? i am.: yes, thank you. i want to just tell everybody how thankful i am that we have the vaccine coming. we will get through this. we are strong, and please, everybody, just be thankful for what we have. i know there are a lot of people who have lost a lot of loved ones, and i am so sorry for that. please, everybody, just be thankful for what we have. thank you. in utah.t is shelley about 10 minutes left this morning.

we read the presidential proclamation from 1789. there is plenty out there throughout history. here is another one, from 165 years later, president dwight d eisenhower's 1954 thanksgiving proclamation. it is printed in today's "washington times." here is part of that proclamation, saying, "we are grateful that our beloved country, settled by those forebears in our quest for religious freedom remains free, strong, and each of us can worship god in his own way according to the dictates of his conscience. numeralrateful for the -- the innumerable daily manifestations of his greatness. for the opportunities to labor and to serve and for the continuance for the satisfactions which enrich our lives. with gratitude in our hearts for all our blessings, may be -- may we be ever mindful that the obligations inherent in our

strengths, and may we rededicate ourselves to the unselfish striving for the common betterment of mankind. that from 1954. from richmond, virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. i am calling to say that i am so grateful not only for the fact that we will be getting a new evendent in biden, but though i cannot spend my time with my daughter and my granddaughter that are two years that --m still grateful my cousin passed in august. i just hope that everybody enjoys themselves as much as they can. you have a good thanksgiving as well. host: thank you. you do the same. choi, wilmington, delaware. you are next. caller: good morning. i just want to say what i am thankful for this thanksgiving.

i lost my mother and my grandmother within seven weeks of each other from the pandemic. host: i'm sorry about that, troy. dark andt has been a hard year for me and for a lot of people. -- i have faith, and it got me through it. i feel blessed. i just want to remind everyone to just take safety precautions and just know that you never know, you know, if you are going to get it. and if you will make it through it. it is a tough thing. host: what were their names? namer: my grandmother's was mary, and my mother's name was debbie. host: thank you for the call. rose in illinois, good morning, you are next. i am rose, and i am

very thankful for my president, donald j. trump. he is the very best president that has ever in this country. the people need him, and i am very, very grateful for what he has done for this country. trump, my nament is rose. god bless you. never concede. you are the best. we have everident had in this country. thank you. host: that is rose in illinois. this is francis in selma, alabama. good morning. caller: yes, good morning to all. i am so thankful to this particular experience we have gone through for the last four years. it does give us a chance to see where we really are. a civilt that we get us

about office in just every state so we can teach the people how to be considerate of all mankind. i lost a sister this summer, too. comeidn't go out before and her son wanted to carry her, take her to a restaurant that was in one of the adjacent cities because selma is so small. he did, and it was on july 9. july 19. burnster, who has a 90% over her body in the 1970's, so she knew how to take care of herself. she died very quickly without anyone knowing. so it is just so sad what goes on, because we don't pay attention and we don't love people. having hadlieve that

donald trump as an experience will help our nation become the nation that it should be. thank you so much. host: francis, sorry for your loss. our last call in today's washington journal. one last next message this morning for our viewers, from peter in provincetown, massachusetts. peter wrightson, "hi, i'm going to take a walk in provincetown, knowing where my path will take me to the same path where the weary passengers on the mayflower visited 400 years ago. then i will join a few friends for dinner. very modest. look it to be alive." that is it for our program today. we will be back tomorrow morning 4:00 a.m.m. eastern, pacific. have a great thanksgiving. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020]

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> today, an encore presentation of q&a with an author and historian on his book, the president versus the press. he examines the relationship between the media and u.s. presidents going back to george washington here and watch q&a today at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. c-span, yourtching unfiltered view of government, created by america's cable television companies as a public service and brought to you today by your television provider. >> tonight, remarks from former president clinton on affordable housing and the racial wealth gap. he spoke at an event hosted by

the clinton foundation. it airs tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span. after that, interviews with current members of congress on race and gender equity issues. that event was held virtually by the hill. >> book tv on c-span two has a top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. this weekend, saturday at 9:00 p.m. eastern, former president barack obama reflects on his life and political career in his newly released memoir, "a promised land." the open markets institute director and her book, seven waste big corporations ruin your life and how to take back control. she is interviewed by a bloomberg news reporter. at 10:00, a former appellate book, voices of our republic, examines the

constitution through the eyes of judges, legal scholars, and historians. watch book tv on c-span two this weekend. sunday,to watch live december 6 at noon eastern with our guest at princeton university. >> the u.s. supreme court hears oral argument in trump team new new york.ump v. the court will hear whether ability. trump has the listen live at 10:00 easter monday on c-span, on-demand at c-span.org, or on the c-span radio app. host: good thursday morning to you. happy thanksgiving to you