general lloyd austin to be the next defense secretary and the national issues facing the incoming administration. we will also take your calls and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. washington journal is next. ♪ host: good morning and welcome to washington journal. despite losses in front of judges across the country, president trump not giving up his bid to overturn his loss in election.ential the supreme court turned down the president this weekend and now states are getting ready to start the electoral college process to make joe biden the next president. but president trump says he will fight on despite losing the election and the legal battle. what do you think about president trump continuing to

fight on after his supreme court loss? we are opening up our regular lines. republicans, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8001. democrats, your number is (202) 748-8000. independents, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8002. at (202)lways text us 748-8003. and we are always reading on social media on twitter at @cspanwj and on facebook on facebook.com/c-span. again, thence supreme court refused to hear the lawsuit supported by president trump and several states this weekend, so there is little path left for president trump to continue to challenge election hecourt

lost joe biden. he says he is not giving up. here is a little bit from the story in politico this morning. rudy giuliani, president trump's personal attorney, indicated the president's legal team will continue filing lawsuits to subvert the election results even after the supreme court shut down an effort to overturn the vote count in swing states. it came after the high court tomissed a suit led by texas overturn the election results in georgia, michigan, pennsylvania, and wisconsin, four key states that secured joe biden's win. xas court said taxes -- te lacked the legal right to challenge how other states conduct their elections. the electoral college will be ready to meet later this week.

we will talk about that. let's go to our phone lines and see what you have to say. let's start with duke, calling from stonington, maine. good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. i want to say that i have never in my life seen such a crybaby, i'm man in his 70's crying -- a man and his 70's crying because he did not get his way. this guy is disgusting. i do not know why he is doing what he is doing. he is making a full of himself, not that he was not one anyway, but anyway -- but anyhow, he is a disgrace. him a someone would give cry towel because he is disgusting. he will not win. he will not get his way, and thank god for that. so we will see what happens. christian, go to

calling from phoenix, arizona on the republican line. christian, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i want to say first off that there have been not one candidate who has conceded this election. because theans is, united states is a republic, not democracy, per our constitution and our codified law, the electoral college vote count, which takes place on january 6, 2021, which will not change -- it is codified law -- that will decide who the winner is, so a lot can happen between now and january 6. the courts do not decide who becomes president, the state legislatures who do not does --

legislatures do not decide who becomes president, the electoral certificates from each state must be confirmed by both house and senate in joint session. is vice president, who currently mike pence, is the chair who presides over the parliamentary procedure. so what we are going to watch is going to be the equivalent of the kavanaugh hearings, the molar hearings -- mueller hearings. this is a political process. you: christian, let me ask -- do you see the electoral college ignoring what the voters did and moving in a different direction? caller: it is highly possible that may happen. it is all going to depend on what the republicans in the house and in the senate decide to do. so you republicans in

washington, i have news for you. the people are watching you, especially the republicans and the 74 million trump voters who voted for donald john trump. host: well -- as christian just said, the electoral college starts meeting tomorrow. let's go to morgan, white house reporter for the hill, to tell us about what is going to happen this week. good morning. guest: good morning, jesse. host: so, morgan, as our caller pointed out, the electoral college meets this week. how is the white house viewing this and are they putting any pressure on the electoral college? guest: i think the president has made it really clear that he is just not accepting these results. butants to keep fighting, he was delivered two decisive losses from the supreme court

this week. once the electoral college meets, it will cement biden's victory. that is what we all expect to happen. after that, you know, the path for the president to change or try to change these results is closed. so i think he will continue to try to fight in some ways. obviously, rudy giuliani indicated they would continue to pursue this legal strategy, but, you know, tomorrow will be a milestone in cementing biden's victory. biden will continue to move forward as he has with announcing specific cabinet picks and preparing to take office despite the president's refusal to concede. any: do you expect surprises at all in the electoral college process? we will be showing it here on c-span. as our previous color said it, well, maybe republicans will not

follow the process. will there be surprises, or will it be pro forma? guest: in this news cycle, it is hard to say we will not have any surprises, but the president obviously has been trying to put pressure on republicans to do, you know, overturn the results. but i expect this to go as we would expect it to, which is that they will, you know, they will cement biden's victory, but i cannot rule out that there will be some kind of surprise tomorrow. are looking and watching the electoral college process, there are other things going on. for example, the house and senate have passed the defense bill with a vetoproof majority. do you expect the president to veto this bill? guest: he has made very clear

that he would -- he threatened to veto the bill due to it not including a repeal of section 230, which is the liability shield for tech companies. and it did include that. president trump also expressed objections to the provision requiring the renaming of confederate named military bases within five years. that was also included within publicl, so given his rhetoric, i would expect him to veto it. now, it was passed with that vetoproof majority, so vetoing it would send it back to congress and they would have to vote again to override that. assuming everyone votes the same way, which i don't think we can promise that, and i think there have been some lawmakers indicating they will not vote to override the veto, but if they do, are still able to get that majority, then the bill will still pass.

the president has time to decide, obviously, but given what he has done publicly, i would expect him to veto it. host: what are you watching this week when it comes to the biden transition? are there any announcements we know that are coming forward this week on possible cabinet secretaries or government positions? guest: so, one selection that it seems that biden is getting closer to his attorney general. last week, he told reporters from the week that he planned to announce it on friday, but that did not happen. there have been several names that have been floated as potential attorney general nominees, but i do think that's a big one to watch and i think that could come this week. i would expect it to come within the next two weeks given that it is such an important role that people are watching closely. i know biden is getting a lot of input from various groups on

that choice, so that could come this week. he has announced several cabinet members and other members of his senior team, but there are left.l the transition team says he has announced 14 members of his cabinet of about two dozen. so, heads of epa, interior, education, those have still not been announced and i think we could expect those as soon as this week. one big event on biden's calendar that we know about will be his travel to georgia to campaign for the two senate candidates and the runoffs, rafael -- candidates in the runoffs, raphael warnock and jon ossoff. assuming everything goes as expected biden will be officially president and he will campaign for these two candidates. obviously, those runoffs are

very important to both parties, both putting a lot of resources and manpower into campaigning for their respective candidates because it will decide this in the majority. host: what should we be watching this week? another week in washington. everything is happening in a bunch of different places. where will your eyes be and what should we pay attention to? guest: welcome i think we should be paying attention to -- well, i think we should be paying attention to biden's campaigning in georgia, the electoral college meeting. i am not sure what president trump's schedule will have, but i'm sure he will have events and we will be watching those. it is getting closer to christmas so i wonder if he will be departing for mar-a-lago in the near future. i does a big week. christmas is coming.

although it will be different, things kind of slow down around the holiday season. a big week because tomorrow will be the beginning of the vaccination process. the vaccines will be delivered to the states beginning tomorrow and i think that is going to be a big story as we get into this week. it is a pretty big milestone in terms of our fight against the coronavirus. host: we would like to thank lfant, white house reporter for the hill taking us through this next week. thank you. guest: thanks. host: as morgan said, the first shipments of the coronavirus vaccine will be going out this week. in fact, they are starting this morning. you are seeing on the screen the pfizer plan in kalamazoo, michigan, which will be shipping out the vaccine -- pfizer plant in kalamazoo, michigan, which

will be shipping out the vaccine. we are seeing the factory live as they are getting ready to load the first shipment of the covid-19 vaccine to americans to fight the coronavirus. once again, we will see those going out. you are looking at the pfizer plant live in kalamazoo, michigan as they get ready to send out the first coronavirus vaccine. once again, let's get back to what we were talking about earlier, which is president trump's decision to fight on against the incoming president-elect joe biden after his court loss. let's take a look at the tweet president trump sent out after he lost at the supreme court level. here is what he treated -- tweeted. "you are president and you went through a collection where you got more votes than any sitting president in history by far and

reportedly lost. you cannot get standing before the supreme court, so you intervene with wonderful states that after consideration think you got screwed, something which will hurt them also. many others likewise joined the suit, but it is thrown out and gone without even looking at the reasons it was brought. a rigged election. fight on!" that is from donald trump after the supreme court refused to hear lawsuits brought forward by texas and others in an attempt to overturn president-elect joe biden's victory in the presidential election. keep in mind the electoral college will be meeting starting monday. we will bring that life to you here on c-span. coverageollow c-span of the electoral college voting starting at 10:00 a.m. monday. we will take you to eight state country soound the

you can watch for yourself. you see the schedule on your screen. 10:00, 11:30 delaware, pennsylvania at noon, 2:00 p.m. michigan, 3:00 p.m. texas. this will all be live on monday. you can watch the electoral college yourself and see how this will work. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to you again about what we are seeing about president trump saying fight on after his loss at the supreme court. portsmouth, virginia on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. the reason he is keeping it up is it is over for him. -- keeping it up is because he knows that once it is over, it is over for him. the lawsuits coming up, he will coda jail over some of this --

he will go to jail over some of this. if he is going to mar-a-lago, it is only because he will want to be close to his plane so he can hit cuba and go to russia to see his buddy. y'all it was going to happen. host: let's go to victoria on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: yes. i support president trump 100%, and i believe the way that you and other media are presenting it is incorrect. he has lost nothing. he lost standing, which is different than hearing the merits of the case, and i believe this is not about trump winning the election. i believe it is about the integrity of our election process and people need to focus on what that issue is. there's two issues.

dr. john eastman at the georgia hearing stated two issues with the election. one, fraud and secondly, the fact that states failed to comply with their own laws and constitutions and legislators did not approve the changes. i believe wholeheartedly that what president trump is doing is correct. the truth will be known at the end. but mostly -- in maryland as well, they changed laws. the governor, rino governor hogan, and the state board of elections changed law. they did not have legislators in the process. as dr. eastman stated, that is a violation of our constitution and fraud potentially. and states should be invalidated. host: victoria, are you saying the courts, both federal and

state level, have no say over whether election laws are constitutional or not? caller: i never said that. they have no spine, just as our legislators have no spine. they need to step up. we have a process and they are refusing to use it. they are finding any excuse whatsoever to not hear the merits of the case. since we have never been down this road before, then perhaps they should speak to each other and decide collectively which level of our court system should or shouldn't be hearing the merits of the case? he lost nothing. host: wright, the state courts have also refused to intervene -- right, the state courts have also refused to intervene at all. caller: right. nobody wants to accept responsibility and do the job they were hired to do. i do not care if it is the courts or our legislators.

the people have been demanding it. oh we keep getting his mortar coney measures. we keep getting his mort track coney and measures. host: let's go to richard. caller: i agree with the lady you talked to. the supreme court should have listened to it. it should have been sent back to congress, which means you get one vote from congress. there are 27 republican states, 23 -- host: let me stop you quickly because the federal government does not run the presidential election. congress would never have anything to do with it. caller: i am not talking about congress. i am talking about the state legislators who make the law. judges are supposed to interpret the law. the legislators make the law in every state. what is going to happen is donald trump well -- he will go to mar-a-lago and continue to fight on, which i hope he does,

because these -- we know it's a rigged election. let me tell you what will happen. joe biden will be elected president. he will not be there long because hunter biden is being investigated. when biden becomes president, he thenpardon hunter and himself and then kamala harris will be our president. thank you, democratic. host: are you saying biden should not use his pardon power? caller: no. [indiscernible] we know what the documents say. the problem is they are not doing their job. they are not doing their job, from the state legislators all the way up to the rino republicans that have hurt donald trump. and the democrats have hurt him. everybody wants to talk about what donald trump has done in the past, but he who is without

sin can cast the first stone. southlet's go to lee in carolina on the democratic line. good morning. caller: the last caller is talking about pardons. donald trump is talking about his whole family. as far as the election, it is over. then't understand republicans and the evangelicals because we were taught as children, we taught our children, if something does not belong to you, you cannot have it. donald trump lost the election. it is wrong to think he can get those members of congress to take it back from biden and give it to him. that is not right. and the way that he is acting is a disgrace. he is a president that lost. he should do like everyone else did, a peaceful transfer of power. convention on your show

last night of evangelicals and everything they talked about was abortion, abortion, abortion. you had these children in cages. these parents do not wear their children are. they are not concerned about children in cages, but they are concerned about abortion. what's the difference? i don't understand why he don't give up. he's lost. host: let's go to michael calling from beverly hills, california on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: ok. i have known and worked with donald trump for the last 21 years. he builds a golf course, he makes money. he builds a hotel next to the golf course, he makes money. he builds a restaurant, he makes money. he called me in my entertainment studio and asked me if i would staff the venue that he would build for my entertainment stuff

over the years. he has never cheated me out of money. 10ill announce on january where the diamonds and cash has been hidden and biden will go to prison. i will announce that to the speaker of the house, whether it is nancy pelosi or someone else. host: michael, why not announce it now? you are on national television. caller: i have a team of private investigators getting actual photographs and copies of federal documents. -- before medical i spent seven years with the federal government. host: we will stop that right there. from go to yvonne milwaukee on the democratic line. good morning. caller: donald trump will fight this will fight this until he

dies. -- donald trump will fight this until he dies. he will not give up until he dies. we are in for a long ride. we might as well just put on our seatbelts and get ready. we just pray that the democratic candidate, whoever that happens to be, will be in every time he runs because that is the kind of person he is. we should be ready. host: let's go to charles, calling from oklahoma city, oklahoma on the republican line. charles, good morning. caller: good morning. i wanted to say that i feel in my heart that trump should fight until he cannot anymore. he should just keep fighting. what i can't believe is that the republicans impeached trump in andhouse over quid pro quo biden is elected as president by

the democrats when he admitted on tv, live, in front of everybody, that he done a quid pro quo for $1 billion with ukraine. saidme on the tv live and "i told ukraine that if they did not fire the investigator, the attorney general and ukraine -- if they didn't fire him, then they were not going to get the $1 billion." host: charles, if i remember correctly, did he not say that when he was vice president under barack obama? caller: he did that while he was vice president under obama. and the republicans controlled the house and senate, but for some reason decided not to impeach him. why do you think that is? caller: i have no idea of why in the world they would not, but he admitted to it live.

you cannot say no more than that. the: michael, again, republicans were in charge of the house and senate during that time, yet they somehow did not think it was worth impeaching him over. worth: well, why was it impeaching trump over a proposed quid pro quo? a supposedly quid pro quo? -- su dr. kuznick: dr. kuznick: -- -- supposed quid pro quo? host: ok. let's go to dan, calling from spokane, washington on the independent line. good morning. caller: [indiscernible] president trump, after his inconsequential presidency, i am 100% behind him because he is 100% behind the people. i am hopeful that the good lord will help us reveal the truth, because this election was rigged. and anybody with any common

sense will see that -- i was in washington. we had that mail-in voting out here. there are all kinds of shenanigans that always go on a here. when they decided to do mail-in voting, i said to my wife " they are going to try to steal it!" then biden didn't even try to run for the presidency because they had this plan all along. this is a continuation of the coup attempt against this president, host: you live in spokane, washington. washington has been doing mail-in ballots for a while now. you think the system in washington doesn't work? caller: i think the system in washington is corrupt. host: washington state. caller: it leads to corruption. it is a proven fact. they did a commission on it. jimmy carter did a commission on it and it came to the conclusion

that mayland -- mail-in voting was apt to have fraud and irregularities and deceit. the democratic party is known for this. kennedy would not have even been president without the cheating that went on in cook county and illinois. -- in illinois. host: who? caller: kennedy, because of the cheating that went on in cook county. host: all right. personalsident trump's attorney rudy giuliani on fox news yesterday to talk about what is next for the president's legal challenges against the presidential election. here's what giuliani had to say. [video clip] >> what is next is to take each one of those complaints against different states, to break them down into individual complaints, and, over the next two days, bring them in states where we

georgia,ding, michigan, arizona, pennsylvania, nevada. wisconsin, we already have an ongoing case. we will take the advice of the supreme court. the prima court -- the supreme court says that texas does not have standing, i think incorrectly, but certainly the president has standing. the electors have standing. bringing those cases in their names in the states. host: let's go to some of our social media followers and see what they have to say about president trump deciding to fight on after his loss at the supreme court. here one tweet that says "who would not fight on if you knew you were cheated and had over 75 million supporters ready to fight alongside you? trump knows he has our support, so stay tuned, folks." a text that says "the majority

of actual votes were for trump. evidence proves a few cities did not follow protocol and accepted illegal votes. the true results will come out and the electors will decide accordingly. the media does not decide our president." another tweet says "trump's tweet about how he got more votes than any sitting president makes me laugh. who cares? he did not get more than biden." another that says "the election is run by the states. talk to your states if you do not like the way it is run." another text "you are fired." we are talking about president onmp's decision to fight after his and texas's case attempting to overturn the presidential election was not heard by the supreme court over the weekend. we want to know what you think. call in. let's go back to the phone lines. we will start from tom, calling

from pittsburg, california on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning, and thank you for taking my call. i am a student of history and the democratic process. every individual state has a right to run the election through the democratic process. the state wants to change merits because of the covid, for example, they can go from a poll to a mail-in ballot. that is their right. no other state has the right to interfere with any other state with the way they handle the election. the supreme court does not have a right to interfere with the states the way they handle an election. the bottom line is the individual state has a say so of how they want to do their election. if people have a problem with this, i think they need to look at democracy 101.

the state has a right to run the individual election whether it is by poll or mail-in ballot. mail-in ballot inc. has been going on since the civil war. -- mail-in ballots have been going on since the civil war. this has been going on forever. so i wish everybody would just, you know -- this -- if a state wants to run a total mail-in ballot, they have a right to do so. the bottom line is joe biden won. callingt's go to bob, in from philadelphia on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. thank you for taking my call. please, everybody understand that a case as complex as this would take a lot of forensic evidence to compile in order to show the court, in detail,

itemized, exactly what fraud took place, and because there was not enough time -- and that is the impediment the trump administration has and these states have -- to be able to forensically bring everything in front of the court so that you could have a proper court case. the time was not on their side. i mean, it is as plain as day that there was a ton of cheating, especially in democratic cities, like in philadelphia, this pigsty that i live in, where they would steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes. it is as plain as day. you have seen the videos in georgia -- jessie, you have seen it yourself -- where they took ballots from under a table and ran them through in the middle of the night, some of them over and over again, ok? and there was this mysterious ok?, and biden votes in

in biden votes in georgia. in order to compile that forensic evidence and bring it in front of a judge correctly, you need time. it is like any murder case or any robbery case or stolen car case. you cannot just come in front of a judge and say we have an opinion. if they had a proper amount of time, you know as well as i do that this would hold a lot of merit. just the videotape evidence alone in georgia. bob, callingo to from decatur, missouri on the independent line. caller: good morning. it is shameful to hear all these people who drank the kool-aid and have peanut butter for know, because, you

anybody who is half awake can see that biden won the election. they rushed amy coney barrett through and everything, before that, he was saying we will need her for the vote on the election. well, evidently, he put the shill because- she is not going to vote for him. she had a bad case of morals and could not tell the lie he wanted. it is pretty plain. by millions of votes and it is a shame our country has gone here, where there are no morals left. thank god morals won the election. trump said he was going to drain the swamp. well, biden has to pump out the sewer. thank you for listening. host: let's go to laura, calling

from illinois on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning, sir. how are you? host: fied. go ahead. caller: i am a navy vet. i am 67 years old, raised on the west side of chicago, which was an experience, an adventure. my question is, because i went to john marshall high school -- hello? host: go ahead. caller: sorry. i went to john marshall high school, and back in the 70's, we had a class, civics. it was kind of like a history class. and in that class -- i have held onto this all my life -- the statue of liberty in new york harbor. she has a saying, send me your -- from any country in, the world, send me your people, and

we will help them, give them a house, a job. the united states of america is the humanity country. i do not understand where these people come up with and do not understand humanity means being a socialist. we want everybody to succeed. i do not get why these republicans want to destroy our socialist society. this is who we are. everything except for american indians were born in this country. everybody that wents to call us -- that wants to call as a socialist country should go back to where they originated from. i am an african american and i enjoy this country. those from anyone else around this world who do not like what the american people are doing --

we thought president trump -- he is a racist and he want -- and if they are following -- falling for it, they are racist. host: let's go to landon, calling from richmond, virginia on our republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. america, and in, am not ashamed of my affiliation voting for the republican party of this anomaly -- that's what i call it, you know? 1968, whenas here in you had three people voting for president. you had george wallace in there. everybody was concerned about the electoral college then, but 1968 and therough transition of power. we did not have to go through all of this mess because he got this many votes or so many votes

because the president -- i , but iremember who remember george wallace, three guys running for president. it is kind of ridiculous to isnk what is going on now going to control the future because these guys are trying to make some money off of people. i'm not going to say anything bad about anybody, you know? buttheir affiliation is, they have to understand that we work under the rule of law in the united states. ofs election has been a test the united states and their fragility, for one, whether they can be taken over by people who have strange ideas were different ideas. -- or different ideas.

we have gone through this before. the first things that happened after the civil killed, isincoln was the vice president tried to and thee slavery congress had decided that they were going to make a law where the vice president could not and hethe existing law, was impeached. that,ne person after clinton. and then trump was impeached. trump does not understand that he will be used in history as a of he iscause his idea going to make things go his way. host: democratic senator chris murphy went to the senate floor theriday and talked about

ongoing attempts to overturn the presidential election. here's what chris murphy had to say. [video clip] >> democracies are really fragile things. hours only continues because we make choices -- ouur only onlynuess -- ours continues because we make choices that let it remain. citizens, not kings, oligarchs, decide who governs. it is made possible by decisions we make every day to put the rule of law ahead of our own political power or the position of our political party. that is the history of america. our decision that democracy comes first, not the perpetuation of our own political power. seriousw, the most

attempt to overthrow our democracy in the history of this country is underway. those who are pushing to make donald trump president for a second term, no matter the outcome of the election, are engaged in a treachery against their nation. you cannot at the same time love america and hate democracy. but as we speak, a whole lot of flag-waving republicans are nakedly trying to invalidate millions of legal votes because that is the only way that they can make donald trump president again. it is the only way they can make donald trump president again because he did not win. and see whato back some of our social media

followers are saying about president trump's decision to fight on after the supreme court loss. here is a text that says "enough already. it is over. move on. good luck." here is a tweet that says "our nation has fought for democracy and equality, and trump has tried to wipe away what made america great." here is a text that says "donald trump is a narcissist who will not accept losing. he said he would accept the results in 20 only if he won. -- in 2016 only if he won. he is a loser." here is a text that says "trump is a fool and cannot accept if fee and needs to move on. we have suffered enough under this maniac. thank god we will have someone with common sense and real love of country in joe biden come january."

a post says "do not concede. mr. president, you are the rightful winner. god is with you and so are we." one last post that says "trump lost. he is trying to destroy our democracy. he needs to be stopped." the washington post actually did a story looking at the court cases around the country and looking at the judges who have decided against president trump and his campaign in this election. i will read a couple paragraphs to you. "the remarkable show of near unanimity across the nation's judiciary. at least 86 judges ranging from juries at the lowest levels of state court systems to members of the supreme court rejected at least one postelection lawsuit filed by trump or his supporters. washington post review found.

the string of lawsuits was punctuated friday by the brief and blunt order of the supreme court, which dispensed an attempt by the state of texas to challenge the electoral votes of four states that went provide. the decision felt short and to the point. other defenses have dismantled efforts by trump to get the courts to subvert biden's audrey -- victory." a statementack with from the texas gop chairman allen west, who had this to say about the supreme court's decision. , in tossing court the texas lawsuit joined by 17 states and 106 congressman, has

decreed that a state can take unconstitutional action and violate its own election law, resulting in a damaging effect on other states that abide by the law while the guilty states suffers no consequences. precedent is -- that states violating the constitution will not be held accountable. perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a union of states that will abide by the constitution." that comes from the chairman of the gop of texas. let's go back to our phone lines and see what you have to say about president trump's decision to fight on after his loss at the supreme court. let's go to martin, calling from frazier's berg -- calling from ohio. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead, martin. caller: i do believe trump

should keep fighting on. you had a guy on there just a aboutnutes ago talking the state legislators should do what they want and change the mail, do whatever they need to do. that is true, as long as they follow their own constitution. pennsylvania did not constitutionally put in mail-in voting. everyone, their mail-in votes is unconstitutional. they should be thrown out. joe callinggo to from california on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. we know that since the 1860's, there was a group of people that always wanted to divide this country because they did not want to get what they wanted,

controlling people's lives. we know in america you cannot cheat in an election overseen by appointedl district, electoral college, and the fbi too. if you do, it is a felony. if two or more people vote more another time in person's name, it is illegal. everybody knows this. from every election that already know what each voter's addresses. there has never been systematic voter fraud in america. one person has been arrested for conspiring to deliver one illegal ballot to another person's -- in another person's name that could change the outcome of the election. while in the middle of a pandemic, the president of the united states is going around complaining about how he was cheated out of ankle election.

-- of an election. mona -- lois, to calling from lakewood, new jersey on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning i definitely think president trump should keep on fighting. the only people that have divided this country is the news media. they only do partial -- hello? host: good morning. caller: they only put on the news they want. go with big tech, the stories that they suppress. if you think those videos that we saw with georgia taking those ballots out -- and another thing, but mail-in ballots. the postal service -- not picking on them -- they cannot keep up with the christmas mail, so how would they keep up with all these ballots that came in? i am sorry. he should keep on fighting and the only people who have divided this country is the news media,

big tech, and people who do not agree with someone else, they are called names. republicans are called all kinds of names while democrats can fly their flags, do whatever they want. but if you say you vote for trump, you will get punched in the face. said was that march that punch a trump supporter in the face. where's the news media on that? that's covered up. the violence we see is from democrats. host: lois, would you eliminate mail-in voting? caller: we had mail-in voting for people who could not -- handicapped voting. in this state, we never had mail-in voting like this. our mail people -- not to pick on them -- cannot keep up with the christmas mail. it took over a week for me to get a card to north carolina. host: my question, lois, is do you think mail-in voting should be eliminated? caller: for the majority, yes.

i would rather vote in person. host: other people should not be able to mail-in vote? caller: if there is reasons, if they file. i am a registered democrat in the promo nares -- in the preliminaries, which i. am ashamed of everyone anmy house is independent or a republican. everybody in the house received a postcard. why did i get a ballot? because i am a registered democrat. that is the problem that i see. i really do not believe in this election. i believe -- let's do a do over. the last time i called in, do it over and you will see what happens. callingt's go to shiva, from rochester, new hampshire on the dependent line. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. there is so much going on now.

i feel so sorry for america. i am independent. i listen to all of your callers. number one, republicans or myself, because i voted for trump both times, we do not drink the kool-aid. a cult.ot occult -- the democratic party stands together. they are the cult. they drink the kool-aid. the guy from pennsylvania who said all the things they found that were illegal, he forgot to mention how joe biden actually, on tv, said this was the biggest fraud of elections in america. so, for all those democrats who drink the kool-aid and are the cult and believe in his word, he said it was the biggest fraud, so why aren't you believing him? you don't think he's a liar. host: let's go to jim, calling from silver spring, maryland on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning, jesse.

thank you for taking my call. c-span, you are doing a wonderful job and i wish you would ring back steve scully. people seem to have a short this petulant child, mr. trump, said that once they got mail-in voting, the republicans would never win again. if they were not worried about more democrats voting by mail, he would not have tried to dismantle the postal service with his friend mr. dejoy. trump has always talked about one of his role models, roy cohn, a suspect person, who taught him never quit, never surrender. that is how he has run his business. he did not pay his bills. he would sue people and declare bankruptcy to get out of paying his bills. he sued one of the banks in new york for not foreclosing on a defaulted loan. the guy is totally incapable of

has gotthe truth and all these patriotic americans convinced that they can make america great again by seceding from the union. listen to the speakers who spoke at that rally yesterday who want to secede from the union. how is that going to make america great again? host: let's go to alan, calling from fort pierce, florida on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning, good morning. i want to mention, i find offense that people call republicans who are not for trump rinos. -- truth is host: alan, are you there? go ahead. caller: yes. can you hear me? host: go ahead. caller: i find offense in the people who call republicans who do not support trump rinos.

republicans who have integrity do the right thing, as mitt romney has, jeff flake, many others. there is a whole group of republicans who have opposed trump. and the trumpers need to realize they need to either break away into their own party or understand that what they are saying is not republicanism. host: let's go to howl, calling from connecticut on the democratic line. hal, calling from connecticut on the democratic line. good morning. caller: i have an idea. on instead ofie fight on. i think it would be great if you let children:. in.f you let children call let them call in and ask them if

it pays to tell the truth. callingt's go to linda, from delmar, new york, on the republican line. good morning. caller: we fought across the bridge in the 60's. there were a number of people that got the same -- that people are getting today. the computers are taking a vote of people who wanted one man, one vote, and the computers are telling them two thirds or 1/6 of a vote of people who had than onehted to them vote, and i did not see that we have the energy to fight that again. at least they are not hanging people in the night. they are just stealing their votes in the night. that is all i have to say. host: let's go to tom, calling from eerie, pennsylvania.

caller: i noticed the woman who was talking did not bother g where she heard all this gobbledygook. one thing for people to consider is that the supreme court decision in 2000 is what started all of this crab. -- crap. you have to ask yourself this question. what is in the heads of these people that do not see the defects and the character of donald trump? that they havect problems themselves. andrew,t's talk to calling from white plains, new york on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call and thank you for c-span. i think mr. trump should step down. he should recognize that he lost

and show some grace. host: let's go to robert, calling from waddy, kentucky on the republican line. good morning. caller: yes, sir. how are you doing? host: fine. go ahead. caller: listen to me. --ocrats thinking they we are doing all this, why don't they stop trying to fight this and put all their stuff on the line? they put out there, we will see it, and we will quit. let's see they didn't do nothing wrong. let's go out there and put everything out and see. host: according to the washington post, 86 judges have listened to the arguments and none of them have agreed with president in his campaign. caller: well, let me tell you something. those judges are democrats. host: apparently some of these

judges were appointed by president trump. caller: i know it, but you know they have turned on him. everybody has turned on him and everything. and nobody don't realize it. trump is doing everything right. all the democrats one is kickback money. how did pelosi get so rich, making a little bit of money every month? if --d she do that linda, callingto from tennessee on the independent line. caller: thank you for taking my call. yes, i think trump should speed on. they holler that trump lies all the time, but joe biden got up there and said he did have -- he did not have nothing to do -- he lied. he lied, he lied. thank allould like to

of our callers and viewers for the first segment. coming up next, we will be joined by dr. james hildreth, president and ceo of meharry medical college. he was one of the experts who fdaally recommended the emergencies authorization last week. later, american enterprise institute's gary schmitt will join us to discuss president-elect joe biden's nomination of retired general lloyd austin to be the next defense secretary. we will be right back. ♪ monday night on "the communicators," journalist and author james baldus got his his book "the tangled web we weave."

>> we don't look at these technologies that keep creating these monopolies. the biggest companies in the world are tech companies now. we don't go how come, on the internet, these things that we are told are you can either's and connectors, how come it keeps creating these really powerful needs that individuals? >> watch "the communicators" at monday night on 8:00 eastern -- act 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. >> american history tv on c-span 3, exploring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. tonight at 8:00 eastern on the presidency, historian douglas brinkley discusses jacqueline kennedy's tenure and legacy as first lady with businessman and

philanthropist david rubenstein. watch american history tv tonight on c-span 3. >> "washington journal" continues. with dr. jamesck hildreth, who is the president of meharry medical college. and also a member of the fda's vaccines and related biological products advisory committee, who approved the pfizer covid-19 vaccine just earlier this week for use. dr. hildreth, good morning. guest: morning, how are you? host: doing great. the fda advisory panel where you sit voted to recommend authorizing emergency use of the pfizer vaccine. you voted yes. tell us why. guest: i voted yes because the

preponderance of evidence suggested the benefits greatly outweighed the risks. there is a very large study involving what thousand people. half of those got the placebo -- involving 44,000 people. half of those got the placebo. wereisk to the vaccine limited to reactions at the injection site, fever -- all the things you normally expect when you first use the vaccine. even though the follow-up has been very short, we all thought that the safety profile was sufficient. voted no,e four who out of the 21 numbers of the panel, were concerned about the lower age limit set in the statement we voted on. they were a little bit concerned if they were not enough 16 years old -- 16-year-olds in the study, but the way that will be dealt with is the recommendations to the health care workers who will be giving the vaccine.

there will probably be a recommendation by the cdc that it not be given to the younger age group at this time and also not to pregnant women or those with severe allergies. a just thought that there is large amount of data which suggest the benefits outweigh the risks. host: this vaccine has been approved under emergency use authorization. tell us exactly what that is and what the difference is between emergency use authorization and just a regular vaccine that has been approved. guest: emergency use authorization as possible when or of the national agencies the president declares a national emergency. under those circumstances, if there is no treatment available or other interventions available to deal with a national emergency, then it is possible to issue an emergency use authorization, where all that is required is that there is a

reasonable expectation, as determined by experts, that the intervention will work. i should tell you that the folks at pfizer, moderna, and all the other companies are going to let their applications proceed to what is called a biologics license application, which will mean for approval. the difference between full approval and the e.u.a. is that, in this case, there is a national emergency, and all that there is a reasonable proof that the vaccine will work. that is the difference. that we are in a national emergency. that allows the fda commissioner to grant emergency use of the vaccine. host: like you said, we are in the middle of a national emergency with covid-19 going through the country. should people be concerned about this vaccine and the fact that is nowdeveloped and

being used so quickly compared to vaccines in the past, which took much longer to make it out into the public? guest: i think it is reasonable that people would be concerned, because it appeared that the vaccine was developed so quickly. but let me offer a few thoughts that may have swayed -- may a swayed -- assuade the concerns. first of all, the technology available to scientists are just incredible. wasgenome for the virus published, fully sequenced and published, in early january. less than a month later, about a month later, a couple of companies had already identified a candidate for vaccine. identifying a vaccine candidate can take as long as two years. sometimes, it takes longer than that. for hiv, we still do not have a candidate identified that seems

to work. so the technology is amazing. one example is how quickly technology allowed us to identify a candidate for the vaccine. the second one is there have been parallel processes working. step whichou do one informs the next step, etc., etc. some of those things have done in parallel, which compresses the timeframe. so by technology and having parallel processes, you compress the timeframe. the third thing which i think is very important is you know we have been working on an hiv vaccine around the world now for more than 20 years, closer to 30, i guess. there is pre-existing infrastructure dedicated to developing an hiv vaccine. what has happened is that infrastructure has been turned to covid-19. so having all of these

scientists and academic health centers and drug companies focused on hiv vaccines, we had an interceptor that could quickly pivot and focus on covid-19. i think the infrastructure, the parallel processes, and the technology have all meant a very quick process. and it will be viewed as one of the great achievements of science, to develop a vaccine virus in 11ic months is incredible. people are correct it is fast, but there are good reasons for it. host: let me remind our viewers they can take part in this conversation. we will open regional lines for this conversation about the fda approval of the coronavirus vaccine. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, we want you to call (202) 748-8001.

remember, you can always text us your questions at (202) 748-8003 . and we are always reading on social media, on twitter, @cspanwj, and on facebook, facebook.com/cspan. dr. hildreth, you said earlier that some members of the panel on which you sit did not vote yes on this emergency use authorization for the pfizer vaccine. what were some of their concerns , and should their concerns have been listened to? guest: the actual vote count was 17 voted yes, including myself. there were four members who voted no. there was one member who abstained from voting. the concerns of those who voted no related to a couple of things. feels that they did not there was sufficient data to include 16-year-olds in the

approval. and they recommended that the fda change the language of that data that we were voting on, that we were voting on approval for 18-year-olds and older. by the fda were not willing or could not change the language, pfizer, we had to vote on that. thatof the members felt raising the age to 18 would make them comfortable on voting yes. because it was not changed from 16 to 18, i believe that is why some of them actually voted no. and i think every member of the committee felt the efficacy data was very compelling and had met the bar. the expectation that the fda had was they would approve, for an e.u.a., a vaccine with efficacy

of 50% or better. having a vaccine with 95% efficacy was truly something extraordinary, under those circumstances. the data confirmed the efficacy. and the safety data -- it is what it is. we only have a few months of safety data in front of us. but that is also sufficient for e.u.a., so we voted yes. the members who voted no were concerned about whether or not the age limit should be raised to 18 versus 16. host: as we are talking, we can see the pfizer vaccine being loaded on trucks at the pfizer facility in kalamazoo, michigan, getting ready to go out to people in the united states. if hildreth, i do not know you know the answer but i will ask you anyway and see if you can give us the answer. is this pfizer vaccine like a flu vaccine? you have to take it every year?

or every few months? umpss it like the m vaccine, you give it to them, and it is years before they needed again -- need it again? there know how long should be between doses? guest: we do not know the answer yet. we know that the vaccination gives immunity that is at least as long, probably much longer, then infection would. we know people who get infected can get reinfected. within a couple of months or so, which means immunity to the infected isetting not long-lasting. a last a few months at most. but there is an expectation, based on preliminary data, that the vaccine will give longer protection than that. how long we just do not know yet, because there has to be additional follow-up. one of the things that will happen in the trial -- the trial

will go on and continue. individuals in the trial will be followed for two years. that will give us a lot of information about how long immunity last. i honestly, we do not know that, if we get enough people vaccinated -- for example, 60% to 80% of the population -- the virus may go away because it cannot be transmitted to a large scale to a large number of people. but we just do not know at this time. we have to get more data. host: we have heard several people say things like the benefit of the vaccine is worth the risk. is saying the benefit is worth the risk the same thing as saying the vaccine is safe? guest: they are not the same thing, but the truth is that none of us, the experts on the panel, the folks at pfizer, none of us can say, with absolute certainty, that the vaccine is absolutely safe.

take what happened in the u.k., when they first started giving the vaccine -- there were a couple of individuals who had severe allergic reactions to the vaccine. that does not mean the vaccine is not safe, that just means there are persons who may have allergies to a component in the vaccine. what we have to do now is find out what is it in the vaccine that allow -- that caused those individuals to have an allergic reaction. once we know what it is, we can screen people to make sure that they do not have the reaction. we will learn more about allergic reactions, more about sensitivities to this, but every time a vaccine has been introduced to the public, there have been reactions. typically, if there is going to be a strong, adverse reaction to the vaccine, it happens within the first six weeks to eight

weeks, which is why the fda required two months of follow-up before they would have approved the vaccine. large, large numbers of the people who participated in the vaccine trial were followed for more than two months. that gave us some comfort that we could approve the vaccine and not worry too much about short-term risk of it. but nobody can say, definitively, that the vaccine is absolutely safe in all circumstances, because it was just introduced into the population. but given what we know about other vaccines and about what we know is in the vaccine formulation, i think it is fair to say that benefits greatly outweigh the risk in this case, given we have a vaccine with 95% efficacy. host: let's let some of our viewers take part. we start with eric, calling from lincoln, nebraska. good morning. caller: good morning.

thank you so much for taking my call. the development of these vaccines is just to be a medical miracle the likes of which the human race has never seen before. i look forward to getting it as soon as i can. hand,na come on the other where this virus started, they have largely controlled this virus through strict lockdowns and the people at hearing to the restrictions that the government puts in place. on the other hand, here in the united states, the situation is out of control. our governor in nebraska, for example, the minute there is any he justn in cases, relaxes the restrictions. so what i am wondering is has the united states failed in controlling this virus without a vaccine, just through sheer will? thank you.

guest: well to the caller's point, the numbers speak for themselves. we have 1/5 of all the cases in the world and about that many percentage of the deaths, and we only represent 4% of the global population. the numbers themselves speak to the fact that, as a country, we have not done as good a job as we may have done. one of the challenges i point out in an earlier conversation on this show is that viruses, including this one, do not respect borders. ,hey do not respect city, state county, even continental borders. wherever people go, the virus goes along with them. what we really needed is a nationally coordinated strategy from the beginning, in which all of us did the same things at the same time for a limited amount of time. that would have made a huge difference. for twoal lockdown

weeks or three weeks at the beginning would have made all the difference. unfortunately, that did not happen. i am pleased to say, though, that the coordination for distributing the vaccine matches the scientific accomplishment has goneplanning that into it. this is one of the things that will be looked on in history as something quite significant that managed to be done in such a short time. so i agree that we could have done a better job as a nation in controlling the virus, but looking forward, i believe we will be able to put this behind us, now that multiple vaccines are on the way. host: i want to show you something that was said by the operation warp speed chief , gus perna.ficer

[video clip] >> my guidance was to ensure this prices -- precious commodity is received by trained professionals in each state. we have to plan for the best outcome without knowing exactly when e.u.a. would occur. when the decision occurred last night, we immediately went into ouron and implemented hourly and now our d-day sequence. we implemented a sliding scale that allows us to ensure everything is in place, that people are positioned and ready accordingly. i expect the first shipments to arrive monday morning. extensive coordination will ensure that this occurs. we worked with pfizer, ups, federal lawson, enforcement agencies to ensure

safety and security of the vaccine. distribution has begun. right now, boxes are being packed and loaded with vaccine, with emphasis on quality control. within the next 24 hours, they will begin moving vaccine from the pfizer manufacturing facility to the ups and fedex hubs. then it will go out to the 636 locations nationwide which were identified by the states and territories. sites come across all the states, to receive vaccine monday. another 425 sites tuesday. the final 66 sites wednesday, which will complete the initial delivery of the pfizer orders for vaccine. hildreth, again, dr.

we are seeing those vaccines going out, just like the general said. who is going to be getting these first shipments of vaccines? guest: the governors have been decide with the cdc to how the vaccines will be distributed in their individual states. for the most part, it will be those frontline health care workers or those living in assisted living facilities will be the first to get it. one of the things people should understand is that the planning for distribution got underway at the same time the development of the vaccine got underway, which is, again, one of those things where that process has been happening in the background all along, to make sure this would happen so quickly. anti-fedex, ups, and a commander from the military -- the logisticales

mobilization really, really well, so it is very encouraging that they were in charge of this. the other thing that is happening is this collaboration between major corporations is also amazing. we have not seen this before. you may not know this, but cvs is playing a big role in this. something like 90% of the u.s. population, the entire population, live within a few miles of a cvs store or pharmacy. they have been asked, because they have a lot of experience in handling drugs and vaccines, to getting this out to assisted living facilities. so i think the logistical coordination and collaboration is quite remarkable, something we had never seen before. it will be necessary, because 330 million people need to get a vaccine eventually, and this level of coordination is needed.

but again, the planning for the started at the beginning of the year. host: like you said, there are a bunch of people in the united states we need to get this vaccine. according to the johns hopkins university, there has been more than 16 million confirmed cases. of -- of coronavirus in the united states. deaths from0,000 coronavirus in the united states so far. how do you convince people, knowing those numbers, who have concerns about the safety of the vaccine that they should take it? respectsearly, in some , getting that done will be as important as developing a vaccine. vaccines do not save lives -- vaccinations do. all of this wonderful work by the scientists and other people

involved will not mean much if we cannot accept -- get people to accept the vaccines. one of the things we are doing at meharry medical college is to recognize how important it is to have trusted messengers. we have all the messages about safety in the science behind it, but if people do not trust the people delivering that message or those communications, it will not be effective. we believe it will be very important for people respected in their communities to be out front, helping us with this. that includes the providers themselves, physicians trusted by their patients, leaders of churches -- it is incumbent upon us to provide enough information so that people will make an informed decision. we have to give people agency. we have to give them the power to make the decision. the power comes from having enough information that you feel

comfortable deciding to go forward. all i can tell you is that the science that has been done is very solid. no steps were omitted. needed to beat was demonstrated has been done. there's something called a data safety monitoring board or committee that, on a weekly basis, examines the data from therempanies to make sure are no safety signals that anything that would cause concern for the participants. that has been happening on a weekly basis. these are independent experts. they get to see the data in real sureand monitor to make there is nothing happening that should not be happening. anything that can be done to make sure that this is safe has been done. about theder messenger rna technology, because it seems to be new -- it

is new to vaccine technology but not new to medicine. the first mention or first reference to mrna, as a treatment for diseases, occurred in 1992. if you go to the national library of medicine and do a search of messenger rna, you will see thousands and thousands of papers have been published on this. a is a new technology in vaccine but certainly not new in terms of clinical medicine. all of those things together should give people some reassurance that they can take the virus and not feel too concerned about it. host: let's talk to bob, calling from north carolina. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i would like to say it is fantastic, the collaboration between the government and private industry, which has been able to develop this vaccine so quickly and effectively.

my real question is is something i am just curious about. i am old enough to remember the oral vaccine given on a sugar cube. now all we do with vaccines is give them with an injection, which i have nothing against needles, but is there a reason why we just do not take vaccines orally anymore? guest: that is a really excellent question. the answer relates to the fundamental nature of the vaccine itself. as you know, when you take something ingested orally, it gets into the stomach, where that ph is between 1 and 2. it is as acidic in your stomach as, almost, a car battery. certain biological molecules will get destroyed by getting exposed to such acidic environments. mrna is one of those. if you put mrna in a solution that has a ph of 1 or 2, it will

fall apart quickly. and messenger rna, by nature, are unstable, so they would not survive being administered orally, unless you encapsulated them in something which may limit their uptake. it turns out that muscle cells are very efficient in taking mrna proteins that the immune system needs to see. we are using a messenger rna as again,ne candidate -- --s is not need to medicine ,he mrna gets into muscle cells and it is a blueprint to make this bike protein that allows the vaccine to get into cells. we put it into the arm because we are putting into the muscles where the cells are that can efficiently take the messenger rna and make the protein so the immune system can respond to it.

it is the nature of the vaccines themselves that dictate whether they need to be injected or taken by mouth. formulating something for oral administration, to be seen by the immune system, is rather more challenging than doing it by injection. eventually, it may be possible to develop something that would work for this kind of platform technology tothe do that so far is not available for us, so unfortunately, it has to be a shot. host: how many injections can be expected get with this -- one shot, two shots, multiple shots? guest: people getting the vaccine can expect two shots in the arm, the muscle of the arm, 21 days apart. protection,y, full sets in, based on the data we have, at about seven days after the second injection.

the way the immune system works is the first time you see something foreign to your body, there is something called a primary immune response. strong, but usually not very strong. it lasts for several weeks. but the next time you see that same thing, a month or so later, you make a secondary response, which can be 100 times stronger than the first response. more importantly, you generate large numbers of what they call memory cells, and the memory cells in the immune system are responsible for long-lasting immunity. in other words, we have cells that remember how to respond to something, and as long as you have those thousand euro body, the next time you see that something, you can make a strong response. the secondary response, caused by the secondary injection, is kind of the secret sauce to make sure we have long-lasting immunity. host: as we are talking, you can see on our screen the shipments of the vaccine going out from the kalamazoo, michigan pfizer

andlity, going out to cvs other facilities across the country to begin giving people the coronavirus vaccine. one of our social media followers has a question for you. it is a question i've as well. they want to know do you know if people who are vaccinated are still infectious? if you get the vaccine, can you still spread it to other people? guest: that is a really important question, and the honest answer -- we just do not know. the vaccine trial was not designed to find asymptomatic infections. volunteers, 40,000 of them or thereabouts. kath got the placebo. half got the vaccine candidate. they're asked to go about their daily lives.

if they develop symptoms of covid-19, they were supposed to contact the physician involved in the study that enrolled them. they would then get a pcr test to confirm whether or not they had covid-19, in which case that would be recorded as an event, trial event. unfortunately, not everyone in the study was monitored for a systematic infections. in other words, if you did not develop symptoms sufficient enough for you to contact the unrolling physician in the trial, it did not count as an event. so we honestly do not know whether or not there are some individuals who got infected who remained asymptomatic, as is possible, as you know. asymptomatic folks can transmit the virus. so we do not know that. one of the things that is happening that i think is exciting is a subgroup of the participants are being evaluated for the presence of antibodies

to the nucleoprotein of sars cov 2. when you get infected by the virus, you make antibodies to all of the proteins, the spike protein, all of those. when you get vaccinated, you only make antibodies to this bike protein, because that is what is in the vaccine. adding antibodies to the spike means you must have been infected and respond to that. so by looking for antibodies to the n protein, we will know whether there are some folks who got infected but it did not come to the attention of the study leaders, so we will have answers regarding that. but the truth is, for the time being, we just cannot answer that question, because we do not have the data yet. mean you would recommend, even for people who

have gotten the vaccine, that they continue to social distance, wash their hands, wear our mask? guest: yes. especially between the first injection and the second injection, it would be wise to keep doing those things. even after the section injection, to be honest with you, i would recommend continuing to wear that mask, until we have achieved to -- what is referred to as herd immunity. that may be disappointing to hear, because we are also anxious to be done with all of that, but we need to get to the point where at least 60%, more ideally 80% or more, of the population has been vaccinated. then we can all really think about going back to some semblance of what we were doing before january of this year. but the answer to the question is what do not know if people who get vaccinated can transmit

the virus, because that is not something the study was designed to do. what we do know is that the vaccine is 95% efficacious in blocking disease, stopping disease. day, that is the why this is so important. it is saving lives. that is what this vaccine will do. from tracy is calling denver, colorado. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a two-part question. the first part of the question is it sounds like dr. hildreth totalking about a return standard door-to-door public fairs, back to health where health educators are standing in front of people, need toabout how people

be health efficacious themselves, also that they have good health understanding -- i --a former health educator it sounds like we are going back to that, so everyone can have a really good understanding about what we need to personally do for our own health. number two, also sounds like me mayy -- it sounds like you interested in having some type thepecific study about special circumstances, about people who react differently to different vaccines, or or is that something you may be interested in, especially about this vaccine? is that something that may be interesting? because all of this is new, and i know how many people are very,

very -- what was the word someone said? they are not willing to step up and get the vaccine right now, at this moment. host: go ahead and respond, dr. hildreth. great numberis a of national organizations that are focused on this. the national medical association, the national academy of medicine, nih, hhs -- there is a national organization of black churches. all of them recognize how important it is that we address vaccine hesitancy. if we do not do that, none of this will mean what we want it to mean, which is getting back to some form of normalcy. encouraged by the fact that health literacy around public health, as it relates to diseases, has probably never been as strong as it is now in this country. the last 11 months, the focus as

a nation has been on a public health crisis. i think the level of literacy and the knowledge of public health has been elevated. the interest in it among students, who aspire for careers going forward, has been elevated. all of those things are encouraging. the rr number of studies and programs underway all over the country, some of them national programs, to engage communities, to increase health literacy, to increase their knowledge of how vaccines work. want agency.eople they want the power to make the decision on their own, especially people in minority communities. i totally agree with that. is, as health professionals, to make sure they have sufficient information on what vaccines are, how they work, what the risks are, and i believe once people fully understand all of those things,

to protect themselves and their communities, they will make a decision to accept the vaccine. but it has to be their decision, which means our responsibility is to get them to a place where they are comfortable making that decision. that is what we are trying to do. host: doyle is calling from indiana. good morning. caller: hi. thanks for taking my call. dr. hildreth, it is great to talk with you. you are really a smart guy. my question is two-part. i have a masters in microbiology. i am not the smartest guy in the world, but some of this does not make sense to me. i read several stories, and one that comes to mind is a 30-year-old man who has been infected and hospitalized multiple times with covid-19. some articles where they found that people who had active

infection, they would do antibody tests on them 60 days to 90 days later and could not find antibodies to covid-19 in their blood. that just doesn't make sense to me. and if that is true, i do not understand why a vaccine would work. if you cannot find antibody to somebody who has had it and was sick -- maybe i am looking at it too simplistically. the second part of my question a dr. fauci, in july, did podcast with columbia university, and he said that he things a lot of these positive tests are false positives, because they are running pcr, and instead of running them at 43 cycles, they are running them 45 cycles -- i think it gives you dead nucleotides that do not work, and they may be different coronavirus, so it will give you

positives that may not be true for covid-19. anyway, thank you for taking my call. first let me acknowledge that there are lots of reports of individuals who get infected or appear to get infected multiple times. one of the things that is most disturbing to me is that, in a couple of cases, the first time a person was infected, they were pretty asymptomatic or very mild disease. but the second time, they had to be hospitalized and treated in the icu and put on a ventilator. that tells us a number of things. the first thing it tells us is that infection itself does not guarantee immunity to the virus. thinkse individuals who that they want to purposely get infected so they can achieve immunity, that is probably not the wisest choice to make. we know reinfection is possible.

the other thing we know is that, in some individuals, the antibody response to certain things can be very low compared to the general population. but it would be quite extraordinary to get exposed to something three times and not to that virus or bacteria, whatever it may be. but we know also some of the antibody tests are not very good because they are picking up antigens from other viruses that are related to the virus at hand, the coronavirus. in you are describing a case which there are no antibodies at all, and i find that challenging to believe. but it is true that -- the pcrht pcr works -- the way works, you have what they call tomers that have the ability amplify a small amount of

material into a larger amount of material. every time you run a cycle, the amount doubles. by 20 cycles or so, you have amount by asmall million fold or more. if there is a tiny amount of material from the virus there, to go from 30 to 40 cycles, you amplified that another several orders of magnitude, which gives you false positives. clearede virus has been , some of the nucleic acid, genetic material in the virus, can maintain in our systems for multiple days. if you run pcr and a high number of cycles, you get false positives. yes, there is material present, but it does not mean you are infected. it just means you have residual material from your infection. so i think there has been a lot of that, that people are seeing. that is why it is important to have a cut off for the number of cycles to make sure we do not have false positive.

but i cannot offer an explanation for why someone who got infected three times would not have antibodies, although what you may argue is the fact that they do not make antibodies is why they got infected multiple times in the first place. so i think that person would be a great person to do an investigation on, just to confirm that the lack of immune response was responsible for them getting infected multiple times. to thank dr.d like james hildreth, who is the president of meharry medical college and a member of the fda's vaccines and related biological products advisory committee, for coming on and walking us through the covid-19 vaccine approval process. thank you so much for your time. guest: thank you for having me. i enjoyed the conversation. host: coming up next, american enterprise institute's gary schmitt

will join us to talk about president-elect joe biden's nomination of retired general lloyd austin to be the next defense secretary. we will be right back. ♪ >> tonight on "q&a," the youngest women in the freshmen class of 117th congress, republican kat cammack of florida and democrat sara jacobs of california. we talked about their background and what they hope to accomplish in office. withtend -- intend to side the american people and the working class. government operates best when it is small and accountable and transparent. people have the power to control that. i do not think people should work to serve the government and build big, bureaucratic programs. i am a conservative member but i am an american first. i will work with members and those who make our country a better place and prove the

concepts of equal opportunity rather than equal outcome. generation that has never known a day in our adult lives without war. i was in middle school when 9/11 happened. ending the forever wars has special important for us. we know the cost that has on our generation. i want to focus on rebuilding america's standing around the world and making sure we are ending the forever wars responsibly and that we are really thinking about how we can craft a foreign policy that will address the challenges in the future and that we are rebuilding for future challenges, things like global pandemics, like climate change. katepresentatives elect cammack and sara jacobs, 117than women of the congress.

electorate of the electoral college cast their votes for president of the united states. watch c-span as results come in, froming at 10:00 indianapolis. at 11:30, delaware's three electors meet in dover. harrisburg, pennsylvania is 20 electors. 16.:00, michigan's 38 electors.as' then we will speak with john fortier about the results. atch live on c-span, online c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app.

>> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with gary ofmitt, resident scholar should tj cox studies at the american enterprise institute, here to talk with us about defense policy and the incoming biden administration. good morning. guest: good morning. angst for having me. me.: -- thanks for having host: so president-elect joe biden says he wants retired general lloyd austin to be the next defense secretary. do you think that is a good pick? guest: on the margin, i would say no. host: why not? guest: principally because there is a principle we have followed for years and years, which is divide civilian control over the military. only beenstin's has retired from the military for a few years.

we really try to stay away from rals be in charge of the pentagon. i think it is an important principle, because the principle of civilian control -- i am not sure it is -- there are other candidates who would be just as talented to hold the position, so i am not sure it is worth breaking this norm once again. the second thing is, as talented as general austen is, and he is talented -- if you think that the rise of china is the principal strategic issue of the day and for the next decade or so, his experience is mostly in the middle east. there is very little evidence he has thought strategically about china. i think that is a second mark against him. the third i would say is larger, which goes back to the first and simple. being secretary of defense is

not the same thing as being secretary of war. while general mattis, in particular, was probably a decent secretary of defense, i think many people thought he spent much of his time thinking about military affairs and not the broader responsibilities of being the pentagon's chief. i think we do not need to go down this road again. i think there are other candidates. but it is not as though i do not think general austin is not a talented and experienced person. host: reminder reviewers where the notion of civilian oversight of the military came from in the first lace and why that is important in our system of government. guest: it dates from the of theion, when a lot colonial governors were, in fact, also in charge of the militaries. the british militaries were

used by the governors to restrict the liberties of our founding generation. the presence of former military leaders, but usually it is quite separate from them being a general to them leading the nation. with the exception of the first president, george washington. but washington went out of his way to ensure people understood -- there was a real separation from his role of being commander of chief -- commander-in-chief of the continental forces and his role in being president. and there was a famous incident where former officers of the continental army created a private organization called the cincinnati society, and there was a bit of an attempt to rope washington into that effort, and he very politely but discreetly suggested that keep himself

separate, for reasons of constitutional propriety. it is a long-standing tradition. in 1947, there was a law passed that said retired military could not become secretaries of defense for a decade. that has all been changed to make it just seven years. but it is still on the books. host: you are not the first person to bring this up. there have been several people who have talked about this, including lawmakers, since general austin's name came up. general austin actually announced -- during his announcement, actually addressed some of that in his formal introduction wednesday. [video clip] >> when i concluded my military service for years ago, i hung up my uniform for the last time and went from being general lloyd austin to lloyd austin. distinctionortant and one i make with utmost

seriousness -- seriousness and sincerity. thiso i come to this role, new role, as a civilian leader. with military experience, to be sure. but also with a deep appreciation and reverence for the prevailing wisdom of civilian control of our military. i recognize that, being a member of the president's cabinet requires a different perspective and unique responsibilities from a career in uniform. i intend to keep this at the forefront of my mind. i look forward to surrounding myself with experienced, capable civilian appointees and career civil servants who will enable healthy, civil military relations, grounded in meaningful civilian oversight. host: react to what former

general austin said there. guest: first thing is, i think it is a close call. i am not trying to suggest this is completely a nomination that should not be seriously considered. that said, he is a career military officer. a very distinguished officer. he worked his way up, graduated from west point, worked his way through various commands, with the final command being the center command for middle east forces. it is not like this is your average general. deservedour-star and it. the problem is, having gone through a career like that, it is hard to imagine that the mental habits and the cultural habits that he has had to develop to rise to the level that he did can be so easily put aside. that is not mean he cannot, but

i think it is harder than people want to suggest. again, the second thing is we have had this law on the book for a purpose. were really only two exceptions. general marshall during the height of the korea crisis. we brought him back -- we did not bring him back but moved him from retired military general to being secretary of defense. we did the same thing with general mattis at the beginning of a trump administration. one could argue both of those things were needed because there were exceptional circumstances. you just have to ask whether this is an exceptional circumstance and whether or not the sort of precedent, that we tried to keep away from, we have now turned into kind of a norm. it is a close call, but i think again, there are other choices

that could have been made that would be satisfactory and were just as experienced about how to run the pentagon. host: let me remind our viewers they can take part in this conversation. we will open up our regular lines for this conversation about defense policy and the incoming biden administration. republicans, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8001. democrats, your line will be (202) 748-8000. independents, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8002. at (202)lways text us 748-8003. and we are always reading on social media, on twitter, @cspanwj, on facebook, facebook.com/cspan. you just talked about this, but i want to go back to it. congress issued that waiver for the cooling-off, the seven year cooling-off period, for george

marshall in 1950. they waived it again in 2017, when general mattis was nominated by then president donald trump. mattis had only been out of the military at four years when the waiver was granted. austin has been out of the military for more than six years. what is the difference between jim mattis and lloyd austin right now? guest: again, i do not think it is so much the difference. i think it is the difference of who is president. to be honest, i was not in favor of a waiver for general mattis either. but the argument could be made that concisely because the incoming president trump was so inexperienced about washington ways and the military in particular, that somebody like general mattis was required to put people at ease that they would be a knowledgeable person,

someone who was recognized for his judgment. that is not the case for president-elect biden. president-elect biden has been vice president, in the senate for a number of years, part of the foreign relations committee. he has any number of folks from the hill, the clinton and the obama administrations to draw on for national security adviser's. i understand why he is interested in general austin. general austin is a talented person. and the president knows him a bit from their experience during the obama years. i think his son was even on general austin's staff. it is important for a president to become double with the people in their cabinet, but the principle of civilian control over the military is still quite essential to our government's working.

anin, if this were exceptional circumstance, i would say yes. but it is not. host: let's go to our phone lines and start with robert, calling from massachusetts. good morning. caller: good good morning. i'm in worcester, massachusetts. i agree with everything james klein speaks off. i would like to start -- mr. biden made some bad choices from blackart with women, the women. he had no choice to take a woman who would the lack. -- be black. mrs. harris should be the attorney general. should be vice president. think that colin powell should have been the man for the job --

not because you are woman, not because you are black, not because you are white. she knows everybody around the world. very intelligent woman. too,harris, i love you, but you should be the attorney general. you know how to prosecute when it's time to get donald trump. host: go ahead and respond there. guest: it's hard for me to tell president-elect biden that he choices all the wrong for his cabinet. not unimportant that general austin will be the first african-american secretary of defense. many a barrier being the first african-american

lead the army corps, the first to be the vice chief of staff. i think that those examples are really important. the question is whether they override the need for the best person or the better person and i think that there are people who might have served president-elect biden better than general austin. host: as you said there, it would not be unimportant if you secretary ofrst color. , how exactly, does it go to the house and the

senate? about that process of going into a waiver. guest: general austin will be asked by the senate armed services committee in particular, but also the house, to come and testify and make the case for why he should be the secretary of defense. but both have to pass measures, just by the majority vote. committee, but a both houses of congress have to vote. matt from westwood, new jersey. good: i -- caller: morning. i agree with your guest for several reasons. he mentioned george washington

who said, i believe we should beware of foreign entanglements and mr. biden, if he gets in through this questionable election because republicans were prevented from witnessing and there was no verification of matching signatures in georgia, if he gets in, he would be illegitimate. basically biden was a warmonger who pushed the iraq war. i was a christian who marched against that. mr. biden, along with hillary and that crowd and also the military crowd such as mr. ,olton, who was a warmonger

unfortunately pushed back onto my -- on to our country and the a disaster. i think c-span for showing the march for trump yesterday. who hass our president not got us into an illegal, immoral war, and who is getting ,s a vaccine for this terrible chinese virus. host: go ahead and respond to their. -- respond there. guest: one of the questions general austin will face when he goes before the committees, the committeeed services and particular, is he was the head of central command during the obama administration when pullecision was made to troops out of iraq.

they drew down in 2011 into iraq for variety of reasons. it is right -- the drawdown created a vacuum in iraq and syria that let the isis jihadist threat to arise. that may or may not be fair to general austin but it generally will be a topic the committees are going to bring up to hear his explanation of how things went. spending timebeen talking about general austin. but congress passed the nearly $700 billion defense authorization bill with a

majority in both chambers. president trump has threatened to veto this bill anyway. why? what's behind president trump's objection to this bill? guest: he's changed his objections over the year. objection was to congress's desire to change the names of military bases that are named after confederate military officials and generals, so that was one objection. in the defenseis authorization bill there are provisions that would slow down or prevent the drawdown or -- and there is an objection there. and the more recent one is

president trump wanted to delete oft they call section 230 gave social media platforms freedom from liability for what has been put on their platform, and as we have seen, president trump as been very upset with facebook and twitter for what he thinks his political bias. none of those things have been changed. that is where the veto threat has arisen. row is the 60th year in a with congress, in bipartisan fashion, has passed the defense authorization bill. this is one area where congress

has been quite successful in accomplishing its duties as members of congress. i think it would be a real change if this bill -- shame if this bill were to be vetoed by the president. us what the defense authorization bill dies. -- does. yes, there is a two-step process to fund the military. there's the defense authorization bill that basically says if congress authorizes the appropriations of on defenseend matters, there's also a variety of different issues. is an appropriation that marches -- matches up with other

authorization bills. this is where congress is riding the check and saying, here's the actual money. for congress, the authorization bill is really quite important. reallyropriation process sets the hard and fast number when it comes to money. host: what happens if the president vetoes the authorization bill and congress cannot override his veto? does the military shutdown? does congress have to come back and redo it? guest: a couple things happen. first, there will probably be a continuing resolution.

so basically you take last year's budget and you straight the in for whatever time resolution is going on. there's a new initiative to give a couple billion dollars to the pacific command to help with dealing with the chinese threat. nothing new initiative would it would never even began if it was under the continuing resolution. you would be putting yourself behind the eight ball for however long it took to override the president's veto, or if not, you would not move forward. to our phoneo back lines and talk to howard from salisbury, north carolina. good morning.

to youtop of the morning guys. four years ago we could maybe have had a discussion depending on how the person is and what not, and without looking at the color of the person skin, but now -- i know what it's all about. white men comeof online and on the phone and the gwen to talk about biden picked the wrong all, everything he picked, he picked the wrong people. but look at the looney tunes we have had now for four years we have this white man called trump. and all of his cabinets, one raisin among all of that rice and now they want to complain because it's a black man. this is a black man and they are worried about the strong black man. it's ok. in.re going to vote him but who else is better to handle in that position than a retired general?

it's ok to get powell, because he's a republican, but we have this democrat black man and you are afraid of this black man, but i know one thing. i know how america is now because trump right you guys out from under the rock. host: go ahead and respond. guest: to be fair to my colleagues in other distractions, they have not been appoint condoleezza rice to be national security advisor or colin to be chairman of the joint chiefs and secretary of state. , theis particular case other top candidate for the job not a guy like me, a white male, it was a woman who would have been the first woman secretary of defense, and i think a lot of oaks thought that her candidacy was probably, in terms of substance for the job, the appropriate person to pick.

i think it's alone more complicated, but, you know, it is important. as you pointed out, our military has a lot of men and women of color and having a secretary of defense would be the first african-american secretary of defense, it's not unimportant. the question is whether it is more important than these other needs to leave the department. jim. let's go to to echo what your guest has said. i am 50-50 on this. i lean toward not appointing him for three reasons. he has a distinguished record, background, no doubt, but he is coming from the board of raytheon technologies and he's

firmpart of the equity invests in defense contracts. so i want to get your guest's opinion on that. you are working for two companies that profit from war and i think we are trying to get away from the. thank you for taking my call. host: go ahead. well, it's not unusual for retired military to go work for defense companies, obviously, because they have a about militaryce affairs and the more senior you are, the more experience you have. it's not unusual. i do think it is a problem. i would say particularly at the cabinet level.

theyis not to say that should not join administrations because they know a lot about we build things and procure things. .here's a kind of experience you don't want an egghead like me trying to buy the f-35's. it's really important that the person appointed be free of any sense that they have worked for the defense companies. it's important for them to have a larger strategic perspective that looks quite independent of anything the defense industry might wants. it's not like there's a huge number of people out there who .re ready

i am sure that they will request that general austin, if he does become these secretary of defense, he will have to dispense with ties with those companies. he may even have to put aside any goal in making decisions that involve those companies. there are usually ways of trying to square that circle. -- for former general austin, talk about the news conference. here is what former general austin said. [video clip] general: i understand the port the department of defense plays

in supporting critical alliances around the world, including in and europe,ific, and around the world. i firmly believe that america is strongest when it works with its allies, and over the years, i have worked hand in hand with our diplomatic colleagues around if confirmed, i look forward to resuming this important work. what are your thoughts about strengthening the global alliances? i think it is appropriate. when you are the commander of the pacific command or european command, one of the things you

in addition to your command of u.s. forces, you will always be working with the militaries of allied regions. we have plenty of allies in europe and the middle east working with us. it's not as though he is coming to this larger defense role without any experience working with his allies. tot is some ordinance emphasize. that is part of his experience and it's another reason why president-elect biden can say confidence he is appropriate for being secretary of defense. david from talk to texas on the republican line. good morning. things i've got a couple

to say. one thing that strikes me about the biden administration is they will reverse energy policy that has allowed trump to use economic power and policy and other countries so for the first time ever we fullable to use our economic power. tofact, we are still able produce more oil than we need. ruth tois there any chu what i have heard that -- truth to what i have heard that general austin's opinion was at thet partly responsible for obama administration discussion of isis as being the jv and i have also heard that he has been

responsible for -- what do they call it? -- their ability to respond in a way that would take isis down as fast as what happened after the trump administration camelot? flynn, was fired, is my understanding, for not that mission. it was all in the same timeline. also, from a nato standpoint, you say trump's against nato, he just was them to pay their fair share before we dedicate our country to get involved in a nuclear war to defend some country that is not paying their fair share. host: go ahead and respond. guest: well, there's a lot. but we start with the general austin comment. it's true enough that there were a couple things that happened

that he will be asked about. one was the dog down iraq and how that happened. i know then vice president biden deeply involved in discussions that the drawdown in iraq and how that happened. i know that then-vice president biden was deeply involved in discussions about the drawdown in iraq and removing troops. he will be asked if his advice was consistent with then-vice or ifent biden's advice the objected to the drawdown or the skill of the drawdown. there's evidence on both sides of that. as to syria, it's true that general austin made remark that was consonant with president all remark about isis .eing something of a jv problem general austin will have to defend himself on that regard. there's also another program to assist thened

syrians in fighting the assad did notnd that program go very well, did not go very public as was made such. one will have to know more blameulars then how much general austin and his staff. but that's the reason why we have these hearings for nominations. senate members will thoroughly investigate these matters. let's go to joey from michigan.ds,

go ahead. you are on the air. goter: when president trump into office he picked who he wanted to pick here he picked people with no experience, is family. no one had anything to say. what everyone failed to realize us from theeived beginning. he never should have been president and what he is doing now, a means to stop putting all of this hatred in the world. it's enough. you people think you are christian. trust in god, ok? let biden do what he's going to. go ahead andt: respond to their. general, iidents in think senators believe this, for the most part, they believe the president should be able to appoint the people they trust

most and have some sort of relationship with. i know that people quite often -- they may not be the best person for the job, but usually there's deference to the president because he's ultimately the chief executive and to mentor in chief. he should be given due deference . are these norms that are really important, one of which is civilian control over the military, and that is why a number of conservatives and republicans were, as much as they respected general mattis, did not believe it was the right step for donald trump to take either. congress gave him a waiver, and i think that was primarily because of what they felt was weakness ofump's

experience in washington. now they will make the decision whether vice president biden need someone like a general austin to be secretary of defense. host: how often, if ever is a president's choice for defense secretary not approved? or is it something that happens all the time? guest: i am trying to think. ,sually someone gets picked they realized that someone is not the right person for the job and they are removed. last who did not get picked was someone in the carter administration. it is rare.

if i was a betting man i would say that general austin will be the next secretary of defense. it's rare, but that's the only one we can think of really quickly. you've got a better memory than i and i'm someone who knew john tower. host: that is from our wonderful research team as c-span. i did not remember that. let's talk to dan from bloomington, indiana on the republican line. i have a question, one callers hadous raytheon. making decisions about war -- greed comes to mind.

war profiteering has been going on. what is the status on war profiteering for one? innow that he cut his ties stocks, but are still money to be made off war. right? even the most -- president there ever has been -- there is not were under him. going back to bush, clinton, obama, all of these presidents have conducted war. war makes money. guess what? why are they going into the defense industry? they are going there to make millions of dollars. host: go ahead and respond to their. guest: well, look. people should appreciate the fact that actually the defense

and the united states is smaller than anything they imagine. it's not the defense industrial complex that president eisenhower talked about at the end of his term in office. is noprofit making greater than the average company on the stock market. it's a lot less than the amazons world. googles of the you don't want to go to war. you want our military to have the best weapons, the most approved the of weapons, to deter our enemies and protect our people. that costs money. lot,lize $700 billion is a but the truth is, when you ask a

military to do all the things is going to do and you have an all volunteer force you are paying folks for, the truth is, the amount of money that goes into buying new weapons is third on for the of priorities pentagon. more money is spent on personnel . more money is spent on keeping things operating them buying things. important'sd, it is that there be clear guidelines what divesting himself of ever companies he has. be it's reasonable that he prohibited to lower the

appearance of the conflict of interest. host: let's squeeze in one more caller. michael, good morning. go ahead. caller: can you hear me? host: we can. ahead, michael. i have several questions. host: make it quick, michael. you're the last call. i think that austin deserves this position. it's time we had someone does colin powell is the last one we had in charge of the military. also, the question about george washington. george washington supported slavery. do you understand? thomas jefferson supported

slavery. sixth black president. abraham lincoln was a black president. harding, andrew jackson, look them up. right.ll we're going to stop right there. guest going to thank our from the american enterprise institute for coming on this morning and talking the defense policy. thank you so much for your time. guest: thanks for having me. moment weng up in a love more of your calls about president trump --we will have more of your calls about president trump's effort to, as he says, "fight on." you see the numbers on the screen. we will be right back. ♪ c-span2 has top

nonfiction books. coverage of the texas book festival continues with the aclu . have an economic and we tech investor with his book "the height machine, how social media disrupts our elections, our economy, and our health. virginia'sst governor on how she was denied reproductive choice. she is interviewed by the women's health policy director. watch it on c-span two today.

>> state of electors of the electoral college cast their the president. at 1130 a.m. eastern, electors well meet in dover. and then at 2 p.m. eastern, electors meet in lansing. and then we are live with john tortilla, the author of after the people vote. and listen on the c-span radio app.

journal"ngton continues. host: we are back. we want to hear from you. the supreme court decided not to hear the case from texas on -- the the president presidential election should be thrown out in four key states, not texas. collegethe electoral monday.t on we get to the calls i want to talk about the electoral theege here's a story from supreme court writers on what the electoral college will do.

laws require the electors to vote for the popular vote winner. the supreme court unanimously upheld this in july. votelectors almost always for this. a bit of an exception in 2016 when 10 electors tried to vote for other candidates. back clintonnot to in a futile bid to prevent trump from becoming president. schedule there, we will be going to the states for the electoral college votes starting at 10 a.m. in indiana and then texas.

this will all be happening live on c-span on monday and you can watch that here and of course, you can always listen to it on the free c-span radio app. let's go to our phone lines. let's start with carol on the democratic line. good morning. >> good morning. thank you for c-span. thank you for doing such a wonderful job and taking my call. comment on these statement by the head of the republican party here in texas who claimed other states were not following the constitution when they changed their voting practices due to covid-19. i wanted to remind that gentleman and anybody else who opposes the outcome of the election that we here in the

state of texas changed our rules to vote for covid during the time of covid-19. early voting lasted for, i believe three weeks. have one week of early voting. we had three weeks that ran all the way up to the week of normal voting, so we changed our rules. we did not go and seek approval askny other state or pennsylvania or wisconsin if it was ok that we did that. as a matter of fact, we have .earings at the county level so i think the republican head of the republican party to

suggested that taxes should , he meansm the union to resign. anybody who signed onto attorney case needs to resign. on theet's go to walter republicans line. good morning. morning.ood i of them watching this on the and regarding the election so forth. there's something i find extremely does control -- disconcerting. speeding, you are arrested, you are thrown in jail. seen one of these poll workers arrested.

they have tapes of pink stuffing -- of people stuffing ballot spirit until they start arresting a few of these people, my feeling is they are being massively entertains. know thaters should they are arrested. we all know what happens. host: what would the charge be and what would the proof be for the need for arrest? caller: stuffing ballots or flipping votes on the ballots is a severe felony. it is an indictable offense. tapehave people on committing these felonies. why there hasne not been one arrest today.

i see an arrest and it reported of one of these workers stuffing ballots -- we are being entertained. host: you say they have video of people stuffing ballots. with that make you wonder if your interpretation of the video is correct? caller: if its videos of people stuffing ballots or filling out talents and counting them -- which i've seen a few of those videos and they have affidavit of other workers saying that they were doing that, that is all they need for an indictment -- apparently no district attorney or sheriff or police officer and none of the judges seem to believe that those videos show anything illegal. it's up to the law enforcement to arrest and indict

, and the u.s. marshals can -- their ownes run elections, so the marshals would not have jurisdiction. there is one law that the government has operated under for the last 40 years. no consequence, no problem. until they have consequences, no problem. host: let's go to mary on the democratic line. caller: yes, good morning, c-span. i don't believe what i'm hearing. we are in the computer age now. scan these ballots into validates your id.

i'm a retired state investigator from pennsylvania. what i am hearing that people do not know how the system works. what president trump is doing is basically a scam. he raised $498 billion based on this and valid voter fraud. people need to realize how the system were. there's no problem with your reporting in this country now. -- people need to realize how the system works. the computer validates everything. we have intelligence agencies in this country that make sure we know exactly what's going on.

president trump borrows billions of dollars from china. now china is a national security threat. president trump does not want to pay china and these other countries that have borrowed money from china do not want to pay them back. host: let's talk to to various from athens, georgia on the independent line. good morning. that is a snazzy tide you got on. let me get to it. i love c-span in minsk. -- immensely. back mr.lease bring scully because he's a very dear, missed part of the c-span network. on to the topic at hand. thank you, thank you, thank you mr. donald j. trump, thank you,

you have done for the american people even though you have been misconstrued as a very bad guy. and welcome president-elect joseph biden, the scrappy guy from scranton, pa. ok?a very cynical man, that human behavior will .ave us doing things i'm not in favor of the vaccine. is there a cure for cancer? we are born to die. nothing we can do will give us immortality, even though we wanted more than anything in the world. we are born to die. host: let's go to england on the democratic line. good morning.

caller: good morning, sir. i'm retired military. i am living here in england. i am just calling -- if the courts of done this, i think about 55 times they told trump, no, there was no fraud in the election, why keep fighting a losing cause? there's no justification for that. ree only thing i can see the is he is trying to tear up the democracy. that solid is an key people against each other. thank you very much. thank you for having me on board. thank you. dale who isgo to calling from cincinnati, ohio on the republican line. dale, good morning. , if they were to

take this case in texas, for instance and they had a choice -- we've gotwins ,ioting, looting, and burning we go with the right and we have yelling and rioting and crime. words ofe got destruction, so they are cowards, ok? that's the bottom line. are you calling the supreme court justices cowards? caller: yes, sir, i am. i am.

-- i ame are so many just going to leave it at that. the judges among those four states -- host: let's go to lupe on the democratic line. good morning. at caller: the reason i am calling, i have heard so much of people saying they have seen the videos, they have seen the video. the only thing with that is when i first got to vote, at my age, i ended up being a volunteer after that, for whole working. this goingyou see

on, when you see a damaged ballot, they put it into a bag and give the person or another chance to vote, and if that goes bad, you put it into a separate bag. what you see people doing, they are not.s, be careful with what you see and what you are told her it i suggest anyone who has a computer -- where trump says, what would you run ase said i would republican because they believe anything you say. say it enough, enough times and the people will believe you. host: president trump said he plans to fight on despite the

taking thert not case that his supporters hoped would be used to overturn the presidential election. here's what he tweeted. you are the president of the united states. you get more votes for president purportedlyyou lost. you can get standing before the supreme court. it is something that will hurt them also. they say to likewise join the suit, but in a flash it thrown out and gone without looking at the reason it was brought. a rigged election, fight on. on house republicans signed to a brief supporting that lawsuit in some democrats in the house want there to be a political price for those house

republicans jumping on to that lawsuit. i will read you a few paragraphs from the story in "the hill" newspaper. representative built pass grell is asking speaker nancy pelosi to refuse to see lawmakers who backed president trump's effort to challenge the election. this is after more than 100 house republicans, including minority leader kevin mccarthy, signed an amicus brief. the suit is asking the court to prevent electors from finalizing the victory in georgia, wisconsin, pennsylvania, in michigan. simply stated, the men women who have acted to tear the united states government apart cannot serve in the government. seeking to

invalidate the clear results of the 2020 presidential election, undoubtedly attacking the text and spirit of the constitution, which each member swears to support and defend. that's coming from "the hill" newspaper this morning. so, let's get a few more calls than before the end of the show. will certainly germane from new york. good morning. caller: good morning. how many votes did biden in-depth winning by? somewherelieve it was around 7 million, but it might be more. caller: you're telling me there's 7 million votes of voter fraud. come on, man. this makes no sense. there's no way possible. he was going to have to when by by aiculous -- two win

ridiculous amount or number, and he did. who do way more people not want the way he is, over 200 thousand something people die. how many family members do you think they had that have seen president trump totally ignore the pandemic, totally ignore a lot of things he was ignorant towards. if you can't see that now that he is racist after he had that , right after he was mad about all of this -- come on. joe from's go to tampa, florida on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? thanks for letting me speak here and let me chime in and let you know what i think is the biggest thing here regarding the election.

it's around the fact that before the election, people kind of set the controls around this election have been loosened. especially in georgia. there was a consent decree that all ofk, we will go and the warnings around that basically came to fruition. people lost control and there was huge concern around the veracity. i know that there was a lady who was speaking before. the lesson has been really dramatic. there's only one person who talked about doing more about that. this is about the suppression by the hunterround biden story. there was a lot of evidence. there is something out today were joe biden is mentioned in

these emails coming off this laptop that the fbi is investigating that talks about him, joe biden, other folks having keys made foreign authors. this is an email from his son. for the media to be this complicit in basically ignoring all of this story and being so i'm curious that we do not even want to talk about it -- we do not even want to voice any of that. it's a total abrogation of the media's responsibilities. caused enormous concerns around the election altogether. here is a statement from one of the republican senators who has been talking about this election. this is ben sasse, the senator from nebraska. --ot of people out of been

have been spinning conspiracy theories, it every american who cares about the rule of law should take comfort that the supreme court, including all three of president trump' yes picks close the book. this comes from republican senator ben sasse of nebraska who had this statement last week on refusing to view the case from texas challenging the election. let's see if we can get a couple calls and bryant from pennsylvania on the independent line. brian, good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. whyst want to comment on people are suing about pennsylvania. pennsylvania did not follow their own laws. the legislature passed a nice, liberalizing mail-in voting rule

and the state supreme court basically change dollars roles, but the one that i found impossible to understand was they said you could not use the signatures to match the votes and i thought it was a mistake, and then i heard the attorney general defending that ruling, you couldn't count on these signatures being the same 20 or 30 years later. , thei vote in person signature from my last election is there in the book. so the most it could be is four years old. i should say eight years old because you can mess, i think, to presidential elections and you're still out the vote. that's my take on why people are

upset about pennsylvania. host: let's go to mike on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. [indiscernible] rational that she is not a rational man. challenges democrats in america was a stupid actions. i think trump is just about himself. people are dying. but is,oronavirus

think it is shameful and disgusting for the united states of america. host: good morning. caller: i'm an engineer. computers.eering -- every month the computers would go out because he put software in there that would not get out. i have no respect for dealing use people who want to computers more for critical issues. he deals with artificial intelligence, computers, like in top -- tiktok. i've have $20,000 worth of equipment which shows we are thatng the frequencies out cause

>> we like to thank all of ow viewers callers and guests on today's "washington journal." we want to remind you that you can watch the vote here on c-span. see the schedule there on your screen starting at 10:00 a.m. you'll go to several different states and watch the electoral college vote. once again starting at 10:00 a.m. live on c-span. of course always on the free c-span radio app. thank you to everyone who watched today. >> tonight on q&a the 117th congress begins with at least

141 women serving the most ever and we'll talk with two millennials in the freshman class. >> i tend to side with the american people and the working class. i think that government operates best when it's small and accountable and transparent and people have the power to control that. i don't think that people should work to serve the government. so as far as where i find myself i am a pretty conservative member but i'm america first so i will work with members and those that make our country a better place and really prove there's a concept afequal opportunity rather than equal outcome. >> i'm of the generation that had never known a day in our adult lives that the united states hasn't been at war. so i think the idea of ending the forever wars takes a

special import for us because we know the cost that has had on us here domestically and on our jern ration. and one of the things i really want to focus on is rebuilding america's standing around the world and making sure that we are ending the forever war responsibly and that we're really thinking about how we can craft foreign policy that will address the challenges in the future and that we're rebuilding for those future challenges, like global pandemic, like climate change. >> freshmen women of the 117th congress. tonight at 8:00 eastern on -span's q&a. >> now is the perfect time to buy a c-span product with a 15% discount. go to c-span's store.org.