occasion to update this announcement of july 29 and november 13 through the 18th concerning the wearing of masks in the hall of the house during the coronavirus pandemic. the chair wishes to again emphasized the importance of safe practices during health proceedings and accordingly, masks will now be required at all times in the hall of the house, without exception. including while members are under recognition. the chair will reiterate that this is a matter of order and decorum in the chamber under clause two of rule one. to be clear, members will not be recognize unless they are wearing a mask and recognition will be withdrawn if they remove the mask while speaking. the chair appreciates the continuing attention of all members and staff to these

principles. influence operations in the united states. our guest, a longtime national security correspondent for the washington times, author of the deceiving -- having those conversations anyway come out about a suspected chinese spy targeting california politicians. start by explaining to viewers who she is and what we know about her connections to the communist party. this was broken in an amazing story by axios. terms, it is what they call a farming operation. agent and they began planting seeds of local politicians in trying to develop

sources or people that they could use to influence u.s. discussionsublic about issues related to communist china. this suspected agent was able to locate eric swalwell and work within very closely, and he showed incredibly poor judgment in allowing a chinese national to come into his office and say i would like to help you fund raise. in fact, i have interns i can put in your office. and then it turns out that she was under fbi investigation and swalwell tipped off and then her, and she then fled the country. there is also according to the report, she had extramarital affairs with two ohio mayors, one of them in the backseat of a car.

this is kind of a pretty good spy story, even though it is a different type of intelligence operation than just stealing secrets. explained that term, influence operation. well, china has been seeking to influence the united states. but one thing china has really done is to wake at the american public and the world at large to the threat from -- of the commonest party. time, for the first recognized that china and its ruling party are enemies of the united states. this is actually not a new type of operation. the chinese, we know going back to the 90's, were funneling money into the bill clinton-al gore reelection campaign and that was a major scandal in congress.

it did not get a lot of traction at the time because china is so good at influencing the u.s. media, they try to play down the idea that china is an enemy of the united states when, in fact, every communist leader since mao has viewed the united states as part of a massive capitalist conspiracy to destroy china and therefore they are working very aggressively to weaken and ultimately destroy the united states, so that is why they send a lot of these influencers and try to get people in positions of power. we've seen a similar thing happen in australia where actually, a member of the australian parliament actually was forced to resign when it was revealed that he was a secret member of the chinese communist party. or link to the chinese military as well. is kindlwell incident of the tip of the iceberg and i know that the trump administration has been making an aggressive effort to identify .hese influence operations

just last week, mike pompeo gave a major speech at georgia tech where he outlined how china has theuenced and exploited american economic community for getting people to support its policies as well as stealing technology. let me get the viewers the numbers if you want to join this conversation. as usual, republicans, (202) 748-8000 -- (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. .ndependent, (202) 748-8002 swalwell responding to that report, and what happened in ago in antion years

interview with cnn. we want to play that and get your thoughts on his comments. this is eric swalwell. >> i was shocked just over six years ago when i was told about this individual and then i offered to help and i did help. i was thanked by the fbi for my help and that person is no longer in the country. and i was a little surprised to read about my cooperation in that story because the story said that never was never suspicion of wrongdoing on my part and all i did was cooperate and the fbi said that yesterday. but the wrongdoing here is that at the same time the story was being leaked out, is the time that i was working on impeachment on the house intelligence and judiciary committees. if this is a country where people who criticize the president are going to have law enforcement information weaponized against them, that's not a country that any of us want to live in. i hope it is investigated as to who leaked this information. >> please operations are

designed to build relationships but also possibly to get sensitive information. are you concerned that you shared any information with this person before you were notified by the fbi? muchain, i can't talk too about the details of the case even though others may have highlighted their own. i'm not going to violate mine. the story made it absolutely clear that no information was ever shared. host: congressman eric swalwell, member of the house intelligence committee. your thoughts on his reaction to that story coming out? guest: it is a typical defense by a politician. it was clearly a huge mistake on his part, as i mentioned, to allow a chinese national to have a relationship. he hasn't answered a lot of questions, and this is a big deal. time, afor a short democratic presidential candidate. in addition to that, he sits on house intelligence committee.

this is a select committee that only very select members can sit on. and yet, even though he have this relationship which again, he has not explained fully whether he had intimate relations with her or not, his staff have said that is classified information, there hasn't been a lot of answers as to whether or not this person may have influenced his views on communist china. came out lasthat week in the washington times, my insider column, i went back and looked over the record where he challenged the homeland security department official on election interference, saying that there was no intelligence indicating that china had tried to influence the elections in the united states, which is simply false. the vice president said that in 2018, that according a senior u.s. intelligence official saying that what russia have done pales in comparison to the

kind of influence operations that are being run by the chinese. host: with us for the segment this morning from the washington times, the national security correspondent, a longtime correspondent the washington times. washingtontimes.com if you want to check out his work. also the book "deceiving the sky: inside communist china's , richard is upy" first out of new jersey, a democrat, good morning. caller: good morning, can you hear me ok? host: yes, sir. caller: i do have something to say about the government but first, i am so happy to be talking to somebody from the washington times because i , theed that the papers washington post, the new york times, the washington journal, the washington times and the washington examiner. the washington post was a newspaper over 100 years old.

millions and millions of subscribers, new york times. host: can we get to this story about the chinese influence operations? caller: i've been waiting for a month to say this and am so glad. the new york times, 100 and 30 pulitzer prizes. washington times, zero. washington examiner, zero. washington times, 52,000. host: we will go to alexandria, louisiana, republican. you have a question? sayirst, i just wanted to that guy is just nuts. look, i wish you would put on a pardons, and this is my question for the times man because he is doing a fine job. i was a military police officer and stuff and i had top-secret clearance in the 80's. bioweapon,his was a

this covid-19 to destroy president trump in the u.s. i would like to think, does he think this is a bioweapon engineer to strictly to destroy the west and stuff? yeah, i have written extensively on this. i have interviewed senior officials with access to a lot of the most sensitive intelligence information and i can tell you there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that this does link covid-19 outbreak to the chinese military. the problem is that the chinese government has stonewalled international community for nine months now, trying to figure out the origin of this virus. and on top of that, the chinese communist party has launched a massive international this to try ton campaign deflect attention on china's role in spreading this virus.

out, we are just on the cusp of getting vaccines to the american population, and china announced probably six months ago that they had already begun production of a vaccine. you can't do that unless you have intimate knowledge of the scientific makeup of this virus. so we don't know. clearly, there is a lot of circumstantial information. i know that the intelligence community has information about china's covert biological weapons program. i reported on this extensively, and i think hopefully before the trump administration the office, we can get some answers on what really happened and what the origin of the virus is. host: rochester, minnesota, joan is a democrat. good morning. i just wondered about this gentleman who i'm sure is a republican, but trump denounces china most of the time, but yes,

his daughter works extensively in china, does a lot of business with china, and that never seems to come up, it seems to get covered up. and i think that china has always been there. howave an envy sometimes of far they have advanced and we haven't. and i just think that we need to concentrate on our country, not looking for blame at another country for other things, but just work on ourselves. i think that would be a good thing to do. thank you. well, this is the central thesis of my book. we made a 40 year candle that if we just traded with china, if we ignore their human rights abuses, which are massive, if we ignored their arms proliferation, they sold nuclear technology to a number of rogue states, and if we just ignored russia's activity in the south

china sea and other places, that this would somehow have a moderating influence and that we would eventually see a capitalist free market china emerge. it was utter failure. now we are facing a china that is on the march, it is no longer biding its capabilities as the reformed communist leader said. they are on the march in working against us. they are trying to subvert the united states, they are trying to subvert the remarket and national water. and i think that people really need to be educated about china, and that's what i've been trying to do and all of my books in my reporting. host: explain the title, "deceiving the sky." guest: and a lot of people know about sun tzu and cheney strategy. this is from the 32 strategies which is called deceive the sky to cross the ocean. it basically means that, it is a story about an emperor who is fooled by one of his generals into going to war and the idea

is that in order to win against your enemies, you must be willing to even deceive the sky or the emperor in order to achieve your enemies. host: taking their phone call. having this conversation in the wake of that axios story that called to light some of these include operations targeting members of congress. we will go to a report on the target of chinese espionage cases. to put in perspective how much they are targeting politicians versus other sectors of the u.s. ofnomy, finding that 47% reported chinese espionage cases since 2000 sought to acquire commercial technologies, about half. 36% sought to acquire military technologies. just 14% sought to acquire info on u.s. civilian agencies were specifically politicians. specific we politicians.

guest: and then you have to add the cyberattack as well. in my book i interviewed a former cia counterintelligence official, a high-ranking official. and he described to the what he said was an intelligence assault on united states by china. and he compared it the kind of assault we saw from the soviet kgb at the height of the cold war. not limited to just gathering secrets and traditional espionage from governments, it is also going after corporate secrets and of course, they are all blended together. but in my book, i talked about the case of a chinese military hacker based in canada. and he was able for some $340,000 to hack into boeing and steal the design secrets for the military transport.

not only were these secrets stolen and worth about $3.4 billion, the chinese then turned around and built their own transport which looks similar to the c-17. so it is an across-the-board effort. on the influence front, we seen it on college campuses. the tribe administration justice department has been leading the way in prosecuting officials who have been in the pay of the chinese government for research, and it has been covert. basis, wea monthly are seeing academics and even chinese nationals being prosecuted for both influence and technology theft operations. area, thiso the bay is thomas, republican, good morning. caller: i want to thank you for your show, i appreciate it and everything you are doing. i just want to ask two questions.

has the u.s. sold out to china? are we owned by china? another one, why isn't he in prison? he is a spy, i don't understand. the first one, the issue is that we integrated our economy extensively with that of china, and the results are this idea that if we just trade with china, this is going to mitigate the threat of china. it was another failure. now there is a big debate within the administration about, do we decouple, do we decouple from china partially or completely? right now is a bill that was passed by congress which would require chinese companies that are inside our capital markets to be taken off those markets to western agree transparency and auditing principles. the is a big debate because

chinese are basically funding the military through u.s. capitol market in the very stealthy kind of way. they don't really own us. on swallow, as he said himself, he did nothing illegal as far as we know. that heseems to think didn't do anything wrong. what he did do was he was compromised. he was, revised by a chinese agent. house minority leader kevin mccarthy last week said this is something that clearly he should be removed from the house intelligence committee. nancy pelosi, the house speaker defendant, said she said she had no security concerns about him, so that is kind of where the swalwell issue stands. has been pressure on the democrats in congress to remove swalwell, at least from house intelligence committee, which has access to the most sensitive intelligence information that the u.s. government owns. host: a question that richard

berman poses in today's washington times, how many more are there? guest: well, that is a good question. i think if i were with the fbi counterintelligence division i could give you an answer, but we do know that fbi director wray any major speech last summer set on average, they open a new counterintelligence case related to china like every 10 hours. thinkw that, i mean, i the fbi has got its hands full just going after the illegal chinese spying, where this influence type of operation doesn't really cross the line into illegal activity unless classified information is involved. it is kind of a gray area. a lot of nations and australia are trying to deal with this issue of chinese influence, and they are doing it through legislation that would limit the access of chinese foreign

nationals. the trump administration is focused on chinese communist party officials, limiting their access to the united states, so there is some effort. we don't know how many more are out there, but i'm certain there are many, many more chinese influence agent out there. on the other of the coin are those former officials who have been co-opted by the chinese, usually through money or through access to china. these are officials that are not paid agents, but they echoed the chinese line up when it comes to any criticism of beijing or that type of thing. this is brian, independent. good morning. >> when required -- were public and party made it legal for foreign to contribute to anonymous campaign donations, that opened up the door for this type of espionage.

went toen our ceos solicit the chinese for their slave labor and took tax subsidies to make jobs in the united states, they may jobs in china. .hat enabled the chinese when microsoft in the car companies went over there and taught the chinese how to make their stuff, it gave them the ability to be able to do further espionage and intellectual theft. federal candidates are not allowed to take foreign money for their campaigns. can you talk us through that? something that i think in the swalwell case needs to be investigated. did this person who was doing with a cop bundling, that is basically fundraising for his

reelection, managed final four in money, either through a cutout or through some other means? we won't be able to know because in my view, i think the fbi mishandled the counterintelligence investigation. this was back in 2015 where they gave what they call a census briefing to swalwell, telling him, look, you have a relationship with this person who we think is a chinese ministry of state security agent. toy have tracked her meetings with chinese consulate officials, and basically by alerting him, within a short time, or we don't know the time period, but it is the same year, 2015, she fled the country. they missed an opportunity, as far as i can tell, to be able to either try and turn her into a double agent for the united rates, or to at least interrogate her thoroughly to

find out what her network was made up of. ist: eugene, oregon, this jason, line for democrats. >> good morning to you, excellent show. give aid and a brother who spoke only the truth and i have to remind viewers of the senate majority leader's wife, the. surely they have family ties to china that she investigated as well. we are in the golden age of misinformation, and i remind -- have aat .oundation plan to counter this guest: like i said, we are coming off of a 30 to 40 year period where china was an ally. i wrote a book back in 2000 called the china threat which was a play on what beijing called the china threat theory.

in other words, they monitored opposition to china around the world and measured it how it would affect their ability to modernize. and i kind of blew the whistle on the china threat back then and it did not get a lot of attention. successive administrations, both republican and democrat have basically appeased china and the appeasement has been a disaster. monsternow got a global that is around the world trying to displace the united states. their drive is to actually have replace chinese currency. this is a serious issue and again, it's not simply a matter that republicans did this were democrats did this. both democrats and republicans mishandled the china threat for many, many years. it was only during the trump administration that they began to turn things around. host: how much reporting have

you done on hunter biden and china? guest: i have done some, but not too much. i think it is an important story. clearly, there is a lot of information out there that he had a very strange relationship. i've been working behind the scenes on some of these stories. he clearly was getting a lot of money from china. he announced just recently that is under investigation for tax issues. clearly, we have not gotten clear answers from any of the bidens about their relations with china work, for that matter, with ukraine. host: doug and gold hill, oregon, republican, good morning. caller: he just brought up what i want to bring up.

are you concerned with the bidens before they ever set foot in the white house? there was a big concern sometime back with president trump and that he was going to be blackmailed. well, you know, we will have to see. what comes out of other improprieties related to china, but i can tell you this, but the chinese spent a lot of money trying to influence joe biden through hunter biden. i think that is something that will come out eventually. we don't have the details at this point, but clearly, the chinese are going to make a run at the biden administration. they want to go back to the business as usual of the previous republican and democratic administration. i think it's going to be difficult to do that. there not clear on how

biden administration will handle china. initially, joe biden very early in the presidential race came out and said we can't compete with china, they are really nice guys. quickly backed off of that and realize that china is a big issue, was a big issue in the presidential campaign. his new position is that the united states needs to win the competition with china. we will see whether or not the biden administration can do that. and a lot will depend on the officials he picks for the key policy positions. >> a question from twitter this morning from doug who writes in, what effect has trump's isolationist policy and withdrawal from developing countries had on china's ascendance across the globe? they: well, i don't think have had an isolationist policy. they have had what they call the america first policy. it idea behind that is that goes back many, many years that

nations don't have friends, nation cap interests. interests america's way above foreign interests and i know that this is going to be a debate in the biden administration. one of the relationship of the united states should have with other countries around the world? it will be interesting to see whether the america first policy will be completely undone by a biden administration or whether key elements especially as it relates to keeping jobs in the united states, bringing manufacturing back to the united states. host: reidsville wisconsin, this is patty, democrat. caller: thank you for the reporting. it might be interesting to list how many of our companies are dependent upon china for their manufacturing, but how do we separate the humanity from the bad actors? and what are we doing as a nation that might not be quite reputable?

thank you for your response. guest: well, you know, america is not perfect but i think it is the best system anywhere in the world. it has produced the most incredible wealth in human history, and this is, i think the united states has led the way in creating what we have today. look at any communist system around the world. there's no communist system anywhere that has produced nearly what the united states has. and yet, china is trying to pretend that it is a quasi-capitalist marketplace when in fact, we see under its nping,t dictator xi xi they are actually moving closer to more state-controlled over what were some quasi-independent businesses. i hope that answers the question. host: talking about listing some of the influences, i want to go back to richard herman's question and washington times

this is what he writes. china has purchased 2000 u.s. companies including those incenses areas like aerospace to gain foothold in technology and influence. inhave supply chains tied up china, 97% of our anabiotic's come from china. the rareplied 80% of earth minerals which are necessary for the function of smartphones, military hardware, and other modern technologies. the u.s. does not have any such mind to open. the things that happened under the trump that committeeis on foreign investment in the united states is strengthening. group thatteragency really examines foreign purchases for national security applications. clearly, there have been a lot

of chinese investments in the united states in u.s. companies. the pentagon is keenly aware of the supply chain issues and the rare earth issues, that is the mineral that are used to make high-technology components. they are doing things to try and protect that. years, we have let our guard down. we have totally integrated with communist china. again, goingis, back to the late 80's where china was not a threat, it is not a threat, they kept insisting that china posed no threat to us. and then even a certain point they said we want a strong china. was really a huge mistake for the united states to do this. now we are reevaluating all of that and we are trying to protect ourselves in terms of economic trade. host: about 10 minutes left this

morning. we have been talking about as well, "deceiving the sky: inside communist china's rise global supremacy." this is eric, a republican, good morning. democrat, no, i'm a thank you for taking my call. amazing to me that this gentleman has so fixated on the bidens that he did not answer the question that the young lady just acting -- ask him about president trump's daughter with her patterns. are you investigating them? it is amazing to me. bidenght think that joe in china,and agreed and if that is so, president trump definitely did. please answer the question about her daughter and her company. what: well, i don't know ivanka trump's investments in china are. years,t was that for 40

both democrats and republicans have ignored the china threat and just said don't worry about how it will impact manufacturing and jobs in the united states. that was a mistake, that is the point i was making. we need to reevaluate that investment on both sides of the aisle and we need to start focusing on what we can do to fix our system here. host: pennsylvania, good morning. caller: i have a lot to say and a short time to get there. with all the circumstantial evidence coming out right now, there's only three factions that have benefited from this pandemic. one is thea, democratic party, and third is the bidens. i am glad there are people on here who are starting to realize

that. i've been saying it for months. i don't know how we are going to stop them. our government is rotten to the core and the swamp is a lot deeper then mr. trump said it was. god bless america. that: well, i would add part of the problem has been the u.s. media in my business. they have not reported aggressively on china with a few exceptions. i think there been a lot of pay to the newt, york times. i don't think the new york times has written a single story on the swalwell-china influence case. that kind of shows you the kind of pro-china bias that we've seen a lot of the u.s. media.

i would make that point. host: lee in pennsylvania, independent, good morning. caller: thank you for having me. i'm a masking occasions professor and have been for 20 years. and i wanted to make a comment about what you were saying about china in higher education and i've taught all over the country, i have taught in texas and north carolina, california, florida, all sorts of different places and universities, colleges. small colleges. in i can confirm to you that research one institutions, specifically in the area of e-commerce, public relations and marketing, as well as integrated systems such as management of information systems, and interdisciplinary areas that are

technology-related, areas where you see a lot of faculty coming in and teaching from communist china and have those experiences. i would like to get to your commentary on some of the facts. i wanted to hear you talk a little bit more about what you've researched in higher education regarding that, please. thank you. guest: sure. i would make the point that china has a program they call made in china 2025. the point of this program is to go out not just of the united states, but to other countries of the world and try to gather both expertise in terms of people as well as information and technology and bring it back to china. and i think that we've seen, i've seen a number of justice department prosecutions of academics who have been co-opted by this program. they've taken large amounts of money and the chinese are

spending upwards of $500,000 per year on a particular professor or some researcher who has access to the kind of information that china wants. and it is a major problem. the other thing i would point out which i haven't talked about is the chinese confucius institute. of stencil -- obstenvstencil he sively buying their access onto campus and a lot of universities became addicted to this chinese money and in so censor they had to self- by not criticizing china's human rights record like the imprisonment over one million in western china. the trump administration has really gone after these institutes.

they are again kind of a stalking horse for a lot of these technology collection programs. ofy've convinced a lot universities to separate from the confucius institute. dayton ohio, this is mark, a democrat, good morning. caller: i would like to know what it ordinary american can do to counter chinese influence in america. thank you. guest: well, it's a good question. it is really a top-down problem. when you are dealing with a nation like china, i think the best thing that people can do is to press for clear answers and information so that when you have a situation like eric swalwell who was compromised by a chinese spy, that we get for answers from our elected officials and government officials. that it is not allowed to be swept under the rug by saying this is all classified information and we can talk about it.

let's make some of this information public. we know that there is a lot of cases out there, but a lot of times the government is reluctant to reveal what it knows about the activities and operations of the chinese in the united states. there needs to be a much greater effort. as far as the media goes, they need to start covering these issues any much more aggressive way. at theell you that washington times, i am almost dedicated full-time to reporting on chinese security and intelligence-related issues. host: time for one more call, this is kelly in washington, independent. caller: can you hear me? host: yes, sir. caller: hello, thank you. sorry, i'veto say, got another call here. thanks for being on the platform here and expressing your views. and, uh. sorry, losing my train of

thought. it is really disappointing that i have to listen to fox news all the time to hear anything about china and you have a point, the media is not really covering china that much at all. but i just want to get your aspect on china's influence in, say, latin america and south america. i know they are trying to have a big influence there. thanks. host: two minutes left, go ahead. guest: again, the chinese are on the move. they have something called the belton road initiative which is an infrastructure development program. again, it has been used as a deception effort by the communist party of china. they go into countries in africa, latin america, south asia, and they say we want to build a railroad for you, and we will even finance it for you. and then they give them the financing at exorbitant interest rates. then the government says we can pay for this and they say well,

now it's ours. and they take over. they've done that any number of countries and what i see them doing is in the developing world, kind of doing encircling strategy around the more developed nations of the world so they can build up their influence. there's also a military component to this, they are ses,loping a network of ba commercial ports and access agreements with countries that china could use for military operations the future. again, our intelligence agency told us for years that china had no global military ambitions, only wanted to take over taiwan. now we see that they have global ambition, to basically take over the world. host: national security correspondent for the washington times. the book again, "deceiving the sky: inside communist china'

coming up wednesday morning, advancing health equity founder and how to build public confidence in them, particularly in communities of color. and then the yell university american history professor on the history of divisive presidential elections in the u.s. and parallels between this past election and the election of 1860 which led to the civil war. watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 p.m. is turn on wednesday morning. be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. >> a day after the electoral college confirmed joe biden as the next president of the united states, mitch mcconnell

biden'sdged mr. presidential win. >> over the last four years, our country has benefited from a presidential term filled with major compliments. president donald trump has repeatedly surprised skeptics, confounded his critics and delivered significant policy victories that have strengthened our country. case in point. back in may, when the president set the goal of finding a of this and a buddy end year, his timeline was literally dismissed by people who assumed they knew better. quote, trump comes his -- promises coronavirus vaccines by the end of the year, one headline scoffed. fact-check complained

coronavirus could come this year , trump says. experts say he needs a miracle to be right. ". with the genius of science, support from congress and the bold leadership of the trumpet administration, that medical miracle arrived right on schedule. americans on the front lines are receiving vaccinations as we speak. this episode offers a kind of microcosm of the last four years. from many subjects economic prosperity to foreign to protecting american families, the skeptics doubted him. the critics divided him. but president trump has delivered. when president trump ran for office, he promised to help open a new chapter for working families.

after eight years of failed policies and concentrated wealth and optimism among the lucky few, prosperity was going to flow to all kinds of in all bec. ctly what happened. before this pandemic spread from china and the world had to slam on the brakes, the american people had the best job market in living memory. with help of the policies from president trump and republicans in congress, american workers dynamited the stagnation that experts had said was the new normal. unemployment hit a 50-year low, capital markets hit record highs. at this time all kinds of americans got to share in the gains. we saw earnings grow faster for workers than for managers, faster for the bottom 25 than for the top 25. this success was fueled in part

by the policy leadership of president trump. this administration pursued bold regulatory changes. once in a generation tax reform had eluded prior leaders. this president signed it into law in his first year. together we repealed the unfair obamacare, the mandate was zeroed out. he strengthened the future of the trade with the world. he secured the historic mexico-canada agreement and the bilateral tax treaties with partners in europe and in asia. a nation this productive needs plenty of energy to keep it going. fortunately president trump and his administration ended the ideological war on fossil fuels

and hit the accelerator on all of the above energy dominance. in the last four years we suppressed saudi arabia in -- surpassed saudi arabia in oil production, we saw energy exports exceed energy imports for the first year in almost 70 years. we saw co2 emissions fall along with other harmful pollutants. that energy independence has dramatically strengthened our hand with respect to the rest of the world, particularly the middle east. so speaking of the middle east, president trump wasted little time pulling back from the prior administration's disastrous iran deal. his team eliminated daylight between us and israel and repaired our relationships with arab partners. and he aligned these relationships around our common

shared interests, countering threats like radical islamic terrorists and iranian aggression. under president trump's command, our forces took terrorist leaders like baghdady and qasem soleimani off the battle field. the previous caliphate on the previous president's watch -- this led to the islamic accord that included u.a.e., bahrain, sudan and most recently morocco and the potential is there for more on the horizon. now the middle east isn't the only place where the trump administration has shored up our footing on the world stage. our 45th commander in chief set out to rebuild and modernize our military from a chapter of

weakness and apology into a renewed posture of strength. four years later we have a new national defense are strategy to compete with and deter adversaries like russia and china, we have rebuilt the military and invested in new technologies to enhad sure that america keeps our edge in everything from cyber to space to advanced weapons systems. nd the president's leadership has not stopped with those who are currently serving. he signed into law the historic v.a. mission act to ensure our dedication to the men and women in uniform does not end when their tours conclude. clearly, madam president, the list of american accomplishments since 2016 is nearly endless. there are the many miles of new protections on our southern border. at one time our apprehensions at

the border hit the lowest levels since the 1907's. essential causes like religious liberty and the unborn have had a champion in this administration instead of an adversary. there have been historic new steps to conserve our national treasures like the great american outdoors act. and perhaps most important of all, president trump nominated and this senate confirmed three outstanding supreme court justices along with more than 220 more article 3 federal judges. these are brilliant, young, constitutionalists, men and women in life-time appointments who will renew the judiciary for a generation all because president trump knows that we need judges that will fit the third branch of government. so, as you can see, madam president, it will take far more than one speech to catalog all

the major wins that the trump administration has helped to deliver for the american people. the outsider who swore he was shake up washington and lead our country to new accomplishments both at home and abroad proceeded to do exactly that. president trump and vice president mike pence deserve our thanks and our gratitude for their tireless work and their essential roles in all of these victories and in many more. six weeks ago the -- americans voted in this year's general election. the legal and constitutional process has continued to play out since then. yesterday electors met in all 50 states so as of this morning our country has officially a president-elect and a vice

president-elect. many of us hoped that the presidential election would yield a different result, but our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on january 20. the electoral college has spoken. so today i want to congratulate president-elect joe biden. the president-elect is no stranger to the senate. he's devoted himself to public service for many years. i also want to congratulate the vice president-elect, our colleague from california, senator harris. beyond our differences, all americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president-elect for the very first time. i look forward to finishing our the next 36 days strong with president trump. our nation needs us to add another bipartisan chapter to this record of achievement.

>> c-span's washington journal. every day, we take your calls live on the air about the news of the day and we discussed policy issues that impact you. morning, dr.nesday luta blackstock on covenant in vaccines and how to build public confidence in them, particularly in communities of color and then david blight on the history of u.s.ive elections in the and the election of 18 sister was led to the civil war. watch c-span's washington journal, five at 7:00 p.m. eastern. be sure to join the discussion with your text messages and tweets.