how the presidency has become too powerful. sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning. welcome to washington journal. a hack has had the federal government with security officials saying foreign hackers have been plundering u.s. security networks since march. private companies, as well as the pentagon, commerce department, treasury and u.s. nuclear laboratories have been breached. there is also indication state-level data has been affected as well. russiay experts suggest may be behind the attack with the joe biden saying he plans to

impose substantial -- on those responsible. what do you think about officials warning a grave risk is coming after the cyber attacks? republicans, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, you can call 202-748-8002. you can always text us at 202-748-8003. and we are always on social media on twitter and on facebook @facebook.com/c-span. the news came out yesterday on the massive hack into u.s. agouti networks. the new york times reports a. -- reports the story like this. the one he went out thursday that hackers working for the

kremlin used a far wider variety of tools known to penetrate government systems. the said the fiber -- said offensive was a great risk to the government. scopescovery suggests the of the hacking extends beyond the pentagon, treasury and commerce department systems and complicates the challenge for federal investigators as they try to assess the damage and understand what has been stolen. after the statement from the cybersecurity arm of cybersecurity, president-elect joe biden warrant his administration would impose costs on those responsible. a good defense is not enough, we need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking cyber attacks in the first place, he said. "i one not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation." this comes out yesterday as the

news of all of the major cyber attacks going on against the u.s. government and private companies. now some democrats and republicans are now complaining that president donald trump is not moving forward or is not talking about this massive attack on the u.s. government. the washington post talks about it like this. "the president's silence about an attack on the u.s. government marks the latest example of his reluctance to to criticize russia. u.s. intelligence agencies have accused them of interfering in the 2016 election to help donald trump. throughout his presidency, he has contradicted his own government's findings about the hacking in the election and disinformation efforts. he has accepted russian president vladimir putin's words that moscow was blameless."

presidential"the thenee -- romney, presidential nominee says, "what i find most astonishing is a cyber hack of this nature is the modern equivalent of russian bombers flying undetected over the entire country." he said in an interview with siriusxm's chief washington correspondent, "our national security is a vulnerable and in this setting, not to have the white house aggressively protesting and taking action is really quite extraordinary." once again, the information came russianhursday that a suspected hacker or hackers had penetrated much of the u.s. government's security agencies, including the pentagon,

including the commerce department, including the treasury department, and some of the u.s. nuclear laboratories as well. once again, we want to know what you think about these cyber attacks, which officials are warning provide a great risk to the united states. for republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. we want to know what you think. let's start with anne in clarksburg, west virginia. ed, good morning. caller: i think it is a good idea to bring it to our attention, but think they are only doing half of it. what about all the attacks from china, the stuff they are doing? i think that should be discussed this morning, not just the one. host: the u.s. government has

said in some of their security efforts, the experts have said that this particular cyberattack has been linked to the kremlin. what do you think should be done, to figure out who did this, first of all, and what should be done once we know who it is? caller: i cannot understand why this country is not able to put blocks up on anything like that. i do not understand, with all of our knowledge of electronics, why this stuff is open. should benk it morning, thats both of these countries, china and russia, they want us out of the way, believe me. that's my comment. host: barney on the democratic

line, calling from florida. are you there? caller: yes. host: go ahead. caller: what did president trump say about it? he will be quiet again since putin has so much on him? i do not think we will hear anything about that, all about the voter fraud. host: what do you think president trump should say? caller: you should make a statement. -- he should have made a statement. the last statement he made a putin was he believed putin before our own intelligence. isn't this ridiculous? host: what do you think president-elect joe biden should be doing? caller: he is not the president yet. this is put all on donald trump. everything is under trump until january. when barack obama was in

office, they did not want to go over bush. host: here is a little bit from the hill that quotes the original report from reuters. reutersirst reported -- first reported that they had hacked into the treasury department, the department of homeland security, the commerce department, the national information administration. isever, they say that what likely is even more catastrophic. on a post on monday, it included all five branches of treasury, the postal service and 425 of the fortune 500 companies in the u.s. the washington post reported that military intelligence in russia, known as cozy bear, was behind the attack on solar wind.

the group was previously tied to an attack on the state department and groups doing research on covid-19 vaccines and treatments. new federal agency has publicly confirmed this group was responsible. once again, we want to know what you think. calling fromames, tucson, arizona on the republican line. caller: how are you doing out there? host: go ahead. caller: we did have every federal law enforcement agency tracking these guys down, in china, and -- our national security. the is going on with agencies trying to get to the bottom of this and stop the infiltration of our money, our defense and what we can do to make things better? nobody is on the ball. they are all drinking their

coffee. they are watching their television and not even thinking. host: what should we be doing? what should the american government be doing as retaliation for this cybersecurity attack? enemy isell, the invisible. we have to check these guys down, anyway, anyhow. the cybersecurity that we have, anybody can google it and find out what they want to know on the computer. and basically have everything hacked. my phone is hacked. every time i talk on it, it listens to what i am saying, or sees what i am saying. everybody has the video cameras everywhere, trying to do something with people who steal and take things from you. it's crazy.

everybody thinks we are all being videotaped and monitored. when actually, if you look around, there is nothing there but our surroundings. we need to keep this thing together within america. we have covid-19. ok, nobody is telling anybody about hydrochloric clan. -- hydrochloric when. hydrochloriquin. if you get an infection, hello. get antibiotics. they see it is a virus, you cannot do anything about it, but you can do something about it. you can take my let's try this, you can say, hey, let's try this. try any antibiotic, like

amoxicillin. host: while we are talking about this cybersecurity hack, there are other issues in washington as well. let's go to lindsay mcpherson, a senior reporter, to tell us about what is going on with the latest in the covid-19 relief bill and government funding legislation. good morning. good morning. we will come back to her in a moment. let's get more of your calls about the cyber attacks on the united states. let's go to marcus on the democratic line. good morning. caller: thank you for c-span. i would like to look at this from an infrastructure point of view. when you're on a government computer, some of the computers,

they are more classified, but many times they use the same bandwidth and hard wires that are connected to the regular internet. you can get onto internet explorer on most government computers. but even on classified computers, they have the same wireless network. and i think we need to have a complete separate network for the government computers, where they are hard lined to land. where the lines go to a different system. not have them accessible, set of china manages to attack the software, the hardware is completely 100% american. president trump talks about building a wall, we need to build a firewall around our networks to enhance national security. it's something that could put many americans to work. ourof our critical systems,

social security numbers, everything that is critical, everything that china wants to get their hands on, national security, the cia, the agencies, all of them go on this, we would be in a better position because you can hack, if the network is connected to china, all that data can go to china. if it is an american network, let's put america first and separate the networks. let's go back to our a roll callsey, senior reporter to find out what is going to happen in congress today with the covid-19 relief bill and government funding legislation. good morning. guest: good morning. host: we know that government funding runs out tonight at midnight. and americans are waiting to see what is going to happen with a

deal on covid relief. where are we in negotiations so far today? guest: we do not have a deal yet. we are waiting on leadership to finalize the details and they have been working on for days, with nancy pelosi, mccarthy, mitch mcconnell, and schumer, they have been negotiating. they keep saying they are close, but then we hear about disputes. so everyone was hoping for a deal by last night. now we are all hoping for a deal today, but the time i keeps flipping and at the funding does run out today at midnight. and there is not even a plan at this moment for a continuing resolution to buy more time. so there could be a partial funding labs over the weekend. they could still attempt to pass a resolution today to add more days. or to extend the deadline.

but they might have issues with that without a deal. o there is a lot of uncertainty going into this final day. host: if they do not get a c.r. today, what would happen if they could not reach a funding agreement? guest: typically, the office of management and budget will not immediately shut down the government if they think something is coming, and if they think an agreement is close. if the lawmakers are able to get something done this weekend, one, a lot of government operations do not work on the weekends, most employees work on weekdays. there could be some things impacted, but they could say let's hold off, we are expecting funding to come in the next two days.

bu that ist only tenable for a few days. if they do not get it moving, they would have to have the deal for that level of confidence to exist, to avoid major shutdown operations. we could start preparing for a shutdown on monday. host: what are the sticking points that are keeping video from being made? guest: there are a couple things we have been hearing about. democrats aree still trying to push for emergency assistance to state and local governments, even though they had agreed to drop a proposal for direct aid, a bipartisan group came up with a proposing $160 billion in direct aid. and they had agreed to set aside, along with liability protection for businesses. the democrats are still looking to provide -- and we heard as

low as $1 billion and as high as $90 billion, through other means. and they have talked about fema the states could tap in case of emergency, like a disaster, or coronavirus related funds. republicans are frustrated. the democrats had agreed to drop state and local aid, and they are trying to find a backdoor into getting some state and local aid. -- as ofsterday yesterday, it was unresolved. another issue was federal lending, the programs they set up under the march cares act are expiring at the end of the year. democrats want to extend the lending program. republicans would like to roll back the lending from the fed,

particularly senator toomey pushing to end the programs as well. it is a big priority for the republicans and democrats have not agreed to that, as far as we know. one final dispute we heard about yesterday as well is they had not agreed to the structure, the rental assistance, whether if they would people be people to pay rent, whether it would go to states or a program set up under the housing department, as well. and the dispute is if you do a about thegram, what eviction moratorium? democrats want both. republicans think you do not need both in the bill. that is all of yesterday. host: where is the covid relief bill and what are the sticking points on that? are those two bills connected? or are there separate

negotiations going on? guest: right. no, the leadership has pretty much agreed to the ominous bill days ago. adjustments,aking they might be fine-tuning the language, but there are some, you know, overlap with some of the funding from different agencies, tweaks, but they largely have agreement on that. that's not really the issue. the reason they have not released it yet is they wanted released age package with a, so hopefully it will happen soon. host: any idea who is doing negotiations on each side? is the white house involved in any way? guest: the main people are those i mentioned, speaker pelosi and chuck schumer for the democrats, , theitch mcconnell majority leader in the senate,

and kevin mccarthy for the republicans. the administration has been involved, mainly through steven mnuchin, who has been involved in the calls with the leaders, looking over the papers as well. i do not know how much trump has been involved. i think he has been getting updates. i'm sure he will weigh in once there is a deal, as he usually does, but i do not think he has been directly involved. host: best guess of when all of this will be resolved one way or the other? are we looking at a shutdown coming? are we looking at the relief bill coming before christmas? guest: i think it will be resolved before christmas, certainly, but people will want to get home for the holidays, and hopefully -- usually with a funding deadline, like we had last friday -- like we had last friday, forces action. but since we have not seen

action, the prospect of being in congress on christmas will force a deal. my best guess is they hopefully have a deal today and they get it passed through congress by sunday or monday. seyt: we want to thank lind for coming on with us and talking us through the covid-19 relief bill and the government funding legislation. thank you so much for your time. guest: thank you. host: we are talking this morning about the cyber attacks that were revealed by the u.s. government on thursday. we want to know what you think about it. politico has a story about the cyber attacks that points out one of the more serious parts of what is going on. i will show you some paragraphs. "the energy department and national nuclear security administration, which maintains the nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers

accessed their networks as part of an espionage operation that has affected at least a half dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said. and othery, the doe officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to congressional bodies after being briefed by the chief information officer at doe. they found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the federal energy regulatory commission, the loss almost national laboratories, the office of secure transportation, and the richland field office of the doe. the hackers have been able to do more damage than the other agencies and officials have evidence of highly malicious activity, the official said, but did not a library." once again, that is talking about the great risk that

officials are talking about after the cyber attacks on the united states. let's go back to the phone lines and talk with stacy from virginia on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. good morning, america. i do not believe we were hacked. you cannot hack something that you are invited into. i believe that agent orange, donald trump, allowed the russians to hack our government services as a spite, just like moscow mitch mcconnell was blocking cybersecurity bills up ago, maybe if you months until he finally gave money, but he was the main one. to stay in power, these republicans will do anything, and that includes betray the united states of america and our institutions. we should not have people in government who are antigovernment, who take pledges

from people like roman norquest, who says he wants government small enough to drown it in a tub. for the past four years, we have had putin running our government. people will say, donald trump is so stupid -- he is not stupid, what he has done has been calculating. man, it does not usurp what he has done for the american people. this looks like president putin is inside not only are white house, but inside every government agency and donald trump gave him access because he's angry that he lost and he could not win without putin's help. and because we had a paper trail, it's hard to cheat when you can back it up with paper. host: michael is calling from new york on the republican line. good morning. caller: hi.

want tothe call -- i at thisut the -- and they had aspaper, story that said the chinese government on all we don't know if government is a double agent and had an open server. host: susan on the democrat line. caller: thank you for having me speak. i'm very happy that joe biden was elected. i feel like he is a person that

likes people, that he cares about america, and will do a good job. he is going to appoint people and work with them. he is not going to appoint people, and if he hears something he does not like, try to get them fired. because the cyber attacks are soto right -- just frightening, thank god joe biden is getting in there, but one thing i will take from the past is when donald trump first came in, the first fourth of july after he was in there, a bunch of republican senator's winter rush on the fourth of july to -- i do not know what they were discussing -- but from that isnt on, i thought, 'what going on?' but i am think for that joe biden is there because he will appoint people who know about the subject they will be working

on, not appoint one that knows something about one thing and put them in a job where they will make it worse than what it was before. so i am thankful that we have a president. give biden a chance. there's so much -- wherever you look there's so many opinions, so much controversy. the way that we gave donald trump a chance, give joe biden chance.-- a host: this morning, the vice president, mike pence and karen ance will publicly receive covid-19 vaccine to build confidence among the american people. the vice president and second lady will be joined by the surgeon general, who will also receive the vaccine. this will take place at 8:00 a.m. eastern this morning at the

white house, and we will bring you that live here on c-span. so coming up in about 30 minutes, you can see vice president mike pence, his wife and the surgeon general of the united states get there vaccine against covid-19. we will bring that to you live on c-span. once again, we are talking about the massive cyber attacks that were revealed to the american public yesterday. we want to know what you think about it. jeffrey from greensboro, north carolina on the republican line. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i would like to cooker on -- concur on the reading from politico, the cyberattack was very damaging. this is not fake news. and for the thousands dying a day, we are on top of that.

that president trump, which he w ants to maintain that title, is sacrificing not only your life, american lives, all of this just to stay in power. he has been putting himself out there for the four years he has been there, emulating dictatorship. he is definitely trying to change the narrative of our elections. i pray that does not happen. the caller in virginia hit it right on. everything he is doing with the silence, with the corona, how dare any of them make a decision to say that the suffering of more, of the homeless in people who do not have a possibility of helping themselves, can not even -- it should have been done two days ago, the agreement for a stimulus bill.

and i listen to newscasts they talk about the great achievements of america, the celebrated this year some grand -- oh my god -- went to some probe on its way to mars, that cost more than what they are trying to put on for stimulus, but they can celebrate sending something to another planet with trillions of dollars involved -- who is going to pay for that? the people need the money. the discoveries of the covert disease need to be taken care of and president trump has lost legit. host: we will go to a caller on the democratic line. george, good morning. caller: how are you today? again, on the cyberattack, i believe that since president fired so degraded and many people in the security operations of the united states,

he has done things that have w k much that we have these outside people trying to come into our country through the internet. few callsth the man a ago about the firewall, that a wall on the border will not stop people from coming in, when you can penetrate the system through the internet. they need to put a firewall up, get people back into the security position so they can protect our country. at i think that he is just at point where he is selling out the u.s. he sold us out a long time ago. it's all about the money. that is all it is. and him being able to stay in power. it's not about the people, it's not about the country. it's about him and the money. host: david is calling from

auburn, new york on the republican line. caller: good morning. alllast four calls were democrats by the way. there must be a phone bank out there. am i still on? host: yes, go ahead. caller: i am sorry, i know the lag. every time we get into these conversations, it's conspiracy. ourrally, it's been henfidence -- the cia, t security agencies at that are supposed to be looking out for this, and obviously they are either incompetent or they have an overwhelming problem and they can't. as far as russian collusion. we have had four years of trying to prove that and could not prove it. --anything president trump

anything, president trump was stronger against the russians than obama. he give weapons to the -- i cannot think of it -- to ukraine. he gave them some real tools. and i just do not see this russian collusion thing. and it all falls in donald trump's lap. all these agencies were colluding against the president. -- of --they caught the name escapes me, but these things are going on. i think it is as much incompetence as anything else. to lay it all on trump is wrong. that's all i have to say. host: the new york times laid howwhat was discovered and it is affecting the country in a story today. i will read some to you.

"the government warning issued by the security agency did not detail the new ways the hackers got into the government system, but confirmed suspicions at this week by fire eye, a cybersecurity firm, that there were other routes that the attackers had found to get into networks in which the day-to-day business of the united states depends. fire eye was the first that suspected russian hackers. they have affected the software updates issued by a company called solar wind, which makes critical network monitoring software used by the government, hundreds of fortune 500 companies and oversee their critical infrastructure, including the power grid. officials say they believe the goal of the russian attack was traditional espionage, the kind that the national security agency and others regularly

conduct on foreign networks. but the depth of the hacking raised concerns that hackers could ultimately use their access to shutter american systems, corrupt or destroy data, or take command of computer systems that run industrial processes. so far, there has been no evidence of that happening." we want to know what you think about the officials warning of a grave risk after cyber attacks on the u.s. government. let's see what social media followers are saying. here is a post from facebook that says, "it sounds like the 't'administration was asleep at the switch. intentional?" ssia putshat says, "ru bounties on our soldiers' heads, donald trump is silent. warehouses because the administration will not tell them where to send them: donald

trump concentrates on his lame coup d'etat, people are dying." "it falls on the president, the president is supposed to protect the country but he is pushing false narratives, russia had a way in. they are trying to deflect to flies with theo president of the united states." "our country is seeing what happens when you elect people like our current president. he believes putin over our security people. national security is essential like never before." another post talks about how "ou r elections are safe from being hacked but i nuclear arsenal isn't." "this is why russia got involved to begin with. they knew that donald trump's administration would be chaotic, not to mention our country would become divided. the fact that trump administered

has been silent is extraordinary." we want to know what you think about the official warning of a grave risk to the united states after these cyber attacks. racquel in hartford, connecticut on the democratic line. good morning. caller: thank you for allowing me to talk. i just wanted to mention on theng that was washington journal. party sad to see how each is talking controversy about each other. i think that this should stop. no matter which party comes in, we need to concentrate on helping the community, the people in the united states. i came to america when i was a teenager. citizen.merican

i love this country. i do not want to see it going down. as far as cyber attacks, this is a very serious thing. we need to find out who is doing that. that's for the safety of our country, including the people who live in the country. it's so sad in my heart to see that some president would not investigate and make them accountable, if they really know who did it. and i am going to welcome the newly elected president. and i hope he does a good job. and i hope that the republicans do not say no, we will not vote for that because he is a democrat. callingt's go to david from burlison, texas on the republican line. good morning. caller: are you there? host: go ahead.

caller: thank you for having me on. yes, i am very concerned and in awe of how utterly stupid and thatcated and such cowards americans are that y'all don't -- ist: let's go to margie who calling from philadelphia, pennsylvania on the democrat line. good morning. caller: i wanted to comment on the senators that went to russia when donald trump was first elected. all of this was a set up. ghy are the senators so backin donald trump with everything they own. because they know what is about to come down. and as far as the attacks going on, iran and russia are probably involved. donald trump killed off iran's top people and he thought they would not do anything about it,

ok. trump has fired top people in the pentagon. i guarantee before he leaves office he will call martial law on the united states. he never respected us and he does not give a damn, and he will do it, watch. host: let's go to tina on the independent line, calling from pittsburgh, pennsylvania. caller: good morning. yes, i wanted to make a comment on a prior caller. i do believe donald trump is involved in leading russia into our security because like the lady stated just now, he fired at the pentagon people and he also fired that christopher kratz with cybersecurity. and i see that he is weakening the whole government. and he is also trying to make the administration, when joe biden walks in, that everything

will be falling apart. so i really feel that this was very damaging to the united states. and i believe the administration now, with donald trump and all of his people, that they do not care about the american people. and they are, like the lady stated, that they are destroying the united states. and this was a serious thing that happened, the cyberattack. host: let's go to george, who is also calling from pittsburgh on the republican line. good morning. caller: morning. dh, i think that joe biden sai whoever did this, they will have to pay. everybody iss that complaining about how much money we will have to spend. about black people, how reparations?

they want to spend money for repairing the damage that the cyber is going to do, but they do not want to repair or give the help that will take them out of debt. that does not make sense to me. especially when you want to talk about america as preventing the tranquility -- yeah, sure, we believe that. tor a more perfect union -- cu me a break. everybody is squabbling over money. so, i agree with biden. know, who liberated the damage, they will have to pay for it. i agree that reparations should be paid, because black people should receive reparations for the work that they put out to create the wealth in the first

place. payment onceeived slavery was over, even a portion, but they didn't. they put us in debt. host: george talked about the fact that joe biden has been clear about the cyber attacks. i want to read the statement that he actually put out on this. "i want to be clear, my administration will make cybersecurity a top priority at every level of government. and we will make dealing with this a top priority from the moment we take office. we will elevate cybersecurity as an imperative across the government, further partnerships with the private sector, and expand our investments in infrastructure and people we need to defend against cyber attacks. a good defense is not enough, we need to disrupt and deter our

adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place. we will do that by, among other things, including substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with. our allies and partners our adversaries should know that as president i will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assault on our nation." that was a statement from president-elect joe biden yesterday on the cyber assault on the u.s. government. let's go back to our phone lines to see what you think about the cyber attacks. carrie is calling from north carolina on the democratic line. terry, good morning. caller: i am excited to be on c-span. i'm calling in regards to the cyber attacks. i am 50 and i have never been so scared in my country as i have been the last four years, i feel unsafe with donald trump as our president and this attack reminds me of the days in the early 1980's, and the tv show

"the day after" came out about nuclear war. it scares me to know that the government was affected. i have never trusted donald trump and regards during nuclear arsenal. however, this does not surprise me, as donald trump is on his way out the door. i believe the person he works for, putin, i believe he will work extra hard on these last days for russia and i believe he has been working on their behalf the entire time to destroy our country. i believe the republican supporters of donald trump, and the citizens of our country that support donald trump, have allowed this to go on. i have never understood why anybody would vote for donald trump or at this point be a republican. the entire party is made up of traders that commit treason. aitors that commit treason. host: william on the independent line. caller: let's go back to the

early 2000's, when companies had their own internets, when you only spoke to computers within your company. now when you look at it and you start seeing, like, wire companies now talking to their other businesses in the state, the u.s. and then the world? now you have your iphones. so, your iphones are not connected to your systems from anywhere in the world. this is not anything to be worried about, this is to be expected. i was laughing in the early 2000, like, this is going to happen down the road. stop being concerned, have a conversation in a restaurant and people over here it. it will happen as long as you have software companies that there are very few now, in the past you had small companies that made software.

a couple companies. or you had internal computer people making software for their own companies. but now, all of that is gone. now there is very little difference when you use these big packages. that is why it got hacked. because you have a large company who anyone can get their software, learn it -- so russia can learn their software. all of the u.s. is using it in their government. it's nothing to worry about, it is just going to happen. host: stephen is calling from fort lauderdale, florida on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. happy holidays to everyone. it's a simple equation. donald trump has weakened every faction of our government and our enemies see that we are weak. ourwith russia being

biggest foe, they have taken advantage of it. eost: let's go to denis calling from california on the republican line. caller: yes, i want to know if i can finish my statement, or are you going to hang up on me? host: it depends how long you will take. go ahead. caller: i want to say that this is ridiculous. arepeople and the democrats trying to push the store donald trump. you talk about the economic, the world economic forum, the united nations, like they did with the simulated pandemic, and a couple months later the pandemic shows up. they also did one on a cyberattack, recently. that what is happening -- that is what is happening now. the great reset, it is all about

one world government, and you have a lineup of callers calling in -- callingt's go to daniel from birmingham, alabama on the independent line. good morning. caller: how are you doing? host: fine. go ahead. caller: i feel like a lot of this stuff is because he lost the election and he is mad. war for nong a reason. he is upset because he lost. that's all i have to say. host: mike from west virginia on the democratic line. good morning. caller: yes, i would like to say one thing. this is not as grave as everybody thinks. is think the united states -

going to let our total security be compromised by russia? in the 1960's, i worked for norad for 18 months. and at that time, there was no social media like there is now, everything on espionage was by spying. you had to be extremely careful, even with people you worked with. let me say this, the president is not given access to everything that goes on in the country, only two things he has a need to know for, just like anybody in his cabinet. so let's not undersell our country. our country is very secure. when i was working at norad, the information given out is what we wanted to give out, not where they wanted. i think there may have been cybersecurity attacks, but i do not want to undersell our country. thing, donald trump

is a lying, draft dodging coward. host: let's see what social media followers are saying about the cybersecurity hack. saysis a text that whistleblowers spoke out on the discrepancies that leave us vulnerable. donald trump went a step further by dismantling everything put in place to solve vulnerabilities. another text that says i do not understand how all the blame can be put on president trump. this is a high-tech world we live in. if there is a breach, i am confident elected officials will investigate and take appropriate action. long overdue "it's to fix our internet and build a firewall to protect information.

the government has been aware of the need for several years. shame on congress and our president for letting this happen." and one last text, "i'm concerned we have so many areas of the government using the same vulnerable software and i want to know where it comes from." let's see if we can get more calls before the top of the hour. i want to remind you as well that at 8:00 a.m. eastern, vice president mike pence, the second lady karen pence, and jerome adams, the surgeon general, will receive covid-19 vaccines live here on c-span from the white house. the three of them will take their vaccines live to promote the safety of the new coronavirus vaccine. once again, you can see it here live starting at 8:00 a.m. we will go to that so you can see the vice president take his

coronavirus vaccine live on air. let's go back to our phone lines and talk with bill, calling from florida on the republican line. bill, good morning. caller: how are you doing? thank you for taking my call. notnt to say that this is just cybersecurity, i think it is the issue of the people who got hacked, their systems were not up to par. i think that donald trump is keeping the country safe. and i am worried about what will happen with joe biden coming in and at the policies and they want to enact. i think it will get worse. i think he is in the pocket of china. and we need to step up her game all aspects of our security in the new administration. with donald trump come we never had to worry about it. he got us out of wars. this was not his fault. i think he is the greatest of

all time. thank you for taking my call. host: let's go to nathan from clearwater, florida on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to say god bless america. i hope that we have a safe, covid free christmas and holidays, coming into the new year. real quick, i want to ask the american people who voted for donald trump, where is he at? we have a cyberattack, we have a pandemic in the country, we have not heard nothing other than our elections are fake. if i was a fly on the wall, i am willing to bet that he's in the white house saying the cyberattack is a hoax. and for the republicans, wake up. it's over and time to move on. god bless america. thank you, c-span, for

everything that you do. i love you guys. host: deborah calling on the democratic line. good morning. caller: hello. host: go ahead. caller: yes, i am calling because i heard the previous caller, nathan, and i agree with everything he said. but my concern is right now, what russia is doing and how president trump is allowing him to do this. they took away all the benefits they gave to the working people, and i feel like they are holding he getsrump, so when out he can pay all the debt he owes. he is doing everything he can to destroy urination. ourwe have -- to destroy nation. and we have mitch mcconnell and other real bookends allowing him to do this -- and other republicans allowing him to do

this. host: let's go to mark calling from massachusetts on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning, thank you. i think that donald trump is an embarrassment and he has exposed us to the coronavirus, when he knew -- he was aware of the possibilities and the other congressional leaders were also aware of it. he left us exposed. didn't the department of treasury get hacked a week ago, before this happened, before the energy department was hacked? this is just -- i have never , you know,osed as even more so than 9/11, the days after 9/11, more vulnerable, because of what this idiot and his enablers have allowed to happen. and kevin mccarthy and all these know,morons up there, you

the chickens are going to come home to roost. i just pray for this country. ist: let's go to brenda, who calling from dublin, georgia on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. i do not see how everybody can put this on trump. it did not just start with the trump administration. thatgoes back years, years this has been going on. it's gotten to the point now that is bad. that's all. host: i want to remind you that coming up at 8:00 a.m. eastern, we will go to the white house to see vice president mike pence take his coronavirus vaccine publicly. that is coming up in a few minutes. let's see if we can squeeze in one more caller. we will go to scott on the

independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. more or less to say i am tired of hearing people talk about the republicans, the democrats, as traitors. did you cut me off? host: no, you are on the air. keep going. caller: thank you. i'm so annoyed because all these cyber attacks are from different countries, not just russia. we have china, north korea. everybody wants to get into our pocket. but to accuse the american people of, the democrats, republicans, of being traitors makes me so mad that those people are ridiculous. callingt's go to ronnie from maryland on the democratic

line. caller: good morning. thank you. i think that the country is in a much better place with joseph biden. we have been so vulnerable since attacks, now we havethings, rur it is too much. steve from reading, pennsylvania on the republican line. caller: yes, i would like to make a comment about the cybersecurity of hours. the climate corporations have to tighten up their cybersecurity when they deal with the government, because that is how they get in. that is how the hackers get in. i want to submit the comment that would be a great idea that the government would check that private corporations they deal system toa secure make sure everything is good.

thank you very much. i love c-span, and have a good day. host: let's go to daniel from brooklyn, new york on the democratic line. morning,ello, good sir. thank you for taking my call. thank god for president trump and operation warp speed. i think he's doing a great job, he is the greatest of all time. that's about it. i feel safe with him in office. charles fromo to new jersey on the independent line. charles, good morning. caller: good morning. -- you havee people to put all that stuff behind us, you have the virus in front of us. you have to take all of the petty stuff, and people are blowing stuff so far out of proportion i don't know what is going on in this country. trump has brought to light

things that have been going on in this government for a long time. if you didn't do anything else he made people aware of a lot of good things that are happening in congress and the senate. good for him with warp speed. i may not even be talking to you right now. host: we will go straight to the white house where vice president mike pence will be taking his coronavirus vaccine publicly on the air right now. we will go right to the white house. immunoany of you compromised or on immuno suppressants?

>> great job. >> before you guys leave today you will be getting a shot record proving that you received the vaccine from us today -- host: we are back. that was vice president mike pence getting his coronavirus vaccine on air along with his wife karen and the surgeon general of the united states, all getting there coronavirus vaccine on air. we will talk about the

nalonavirus and the natio covid vaccination plan efforts. we will talk about this with jim pandemicck, the response and recovery senior vice president for the association of state and territorial health officials. jim, good morning. guest: good morning. understand. let's your title is senior vice president for pandemic response and recovery for the association of state and territorial health officials. tell us exactly what all of that means. guest: i would be pleased to. by its very nature, it is a new job, a new position with the association because of the covid-19 pandemic. with the association for 15 years, responsible for all of the health security activities. but recognizing how significant the pandemic is, not only for

our immediate response, but obviously in the recovery to come, our association felt it would be most appropriate to have a senior executive exclusively dedicated to that effort. we are a national association that has members who are the chief health executive, public health executives of the 50 states, district of columbia, caribbeanpacific and territories. themle is to support individually and with all of the assets the association has to help them with developing and executing sound leadership thetegies, providing necessary technical assistance support they may need, and of course having a strong advocacy program so federal policies, procedures, funding decisions are made in the best interest of

the state and territorial public health agencies and the people they serve. host: tell us what that agency, that association's role is when it comes to the coronavirus vaccine distribution in the united states. guest: sure. there are so many areas we are currently working on and i would like to give you a few examples. first, we find one of our greatest strengths is to be a convene or and coordinator. we have a very elaborate process of convening our members across the country. i believe they reside in 10 different time zones. multiple times a week. this gives them the opportunity to talk amongst themselves with the technical program staff of our association and invited guests, such as leadership and subject matter experts. there are federal agencies such as the cdc and assistant secretary for preparedness response.

for us it is a fairly simple process to convene our members twice a week, but the value is it provides them a safe space to have peer-to-peer conversations where they can strategize, share examples, and sometimes even fightresources and try to the good fight of protecting the public against all sorts of threats, including covid-19. we provide also an extensive portfolio of technical , resources, and documents. i would encourage everyone to -- itour website, www. of whatgood sampling we create for a strategy and to be aware of an execute on a day-to-day basis.

another example, and we will spend a few moments talking about this more specifically is leadership council that we started to convene and cohost with the american pharmacists association. spend a fewto moments giving more detail on that, i would be glad to or we could hold off until later in the program. host: i was literally going to ask you about that next. you're cochair of the newly formed national association covid leadership council. tell us what that is and what organizations are a part of it. this is a self-created self-organized body of 23 national associations that represent a fairly wide spectrum of public health, pharmacy, and pharmacists and supply chain associations. ofy are in that common space

trying to support our respective members in the state, having them execute the responsibility and activities in covid response efforts. on theoup is focused national vaccination campaign. we did this 11 years ago. we had1 years ago when the h1n1 influenza pandemic. the national associations realized while the federal government does a good job organizing themselves in this campaign, having those connections and touch points with the various state partners, but we were missing were the opportunities for the national associations who represent all of the players and active individuals in the jurisdiction who also get together to compare notes, problem solve on areas of mutual interest.

sohave that go to resource if there is a question or issue coming from one of our members and we don't have an answer to it, we now know what other component or sector is responsible for that and would have better resources or information. we have those relationships put in place. we did this 11 years ago, recognizing that the pharmacists and pharmacies across the country were extremely valuable resources to the public health community in administering not only the h1n1 vaccine, but engaging in distributing a lot suchdical countermeasures, as antivirals. that was a successful effort and lesson learned for us as a successful best practice going forward.over the last 10 years we kept those relationships together. to develop and

improve our collective performance activities based on the experiences and observations during the h1n1 pandemic. when covid-19 hit and really started to explode, quite frankly, we said it is time to reconvene this group. level have had a very low level of contact the last 10 years, we never maintained any routine program, contact. we didn't really correspond. we resurrected the group and expanded it. in the 23 organizations, which i will mention in a few moments, clearly addresses the largest players in the public health community, but again the pharmacy/pharmacist community and other health care and supply to really provide this solid format and foundation where the 23 organizations can meet, help each other process some of the challenges and difficulties,

exchange information in a very positive, nonthreatening, noncompetitive environment where it is healthy and a good way to support not only our member base but help advance the mission of operation warp speed. the administration and federal agencies who are working on this particular crisis. to give you a sense of the national associations, for example, i mentioned this group was coke convened and cohosted by astho and the american pharmacist association who have been strong and durable partners . other groups who are part of healthclude america's insurance plan, the american association of colleges and pharmacy, the american immunization registry association, the american medical association, the american society for consultant pharmacists, the american

society for health system pharmacists, the association of immunization managers, big-city health coalitions, the health industry distributors association, the health care distribution lines, health care ready, the immunization action coalition, the national alliance of state pharmacy associations, the national association of boards of pharmacy, the national association chain drugstores, the national association of community health centers, the national association of city and county health officials, the national pharmacists association, the national governors association, the national indian health board, and the national food association. hopefully you can see that the 23 represent a very broad spectrum of national association with the primary focus and mission of making sure our national vaccination campaign is as effective, efficient, safe,

and equitable less possible. that is how we view our contribution to the all of government all of nation effort. host: let me remind our viewers they can take part in this conversation. we are going to open up regional lines for this conversation about the national covid vaccine plan effort. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, eastern or central time zones, you can call in at (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or atific time zones, call in (202) 748-8001. if you are in a medical professional, we will open a special line for medical professionals. we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8002. keep in mind that you can always text at (202) 748-8003. we will always be on social

media at twitter and facebook. expertise,ll of that that brings the next logical question. the covid vaccine started this week. we saw the trucks leave on saturday. they went to nursing homes and cvs is around the nation. how is that process going? man's this is one opinion. from the obviously tracking the media reports and conversations with our members across the , intry since monday morning general i think it is going extremely well. there was a lot of careful, thoughtful planning. it was executed sort of a slow and steady start as far as first week with a limited number of facilities designated in every first launchof the

of vaccines going out. overall, we are getting reports that this week is going basically as planned. a few logistical glitches that may have been encountered seem to have been readily fixed or addressed. i am honored to really follow the piece that you did at the theof the hour with country's leadership getting the vaccine. this is a monumental task that is critically important. week one seems to be very successful and put us in really good position for the weeks and months ahead. host: how are they deciding who gets the first shipment of the vaccine? or example, we are understanding that frontline workers, frontline medical workers, and senior citizens in nursing homes

were the first in line this week. who is making the decision of who comes next? guest: sure. there are 300 million americans and not enough vaccine or manpower to vaccinate everyone at once. a prioritization scheme had to using some really solid and appropriate criteria. the public health agencies basically do matching and allocation, knowing how much material, how much vaccine, they will get on a week to week basis. they have gone through with advice from the cdc's advisory panel on immunization practices to really set a listing of all of the different priority categories so that as the vaccine comes in you systematically process through the schemes.

category 1a was identified as health care workers, principally those on the frontlines, as well as of skillednd staff nursing facilities and other types of nursing facilities if they are at highest risk. with that in mind with that being the target audience or populations to receive it, the states have identified facilities and mechanisms that would be best suited to administer the vaccine to those groups of individuals. over time the population that comprises 1a will be fully addressed, and then the 1crisdictions will go to 1b, and subsequent phases going forward. it is a challenge, it is hard to do it right. that is why with a lot of advice

from our federal partners and the expertise and experience the health departments have had doing this, they are really looking at an area that is logistically sound, methods that are logistically sound that can be efficient and effective. we also have to make sure it is fair and equitable in making those decisions and allocations. as you saw from a lot of the media clips, principally large hospitals, health care systems that have been chosen for the first week, first or second week , vaccinate administration for a couple of reasons. number one, they have the infrastructure and cold storage facilities that can accept the pfizer vaccine. they clearly have a workforce available to set up the vaccination clinics and skillfully administer the vaccine. also, it is where the workforce

is. the frontline workers are in those facilities, hospitals and nursing homes. it makes sense bringing the vaccine clinics to them at their place of employment and having that confident -- that confidence that that would be a great set of venues to have week one, to make sure that if there are any rough spots in the process they can be identified and worked out. in the meanwhile, it is the best place to start this critically important campaign. as time goes on, that net will be broadened. there will be other types of facilities, places of employment, essential workers, other individuals who are considered higher risk, such as otherwise healthy older americans, for example, and over time we will get to the general population where the net will be fully opened that everyone basically would be eligible.

hopefully we will all see many facilities across the country, whether it be neighborhood pharmacies, physicians offices, care clinics -- emergency care clinics where you can go in and get a vaccine like you would today for a flu shot. we are a couple of months away from that scenario. host: let's let some of our viewers take part in the conversation. york.ockaway new muriel, good morning. caller: yes, last night on rachel maddow i heard that several governors who are expecting to get the vaccine in certain amounts next week are told by the government they won't be getting them. the governors are saying they don't know what to do. pfizer is saying they have millions of vaccines on the shelves just sitting there and they don't know where to send

the vaccines. i need you to find out, if you can come if there will be a shortage of vaccines next week, and who is holding up the vaccines? the government is saying everything is fine. it is something with pfizer. pfizer is saying they have millions of vaccines on a shelf waiting to find out where they are going. one more thing. here in this country, how are you going to give them the vaccine? a lot of them have been here for years and years working here, but they are undocumented. how are you going to get them to get the vaccine without them being in fear of being deported? host: go ahead and answer. guest: two great questions. don't knowone, i what else to say other than i had the same reaction you have

regarding the confusion or mixed messages. we spend a -- we spent a good part of yesterday and will continue today to try to get a better understanding of what may be happening, and it could be something as simple as a miscommunication to something beyond that. that this isand not associated with a manufacturing or production ,roblem on the part of pfizer but may be attributed to a process where operation warp speed provided some early on planning target numbers for states to use in anticipating how much vaccine they are going to get. numbers mayplanning have been different from the real world actual numbers being shared today.

that is one possible explanation we are trying to get a better idea about and try to help influence a remedy. thestate health officials, governors, clearly my phone and email were quite busy over the last 24 hours trying to get a better answer to explain that. is the allssue too need to be patient. this is a huge undertaking with so much at stake. just like everything else in life when you do something new, you do something big, and everyone is under a lot of pressure, there may be th these bees of pick -- there may these types of pickups in the process. thatnk everyone is in mindset now, and i apologize that that is not a clear, direct answer to your question, but i

was just trying to explain the status of the situation and trying to get a better answer. hopefully we will have one as the day goes on. to your second wait of all individuals -- to your second point of all individuals and their ability to receive the vaccine, from a public health community. we acknowledge that individuals' immigration status may be a barrier for individuals vaccines. the state health departments and their local partners are doing everything within their power to ensure that individuals are confident and comfortable in whether they are going to their private physicians, going to public health clinics, or even mass vaccination clinics set up across the country in due time. that they should not be fearful of any type of legal enforcement

situation. the public is not going to be by preventing or discouraging everyone from getting this lifesaving vaccine. the issue raised is recognized, and for the greater public good and individual health, the state public health department is going to do its best to ensure that it is comfortable and safe so no one should feel nervous, anxious, or fearful of pursuing a vaccine. thank you for that question. --t: christine from illinois christina from illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a comment. using the word "warp speed," which from what i understand was to be on the release of the medication, i think it might have a few people kind of frightened thinking that the drug was developed too quickly.

that it is of the corona family along with sars and mers. it is like just tweaking those two medications. using the word warp speed talking about the vaccine, not just the distribution, i think might be frightening people to think that this has been made too quick. i don't know if you guys want to try to figure out something about that or if that makes any sense. guest: it makes a lot of sense. believe me, you are not the first person who has raised that as it being possibly misleading or turning off the general name. because of the i can't speak for the federal government, the president, or the military experts that are running operation warp speed.

all i can say is i am confident it is not meant to indicate it is going to be speed at the expense of safety and carefulness. their objective is to do both. do things as expeditiously as possible, sort of breaking through some of the bureaucratic processes that serve its purpose during nonemergency periods, but in times of crisis we need to do things differently and out-of-the-box, but not at the sense of sacrifice of safety and public protection. usedf the examples that is is when you talk about the , inine being developed every case when a vaccine goes through a review and approval process ise approval

done before the vaccine is produced. what operation warp speed did to save time is to make this financial commitment or take the financial risk of producing the vaccine at the same time it was going to go through the review .nd approval process that would have saved a large amount of precious time doing them in parallel as opposed to one after the other. this is explained as the u.s. government took a financial risk , because if the vaccine turned out to not be safe and effective the worst that would happen as they would throw it out and it was money invested, but that is just the cost of doing business. the fact is that now, at least with the pfizer vaccine and hopefully soon to be the moderna vaccine, we see the

authorization. we already have stockpiles of that vaccine and those two companies are in production mode. that is an example of warp speed. it is being done quicker and more efficiently than traditional practices. again, safety, transparency, and the public health has not been compromised during the process. we certainly understand naming this operation that could lead people to feel or think that way, but that really isn't true. but thank you for raising the question. host: here's a question for you. we know the pfizer vaccine went out this week. the moderna vaccine has now been approved. how are they going to decide where the pfizer vaccine goes and where the moderna vaccine goes? we know that these are two different vaccines who have to be kept in two different ways and went through two different

processes. they are not the same thing. how will they decide who gets what? guest: great question. let's assume by sunday we have two vaccines that have gone through the full fda and cdc process and are good to go. when the states order their vaccines they will have an opportunity to order both based on the allocation numbers they receive from operation warp speed. the public health department are seriously considering some of the differences between the two vaccines. they have a great deal of similarity, but they have several differences that could impact some of the logistical issues as well as some of the administration's issues. the pfizer vaccine requires -80 degreesorage, celsius. very few facilities have

freezers that are that cold. certainly when you have situations in the remote parts andhe country, the rural frontier areas, that logistical challenge of transporting and storing the vaccine could be challenging. especially in the pacific islands, for example. that is one criteria where the jurisdictions are saying if it is hard or difficult to get the pfizer vaccine to those parts of the country or their jurisdiction, let's send the therna vaccine to handle largest part of their population . another example is one vaccine is approved down to 16 years of age, one is 18 years of age. depending on the priority groups we are focusing on, the type of facilities that may be enrolled to administer vaccines, that may be one factor also that would

influence which jurisdiction gets which type of vaccine. by and large, they both have a a very use profile and similar safety and efficacy profile. i guess the message here to the general public overall is there isn't any significant or substantial differences, one better or more appropriate over the other, with very few exceptions as well as some of the logistical and scheduling challenges i talked about where one vaccine may just be easier to handle than the other. from tallahassee, florida. marlon works in medicine. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you, c-span, for taking my call. , ier the guise -- tell me

was wondering at what point with and prisonorcement population, where they have the majority of black and latino people, be distributed the vaccine? second, if we can do the warp speed so fast and black lives really matter, why haven't we put a warp speed on reparation? guest: on the latter point really it is beyond my area of expertise. i can't quite comment on that, but to your first point, congregate care settings, including correctional care facilities, is being seriously considered in the next couple of priority groups for all of the reasons you have identified going forward. my general sense is they will receive higher priority than the

general population groups, and they are being assessed along with some of the other essential services personnel and other circumstances or environments that put them at greater risk. by greater risk is not only the individuals who are residents, thealso the staff who have responsibility of providing to them the necessary custodial care. correctional facilities and similar entities are being seriously considered for the next one or two priority groups. hopefully those decisions will few days not within a within a week or two, to begin the planning around that. host: this is washington, so we know nothing is free. last week during a senate hearing dr. rachel levine,

pennsylvania's health secretary, and the president of the association of state and territorial health officers said billiontes need a $.4 for vaccination efforts. foreed a $.4 billion vaccination efforts. billion for vaccination efforts. guest: vaccination efforts may provide a lion's share of the funding that is being requested. it is good news it is on the table and being considered. the better news is when it gets across the finish line as quickly as possible so those resources are provided. and other why astho associations are number one determine the funding level is reasonable and necessary, let me

give you a couple of examples. during h1n1, the influenza pandemic, which in itself was potentially serious. it could have been much more serious than it was. it was a relatively simple vaccination effort compared to the complexities we are managing with covid. 11 years ago around $1 billion was provided to state and local health departments to execute that campaign. in month or two ago dr. redfield from the cdc estimated it would cost between $5 billion and $6 billion for the campaign. with those two numbers coming to give you a sense that $8.4 billion is a reasonable amount of funding, recognizing that, but it is not considered unreasonable or unnecessary.

this is a labor-intensive effort. we talk about not only the issue of ordering and delivering the state and local health departments have a responsibility to ensure that there are a sufficient number of health care providers registered to vaccinate, that are properly trained, that are reviewed to make sure they have the proper equipment and standards. the public health departments are also responsible for providing public education to anyone who has an interest or need in learning more about the vaccine as far as its risks or benefits, especially in communities of color where there may be a great deal of vaccine hesitancy. advancing the vaccinate with confidence mindset and approach is significant and takes resources to do that. your local public health

departments most likely will be standing up your traditional government vaccination clinics across the country. in addition to going to pharmacists and your doctor's office there will be clinics set up where individuals can come in -- i won't say around-the-clock, but hours and days that make it convenient for a lot of individuals. this all takes manpower. it is the same manpower executing this vaccination campaign that is addressing the acute covid response as far as contact tracing. it has been a huge burden -- a huge impact on manpower and resources for the public health community to provide services to the public deserves and needs. the administration appropriately

did not hesitate to invest tens of billions of dollars in vaccine research development and production. we hope at the end of the day there is that same level of commitment and enthusiasm to downstream, the last tactical mile, as we say, where we are in the community, distributing and administering the vaccine, and providing the right counsel and support to everyone who has an interest in need in getting the vaccine. host: michael from deerfield beach, florida. caller: good morning. this is a matter of trust. i can't believe i'm saying this myself and i'm sure the rest of the country has the same feeling. i can't believe medical doctors don't have our trust. there are a lot of people who don't work for government and have a strong background in a technical field. the reason we are terrified of

the cdc is some of the things that happened. like in florida we downplayed surveillance, we downplayed masks. my question for you, to bring that trust back it looks like the government is literally doubling down on herd immunity. down here it looks like they are playing with our numbers. my question for you is to fix this even a layperson knows that humans herd immunity in is the very definition of genocide. we know that. it is the dictionary definition. it is not a gray area whatsoever. if you apply natural herd immunity to the human population you are without any doubt committing a crime against humanity and genocide. science,t bad

is mass murder and you are calling it bad science? that terrifies those out there who do not get a paycheck from the federal government or a company that may have concerns about their contracts. you can say no the government is not doubling down on herd immunity and you do understand that were any government official to apply that as public policy of course that would be against minorities, people of color, poor people, people who cannot afford health insurance, and the elderly, the weakest in our population. host: go ahead and respond. guest: thank you for raising that critically important question. i am not a physician or a clinician, but what i can confidently say is there are pockets of opinion that exist that reflect the point that you

just made. i can say with all honesty and mainstream --t the mainstream public health community in this country and probably worldwide agree that just allowing the natural progression of infection and herd immunity is a strategy is not supported by the science. ill-conceived, ill-founded, and will cause a lot more problems than people think. the two best protective measures are vaccination -- so you immediately don't have to rely on the natural transfer of the disease, that is something we are trying to prevent. vaccination is the most safe and effective way to achieve that level of population-based protection against an infectious disease like covid. the other preventive measures are to keep it from spreading in

the first place. this is an important point to raise that even fast forwarding six months from now when we have a lot of vaccines across the country and a lot of people vaccinating, through this time and even at that point it will still be absolutely necessary that we practice commonsense steps of not getting exposed, infected, and sick. social distancing, face , avoiding handwashing large indoor crowds. certainly throughout the vaccination campaign does have to continue. it is about redoubling or doubling down. that is one area we all need to focus on in addition to being open minded to accept and readily take the covid vaccine once our comfort levels are such where we have been informed and educated. it is the one to punch against -- it is the 1-2 punch against

this threat. protection by vaccine and preventing person-to-person handwashing, face mask wearing, and social distancing. thank you for raising that point. host: you are not a clinician, not a doctor, so might be unfair to ask this question, but i'm going to ask anyway. a three-part question. first part, we know the first people to get the vaccine are the front-line line medical workers and nursing home residents. we also know that one of the places covid-19 has ravaged has been nursing homes. are you eligible to get the vaccine if you have already tested positive for coronavirus? know thatstion, we the pfizer vaccine requires two doses. will it be the same thing for ?he moderna vaccine

third question comes from one of our social media followers who says that doctors are saying that the two vaccines have to come from the same company. how are the american people going to know if the two vaccines they are getting are from the same company? i will be able to answer those three questions. the first, regardless of your infection status, if you tested positive, individuals are still allowed and encouraged to get vaccinated. being previously ill does not block or prevent, medically or operationally, you getting the vaccine. we really don't know with the immunity level is for individuals who have had some level of infection. the safest thing to do is to get vaccinated like everyone else.

the second question about the second dose, both the pfizer and moderna do require a second dose. pfizer is 21 days between the assuming it is, approved, is 28 days between the two. even though the two vaccines are similar, they are different co-minglet you cannot or interchange them. if you get pfizer on shot 1, you need to get pfizer on shot 2. same with moderna. the way that individuals will is obviously receiving education, which i just sort of talked through, but also receiving a record you're just like if you went for a shot today you would be provided with an information sheet and record of your immunization.

it will have that information on the card so there is no question as to what company manufactured your first shot if you don't remember. another feature being put in place is a program called be safe. this is basically a cell phone text and web-based program that anyone who gets a vaccine is encouraged to self-enroll. it provides contact between all of those individuals and the public health community. where the individuals will seeive daily messages to how you are feeling, if you have any questions, a reminder if you're coming up on the 21 or 28 -- 28 day period.

purposes,s multiple monitoring, checking in if you have any questions, if you're having reactions let us know, and, to your point, being reminded don't forget to go back next week on day 21 to get your vaccine. calling from minnesota, roger, good morning. caller: good morning. us that wedering to have our great democratic leadership who are old and fragile all telling us to run out and take this vaccine. we are standing here thinking, are we the guinea pigs? everyone tells us to go get it. i had the swine flu shot in jimmy carter's day and i was sick for 10 years. i'm not going to chance another 10 years or something fatal. almost killed.

maybe we are part of the family that should not be taking this vaccine, no matter what it is. i would rather catch it on my own rather than getting a live virus. that is my comment. ,uest: thank you for that and what you have been through i understand your reservation or concern. hesitance, on your if you will, to consider getting vaccinated, i would ask you to again try to keep an open mind and speak with your health care provider. that could help you understand risks --at may your thebe your risks and benefits the vaccine could provide that could outweigh those risks. on the issue of guinea pigs, that goes to the heart of a lot

of our public confidence in education campaign. we realize for good reason many segments of our community will .eel that way that is why we are laying out prioritization schemes. we are trying to make it very transparent and inclusive and engaging by individuals who have a say in the process to inform that effort so that when you see these you will hopefully theretand and appreciate abouthing overt or covert targeting one population over another for a reason other than risk, potential exposure, and other public health or clinical concerns. everyone is doing their best to will eventually dissipate in everyone's mind.

host: gladys from new orleans, louisiana. caller: good morning, good morning. i have a question in reference to the first vaccine and the fact that it needs to be kept at a certain temperature. suppose that that vaccine has not been capped at a certain temperature accidentally -- not certaint at a temperature accidentally. does it change color, doesn't separate? how would professionals know they cannot give that particular vaccine because it was not cap at a certain temperature -- not kept at a certain temperature? guest: great question. i don't have an answer to if there is a physical expression or deterioration in the vaccine other than it looking thawed other than ultra frozen. i know temperature control and

electronic monitoring is a key feature in the transport and storage of the vaccine. ups,er it be fedex or aircraft or trucks, the shipping containers, which we are all seeing close-up pictures of on the media the last couple, of days, all have gps and thermal monitors that are data recorders. fluctuation in transport and storage will be detected by the monitors, the the hospitals have protocols on what to do if in fact it is out of temperature for a certain time as to whether or whether it should not be used. you said earlier that it would be states and local

officials who are responsible for getting people back to get their second dose of either daysne, 21 days or 28 later. there has been a report from the associated press and kaiser health service that found 181 state and local level health have either resigned, retired, or been fired since the beginning of the pandemic, which they are calling the largest exodus of public health leaders in u.s. history. what kind of pressure are state and local health leaders under now. we know the coronavirus pandemic was politicized here and what type of pressure are they under, and how will they get people to come back for the second dose? two different but related questions. thank you for that. the nation's public health

workforce has been under tremendous pressure, as you indicated. not only at the leadership level, but all the way to the rank and file of the scientists, the laboratory -- laborator ian. they are working 24/7 and are exhausted. they continue to maintain a high level of performance and dedication. .he concern is sustainability this ties back to the $8.4 billion question you raised. anylong can we expect business, company, any element of government, like the public health element, to sustain that high level of activity, performance, and efficiency when we are going to be in this fight for another year or so? issue of bringing in additional staff, hiring,

allowing public health workers to take time off with some depth on the bench so they can be and wed is important should all consider investments in that process. on the point of leadership, you are right. there have been a number of leaders at state and local level who have lost their jobs or just needed to step aside for a variety of reasons associated with the pressure of this .andemic they are being replaced with equally skillful individuals. state public health agencies are fortunate that they like federal government have career service personnel who are mid-level managers or executives who can slide up into the management role and assume that responsibility. like astho,ation

tois our job to onboard them replace their predecessor in leading these types of activities. given the dynamic -- and i have been in the profession well over 40 years, this is a dynamic that i have not seen at this level of intensity before. it is concerning. there are ways in which we can remedy it. one is investing in the public health infrastructure. the other is, frankly, for every member of the public to appreciate public health professionals. they are public health servants, not public health enemies. they are doing their job to protect the lives of the people they serve. i think in large part that should not only be respected, but be supported to make sure that at the end of the day we

are all here to reflect upon ught as a well fo public health campaign that at the end of the day saved many, many lives. host: let's even get a quick answer before the top of the hour. sherry from bismarck, north dakota. can you get a quick question in? caller: it has been reported some of the states are being cut 30% to 40% vaccines. pfizer is saying that there is no problem with production or transportation. i have a question as to why is that happening? guest: we are trying to get a better understanding of that. that broke yesterday or the night before. we don't believe there is a shortage of vaccine or production problems.

lapse be a communication between the federal government and state or a misunderstanding, or a chained up of the early allocation numbers that everyone is trying to process through. we will try to get a more straightforward answer as the debate goes on and look at the weeks ahead to ensure that those numbers are back at the level that is necessary and manageable. at this it has been frustrating the last day or so. we don't think it's an indication of any significant problem with the vaccine production or the coordination between operation warp speed and their state partners. host: we'd like to thank jim, the pandemic response and recovery senior vice president for the association of state and territorial health officials, and co-chair of the national association covid vaccine

leadership council for being with us this morning and walking us through the national covid vaccine efforts. jim, thank you so much for your time. guest: my pleasure. thank you very much. happy holidays, everybody. host: next, we'll be joined by hamline university political science professor, david schultz, who is here to talk about the growing power of the executive branch and what should be done about it. we'll be right back. ♪ >> sunday night on "q&a," author jake wood on his book "once a warrior." recounting his time with the marines, and team rube conthe disaster response organization he founded. >> historicically speaking the humanitarian community is not big fans of the military. for good reason. the majority of the humanitarian suffering around the world is the result of armed conflict. o it's almost as though career

humanitarians despise the military almost out of an obligation. so we knew that we had been trained with all of these skills, and developed all these experiences overseas in the military that were directly applicable to these disaster zones. we quickly discerned none of the agencies were recruiting the men and women, at least not large scale. we thought that was a really just a waste of incredible human capital. >> team rubyson's jake wood, sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's "q&a." >> future mobile devices and go to c-span.or dwfment for the latest video live and on demand to follow the transition of power, president trump, president-elect biden, news conference, and event coverage at c-span.org.

>> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back with hamline university professor of political science, david schultz, who is here to talk to us about the strength of the u.s. presidency and whether it should be weakened. david, good morning. guest: my pleasure. thank you for having me. thank you to the audience. host: you have written an op-ed in the hill newspaper, i want to read that first paragraph and have you tell us why you think this. contrary to what many people may think, the best thing joe biden can do as the next president is weaken his office. as an institution the office of the president has become too powerful and it's time to reset the power of the presidency. david, why do you think that? guest: i think that because in many ways what we have seen, not just with donald trump, not just with barack obama and the period that's really been occurring for

a long time, the balance of power has shifted dramatically away from congress and over toward the president to where what we are seeing now is almost an executive dominance of the national government. what we really need to do is rethink, or reset the dial. much in the same way that after richard nixon in the 1970's, congress sought to reset the dial then. we need to do that again because, again, my basic premise here, this is not about democrat, it's not about republican. it's about gradually congress acceding constitutional authority and powers over to the executive branch, including the presidentcy. host: explain to us what you mean by congress ceding power over to the executive branch. what is the president doing that you think that the president shouldn't be doing, it should be in the hands of congress. guest: let's first think about, do a little bit of sort of

constitutional law here for a second here. article 1 outlines the powers of congress. article 2 outlines the powers of the presidentcy. each branch has certain constitutional powers that they can perform. the president has a variety of functions in terms of being the head of the executive branch, commander in chief, sort of chief law enforcer. all think that presidents can do and have authority to act within their domain. what's happened over time, perhaps starting during the new deal, but we can even trace it back earlier, is that congress has gradually said, well, we are going to either delegate more powers to the president, not just in the areas of war making, but in the areas of making decisions about immigration or tariffs or what constitutes a national emergency, or how to move money around. and congress has gradually delegated, which it is allowed to do up to a point, more and more decisionmaking over to the president. or in some cases, congress,

because it's deadlocked, unable to make decisions, has basically punted, if i can use a football aalcy, punted and said let the president or the executive branch worry about this. over time it has shifted or by default let the president do things that congress should do. and as a result, the presidency has become very powerful. back in the 1970's, historians arthur schlesinger jr. wrote a book about the imperial presidency. talking about the fear of the shift of too much power in that direction. in the 1970's post-watergate congress tried to take back some. 50 years later presidents have now assumed incredible amounts of authority that really tip the constitutional balance of power in an improper way, according to me. host: are you saying that the relationship between congress

and the president and the amount of power that's being wielded by the president is not in the way the founding fathers designed it? guest: i'm not going to go back and make purely an intept of the framers argument because i do think there is a sense in which we have to understand how over time tradition and how, let's say, changing circumstances necessitate maybe a shift from that original sort of intent of the framers approach. but what i am arguing, if we can think of power as an equilibrium f. we 24i of performance -- if we can think of performance of task, certain things should be performed by one branch as opposed to another. the argument would be the balance has shifted too much in favor of the presidency at this point. where esentencely we are letting the president take action that is really ought to be done by congress and they ought to be held responsible by their voters

and by their electorates by making certain types of choices. in some sense that's what i'm getting at here, not a frozen in time 1787 model, although we make that as our touch stone, as our starting point for understanding the concepts of what? separation of powers and checks and balances. host: you aim your editorial toward president-elect joe biden, saying it's the best thing he can do coming in. why would an incoming president agree to weaken the power of the office he's about to hold? is there an advantage or a disadvantage for incoming president to even think about this? guest: normally i would say no. why would a president want to be weaker on one level? but on the other hand i'm going to invoke another book. i'm going to invoke what some people consider to be one of the greatest books ever written on the presidency, the one on presidential power. he says the real power of the presidency is the power to

persuade, influence. that all presidents have roughly the same official powers, but there are other variables out there that really determine how effective they are. one of the things that we ought to be thinking about here is how in recent history presidents are resorting a lot to executive orders as a way of getting things done without relying upon congress. in many ways, that's not a show of strength, that's a show of weakness. a demonstration you are unable to persuade congress to get them to work with you. here if joe biden were to be able to work with congress to be able to carve legislation, he shares credit, but he also shares responsibility, and with that, perhaps, he gains more influence by having congress invested in what he wants to do. think about -- take us back about a decade or so that we have legislation which we refer to as the obamacare, the affordable care act. obama never received republican

support from it. therefore, what? a decade later we are still looking at a congress vastly split over the merits of the affordable care act. it hangs by a partisan ballot. there's examples of legislation, we have that. we have during the trump era issues about immigration, for example, all dividing along partisan, cleavages, that if presidents were to reach out, were to be able to say you, congress, need to solve this problem and i'll work with you. as a partner not adversary. we would probably get not only only better government but in the process this richer sense of a president being -- having influence in a different way, would enhance the power of the presidency. guest: let's let our viewers take part in this conversation of the we go back to our regular lines for this segment. that means republicans, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8001 . democrats, your line for this

conversation is going to be 202-748-8000. independents, you can call 2302-748-8002. keep in mind you can always text us at 202-748-8003. we are always reading on social media on twitter at c spap wj and on facebook at facebook.com/c-span. david, in your editorial in the hill, you pointed out that there have been more than 14,000 executive orders issued since 1789. and in recent history, president trump has issued 197 executive orders, bill clinton issued 254, george bush, 291, and barack obama, 276. it seems like the executive order is the way for a president to push forward and grab more power for the presidency. should these be eliminated?

guest: it can't be totally eliminated. i tell my students there are two types of executive orders. there are certain executive orders that presidents had inherent under article 2, whether it's as the chief law enforcer or as the head of the executive branch. when presidents issue, those are matters of policy. those are discretionary things. they are -- let's move on our particular aspects of our agenda. those are generally sort of part of the presidency. and they have been there from 1787. the real trend, again mostly since the new deal, is for congress to delegate over to the executive branch, to the president, to administrative agencies increased authority. that's those executive orders issued pursuant to congressional delegation that carry the force of law and that in many ways presidents are using them as well as those other executive orders as a way of either,

getting what they want done if congress won't do what they want, or b, if congress can't act, they are saying we are going to step n think about examples where again, barack obama took action in terms of let's say daca or the dreamers. or on clean energy. issued executive orders that then donald trump came in and undid those executive orders, of which joe biden will come in and probably try to bring those executive orders back in. we are really creating a situation where if we think about our simple model where it's supposed to be, what, congress makes law. presidents sign bills into law and enforces them or administrate straits them, we have lost that basic balance in terms of how our political system should operate. again a better way of containing the power of the presidency and with that of getting policy done is to say, congress should take back some of those powers, say

it's going to act on immigration. it's going to act on energy, etc., etc. and for the president not to let them off the hook and say, all right, i'll do it for you instead. host: is this a partisan issue? is there one party who advocates for a strong presidency and another party that doesn't? or is this just based on the situation that the president finds himself in? guest: i think it's more situational. some people would argue that historically a strong presidency is really an artifact of the democrat. they would say this is all about franklin delano roosevelt, the new deal, or lyndon johnson. remember, we have had very powerful, strong, republican presidents, too. the ronald reagans, teddy roosevelts. we have had abraham lincoln. i would even argue that in many ways post 9/11 george bush was a very powerful presidency, too. even though people cast it in a

partisan lie and say, well, incoming biden is democrat, you just want to weaken him because you are a republican or you want to strengthen him because are you a democrat or something like that, this really ought to be less about partisanship and about, say, what's a good relationship for how we ought to get problems solved? we all know how partisanly stalemated we are in the united states right now. in terms of straight party-line vote, inability of congress to clear legislation to get to the president. partly presidents and their increased power is a reaction to that, but also presidents taking the actions they have in the last let's say 15 to 20 years are essentially letting congress off the took from having to do their job. host: let's let some of our viewers take part in this conversation. we'll start with monroe calling from clinton, maryland, on the independent line. monroe, good morning.

caller: good morning. i'm going to try my best to say as emfatically as i can. thank you, thank you, thank you for everything you have said. i agree with the overwhelming majority of what you said. it almost stole my thunder. a lot of these elected officials are spineless and weak. perfect example, when donald trump got elected, here's a person who never held political office and he waxed the floor of 15 other career politicians. they don't vote on anything. they don't stand for anything. so how can you blame a president whether it be clinton or bush or obama or even trump for taking command and doing their job? i think if anything we need to really talk about term limits. let's talk about term limits, i bet you that will make these career congressmen, senators and representatives, realize my job is not safe. i better actually do something otherwise i'm going to get kicked out. guest: i think the caller makes a really good point here. whether i agree with term limits is a different story entirely,

but there is no question about the fact that what we really need to do here is that, again, we need to get members of congress to be more accountable than they are right now. we no that probably 95% of people who run for re-election in congress get re-elected. once you are in there you're pretty safe. you seldom stand a chance of facing a serious challenge of being out ofed. it's a sense it becomes too -- being ousted. it's a sense it becomes too easy and pass the buck along. i think we are in agreement. a lot of people are in agreement with the base argument we are making. if we are electing a bunch of people to congress, do your job, and then be willing to stand accountable for what you do. at the end of the day we are asking you to what? legislate. we are asking you to address the major issues of the day whether it's the pandemic, immigration,

or energy. or the economy. don't pass the buck to the president. don't let him be the person who does your job. host: we are talking a lot about the increasing power of the president. it seems like our conversation keeps come -- coming back to congress. does it seem like they really instead of reforming the presidency, the argument should be reforming congress? guest: it's a little bit of both. there is no question about it. part of it may be all about do we need to change the incentive structures for how congress legislates and what they do. partly what i talk about in my hill piece there are critical pieces of legislation that in the past, back in the 1970's, that congress adopted to try to bring back powers. for example, there was concern about presidential excess growing out of vietnam about military action. they passed the war powers act. they were concerned about the fact that presidents were declaring too many emergencies and acting. they passed the national

emergencies acting supposedly to reign -- rein it in. the president doing too much in a budgetary way and tried to bring some of that back in. what i'm arguing now is that congress should do its job and do its job in a way that at the same time turns back on the power of the presidency. for example, when there was criticism of donald trump making decisions when he first came in regarding the travel ban, the courts eventually upheld his travel ban and trump versus hawaii by saying that guess what? congress has given the president broad authority to act here. if you don't like that broad authority, change the law. or there's been criticisms about say, that the president has exercised too much authority when it comes to issuing of tariffs or trade wars. well, all of this is by delegated authority by congress. if congress were to do its job and say, no, we are going to legislate more clearly. we are going to put tighter

parameters on the president in terms of doing a variety of things. we wouldn't have some of these controversies out there. you are exactly right. the issue of, let's say, restructuring the presidency ties into what congress being willing to take more responsibility for actions in american politics. host: talk to jim calling from is entral new york on the republican line. jim, good morning. caller: hello. i wanted to bring up the fact that you point out that it's as if the powers are changed. i want to bring of president isenhower in the 1950's. the americans used to do the farm work. then they -- people started coming over the border. and eisenhower wanted to protect the american workers like trump

does. he had something called operation right back where he shipped them out of here. that's a fact. you can look that up on wiki peeda. we've got a real mess in this country with immigration. he's the only one who is really speaking out against it. this whole neighborhood here has become a third world country. we have the highest rate of coronavirus from miles around. it's just flooded. it's killing the middle class around here. the roofers and framers that are building these houses put out of business. guest: i'm not willing to blame america's social ills on immigrants. i think we are a richer society as a result. but where i am willing to have a discussion is to say that what we have seen for probably at least a generation is the inability of congress and the president to address the issue of immigration.

that, yes, we know we have -- i think the estimates are about 12 million, maybe more individuals, without documentation in the united states. we have many children who come here with their parents who came here when their parents were not documented. what i'm getting at here is that because of this sort of divide that we have in our country, we have not been able to come up with what i think needs to be a viable solution for addressing immigration, whatever it may be, that's a different story entirely. this is a consequence of what? presidents acting unilaterally. it's a consequence of what congress delegating to presidents, perhaps, too much authority about immigration issues. instead of us actually, let's say, actually or politically biting the bullet and saying we really need to reach agreement and decide what it is. if we are concerned about immigration, whether for the reasons you offer or for perhaps

other reasons that people might have, we need to solve this as an issue. we also need to solve some other pressing issues in our society about health care, about a whole bunch of other things. right now the -- i would argue the way the balance of power is structured, the way congress has acceded so much to the presidency, we are setting ourselves up for just perpetuating this not only strong presidential rule that can change from president to president in terms of policy, but it also perpetuates the partisanship and gridlock we are seeing in washington. host: we have a comment from one of our social media followers i want to read to you. then ask a question. this social media follower says, it seems like citizens only raise concerns about the enhanced role of the executive branch when their preferred party isn't in power. it's up to us to put less value on short-term partisan gain and prioritize institutional

well-being. democrats will control the house. democrats may control the senate based on the georgia senate runoffs. democrats will control the white house. what can you offer to democrats as a reason to now decide to pull back on the president's power? guest: ok. what i would offer is more stability longer term for public policy and the public policy initiatives you want to achieve. what i mean by that, take us back to something such as the obama era of the presidency. he got his major score, which is the affordable care act, of which then delegated to the executive branch pretty broad discretion on a whole bunch of different issues of which then when donald trump came in under his executive branch turned back and some people might say undermined some of those things. we can also look at areas such

as the environment, workplace safety, a few others where we are almost winning at caprice. the presidents make choices that can change from president to president. if biden wants to achieve, democrats want to achieve, let us say, more stable, lasting foundations for legislation such as health care, such as issues regarding immigration, it would be better if we let congress and the president work together to achieve compromises, to achieve policy objectives that will transcend presidents as opposed to saying, well, let the president do that. then let it slip on what the next -- with the next president. i didn't put it in this op-ed piece but i did it talking to my students recently. i pointed out, for example, to give you an idea how policy

flips, when reagan became president, issued an executive order barring the use of foreign aid for organizations that perform abortions. when clinton came in he reversed that executive order. when george w. bush got elected he reversed that order. when barack obama got elected he reversed that order. when trump came in he reversed that order. i suspect on january 20, joe biden will reverse that order, too. we are looking at over a half dozen presidents. it's basically policy flip-flop, flip-flop, flip-flopping back and forth. if democrats want something, and republicans will say this, too, want something that's more person, it is better to do this approach than to simply say rely upon apparent, i say apparent strong presidency that issues executive orders. at the end of the day i would still argue that relying solely upon executive orders is more an admission of what?

of failure than it is an admission of success. host: let's go to cindy who is calling from brodhead, wisconsin, on the independent line. cindy, good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to say that as far as i'm concerned, yes, the president should be a little more limited just for the fact that trump is in the process right now of thinking about pardoning all of his family, himself, and he's got lines and lines of people calling to get pardoned. and i think they should be limited to how many people they can pardon and for what instances they are being pardoned. i also as far as congress goes, i do think that they should work a little closer with the president because of the fact that as it stands right now they cannot seem to work together for the people. all they want to do is fight with each other and have it their way versus what is best

for the people. i think that they should all work together. if they can't do that, then they should be gotten out of the system and they should bring someone in who is neutral and thinks of the people themselves and thinks of the country not just what they want. host: a couple of different points here. one i want to -- guest: there are a couple different points here. one is the pardoning power. we do traditionally see presidents after they had their two terms expire or lose issue a lot of pardons, i know there is an incredible amount of concern here about the president and how he's going to use his pardoning power in the next approximately six weeks or eight weeks until january 20. the supreme court in a famous case a long time ago basically said presidential power at the federal level was almost unlimited.

it is probably time for a serious discussion for the supreme court to re-examine that issue because many of us, i teach constitutional law at a law school. i've got a constitutional law text. many of us think the idea that the president can, what, pardon himself, can pardon people close to him and basically say what? i'm going to sanction you to do bad behavior or let you get away with bad behavior. there is something fundamentally wrong with that idea. it doesn't gel with our concept, no person is above the law. that's one issue. the second thing i want to get at here, the listener alludes to a good point, is that we go from november 3 this year to january 20, we are looking at about a three-month period where presidents have an incredible amount of time still to do things. i think one of the things we should be thinking about is to what extent, and this president's doing it like obama

did it the previous president, is using this final transition period to issue a bunch of executive orders to cement in their legacy. to cement in things or maybe some people say to make life difficult for the next president. i think part of my argument is exactly the same thing here. for democrats who want to say that why should we weaken the presidency? well, point to donald trump who is issuing -- going to issue a bunch more executive orders beyond 195 he's done right now as an effort to what? to perhaps either be malicious, some people might say for the next president, or what? simply cement in his policies. that's probably something that we both should -- we all should dislike. independents, democrats, republicans. the idea of presidents as their lame ducks just pushing through stuff as a way of guaranteeing their legacy and their policy

direction for the future. host: talk to amanda calling from cuba, missouri, on the democratic line. amanda, good morning. caller: hi, good morning. i have a couple of questions. one is about trump's mishandleding of the -- mishandling of the coronavirus, and the republicans who have continually pushed that it's not a real thing. they called it a hoax and everything. well, when a captain on a ship to his crew,s harm he has to face the ramifications of it and perhaps be charged with neglect or something like that. once trump gets out of office, number one, i think he's going to have to be evicted.

i don't think he's going to leave. but that's going to be an us show, if you know what i mean. the there any -- anyway psycho fants -- sicko fants who have been following -- sycophants who have been following him. the governors who refuse to accept it as a real thing and now this virus is running rampant, my daughter-in-law, she's in the hospital right now. she's almost 37 weeks pregnant. and she has covid. glass -- e opaque brown glass in her lung. they might end up having to take that baby and her being in the hospital with this covid, they may have to deliver her early if they get worse. she is actually in the hospital

on the covid floor. i think that there needs to be set en people just totally up to harm people, and that's what those in the republican party have done since donald trump thought it was a hoax and spread it to all of his people that it's a hoax, i live in cuba. i go to the grocery store. maybe eight people have a mask on. it kills me. host: go ahead and respond. guest: sure. ok. i'm going to invoke another book, james mcgregor burns, great american his tore-and-did a book on the presidency, called leadership. some people say greatest book ever written on leadership and arguably one of the two or three best books written on the presidency. i mention this because i think

one of the things we'll be you curious to see what future historians write is at least on the issue of the coronavirus this president didn't take the lead. didn't act at the time when we needed to act in terms of responding, and saying this is neutrally as possible here is that the failure to act earlier this year and the failure to come to grips with the reality of the coronavirus, and let's say now, post-election where largely the president has been preoccupied with claims of -- false claims of voter fraud than worrying about the coronavirus has really contributed to a major public health problem in this country. with that the strength politically that the president has had over republicans across this country, which is again a different topic here, i think has damaged the u.s.'s capacity to be able to respond to the

pandemic. and then in a larger global sense, which we forget about here, the fact that we have mishandled the coronavirus the way we have has damaged u.s. credibility internationally. i wish i could give an answer to the question about why some of these republican governors and so forth didn't act more forcefully within their own states. why they didn't take a different course of action. the simple answer is that the political party discipline in this country has become so powerful now. unlike it was 25 or even 30 years ago. and trump has so successfully taken over the republican party that has really prevented them or led them, i should say, not prevented them, led them to taking the positions that they have had. host: we have talked a lot, so far, about the presidency and

congress. but there is a third branch of government that our viewers want to make sure we remember. i'm going to start with a comment from a social media follower i'm going to go to what you said in your op-ed. our social media follower says, don't leave the courts out of this. they have been and are being used to do the job of the congress and of the president. and they have been far too willing to oblige. and you added in to that comment from your op-ed, congress, especially post 9/11, has delegated even more discretion to the president. creating a new imperial presidency, perhaps even more powerful than before. trump exploited this delegated power when he issued his muslim travel ban, the ordering of the border wall, and efforts to scale back environmental legislation. while the courts have trimmed back many of these actions, and the trump administration has one of the worst records ever when it comes to losing in court, the current supreme court has often looked at the legislative basis

of what the president did and upheld his delegated power. what responsibility does the supreme court have in creating what you are calling this imperial presidency? what thud they do differently? guest: they are co-conspirator of this. they are clearly getting involved and making decisions, again, when the other two branches of government are not. there is an old expression that power abhors a vacuum. if there is a vacuum the supreme court is stepping in or being forced to step in to address some issues. that's one thing. two, is that, again, part of what the court has been doing is saying, listen, as we read the congressional statutes, congress has intended, wants the president to be able to do these things at one level the court is saying, our hands are tied. i don't think that's completely correct. i do think that the court should be taking seriously some

doctrines that it's largely ignored. for example, back in the 1930's, there is a famous supreme court case where the supreme court struck down several laws that congress had passed that delegated power to the presidency. and said that congress had exceeded its powers in delegating things or giving over to the president. we haven't seen the supreme court strike down a single piece of legislation in nearly 100 years since then on delegation of power. it's probably time to resuscitate that doctrine and rethink it. i know other constitutional scholars have made that argument. i think it's true. i think at some point what this court needs to say is that, yeah, congress has delegated this over to the president, but should this be the type of wide open delegation, wide open discretion that really is compatible with what we think our constitutional framework should be? should these not be tasks that at the end of the day congress

should perform? i do think that a supreme court needs to think about these types of issues. but one of the concerns, i know some people are going to come back and say, now this is going to happen when biden is president, and that becomes part of the problem here is that you may have a republican dominated supreme court striking down, if they do some of this stuff, striking down powers that are coming with a democratic president. this only speaks to what? speaks to, again, the problems that are -- our national government faces right now where we really have lit, a whole different discussion, where we have let partisanship really infect all the branches of government and distort the way our system is supposed to operate. or we hope it's supposed to operate. host: let's talk to terry, who is calling from rogers, minnesota, on the republican line. terry, good morning. caller: good morning.

listen, david, i first like to comment and say that the ladies that called us republicans sigh foe can'ts and said -- psycho fants and said the virus was a hoax, david you have soon those republican senators. i would say you trained a seal to be nonpartisan on that issue. getting back to my real questions on this issue. now that the executive order was used so successfully, and i think incorrectly with you, that the presidential, level, now we have governors, including our governor, saying things like you can only have this many people on your homes on the holiday. i'm wondering when on earth, where in the constitution allowed the executive order to override the basic principles of some of our bill of rights and constitution? how can any executive say you can't allow -- what if this were to happen during the aids deal? would the governor or president been able to say, gay people,

you can't have sex in your home no more? you are not allowed. if you do we have the power to find you and arrest you? i'm saying that. i think the executive orders ave to be limited and reined in. if something can't get done by congress, maybe they should take up the dee creed of doctors, do no harm. if you can't cure something don't do harm to t all these executive orders have promoted, i think, the hatred between -- more pushed apart the two ideological ideas in this country. every four years to say now it's going to be our way, we don't care what you do. that's what's happened. that's promoted the anger that we see. guest: i tend to agree with you on most of what you said here in the sense that i think the executive orders really have sort of created, again, the all

or nothing situation because the whole purpose of legislation, the whole idea of congress legislating, the president signing or vetoing is force of compromise. we have walked away from that. right now increasingly it is the all or nothing situation. we have seen that also at the state level. i know you are calling from rogers, not too far from where i am located in st. paul, minnesota. we are in state right now like many other states where we have a serious pandemic and in many situations here we have a governor, in our state, another state, issuing a lot of executive orders. there is a partisan divide over those. i, too, wish we could get the governor, who is a democrat, and the republican senate to work out and reach a series of agreements in terms of, let us say, the scope of how we are going to respond to the pandemic. what should be opened. what should be closed.

i totally agree with you. i want could come back -- i want to come back and make one more point. the previous listener did make a pretty good point. we are saying that if we look at the overlay in this country in terms of how the pandemic has been responded to, we see a clear partisan overlay, a clear partisan divide whether it's wearing masks or the responses to the pandemic. we can't deny that. the messenger: -- host: one of the powers that seems to have completely flipped away from congress and now pretty much resides with the presidency is the power to declare war. the president has ability to take unilateral military action when the constitution says that the power to declare war belongs with the congress. what should be done in this area? guest: congress tried -- first of all we should remember that if you look at article 1 of the

constitution, it says congress has the power to declare war, then it lists about seven other powers related to the military. funding, raising an army, etc., etc. the president in article 2 is listed as commander in chief. the classic line is if we are attacked tomorrow, president should be able to respond and address those attacks. almost everybody agrees in that distinction. what we have really seen over time, and especially it came an initial head during vietnam, is presidents using congressional resolutions and not declarations of war to commit us to large military adventures. we saw this with the first george bush with the authorization to use force in kuwait. we saw this with the second george bush after 9/11. bram was using drone attacks -- barack obama was using drone

attacks to target people internationally. this president is doing the same thing. we really have seen how once they alou -- a lot of the basic war making functions have shifted over. we tried to correct this in the 1970's with the war powers act. the war powers act relied upon a series of mechanisms that effectively the court has struck down as unconstitutional. and we probably do need, again, to be rethinking this issue of what kind of powers do we want to give to the president. clearly i think everybody says responding to attacks against the united states is a legitimate scope for the president. but beyond that, we need to have both a president bringing congress into decisionmaking for military issues, and congress taking a much more assertive role in terms of oversight and in terms of being involved in

making some of these, let's say, decisions about how we commit ourselves internationally with military force. host: talk to gloria who is calling from upper marlboro, maryland. democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. god bless you guys. thank god for c-span. there is an element of rationality in your discussion, young man. but you are overlooking where we are by now. mitch mcconnell, that monumental motivational constipation, made a decision at the beginning of barack obama's term to make him a one-term president. and he brought enough of the republicans with him. they forced him to make those sweeping -- whatever you guys call that thing i'm a lot older than you. instead of having it happen the

normal way. and i think one of the worst progressions of this, of course was donald trump, who is both narcissistic and dictatorial. they supported that wholeheartedly. but the thing that made me most horrified at the behavior of a rica is refusing obama supreme court pick nearly 10 months out from the end of his term, and yet denying ruth bader ginsberg the -- and that family, the honor that should have been theirs because of the amazing social justice icon she was and will be, in spite of the republicans' bad behavior, because they were interested in attacking the supreme court -- packing the supreme court. we've got a lot of work to do. i thank god we are going to have a different administration. but he's going to have to do

some things that are unusual to clean up the mess that trumenty dumenty made. have a good day. guest: we could clearly face multiple problems in our society both policy wise and let's say institutionally. policy wise i sit at a desk right now approximately six miles from the place where george floyd died. we have an enormous policy problem about race in america. we've got an incredible gap in this country between the rich and poor. it's greater than we have had since the 1920's. these policy issues need to be addressed, but we also probably can't address many of these fundamental policy issues unless we deal with institutional reform. it's easy for us to sort of say that, well, it's our turn. the other side's at fault. or to point fingers in lots of different ways. what i'm trying to talk about naive aybe it's a little

i'm saying that we need to be thinking about deeper institutional reform primarily with the presidency, but it clearly -- eventually dovetails back to congress and the supreme court. in terms of how we think about how our government operates. i'm not taking us back to the intent of the framers. i'm not taking us back to some image of what america looked like in a horse and buggy era, but to say we need to be thinking about what is the institutional apparatus that we need to have as a nation to be able to address the most number -- fundamental problems in our society so we can get beyond the partisanship. so we can get beyond the all or nothing politics that i think so many of us dislike. host: as we get closer to the top of the hour, i want to ask you about your worst case scenario. what happens if nothing is done

with the powers of the presidency and they continue along the lines that we have seen so far? for example, we are just hearing now from actionos that president trump plans a -- axios that president trump plans a wave of pardons today with some of the names possibly being thrown about, including possibly paul manafort and rand paul suggesting that perhaps edward snowden. what happens if nothing happens with the president and the president continues to keep his current powers and they add more in the future? guest: this becomes exactly on the problem that we need to worry about is do we now create a president that can what? essentially first off bypass ngress and do whatever presumably someday she wants to do. two, think about what you are talking about here in terms of the pardoning power. what could a future president

do? come into office the very first day and say, i don't care what the laws say, i'm going to do what i darn well please and i'm going to issue pardons in advance. we know that pardons can come even before people are indicted or convicted of a crime. now future presidents insulate themselves from accountability. and the only remedy at that point would either be elections or impeachment. for the most part we know impeachment doesn't work as a remedy. we have impeached three presidents but never removed a president. for all intents and purposes that's not effective. it's hard if not impossible to remove a president through a political solution. to a large extent what we are talking about here if we don't change the path is that we are going to increasingly, let us say, increasingly enhance the power of the presidency and insulate that person from any

type of public accountability or public control where they can act with impunity. not to sort of trellis into our chamber of horrors argument here, but one of the things we know from comparative politics studying other governments around the world, that one of the greatest threats to individual liberty across the world are powerful presidencies. powerful chief executives. and that's something that we need to be thinking about and let's say a more comparative perspective. host: there is a little bit of news i'll bring up that just happened being reported by axios. that's acting defense secretary chris miller has ordered a pentagon wide halt to cooperation with the transition f president-elect biden. right now top biden official said he was unaware of the directive and administrative officials have left open the possibility that cooperation would resume after a holiday

pause. according to axios, officials were unsure what prompted miller's actions or whether president trump approved. once again the acting defense secretary has ordered the pentagon to stop cooperating with the transition of president-elect joe biden. see if we can get a couple callers in before the top of the hour. harold from california on the independent line. harold, good morning. caller: i'd like to say that the election was so close for both people, the president and vice president joe biden, president-elect. and the united states has grown so much and congress and senate are so close together. why couldn't we for the next two years put the two presidents both in office, elect and trump, and let them hash it out across the table and stuff and draw this country back together. i'm talking as a simpleton. i'm not anybody, really.

it just seems so clear we need to get these two parties back together because the private sector, private and sector party are basically failing. and they really need to be put back together instead of fighting each other. we need -- host: go ahead and respond. guest: i'm not sure the idea of having a dual presidency is viable. but your broader point is accurate. it would be nice if come whatever the date is, january 20, or whatever, that mitch mcconnell, nancy pelosi, and joe biden sat down and said, how do we move forward? how do we put behind us the partisan divide that we have and figure out more permanent solutions and not just sort of do the by executive order approach? i know we have been most trying to talk about presidency today, but of course the presidency gets us into talking about other institutions in our society. including parties. i point out to people, my

students, for example, that arguably one of the greatest speeches ever was george washington's farewell speech in 1796. where he lamented and feared the rise of political parties that would come to divide america. and either you think he's a crackpot in that speech or he saw something very prescient that we ought to take advice from. and clearly any discussion of congress, the presidency, the supreme court, has to be viewed through the lens of what? how we let partisanship affect the operating of those institutions, and how we judge the operation of those institutions. as i listen to the different where s today, clearly people speak depends where they stand partisanly. that's one of the themes that we need to be thinking about here is how do we create institutions, if possible, that

can overcome that partisanship? are we at a point now where the partisanship is so powerful it's breaking down these basic institutions? host: to daniel who is going from philadelphia, pennsylvania, on the republican line. daniel, good morning. caller: yes, god bless you. i'm disappointed in the supreme this because we do have election is rigged. -- we do have evidence this election is rigged. i want to know why the supreme court didn't take this case? guest: the reason why the supreme court didn't take the case, you are referring to the one brought by texas and many other states. i presume you are referring to. is that there is a basic principle in american law, constitutional law that you have to have what's called standing or having been suffered an injured to be able to bring a case. but the supreme court said is that texas didn't suffer injury

on top of which it said that the constitution clearly delegates to each state the way that they get to run their own elections for president. essentially what the supreme court said to texas and the other states is guess what? it's none of your business what pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, what georgia, whatever the states were that were named in the suit. because the constitution gives them the authority -- to resolve these issues. i should also point out that, i can't remember the exact number is, but it's been somewhere between three dozen and 50 lawsuits were brought after the election claiming widespread voter fraud. at the end of the day, the trump campaign and administration was unable to find, or unable to basically document this, even outgoing attorney general barr at the end of the day conceded and said, what? we don't have evidence of widespread voter fraud.

a combination of standing issue that texas basically under the constitution has to keep the nose out of what other states do, and the fact at the end of the day other courts, federal, state, trump appointees to the federal bench have all said, you don't have any evidence. i think that explains in part why the supreme court did what it did. host: see if we can squeeze in one more quick caller. ed calling from pennsylvania on the democratic line. ed, good morning. caller: -- ed, are you there? i think we lost ed. i will ask a question of my own here. we were just talking about the national election for the presidency and the fact that texas didn't have standing because they are connected to -- the elections are run by states. should there be a national election for the u.s. presidency? guest: if you ask me, i would

move towards saying yes because right now the system of the electoral college really creates 50 separate states which -- plus district of columbia, 51 separate elections of where effectively it means only about a half dozen states from a political perspective. a nationwide election for president with nationwide standards on voting, eligibility, and things like that, would encourage what? perhaps presidents to represent the entire country and not just what? a segment or party. host: we'd like to thank david schultz. hamline political science professor for coming on this morning and talking about the rise in executive power. david, thank you so much for your time. guest: my pleasure, thank you to the audience for listening. host: we'd like to thank all of our viewers and callers this morning. we are going to go directly to the house of representatives as they meet today at the u.s. capitol. thanks for watching, everyone. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of repres entives.]