coming up this morning, a reporter from the wall street journal discussing president trump's objections to the government funding bill. a look at civil-rights in the trump and biden administrations. in the future of the republican party. be sure to join the discussion.

>> tell us about this. when did you see this beginning? who is behind it?

not that you have meetings in a basement. it is this idea of using the category to change america. to transform america. to systemically change it. it is a rejection of the individual. that is joining the system. that is really at the core of this. it is really a plot in the sense that opponents do want to change

america structurally. one of the pieces in your new book talks about the myth of identity politics. that it is a grassroots movement. that it is fighting identity politics. tell us more about that. >> that is one of the reasons it needs to be called out. it hijacks one of our best impulses. to be compassionate. to side with the people who need our help.

they rejected being seen as marginalized or members of the minority. access the to american dream. they were aware they were discriminated against. believes they could improve their lives. they have this idea of changing america in mind.

you had groups from eastern europe. demography has always been changing. is just a continuation of the american story. >> we mentioned some of your professional background. tell us about your immigration background. you were talking about. the idea of abe melting pot.

>> that is one of the first things targeted. they do not want to improve the system. starting with capitalism. this is a neo-marxist school. i am an immigrant. i have this history. it is my lived experience.

i was a journalist and a foreign correspondent. i was abroad for 15 years. the vast majority of the time was spent in asia and europe. i'm able to compare and contrast. i believe in america. countrythis a fantastic . it gave my family a chance to escape socialism. we have produced a level of liberty and prosperity unheard of in the history of mankind.

guest: we have had color cautious laws. we had the era of plus he introduced in the 1880's, this idea we could have separate but equal. the civil rights movement starting with brown then the civil rights act in the 60's really is about producing a government that lives by the reconstruction amendments, equal protections to all americans. the state exists to protect that natural right no matter what our ground is, no matter what our race is and i think we need to pursue that. due to the betrayal of the civil rights act that we saw soon after with for example the advent of the racial preferences of affirmative action, that is something that rankles many americans. all the polling that has been done once you describe to americans what these racial preferences are it is rejected. we just saw in california whereby an 11 point margin californians in the bluest to stay in the union rejected affirmative action. host: i want to go to the election.

the day after the election we had a piece in the wall street junior -- wall street journal -- tuesday's big loser, identity politics. in the days since the election, has your view been bolstered? guest: even some districts in philadelphia, that are heavily puerto rican had a swing towards trump. alexandria ocasio-cortez's own district saw a swing towards trump, nothing as humongous as what we saw in the rio grande valley where we saw massive swings towards trump. a county that hillary clinton had won handily in 2016 and of course you have the example of florida and south florida with many south american and cuban-americans voting for trump in large numbers.

puerto rican districts in the i-four corridor between tampa and orlando swinging towards president trump. what we saw then was exactly this rejection i am speaking of of people saying please do not use us as victims. we are going to vote as all other americans. we are going to vote on the economy. we are going to vote to sustain capitalism, to make sure the system of government and our economic system has not changed. the group of americans -- hispanic americans a show every time you pull them is what is most important is the economy, education, which is the ladder to success, health care and do so forth. host: we spent the first hour of their programs begin to our viewers and listeners about the president-elect's picks asking them if diversity matters.

does diversity matter in your opinion for the selection of the president elect or any president coming in? guest: i was listening to that. i was comforted by a lot of people calling in and saying diversity does matter. for example, you need diversity of experience. you need people not just educated at harvard and yale, but you need people who perhaps have not graduated college or have gone to a state school. this idea that we are to be run by anna lead of people who read weight singularly from the ivy's has not been great for swathes of america. need geographical diversity. you need people from appalachia

community people from the pacific northwest and new england, not just people from the corridor between washington dc and new york city. in many areas of life, in the newsrooms for example, you need a diversity of views and in academia, in the faculty lounge you need to have a diversity of views, not just controlled by the most extreme aspects of the left, which is what we are seeing in newsrooms today. host: let's get to a question on twitter from noah who asked this weston -- this question " can identity be used to address systemic issues in the united states?"

guest: it is not only fine but healthy to take pride in your history. knowledge is a powerful thing. it does empower you to understand your life, your background, the life of your parents and grandparents' struggles in where you got to be where you are. you are a point on that continuum. for that you do not need to rely on the false into synthetic categories created by the -- false and synthetic categories created by the office of management and budget. you can be colombian american and take pride in that and use that as fuel for your own success.

you can be puerto rican and take huge pride in your traditions. individual agency, individual striving, adopting good habits the habits that lead to success is what leads to success. becoming virtuous first in small ways, practicing, that is what leads to a fulfilling and flourishing life. the idea that you must join a category often times created by government in order to collectively change the system, i think that is pernicious. host: our guest, mike gonzalez is from the heritage foundation. he is the author of the new book, the plot to change america: how identity politics is dividing the land of the free. let's go to callers and hear first from albert on our democrats line.

caller: here is what i have noticed about identity politics. republicans went after what bathroom a transgender person could use. that was identity politics because you did it based on the transgender identity. when trump issued his ban on muslims coming into the country, that was done based on their identity as a muslim. that is identity politics. when in north carolina they pass to their voter restriction, voter id laws, the north carolina supreme court said those laws targeted african-americans with almost surgical precision. that is identity politics. why is it that every time liberals, democrats pushed back against these identity politics

policies they get accused of playing identity politics when all they are trying to do is stop you all from stripping the rights of people away based on their identity? guest: thank you for that question. we have very good laws on the book about not singling people out according to their race or sex or their national origin. we need to enforce those laws and we need to throw the buck at any entity that makes decisions based on someone's background door race -- the book at any entity that makes decisions based on someone's background or race. the identity politics i am referring to is that we are a confederacy of categories with varying degrees of victimhood that give us a claim on compensatory justice. with internet -- with intersectionality you can have an olympics of victimhood.

that is the identity politics i am referring to. absolutely any entity that discriminates -- this is the kind of country we live in. we need to enforce these laws. host: texas is next. rick is on the independent line. caller: i had a question for mike after what i have on my mind -- we need diversity in the cabinet. with diversity you have got a different perspective. views are coming from the country. our last cabinet did not have that you had just people who were put in there because they were friends. it diversity in the cabinet does make a difference.

my question to mr. gonzalez is do you believe that we should give a number, maybe a tax number, driver's license to the 12 million illegals who are here and do you think that is good for the country as far as knowing that the baby boomers are retiring and that we need that incremental income coming in to that social security fund? -- to sustain that social security fund. guest: thank you, color from texas. -- caller from texas. embedded in your question is the assumption that ideas inhere in your race. if you have someone surname gonzalez who has graduated from harvard and you have someone named johnson who has -- is white and has graduated from harvard and you have an african-american has graduated from harvard, they will have similar views, especially if for example they are liberal, all conservative.

it just because they have a different national background, a different country of origin background, different race or different sex does not mean in the least that they are going to have different views. this idea that your race carries ideas with you, that carries ways of thinking is very pernicious and has led to a lot of problems in the last century.

if -- we need to put that aside and understand that what we need is a diversity of experience, not so much a numerical proportional is him of the base population. the illegal population, i do not deal with that in my book. a generalized amnesty would create a huge wave of people flocking to the border and that is what the history of that proves but i do not deal with that at all in my book. host: you say, you write that the key in terms of identity politics is to eliminate the economic entitlements of adhering to group identities, which in many instances have been fabricated for the express purpose of dividing us into factions.

society must decide to withdraw the inducements to group making to shut down the casinos of identity politics. tell us what you are talking about there. guest: i have a chapter dedicated to this new identity the obama administration try to create, expecting that clinton administration to come in and represent the idea. i look at the debate that took place in 2015 where the census bureau brought in a lot of so-called experts. they ended up being ethnic studies professors and suss tour was one of the people -- and they kept saying -- the video is out there, but i have it transcribed -- they kept saying that people from the middle east and north africa do not want these categories.

this is sununu and mcdaniels, people of lebanese origin but do not want -- and they kept saying that the grassroots do not want this then people would say yes, but once they start associating being a part of the mena category with benefits in hiring, they will love it.

host: you are pushing back less against the groups that identify with various minority categories and more with the groups that sustain or claim to represent those people, organizations that benefit as you pointed out from government funding or grants. is that your charge? host: that is -- guest: that is one of the arguments i make. that is not the only argument i make.

a group that is supposed to represent the views of asian americans now supports affirmative action, which hurts chinese-americans. they are not responsive to the huge wave of rejection of affirmative action we see amongst chinese-americans across the country. the people who make up these ethnic affinity organizations like unidos u.s. they are the ones who benefit the most because they have a job for life. these are members of network organizations. it they are more plugged into what is happening in washington dc than they guard to what is happening in the individual districts and neighborhoods -- and they are to what is happening in the individual districts and neighborhoods in this country.

caller: hello. my name is terry and i wanted to give my comment on my view on identity politics. i remember when bush senior spoke at a university about how it was going to destroy our country along with, in my opinion, the internet. the people calling in and listening to you are not hearing you. there hearing what the media and politicians are telling them, like the gentleman from illinois with the transgender and the bathroom. the bathroom is safety for children. any pervert can use that to go into the washrooms. we change the laws on capitol hill to shelter the lawmakers from lying to the public and getting away with it. at the media are destroying our country. identity politics is a terrible thing.

host: terry in illinois. mike gonzalez, we have not talked about the role of the media in either promoting or distancing entity politics. guest: thank you for that call. what i am saying is jarring for many who have not heard these things before, which is why i wanted to write the plot to change america. i was horrified that these myths had gotten currency in society. media are huge proponents of these ideas. they constantly use the term latinx. there is not a coffee place in havana or a bodega in the bronx where anyone in their right mind would use the word latinx.

that term was to exclusive.

in only isolating males. there was a deep misunderstanding of how the plan would work. it is made up of academics to understand the language. our guest is on with his new book. >> i think your book is so that old republican men can stay in the position of power.

gerrymandering, i think you probably go along with it. the people who are being elected or old white male republicans. congressman and said , we would take out the president of the united states. and we did. because we have joe biden as president, i don't know if you acknowledge him or not and i don't care. we want a diverse cabinet. we want people who represent our ideas.

the money to come back to us. we want all the health care that we can get. this president has made a mockery out of the health care system. we have -- my grandson, give you an example. he is an icu nurse in the greater cincinnati area, and he informed us over the -- i didn't see him over the holidays, but i did see him on the phone. he said he has not had one patient, not one, who has left the icu that has not gone in a body bag, yet we could not get this administration even to say coronavirus. they call it china virus.

host: any response? guest: merry christmas and thank you for your call. we actually have some agreement. i hate gerrymandering as much as you do. i think the racial gerrymandering we have seen is one of the reasons we have the polarization we have in america today, a district for which nobody can really compete produces politicians who go to washington who feel no need to reach across the aisle, either to the left or right. that is a big problem in this country. what i want to see in this country is successful government and successful companies. i want to see a diversity that is organically produced, where ideas and creative people are really fulfilling their lives. it doesn't matter their background, their sex, the color of your skin -- that is truly the america that i want and the america that a lot of people who are now on the left and right want.

host: republican line, this is bob. caller: thank you for taking my call. there is a couple of points i would like to make. one is i remember reading a study on race. they looked at dna of different races and determined there was actually more diversity within a single race than there were between races. we all come from a common ancestor, so these differences we see in skin color and eyes and hair and whatnot is secondary. we are so much more alike. the second point is i agree with mr. gonzales about certain ethnic groups thinking a certain way, i don't believe that. i believe we should have a colorblind america, like martin luther king said.

when you look at who graduated from the ivy league schools and etc., one of the most important things -- and i have always said this -- intelligence does not run parallel with character. neither does race, ethnicity, but character is extremely important and i think it is one of the things they need to look at when they choose people for these high posts. i will leave it to mr. gonzales. guest: what a great point about character. it is a word that was used by martin luther king. character really is, along with ability, probably the main thing that anybody hiring or giving a

contract should think of. absolutely what you said, that we all come from the same ancestors, the more we learn scientifically, the more we see there was an original female ancestor and an original male ancestor of all humanity and we are all the same. it is our humanity that we share, the faculties we have of reason, of speech that links us together, all 7 billion of us on this earth. host: here is harry from

georgia. caller: there are so many issues that seem to have come into focus here, but i would say as far as when you were hiring a cabinet, filling a cabinet, you make sure that the pool of people you are pulling this cabinet from his diverse, but you don't use race or anything but competence to pick those officers for your cabinet from. and if you start getting diverted into all this race or anything else, but other than qualifications, so you pick the best qualified. there is never going to be a time you are not going to devote a certain amount of time to making sure your diversity matches.

the real thing that we all have to worry about his policy right now, because what we have is this huge divide between the common man and the top 5% or .1% and the policy changes need to be made. because the middle class was built by policy changes during the 1930's and 1940's that brought about the middle class burgeoning in this country.

guest: again, a great question. this is a very high-caliber audience you have here, bill. having the ability to perform along with the character that bob spoke of earlier. yes, i think that is what is needed, not just in the cabinet but in a court, in an office, in a legislature. i live and work in the washington area. you do have a permanently settled administrative state that really does run and believe that it has the right to run the government and the country with little or no political accountability. i think that is really, as you said, the divide between the elite and the common man is something that, as we have seen in not just the last four years but the last few years, it emerges as one of the fissures we have in society, and i think we need to address that in a diversity of educational backgrounds, geographic backgrounds, not just choosing people who have this monolithic mindset of new york and washington i think that is what the country needs.

host: let me ask you about that political accountability. we mentioned your wall street journal opinion piece that said identity politics lost in the 2020 election. looking ahead to the biden administration, what's the status? do you see identity politics being used more by the parties during the biden administration? guest: i think the country is rejecting this. my book is selling well because, for reasons i don't like, necessarily, we have had a very tumultuous year in 2020.

i think we see, not just from the right but among the left, many people on the left like steven pinker, michael lind, professors who are more left of center who i don't agree with, andrew sullivan, the brilliant writer -- people i don't agree with a lot on many things, but they do agree identity politics is a problem because it threatens our liberal democracy. it threatens very expressly the idea that we are based on natural rights. i think that the american people are rejecting this. i cannot see the elected leadership of the country bucking what the people want. not just people like steven pinker of harvard, but americans. they won california by an 11 point margin, a resounding failure of the attempt to reintroduce affirmative action.

they had all the media and corporations and elites on that side, a very grassroots campaign led by many chinese-american families, many of them immigrants, were able to defeat this. i don't see, not only in the federal government but in our state, our leadership doubling down on identity politics. they do at their own peril. host: let me ask you about another political scientist professor from brown university in an opinion piece headlined, identity politics keeps american

society healthy. he said identity politics springs from a dynamic society in constant motion. there is always a group at the margins pressing for a proper place. irish, italians, catholics, jews, chinese, formerly enslaved people, latin, muslims, civil rights activists, same-sex partners. each group rattles the establishment and provokes culture clashes, but they add up to a vibrant change in society. new groups inject fresh energy and new ideas and face pushback from the powers and the identities that were. guest: that is a deep misreading of the historical record. our demography has been turning

from the very beginning, but nobody, thank god, nobody in the 1910s and 1900s and 1890's thought of saying, let's have all these people coming in through ellis island and call them marginalized victims and minorities and instill them with grievances so they can change the country from within. it was the opposite that was done, just as the opposite was done with the scandinavians and germans and irish and scots irish. it was an extended hand, saying, you join us in our culture, you become americans. no other country does this, by the way. my experience as a foreign correspondent, i can tell you having lived in many foreign countries, we are unique in extending this invitation to newcomers when they become americans. identity politics is a departure from the model, to say this is what has been done for centuries.

it must be a deliberate misreading and that author's use of the term latinx shows where his political bias lies. host: bob in texas on the republican line. caller: i would like to ask -- there are two words in the first sentence of u.s. code. [indiscernible] host: you are breaking up a little bit. go ahead and rephrase your question. caller: we keep asking what we need and i would like to ask -- there are two laws in the first sentence of u.s. code. do we need or can we trust anyone that does not know those first two laws?

and i would like to ask if you know them. guest: the first two words in what? caller: the first two laws in the first sentence of the entirety of u.s. code. host: i am going to throw my hands up. do you want to take a shot? guest: can you rephrase that? i don't know. host: we go to james in charlotte, north carolina. caller: i think you have a failure to face reality in what you are saying and writing. i think you are confusing culture with race. it is obvious to me that you are. you are saying identity politics lost. no, it won. the white identity is still

dominant. that is the dominant political structure of the country. they keep dominating whatever minority groups try to enter. it is all about race. mr. sununu, he is a fair complected -- he would probably consider himself white. your name is gonzales, you would probably consider yourself white. i am sure people across the border don't consider themselves to be white, at least the white community doesn't. trump did not have black people in the entire cabinet. but he was very emphatic in putting a white cabinet together. i did not hear a guy like you

coming out saying -- forget about racism, this is about thought. i think people like you are really bigots in a nice suit that hides it. host: i am going to cut you off and let mike gonzales respond. guest: i don't think he really sees me if he thinks i wear nice suits. i wear quite old suits. let me attempt to answer his question in two ways. i do think there is a big difference between race and culture. i think culture really does matter. cultural habits matter with regards to how successful you

will be as an individual -- thriftiness and punctuality and hard work matter and these are things, no matter your last name, your sex, the color of your skin, if you practice these habits, you will probably avoid poverty and have a good chance of becoming successful. on the question of the cabinet, i recently had the opportunity to be in the same room with ben carson. ben carson is an very active member of the cabinet. he is also a brilliant surgeon. he also happens to be african-american. that is really not as important as the fact that ben carson is a man of character and a brilliant person and a great american. i am going to leave it there. i was lucky enough to work at the state department when

condoleezza rice was secretary of state, a woman that was filled with ability and character. that's really what mattered to me and what inspired me. host: let me ask about the cultural aspect you write on in the book. you right there is a problem with equating the experiences of mexican americans, women, gays, and so on to the suffering of blacks. justice thurgood marshall argued in a dissent that the experiences of the negroes has been different in kind from any other group. it is for this reason, you write, that this book does not have a chapter dedicated to african americans. tell us about your decision on that. host: that is the one unique

group, the one group in america whose ancestors -- not all, because we have many immigrants from the caribbean and africa -- about african-americans as a whole are people whose ancestors were brought against their will and have a history of horroring experiences with slavery first, then jim crow, then separate but equal, which was legal segregation. this is something we have always strived to address by living up to the ideals contained in the founding documents. what you see in the 1960's and 1970's is political entrepreneurs, activists and ideologues, saying the members of my category suffered equally.

there is a false analogy drawn to the experience of african-americans. that is how it was done with every group. there was even a paper written called jane crow and the law extending the jim crow idea to women, to white women in this country. this is not to minimize the fact that women have been discriminated against and that mexican americans, especially along the south, the border areas of texas, face real discrimination, but the analogy was false when it was drawn to black americans. black americans suffered uniquely and we are still living with the consequences of that.

that is another thing i wanted to do with the plot to change america, point out this false analogizing. host: mark from missouri, republican line. caller: i have a couple of points and i would like to hear your comments on them. first, i don't think america really should be looked at anymore as a melting pot. i like to look at it more as a salad where the ingredients are mixed together but still retain their individual properties. i think that is a big problem because representative bobby jindal said it best when he said immigration without assimilation is basically an invasion. that's what i think is happening with our country. my second point i would like you to comment on is i would like you to comment on the news media's role in how the country views things, because i think

they are trying to control the narrative of what the american people think, so if you could comment on that, i would really appreciate it. guest: thanks for the call. i completely agree with you, the idea of the salad, which is more the canadian model, does not fit as well in a country where many different people can become united by common purposes. we are a leader and we cannot reimagine ourselves as a confederation of categories of the oppressed. i think we saw a little bit of that in the election, as i wrote

in my wall street journal piece. what you have in the rio grande valley in these counties that are heavily mexican-american, they voted as texans. many of these families have been here for 15 generations. they are not immigrants. they may be surname hernandez, but their ancestors came in 1598 across the rio grande. i think that is -- you saw a pushback against this idea of the salad model rather than the melting pot. nobody gets up in uruguay or lisbon, portugal or mexico and says, i want to emigrate with my family to the united states because i want my children to grow up being victims, marginalized, and change society from within. yet this is the central idea in identity politics. it misunderstands human nature, which is why it needs a system of rewards through the racial preferences of affirmative

action and things of that nature, because otherwise it falls apart. people just want their children to succeed. host: gary in fletcher, north carolina, independent line. caller: another great topic. i got three questions to put out there. do you think gerrymandering is kind of a response to identity politics? i always thought racism was kind of a treatment of people differently. at the border, for example, i don't see people living in white -- i don't see people letting in white people or other types of people or not letting in others. i don't see racism there on that point. i will end it there. host: your response? guest: i think you are

absolutely right on the gerrymandering. this goes back to the reinterpretation of the voting rights act that produces districts that are 85% of one category, be it african-american, mexican-american, cuban-american, or what have you. this is not a good idea at all because it produces politicians who really have no reason to reach across the racial lines, to reach out to all americans, to make sure the best policy is introduced. as to whether i think that we should have a system that admits people who are going to improve america, it is after all -- we should think of immigration as with every other policy, what is in it for the united states and

its national interests host: do interests.national host: do you think identity politics came into play in the year debate over whether immigrants should be included in the census count? guest: we ask all these questions in the census, whether somebody is a hispanic, for example, a category created by the office of management and budget in 1977. and we can't ask the question about citizenship? i thought that was silly. we should ask many questions that have an impact on the lives of americans, for instance the nature of their family. for example, they have an intact family or not. i think citizenship is a good question to ask in a republic. the u.n. recommends countries do that in many countries do that without any controversy.

host: mike gonzalez, our final guest on authors week. the plot to change america: how identity politics is dividing the land of the free. thanks so much for joining us. >> c-span's washington journal. every day, we take your calls and pulse on the events of the day. coming up this morning, the wall street journal's natalie andrews discusses president trump's objections to the relief bill. clark with then lawyers committee for civil rights under the law. also, republican media strategist m goodman on the goodman onnn the future of the republican party.

that the president has signed the coronavirus relief and government funding bill, congress to has work to do this week. they begin today in the house with a vote on whether to override the veto of the defense authorization bill. in his veto message, president trump said he objected to the 's -- and the removal of confederate names from military relations. if the veto override is successful in the house, it goes to the senate. the house may try to increase the stimulus checks from $600 up to $2000. the house gavels in at 2:00 p.m. the politicsk with editor of the washington examiner and he is with us tod