churchill's iron curtain speech with timothy riley. be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. "washington journal" is next. ♪ host: good morning and welcome to "washington journal." as the senate debates a relief bill, the unemployment situation in the united states is getting a little bit better, but experts say that more job growth is needed to replace the 9.5 million jobs lost during 2020. many because of the pandemic. more than 4.1 million people have been out of work for 27 weeks or more in the economy is still not back to where it should be. our question to you today, how are your highs -- household

finances compared to pre-covid. if you are worse off, if your household finances are worse off than they were a year ago we want to hear from you at 202-748-8000. if your household finances are about the same, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8001. if you are doing better off than you did pre-covid, we want to know how you did it. call in at 202-748-8002. keep in mind that you can always text us at 202-748-8003, and we are always reading on social media and twitter -- onset of -- twitter and facebook.com/c-span. once again, the senate is still hard at work on that covid relief bill, and they are debating amendments all throughout the morning. in fact, they even set a record, a record yesterday for the longest vote ever.

you can see right here, the screen says the minimum wage increase vote on the 9 million -- $9 trillion relief bill started at 11:00 this morning and kept going through 9:13 p.m. the senate is still debating right now. you can see them on the floor working this morning. if you are interested in seeing some of the amendments that they are working on right now and how they are voting, you can go to budget. senate.gov where they are keeping a list of the amendments that the senate is working on right now as they pulled an all-nighter trying to get the $1.9 trillion rescue bill out of the senate and on its way to the president. speaking of the president. president biden on yesterday talked about the february job report and why that covid relief

bill, called the american rescue plan, is needed. [video clip] >> today's job report shows that the american rescue plan is urgently needed. our economy still has 9.5 million fewer jobs than it had this time last year, and that rate would take two years to get us back on track. we have one million who were educators, we have lost 400,000 small businesses. all of those empty storefronts are not just shattered dreams, they are warning lights going off at state and local budgets that are being stretched because of lack of tax revenue. and some of last month's job growth is a result of the december impact.

without a rescue plan these gains will slow. we cannot afford one step forward and two steps backward. we need to beat the virus, provide a sense of relief and build an inclusive recovery. people need the help now. in less than two weeks, unemployment benefits will expire for 11 million people. at least 7 million kids do not have enough food to eat on a regular basis. 15 million people are behind in their rents. the rescue plan is absolutely essential for turning this around, getting kids back to school safely, getting a lifeline to small business, and getting the upper hand on covid-19. host: the senate is working through its amendments one at a time, but they did come to an agreement on a major part of the legislation yesterday and here's a story from "the new york times" explaining what they did. "senate democrats scale back the

$400 a week and unemployment payments in the one point $9 trillion stimulus plan, making a key concession to placate a crucial moderate in their own party who had threatened to defect and derail the new administration's first major legislative initiative. with the packet stalled and evenly divided senate, leading democrats agreed to drop their bid to raise the existing $300 a week benefit, bowing to the demands of senator joe mansion -- manchin iii and other moderates who had voiced an over generous benefit could keep people from returning to work. as part of the agreement, they propose to make a large portion of last year's unemployment benefit tax-free. the deal emerged that mr. manchin's objections halted the stimulus measurable -- measure in its tracks as the chamber

began a marathon series of votes on an array of proposals." they are still voting on that and you can see senators hard at work. what we want to know from you is how your household finances are doing. in fact, we are just finding out that the senate has agreed to its first gop amendment the bill, descendent -- the senate has agreed on revenue requirements of institutions of higher education. that is the first amendment adopted into president biden's covid relief bill. how are you doing, how are your household finances doing? that is what we want to know. let us go to our phones and start with joe from georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. i love c-span and i've been calling for 30 years. i am doing better because i am

investing in blue-chip, and stocks. and i am teaching a leadership class and we have a financial expert to teach these young people about blue-chip stocks and how to make money with stocks, and i am a strong trump supporter, and also we believe in the larry kudlow show. he has a great program on fox news monday through friday about how to do well in stocks and politics involved. host: let me make sure i heard you correct. are you retired in doing this or do you do it full-time? caller: i am not. but i have done well in blue-chip stocks so i am financially able to spend a lot of time with young people, and we meet and encourage them. we teach them about how to invest in good blue-chip stocks, and dividend paying stocks so they can be financially

independent. and then we also discussed politics. steve moore is a great guy on fox news. anyway. i feel real good about the future, and i love c-span, you guys are doing an incredible job reporting on politics. host: richard from clarksville, tennessee. richard, are you doing better or worse off? caller: we will go back two years, and no. i did not follow. i voted for biden. i lost $12,000 from 2019 through my benefits in cash what i paid out and i am a disabled veteran. i am a journeyman. there were four musketeers, and five stooges. i do not know what this

gentleman before me has been so fortunate. my money came from my earnings from my body being a journeyman. i have done quite a bit of work and i get joy out of having laughter and hearing good things. now, falling in with trump has not been very nice at all. i saw him as how can you have six bankruptcies, i do not understand one rather than having to deal with six? host: ken from fremont, california. good morning morning. how are your household finances? caller: they are fine this morning. i really do not have a job or anything but i have a few questions. why hasn't president biden delivered the state of the union message yet? host: the state of the union is scheduled for a certain time, it

just has not happened yet. caller:, i heard he would deliver it around march, the later part of march, is that true? host: i do not know the exact date. they have to send an invitation to the white house to set the date, so i do not know if they have set it yet. caller: thank you very much. have a wonderful day, and god bless you. thank you for c-span. host: jim from little valley, new york. good morning. caller: good morning. host: are you doing better or worse than a year ago? caller: worse. host: tell us what has happened? caller: i am a retired truck driver, social security does not give me what i need cash wise. i just received my vaccine thanks to a program that president trump put in.

my wife passed away december 26, 2020, and these bills and the funeral bills and all of that. i have gotten behind on everything. i am getting shut off notices every day. i could use that stimulus, that i agree with some of the people that all that pork that they put in, that could bailout the state i live in, california, and some of the sanctuary states and provide free everything for people they are letting in here with no restrictions what fred -- note -- whatsoever. and yet they call -- they put restrictions on me. i called about my first covid shot, but i cannot get it until the seventh of april. and they will you -- they will let people come in here who have not been vaccinated or vetted and give them free money, housing and whatever they need. i have never gotten anything free.

i have had to work for everything i got. i carried furniture for four years and drove trucks. so, and as far as this government we have now as of january, i have no faith in whatsoever. all the pork that pelosi, schumer, nadler, shift, biden, and harris, the changes they are trying to do. i am an honorably discharged veteran six years standing up for this country. and the constitution the way it is written, what they are doing, i do not appreciate. host: republican senator on friday voiced his concern about some of the unspent money in previous covid response legislations and discussed concerns that he had with the american rescue plan that is being debated on the senate floor. here's what the senator had to say. [video clip] >> of all the money that we

appropriated in a bipartisan fashion, we have not spent it all yet we will spend $1.9 trillion even though we have not spent the earlier money. of the administrative actions we have 200 billion left to spend, of the legislative appropriations the appropriated $4.1 trillion and we have one trillion that will not -- that we have not spent yet but we will spend more than what we have spent in the past. the federal reserve set aside $5.9 trillion to help business and they have sufficient two -- two point $8 trillion. the economy is showing signs of life, the vaccine is out and things are looking better. it seems to me that we would want to spend the money not spent wisely before we embark on a 1.9 pick dollars spending spree, and most of it does not have much to do with anything with covid. they are doing it because they can and there will be a lot of amendments talking about better

ways to spend this money. the minimum wage has been dropped out, here is what is in this bill. $20 million for the preservation and maintenance of native american mini light -- native american languages. that is something we should do, but we should have hearings, not put it on a covid bill. 135 million dollars for the endowment of the national arts, something we want to do but not on a covid bill. $135 million for the endowment of humanities. $200 million for the institute of museum and library services, what does that have to do with covid? nothing. ppp loans for labor unions, paid leave fund for federal union -- for federal employees. what does that have to do with covid, nothing. $350 billion for blue states and we change the formula that is dramatically different than the

one that we passed. i could go on and on. money for schools. most of the money, 109 -- $129 million for k-12 most on the money is spent from 2022 to 2028 and hopefully we will get control of covid by 2028. this is an opportunity to spend money on things not related to covid because they have the power to do so. [end video clip] host: let us see what our social media followers are saying about their household financial situation compared to pre-covid. here is one post from facebook that says "my financial situation has been disrupted. it will continue to be until after i get the shot, and hopefully not the virus before then." a text that says "i am on fixed income and i am worse off because prices have gone up while interest on money has gone

down. i do not feel safe in stocks, cannot afford to lose money." here is a tweet that says "i work fewer hours last year and made $4000 more part time delivering pizza than in 2019." another text that says "actually i am financially better off. my wife and i have been saving gasoline and insurance rebates. we have not been on a vacation in two years. we used to go out to eat in the movies twice a month, a savings there. our son is in college and he received a college corona aid package, a savings there. last but not least we received a corona check and will receive another one in the near future." we want to know how you are doing and how are your household finances compared to a year ago before the covid pandemic. we have here a chart from pew

research center where they asked respondents what their financial situation was compared to a year ago, and as you can see on the chart, more people said that they were doing about the same, 49% of all adults said they were doing about the same they on they were a year ago. 30% said they were doing better, and 21% said they were doing worse. as you get into the other incomes it becomes different. on the whole, about half of the people say they are doing about the same as they were a year ago pre-covid. once again, how are you doing? let us go to paul from lady lake, florida. good morning. how are your finances compared to a year ago? caller: better, because i understand money and i would

like to help share with you two things i have learned about money. one, each dollar is spent over 50 times per year. the first receiver of money matters less because it will be received and re-spent over 50 times in a year. that is called the money accelerator. people can read about that. even if a first spender is an investment or by someone who does not need the money, it will be received by someone and simultaneously, almost simultaneously re-spent 50 times a year. think of money as an ocean, with individuals or businesses as paddlers of the waters of the money ocean. if you paddle the water, some all else will be able to paddle it. it does not disappear. second major point, this one is

a little bit hard. the amount of money they talk about, for trillion dollars, that is a four with 12 zeros after it. now think about the number of people in the united states, that is 300 million or more people. say there is an average of about three per family, meaning we have 100 million family bank accounts. 100 million family bank accounts is a 1 followed by eight zeros. it is a little bit harder arithmetic but it is not beyond your already and soar yourself to know how to divide $4 trillion equally into each of the 100 million family bank accounts so that each family wakes up and they see a deposit. host: let us go to mary from austin, texas.

good morning. caller: hello. host: how are your finances, are you doing better, worse, or about the same? caller: about the same for me, but first of all i wanted to say sorry for the lost jim, -- the loss jim, when he lost his wife for whatever reason. you know, i am a teacher, and i have not lost too much money, and i know there is a lot of argument about teachers and that sort of thing. that has gone often on, a hybrid situation. but, if we are looking at the big package, i feel like it is not very transparent to what

they are actually spending the money on. if we are going to get 9% of it that some people have broken it down, how does that help? $1400 for how long? the next six months? that is one mortgage payment for the month. how is that helpful? host: you think that they should put more money in the covid relief bill -- or the payments should be higher? caller: i think that if -- where is all this money -- if we are paying for this, right? $2 trillion, i think that most of the money needs to be put into our businesses and brought back to us. why are we sitting here thinking about people living in the

liminal areas and on the edge worrying about our existence and the ability to thrive in our own country. host: that brings up a question and that is one of the things they are debating right now, exactly which businesses should get it? exactly which americans get it? should americans doing better off a year ago still get covid payments? caller: how are you going to judge that at the moment? people who are doing better off. that even bothers me a little bit because joe biden promised the $2000 and then now it is like, only a certain set of people who make under this amount. it just keeps going on and on about the extent to which they are willing to pay these people.

it is our money anyway, you know? host: norman from tampa, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. i am a pharmacist and i see this bill is a very important for what is happening in this country. it is not about money, it is about a life-and-death struggle for us to survive in this world. and so these -- right now in florida we have unspeakable disparity that is taking place and it comes to distribution of the covid vaccination. if we just vaccinate this part of our population and leave the rest behind, money is not going to matter. so, i see this bill as serving an important message as to getting us back on track as the president said, and getting us back to normal and, if we can get back to normal.

the money will follow. host: you said you are a pharmacist, is the vaccine being offered in your pharmacy? caller: no. we would love to. we have reached out to get the covid vaccine in our pharmacy. we have spoken with our congressmen who has been very helpful, both kathy castor and congressman alfred lawson. the problem is that what we have in the state of florida is an unrighteous disparity. that is being conducted by our governor, who decides that, and if you look at the reports, that the vaccine will be distributed but only in certain places and in certain matters as those who vote in his district. this is not righteous. we are going to get back on track in this country, so we have to have some sort of equitable way of dispensing this

vaccine, either by giving pharmacies a grant or, have $500,000 in order to get what we can get into these places and get equitable distribution to the populations that need it. host: jaclyn, calling from texas. in morning. caller: good morning. host: are you doing better, worse, or about the same? caller: worse, because i have five sons, and they are grown. when this pandemic hit, they had been laid off, and they have been struggling with their families, and me and my husband has had to go into our savings to help out our sons and our grandchildren. we have 16 grandchildren, and my sons' families have to struggle.

that put us in a struggle. i feel that the republicans are doing the same thing that they did to us -- that they did to president obama that anything that biden or harris put on the table, they do a drawn out trying to pass things. people have been suffering for the longest, even in texas they have raised rent during the pandemic. that is ridiculous. and, to say that we are doing good and better, that is so ridiculous. and, the republicans ought to be ashamed. the senate ought to be ashamed of themselves by keep delaying this stuff and knowing that people are out here in the united states that are suffering, behind on their rent and utilities, their children

are not being able to be fed. some people are still trying to get food stamps, still trying to get unemployment, and they want to downplay it like it is ok? representative cruz does not represent texas. host: let us go to greg from illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. financially i am about the same, although i did retire because of covid. the company i work for made a separation agreement and i took it. in my entire working life i have worked in the same unionized trade in the same geographic area. and you can take the first union contract i worked under in 1977 and you can take my hourly rate and adjusted -- adjust it to inflation today, and i retired i made almost the exact to the

penny adjusted to inflation that i made in 1977. so really, in my entire working life i had more money. i have more assets, but i really have not had a raise in that entire working life. host: now that you are retired, the you plan to spend your time doing leisure activities or land to get another job and keep working? i know a lot of people retire and they look out how much money they are bringing in and realize that they need another part-time or full-time job just to keep up with inflation. caller: i wanted to go back to work because i got a little bit bored, but according to the pension plan, i cannot do it without having a financial penalty, as well as i took my social security at 62 and there would be a penalty with that if i made too much money. so, pretty much, i have to stay

not working. host: ok. let us go to elizabeth calling from virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. i am not doing that well financially. i have been unemployed for four years. are you there? host: we are listening. go ahead. caller: ok. and, i put in more applications, but i think at my age no one is going to hire me. and, i will be so glad when this stimulus comes through, because i have been living off of my savings, and they are just about gone. host: they have passed previous

covid relief bills, were you able to get any of the checks that came before from the previous stimulus bills? caller: $600, which does not go very far. host: and -- you are waiting on -- to see what type of relief comes out of this bill? are you following the senate debate at all? caller: i do follow it, yes. but, i hate to say this, you will probably cut me off, if the republicans would be fair to people, they have so much money, and yet i do not have any. i am almost in the poorhouse. host: senator bernie sanders talked to the third floor on friday to defend the $1.9 trillion spending and the

american rescue plan. here's what senator sanders set on the floor. [video clip] >> mr. president there was a poll that came out last week that was shocking and what it said, and it said that 63% of the american people are living paycheck-to-paycheck. and we said why are we spending all of this money? and the answer is we do not believe that children in america should go hungry. we do not believe that working people should be evicted from their apartments or lose their homes. we do not believe that in the midst of a pandemic, people should not be able to afford to go to a doctor. so, making sure that people have those direct payments, we believe in that. we believe that if a family is struggling through no fault of

their own, having lost their income, we are going to get them a check for $1400 and a family of four a check for $5,600. you know, there are a lot of people in this country who are doing well, and they are wondering what is the big deal about $1400, that is not a lot of money. a bunch of people can come in and spend $1400 on a lunch. if you are struggling to put food on the table for your kids, that $5,600 for a family of four is life and death, dignity or desperation. people are wondering how will i pay the rent that i owe after the rent and eviction moratorium expires. how am i going to feed my kids, how am i going to take care of the basic necessities? yes, we are providing $1400 per

working class family, because that is desperately needed. so, when the senator says why are we spending all of this money, the answer is because we are living in the most difficult moment in modern history of this country, and arguably a more difficult one than the great depression of the 1930's. people are hurting and in a democratic society, government is supposed to respond to the people who sent us here. [end video clip] host: let us go back to social media followers and see what they are saying about their household financial situation compared to pre-covid. here is one text that says " retired so revenue is unchanged. the long-term outlook is shakier due to likely inflationary trends in the economy." another says "worse off.

health-food prices went up and social security and medicare rates went down to offset the price increases." another text, "we are fortunate because our finances have risen. my house value has increased 25% due to all the people from high-tech states like new york moving here because they can work from home and live in a great cry -- climate in a beautiful area at half the cost and regulations." another text says, "got a $13 raise, i guess i am doing better, not. the price of gasoline, cable, electric, and rent went up." "my wife and i are in our early settle -- early 70's and we are doing fine. we saved and invested wisely. i heard a retired truck drivers comment stating his hardships. i am a retired teamsters with a defined pension and a 401(k) or

taking at least the rmd and we both have social security income. no debt and we pay cash for anything we buy. we plan on living comfortably after retirement." how are your household financials doing pre-and post-covid? we want to know how you are doing now compared to how you are doing pre-covid? we are talking to jennifer from tennessee. good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to say that my husband and i are doing about the same as we were before the pandemic, although in march when everything shut down i had to shut down my tutoring business. fortunately, i am also a classroom teacher so i am continuing to teach in the classroom and we are teaching in person. so, i am teaching in person. he has a full-time job as a

manager, and together we own some rental properties. and, we decided early on in the pandemic that we were going to do the best we could to make sure that our renters were able to stay in their homes, because we knew that a lot of them are working service jobs, restaurants, and things like that. and they had no income coming in at all, and i want to say they have done a fantastic job of just trying to do what they can. we stopped charging any late fees. we have been working with them, but i am concerned about them, and i think it is important that they get that $1400 because it means the difference to them between being able to eat, being able to put gas in their cars. host: i am glad you brought this up, because i was going to bring this up. we rarely have landlords who call in, so i heard you say that

you are trying to help your renters stay in their houses, because that helps you because you are getting rent and it helps them because it gives them a place to stay. in what ways are you helping them stay and continue to pay rent? caller: one of the things that we did is let them know on the front end early on in march that if you run into trouble, you need to call us. do not wait until you are at a crisis point and you are getting worried that you will you lose your housing. call with us and talk with us and we will figure something out. in some cases we have dropped the rent to half for that month, and in some cases we forgave a month to make sure that they could make it to the next month. so, we knew that we were going to take losses, but we knew if they took the losses they would be out of their house, and

especially with the ones who have kids, you do not want to put a family on the street if you can do anything to help them. we are doing well enough on what we do to be able to help, and i think that since the government is not quite getting it together yet, i think that the rest of us need to look around at how we can help and do the part that we can to help other people. host: let us talk to charles from fayetteville, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning, how are you? host: fine, are you doing better off, worse off, or about the same? caller: we are doing about the same. we are retired and we have pretty good pensions and social security so we are doing about the same. until everybody is doing ok with the country -- in the country than the poor and the democrats

will have to make sure that the people we sent to the senate and the president do better for us. we will have to demand it, and then everybody will do better when a crisis comes. until we do that, we will always be suffering. there will be people in this country suffering, and it should not be. and, until the poor and middle-class come together to make sure that the rich do what they are supposed to do, we will always be in the situation. host: just as the senate is debating the covid relief bill, the first unemployment report of president joe biden's administration was released on friday. i am going to read a couple of paragraphs from nbc news.com that talk about what happened in that report. "the u.s. economy added 379,000 jobs in february, beating

estimates of 210,000 and indicating that one year into the pandemic the labor market is finally showing signs of recovery. in the first full monthly employment report under president joe biden, the unemployment rate fell to 6.2% from 6.3% in january according to data released friday by the bureau of labor statistics. so, 379,000 jobs were gained in the february unemployment rate was 6.2%. that is the first unemployment report coming from the biden administration. so, for some people the economy is ticking up a little. but how are your finances doing. let us talk to carrie from milwaukee, wisconsin. good morning. caller: good morning. i am a first time caller, thank

you for having me on. thank you for -- i am not doing much better, i am a corporate travel consultant and i do not hear much regarding the travel industry but i have been laid off since last march, so going on about a year and my unemployment is about to run out and i am dipping into my savings. it is not a good thing. also i was hoping that you would put on your program what the biden administration is talking about regarding the extra taxes on the 401(k) ira investments and what that will do to pretty much every worker in the country? thank you very much. host: let us go to vicki from tennessee. vicki, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. good morning. how are you doing, how are your have sold finances? caller: mine or about the same,

what i am low income, so i am used to this. being on social -- social security disability you only get so much per month and i have learned to live with it. but the only thing for me is i see people who, one is my mother who set up -- herself, who cannot get into another apartment anywhere because the rent is much higher than what she can afford. and, my whole issue is if they took the pork out of the relief fund, in other words, the stuff that does not relate to covid-19 or to helping the people who have had to live through this covid-19 and the people that are working low income jobs, or do

not have jobs at all, that money could go towards those people instead of all of the pork. and, it would better everything. it might even open up our country to be able to work. to me, when this first started i took out a credit card. to me, the meaning of getting that money is paying off the credit card and getting rid of it. host: let us go to patricia calling from georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: yes. they need to help us on social security. i only make $800 a month. that is hard to live on when you pay car insurance, your mortgage.

i have zero dollars left, so i do not know why they will not give us a raise. $800 a month, some people live on less than that. they need to think about that. host: you heard several callers earlier say that this bill has too much pork and they want senators to go back through it and delete some of the material from it, which would take it longer for it to get through congress. do you think they should slow down the bill and re-examine the material in it? caller: no. i think they should take the pork out and give it to people who are on disability that are making low -- they are making $800. i am in poverty, and i am sure that others are too. and it is a shame that we have to live this way. and, social security is based on what you made. back then i was not making five

dollars an hour. host: one we got the unemployment report, the differences in the second there's the claim -- became very clear as it showed how the economy was doing. the leisure and hospitality industry, which was devastated by the shutting down of the country is actually picking up jobs again with -- and also the health-care industry is also picking up jobs. as you can see, the construction area and the mining area are still going back down with retail inching up as well. you can see from the report that some of the industries that were really affected by the pandemic last year, leisure, hospitality, and retail are picking up jobs as we move into -- as we move out of winter and head towards

spring of 2021. yesterday, during a white house covid-19 briefing, the response team senior advisor asked people to wait a little bit longer before trying to get back to normal. here's what he said. >> we owe the public straight talk whether the news is promising or challenging. progress demonstrates we can defeat covid-19 but it does not equal success. it may seem tempting in the face of all of this progress to try and rush back to normalcy as if the virus is in the rearview mirror, it is not. now, years of watching football on tv has shown me that it is better to spike the footfall once you are safely in the end zone, not once you have made a couple of completions. the cdc and public health officials locally, at the state level, and nationally are clear, wear a mask, not forever, but

for now. wear a mask now so we can get to a place where you do not have to. this is not just the voice of cautious public health experts, it is what businesses who want to remain open and many public officials of both parties who lived through the last year are saying. host: let us see what some of our social media followers are saying about their household finances. here is a text that says "doing much worse. we have lost our entire savings and in an excess of $100,000 due to the eviction moratorium. no rent payments for a year and no assistance under any federal program. landlords do not qualify for unemployment, ppp, stimulus. we have been shut down by the government from collecting rent for over a year. we have no money left and none coming in. we cannot pay for food for kids

and we will not receive any money out of the new bill." another text says "i am much worse off, living off my savings which are almost gone, feeling lucky i had it. the u.s. has one hundred 46 new billionaires this year, but i will not be able to retire when i turn 65. disgusting. ." here is a tweet that says "i am doing better. i clean houses and every one of my jobs started paying five dollars more an hour without me asking them to. they know i am paying test taking extra precautions in everything i do throughout my day to keep them safe. wearing a mask while cleaning house is not easy." one more that says "snowbird in florida, i am doing great. 80% of the money i had went right into savings and i had no major purchases. so happy they did not raise the minimum wage in my stay in florida it makes my dollar worth

a lot more. thanks to the people who are willing to work for $7.25 an hour." how are your household finances doing -- compared to pre-covid. let us talk to ray from yorktown heights, new york. good morning. caller: i am doing about the same. i am retired, i collect a pension and social security and i live on a tight budget. i am ok, and i take advantage of all the senior citizens discounts as far as food shopping and everything like that, and the medications and all that stuff which are available. and, i am even able to save a little bit. i would say about the same. host: let us talk to fred from toms river, -- tom's river, new jersey. how are your finances compared to a year ago? caller: worse.

it is only because i am retired, i am a veteran, vietnam era. so i have my pension, i am retired from my job, i have my pension, i am remarried because my first wife passed away and a lot of money went towards the house, and towards her burial expenses. unfortunately for me, i was fixed up with my former maid of honor, my spouse passed away, and because they lost their house and moved to seattle, she is taking care of her stepdaughter and her disabled son. they are ok now. we brought them to tennessee, and they went back to florida again. i married my former maid of honor, and it has been going

downhill even worse. we are still in new jersey, but she is doing ok. we found out that the problem she had with her back is not with the back. during her two knee replacements, and it is a relief to know that before covid started in october, that was the news. the bad news was that she got reinfected and the reinfection was not because of her back, it was because of her infection that has spread to her kidneys from 9:00 all the way to 11:30. and i finally picked up from the hospital, we are together, but she went from the hospital into a nursing home. she picked up covid. i did not see her for another month and a half to two months.

i am starting this year off at a point where i do not have any savings and all of our retirement money goes on a monthly basis straight to food and bills and that is about it. host: let us go to will from orlando, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. i am personally in the state of devastation. i do not know where i will be in six weeks or six months. i have reduced my personal outlay by leavingk to a transient hotelo,a i opened my social -- i opened my social security two years before retirement. florida is devastated and they are realistically talking about 2022 through 2024 or 2025 for a full recovery. employers are getting ready to absorb a $1.50 increase minimum

wage by september and a dollar a year thereafter until $15. they are not going to rehire all the people that have been let go. almost nobody has rehired. we talk about the jobs increase last month, that is not an increase, that is recovering jobs lost in the last year. the tourist revenue is -- tourism revenue is devastated. orlando and las vegas are the two most brutally affected cities in the country. people who make $75 or $150,000 are not using that money for stimulus. people at the bottom end are using it. they are stimulating the economy because every nickel is being spent for survival. host: let us go to kim calling from iowa. good morning. caller: good morning. we are doing better, but the

others, we started a business. and we are putting people into rent with a mortgage, rent to own. but when they say there is nothing in the bill for everybody, even the ones on disability and social security, this is not true. i watched them read the bill this thursday. i sat there and listened to what she was reading, and what they were reading. it has something for everyone. i feel bad for the workers, because i am a worker. and i feel so bad for the working poor. and, i think they should pass the bill and pass that $15 minimum wage, because it is time. host: james calling from

campton, new hampshire. good morning. caller: thank you very much for allowing me to come on. i am 78 years old at this time, and it has been a stretch. it has been a severe stretch. many of the expenditures that i was able to make before i cannot now, particularly in tax payments. we are slowly eroding our position. i am doing what i can to help my children, because they are also suffering. so, i have -- i was forced into a situation where money will pay for the housing in the heat, so it is forcing me into a bankruptcy situation. it is costly to file bankruptcy but i was lucky to find an agency that would do that for me. i feel bad about it after 78

years i have to declare that to my creditors, or some of the creditors. it has been a stretch. we are alive and eating, and functioning. but i worry more about the next generation and what they will inherit. host: judy calling from west virginia. good morning. caller: good morning. i think we are worse, the simple fact that i think there is a lot of waste in our government, and in this covid bill i think there is a lot of waste. things that could be spent on the american people. with us, we went through about all of our savings. we have three grandchildren that we keep. my daughter has stage four cancer.

and, we live primarily on social security. my husband returned to work, he works just to cover our insurance and help with the grandchildren. i do not think this bill is going to help much fair -- for people, especially seniors. i grew up in the vietnam era. my husband started to work and he worked his minimum wage which was one dollar 29 in our -- $1.29 an hour. that does not pay much for social security. and, i think our government needs to help people on social security more. i think there is a lot of waste in our government. host: let us go to don from sacramento, california. good morning. caller: can you hear me? host: we can.

go ahead. caller: i am doing worse off, but i have a suggestion because i had a history teacher who said we study history to learn from past mistakes. why aren't we taking this opportunity to do some infrastructure repair, retraining people, paying them a little bit more than they might have made, but giving folks a lot of work and opportunity to make a little bit more monetarily and to train for future jobs? there are a lot of things that could be done. it would take some of this burden off, and as much as i hate to say it, sincerely, if you are not a well documented member of this country, you do not qualify for this. and, because i hate even saying that or thinking that, but i

drive around america and there are 70 potholes and worlds -- roads need to be repaired. all of the fires, people could be trained to clear the forest and fight the fires. host: let us go to jim from georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call and thank you for c-span. you guys have a great program. i am probably a little worse off , but i was very fortunate in doing some work for a company that was a -- one of these companies that was had to keep working to keep the economy up. so, i had some good fortune in that regard. but, monetarily, in this whole scheme of things, not having the money is a problem, but that is

really an opportunity for discovering so much more about life than money. so, monetarily, yes, maybe a little worse off, but i can make ends meet. i think this is an opportunity to find out more about what life is about than just money. host: like to thank all of our callers and our social media followers for a great conversation. coming up next, dr. amesh docked is -- discusses vaccines and the covid-19 virus and variance. later today, it was 75 years ago that former british prime minister winston churchill delivered what came to be known as the iron curtain speech at fulton, missouri's westminster college. for our last hour of the day on washington journal and c-span's american history tv, we will

revisit how churchill came to be in fulton that day and how that speech reverberated across the decades long cold war. our guest will be timothy, fulton's chief curator. we will be right back. >> sunday on in-depth, a live conversation with elizabeth colder, staff writer -- elizabeth kolbert, staff writer for the new yorker. her books include the pulitzer prize-winning the sixth extinction and field notes from a catastrophe. join in the conversation with your phone calls, facebook commons, texts and tweets for lisbeth kolbert -- elizabeth kolbert, sons day -- sunday at noon eastern. be sure to visit c-span shop.org to get copies of her books.

>> sunday night on q&a, a discussion about social and economic disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic and the government's response, with jamie, senior fellow at george mason university's mercator center. >> any time we are going to change the way we live and change the economy produces, there are things that are going to be left by the wayside. there is going to be some degree of destruction with whatever is created. we are changing the way resources are used. this pandemic is forcing us to engage in that creative process. i think there is some optimism we can find in that. in particular, with the issue of working women, it has been known for a while that flexibility in work is one of the most useful

ways to enable women to balance a profession in motherhood. we are all very familiar with using online technologies and work from home. there are some good things long-term that might come out of it. in the short term, there is some pretty serious -- i think it would be fair to say trauma to be dealt with. >> jamie, sunday night on c-span's q&a at 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> washington journal continues. host: we are back with dr. amesh adalja of the john hopkins university center for health security, who is here with us to discuss vaccines as -- and the covid-19 virus and variance. thank you for being with us this morning. guest: thank you for having me. host: we are about one year into the coronavirus pandemic.

what lessons have we learned? what have we learned over this past year? guest: when it comes to the virus and the spread of infectious disease, we have learned a lot. to me, the biggest lesson, as somebody who works on infection disease preparedness, no matter how much you know and how many experts you have weighing in, if you don't have political leadership willing to execute those plans and take the current actions to not be evasive and see things for what they are, you are still going to end up with a horrible pandemic experience, even if you are the most prepared country in the world. that is the lesson a lot of us have taken. this cannot be something we do on the fly. we can't keep talking to ourselves and writing reports that end up in desk drawers, getting dusty. we have to have a sustainable system to deal with infectious emergencies day in and day out. we have to think of it as part

of national security and not allow public health departments to basically be eroded away so that when they are called upon to do contact tracing or testing, they have no ability or infrastructure to do it. that is the lesson and that is why we have seen these cycles throughout this pandemic of surge after surge and nothing done in between to fix the problem. i think there is this opportunity to change this for the better during the next pandemic. there is not a question about having another pandemic. we will. it is just a question of when. making sure we have this fixed so that we do not have this again. so that we have more competent leadership in place when we are talking about pandemic preparedness. host: looking back to one year ago, in a perfect world, what should have been done a year ago that would have changed the pandemic in the united states? guest: it is a little more than a year ago. i think even in early january of

2020, when we started to hear there was a novel coronavirus that was spreading efficiently from person to person, that was very deadly to elderly individuals, and that was likely in china, probably in november or october, unrecognized, mixed in with their influenza, at that point we needed to get ready. we could have first of all, we would have warned the country that this was going to come but we would have handled it proactively instead of reactively. we knew elderly individuals were getting hit hard. that meant our nursing homes would be easy targets for the virus trade we could have hardened nursing homes, major they had protocols and ppe. they sick we locked them down early. we could have developed a better testing strategy. our testing strategy was late and flawed. there was no interest in taking up the who test, a test was made in the united states that was flawed. private labs and universities were blocked from making their own tests. the testing criteria for the cdc

was so strict we new we were missing cases. we could only test people that had come back from china that had lower respiratory tract infections. we could not test somebody who had a sore throat or somebody who came back from italy, even though we know now and knew then that the virus left china long before it came to the united states. there were cases in france and we knew there were many countries that had cases but we could not test. that led to a perfect storm, where you had cases, developing undetected transmission change. the hospitals went into crisis like we saw in new york city. governors were left with a blunt tool because they had no way to know who was infected and who was not so they shut everything down. that whole january, february and most of march when all of that decisive time was lost, i think that is why we had the trajectory we had in the united states and taiwan only had eight

deaths and never had to resort to these types of measures, because they were proactive. they jumped into action in december of 2019, just on rumors. host: that is looking backward. now, let's look forward. what challenges does the united states face right now? what are the challenges we face in eradicating the coronavirus and getting like back to normal? guest: one major point, we are not going to eradicate the coronavirus. this is an efficiently spreading respiratory virus that comes from a family of viruses whose virus causes 25% of our common colds. several years from now, we will still have covid-19 cases. what we are trying to do is render it unable to cause three things. serious disease, hospitalization and deaths. that is what the vaccines are trying to do. we are not going to covid zero. that is not possible. what we are trying to do is make something that has become

defanged and can never threat hospitals again. the threat -- the challenge is to turn our vaccines into vaccinations. get them into as many people as we can, especially vulnerable individuals who are likely to develop serious disease. then, i think the challenge is going to be trying to teach people about risk calculations. covid is going to be around. you have to teach people that this respiratory virus is now going to be part of our normal respiratory viruses that occur every year and that people have to have common sense and it comes to crowded and congregate in places and handwashing. maybe mask wearing until enough people are vaccinated. the other challenge now is to make sure this never happens again. to build the systems in government at all levels, federal, state and local, that are able to respond properly to an infectious disease emergency and have that infrastructure day in and day out, so that when covid-19 receipts from the

headlines, all of our public health infrastructure does not reseed -- recede like with ebola. we need to recognize the threat infectious diseases are going to pose in the future. host: what is the biggest need in fighting the coronavirus, both in the united states and around the world? guest: the biggest need is getting more vaccines available and having the infrastructure to put the vaccine in people's arms. the vaccines are the solution to covid-19. they are how we get back to normalcy. this is how we protect our hospitals from getting frightened. this is how we protect our nurses. we have to take this awesome tool we have, this awesome piece of technology and get it into people's arms. that means making enough of it, having the supply chain channels to the state and to the county help the parma so that this actually happens, to make getting a covid-19 vaccine as

easy as getting a flu vaccine. host: during a covid-19 response briefing, dr. michelle wilensky -- rochelle walensky warned against lifting restrictions too soon. >> i know getting back to everyday activities is appealing but we are not there yet. we have seen this before. when prevention measures are rolled back, cases go up. an article was published today highlights the critical importance of these prevention strategies and the real risks when prevention measures are used. this study of the relationship between covid-19 cases and deaths and state issued mask mandates and restaurants resuming on premises dining from march to december of 2020. the research found increases in both daily death rates and covid

cases and deaths rose significantly in 20 days -- within 20 days of -- in contrast, the increases in elite death rates of covid-19 cases and deaths grew more quickly within 40 to 80 days of restaurants being allowed to resume on premises dining. this is a critical reminder that with the current levels of covid-19 in communities and the continued spread of more transmissible virus variance, which has now been detected in 48 states, strictly following prevention measures remains essential for putting an end to this pandemic. it serves as a warning about premature lifting of these prevention measures. host: dr. adalja, we see several states including south carolina,

texas and mississippi say they will open their businesses, restaurants and bars and they will lift their mask mandates. what impact is that going to have on the coronavirus pandemic in the united states? host: it is unclear exactly what impact because there are a lot of different variables at play. the first thing is i think it is ill-advised to lift mask guidance at this point because we still have over 60,000 cases occurring every day. we don't have enough people vaccinated to be able to do away with masks. as the cdc director discussed, there is clear evidence that having a high compliance rate with wearing masks when people cannot social distance is associated with decreased caseloads and decreased deaths. what is different now is that we have a vaccine and there is a sick and proportion of the population, not enough, but a significant proportion vaccinated. a majority of the people over the age of 65 have had at least one does now. that is going to play a role in this kind of disparity between

the number of cases that we might have versus hospitalizations and deaths. the governors that are doing this, i think it is ill-advised. they will have a cushion because there is some vaccination going on. i would say if you are going to 100% capacity, it is very important from a business operations standpoint to have masks the part of that etiquette. if you are a business and you are operating at 100%, you're likely to have people numbing in there that don't know they are infected. they will expose other people and maybe infect other people and you will have employees off and you will be known as a place where covid-19 is spread. i would hope that -- despite these governors actions, -- and there are some states that never had mask mandates like florida, i hope they are able to make calculations and do this on their own. you don't have the government telling you to wear a mask at this point but i am telling you to wear a mask until more people get vaccinated. if you are operating at 100%, remember you are at -- in a

pandemic. you can do more than what the state guidance says, you can have employees wearing ace masks and have handwashing stations, open windows and increase ventilation. that will be important as we move forward. this will happen slowly. each state will start doing this. but many of them are going to do it. as people get vaccinated, especially nursing home stations and communities with high risk individuals, you'll see a change in the risk perception. the disease will not go away and we will have cases. but they will not infringe on hospital capacity. i think this is the ship we will see. cases will continue and probably go up. that is in the short-term. you will see hospitalizations be stable and eventually deaths start to fall as well. what we are going to do is change the dynamics of this virus and make it one that cannot kill or hospitalize people it will still spread. that will be what the cdc has to think about the guidance and how to shift that as we move from a

deadly disease to one that has a different risk level because we have removed the ability of the virus to kill. host: let me remind our viewers that they can take part in this conversation. we will open up regional lines. regional lines for this conversation. that means that if you are in the eastern or central time zone, you can call (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, your number will be (202) 748-8001. keep in mind, you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. and we are always breeding on social media, on twitter at c-span3 j and on facebook at facebook.com/c-span. dr. adalja we have a question from one of our social media workers. they want to know if you can comment on the current flu season and lay rest to the lies

that covid-19 is just like the flu. what has flu season and like this year? we have been saying covid-19 is not like the flu for the longest. can you reemphasize that. guest: sure. the flu season this year has been almost nonexistent. that is because flu spreads through respiratory droplets. there are people who are vaccinated against the flu. when we put into place the social distancing measures, the handwashing and the mass wearing, the flu was unable to find that environment conducive to its spread. all of our covid-19 measures have rendered flu a nonissue this season. you have to remember, flu has a difficult time spreading because there is population immunity. people have been inflicted with similar flu strains in the past and been vaccinated against the flu over the years, as well as having an updated vaccine matched to the circulation strains and we saw the southern hemisphere which has the opposite flu season has -- have no season as well. that provides less viruses in

the environment for it to spread. flu was knocked out because of our covid-19 mitigation strategy. it will be interesting to see as those lift if the flu starts to come back. i saw maybe one case of the flu this season which is different. flu is a much easier disease to control that covid-19. we have vaccines for flute since the 1940's. we have multiple antivirals for flu, things like tamiflu and other antivirals. we have a lot more knowledge about the flu. we know how to treat it and when to suspect bacterial inflections -- infections that have superimposed on the flu. the flu does not kill the way coronavirus does. in a bad flu season, the worst one in the last several years was a couple of years ago. about 80,000 americans died of influenza. that is at least five or six times less than how many died during covid-19. these are not diseases you can

compare other than they spread through the respiratory route. covid-19 is much more deadly. it kills at at least 10 times the rate of influenza. i don't think that that comparison is valid. it is something that is used to dismiss the seriousness of the pandemic. the fact that we are approaching 500,000 deaths or we have crossed 500,000, that puts this on part of the u.s. impact of the 1918 flu pandemic. -- on par with the impact of the 1918 flu pandemic. host: we encourage people to get their flu shots every year. you said earlier you expect to see covid-19 as part of our lives from now on. do you think we will be at a point soon where we have to take a covid-19 shot every year like we take a flu shot every year? guest: it is unclear what the interval will be. if we have to have new shots,

there are a couple of issues. the flu is a tricky virus when it comes to vaccines because the virus is shifting and drifting away from what the vaccines are designed for. that is why we have to update the vaccines basically every year. coronavirus is are a little -- is a little different. we have seen viruses that are drifting away from the vaccine. we may need that. what interval is unclear. we may need booster shots every five to 10 years. we don't have enough data. to me, the threshold for updating the vaccine, at least in the short run is if we see people who are vaccinated getting breakthrough infections that land them in the hospital and i have not seen that yet. i think it is important for companies to start studying different variations of the vaccine in case it needs to be updated but i don't think we are ready to pull the trigger yet. i think we need more data and understanding of the natural history of people who are vaccinated and how long the

immunity lasts and when breakthrough infections occur and how contagious they might be. host: lets let some of the viewers take part. we will start with rhonda, who is calling from jacksonville, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. i just want to say that i want to thank the front-line workers and all of the hospitals and all of the front-line workers that have sacrificed their time to take care of the covid patients to keep the economy going. my father passed away in january of covid. in the beginning of coronavirus, i was trying to keep them safe by trying to stay away from him because i am a front-line worker and i did not want to expose him . we still talked on the telephone. but it was so sad, the fact that we had to say goodbye to god -- to each other and not hold hands.

and i feel like our leadership now -- he cut me off. host: rhonda, go ahead. caller: i'm sorry, i thought you cut me off. i want to say thank you to the front-line workers. thank god for president biden, that he is helping get us under control. the people that don't want to wear a mask and believe in conspiracy theories, it is sad because i have front-line experience with what people go through with covid. i talked to the nurses and my father suffered for two weeks. people need to just wear a mask and stop being selfish, listen to the signs and listen to the doctors. if you go out to a restaurant and -- to a restaurant, wear your mask. my father was a businessman. he would be around a lot of people. every time i talked to him i

would say make sure you wear your mask. this coronavirus does not discriminate. host: go ahead and respond, dr. adalja. guest: i think the caller -- i think what the caller brings up is important. the idea that covid was not as serious as it was, that has made responding to this pandemic difficult. this is something any of us were not prepared for. we did not think politics would be injected so heavily into an outbreak response. we know with emergencies, politics play a role. we saw with hiv. we have seen it many times. the degree to which you have one half of the country not really thinking this is something to take seriously and the other half taking it seriously, that is something a lot of us had not thought would actually happen. i do think that our political leaders bear the blame for this. that has been coming from the top down from the beginning because we did not have residential leadership that was strong about this in january and

february and most of march, where we had a lot of evasion coming from the highest levels of government where they thought it would magically disappear or go from 15 to zero. i think it influenced people's behavior and made the pandemic worse than it had to be. i would also say that i never expected to see an attack on experts where you heard people chanting to fire certain people or our renowned infectious disease doctors having to have security in place because of the rhetoric that is going on or see the cdc sidelined and bound and gagged and thrown into a trunk during the last administration. all of that has politics as its cause. i think we need to be careful, when we think about how to structure an infectious disease response so that it does not have the ability to be polluted by politicians. we are seeing it now, in detroit

we heard about the mayor not wanting the johnson & johnson vaccine. all of that is politics injecting itself into a place where it should not be and the politicians do not have the qualifications to make the announcements they are making. host: yesterday, the white house -- during the white house response briefing, dr. anthony fauci reminded people the best covid-19 vaccine is the one available to you. here is what he said. >> i think -- i will tell you it is a great question. the message is getting through. dr. fauci: we have to get away from this issue of comparing one to another except to say we have a highly efficacious group of three vaccines. and the critical issue you said to repeat again in the important area of preventing against very severe disease leading to

hospitalizations and deaths, it is virtually 100% in that regard. that is really good news. again, people want to get vaccinated. you go to a place that will have a vaccine. almost all will have one or the other. i would just take a vaccine that is the most readily available to you. host: should we, as consumers, be trying to judge the effectiveness of the vaccine? how does the johnson and johnson one stack up against pfizer or moderna, or should you take what is available to you? guest: you should take what is available to you. as members of the population, i don't think we should try to compare the efficacy because you can't. when it comes to these vaccines, what we want them to do are three things, prevent serious disease, prevent hospitalizations and prevent deaths. all three due tremendous on that account. if we can get our population vaccinated, this virus will never threaten hospital capacity

again. when you look at the efficacy numbers and someone says 66 for johnson & johnson, 95% for moderna and pfizer. there was not a trial where one proportion gets pfizer, another portion gets johnson & johnson, and another gets moderna, and another gets the placebo. they happened at different times of the year in different parts of the country. johnson & johnson started later than pfizer. you also had sprite -- higher spread when johnson & johnson's trial was going on. the lower the spread, the better the vaccine will look. you cannot make a one-on-one comparison. if i were speaking to a medical student class, i would say that is not a viable considers and -- comparison. the fact is, these are all great vaccines. you should get whichever one you

can have. i would call to attention the u.s. catholic conference of bishops maligned the johnson & johnson vaccine and i think that is an unfortunate thing because this grant -- vaccine is a great vaccine and it is a life-saving vaccine. if you can get it, get it. it is a single dose. you are one and done and it does not require cold storage. it will be easier to get. this is a breakthrough when it comes to vaccinating the population. host: one of our social media followers wants more basic information about what the vaccines will do. this person writes i would like a better explanation about the protections of the vaccine. i am also understanding that it just protects the vaccinators from severe illness, not immunity. and it doesn't prevent the vaccinated from spreading the disease, is that true? guest: know, that is not true. -- no, that is not true.

what they were testing to see is does it prevent symptomatic disease. including a cough and sore throat, that is where you are seeing high numbers, 95% for moderna and pfizer and johnson & johnson had 66%. if you got the vaccine, did you develop symptoms of covid, it is very good not just at preventing serious disease but also symptomatically disease. -- symptomatic disease. in countries of israel, which have a high population, not only does it protect symptomatic disease, it protects against asymptomatic spread. it makes you safer to be around. you are less likely to be a carrier of this virus, very less likely to be a carrier of this virus. it provides immunity and does everything we wanted to do. these are great vaccines. i think there has been a lot of underselling, where they say it

is 95% effective, what about the other 5% or it does not prevent spread. i think that was misguided. studies did not check for asymptomatic infection because they were done quickly. they wanted to get the most important measure out which was symptomatically disease. as we look at what is happening in places like israel, we are seeing the virus does decrease spread. you will be someone who gets there like back when you get this vaccine. this is something we want as many people who are eligible to get the vaccine to get. this is something that is critical to ending the pandemic and getting us back to some semblance of normalcy. host: let's go back to our phone lines and talk to alan, who is calling from hawaii. morning. caller: thank you for taking my call, jesse. i hope you can let me ask three questions of dr. adalja. i will throw the word antigenic seniority. he is not saying it is exists with corunna. -- coronavirus. we think there should be a study

to -- do you think there should be a study to examine that possibility? if that strategy was done on a gigantic scale and given to the population now, is that cool if the variance become a severe issue, help to combat variance become -- from becoming a more dangerous thing. if you consider it to be intimate, that the virus is no longer a pandemic, it is endemic, is there a model you can cite that would show the virus would become more dangerous or less dangerous with time, like some corunna viruses? -- coronaviruses, i will take my answers off the air. host: antigenic -- guest: antigenic seniority, to me, that has to do with -- it is

a technical term where if you get infected with a strain, later on your immunity will be boosted against other strains. that is a technical thing but i agree those studies should be done. i have been an advocate and did a congressional seminar on this. i think he has been a great champion of this. this is something we should have been doing on day one. what we are talking about our cheap home tests where you can test yourself twice a week or once a day, a one dollar or five dollar test and get the result that day and know whether or not you are contagious. and that will influence whether or not you can be around people. i think that is something we should have done long ago. there are four at home tests which give you results available. none of them are cheap or easy and some require prescriptions. we need to get to a point where we can test for this like we can test for pregnancy tests.

we would have opened up a lot of things early if we have this type of testing in place. we have never had testing like that. that is part of the reason why the pandemic went this way. the third question had to do with the fact that -- will this adapt itself to humans in a way that it becomes less verlander? -- virulent. it being more transmissible means it is more deadly. some infections, being more deadly makes it more transmissible, like cholera. they have likely been selected for their ability to transmit efficiently. and they have given up some of their virulence. people think the 1889 flu

pandemic was a coronavirus. for the coronavirus, its transmissibility will be a function of having mild symptoms so people can go about having -- about their deadly lives and transmitting the coronavirus. -- the front of arms to other people. when they get -- the coronavirus to other people. when they get severe disease, it is bad. i think this is something we will see, and the vaccine will help us get there. host: one of the questions coming from a social media follower is one i want to ask as well. we need to know what is happening with all of the virus variants. a specific question says how will the variants, including the new one detected in the philippines affect our vaccination efforts? will everyone who received the madera and pfizer 1.0 vaccines have to go back for boosters?

guest: there are many variants that have been transmitted. most did not change the function. there are some of concern. they change the function of the virus. they make it something that is more transmissible. in -- and a couple of them pose problems for the current vaccine. the threshold i mentioned earlier to update a vaccine is if you have vaccinated people that only have breakthrough infections but have severe breakthrough infections that land them in the hospital, that is what i think the threshold would be to update the vaccine or to add a booster or whatever it might be. we are not there yet. i don't think we have seen those types of cases. it is important to be proactive and thankfully the vaccines we have developed, moderna and pfizer, astrazeneca and johnson and johnson, all of them are innovative, using something called vaccine platform

technologies. they can switch out the coronavirus necessary to update it. what we know about the south africa and brazilian variance -- variants is that even if you get a breakthrough infection, you are protected from severe disease, hospitalization and death. that is all we have asked from the vaccines. i think in the face of these variance, our vaccines look pretty good. the efficacy drops, but not below 50%. several months ago, the fda was poised to give approval to a 50% efficacy vaccine. i think this is an issue we have to address coming forward but i don't know that it would actually cross that threshold yet. i think we are prepared for it but not ready to pull the trigger on saying we need to update these vaccines now. host: let's get back to our phone lines and talk to joe who is calling from beacon, new york. caller: hello, hi jesse. hello, dr. dr. adalja -- hello,

dr. adalja. can you hear me? host: we can. caller: i am a teacher. i have two questions. i am going to go get the johnson & johnson vaccine in about two to three hours from now. i feel like you guys covered that. i did have questions about the efficacy rates. just because looking at 60 and you look at the others, dr. adalja, if i'm correct, this all kind of evens out at some point. i am not sure if i am stating that accurately. the other question i ask you as a teacher, we have been relaxing our guidelines quite a bit. we have been back in person since november. we had cohorts and we had

special education students that were coming four days out of five. now, we are at a point where there is pressure, particularly from students that are wanting to be in four days. we have relaxed the guidelines and we are also getting more students in a classroom, as opposed to the max being 15, now we are up to 20. students aren't vaccinated. teachers are getting it, thanks to president biden with the initiative to get teachers all vaccinated by the end of march, hence why i got a vaccine scheduled for today, so quickly. i guess my two questions are really related to the efficacy of johnson and johnson that you guys talked about. am i correct in that it will

even out eventually as far as how well it will be able to protect us from catching covid? and the other is is it premature to be relaxing the guidelines this much? those are my two questions, thank you very much. guest: with the johnson and johnson vexing, i would not pay attention to the efficacy number comparing it -- when you are comparing it to moderna and pfizer. they were not exactly the same trial and they happened at different times. those numbers are not 1:1 comparable. it is unfortunate because people are naturally drawn to make that comparison. i think all three of these vaccines will be shown to be equivalent and you should get whatever one you can get. i am glad you're getting the johnson & johnson vaccine today and i am glad that we'll get teachers vaccinated so we can get in person learning going across the country again, because it is very important to do that. i think children have suffered because of that and we traded a

lot of short-term stuff for long-term gains and we will pay for this for a long time. the data is strong on how you can do this safely in schools. i know there is controversy. the who has been pushing and talking about a three-foot barrier you can use. they and it is more difficult to do. with masking, with lots of handwashing, i think you can do it. i would be meticulous about all of the other things that you are doing, in order to make that feasible. when you see transmission in schools, it is often not the actual classroom, sitting there and learning at the desk. it is the extracurricular activities. the sports, the cheerleading, the clandestine homecoming dances, which is something that happened near my hometown. that is driving the infection. especially when you get to younger children, probably sixth grade and below. i think the risks are lower than when you get to be high school level. it is important, when you -- it

is important to see if people are getting infected. this is something we have to figure out. it has been over a year and it is inexcusable that we do not have this figured out. hopefully this will happen for you and i think as more teachers are vaccinated, that three foot rule might be something you can start to implement much safer or much easier. you can use plexiglas around the desks to prevent spread between desks that is the case. i think we can find ways to do this and it is long overdue that we get our children back in classrooms. host: we appreciate dr. adalja for being here with us this morning and answering these questions. dr. adalja, thank you so much for taking time out and walking us through this important information. guest: thank you for having me. host: we will continue to talk about the covid-19 pandemic response. you see the lines there on the screen. we want to hear from you about

what you are seeing out there and whether you have had your coronavirus shot or not. we will be right back. ♪ host: today on the communicators, antitrust analysts sally hubbard and brent talk about the efficacy of antitrust laws and should they be reformed? >> we have these lost that were passed, the sherman act was passed in 1890. the clayton act in 1914. the sherman act makes it illegal to monopolize. the clayton act says any murder that is made in monopoly is illegal. we have watched hundreds of these mergers that would be illegal under that standard have been approved. >> there is an argument that underlines a lot of criticisms

of antitrust, the feeling that big is bad and large companies are abusing competition or consumers. i don't think that is true and most antitrust forces don't think that is true. large companies are large because they are efficient and bring great services, popular services to consumers. >> sally hubbard and brent today at 6:30 p.m. eastern on the communicators on c-span. >> washington journal continues. host: we will open up our phone lines. we want to hear from you on whether you have gotten your first, second or the single johnson & johnson coronavirus vaccine shot. what are you seeing out there in the country? the lines are going to be open by region. if you are in the eastern and central time zone, your number is (202) 748-8000. if you're in the mountain and

pacific time zone, your number is (202) 748-8001. let's start with george who is calling from circleville, ohio. george, good morning. caller: hi, jesse, how are you doing? host: just fine. caller: i got the coronavirus when it started last march or april. i am wondering about heard immunity -- herd divinity. i am a senior citizen. i have trouble walking. one person fell when he got home . that is the kind of risk i don't want to take. i have already had it so i am thinking herd immunity, i don't want to risk myself getting it. it is the first vaccination that

will cause that. it is based on gene therapy. host: have you had asked let me see if i remember -- have you had -- let me see -- have you had any vaccines? caller: i had the coronavirus. host: but you have not had any vaccines? caller: [indiscernible] host: are you saying you don't plan to get any? caller: no. if i fall, i won't be able to get up. there are too many questions about the vaccine. it is not a vaccine. it is gene therapy. it is the first time it has been used. host: let's go to john who is calling from seattle, washington. good morning. caller: good morning, c-span.

i have followed the case numbers closely for over a year. there have been three distinct covid-19 waves. the most severe first began in october of 2020. one of the early identifiers for the new wave is a mismatch between the number of cases reported and the percentage of those that are positive. i noticed that the number of tests performed has roughly fallen with a drop in caseloads. this might have been a good question for your previous guest, the professor. maybe this is something your viewers can think about themselves is that i wonder if it would be a good idea to increase our test load to at least where it was during the previous peak, in other words strategically testing asymptomatic people as a means

to detect cases that would otherwise not be found. that might be especially helpful in removing it from circulation. host: we did not get a chance to talk to dr. adalja about that today. we had another segment who said doctors are not suggesting people get tested but they are suggesting people get the vaccine, which could lead to the drop in testing. caller: i think i have heard that on a few of your segments before. that is possible. one of the explanations for that is that they have had to redirect personnel from testing over to vaccination efforts. that is possible. but the tests are still -- they are not out of range from where they were in the last way. there are plenty of mitigation

efforts beyond the vaccine. if you're in your mid-40's like i am, it will be a while before you can get the vaccine anyways. host: let's go to kurt. caller: good morning. i am high risk for covid. i have been working in the field, doing my job. and i have just been notified in florida that, from my cardiologist office, i am now next in line. i am 61 years old and have been waiting my turn. i would like to emphasize that we should take more than just one approach toward doing -- using the good science. we have indoor air quality science that is not being applied. and we should mandate that all commercial ac systems be

supplied with ionization that will sanitize the air in schools and other closed in places. host: that was going to be my next were next in line. how long will it be before you get your first or if you get the johnson & johnson, the only shot you will take? how long will it be? caller: unfortunately, the process is done online. when i was notified, i registered and when it was my turn to set an appointment, they were no longer available within 24 hours. host: so you don't have an appointment? caller: i am waiting for my next invitation to get an appointment. i did hear that they are going to start sites in jacksonville for people that are at high risk. you no longer have to be 61. they made it a wider range of

people it is now available too. i have been waiting in line. i think it is my patriotic duty to wait in line. that is what i have done. i am worried everyday about it. i am still working out in the field. i no longer am going to my office. i kept myself out of the office environment. i think the main thing here is personal response ability, best response ability -- responsibility, doing the best thing for yourself. i am no longer counting on the scientists and government to get me through this. it is me taking personal response ability. host: let's go to margaret who is calling from pennsylvania. good morning. caller: hi, how are you. host: just fine. go ahead. caller: i have not had the shot yet. i called. my doctor gave me a number to call. they are very busy.

i will just have to wait and i am sure -- until i can get through. my son tested positive for covid last march and we live in the same house. he is downstairs, i am upstairs. so, i am ready good. what i am just going to do is keep my mask on when i go out. when i cook, i cook the food and leave it there for him. when he is done, he puts it in the dishwasher or whatever and i go downstairs and do whatever else i have to do. if i can say one other thing, i am doing much better since the covid started because i have saved a lot of money. i don't have to spend money on gas, dry cleaning and other good stuff. hello, are you there? host: let's go to john, who is calling from little rock, california. caller: hi, jesse.

host: go ahead, john. caller: i am hearing some of the else talking. host: turn your television down and go ahead. caller: i want to tell you good morning. good morning to the washington journal. host: host: you -- host: you are going to have to turn your television down or you will get that echo. let's move on to liz. liz, good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. i was fortunate enough to get those doses of the pfizer vaccine, the second one a week ago on wednesday. i got my dosage. i would encourage everybody to get the vaccine. i am sure that the same

conspiracies will be abound on social media about each and every vaccine. we are not going to get out of this pandemic without reaching herd immunity. we need to reach it through vaccines and not just through massive deaths. there is no guarantee if you don't get the vaccines that you won't get covid and perhaps a very bad case of covid that either harms you for life or you are not here with us anymore. host: now liz, you said you had gotten both of your shots. did you suffer any of the side effects? caller: i was pretty fortunate. i did get a sore arm, like if you touched it it was sore. and after the second one, i also got a day or 1.5 days of

sleepiness, being tired or fatigued. i slept more. other than that, no. i did not have a fever. i did not have chills. i did not have a headache. all of the things that some people claimed they had and perhaps they do, i really tolerated it already well. i was blessed they. -- there. host: let's talk to joe who is calling from richmond, virginia. caller: good morning. i don't get sick for eight i have not caught a cold since 2012. -- i don't get sick. i have not caught a cold since 2012. i would rather get the virus that the vaccine ash than the vaccine. -- than the vaccine. host: i don't think the covid-19 virus cares about what you eat. caller: i care about what i.e.. -- i.e. -- i eat.

we try to maintain a system around us. if you eat healthy, you will be able to build your immune system and strengthen your awareness to be able to defend yourself. host: let's go to marilyn who is calling from illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. can you hear me? good morning, thank you for taking my call. i just wanted to say that i am 78 and my sister is 91 and we both went together on february 26 and got the moderna vaccine. neither one of us had any really bad effects of it at all. just a little bit of a sore arm for a couple of hours and that was it. the next day, we did not have anything. we moved around like we always have and we have a schedule to get our next moderna shot on

march 26. i just want to tell everybody, especially all of the older people out there that are so fearful that there is nothing to fear. what you should fear is getting the covid if you don't get the vaccine. because it is a terrible, terrible thing that happens to people. so, go ahead and take the plunge and get the shot. host: tell us about the process for you. did it take a long time? did you have to stand in line? was it quick? how was the process? caller: we were on the list and my niece works for the medical clinic in our town. she let us know that they have several vaccines that they were going to have to discard if they did not get people to come in and take them. she called us and we went right away. our wait was about 45 minutes.

a pleasant way. -- wait. we were spaced apart in the waiting area. i can't say enough about the lady who gave me the shot and my sister the shot. it was almost where you did not know you had a shot. host: let's go to joe, who is calling from tulsa, oklahoma. good morning. caller: good morning, jesse, how are you. host: just fine. go ahead. caller: i got my second shot on the fifth of february. i am supposed to have my immunity built up now. and it was a very pleasant experience. host: let's go to betty who is calling from gray, kentucky. betty, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: yes, i got my first shot the first day of march.

i did not have to stand in line maybe 40 minutes and i didn't even feel the vaccine. i am just glad i finally got it. the only side effect i have had is a slight soreness in my arm and i am relieved i got my first shot and am looking forward to my second one. host: let's talk to carl, calling from lancaster, pennsylvania. good morning. caller: i got both of my madera shots -- madura -- moderna shot. i had a slight sore leg that lasted for 12 hours from the first shot. the second shot, i had heaviness in my nose after i got the shot.

what we have to do, one of the most important things is not to take any over-the-counter medication whenever we have that stuff going on. thank you very much. and i just wanted to make sure people knew not to take tylenol or aspirin whenever you're getting your shot, for 48 hours. i know you want to but doctors say it reduces the effect of your coronavirus antibiotics shot into your arm and you don't want that. host: we would like to thank all of our callers. it was 75 years ago that winston churchill delivered what came to be known as the iron curtain speech at fulton missouri's -- fulton, missouri's westminster college. for our last hour of the washington journal and on

c-span3, we will revisit how he came to be in fulton that day and how that screech reverie would across -- reverberated across the decades long cold war. first, here is >> in the baltic to the adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the country. [indiscernible] warsaw, berlin, prague, vienna, budapest, belgrade, bucharest, to all these famous cities and the populations around them.

[indiscernible] russians . [indiscernible] at the end of the fighting last june the american and british armies, in accordance with an early agreement, to adapt some 150 miles in order to allow our russian allies to occupy the territory.

if the soviet government tries to build up a probe communist germany in their areas, this would cause serious differences in the american and british zones and will give the defeated germany the power of putting themselves up between the soviets and western democracy. whatever conclusions may be drawn facts, facts they are. this is not deliberated europe, nor is it one that contains the essentials. on the other hand, ladies and gentlemen, i repulse the idea that a new war is inevitable. it is because i am sure our fortunes are still in our hands, in our own hands, and that we hold the pile where to save the

future. host: that was winston churchill 75 years ago on march 5, 1946 at westminster college in. fulton, missouri. timothy riley joins us now at westminster college. good morning. guest: good morning. thank you for having me on. host: we are not only here on washington journal but we are simulcasting on american history tv on c-span3 right now. timothy, explain to us what winston churchill was doing in fulton, missouri on march 5, 1946. guest: 75 years ago, it is a question we get asked every day. why in the world what winston churchill visit westminster

college in central missouri in the heart of america? i guess the simple answer is the college asked him to come, but the longer answer is more complicated. we have to take you back to the end of world war ii. there was ve day in europe in may 1945. the allies had been victorious. things were looking good for churchill, for harry truman, and for the other big three in the alliance, stalin. they had won the war. shortly after there was an election in britain and churchill's party lost the election. suddenly, arguably the most recognizable figure in the world is without a job. he is no longer prime minister and he is by all accounts somewhat taken aback, despondent, somewhat depressed.

his wife famously said, "winston, this is a blessing in disguise." to which he replied, "it is very effectively disguised." although he is not in the greatest of spirits it was on the heels of that loss that he received an invitation from westminster college where we are broadcasting from today. the president of the college said, i would like you to come and deliver the lecture. i am convinced this would have been given to a secretary and churchill would say, i cannot possibly come but thank them. he was usually polite and refusals. but there was a handwritten note on the bottom of the invitation that said, this is a wonderful school in my home state. if you come, i will introduce you. hope you can do it, harry

truman. when the president signed that postscript churchill immediately took notice and new he would be back on the world stage if he had president truman next to him on a platform. i am not sure churchill knew where westminster college was when he accepted, but truman's endorsement of that notation was really the trick that did it. churchill began plans in october, november to travel the united states for several weeks in miami. very smart man. in january of 1946 spent some weeks in miami relaxing, painting, handcrafting the "iron curntain" speech. the college asked but they had help from the president. he appealed to churchill as well. host: we talked about this a little bit, but tell us what winston churchill's political

status was in the u.k. at that time? his party had been voted out of power. does that mean he had no political influence? the speech was just his opinion only? guest: he said as much from the platform here. he said what you see is what you get. he said that famously from the stage of fulton although he was clever. he knew that what you saw was a man who is the leader of the opposition party in britain next to the president of united states. seldom does that happen when you see the president invite the leader of the opposition party to speak. churchill knew he was in the right spot and even though he somewhat downplayed his position and said, i am here as a private citizen, the world know. and certainly churchill himself knew his stature and his power of observation -- he had more to

say. the "iron curntain" speech was his calling card to have a world stage, a platform, ironically in a small town in the middle of missouri and a hard time in america. so churchill knew what he was doing when he was saying those words. host: as you said it became known as the "iron curntain" speech. at that point what was the state of the cold war? where were america and the soviet union at that point? guest: it is complicated. you have to remember that the soviet union were our allies in world war ii. they suffered greatly. millions of casualties on the soviet side. in the general sense the americans and, to a degree winston churchill, appreciated the russian people for the

sacrifice they made. without the soviets the war would not have been one. it was a necessary alliance in the second world war, but it began at the alta conference with fdr. maybe even earlier with the big three at the tehran conference. there was a fracture in the alliance in the postwar outlook was such -- who was going to be in control of the eastern european countries? churchill for instance wanted to defend poland and other countries, thinking it should be a sovereign state. i think joseph stalin had other plans. churchill began to see this and after the victory in europe and after the end of the world war, churchill notices the americans,

the british, went home. they sent troops back to england, they sent troops back to the states. joseph stalin's armies for the most part stayed put and they did not retreat east back to moscow. this is what churchill called the iron curtain which descended across the continent. churchill sees this and warns the world that without proper buttress to counter that soviet threat the next threat could be soviet communism and expansion of their philosophies into europe. that was the crux of churchill's message to the soviets here at westminster college. host: let me remind our viewers that we are talking today about winston churchill's "iron curntain" speech. the 70 for the anniversary. we are going to open the phone

lines for conversation about the 75th anniversary. you're going to open up regional lines. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, we want to hear from you at (202)-748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, your number is (202)-748-8001. keep in mind you can always text us at (202)-748-8003 and we are always reading on social media on twitter @c-spanwj and facebook at facebook.com/c-span. timothy, remind our viewers what were some of the other key things in the early days of the cold war. guest: well, you have to start with the end of world war ii with victory in europe day, which churchill was part of, and then vj day, the victory over

japan. churchill was no longer prime minister by that time and harry truman had the big decision to make with the atomic bombs at hiroshima and nagasaki. after that one of the next major chapters was the "iron curntain" speech 75 years ago. after that you will see the marshall plan that unfolded as part of the cold war. some of the ideas on how to construct europe after the war came out of that speech but in 1946 he was emboldened to make another speech where he called for a united states of europe. he set into action many of the things that are outlined in the marshall plan. after the "iron curtain"

speech many things came to pass in the soviet expansion was real. the west responded very much following churchill's playbook with the berlin airlift after the berlin blockade. truman's plan came into be which was a blueprint taken from churchill's playbook and it did inspire the west to ultimately wage their tactics and the cold war for decades to come. host: let's talk about the specifics from churchill's speech. i am going to play a piece of his march 5, 1946 speech where churchill is talking about his concerns about the policy of appeasement when it comes to soviet russia. here is that part. [video clip] >> this is certainly not the liberated europe we fought to build up. nor does it contain the

essentials. twice the united states has defended several millions of his young men across the atlantic defined the war. but now war can find any nation wherever it made well. between desk and dawn -- dusk and dawn. what they desire is the fruits of war and the expansion of their power and doctrine. oh, but what we have to consider here today while time remains is the permanent prevention of war and the establishment of conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries. our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. they will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens nor

will they be removed by policy of appeasement. host: what was churchill actually asking the u.s. to do at that point? guest: it is very telling that a great section of the speech -- the entire speech is about 15 minutes -- but that is one of the most import sections. churchill is saying clearly that he does not think the soviets desire war. he is not suggesting that, but the fruits of war and the expansion of their doctrines and powers. that is the threat that churchill warns about. he said in order to do something about it the west, namely the anglo-american relationship of britain and the united states, need to work together and take this head-on. not appease -- he used the word

"appeasement" which was a conscious word choice. he knew full well the policy of appeasement that imploded prior to the second world war was one that did not work out well. later he says that there never was a war, the second world war, that could've have been prevented like the last one. he said it ravaged great areas of europe and he said the second world war could have been prevented without the firing of a single shot. but no one would listen to churchill in the 1930's. he says here in fulton that, ladies and gentlemen, we must not let that happen again. we being the west, united states and britain as he said, need to stand firm and not appease the soviets. he feared if he did, then those

expanded doctrines of communism would creep westward in the world will be a far different place. this is churchill's backstop against potential soviet expansion. host: let's let some of our viewers join in on the conversation about the 75th anniversary of winston churchill's "iron curtain" speech. let's start with david calling from texas. david, good morning. caller: good morning. great speech although you would think churchill would have certainly known what stalin is going to be up to. also, as far as stalin being an ally, he was allied with germany before he was allied with us. russia and germany invaded poland and russia had the nonaggression pact with germany which surprised the world. and russia provided the staging and training grounds for german military forces when they were

in the process of violating the versailles treaty. that is how they got to organize forces. none of this should have been a surprise. written in europe was the only country that had an army left -- britain and europe was the only country that had an army left. america resisted. that is the same thing we are doing now. churchill, he made a lot of mistakes during world war i. he was in charge of the charge in gallipoli that was one of the most monstrous disasters. he was up and down as far as that was going on. at the end of world war ii he was shocked he was thrown out of office, but britain was on its way to socialism. when people want to compare socialism to venezuela, you are wrong. look at britain with margaret thatcher. that is the benchmark.

i admire churchill's precedents in 1938 and 1939. i just finished a book on german bankers which the banking and finance had so much to do with politics. they were involved in the versailles treaty on both sides. both jewish bankers -- they walked away from the treaty because they knew the germans were just going to lead to another war. they knew the germans could not afford it and the nazis used the fact they were even there as proof that the jewish bank was responsible for germany's plight and what they used as the excuse for what they did to the jews. one last thing if i could please get it in, there did not have to be a holocaust. again, i am finishing up "warbird" and the germans would have been happy for the jews to have been ransomed out their

plans to get them out. the united states refused to raise its limit on letting jews into this country above 25,000. they could not get them out. u.k. did some of the same things. they were stealing all their money before they let them out anyway so they were going to get their wealth and they would not have to get their hands dirty. after kristallnacht enacted 38, that was over with. host: go ahead and responded, timothy. guest: there is a lot to unpack. first of all, your attitude about churchill and communism is correct. churchill certainly knew, and early on, was not a fan of bolshevism and communism. the alliance with the soviets was a necessary one. it was a repositioning of forces.

there was no way the allies from britain could have done it alone. churchill warned president roosevelt to send materials and the soviets got a better deal than britain did. churchill knew that but he needed help. he was standing alone in 1939, 1940 as germany was swallowing up pieces of europe. all of europe for that matter. when it became necessary to form an alliance with the soviets he did so by matter of necessity. churchill was a shrewd politician and geopolitics was the arena he loved to play in and was very effective in. he made that decision out of necessity really and ultimately it was the right decision. but he knew and that is coming

back to the "iron curtain" speech. once the war was over they needed to go back and deal with the soviets and, in large measure, that is what the speech is about. it is about standing up to the soviets but not alone. forming an anglo-american reliance or special relationship he called it. only that relationship and the quote you played earlier, the expansion of democracy, liberty, and freedom, that the two countries have long shared that churchill says in the magna carta and bill of rights and he says in the speech reach their highest manifestation, the declaration of independence. these are the values the countries together need to save and stand up. this is what he is looking for in the iron curtain" speech. host: what was his relationship with stalin? we know he had a long-term

relationship with president roosevelt. what was his relationship with president truman? guest: [laughs] by the time of the "iron curtain" speech -- this was the last straw. stalin was livid at the speech in fulton. he said quite clearly it was warmongering. it was a declaration of war. prior to that churchill had been somewhat polite to stalin. he would send greetings and said he was a great man, may be his ego a little bit, but stalin knew full well churchill was coming after his ideology. the "iron curtain" speech was more than a warning shot to the soviet union. as far as his relationship with harry truman, that is a fascinating relationship. the men really did not know one

another when they first met right after the end of the war. churchill goes to potsdam and not quite knowing what you expected harry truman. he knew roosevelt very well, but truman was this new person from the middle west. i don't think churchill had high expectations until truman started to speak and then he realized that truman was the right man for the job. they really forged their relationship on the train ride from washington to missouri. on the way to the speech. they rode the overnight train. there is a bit of poker diplomacy. they played cards and shared --

churchill shared early drafts of the speech with harry truman who said, i think this is going to create quite the stir, but i think you are onto something. after the speech truman distanced himself and, uncharacteristically, said i had not seen the speech in advance. eleanor roosevelt was livid with the speech. she thought it was a threat to the alliance that her husband and churchill had started. truman distanced himself immediately after. in the end truman had great affection for churchill's words and used the speech in many ways as the blueprint for the truman doctrine that was the united states recipe for waging the cold war. host: let's talk declarant calling from east lansing, michigan. good morning.

caller: good morning, gentlemen. guest: good morning. caller: i have been inspired upon hearing more about the speech that i never really realized that was given. i have just been receiving snippets of the speeches he gave. i think he is one of the greatest people in history. one of the greatest that lived and i hate to say it, but we could be speaking german or japanese if it were not for people like him. i feel like he does not get enough credit. thank you for enlightening me and i will find out as much as i can about the gentleman. thank you. guest: thank you for calling in. churchill's speech resonates today.

he had a vision and could see a global landscape like few leaders can. it is worth studying and i am glad we had the chance to talk about him at america's national churchill museum everyday, but certainly with milestone anniversaries like the one we are commemorating. host: like you said earlier, the speech is become known as the "iron curtain" speech. where did he come up with the term? guest: iron curtain was a 19th-century victorian era steel curtain used in the theater. it was at fire safety measure. the iron curtain would fall so the fire would not engulf the entire theater. it was a protection measure. it was really an antique phrase,

but in referring to an iron curtain for soviet expansion, the germans used it first. churchill used it in correspondence with american officials before he used it in this speech. it wasn't a new phrase but he did not coin the phrase iron, curtain, but he gave it value in the speech in fulton. it became recognized with that. but as you mentioned churchill's own title for the speech was sinews of peace. the president of westminster college wrote to winston churchill in february, i believe valentine's day, asking winston, what will the title of your speech be? we are looking to promote it, looking to print the programs and so forth, taking care of

details, and we would like to know what the title will be. churchill replied to the college say he was not sure. something like world peace. the programs from the day simply say, winston churchill, world peace. that was the title. churchill decided on the term sinews of peace the night before. we have in the archives the near final draft of the speech with the handwritten notes that churchill -- written by his secretary. he was dictating to his secretary who is taking the last-minute changes and she writes, inserts a the paragraph that says, sinews of peace. that is a last-minute rhetorical phrase and sinews are things that make us stronger. he is talking about the

anglo-american special relationship. that strength would ensure and protect the peace to come. in some ways, they said he was a warmonger, but that is not what he was suggesting. he was suggesting military alliance through strength that would preserve the peace. that is what the message was about. host: we want to remind everyone we are talking about the 75th anniversary of winston churchill's "iron curtain" speech and broadcasting on "washington journal" and american history tv on c-span3. i want to bring to you another bit of that speech from winston churchill from march 5, 1946 where he is making connections

between 1946 and the years that preceded world war ii. here is that part of the speech. [video clip] >> there never was a war in history easier to prevent by timely action than the one that just desolated such great areas. it could have been prevented, in my belief, without the firing of a single shot and germany might be honest today. no one would listen. one by one we were sucked into the awful world. surely, ladies and gentlemen, i put it to you. we must not let that happen again. [applause] host: divided winston churchill want to make these connections to the 1930's and the years leading up to world war ii? guest: that is a great part of the speech not only for winston's words but the public reaction. if you can hear it, the 2700

people gathered in the gymnasium immediately burst into applause. that sentiment was a really good gauge of public reaction and he is saying clearly that last time, referring to the rise of hitler, that in order to prevent the next great tyranny -- early in the speech he says there are two marauders, war and tyranny. that was the more abstract notion. tyranny was known because of hitler, but he was saying the next tyrant could be soviet russia. he is very clearly saying that clip that no one will listen. surely we cannot let that happen again.

winston churchill is uniquely qualified to say those words. perhaps no one on the plan at the time would've had the gravitas because he was right. he was crying aloud to his countrymen as he says in the speech and no one would listen last time. and here he is on the world stage with the president of the united states at his side saying this is the next threat. we cannot let it happen again. those words carried great weight when churchill said them. host: we go to dennis: from dennis calling from connecticut. caller: thank you for taking my call. everyone agrees he had a great geopolitical vision. is it possible he actually foresaw the iron curtain years before? maybe two or three years before

when he recommended that the allies established a front through greece and eastern europe to actually block the soviet army from overtaking eastern europe? as i recall the allies rejected that front. is that true? thanks. guest: i think the argument could be made that that is very true. in fact, in the "iron curtain" speech itself churchill takes credit for greece as being the birthplace of democracy and still being democratic, and said that his intercession earlier helped make that so. but there were other countries in other areas and regions that were under threat. i think you are right. churchill using his impressions

was thinking about this long before march 5, 1946. host: let's talk to carol calling from south carolina. good morning. caller: good morning, gentlemen. this question is outside the box. we are facing global instability because of the covid epidemic and the climate crisis. put yourself into winston churchill's shoes as he was a great believer in world stability and a visionary. if he were alive today, how would he approach the existential threats of pandemic and the climate crisis? thank you. guest: that is an excellent question. and it is always dangerous to put yourself in winston churchill's shoes, let alone in

his mind. he is no longer with us. the world is a different place. it really is hard to say what he would do or say in the current climate. however, he said famously, "the future is unknowable but the past can give you hope." i love that line. if you look at the past, we can be hopeful that churchill might have, first told it like it was. he was very frank with the british people and the second world war. there was a seemingly unsurmountable odds. he said this would be difficult. the dangers and difficulties will be true and will be something we need to overcome. it won't be easy, churchill warned. however, he mobilized the english language and sent into

battle and he gave the people hope. through his words he was honest and i think in terms of the current challenges, the new iron curtain if you will of today, perhaps the global pandemic and climate change, churchill would be honest and he would say, we have a problem. he was a big believer in science. he was one of the first great world leaders to have science advisors at his side. before and during the war, and after as well. i think he would've kept them close at hand in dealing with both climate change and the pandemic. he would have been up to the challenge. he would have seen it. he would've told the people the truth and he would have acted with knowledge by experts and not tried to do it alone.

, i think that i think that is how he might handle it. host: larry calling from minneapolis, minnesota. caller: good morning. thank you for being a guest today. it is a very interesting topic. my question relates to, you know, one man's idea of appeasement is another man's idea of real politics. we played the clip of churchill say we must not have appeasement. but britain went to war in world war ii based on a treaty with poland to guarantee poland's independence. we all know that was basically quickly forgotten because it

wasn't thought to be realistic once we got to 9045. -- 1945. the soviet union occupied more of europe than germany. i guess i would have to disagree that churchill is showing this strong, anti-appeasement stand in 1945. thank you. guest: i think it is clear however -- we talked about this earlier -- that churchill knew of stalin's track record. he knew stalin ultimately was

not someone he wanted to be friendly with. he had to be so during world war ii and it was a good thing in the end for the allies. however, the human rights atrocities, the philosophical differences was when churchill did not want to participate in peer i think he did see it as a threat and doing nothing, as he says in the "iron curtain" speech, is not acceptable. host: one of our social media followers wants to know if you know whether churchill blamed the soviet union's influence for his election defeat. guest: [laughs] i do not know if it is anecdotal or not, but at the potsdam conference allegedly winston

churchill is there with harry truman and stalin. this was july of 1945 and churchill had to go back to britain. he had to leave berlin. he had to leave the german conference to go back home to learn of the election results. stalin is reported to have said to churchill, why are you worried? churchill was a little worried but he thought he would win. stalin is reported to have said, i have never lost an election. there is that note. i don't think there was russian interference in the general election in 1945, but there was a humorous exchange before churchill went home to learn that he had lost the election. host: on that day of the speech was the international and national media in fulton for the speech? did they know how historic this

was going to be? guest: there was an advance copy of the speech. not a complete final draft circulated to the media, so they knew. there were hosts of radio broadcasters. there was no television coverage although the networks at the time -- network television was in its infancy and it was quite an offer that they offered to send it to the middle of america in rural missouri a camera crew to cover the speech. in fact, they asked churchill would you be ok if we televised the speech? churchill was in miami beach and then cuba before the speech in january 1946 and responded to the request from westminster

college, and we have the telegram in the archives, saying i deprecate complicating the occasion with technical experiments, meaning television. the speech was not televised because churchill did not wanted to be televised. but it was covered on the radio. there were major networks and major coverage in the news spread fast about what had been said in fulton. host: let's look at another piece of this tape where winston churchill is talking about the importance of the special relationship between the united states and the united kingdom. [video clip] [applause] >> nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gauged without what i have called the fraternal association of the english-speaking people. [applause]

this means a special relationship between the british commonwealth and empire and the united states of america. host:host: that special relationship, was this a new way of describing the relationship between the united states and the united kingdom? guest: that is a great question and certainly the "iron curtain" speech is the time he used it with greatest currency. he mentioned it in passing in 1945, but he really gives that term full weight at westminster college. as much as it is about the iron curtain and looming soviet threat, it is also about shared value sets between britain and

america. the special relationship, the common language, common values of law, he cites the magna carta, the declaration of independence, as being together in the same boat. churchill realizes these great nations -- and churchill himself was half american. his mother was from brooklyn who had a lifelong affinity for the united states and appreciated and knew full well what america and americans did for world war ii. he is looking to continue to bolster that relationship, that special relationship, a term we continue to use today. the term is one that churchill also knew was something they needed at the time. britain after the war was not

the britain the end of the war -- ended the war. his country was impoverished, they needed money. early in the speech churchill says, this is a solemn moment for democracy. the united states of america is at the pinnacle of world power and with that power comes responsibility. churchill realizes his own country is not in that position. in many ways he is shopping for the special relationship to benefit britain. certainly behind-the-scenes in his visit to the united states before the "iron curtain" speech he was trying to broker a deal to secure funding from the united states for his government. he is looking to secure funds to help with the indentedness of his own country. the special relationship was

when we talk about today quite a bit, but it was also a relationship, in some ways, of necessity for great britain at the time. we have a new book at the museum that was just published on the subject called "the inspiring history of the special relationship." it is by one of our fellows. it is fascinating. new look at the speech and that relationship. host: let's talk to ned calling from idaho. good morning. caller: how are you doing, guys? i was just wondering if you could maybe comment on a current relationship with britain where biden threw out the bust in the oval office of churchill after they gave it to us. that is our closest ally.

we are trying to pivot to our new alliance with australia, new zealand, and canada. you know, biden is still trying to keep us in this nato thing. what do you think? guest: that is a great question. as always with every new administration, every new leader in britain or here there is a new chapter that is written about the special relationship and we are writing a new chapter today. as far as the bust in the oval office, i think the statue that was on loan from the british embassy after 9/11 has gone back and forth in and out of the office. there is a happened to know a bust of winston churchill in the private residence. it is been there since 1965.

i think there is no threat that just because the statue has moved around in the white house that the special relationship would fail. that is one thing i know for certain. i also know -- we heard from th investor to the united states, the british abbasid are, yesterday during the commemoration and we heard from the state department. there is a renewed look at fighting the next looming threats together. one of the things they both mentioned separately was climate change as being, if you will, the new iron curtain. i think the special relationship between the two countries will have to be one working together, as we have done for so long, solving some of the great global problems. i think there is great hope for

the special relationship. i do not think it is under threat. i think we will be writing a new chapter in the months and years ahead. host: let's see if we can squeeze one more caller in. douglas calling from laramie, wyoming. douglas, good morning. caller: good morning. the reasons and causes of winston churchill being voted out of office, he was no longer seen as desirable for the office of prime minister. guest: if i understand it, why was churchill voted out of office? he was an extremely effective award leader -- war leader and he stood election at a time when britain was a war weary nation. he won the war. i don't think the british people had anything about -- had anything against churchill as a person, but dealing with

domestic issues, which he had to deal with in earnest almost his entire times premised or other than protecting the homeland and dealing with the war effort. the rebuilding was believed by the brits best for somebody else. frankly, churchill did not campaign well in 1945. he was tired. he made some comments about his opposition, referring to if he would win, there would be a gestapo state. that is not a good slogan if you're trying to run for office. particularly if you are winston churchill and he suffered a great deal. between the british desire to take a new direction to deal with the internal domestic issues the nation had to face, and churchill's somewhat tired campaign, it was a choice the

british made to go in a different direction and that is where adley became prime minister. he had served in the cabinet during the war so he was not unknown to winston churchill. later on churchill is asked of all the labor prime ministers, who is your favorite and he would say adley . ultimately winston churchill is vindicated in large measure because of the rejuvenation he has in his career in the "iron curtain" speech. by 1951, in the general election, his party wins and he

is prime minister a second time and is now at the helm as the cold war is waging. he lost in 1945. in some ways it permits him to say things like he said as a private citizen, though he is still the leader of the opposition, here at westminster college and rehabilitate his career as he did so many times during his long life. and when he stood for election in 1551 he is back at the helm. if it says anything about winston churchill that we can admire, you can knock him down but he will always get back up. his perseverance and resolve is extraordinary, extraordinary throughout his 90 year life. host: let's see if we can get one more quick question and answer in. we talk to anthony calling from

green town, pennsylvania. can you get a quick question in? caller: sorry. good morning. just a question on his attitude toward china. i was wondering if you had some insight on that. i understand george marshall did not like china. i did not know if winston, did i don't think he did. we would be in a different world right now. thank you for your answer. guest: that is a really good point. china is certainly in the news today and people are talking about the great wall and the iron curtain. maybe we could do a whole program on this topic, but i will simply say churchill himself somewhat avoided the subject in the speech here. he mentions china in the "iron curtain" speech.

it is almost a throwaway line. there are very few such lines in the speech, but he acknowledges their existence and say, you know china well. i need not talk too much about it here. and that he moves on. it would be very interesting to see and think if churchill had a little more space and maybe had a 55 minute speech to comment on china. he doesn't take on china in the "iron curtain speech at all. it is a question well worth asking and maybe we could find it on another program to explore. as you suggest china and its influence today is something churchill would be talking about i suspect if you were alive. host: congress has recognized your museum as america's permanent attribute to winston churchill.

what is your mission there at the churchill museum? guest: it really is to preserve history and lift of history. winston churchill himself -- his greatest advice to young people was study history. history has all the secrets to statecraft. we live with history. part of the museum has a 17th century church that was bombed in the blitz in london relocated to fulton in the 1960's stone by stone as a permanent memorial to churchill. we have a piece of the berlin wall, the concrete manifestation of the iron curtain. reagan dedicated it in 1990. that is sculpture now by churchill's granddaughter. history continues to happen here. world leaders continue to come to westminster college and we

have had gorbachev, margaret thatcher, these great leaders who helped end the war. westminster college platforms for world leaders to make remarks and speeches and is quite extraordinary. it is a ripple effect from what happened here on this campus 75 years ago. history is not old. we live with it and see it and continue to be influenced by it today. host: talk a little bit about that statue you were mentioning, the breakthrough statute. tell us why does there. guest: edwina sands which is winston churchill's granddaughter, and a very well-known artist, saw the berlin wall fall on television and had a notion to relocate eight sections of the berlin wall from berlin to fulton as a

sculpture. but she did something interesting. she carved through these abstract male and female bricks so you can break through communism and freedom. she entitled it "breakthrough." she has this remarkable work on the campus outside the museum. it really is an extraordinary exclamation point on the story. some are saying these days is that a question mark? interesting on whether the cold war is actually over. host: this has been an absolutely great conversation. timothy, we really appreciate you coming on here and talking with us about the history of the "iron curtain" speech and your churchill museum. what can people expect to see from the museum coming up in the future? really quickly. guest: join us online right now.

if you missed the virtual programming from the 75th commemoration yesterday, we have archived six hours of footage. we have world leaders, diplomats, churchill's family members. you can go to our youtube channel and you will see much more about this really rich and poor topic. host: what is the website? guest: nationalchurchillmuseum.org. host: we want to thank those who have joined us on washington journal and american history tv this conversation. we would like to thank timothy riley for being on with us this morning. he is the director and chief curator of americans national churchill museum. timothy, thank you for being with us this morning. guest: thank you very much. host: we want to remind everyone this program and several others related to the "iron curtain"

speech, including the entire speech audio recording, begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. you can see more about winston churchill's "iron curtain" speech next on a mac history tv. former british prime minister margaret thatcher marked the 50th anniversary with an address at westminster college in 1996. that begins right now on c-span3. all of our washington journal guests and viewers and social media followers, thank you for being with us this morning. make sure you continue to wash your hands and stay safe. have a great saturday. ♪ ♪

your unfiltered view of government. c-span was created by america's television companies in 1979. today we are brought to you by these television companies who provide c-span to viewers as. a public service. . voting on amendments to the biden administration covid relief . they rejected increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years. after the bell stalled for several hours on the floor, democratic leaders reached an agreement on unemployment benefits with west virginia's joe mansion. the deal would extend existing unemployment benefits as well as provide tax