washington examiner's quin hillyer. be sure to join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. "washington journal" is next. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy visit ncicap.org] ♪ host: good morning and welcome to "washington journal." 20 years ago, the world changed as four airplanes smashed into the world trade center the pentagon and into a field in pennsylvania. on september 11, 2001, one of the worst attacks in the united states happened. and two decades later, we are still dealing with this aftermath. the commemorations may be over but we as a country will never forget those we lost and how our lives changed forever. our question for you this morning -- what is the legacy of

9/11? we're going to open up regional lines for this conversation, regional lines. that means that if you are in the eastern or central time zone, you're going to call 202-748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zone, your number's going to be 202-748-8001. keep in mind you can always text us at 33 at 202-748-8003 and you can follow us on instagram at graeme clarke. -- c-span wj. the "new york times" described the commemoration like this. "the loved ones gathered again for moments of silence and the peal of the bell paying tributes

and listened as bruce springsteen sang about memory and loss. "in pennsylvania, hundreds gathered in a clearing where a highjackers -- hijacked plane crashed. in chicago, firefighters too long to remember september 11 climb thousands of steps to honor emergency responses to who have not lived past it. in nebraska, children sat on the shoulders of their parents and waved american flags to honor the victims of a tragedy that to them, has only been history. for two decades, americans have mourned the attacks of september 11 that killed nearly 3,000 people, a loss so deep it shook the united states to its core. but even as time has passed, and the horrific days has moved from fresh memory into the chronicles of history then people who gathered around the country and the globe said the wounds from anaheim -- 9/11 have remained fresh. the president at the time of the

9/11 attacks, president george w. bush traveled to shanksville, pennsylvania, to speak at the national -- at the flight 93 national memorial yesterday. did he -- in his speech he contrasted today's political division to the sense of unity that happened after the attacks. here's what former president bush had to say. >> so much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment. that leads us worried about pour nation, and our future together. i come with that explanations or solutions. i can only tell you what i've seen. on america's day of trial and grief, i saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor's hand, and rally to the cause of one another. that is the america i know.

[applause] at a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, i saw americans reject prejudice and embraced people of muslim faith. that is the nation i know. [applause] at a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, i saw america reaffirmed their refugees. that is the nation i know. [applause] at a time when some view the rising generation is individualistic and deck tent, saw young people embrace an epic of service and rise to selfless action. that is the nation i know. [applause]

this is not mere nostalgia, it is the true version of ourselves. it is what we have been and can be again. host: once again, there were commemorations all around the country yesterday, including here in washington, d.c., in virginia, with the pentagon sits, and in new york and pennsylvania. we want to know what you think the legacy of 9/11 is. let's start with jesse who's calling from sherman, texas. jesse, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i think the legacy of 9/11 shows that america loves each other and we love america. but other countries don't love us for some reason. i really don't understand why. i only can think of the saying as the devil comes to kill and

destroy. host: do you remember where you were that day? caller: yes, i do. i was at my job. host: and what do you remember how you reacted and what happened with you that day? caller: well, i wasn't sad. i knew that god was in charge but my family was upset. my coworkers were upset. but i wasn't. because i knew god is in charge and the devil rushed to -- wants to kill and destroy. host: how did 9/11 change your life? did you have to do anything differently? did you have to make any adjustments in your life because of what happened on 9/11? caller: well, i had to consul mi had to let my 9-year-old son know that it's going to be ok, but i don't remember what all i said to him. but he was ok from then on.

but it was a horrific time. it was horrible. host: did you end up watching most of the coverage on television or online? do you remember how you found out about it? caller: well, i was at my job, somehow we heard at my job about it. i don't know how they knew. because we were at work. host: ok. let's go to james, who's calling from pittsburgh, pennsylvania. james, good morning. caller: oh, hey, good morning, jesse and good morning, america. thanks for taking my call, jesse. i've been watching lotses and lots of documentaries on 9/11. you know, a plane hit 'em pyre state building in 1945 and when they built them twin towers, they built them on that same thing, on steel glass cement when the attack, it was built

with massive stuff. did you know how that was built? the twin towers? jesse in. host: no. tell us, james. caller: how about this? when they at the school, when they were at the school and they hit, right? and 93 was 14 minutes late. so they're in the air with airforce one. george bush really kicked back and he's like real comfortable and he says we need to ground these planes we can't get ahold of 93. bush said take it down! why won't he come and say why would you take us down if why didn't he say he said that? this is not a conspiracy theory, jesse. he said that. host: so james, do you remember where you were when you heard about 9/11? caller: yes, i do. at that time, jesse, i was shooting herrion, ok? so -- heriorn. i couldn't get a ride to get my dope. and i said look, some jerk flew

into the plane. and i seen another one come. and it's like we didn't know what's going on. and they're in the basement. they're going to save these people. i didn't know what was on but then i ended up going to prison, of course. i got locked up september like 25th, would be to. i didn't get out since 2007. but i remember i was just watching when i was in prison and i was watching it like i watch -- i was always looking down. and i seen a couple of guys i know the kid was going over there. he was going over there and i'm like man, i know that guy. i grew up with that kid and his son goes over there. and i remember like yesterday, jesse. i remember it. but then it's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense, jesse. host: let's go to robert who's calling from missouri. robert, good morning. caller: good morning, jesse.

i just -- you know, the government, they covered up a lot of stuff there. they knew what was going to come down, learn people and they were going to guard the white house and they weren't even armed. so american people need to wake up, you know? host: so you with saying that the american government knew the planes were going to fly into the building and they weren't going to say anything? caller: they knew something was going to happen and they were ill prepared you know it. they know it they've had too much research on it. host: where were you when you found out about 9/11? caller: i was home from texas at my parents' house. they walked in the door and the first tower, it hit a plane going to and then danny said the second plane, well, it's going in and it sure did. you know, that's a crying shame.

our government let us down. host: so robert, what changes have happened in your life because of 9/11? are you doing anything differently? caller: you know, yes. the difference is i -- well, i saw the bad, the good, the ugly about afghanistan and, you know, iraq. you know, the u.s. government, the u.s. is always think we could force our beliefs on other people. well, we can't, sir. you know it. i know it. and that's just how it operates. so, it's changed the world forever and it's tragic. but, you know, bush can stand there all day long, but bush is partially responsible for what happened at 9/11. host: let's go to jan who's calling from port richie,

florida. jan, good morning. caller: good morning. host: jan, what do you think the legacy of 9/11 is for the united states? caller: i think it's about freedom and knowing what to do. host: so do you remember where you were when you found out about 9/11, jan? caller: oh, i was at home and i was getting ready for work. host: and can you remember what happened after you found out? caller: i was shocked. i was just shocked and i didn't know what wirfs -- what i was doing. i had the tv off but i found out at work that it happened. host: and what type of changes do you think have happened for the united states and for you, personally, jan, because of 9/11? caller: oh, the changes?

just the way america handles everything. and it was just shocking. there's no words to say. host: ok. let's go to melanie who's calling from westhaven, connecticut. melanie, good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead, melanie. caller: yes. i like to talk about how i found out about the disaster of 9/11. i remember perfectly. i was at my second day at my job in greenwich, connecticut. and i was a single mom. my two children at the time were ages 7 and 5, attending the same elementary school in stamford, connecticut. i was a morning receptionist at

my job. and in the reception room, it was just me and a coworker teaching me the switchboard. and after the first plane struck, a male coworker ran through the lobby yelling a plane hit the trade center. so, my coworker and i at the computer scrambled on the internet to find whatever news we could. and of course, we were shocked and devastated. host: do you remember how people were talking back then? were people just confused? were they angry? what emotions do you remember from that time? caller: i remember some of my coworkers lived in new york city and i remember them talking how they couldn't go home that day. you know, people were trying to

get through on cell phones and couldn't to loved ones. host: now, melanie, there are some people out here in the united states now who weren't alive when 9/11 happened. how do we explain the events of 9/11 to children and to teenagers who weren't alive when it happened? caller: well, personally, you know, as i said, my children at the time were 7 and 5 and even though they were that young, i was a single mom and i was always open with my children. and what happened was my job was in the morning as a receptionist. i left my job at noon. and i first thought i was going to go home to my apartment in stamford and call my children's school to see what was going on. and as i was driving north on i-95, i decided i'm just going straight to the school to see what's going on.

so, i got to the school, walked into the building with other parents. we were greeted by the school principal in the lobby who explained we have not made any announcements. the children do not know what's going on. and we're going to go into hold a full day of school. however, if you want to take your children home, feel free to sign them out. so i thought for a moment, you know, do i want to do that? and it didn't take me long to feel i'm going to take my children home. i just want all of us home. so they brought the children down to me and i'm thinking what am i going to say to these two young children? and as i said, i'm always opened with my children. i knelt down in front of them. i said something bad has happened. a plane had hit the world trade center in new york city. this is a bad situation.

and i just wanted to go home together. my children didn't argue with me. and we went home. locked the doors inside, got inside the apartment. and had the tv on the rest of the day. so, i feel, you know, to tell children who don't know or don't understand as best you can the history and what it means. host: with all the commemorations around the country yesterday, president biden visited all three crash sites. while he didn't have a speaking role in yesterday's ceremony, president biden released tape remarks on twitter. here's a few a little bit of what he said. president biden: the day that followed september 11, 2001, we saw heroism everywhere in places expected and unexpected.

we also saw something all too rare, a true sense of national unity. youity -- unity and resilience in service, that 9/11 accepted up to protect and serve and to show everyone seeking to do harm to america that we will hunt you down and we will make you pay. and that will never stop. today, tomorrow, ever. for protecting america. fear and anger, resentment and violence against muslim americans, true and faithful follow others a peaceful religion. we saw a national community bend. unity is the one thing that must never break. unity what is makes us who we are. america at its best. to me, that's the central lesson

of september 11. is that at our most vulnerable, in the push and pull, all that makes us human, and the battle for the sole american, unity is our greatest strength. unity doesn't mean we have to believe the same thing. we must have a fundamental respect in faith in each other and in this nation. we are unique in the history of the world because we are the only nation based on an idea, an idea that everyone is created ekele and should be treated equally throughout their lives. that is the task before us. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about the legacy of 9/11. here's one tweet that says "the terrorists won." another tweet that says i was in biology lab in college. i remember the teacher that i talked to often with turning the

tv on. everyone looking at it with their biology goggles on in shock. i remember her asking me who they thought did it and they felt like i was teaching everyone who osama bin laden was. another tweet says september 11 brought what the rest of the world understood about terrorism to the american people. and another tweet that says things i do differently after 9/11, i drive a lot more than i fly. we want to know what you think the legacy of 9/11 is for you and for the country. let's talk to randy who's calling from fairport, new york. randy, good morning. caller: good morning. how are you doing today? host: just fine. go ahead, randy. caller: what i was going to say is that we have some fairly close experience, in fact, that just prior to 9/11, my wife actually worked with at the 96

floor of number one. and as this occurred, we were both living now in rochester, and to see what was happening on tv, you know, we had a first-hand experience after 10:00, each of those twin towers could hold up to 60,000 people each. and that this was going to be devastating. to see the marks on the building, she felt that there was going to be a lot of people that were trapped because of, you know, the way that the planes hit the building and penetrated into the building. i watched the other night the game between the hockey game between the new york firefighters and new york policemen who were commemorated the game for the 20th year. and a lot of people don't know that there's been almost twice as many people that have died of

the effects of the building and they -- materials that were released during the building and the dust that had actually indicted instead of the terror attacks in the building. so there is a lasting legacy and it's people who went in there and rushed in to help or people that were in the area when this occurred and, you know, are still feeling the effects of 9/11. host: how comfortable are you that the u.s. can prevent from this happening again? caller: we somewhat have become a little complacent we've had an attack. 1945 in pearl harbor. and we thought this would never possibly happen again. but that was on a different scale. that was a nation scale.

this was an individual terrorist scale. and it slipped under the crack. somehow, they got in there and they were trained and when they were trained they never were trained how to land planes. i would think that would have raised, you know, quite a bit of stir on this. but, you know, the way that the planes were taking -- taken over, they knew how to do this when the flights were that full. but the planes were full of fuel. and it's really, you know, it's sad and unfortunate, but i don't know if we would have ever expected that airplanes would be used as weapons of war. host: let's go to john who's calling from bristol, connecticut. john, good morning. caller: hey, good morning. yeah, this is new -- the generation -- like the gentleman talked before. you have pearl harbor, oklahoma

bombing, you have the 9/11, the terrorist stormed the capitol on january 6. i don't know what this world is coming to now. i don't think the government is ready for any of this. they don't connect the dots, you know? the -- that's amazing to me, myself. but, you know, it's a new world out there now. and i just pray that it gets better. host: john, do you remember where you were when you found out about the events of 9/11 and how you felt back then? caller: i was at mohegan sun and we were building a high-rise in connecticut, a casino and everybody was running up on the casino saying, you know, new york's under attack. and you ought to stop working and listen to -- huddle around the radio and listen to what was going on, you know? host: john, how did something --

the september 11 attack change things for you or did it change things for you? caller: well, i was hoping that they tighten up security about who comes into the country and intelligence and all that. but, you know, look what happened to january 6. you knew people were coming down to the capitol and you had all their information but nobody took it serious, you know? host: all right. let's go to alexander who's calling from brooklyn, new york. alexander, good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. i've been a lifelong new yorker. for the first time yesterday, i went to the memorial. ironically, i was working a block away from in the university that i was going to at the time of this happened in

cooper union. and i've been thinking about this a lot. just about what this all means, particularly for new york city. and being there last night, you know, i saw so many people, so many around the country just coming to pay respect for the people, just taking photographs at the lights as if to draw an instagram moment. and it was sad because i really felt like a foreigner in my own city. i'm hispanic, dark, and were just certain people looking at me as if i didn't belong and i've lived here my entire life. i don't know. i have a sad feeling about the legacy of 9/11. c-span has done an amazing job of really trying to explain the whole complex situation in afghanistan. and when this happened in the university, it was called the

cooper response community and precisely for to us try to understand what happened. and, you know, i think the memorials are beautiful, but they were just so many failures within the government, within the military, the agencies. i mean, bin laden was on the radar since 1959 -- 1995. we left afghanistan in 1989. and somehow, we didn't think at all that this is going to come back to us. and yet when the bombing happened in 1993, nothing happened. and osama bin laden was in the radar since 1995. clinton had nine times to kill osama bin laden and yet he didn't. bush let him get away. and i don't think we've learned any lessons. and as callers from, you know, previous callers have said, some people will say we haven't

gotten attacked in 20 years. we've got attacked. the capital one, an internal attack from extremists. and i think bush now can come to terms with that and say yes, we have national and internal terrorists and we have a nation that's divided. and yet that is not what i know. my new york city and everybody that's listening into this that knows new york city knows that we have a robust culture from all parts of the world and we live in unity. i went out friday night. they asked me for my vaccine, in a bar that i went to. there's no questions. gave them my vax i.d., people were really. went out, nobody was wearing masks. we don't politicize and we all live, you know -- i understand it i'm not saying it's perfect, but we have muslims and we have jewish, the jewish community, we

have people from all over the world. and i think that is the ideal of what this country is. host: well, earlier in the summer, c-span talked to members of congress about their experiences on 9/11. one of them was washington democrat who told us about how the attacks influenced her career in public service. here's what she said. >> i had moved into a new house on settlement 10, 2001. so i was completely in boxes the morning of september 11 and of course, i'm here in seattle. so i got a very early morning call from a good friend of mine in new york saying oh, my god, are you seeing what's happening? have you seen what's happened? and i hadn't seen any of this because it was early on the west coast. and i remember sitting amidst all of the boxes, trying to find the box that had my, at the

time, i only had a nine-inch television and trying to find the box that had the television so that i could pull it out, plug it in, which i did, only to see the images flashing across the screen of what had happened in new york, the images of the terrorists who had committed the attack and when they flashed on the screen, i remember thinking to myself everything is going to change for people who look like me. and i also remember that i had just gotten my u.s. stipe -- citizenship the year before after a long time of waiting and being on a multitude of visas and i just felt this moment of deep fear and insecurity about my own place in this country and people across the country who would be stereotyped and attacked in the wake of these attacks. because i know that history and sure enough, that is what

happened. immediately, i started getting calls from across the community of arab-americans, south asian americans, who were being literally attack, violently attacked, cab drivers who were being attacked simply for wearing a turban. of course, there was an early reports of people being attacked and killed simply for wearing a turban. people were conflating turban and hijabs with the terrorists. and so within a week, i had ended upstarting an effort that initially i thought was going to be a short-term effort called hate-free zone that was initially established washington state as hate-free state. and to have all of our elected officials -- at the time, i was an activist not an elected official, to have all of our elected officials from the governors to the congress

members come out and declare washington is a mate frey state. and that -- hate frey state. and that happened. i stopped wearing -- at the time, i used to wear a lot of indian clothes. it's something i enjoyed doing. i stopped doing that. i did not take my kiddo out with me at the time, my child was very, very young, just 4 years old or 3 1/2 years old. i didn't go out on the street unless i had people around me. and then as i started this work and ended upstarting and leading for 12 years what became the largest immigrant advocacy organization in washington state, i had death threats against me for what i was doing. you know, it was a time of tremendous fear. but really, not just for me, for everybody that i was advocating on behalf of. people who were terrified to take their children to school. i mean, so many parents in communities of color had to take their kids out of school. and at the time, i remembered

thinking that patriotism and fear combined are the most powerful way to suppress a sect. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about the legacy of 9/11. here's one tweet that says the legacy of 9/11? the terrorists didn't attack blacks or white, gays or straights. they attacked americans. here's another tweet that says imagine when we could accomplish if we stayed unite, work together, grow food that will keep us healthy and shared around the world, build efficient homes. no one will be homeless, hungry or unhealthy. we can enjoy our beautiful plants and kids. another tweet says the legacy of 9/11 is how we responded to it. as an arrogant, imperial power. bin laden's goal is to get the u.s. and expensive war.

he succeeded. now empire has come home into the form ohlmiller franchised police, and decaying democracy. a friend who worked in a french restaurant in new york city on 9/11, the owner thought every time the plane crashed into the towers were shown that they didn't speak english that many planes were hitting many buildings it was really confusing about what was going on. won't to know from you what you think the legacy of 9/11 was. let's start with diane who's calling from st. paul, minnesota. diane, good morning. caller: good morning. i was would just like to say that when 9/11 happened in 2001, i was on my way to taking my grandkids to school, it was the most prestigious black school for children. i was living in minneapolis. and when the towers hit, we were

listening to the radio, joe madson and when the towers were hit, i said yeah, yeah, go, go, go! y'all got it and my granddaughter who's 8 years old looked at me and said gran marks they just hit us. and that shocked my to my core. because as an african-american, i was experiencing what is -- [indiscernible] the glass ceiling and all the things that goes with presidents. so i had to pull over to the side of the road and explain to my gran daughter because we always were woke about american history because we know what's the history books was not true and we made sure kids when they got the true history about america from when america first got here and who was already here. and then on. and i told them. i said arya, i said you are all right. i apologize because they did hit

us. and i said i got to remember. i got nephews who are in the united states navy because we're a navy family and they're already experiencing discrimination because they are muslims with last names like muhammad. and i had to think about that. and i said i do have a sister, working in the twin tour and i -- tower and i wonder what happened to her this morning. i said you're right. i was just willing at the fact that america was going around the globe, a nation building and has done so much to other races and other countries. because i'm traveling. i have been to about 19 different countries and i've been to 17 of the 54 countries in africa and i can see some of the things that we have done in the past that has not been right. we can't nation build.

and i feel that the legacy of it is that we got to stop building a nation building. i'm sorry that we left people in afghanistan but we need to get out of afghanistan because they're not going to step out of democracy. host: let's go to charles who's calling from richmond, virginia. charles, good morning. caller: yes, good morning. what i saw yesterday was one of the most beautiful sites that i've ever seen before. what i saw were the -- and i remember that because i remembered the airport and they shut down all the airports and stuff like that. but what i saw yesterday was one of the most beautiful sites i've ever seen in my life. it was a democracy at work. it was our leadership. i'm a republican but i had to give it up to the leadership that we have in the united

states of america. and it was strange. something's very strange happened. last week, it looked like new york city was washed and clean canned and because you didn't see none of that yesterday but they had the blood of new york city and people died. and then 9/11 yesterday came and the city was beautiful. and you saw how democracy works. i'm not even going to discuss any of the religious aspects of it all because there's nothing there's no religious aspects. we were attacked by an evil group of people, an evil men who don't like to see people get together. you ever notice that? when you see people singing and getting together and enjoy life and all of a sudden, somebody comes along and wants to destroy what you have.

we have the most beautiful place on earth. we have freedom. we have democracy. and yesterday proved it. we have all types of people that got together and i have to give it up to joe biden and kamala harris and her husband. i'm glad she was with her husband because she usually travels alone. and yesterday, to me was like god had blessed new york city. he cleaned it in the flood and then blessed it. host: let's go to april who's calling from rock island, illinois. april, good morning. caller: i really appreciated the last gentleman, but i don't understand how anybody thinks that yesterday was a wonderful, beautiful experience. 9/11, 20 years ago happened

because bill clinton didn't do his job. -- when he was. president. and now, 20 years later, the taliban in charge of afghanistan, they wore our uniforms. they're flying our helicopters. they're using our guns. i'm so disappointed i can hardly even stand it. host: let's go to dan who's calling from arlington, virginia. dan, good morning. caller: hey, good morning to you and thank you for what you guys are doing, remembering 20 years ago today or yesterday, i guess. i think that the thing that really leaps out at me is the legacy and the history of 9/11 is not what happened as airplanes hit towers or

buildings, but what happened immediately thereafter. and the courage, bravery, tenacity of the passengers and crew of flight 93. it knew what it is that they were facing and unlike the military who were sworn to protect and defend the constitution of the united states, these passengers and crew regardless of religion, race, creed, color, ethnicity, came together as americans to fight back. and them along with the firefighters in new york, the nypd officers, the port authority officers, and other first responders both up in pennsylvania and new york and washington, that gift of a great example that gift of fighting back in the face of fear and uncertainty is a legacy that i hope that we all here to the united states take moving forward. thank you. host: let's go to lee who is calling from holland, michigan.

lee, good morning. caller: yes. this whole thing is this even c-span here? it's 3-1 democrats versus republican on your show. you have more democrat callers. you have this squad member that was just on there and just race debating, talking about it's 9/11, i couldn't wear my indian clothes. everything the democrat party is nothing about race baiting, they have no good policies. all they do is race talk and duck to duck about -- host: do you have anything to say about the legacy of 9/11? caller: yeah the legacy of 9/11 is the democrat party is horrific and these callers are brainwashed because all they do is watch abc, nbc, cbs. google, facebook, twitter, waning you're being brainwashed by the democrat evil empire. host: let's go to loreen who is

calling from washington, d.c. loreen, good morning. caller: hello, jesse. how are you doing? the way i see it is it could happen again. it's great that we can unify after a horrific event. but defeat to unify before the -- we've got to unify better the horrific event. those agencies that with protective of us, they've got to work together. they can't be in this silo of seeing different things. this is weird. that looks weird but not coming together and say let's do something about it before something bad happens. it happened in pearl harbor, january 6 and it happened with 9/11. can it happen again? sure, it can. so, and the legacy is it could happen to us. all those bad things that are going on overseas, you know, that's awful. but awful could come to our shores and it did on that day. i think it could happen again. host: let's talk to steve who's

calling from topeka, kansas. steve, good morning. caller: good morning. how are you, jesse? host: i'm fine. go ahead, steve. caller: yeah, 20 years ago yesterday was tour 25th anniversary. briefly, i'll do the best i can to be brief and that is on the 25th anniversary, our 25th anniversary, we were married in the morning. we were in topeka and married at 10:00 and i had flowers delivered. they were right on time. i walked out and the flower was delivered just as if flying into the world trade center. so that every year in a sense was personal to me yesterday, we're in our 40th anniversary of 9/11 that our sons were here and i'm interested to hear what they were doing that morning. he had an english class. and an rotc man walked in and he said the world trade center has been hit and he walked out and

he left the teacher like what did he say? and the next hour, he had a government teacher and already prepared the library, seating and had tv up there. so in the very next hour, they were all sitting in the library watching that in their school. so it was not -- so every year, i guess it's somewhat personal to us. it was a dark humor i always wondered if i had flowers delivered a good thing. i had picked flowers. and i had them on the table so i didn't have to worry about that event. so every year, it's personal to me because that's our wedding anniversary that morning and certainly something i can't forget personally. i think everybody's touching on it nicely. lean the lincoln assassination would have been noteworthy for all the country. yeah, it's personal for me and also for the country.

host: let's go to diane who's calling from -- diane who is calling from san diego, california. diane, good morning. caller: good morning. i come from a service family. not only military service, but once we get out of the service, we give back to our community. what do i think about 9/11? i say, i cry. and you know even though it's been 20 years, i remember that morning taking my son to school and before we left the house, he said mom, you have got to see this and it was the tower and the plane and he ended up joining the marines as soon as he turned 18. so i'll tell you something. i give one -- i give 200% support to any american that has

given their all and they give it freely to anybody that comes along. because that's what it's all about. host: during the commemorations yesterday, vice president kamala harris spoke in shanksville, pennsylvania and peelleed for unity on the 20 anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. here's what vice president harris had to say. vice president harris: united in purpose. we will be prepared for whatever comes next. the 40 passengers and crew members of flight 93, as we all know, they didn't know each other. most of them didn't know each other. they were different people from different places. they were on that particular flight for different reasons. but they did not focus on what

may separate us. no. they focused on what we all share. on the humidity -- humidity we -- humanity we all share. in a matter of minutes in the most dire of sir, the 40 responded as one. they fought for their own lives and to save the lives of countless others at our nation's capitol. after today, it is my hope and prayer that we continue to honor their courage, their conviction with our own. that we honor their unity by strengthening our common bonds, by strengthening our global partnerships and by always living out our highest ideal.

this work will not be easy. it never has been. and it will take all of us believing in who we are as a nation. and it will take all of us, going forth to work together. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about the legacy of 9/11. here's one tweet that says i blame george bush for two major faults. one six weeks prior to 9/11. he ignored the c.i.a. white paper telling us that bin laden would attack us using airplanes and two, bush attacked the wrong country afghanistan and the retribution. another tweet that says what is the legacy of 9/11? 9/11 was a dry run that taught us that when fear is stoked, we will give up rights and even scarier reality. they learned how to sell a lie and trump learned a lot repeat

the lie often enough and those who want to believe it as real will. another tweet. the legacy of 9/11 -- u.s. should not become entangled in senseless wars, especially in the middle east. u.s. invaded and occupied iraq, a country that did not attack the u.s. cost and consequences of iraq, afghanistan and blood and treasure were colossal foreign policy blunder. and one last tweet. no revenge attacks by the families of the 40,000 people we killed after 9/11. we search for invisible boogiemen for profits for arms dealers. maybe we should have given bace a chance after 9/11. we want to know what you think the legacy of 9/11 is. let's start with martin who is calling from miami, florida. martin, good morning. caller: hello? host: go ahead, martin. caller: yes. hello. this is monty.

yes. and my son served -- my sun wen as a result -- my sun wen as a -- son went ads a result to afghanistan and iraq. host: go ahead. caller: yes. and he went and then he came back but he was injured and he died. and he as a result of this. and my youngest son went to afghanistan as a result. i was at home when that happened. and it scared me. but, yeah, they saw the -- what you call it? they saw the federal building in oklahoma city where we're from

and they saw the -- they saw the, the federal buildings fall. and they got scared. but they when they got 18, they responded and joined the military. but one passed away. so, yeah. he gave all. and i just, you know, commend him for doing what he did and my other one as well. host: let's go to don who's calling from washington. don, good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. hey, yeah, i was just going to say where i was. i was in portland, oregon, at the international airport there. and i remember watching with the f-16's take off and circumstance

tell whole city for probably about a week, it seemed like. and that was my day on that day. but i was wondering if you guys were going to show president trump's stuff there, his speech yesterday. i tried to watch it on you guys' internet and it would not play. and so i was wondering if you guys might do that for us thank you, jesse. god bless you. host: let's go to russell from south carolina. russell, good morning. caller: yes, good morning, america, and jesse. i keep hearing people talk about all the terrible things that america did and somehow, america had it coming that we would be attacked. i think -- i'm a veteran. i put my life on the line for america. and i'm also an african-american. so when i look back at my history, my history -- america

has done a lot of bad things to my people. but america did not deserve what happened on 9/11. innocent people going to work should never be attacked and killed. and for people to come on c-span and try to down democrats because we care or somehow make -- try to make it seem as though it was justified, it was not justified that america is attacked. we need to come together as a country. we need to stop attacking muslims, attacking democrats, and attacking people. remember. we are a country that should support freedom everywhere. we should support freedom in hong kong. we should support freedom in taiwan. and we planted seeds in afghanistan. my sons -- i'm a veteran and my son fought in that afghanistan. was wounded in afghanistan we planted seeds in afghanistan that will continue to grow long past the time we're gone.

all of us and stop pointing fingers. you want to blame it on trump. you want to blame it on ahmad -- oklahoma. you -- abama obama. as long as we're d-wooded, we are so easily to be the cause of it the internet has almost conquered out people. we have people who all they want to do on the internet all day is talk "idiocracy." host: let's go to joseph who's calling from manchester, connecticut. joseph, good morning. caller: how are you? host: go ahead, joseph. caller: yeah. 20 years ago, i was in elementary school in the third grade. and they made my classroom lockdown and shelter in place in a closet.

and i wasn't sure what was going on. and then i came home when i found out. my father and my grandmother told me what was going on. and i knew that the world had changed. and i, i didn't know that the world had changed that much, that we would forever fix the way we travel and how -- forever change the way that we did things. and that we judge certain people. because arab-americans and everything for things that a select group of people did. and i've been really disappointed in my country for,

for the past 20 years. i'm past -- i'm 28 years old right now and i've been really disappointed in e.y. that we've reacted to 9/11 and i think we could do better. host: let's go toed who's calling from michigan. todd, good morning. caller: yes, hey, good morning. as far as the legacy goes, mr. bush has been varying his comments and basically, he was saying that we're more divided now than we were back then. and, you know, i think in his personal life, i think he feels a lot of remorse about some of the intelligence that he received to dick cheney and some of these other guys. and, you know, i believe that

mr. bush is an honorable man. i really do. i believe say the -- i can't say the same for trump or biden. i don't feel anything coming from those guys at all. and another point, too. i think americans are kind of naive, including myself about being attacked and about pain. you know, you look at history and you look at the casualties that united states has suffered like in vietnam, 54,000, world war ii, 150,000, and then you look at russia, and they've suffered 26 million losses. so, i think it's time that, you know, we start getting the history books rewritten truthfully and we start taking a damn good hard look at what's going on around us. thanks. host: coming up next, we'll talk

with david corn and quin hillyer, again, about the impact of 9/11 and the political news of the day. following that, we'll go back to your telephone calls as we talk again about the legacy of 9/11, 20 years later. stick with us. we'll be right back. ♪ ♪

>> c-span shop.org has a collection of products. browse to see what is new. your purchase will support our nonprofit operations. you have time to early directory -- congressional directory. go to c-spanshop.org. next week, what c-span's january 6, views from the house, where 14 members of congress share stories of what they saw, heard, and experienced that day. >> representative gosar from arizona was objecting. at that moment i simply shouted out at the top of my lungs, this is because of you. i screamed it. >> the capitol police office came into the chamber. they were being very loud.

they were making a lot of commotion. the doors to the chamber are typically open and all of the doors, they started shutting the doors. >> someone up in the chambers, in the gallery, a member, was yelling at the republicans to call trump and have trump call off his mob. >> there were a lot of freshmen i got to know during orientation that this was their first real experience as a member of congress. we were watching them and talking to my fellow colleagues about what we could try to do and stop this. >> watch january 6, views from the house, next week on c-span, c-span.org, or listen on the c-span radio app. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we are back. joining us is david corn the washington bureau chief of

mother jones and an msnbc analyst and quin hillyer, a senior commentary writer and editor for the washington exam at your and contributing editor to the national online. they are here to talk to us about the 9/11 commemorations and the political news of the day. good morning, gentlemen guest:. guest:-- gentlemen. guest: good morning. guest: good morning. host: what do you think about the legacy for the united states is. guest: those are two big questions. this is what i've been thinking a lot at mother jones and my newsletter. i think we can talk about political, psychological effects of having an attack and americans feeling insecure. if you had to boil it down, in retrospect, the biggest impact

of that in terms of america, we launched two relatively pointless wars that led to the deaths of thousands of american soldiers, but also hundreds of thousands of iraqi and afghanistan civilians area we went into afghanistan justifiably to rule out the taliban and al qaeda, but we stayed there for 20 years, not understanding the country, culture, politics or having a strategic aim that could be accomplished. we have seen what has happened with the withdraw and what we ended up with and is spending trillions of dollars of taxpayer money and thousands of lives of americans. in iraq, we went in without any clear idea of what to do once saddam hussein was booted out of office. george w. bush spoke eloquently

yesterday, and had no idea what to do once he got into iraq. he greased the way to war with misrepresentations and outright lies about saddam hussein's relationship with al qaeda and the wmd program. we were there for years and it trickled a civil war and the rise of isis. and literally hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilians died in the aftermath of our invasion. even now you could call it democracy in iraq. two horrendous wars that led to the deaths of many for no obvious gain are the most lasting legacies of the terrible attacks of 9/11. host: quin, what did you think of the commemorations and what do you think was the legacy of

9/11 in the united states. guest: the commemorations were exactly what was due although frankly -- and talking about what we got wrong afterwards, i have to take issue with almost everything, i would certainly take issue that afghanistan was something we never should have gone into anything. in the month after 9/11, that we should go into afghanistan to knock out the taliban and al qaeda's capability.

90% of the people in america or maybe 85% with say you are nuts. we went in and toppled the taliban and degraded al qaeda down to next to nothing. what i found going after bin laden we probably could've gotten him. but to say in retrospect that we should not have gone into afghanistan is just almost nuts. guest: that wasn't my point. i said it was justified to get the taliban and root out al qaeda. i'm not disagreeing with that. what i am saying is we had no idea of what to do afterward. great reporting the last couple of days about the possibility of a peace deal of some sort with the taliban after we had gotten al qaeda out and donald rumsfeld

had no interest in doing that. for 20 years, longer than what you described, we had no idea what to do with 19.5 of those 20 years. and that is the tragedy. guest: i would take issue with part of that. i think the last seven or eight years, we sort of had afghanistan i am one of the few that will not apply retroactive brilliance and assume we knew back then what we know now in terms of iraq. the majority of the american people wanted to go into iraq. they resent was we had every reason to believe that saddam hussein still had weapons of mass destruction. and if he did, now we know he did not have those capabilities in full measure like we thought

he did. had we not gone in and it turned out that he did, we would have been in a mass of trouble. host: let me interrupt both of you here, because i don't want to get into the here. i have a few more questions i want to get you to react to you and i will talk to each other after that. what has been the legacy of 911 on u.s. domestic policy and foreign policy? what changed. i will start with you first, quin. what changed because of 9/11? guest: domestic policy and david and i will partly agree on this, domestically we have a much more intrusive government in terms of

civil liberties. some of it i would argue is necessary even though i hate it, even though the blinds at tsa and security, but most of that is necessary could we can't allow hijackers to exert their will. but we also have sort of expanded the vision -- divisions and the reason for divisions in the country. the fact that we are still having this debate 20 years later shows that the terrorists exceeded in at least one of their aims which was to destabilize us. that was not good. it is something we all as americans need to struggle with. there are really no good legacies of 9/11. there are good legacies of the response to it, in that yes we have that are capability to

disrupt terrorist networks, we have better capability to protect the american homeland. but at what cost to that is the question. host: david, your response. guest: i agree that it led initially there was a rallying around the flag and george w. bush. but going back to the point you don't want us to debate, and i wrote a book with this, george w. bush and dick cheney made a case in a rock -- in iraq that they knew were misrepresentations they made that biased the intelligence or misrepresented the intelligence and it turned out in the end they were wrong and prevent wrong. there was no connection with al qaeda and no meeting between the 9/11 hijackers as dick cheney

implied and said over and over again. that led to once again a renewal of the credibility and a lot of people could not trust the president and vice president. half of the country believed that he had lied knowingly to get us into the war. that led to a lot of polarizations and in some ways that we couldn't get together for the long run after 9/11, we do not study the world around us for what to do, and afghanistan and things that were reported on a couple years ago said again

that we did not understand -- policymakers and the bush administration, the obama administration and the trump administration did not understand the culture of afghanistan. one legacy here domestically is that we have had debates that have not been honest and debates we are predicated on information and facts and knowledge. that is a perfect set up for what we have seen during the trump years. guest: let me interrupt. it is just not fair to say that wish and cheney lied. -- that bush and cheney lied. there is a difference between having bad intelligence are telling a deliberate lie. passing on information you believe to be true is a mistake. host: let him finish, david, and

i will come back to you. guest: it is absolutely true that saddam hussein was harboring terrorists and maintaining terrorists ties. he was paying money to terrorist's relatives as a sort of county for terrorist acts, so that if the people carrying out the terrorism were killed, their families would get paid. he was violating the sanctions regime, which was eroding because the food for oil gamble in europe. so europe support for inspections was going down. there was lots of stuff that gave us very good reason to go into iraq, and it was not a lie,

even though the intelligence was fully even sit-down's own generals. the intelligence was bad but sit-down had a very, very extensive sort of falls flag operation to make everybody coming including his own generals, think that he did still have the wmd's, which were by the way suit bearded -- which by the way were spirited to syria. guest: one example of a date cheney lie. he said repeatedly that mohammed atta that led the attack on us on 9/11, the key operator, had met with saddam's intelligence people. that was the big connection. there was no such meeting here he was told repeatedly by the cia there was no credibility but he kept using it.

the second point is in terms of weapons, we had weapons inspectors and their throughout and there were still working on the job and finding nothing and guess what, they were right. there was no reason not to continue with those inspections for another couple of months or longer because they had the right answer. so bush and did cheney decided -- and dick cheney decided to cut out the inspections. people can read my book and we go into all this in great detail. they made misrepresentations knowingly. host: at this point, let remind everyone that our viewers are going to take part in this conversation. we are going to open up our

regular lines, which means democrats, you can call (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, your line is (202) 748-8002. you can always tempt us at (202) 748-8003. we are always reading on social media. we have been talking about what happened 20 years ago. let's move the timeline up a little bit. we have seen a lot of people talk about a link between 911 2000 and one and january 6 -- nine/11/2001 and january 6. do you see a link? guest: one link is flight 93 was possibly headed for the capital. i was on capitol hill that

morning. i was felt like i had a debt i cannot repay to the passengers and crewmembers of flight 93 because they might have saved a lot of lives. yet the capital was protected -- capitol was not protected in the threat was inside the country who were revved up and incited by donald trump's big lie. i just watched yesterday, not because it was 9/11 but it was appropriate i did this on 9/11, the new york times day of rage video, which is made up of thousands of videos showing exactly what happened. the amount of hatred and violence and venom that was whipped up by donald trump, rudy giuliani and many others over the course of weeks and months

to convince everyone the election was exposed and that there were conspiracies and white nationalists doing white supremacy and beating the cops with flags and gates and spraying them. you can tell i am still upset about it. as we talked about earlier, the divisions that led and were prompted after 9/11 have let us to this now, where one part of the political world believes is our theories that have no basis and not only believing them but acting out and violent domestic terrorists trying to stop a constitutional procedure. in some ways it is far more threatening to the politics of the united states than the awful attack of 9/11. host: quin, do you see any

correlation between 9/11 and january 6? guest: no, i don't. i come down very hard on the insurrectionists and the sort of sheepish followers of the insurrectionists, but they were not terrorists. they were not trying to destroy the whole society. this was not terrorism and was not domestic terrorism, but i do leave it was, at least among 100 or 200 of them, it was an attempt of insurrection and was absolutely percent responsible. it was borderline traitorous. conservatives who try to make the case that this was just a protest and a lot of those were

good people, that not right -- that is not right. you do not swarm the capitol and do the things they did and say it was a protest that got out of hand. as got awful as it was, there is a difference between that -- as god awful as it was, there is a difference between that and 9/11. host: let's go to mike from virginia on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. we always turn a blind eye. saddam never took one american.

what we should have done, never gone to a rack -- going to iraq. i blame cheney for going there and destroying that country and letting iran take over syria. and lebanon, we never did anything about it. talking about terrorists in iraq , saddam was a secularist. if someone grew a beard he would send them home to shave it. you are talking mr. quin about palestinians objecting to the occupation in israel. you are conflicting things. look what is happening in iraq. the country disintegrated.

it is gone, finished. we opened the door for iran to sponsor these terrorists in yemen, iraq, and syria. i don't want to hear about republicans always defending cheney's decision to go to war in iraq. host: i will let you respond first, quin. guest: we did not kill a million iraqis. the handling of iraq is different than the decision to go into iraq. if we had taken the advice of -- and -- and mccain and gone in the right way and had not

completely eroded the middle rank of experienced government, we would've had a lot better results but be that as it may, i do want to say we weren't just going in there for links to 9/11. we were going and because iraq had ties to terrorists and he was dangerous. and he was harboring them and giving the bounties to the terrorist families. andy absolutely did have -- and he actually did have happens of mass destruction at one point and did not show definitively he had gotten rid of them. hindsight is 20/20, but our reasons for going in were justifiable for everything we knew at the time. host: david, anything to add to that? guest: i will just say that

while we didn't kill them directly, utterly hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilians died in securing -- in the ensuing violence triggered by our invasion. we talk about in the book that george w. bush went in. he had no plan and no idea what to do after the initial invasion and the d throwing -- dethroning of saddam hussein. you are not thinking about what you are going to do afterwards. you are responsible for that i don't care if mccain or anybody else had lanes, dip cheney and george w bush -- date cheney and george w. bush didn't -- dick cheney and george w. bush didn't. they chose not to prepare adequately for what would come

after that invasion and hundreds of thousands of iraqis paid for that arrogance with their lives. host: let's talk to arnold, who is calling from some or not, tennessee -- calling from sy merna, tennessee. caller: i am a democrat. can i still go ahead and speak? host: i will let you go this time. i didn't dial 8000. host: go ahead. caller: i want to share, the last segment was about the result of 9/11. there is a documentary on youtube and it was free and made

by the firefighters of new york city. it is called "calling out bravo seven: the 2020 edition." you can watch it and this will greatly bring about the legacy of 9/11, which will be truth and justice for all. the last time i called in last month, i recited the first verse of the poem by kipling called "the gods of the copybook headings." i want to recite it now. it is a very long poem. it is also on youtube and online. calling out bravo seven, the 2020 edition made by the

firefighters in new york city. you need to listen or read this poem and also watch this documentary. just one other point, there is a poem called "the countdown," by sofia snow that is about 9/11. this poem won an international poetry contest of the whole world. this poem came in first place. it is called "the countdown," by sofia snow. host: let's go to another call. let's go to luke who is calling from new york on the independent-minded. luke, good morning. caller: good morning. legacy of 9/11 is the belief that america is strong, no matter what political group. when it comes to the homeland we have always come together.

i witnessed that. the problem with the afghan war is the resources that went to large corporations. all of the big, large profits. they didn't go to paying down our u.s. national debt. it went into billionaires' pockets, the top 500 companies in the world. i think from now on if we go to war, the spoils of those wars could go to paying down national debt like it used to. now with the corporate greed controlling everything from the media on, it is unfair to the american people. that is what is really causing a lot of discourse in our political system is that we are lobbied to keep all of the corporate power in power. host: let me let you respond first, david, and then you, quin.

guest: what we are seeing with the afghan war is we spent williams of dollars and at the end of the day we didn't -- we spent trillions of dollars and at the end of the day we didn't get anything. we held the taliban at bay but there was vast corruption in the spending of money in -- the sending of american money in the a4 reconstruction. -- the aid for reconstruction. it benefited the corporations but it is not the smart thing to do strategically and does not always give us results but takes money away from other things we could be doing as a country in terms of education, addressing climate change, whatever your favorite thing is. one lesson in the afghan war is we have been really stupid and how we spend our money and there

are some big corporations, contractors host: that did benefit. host: host: quin, what do you think? guest: well, there was clearly corruption in afghanistan. we also had, for about seven years, reached a fairly good stasis for 10,000 or fewer troops. we had intelligence terrorists on the ground, capability to deter it. we kept at least the taliban at bay. we had bagram air base, which was an extremely valuable air base, not just for internal afghanistans, but it gave us four deployment capability that could help deter bad action from russia and china. it was a very, very valuable air base there. we now have located air base. we have lost the on the ground intelligence capabilities. we've had the taliban completely overrun the country.

the afghanistan study group, which was one of the true bipartisan groups that was respected across the board, came out with its report in february, and they said, if we pulled out instead of maintaining a 5,000-troop force, then it said the taliban would quickly overrun the country, and it said within 18 to 36 months, it was not just possible, but likely that they would have been able to reconstitute, that al qaeda would be able to reconstitute enough to attack the u.s. homeland. that's 18 to 36 months from now. we could have another 9/11, because of the way we cut and run in afghanistan. we have opened up the pandora's box, and had we stayed there at relatively minor cost, we could have avoided that you now we might reap it. host: i can't have you two on

this show and not talk about the things that are going on in american politics right now. i want to get both of you to comment on president biden ordering new vaccine mandates around the country. first, let's see what president biden said on thursday as he moved towards these new vaccine mandates. here's what president biden said. president biden: so tonight, i'm announcing that the department of labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week. some of the biggest companies are already requiring this. united airlines, disney, tysons food, and even fox news. the bottom line, we're going to

protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. we're going to reduce the spread of covid-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across america. host: first of all, quin, what do you think about president biden's vaccine mandate and the threat from g.o.p. governors to sue over the mandate? guest: well, you will not find many conservatives stronger than i am in favor of vaccines, stronger than i am in saying that this pandemic really is bad and it is still raging, and that we need to have some aggressive strategies, and yet to go to the vaccine mandate the way that biden did it is absolutely appalling. how do you force a company of 105 workers to get all of its workers vaccinated and punish the company if the workers refuse to get vaccinated? that makes absolutely no sense. i know companies that have

offered cash rewards to workers if they will get vaccinated and the workers still turn it down. if the workers turn it down, how do you put a $14,000 fine on the company because the workers refuse? it is absolutely impractical, and it is a violation of all sorts of restrictions on executive power. it is almost certainly unconstitutional. it is exactly the wrong way to go, and i say that as a very pro-vaccine person, but this is an absolutely appalling order. it is creeping authoritarianism, and it has to be stopped. host: david, do you agree? guest: surprisingly, no. i think it's said we've got to come to the point where we need mandates, because there has been a push, not from quin, but some conservatives, and we see this on fox news so not have the

vaccines, to raise questions about the authentic isity, the sincerity of people like that, and to promote all sorts of conspiracy theories about the vaccines. and so we have this tremendous hesitancy, a lot of it is politically motivated. on the constitutional point, all you have to do is just read the coverage the last few days. there are plenty of legal scholars who say, no it's not obviously unconstitutional. it is constitutional. so that is a debate that will be taken up, but it's not a slam dunk, but not in the lyse, and if we look at the nature of mandates, you know, whether the president has the authority or not, you can't sudden your kid to a public school without having a mandate to have many, many vaccinations. i can't, we can't get the economy moving, we can't get this country moving again until we stop the transmission and do

something about this pandemic before it new dates again from delta to the next one that may be worse. so i think at this point in the game, mandates are unnecessarily necessary. unfortunately necessary. and that there will be a fight about this, and the fight is happening because we as a country could not come together on some agreed upon facts such as the pandemic being serious and public health measures and expertise needing to be heeded. that goes back again to donald trump, yeah, he's been vaccinated, but he hasn't been out there encouraging people to be vaccinated, and he spent a year and a half telling people that this was largely a democratic hoax, you didn't need to wear a mask, we can open up, and all these things that really set the foundation for this country not being able to come up with a response, voluntary response, a civic community type of response that would have helped us smother this he he will dick, this pandemic at a

much -- smother this epidemic, this pandemic at a much earlier stage. guest: you didn't say about the decision of the workers. host: we can't hear when you you both talk at the same time, so we'll let david speak first, then you, quin. guest: no, let quin finish the question. guest: if the mandate is on the business, but the workers refuse to get the vaccine, is the business supposed to fire the workers? how does that help the workers? unless, of course, you keep paying them extraordinary amounts not to work. guest: i believe the taxpayers money. either way, it doesn't get the people vaccinated, and it puts the onus on the business when it's not the business' fault. guest: well, i believe part of the rule will be if people don't

get vaccinated, then you have to have very robust and regular testing. that businesses try and they can't, then they have to have a testing regimen, which is put in place to protect the vaccinated workers. this is a labor protection measure, so people go to work, they don't have to fear that they're surrounded by people who pass them the virus. and that's the -- if people aren't going to take the vaccination, they're threatened with national football league or whatever penalty might be on the worker, then you have to test the worker very rigorously to keep that person separate. but i do believe businesses have the right, if they know that you're infected with something, they can tell you to stay home, and if you don't do what is necessary in order to come to work in a safe way, businesses do have a right to fire you. host: all right, let's get some of our viewers into the conversation much let's start with a caller from lee's summit,

missouri, on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: ok, thank you. how would you like me to address this question? i do not want to elongate what you're trying to address. host: just go ahead and ask your question. caller: ok. when it comes to the vaccinations, there has to be a stop prevention for many, many reasons. we have immigration coming into this country, and we have always made sure to ensure their health, because locations that come from people here don't have immunities for, haven't been vaccinated, just for location.

and as immigrants come in, historically always have, we try, the medical community tries, and i'm in the middle of that ongoing, as well as being from a very strong military background. so, yes, many people don't realize we have skipped an entire virus area. we have vaccinated against what is considered a and b vaccinations since we were hit with what was called the spanish influenza. since then, it has been a push against polio. f.d.r. himself, he was behind a

lot of that. and it's still ongoing, except the viral strain has mutated so fast, we skipped from a and b, and forget c, we're d. we knew it was coming. everybody in the medical field were on high alert, embraced before we ever had cases reporting coming in. i asked one question from one of my best friends for over 40 years that grew up in queens, basically. host: can you get to your question really quickly for us? caller: she's on a fema team. she had to respond to ground zero to have to identify the remains. that hit her so hard, and she's still in medicine today. so i can't see too much about that, that she is constantly in the same predicament.

she has to get vaccinated, even at risk to herself, when we had someone that's bringing the district i can't virus through our area, and we're considered insignificant flyover states where i am, she had to. as an emergency room responder. to see this person in the hospital didn't have the equipment required to even -- so she put -- host: david, we don't want to take up all of our time, so why don't you go ahead and respond to what she was talking about there, david? guest: i'm not quite sure what question she was driving at. i'm happy to move on. host: quin, anything you want to add to what she was saying? guest: i think she was talking about how important it was to get vaccinated, and i would agree, and that is a message we can join in right center and left if you're responsible, you

will indeed join in push forgo people to get vaccinated because it works. host: let's go to deb free roswell, new mexico october independent line. debbie, good morning. caller: good morning. you put 9/11, because when i turned this on, i seen david corn on, at first i thought you might have been talking about what we did in 9/11, but i guess we don't want to talk about what we did. anyway, my question for you, mre door for the foundation of the government telling lies to the people and the mega phone that they use by leaking to the "new york times," i think it was judith miller who would print something and then cheney would repeat it as if it was gospel, and it has just accelerated over the last 20 years to where now how do you find out the truth about anything when our news we used to depend on is nothing but lies and conspiracies and it makes it much more difficult.

so i think the tragedy of 9/11 is not so much the deaths, but the death behalf we did to the news and telling the truth. i think that's our biggest legacy that nobody knows what the truth is anymore. host: go ahead and respond there, david. guest: i think that's a good point. i would not say that you can't trust anything from the news now. i do think if you look at the runup to the war in iraq, lot of reporters were repeating things that they were not as if they were true, and it created a false foundation for the war, and people were cynical about that afterwards. it's something i've written about. but if you look at what's happening today in which you have -- you had a president for years say the news media is fake and you can't believe it, it leads to people not believing it when they put out reports about the need and the necessity and the efficacy of the vaccinations. there are people out there who the president says, you know, ex-president, says you can't believe them, you did not

believe the media or dr. fauci or anybody else now. and so we don't have the means by which to have a communal conversation on agreed-upon facts, then we as a country cannot really handle a wide a. so of of crises that face us, beyond the pandemic. but i do believe that a discerning individual can look at what's being reported in different media outlets, but it takes a lot of work to come up with a semblance of what is accurate, what is not accurate, who has the better record of telling the truth. but if we take our information according to tribalism and fall into cults of personality and belief that the media is all fake and the enemy of the people, then we're in trouble because if you don't have agreed-upon facts, you can't have an honest policy debate about what we should do.

host: quin, impact on the media? guest: i would agree actual well most of what david said. i would say, and this could be an entire hours-long debate, media ethics have definitely gone in the tank. media bias, including things that purport to be straight news, has gotten absolutely out of hand, and the media news to get back to old-fashioned objective reporting, and it is really falling down on the job. but that said, it is absurd, on the other hand, to say that everything out there is a lie, to say that we can't agree on facts, to say that there are no facts rather than just pure opinion. there's got to be a happy medium, and toward that happy medium, most of what david said is right. we do need to get back to a

semblance of agreed-upon facts, and it is still possible, even in this media environment for a discerning individual to do so. guest: if i can add one point, you look at what donald trump has done, and quin, i'm interested in what you say about this. on the conservative side of the aisle, according to "the washington post," he's made over 30,000 misrepresentations, sometimes outright lies, when he was in the office of the presidency. he has gotten throughout again and again and pushed conspiracy theories, whether it's birtherrism or the deep state being out to get him. he's really basically told his most loyal followers in the republican party, don't trust anything you see in the media on fox, trust what i say, and then he says things that are demonstrably not true. i think that's had a real impact on what i would call the conservative political culture.

it makes it harder for to us get to that point, because i think quin and i both like to see where we cannot debate whether the sky is blue or not, but debate what to do about the sky. host: quin, your response? guest: my response is what he says about trump is absolutely right. he lies more than hillyer and i bill clinton put together, which is saying something, because they were and are two invet rate liars. we do need to get back to something, to a situation where we can agree on basic facts, and that was one of the reasons, one of the many things that made donald trump a blight on both the country and on the conservative side. is he regularly, regularly lied and then said believe me and don't believe anybody else. but it is not fair to say that

some of the same stuff did not go on on the left, it goes on both sides. trump was just a master at it. but i have catalogued hundreds and hundreds of&hundreds of examples of people on the left doing the same thing. they just didn't have as big a mega phone as donald trump. host: let's talk to a few more viewers, chris from the democrats line from california. caller: good morning. you hear he? host: we can. go ahead, chris. caller: i hold the opinion our invasion of iraq was actually a bush family vendetta against the hussein family. host: all right. quin, i saw a little laugh from you there. quin, go ahead and respond to that. guest: well, it's tough to get in the w psychology on that. but since i've got the chance, let me just say one other benefit that came from iraq is

that it scared good after knee libya into cooperating with us for about 10 years, turning over all his weaponry, stopping his nuclear program, which was much farther along than we thought, and turning over the keys to the nuclear network, which was very, very devastating and was very close to being operational. so that was a benefit from us going into iraq, and it was specifically because, quote froi somewhat they did and it scared me. guest: there's nothing compared to the thousands of american lives that were lost from this. but yeah, you can say that he missed with libya, but the end of the day, americans did not bear the cost of that war for the most part. it was the iraqi civilian who is

lost hundreds of thousands of their loved ones, and if americans wanted to go through that type of sacrifice to have a foreign policy game like the one quin just described, we can have an honest debate about that. host: let's talk to jerry, who's calling from minnesota on the republican line. jerry, good morning. caller: good morning. i would say about the afghanistan war, we don't know yet what will happen. it will depend on when the inevitable attack comes. it will either be some virus like the china virus that was released, or maybe a nuclear weapon. when that day comes, then we'll know whether or not the 20 years in afghanistan was worth it. secondly, david, when you say you despise all the lying of trump and all that, you didn't make it five minutes into the show before you lied. you said i never interrupted you, but i watched you. you interrupted him twice. guest: i don't believe i said i

never interrupted quin. host: yeah, go ahead and respond. guest: you can go back play the tape. did i say i never interrupted you? i think i interrupted you once, and then i let you go first. so i mean, if that's really the best case this caller can make, i'm happy to let the jury decide. host: anything to add there, quin? guest: david did interrupt me. i did not hear him say that he did not interrupt me. david is a consummate gentleman, so i am not going to hold that against him. two minutes later, i interrupted him without realizing it. but back to the point of afghanistan. i really wish everybody would go back and read the afghanistan study report, the bipartisan commission that republicans, democrats both pointed and were very happy with. and then having read that report, decide whether or not we did by getting out of

afghanistan was the right thing. host: gentlemen, before january 6, most of us would have said washington, d.c. can handle any type of protest, any type of march, any type of demonstration. but now we have this september 18 rally coming up, and we see people in congress talking about putting up fences again and police getting ready to mobilize. are you concerned about anything that's going happen on september 18, and are we reacting in congress properly? you first, quin. guest: there is any violence on september 18, if these protests that happen then turn into any sort of violent attack, every single person involved in the violence should be arrested, prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it is absolutely right to defend the capitol in every way that we can within

constitutional limits, and this idea that because you don't like something you go and riot, it's wrong on the right, it's wrong on the left. i wish the left would call out their own the way that i just called out the right. but either way, this thing has to stay peaceful. host: david? guest: i will say that all political protests should be nonviolent on the left and right. if people on the left do it, that's not going help their case. so there you go, i agree wow that, quin. as i mentioned earlier in the show, i worked -- my office, when i worked at the nation magazine was on capitol hill for many years. i spent a good part of my life up there. and it really sanded notice see what happened on january 6. but then in the aftermath, have to walk around up there, it looked like a garrison state with all the fencing up. so i think this time around, this time around, there's plenty of warning in that the capitol hill officers, the police in

washington, d.c., national guard troops, they'll be available, can really prepare for this. i also think that the guy running this, who was last seen giving out analysis that was false, that the election had been stolen by donald trump. he claimed to be a data analyst, is not necessarily the type of person who's capable of bringing thousands and thousands and thousands of people to the capitol for a protest on a saturday. so my hunching is this is not going to be anything close to the size of january 6, and that the law enforcement community will be able to have it well under control, and that even people on the paranoid far right, which fueled the january 6 attack, a lot of them are saying stay away, this is a false flag operation, this is meant to entrap us to bring includes to arrest us and throw

us into jail. so the paranoia of these extremists may make this day safer. guest: i hope he's right. host: i'm sorry, we didn't hear you, quin. say that again. guest: i said i hope david is right. host: all right. we're getting a lot of agreement here in the last few minutes of the hour. let's see if we can get a couple of calls in. let's talk to trent, who's calling from louisiana on the independent line. trent, good morning. caller: hi, guys. what an honor to talk to both of you, the guide from the left and right i respect. i'm a man of the right, but all my life, i'm in my mid 60's, and when i was younger, it was the left guys that were saying, my left-wing saying there was a ruling class. in the last 20 years, because of thinkers like samuel francis and gary north, and i got to have howard phillips well, and he said that i just had to admit it at the end of my life. i think there is a conspiracy. i'd like to know what both of you think about your definition

of the ruling class managerial lead, and then one last thought about paul. you guys don't remember, he was one of the few right guys, and square north told me a story that david rockefeller asked him to come have lunch with him in new york city, and goat there, and they had a long lunch, and david rockefeller said, paul, is there anyone who can stop our globalist agenda, and he said, yeah, the religious right and the hard money guys. so anyway, that's a true story. i'd like to know what you think about the ruling class managerial elite. thank you. host: we'll start with you, david. guest: well, i think you can define that in many different ways. donald trump defined it as a deep state that i thought was highly conspiratorial that didn't really exist. i do think that to some degree and let right can sometimes agree that big money interests

in the american political system unduly influence decision making within the political realm, and that to me it's highly, highly unfair that an individual or a corporation can flood a candidate, a campaign, can run a campaign for a candidate, with millions and millions of dollars, and skew the playing field while you and i can't do that. i've always thought that, you know, a lot of countries do this, england, i think israel does this, whether it's public financing of campaigns. so whatever a candidate is saying, you can believe that he or she is saying it, you know, because they believe it or because they think it will get them elected. but not to keep a big money interest happy. i hope that we can move in that direction. there are constitutional issues. it's very difficult, but i do think you're concerned about managerial elite, the question there is always money, money,

money. so finding a way to diminish, if not remove the impact of big money on american politics is something that would address that concern on the left and the right. host: quin, the ruling elite? guest: the ruling elite, there is something to be said for the idea and the fear of that, i think on both sides, people get conspiracy theory-minded, and they overplay it. but they're on the left as well, academia, big media, the tech giants, etc., etc., it's there on the left, it's there on the right, but to say that there's some sort of cabal that is controlling everything on either left or right is going overboard. we are still individual americans. we still have lots of freedom. and again, i just think we need

moderation in a lot of ways, including how we look at questions like the managerial elite. there is such a thing. it is not all powerful, but it is probably too powerful than it should be. host: let's go to pat who's calling from new york, new york, on the democratic line. good morning. caller: yes, hi. i'm calling from actually ground zero, and i just would like to agree with both of these gentlemen it seems to be if the left does not like what you have to say, they call you a conspiracy theorist, if the right doesn't like what you have to say they call you news. i have not heard either of these establishment, i don't know clowns, talk about 9/11 in the context of what wesley clark, who was the nato

secretary-general said many times he testified and i guess this would be in the category of -- as fact. he would be an authoritative position to know. he said the week after 9/11 at the pentagon he was told that we would be attacking iraq, we would be taking countries in the middle east region five years. we know about the project for a new american century, you can look up clean break strategy for securing the realm. these are documents that play out the plan of what has been going on in the middle east, the destruction of these countries and the renovation of their borders, these are established fact. and then you have their main newspaper had articles more than once about this company that was

an instant message company that got messages two hours before the trade center was going to happen. is that a conspiracy if it comes out of their? that the legacy of all of this, we are at war for israel and if there's another false flag it means we go and finish up the seven countries in five years and attack iran. what do you think -- host: what do you think? guest: i think to say we are at war with israel borders on anti-semitism and i will say that that. >> i wouldn't call it anti-semitism. i don't agree with the premise. she did not mention that is indeed a fact is that the day or two after 9/11 there were people

at the pentagon including paul wolfowitz and others who had wrongfully advocated attacking saddam hussein and overthrowing his merging militarily who said basically we should do this and that should be the number one thing to do even before afghanistan. there was a part of the neoconservative agenda to overthrow saddam hussein with force. unfortunately this on 9/11 is there chance to do that. host: we would like to thank david and -- for being here and talking to us about current politics and the legacy of 9/11. gentlemen, i enjoyed this. thank you for being with us this morning. >> thank you. host: coming up next we will go back to talk to you again about the legacy of 9/11. you see the numbers on screen. we are waiting for your telephone calls, we will be

right back. ♪ >> tonight, on "q&a," jessica delong was chief engineer of the john jay harvey on september 11 when it was called to aid firefighters. she tells the story of the community of mariners who came to the rescue of thousands. >> the maritime evacuation that delivered nearly half a million people to safety is an incredible example of the goodness of people, that when you are given the opportunity to help, you have the tools and the skill set, you have the availability, the people over and over again made the choice to put themselves in harm's way for the sake of fellow humans.

that is very instructive and something we need to continue to remember. >> jessica delong tonight on "q&a." >> this week on the c-span networks. secretary of state antony blinken testifies in front of two communities on the u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan. the hearings begin with a house foreign affairs committee and the senate foreign relations committee we are from secretary blinken 2:30 eastern. senate judiciary committee examines the fbi's handling of its investigation into larry nasser. watch this week on the c-span networks or listen on the c-span radio app.

head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on-demand any time. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> "washington journal" continuous. host: we are talking about the legacy of 9/11. we want to hear what you think the legacy of the attacks on 9/11 were and what you were doing that day. i want to go to a pole from gallup the talks about how the -- attacks on 9/11 affected the united states. 20 years after the 9/11 terror attacks, a record high 64% of u.s. adults -- changed the way

americans lived because of those attacks. at least one in four americans say they personally have permanently changed the way they lived and a substantial minority continues to express apprehension about flying, going into skyscrapers and overseas travel. the data largely collected prior to the taliban takeover of handstand and before the u.s. terror attack -- the terror attack on u.s. troops there. true -- likewise, confidence in the u.s. government to protect its citizens from terrorism was nearly two decade low. concerned about being a terror victim was lower than in the past although that may have changed in recent days. this comes from a gallup pole showing americans are concerned about terrorism and how change their lives. earlier this summer, c-span

talks to members of congress about how and what their experiences were on 9/11. one of them was michigan republican peter myers, now a freshman member of congress. he was only 13 when the attacks occurred. here is his story. >> in 9/11 i was in middle school. i remember walking between two classes and i had to go and grab some books out of my locker. the person of the locker next to me said a plane it at the world trade center. i had been very interested in international terrorism, especially after the uss cole attack. i'd been aware of the kidnapping of group of hikers in central asia, i think it was al qaeda a few years before. so the first thought that came to my mind was this was osama bin laden. he tried to attack in 1993 and

he came back to finish the job. it was a weird day. we were a world away from new york in many senses, but i had colleagues and classmates whose parents were pilots or flight attendants. they were desperate to get a hold of their parents and understand if their parents made been involved in one of those planes. i of their colleagues who had family members who work new york and the financial services sector. it's a very tense day. and a challenging day for the teachers to balance between showing what was happening was unfolding and at the same time potentially traumatizing students or trying to strike the right balance. i do remember when they sent us home from school later that day, i had the sin team -- instinct to go home and print out on my

computer at home and eight and a half by 11 american flag and put it up in the window. it was definitely a startling day and a reminder or at least a lesson for someone that young that things a world away can have strong impacts back at home. host: i want to remind you of the timeline of how events happened on september 11, 2001. at 8:46 a.m. was one american flight 11 struck the north tower of world trade center. united flight 175 struck the south tower 9:0 3:00 a.m. at 9:37 a.m., american flight 77 hit the pentagon. ed 9:59 a.m. was the collapse of the south tower.

at 10:03, united flight 93 crashed in pennsylvania and at 10:28 a.m., september 11, 2001, of the north tower of the world trade center collapsed. we want to know what you think is the legacy of the 9/11 attacks on the united states. dawson is calling from st. augustine, florida on the republican line. good morning. guest: good morning -- caller: good morning. at that time i was in nice. i was with my grandma in the islands and my mom was about to go back to the embassy because she was sorting out our paperwork and then closed the embassy. when they closed the embassy she called me and told me we aren't

going anywhere anytime soon. she called the school and told me to go home. after that i went home and i saw it on tv i think the legacy of 9/11 should be that we must never forget what is out there that is jealous of america and of its people and our way of life. we must never forget that. that's how i feel that should be the legacy. >> let's talk to christine from middleborough, massachusetts on the democratic line. caller: i wanted to say i am a lifelong liberal, i'm 69 years old. absolutely not in anti-vaxxers. with that being said i do have

family that have been harmed by vaccines, a grandchildren with seizures and one permanently deaf in one ear. so what i'm calling to say is there really does need to be more scrutiny to the vaccine industrial complex and i don't want people to be afraid of what i'm saying. remember, it is the experts, the doctors, scientists, the pharmacologists that gave us the opioid pandemic. host: we are talking about 9/11 right now. do you have anything to say about the legacy of 9/11? caller: please let me finish. host: let's go to joe who is calling from prichard, west virginia on the democrat line. good morning. caller: good morning. the legacy of 9/11 in my opinion is we understand at least $2 trillion and possibly as much

trillion dollars was expended. numerous american lives, disabilities. it created a vacuum to allow the tech companies to change america forever by going to globalization. 12 million jobs, numerous unemployment, what are five children hungry, poverty at record levels. wagers at record lows -- wages at record lows. it distracted americans so the rich, the elite are two other guests just talked about could redirect the wealth of america away from the working men and women. those people in iraq and afghanistan, they don't -- they've been killing each other for over 1700 years basically

because of one verse in the koran of who succeeded the prophet muhammad. for us to go to war for something like that was pure idiocy on both the democrats and the republicans watch. host: let's go to morgan calling from nashville, tennessee on the independent line. good morning. caller: i'm calling about an experience i had february of 2001 that every year on 9/11 haunts me. i spontaneously, it was a very cold winter in tennessee in 2001 and february i spontaneously made a reservation to go to fort lauderdale and i was looking for the cheapest hotel possible, i

found a little family place on the beach that i could afford and on the second day i was on the beach and there were three guys and i was stunned by these three guys, there wasn't anybody else except another couple and i on that little beach. these three guys, i could not figure out what they were doing. they were definitely not tourists and they were certainly not business guys. and they were middle eastern, there is doubt about that. for three days they were there. and they spent all day -- the fourth day i was at the desk waiting to go to the desk to

speak to the desk and they were at the desk, their leader guy. it was obviously a leader. the other two, -- he was irritating the leader guy. i get to the desk and they are there. he is saying -- he is talking to them. they leave and i go to the desk and i say are they leaving and the owner says yes. they wanted to stay for a month and i told them it was impossible. someone 9/11 when they showed the picture of the hijackers, three of them were the guys i was on that beach with. and the irony of it all is the

guy in the blue shirt, he had that shirt on every day at the beach. i questioned myself who are these guys and why are they here because it makes no sense. my question is if lowly little me could question their presence , visible to everybody in fort lauderdale for some time, what was the government doing? host: let's go to mary calling from philadelphia, pennsylvania on the democrat line. good morning. caller: good morning c-span. what happened on 9/11, we have to make sure this never happens again. we have the security apparatus in place with the intelligence

agencies, we have i think 17 now. all the data goes to them, we have to make sure we hold them accountable, they are all looking at the same information, hundreds of thousands of employees that secure our systems. and we have the general public is required by law to use e-verify. and because this never happened during the 9/11 attacks, we have to make sure we hold everyone accountable at this point, if you are a learning institution and failed to report that someone dropped out of college based on them coming from another country, then that needs to be reported. on our database. everything is secure now.

we integrated our intelligence agencies, our satellite systems under president reagan. if people fail to use it, then they also need to be held accountable, we know who is looking at the information and failing to act when these government agencies are in place thinking that it is not under their jurisdiction, it is under everyone's jurisdiction. host: let's go to rebecca calling from california on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning everyone. i feel the legacy is the patriot act. everything changed and it did start with i patriot act. but there is another legacy attached that i would like to mention. the night before there was a big concert at madison square garden and it was michael jackson and they were doing the billie jean anniversary.

the next day a lot of people did not go to work, they did not go to the city. michael jackson, part of his legacy, he saved lives that day. because of that concert, people for whatever reason did not get up to go to work the next day and save their lives. i would like to give kudos to michael jackson because that concert did definitely make a difference. host: like many people, congress was inside the u.s. capitol on 9/11 and had to be evacuated during the attack. congress did return back to the capital on that day to stand on the capitol steps. here is a video from the evening of september 11 2001 when congress returned to the u.s. capitol for a moment of silence, a moment followed by members spontaneously singing god bless america.

>> we know as a nation, our thoughts and prayers are with those families and injured in those who are the casualties of today's attack. we also remember those thousands of people who are rescue workers, we ask now we all bow our heads in a moment of silence in remembrance. thank you. >> ♪ land that i love.

stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above. from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam god bless america my home sweet home. god bless america, my home sweet home ♪ [applause] host: let's go to jean calling from jackson michigan. caller: good morning. i was sure after that attack that we would retaliate and make them pay for what they did.

but through the 80's and 90's, china always said the u.s. was a paper tiger and this proved it. we want people to like us and respect us, you can make them like us or respect us. but you sure can make them fear us. they fear russia and china and you never see an attack like that on russia because they would retaliate instantly, and they knew that the bigger attack they made on the u.s. the less chance we would retaliate. we have to change our way of thinking. i don't care if they respect us or don't like us, but i want them to fear us. when they install that fear, nothing like this will happen again. >> let's go to doris who's calling on the independent line. good morning.

>> i just wanted to say i think it is weird than that on the day of 9/11, bush was sitting in a classroom. if there was a national terrorist emergency being announced, wouldn't you tell the families and students to go home because you don't know where it's going to go or where they are going to attack. so unless he knew where was going to go he wouldn't have stayed there. you can just jet fuel cannot burn steel buildings. it's not possible. also the pentagon was considered a catchers mitt. it was supposed to sustain bomb blasts and there were no pieces of the plane founded the pentagon. there so many pieces that connect the 911 being an inside job. host: let's go to jeff calling from pacific city, oregon. good morning. caller: i agree with the last lady, there's a lot to look into

here. building seven first of all and basically if you want to go with what happened here -- host: let's go to brian calling from portsmouth, ohio on the independent line. caller: i was living in the pensacola area at the time. i had worked to previous shift and i like to sleep with the tv on. i could just barely hear it. my mom called and said look at the tv. at the time i was in the marine corps reserves.

i looked at it and said some unfortunate accident, probably a tourist helicopter or something. the second aircraft flew into it and there was a very distinguishable aircraft of commercial size. i told her then i knew we were going to be in serious trouble. within 20 minutes or so, we got a call from a reserve center, everyone was put on active alert. i wasn't called in that day, but within probably six weeks we were activated and sent off. i had intended on just carrying out my time as a reservist and fulfilling my flight duties as required, but from that point on

i was still on active duty and decided to stay because the rotation just kept coming. i gained a lot of flight time, but memories, some were great and some were not so great. these people with the conspiracy theories, i think you need a separate line just for those guys. host: let's go to sean from colorado on the republican line. caller: i think it's a massive intelligence failure. we had huge tips called into the fbi in the intelligence agency these guys are taking flight lessons in the apartment manager said they were training on computers when he went by the window learning how to fly and now we just imported 100,000 more terrorists, the biden regime did so they can fly more planes into buildings.

governments done nothing right. host: let's go to alan from little rock, arkansas. good morning. >> i was on hold yesterday for a call just before they went to the formal ceremony at the world trade center memorial and thank goodness because it turns out i'm calling now. just a completely different perspective from yesterday and today. there's so many things i want to talk about, but i'm in my 70's, i always loved talking since i was a kid and got a job at a radio station when i was 16 and became a news director 50 years ago at a couple of different radio stations. i've been watching this for 50 years.

the legacy for me, and i think all of us americans, listen to this. we all know this is true. i want people to change for this reason. the legacy has been read. i tell you that remembering back to the 70's when this oil embargo started. when our wealth shifted out. i remember complaining all the time there is no oil shortage. so we've transferred this wealth, we had our leaders on both sides, democrats and republican leaders have sold us out. we have to re-claim our businesses back to this country, we may not make as much money, you see the price of your homes now, they've been escalating

because of these foreign investors. they've escalated across beyond belief. what wall street is going up so this isn't a partisan issue. we as americans need to reclaim our businesses, we may not earn as much. that was detroit shifted over the border. look at all these businesses that have been shifted to mexico. they are our businesses. host: we have had a couple of callers call in and talk about some of what have been conspiracy theories about september 11. i want to bring to you comments from former white house chief of staff who talked about how he informed president george w. bush of the 9/11 attacks and what was going on with president bush at that time. here's what he had to say.

@cspanwj -- [video clip] >> a pool of press gathered at the back. just before the principal open the door to the classroom, one of the staffers for the national security staff came up to the group gathered at the door and said mr. president, it appears a small twin engine prop plane crashed into one of the towers of the world trade center in new york city. the reaction was what a horrible accident. the pilot must of had a heart attack or something. the principal open to the classroom. the president went in with the principal and the doors shut. that same staffer came to me and said sir, it appears it wasn't a small twin engine prop plane was a commercial jetliner. and my mind flashed to the fear that must've been experienced by

the passengers. you had to know the plane wasn't going up and that's what my mind flashed to. a nanosecond later, they came to me and said another plane hit the tower of the world trade center. i then knew it was not an accident or coincidence. i performed a test the chiefs of staff have to perform at the time, it is president need to know. i made the decision, it wasn't that hard of a decision but yes he did need to know. i decided to pass on to facts and make one editorial comment and that i would do nothing to invite a question. i opened the door to the classroom and it was very unusual for me to enter a venue the president had already entered so it was unusual. i open the door and look up and i saw and compton in the press pool and she spotted me, the president and the teacher, i

think her name was sandra daniels, was speaking to the class. ann mouthed to me what's up. -- there was a break in the conversation and i walked up to the president and i leaned over and whispered into his right ear a second plane hit the second tower. america is under attack. i focused on getting word to the president, i did not stay in the classroom long. i stood back from the president and i thought he reacted and hopefully the right way because he did nothing to introduce fear to those kids. he did nothing to demonstrate fear to the press corps that would've translated to the satisfaction of the terrorist around the world. and then i moved into operation mode and i said get the secret service, get the motorcade turned around, get the crew back

on air force one, get lines of communication open to the fbi director, the situation room, condoleezza rice, the secretary of defense, we have to get some remarks written for the president and we have to get the word to the secretary of education who was about ready to leave that classroom and go speak to a group of people gathered in the gymnasium. i moved into operational mode right after i left the president while he was sitting in the classroom. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about the legacy of the attacks on the states on september 11, 2001. one text says the legacy of 9/11 is that only us are entitled to attack and invade countries. here's another text that says we had to give up freedoms to fly

and be more aware of our surrounding. another text said i just wonder if it was worth $6 trillion in military redistribution would've been such a big deal. >> another text says we are all vulnerable because of the policies of our government. it is made is more likely involved in how our government operates. if you want to know what you think the legacy of 9/11 was? let's start with the rose: from north carolina on the independent line. caller: i just finished reading new confessions of an economic hitman by john perkins originally published in 2004. i would recommend it for everybody to read because he actually claims he was one. there is no doubt in my mind 9/11 is directly related to men who has their profession invite

investment potential overseas with numbers to justify to bankers the potential with the express purpose of increasing that countries debt, so our bankers calling the debt and have to give us their resources that we are actually wanting in the first place and when they refused to pay the debt, jackals are sent in to assassinate the leaders and replace them with puppet leaders and he lists all the history involved in which we've done that. i have a recommend will read that. never forget 9/11, they struck the buildings the bankers owned and rented and our military were complex stops the nationbuilding projects run by economic hitman. >> let's go to eddie from peoria

illinois. >> thank you for accepting my call i was eligible for the vietnam era when i joined the service. the legacy i think happened is the united states stopped policing the world. and stop declaring everything a war that's not a war. our legacy will stop policing the world and unite the united nations to police the world. thank you. host: let's go with alexis calling from wilmington, north carolina on the independent line. caller: thanks for taking my call. i see it on a very visceral level.

the woman on the independent line before me, i liked what she had to say. the day it happened i was at work. i can't believe anybody at atv there. so i think it was over the internet. i had a close friend of mine who was from israel and the next day they were supposed to have some kind of cultural event about 200 people, people it cooked large amounts of food and so everybody was dressing up and they were afraid to go out because their goals are too much like muslim garb and people were being attacked in the street for no

reason because of how they were dressed or how they looked. it doesn't appear to be any different the virus now and people attacking people of asian descent, it's very frightening. for me the big picture is where does this come from? we were attacked, what was our part in it? where does this come from that we provoke somebody. we can't control with those people do. we can only control ourselves. what did we do, that side -- that is my question. host: pugh did a research poll on exactly how americans remember and who americans remember 9/11. i want to read a paragraph. the enduring power of the

attacks is clear. an overwhelming share of americans old enough to recall the day remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. yet an ever-growing number of americans have no personal memory of the day. either because they were too young or not yet born. 93% of those 30 and older say they remember exactly where they were on september 11, 2001. the number drops to 42% of those age 25. as we move into the future, fewer and fewer people will remember exactly where they were on september 11 which is why we have these conversations about what you think is going to be the legacy of 9/11. let's go back to the phone lines and talk to ryan on the democrat line. caller: thanks for taking my call.

first the criticism of c-span. i don't think your coverage of 9/11 has been very fair. i think over the years you had more callers talk about alternative explanations for how the buildings collapsed then just about any other topic. looking back in the archives only see maybe one or two videos including richard gage from architects and engineers for 911 truth talking about these theories. not a conspiracy theory to ask questions. among them that i could ask are where the wreckage? where are all the planes. can those be investigated? is there a computer simulation out 20 years later they could show how those buildings fell down because the one that nist produced was a complete farce. he didn't use the real inputs and according to their own

analysis, of the collapse of building seven was highly unlikely. why would any testing -- he thought immediately it was another terrorist attack. no testing for explosives was done. does that not raise any questions that c-span could look into? where the people from 9/11 -- architect from 9/11 truth. host: as ryan brings this up, we have covered on washington journal several times conspiracy theories and why americans seem to enjoy talking about conspiracy theories and we have had a show specifically on september 11 conspiracy theories. you can find all the segments if you go to c-span.org, you can find this segment we did specifically on september 11 conspiracy theories. you can find them if you go to c-span.org. search for september 11 conspiracy theories.

let's go back to the phone lines and talk to kelly calling from pittsburgh, pennsylvania on the democrat line. caller: good morning. i have a personal story, my mother was in the air returning to italy along with my grandfather and great aunt and another friend and they are all older. they were rerouted to newfoundland. newfoundland embraced everyone. they put thousands of people up, they took care of them. it took a month for my mother to be able to get on a plane to return home. there was a play based on newfoundland and i encourage anyone to see that. it provides such an alternative opposite reaction of what was going on. secondly, i feel we were at war for so long yet you could walk around the u.s. and not tell we

were at war. any other time in history people were talking about it constantly. years later they were still talking about the war. but it seemed as if life just went on here and we had thousands of soldiers who gave up their lives and i just feel there was a loss of interest and personal interest and i feel there should be for any future war there should be an automatic draft so that if my son is drafted i have a vested interest and i would be more interested in what was going on and what politicians were doing and how safe the soldiers were all these other things that should have never happened and i think we as americans really dropped the ball by not staying interested

in what was going on. host: let's go to paul from kansas city, missouri. good morning. caller: before i make my point i will say one thing is consistent 20 years later. 20 years ago donald trump was lying in the news about muslims celebrating the attack. and he is still lying in the news to make an part of the current story. but i think our last -- lasting legacy as far as 9/11, george bush came out and made a statement. he said you were either with us or you were against us. and i think america has embraced that to a point where everyone with the slightest disagreement is an enemy.

i'm not saying that's george bush's fault, i'm not attributing the blame of that attitude, but over the past 20 years if there's anything we've seen is that if you are not with us on any level, you are the enemy. >> host: once again there were commemorations at all three crash sites yesterday which was the 20th anniversary of the september 11 terror attacks. president biden made appearances at all three crash sites and also released remarks on twitter. i want to show you what president joe biden had to say. [video clip] >> the days that followed september 11, 2001, we saw heroism everywhere. in places expected and unexpected.

we also saw something all too rare. a true sense of national unity. unity and resilience, the capacity to recover and prepare in the face of trauma. the generation in the face of terror to get this terrace a to responsible. to show everyone seeking to do harm we will hunt you down and we will make them pay. that will never stop. today, tomorrow, ever. we also witnessed the darker forces of human nature. fear and anger, resentment and violence against muslim americans. we saw national unity bend, we learned unity is the one thing that was never break. unity makes us who we are. america at its best. to me that's the central lesson

of september 11. at our most vulnerable, in the push and pull of all that makes us human and the battle for the soul of america, unity is our greatest strength. we don't have to believe the same thing, we must have a fundamental respect to faith in each other and in this nation. we are unique in the history of the world because we are the only nation based on an idea, an idea that everybody's created equal and should be treated equally throughout their lives. that is the task before us. host: let's see what some social media followers are saying about the legacy of 9/11. one tweet says 9/11 legacy, the department of homeland security, flight check in. another says never forget rings

hollow when you contemplate how we treated first responders who got sick after 9/11 and we shrug at an attack on our capital. another says 9/11 spurred the biggest government cover-up in the history of this nation. one tweet says i will saying something extremely unpopular. i think it's time put 9/11 in the past and look to our future instead. we've been stuck for 20 years mulling over this disaster. we want to know what you think about the legacy of 9/11. let's start with sean from massachusetts calling on the democrat line. caller: thanks to c-span. i want a legacy to be about people bonding as americans and working together to make our

country a beautiful place to live and everybody can have equality and freedom. what i have seen happening is this fracturing of our society, you listen to some callers and they strongly believe things they may have heard somewhere, they have done their own research and feel confident in that research and i understand it. the first time i heard about the story we never went to the moon happened to be in a hotel room in russia. 10 years before it became a mainstream. i wondered did we go to the moon. we went to the moon. what's happened is and the reason for these conspiracy theories and the mistrust. i believe is due to the fact of secrecy, that we have secrecy in our government, they are still

secrets from pearl harbor and there still secrets of 9/11. that we may not know for another 40 years. it had to be nano thermite or the planes were remotely controlled. we do know for a fact that it started in afghanistan with al qaeda and with osama bin laden. this fracturing which is culminated has led to the january 6 insurrection is because of secrecy. we are not telling the people the truth all the time. host: let's go with sean calling on the independent line. >> glad i came behind my namesake because i'm going to continue the conversation. 9/11 was where the misuse of

what you saw started. people saw the same thing but nobody's really talking about the same thing. 9/11 happened, let's look at the facts. the fact after 9/11 happened, a certain group of people became very rich. i'm going to stick with the facts. the fact after 9/11 happened, all the buildings that got hit in the crash sites, there was clay debris and all of that. the pentagon only had that one little picture with one little piece there in front of this big hole. nobody in the pentagon can claim they saw debris. the pentagon, and has video of the plane hitting that building. those are facts. when you look at those facts and you look at the story that's been told about 9/11.

9/11 was the start and they continued it now all the way to this coronavirus all the way down to covid all the way down to weapons of mass destruction and there's so much stuff we've been lied about. there's so much stuff we have not been privy to, that we want to focus on what we don't know. let's look at what we do know. the lack of evidence, the fact so many people got rich off of 9/11 aftereffects. host: let's go to andrew from ohio on the republican line. >> the legacy of 9/11 is what happened on the day when four airplanes were hijacked within 74 minutes, american 11 at the north tower, united 175 hit the

north tower and in -- american 77 hit the pentagon. united 93 saved her capitol building. saving the capitol building, the highlight of washington journal in the background. the uss cole bombing, the 93 world trade center bombing, the san bernardino attack in 2013. we have a problem with terrorism and 9/11 reminds us of how the threat, it's a dangerous threat and we need the government to stop it. host: let's talk to diane at -- calling from fayetteville, new york. caller: i want to talk about purity and the significance of

what and how many paid for what happened on 9/11. i don't care about conspiracies, i don't care who was involved. it happened, lives were lost. it hurt so many people around the country and the legacy has been tainted this year by this new administration. the president not even speaking, the vice president not speaking. nancy pelosi, it's all about them and it should be about americans. it should be about american lives lost. it shouldn't be about anything else. as far as memory, this has been tainted by this administration and it saddens me so much. host: let me correct you real quickly. vice president kamala harris did speak in pennsylvania yesterday. caller: i know, but there has

been only speaking, there has not been any kind of questions or answers and it's been all about the reconciliation and everything else. there should have been more against what government is doing and more pro against what we as a nation lost. i don't care who spoke, it is zero felt words when they have put their ideas above and they wanted to make the -- host: let's go with atrios from pennsylvania. go ahead. caller: i just wanted to say i'm a black man and i was in the military, i would fight and die

for this country because this is all i know. i hear people calling in calling the truth and government lies. the government is never told the truth about anything. they won't even tell you the truth about ufos. one thing i want to say, and i've said it, it's not associated with this, but of two rich white men aren't safe, who is? host: let's go with tom calling from san jose, california on the democrat line. tom, good morning. caller: i read an article in the washington post and he pretty much summed it up by the divisions. he said joe biden is the president who surrendered to the enemies who attacked us on 9/11. he not only surrendered but did so with dishonor. he went on to say it would be an insult to the memory of those

who died on 9/11 if you were to visit ground zero. what a little man. maybe he should remember the bush administration was warned by the clinton administration, specifically by richard clark in 2001 that a group presently in the united states was planning a terrorist attack. in fact the june 22 daily briefing warned al qaeda strike might be imminent. and then paul wolfowitz dismissed the warning about al qaeda being led by bin laden and how it possessed an immediate and serious threat to the u.s.. i think maybe these conspiracy theories are more strawman arguments and they just do this to distract. host: we would like to thank all of our callers, all of our guests and all of our social media followers for being with us for another edition of washington journal this morning.

join us tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. for another washington journal. have a great sunday. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] announcer: c-span is your unfiltered view of government. television companies and more including charter communications. >> broadband is a force for empowering. that is why try to has invested billions, building, structure, upgrading technology, empowering opportunity in communities big and small. charter is connecting us. announcer: charter communications supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers.

giving you a front-row rosita democracy. -- front row seat to democracy. >> tonight on q&a, chief engineer of the historic john jay harvey on september 11 that was called back into service to aid firefighters following the attacks on the twin towers. in her book, she tells the story of the community of mariners who came to the rescue of thousands. >> maritime evacuation that delivered nearly half a million people to safety, an incredible example of the goodness of people, that when you are given the opportunity to help, you have the tools, you have the skill set, you have the availability, that people over and over again make the choice to put themselves in harm's way for the sake of fellow humans. and that is very