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research and evaluation center. and we will look at efforts to develop the next coronavirus vaccine with insider health care reporter andrew dunn. join in on the conversation with your phone calls, text, facebook comments, and tweets, next on "washington journal." ♪ host: geopolitical kung fu between russia and ukraine became a diplomatic one sunday, as the u.s., britain, and other countries announced many of their diplomatic staff and families would leave ukraine. news reports this morning suggests the biden administration is weighing sending u.s. troops to eastern europe and the baltic nations as a precaution paired good morning on monday, january 20 4, 2022. this is "washington journal." we will start the program by asking you, how should the u.s. respond to the russia and

ukraine conflict? for democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. we welcome your text messages at (202) 748-8003. tell us her name and where you are texting from. we are on facebook, facebook.com/c-span, and we will look for your post on twitter and instagram, @cspanwj. it is the reporting of the new york times this morning on the potential involvement of u.s. troops in the neighborhood, let's just say, the headline says that biden ways to play thousands of troops to eastern europe at baltics, also considering deploying more ships and aircraft to nato allies in what would be a major shift from its restrained stance and ukraine. president biden writes, considering deploying several thousand u.s. troops, worships,

an aircraft to nato allies in the baltics and eastern europe, and expansion of military involvement amid mounting fears of a russian incursion into ukraine. the move, they write, would signal a major pivot for the biden administration, which up until recently was talking about a restraint stance in ukraine out of fear it would provoke russia to invade. but president putin has ramped up his actions, and talks between american officials have failed to discourage him. the administration is moving away from its do not provoke strategy. that is from the new york times. a tweet this morning from zeke miller, associated press, on nato troops. nato is sending ships and jets east, as ireland rejects russia drills. that is from the associated press this morning. here is the story on that with the headline from the associated press, nato sends ships and jets

east as ireland ejects russia drills. they say that nato said this morning it is putting extra forces on standby and sitting more ships and fighter jets to eastern europe. ireland warned wargames are not welcomed. the u.s.-led military organizations that it is beefing up its "deterrence presence" in the baltic sea area. did marcus and a frigate and deploying f-16 warplanes to lithuania. spain is also sending warships and could send fighter jets to look area. and france stands ready to send troops to romania. this is a tweet this morning from the prime minister of estonia, one of those baltic nations. here is what i told the financial times, the west has been united, we must keep this line. two, nato has not created this situation.

the only one who can de-escalate is russia. and three, nato's eastern flight must be strengthened, we do not share by increasing defense spending. we are asking your thoughts on how to best respond. how should the u.s. respond to the conflict between ukraine and russia? (202) 748-8000 is the line for democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. all others, (202) 748-8002. on the diplomatic front, here is the story in the wall street journal this morning, u.s. tells them families to leave ukraine. the state department instructed the families of u.s. diplomats in the ukraine to leave the country and authorize some embassy staff to leave, as well, while the biden administration considers sending several thousand troops to europe amid a minute russian military buildup. the state department decision announced sunday comes as u.s. officials have warned that a russian attack could come at any

time. that announcement from the state department coming shortly after the secretary of state, anthony blinken, appeared on a number of the sunday shows yesterday morning, including cnn's state of the union, where he was asked about imposing sanctions on russia. [video clip] >> the ukrainian president is calling for the u.s. and others, europeans, to put sanctions in my place now, to do it proactively, not reactively. he said, today our partners are saying that war may start tomorrow if there is a powerful escalation on the russian side, and then there will be powerful sanctions applied. the question is, why are you not introducing sanctions now, rather than wait until after the escalation? >> first of all, as i said, we are not waiting paired we are doing a lot right now. and as i mentioned, besides the united states taking the lead and bringing countries throughout europe and beyond together and putting together massive consequences for russia

if it takes aggressive action, ukraine, we are providing and lester alone provided more military assistance to ukraine than any year in the past. we have been going against those inside ukraine trying to destabilize the government. >> but you are not imposing the sanctions. >> the purpose of those sanctions is to deter russian aggression. so if they are triggered now, you lose the deterrent effect. all of the things that we are doing, including building up, in a united way with europe, massive consequence for russia is designed to affect her in the calculus of president putin and deter them from taking aggressive action. host: some russian response to reporting over the weekend, and associated press story here, rush' or in ministry on sunday rejected a british -- russia's foreign ministry on sunday rejected the british claim on --

about a former ukrainian lawmaker that could be a potential candidate. britain's foreign office saturday name several other ukrainian politicians is that had links with russian intelligence services, along with the leader of a small party that had no seats in parliament. to your calls on how the u.s. should respond to the russia-ukraine conflict, we go first to paul in friendship, wisconsin, independent line. go ahead. caller: good morning, and thank you for having me. i, myself, would go to the middle east and begged them to ramp up oil production. i would have every domestic oil driller keep going -- hello? host: go ahead, we're listening. caller: yeah, i would just get every oil drilling person possible, ramp it up, because

putin is interested in oil, always has been, and it worked pretty well when obama got people to flood the market on the last time. so i think that might hurt him and put a little pressure on him to pull back. host: here is wrong on our democrats line in berrien springs, michigan. good morning. caller: how quickly we forget the 13 dead americans, huh? if we go to war with russia, it will be 13 dead americans a day at the minimum. we are already bragging what we did to the soviet union, when we intervened, when jimmy connor intervened in afghanistan, and we're still paying the price for that intervention, worldwide jihad. and now we're going to go to work with russia, nuclear armed country? they know how to fight and on their own homeland? are we insane? host: next up, peter on the

independent line. caller: hey, thanks for taking my call. i really like that last caller. we're going to go to war with russia over this? this is about selling military weapons to nato countries to expand the military budget. this is about money. this is not about u.s. security. we still don't have health care for everybody. we got homeless people. yet, the biden administration is craving on getting annihilated in midterms, so they think they can start a war with russia over ukraine? it is absolutely insane. you have to remember, it was obama -- a few years back, and now that is collapsing. and would you please bring some antiwar people on? the new york times and cnn just

blanket us with ex-cia people and ex-generals making money off of promoting war. thank you. host: a couple calls, someone mentioned the issue of energy. wall street journal writes about that and the predicament that germany faces. the headline, russia gas dice europe's hands on ukraine, germany's dependence on russian gas has left europe short on options. it will be vulnerable should russia stop gas exports to the west. a two-deck's decision to phase out nuclear power in more recent moves to cut reliance on coal and bring on carbon dioxide emissions means germany is no more reliant on russian gas than most of its neighbors, not just for eating but also for power generation. on those sanctions, some of those proposed sanctions against russia, a senator and member of

the armed services committee said those sanctions should be imposed now. here is what she had to say on state of the union. [video clip] >> senator ernst, your reaction to secretary blinken about what you just heard, the u.s. doing what it needs to do to stop russia from invading ukraine? >> i believe that we need to act now when it comes to pushing back against russia. we need to show strength and not be in a position of doctrine of appeasement, which seems to be how president biden has worked his administration. so we do need to go ahead and impose sanctions on russia now. we need to show them that we mean business and we will be there for ukraine should they invade. once an invasion happens, lives are lost. you cannot go back from that. so those sanctions need to be put in place now. they could be expelled from the swiss banking division.

and we need to make sure defense eight is in the hands of ukrainians, as well as legal aid. we need to ensure the safety and security of americans in that region. they need to be moved out or know how to evacuate safely should russia invade. again, i hope that we can prevent that. host: back to your calls on how the u.s. should respond in the conflict between russia and ukraine. washington, cameron on the republican line, washington state. caller: i wanted to comment on ukraine. i had a very good opinion, i believe come of this. i first wanted to call up c-span about two bucks ago when your mart -- you were moderating the program. a republic called up and said i think joe biden should be impeached. you had about half a second and disconnected him for having that

perspective. about five minutes later, another republican caller called in and said, hey, why did you hang up on her, she entitled to her commitment -- opinion, and you lighten said it was an accident. so with all due respect, i do not see why you are a moderator here. host: cameron, i appreciate your opinion. i do not recall that from two months ago. but if you could stick to the topic this morning, go ahead and make your comments. caller: sure, you know, ukraine is a situation, in my opinion, where they have been in a civil war for over two years. we have ukrainian volunteers that have been fighting a trench warfare with the eastern side of the country who has always cited with rossiya and wants to be part of rossiya, so they have this internal conflict. if america gets involved, it should be supplying arms to the western side of ukraine.

if they end up splitting, it is probably healthier than an all-out war. rossiya is aligned with china, so i really think these sanctions are sort of windowdressing. they are going to get their resources from china, in that respect. like the earlier caller said, it is about money, that is true, but i think the biden administration has really dropped the ball on limiting oil production in the u.s., because it gives rosia a stronger arm in this. i do not want to see american boots on the ground defending eastern ukraine. i want to see it delineated between when and if putin tries to move into western ukraine, then we should get involved. host: to jimmy on the democrats line in brooklyn. caller: before people make a

decision on what we should do, they have to really look at the entire situation. putin is kgb, carrying out long-range soviet strategy. russia and china are communist parties working with iran, so it is not just a conflict between the country of ukraine and russia, because if we had a shooting war with russia, russia could have riots in every city here, because they work with groups like antifa, revolutionary communist party. this is a world event. you could have terrorism, iranian terrorism, because putin has been rearming in colombia, is helping iran build up weapons, and he has a lot of power. he has people that think putin is good, and other people act like putin is bad. putin is bad, but they do not understand he is carrying out long-range communist strategy laid out by gorge -- by gorbachev. i read soviet publications like

world marxist review, and many countries around the world praised gorbachev for taking where the image of the enemy. took away the image of the enemy. then we have a new enemy now, according to the media here, the trump supporters. it is absolutely brilliant enemy strategy, and our site is so confused, almost like our site is on lsd or something. so it is not an easy situation. russia may back away to give biden a win to strengthen biden in america because the soviets and the communists got trump out for a reason. trump stood in the way of all our enemies. or perhaps this could be where the whole world gets in an upper. -- in an uproar. why is it we have to fear the russian

weapons? they do not fear us, too? host: a piece in the washington times, why are we rushing to defend ukraine? the author writes that there are a handful of border disputes underway on this planet at any given moment. a 100 year border dispute in ireland, in sudan, india, etc., a border dispute on our southern border were pretty much everyone on the planet believes i have a right to enter our country at will. an increasingly ominous dispute between taiwan and china. those are material to specific american interests and legal and moral obligations. he writes that it is not clear why this border dispute is worthy of our attention. as the great german from minister audubon bismarck once noted, the entire balkans are not worth the bones of one pomeranian grenadier, nor are they worth the honor of a single

united states soldier or marine. the gdp of less than $2 trillion, russia's economy is smaller than canada's. it is a kendrew deteriorating economics and democrat minutes -- democratics are the real threat is the chinese party, russia, and by extension, ukraine, is a sideshow. to ohio, republican line, cheryl. go ahead. caller: good morning. in 2014, i believe it was, when president obama was in office, the united states ousted a democratically elected government in ukraine, and we are the ones that installed a puppet government, as evidenced by comments that victoria nuland made on a hot mic. i believe that russia is defending its own borders, and i really do not blame them for doing it.

and i do not see them as a threat for us. there is nothing wrong with them lining up soldiers and their own country on their own borders. some people protect their own borders, unlike the united states. i do not see any reason whatsoever for us to be going over there and getting involved in this, especially after all the rhetoric we heard about how we needed to end this war in afghanistan. ok, i think that there is a lot of secrets in the ukraine, and some people do not want to come out. so they need to control ukraine. and we were told that, oh, russia overtook crimea -- no, 95% of crimean's voted to be part of russia, because i saw what was happening with these puppet governments being installed around them. so i am totally against this. i think it is a lot of political rhetoric. i think there is a large agenda that is not being talked about, and i do not trust this current united states administration as far as i could throw them, and that is my take on it. host: next on our independent

line, lancaster, south carolina, this is ken. caller: yes, please give me the time. the article you just read was awesome, and the last republican caller, nothing but the truth. the mainstream media will not show those two viewpoints.let's go back to trying to protect the ukrainian mortar -- border. meanwhile, you need to protect our border. energy is on ukraine while inflation is so high. ukraine is one of the most racist countries in the world. it is more borders we can be defending. we destroy -- obama, we removed their elected government. and we got them on the microphone sank they going to do what we going to say are we going to hold the money. so american peoples are

struggling. they want to put their energy on ukraine. but russia, china, and india are probably working together. war, it would be a disaster. we just got out of afghanistan, so why the big push to go to ukraine? the mainstream media, abc, nbc, cnn is nothing but a propaganda. there is not really news, and that is what most americans get their news from. host: the question, should the u.s. response to the russia-ukraine conflict? (202) 748-8000 is deadline for democrats. republicans, (202) 748-8001. and for independents and others, (202) 748-8002. a here from the bbc with the headline, ukraine, u.k. is withdrawing some embassy staff. we played the comments from secretary blinken earlier on sanctions. he also talked yesterday on cb''

face the nation about how nato would respond. here is what he said yesterday. [video clip] >> president biden said at a press conference this week that we can spend a lot of time to try to get nato allies on the same page when it comes to anything short of invasion. seems like putin's easiest strategy would be to hit on that weakness. that is how you divide nato allies. just yesterday, the head of the german navy had to resign because of probe putin statements. it does not seem like the alliance is completely knit together. >> we have been clear, if there is any further russian aggression and terms of sending russian forces into ukraine, it would be a swift, severe, and united response from the united states and europe. second, we have been clear russian engages in other tactics short of sending forces into ukraine or other countries, hybrid actions, cyber attacks, efforts to bring a government down. there, too, based on many

conversations with european allies and partners, there would be a swift, calibrated, and united response. [video clip] we showed you earlier nato military units are on the move, the headline from ap this morning, nato since ships, jets east as ireland rejects russian drills off its coasts. comments on twitter, @cspanwj, larry says this, iraq, afghanistan, vietnam, etc. all over again. let europe take care of their problem. biden has said we are not getting involved militarily, so you should -- support him on this, right? this one says the pink row weak -- bankroll weakens eu, infiltrates u.k. and u.s. legislature. then masses troops on ukrainian border. anyone else see where this is going? mylan says this is trump's

problem, he did nothing while putin built up his military in preparation for ukraine invasion, another thing president biden has to clean up. to washington, pennsylvania, republican line. this is jerry. caller: good morning, sir. first off, i am united states navy and was part of the viennese dish vietnamese effect will. do you ever watch open quote -- do you ever watch game of thrones? he seems them with this old man with less than zero power and cannot beat him in no way. you are up by is my gas, will not stand in my way. china, they move to taiwan. they see what we are now. we are weak, and they see it. and they are moving.

that is what a veteran sees. your last two callers were right on, the ukrainians want to keep things hidden. we have our own problems on the southern border. putin is no fool. he is kgb. he sees what biden is, a confused old man who is being led, who is not in charge. putin will move on ukraine before the end of february. and when he does, china will observe. they will see what we will do, and they will see that we do nothing. we wheeled the flaccid member of sanctions on them. they laugh. do you think putin cares? he has his own oil. host: have we been able to effectively track anything that vladimir putin has wanted to do since he came into power as president? caller: generally speaking, no. he has moved at will.

what have we done to stop him? nothing. i had an old jewish friend once who told me one thing, he said, people such as this understand only one thing -- old jewish man, wonderful man, love speaking with him -- he said, they only understand the stick. what he meant as they only understand force. these people only understand force, and that is what americans do not understand. we think we can diplomat our way out of things, but the world does not like that, the world is not like us. the world is different from us. americans leave the stateside home and goes around the world and says, why isn't there ice in the drink? arrogant americans do not understand foreign affairs paired we don't, and they don't care. they simply don't. host: it does not matter what the line is this morning, not a

lot of support for -- any u.s. support in terms of military force here of the people who have called so far. caller: sir, i am a veteran, and i have been called to fight, and every time it has been on foreign soil. it is easy to stand by and say we need to go there, the only people, and i mean this from the bottom of my heart, the only people that cry for war are the people who have never been there, sir. and i have. you do not want to go. you do not want to be there when you're best friend is sprayed all over you because they caught a round. you do not want to be there. you don't know what it is like. host: thanks for your call. obviously, thank you for your service, too. to falls church, virginia, oliver on our democrats line. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: yes. caller: i am so glad i got a chance to get through this morning.

give me a win it. i am so glad i got a chance to get through to c-span. i am appalled at the republican set call in and defend russia. donald trump did this to this country. donald trump is the problem with disinformation analyze and cheating and stealing -- and lies and cheating and stealing. these republicans are calling this morning to defend russia because they got that line from donald trump. remember, he said he is not a bad guy, he is a great leader, that is the communist in this country, donald trump and his followers. those trump supporters attacked the capitol, and now they want us to look the other way while they take the other part of this country down the tubes with white supremacy and all the misinformation that is going on. it is amazing that the

republican party fallen on the side of putin and the communists. they are the communists, not us. host: ted jackson, missouri, edward, democrats line. caller: i am a former veteran, retired, first airborne. i have fought in iraq and afghanistan. why just can't we all get along? i do not see why we have to go to war. like that one gentleman said, you have never been there, you never understand what really goes on in war. and thank you for your time, sir. host: this is the foreign policy publication, what a minor russian incursion into ukraine may look like, the piece published late last week they write it is no secret the russian army is designed to be an offensive just -- machine. most forces are armored or mechanized, leaving convoys vulnerable to the insurgent like

ambush tactics ukraine is preparing to use. and while u.s. president joe biden raised eyebrows when he suggested the u.s. response might be different if rush only staged a minor incursion, the white house clarified. there may be little appetite to run into the defense's teeth and taken hold territory across a large swath of ukraine. ben hodges, former commander of u.s. army forces in europe, that would be so many casualties and no guarantee of being successful. you can read that at foreignpolicy.com. janice in jessup, maryland, republican line. caller: sometimes i really feel like we are about to be in the twilight zone, getting tired of hearing about president trump.

i think any border we ought to worry about, it should be our own. and i also believe that europe should handle the ukraine and russia deal. that is all i have to say. thank you. host: nick, also on the republican line, delray beach, florida. caller: good morning. question. when did the ukraine become the united states upon trip problem? i went to school, was a political science and history major, all those history and political science classes, i do not ever remember anybody mentioning ukraine as a strategic ally of the united states. and i find it really comical that you have these dummy-crats calling into this show and telling us that this is donald trump's fault. when russia first went into the ukraine, they went into the crimea, and they did it when

barack obama was president, and barack obama said, and i quote, that is russia's sphere of influence, basically giving them the ok. obama did not sure of the ukrainians, did not send them any military arms or anything they needed to stop russian tanks from rolling into the crimea. putin does nothing when donald trump is president. trump makes america independent, drives down energy prices across the globe, hurts russia's economy. putin cannot do a thing. joe biden comes in, what is the first two things biden does? shuts down american energy by shutting down the xl pipeline, and he approves the nordstrom pipeline, which is a lifeline of money. that is how russia is funding this, and you have india -- you

have idiot democrats calling in whining still about donald trump and the fbi-run insurrection on january 6. this is why putin is doing what he is doing, because he knows that about 55% of the american people are complete more on's. -- morons. and if anybody thinks that joe biden is going to do a thing about this, you people are crazy, because remember all that garbage about the russian dossier and donald trump and the salacious video that they supposedly had that they never came up with 5, 6 years later? well, i got news for you, that video exists, the only problem is donald trump isn't in it. one of the bidens is, either hunter or joe. so they have the bidens over a barrel. host: democrats, (202) 748-8000.

republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. how should the u.s. response to the conflict in russia and ukraine? the ranking republican on the house foreign affairs committee was on yesterday, faced the nation on cbs, talking about how the u.s. should respond, and that congress, which was out this week, should get busy working on sanctions. [video clip] >> let's pick back up on the issue of russia. we are talking about immediate action potentially. congress is going away for a week. there are bills before the senate. do you have that kind of time to play with legislation, or do you need something in terms of a toolset to handle the president more quickly? >> i have introduced a bill, and we are getting key democrats on

board. it would be an assistance package of lethal aid to ukraine . that is important. what is also important at this -- is the message of deterrence. baltic steaks, romania and bulgaria, we need them to show putin we are serious. right now, does not seem serious, and that is why the build up is taking place. i believe this all started with afghanistan. he self weakness, weakness invites aggression. we sell that with chamberlain, hitler's. reagan talked about restraint. the thing is, it is not just about ukraine. it is about china, about president xi in taiwan, the ayatollah, about north korea who just fired off two missiles, these hypersonic weapons. i think this has broader global ramifications. we are seen as weak right now because of president biden, his

comments about a limited invasion as being acceptable and that nato was divided, i think one thing he said was true, that nato is divided. putin's goal is to divide and weaken nato. he has accomplished some of that. [video clip] a story from -- guest: a story from reuters this money, e.u. ready for never before seen sanctions, ready to impose never seen before economic sanctions on russia if it attacks ukraine. the eu foreign minister says it would send a unified warning to moscow. east and west tensions have risen since russia amassed troops near ukraine's border with western countries. russia denies plans for an invasion. there is a -- they could hinder efforts to agree to a joint position, and the eu is sidelined by direct russia u.s.

talks, but ministers said it was essential to find unity. knowing russia's tactics, i am sure one of their aims is to splinter the west, and ministers gather with regular talks in brussels. this is a victory we cannot afford to give to the russians. a tear from jeff in danville, virginia, independent line. caller: sitting here listening to these people. they are so quick to just go off the line of the question and just go off on a tangent on their own. i think we ought to stay the hell out. i am a combat veteran and was in afghanistan. we just got out of afghanistan. we need to stay out from over there. it is none of our business. at i keep hearing everybody putting the blame game on past presidents, trump and obama, the truth is obama did start this

stuff over here to where they was going to have their back at all of that stuff that they took their nukes out and all that. should have never done that. but we should have never done anything whatsoever as long as trump was in there, because he knew trump was crazy enough to do something. what really goes against my grain is how these people just go off and just say stuff that is just so stupid and so awful. it don't even make sense. they are getting all of their reporting and stuff coming from cnn and big news media like that. and these places, they are not really telling you the truth. so these people are going around their daily lives and stuff with their nose in the air and stuff

and not paying attention to what is going on around them. and that is all i got to say. if you got any questions for me, i am glad to answer. host: anna in gaithersburg, maryland, democrats line. caller: i have been a registered democrat for almost 30 years, and i have to say, people need to stop representing the party or supporting the party and look at people as individuals in our government. judge them on their character and with actually do, not what they say. i have to tell you, how should the u.s. respond to russia and ukraine? bring back trump, because trump knew what he was doing. this administration, i have never seen a bigger bunch of idiots. truthfully, i do not even consider them democrats. i consider them communists, marxists, socialists. it is despicable what has happened to our democratic party.

i am appalled. just bring back trump. the man said what he was going to do and kept his promises. that is what you should look at. all of them live. they are all liars. but the truth is, you have to look at what they actually do, what they accomplish. host: democratic senator chris coons is a member of the foreign affairs foreign relations committee in the u.s. senate. he was yesterday on abc's this week and talked about his response, his thoughts on the biden administration's response to the conflict between russia and ukraine. [video clip] >> senator, you are a member of the foreign relations committee. i want to return to russia and ukraine, the state department is preparing to approve the evacuation of some u.s. opponents and their families. how likely do you think this morning as we sit here that an invasion is likely? >> most important think that president biden has been doing

is to deter putin from invading ukraine. he has pulled together our nato allies come in sharp contrast to his predecessor. he has invested time and effort in rebuilding our european partnerships, our north atlantic alliance. $650 million in military assistance was delivered to ukraine in the past year, and just this week, another $200 million in the ammunition, small arms, javelin missiles, stinger missiles are being delivered, and our close nato allies like u.k., poland, checklist of ocular, czechoslovakia, and france are delivering come as well. the work to strengthen deterrence is what is hopefully going to succeed, but i'm gravely concerned that putin osha once again aggression in europe and cross the boundary into ukraine in the coming days or weeks. >> you sponsored legislation supported by the white house to be imposed if russia invades. my next guest said sanctions

should come now. why not now? >> i do think we should take up and pass a bipartisan bill that will show resolve and determination and apply some sanctions now, but the very strongest sanctions, the sorts of sanctions we use to bring iran to the table, something we should hold out as a deterrent to prevent putin from taking the last step of invading ukraine. >> quickly, there is a report out this morning that british intelligence leaves the russians plan to oust ukraine's president and start a pro-moscow government. what do you know about that? >> i have also heard those press reports. one of the things we're doing to show resolve and bipartisan determination is engagement with zelensky to support him. 20 members of the senate in the house, democrats and republicans, spent two hours on a zoom call with zelensky on

christmas eve, and a bipartisan group just went to meet with him in ukraine this past week. it is important that we continue to show support for the duly elected leadership of ukraine and that the united kingdom and the united states, that our intelligence communities call out in advance things that we are learning russia is planning, to make it clear to the rest of europe just how aggressive and just how creative putin and tends be in both overt and covert means and trying to overthrow ukraine government, independence. guest: russian post front page this morning on the conflict, u.s.-made take aim at tech in russia, biden threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic russian industries from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian

aerospace. if moscow invades ukraine, the administration may decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that will potentially affect smartphones, tablets, and videogame consoles. such moves would expand the reach of u.s. sanctions beyond financial targets. the deployment of a weapon used only once before to nearly cripple the chinese tech giant huawei. the weapon contributed to huawei's suffering is first annual revenue dropped, a stunning collapse of nearly 30% last year. back to your calls, republican line, johnny in brooklyn. caller: yes, do not forget hillary clinton, biden, and obama did the russian reset, where hillery built a silicon valley right outside moscow and transferred an enormous amount of serious kinds of technology, and now russia and communist china have hypersonic missiles. a lot of that technology came

from us. years ago, we think that russia during world war ii, president roosevelt, sent entire factories, nuclear material, everything, and then a couple decades later, we built a communist china to counter russia. that is like giving ukraine cancer to counter lung cancer. the russian collusion was to divert attention away from hillary building the high-tech transfer operation to russia. the hoax was proven a hoax. talking about putin taking out the ukrainian president and installing a pro-putin guy, the commie is -- the communists took out a pro-american guy here, trump. wake up. this was investigated, the russian collusion hoax, and it is all documented. the red threat. everybody involved in that hoax have marxist connections, some going back generations.

people have to wake up, this is a serious world movement. the communist movement is a world movement. they have radical islam, have our schools, have our media. they work long range strategy. host: next up is joe, democrats line, murfreesboro, north carolina. caller: yes, what i wanted to say is this, how forgetful the american people are. i think it was a day or two days after trump was sworn in, everybody talking about trump and obama. two days after trump was sworn in, he had russians in the oval office. and then he went and met trump -- i mean, met putin with no news media. who is your communist traitor?

trump, that is who. putin and trump set all this up to make the democratic party look bad. they said it up with all of the business corporations, everyone in this country also. that is why you see prices going up. crisis started going up on gas and all that stuff before january. soon as trump found out he lost, you seen all this stuff start to happen. people are dumb as hell in this country, dumb as hell. in this country, we say, in god we trust, we know nothing about god, nothing. host: next up is greg on the republican line, westport, massachusetts. caller: good morning, america. two things.

you will see what is going on in the world, the shipping of fuel and stuff all over the world is horrendous. you can go online and see how happy the russian people are. not like this country. we have generals who do not even know who they are. and we are expected them to lead us into war? the other thing, think back to the ukraine call with president trump and the impeachment trial. where is venderbelt, whatever his name is? said ukrainian wanted him to go take control of his army and take care of everything, that he was the biggest, smartest democrat there was on that impeachment trial. where are those people now? host: on twitter, alford says this, florida caller with a

degree in foreign affairs should realize that in today's global economy, what happens in eurasia is very much our concern. a text from russ in texas, ukraine has 40 million people him at 280,000 troops, give them plenty of guns and ammo and get out of the way and let them settle it. this one says iraq and iran had no navy and air force and we were there for 20 years. this is all about money. the work in -- weapons makers, military-industrial complex eisenhower warned us about. 90% of americans cannot find ukraine on a map without help. and another one says this, hit them with sanctions now and do not wait. match them by moving equipment. if they invade, we hit first. they are a gas station with nukes. a couple views on twitter. this is from thehill.com, senior u.k. minister warns that russia -- warns russia of sanctions if

it installs a puppet regime in ukraine. yesterday on fox news sunday, former trump secretary of state mike pompeo was on and talked about the biden administration's response to the situation in ukraine. [video clip] >> it is awful late, the real hard work of deterrence would have happened a long time ago, a year ago, when president putin demanded that we give him a new start treaty extension, we gave it to him for nothing. when they had russian cyber attacks and they should on the colonial pipeline, we told them they could only attack certain sectors, but 16 are off-limits. when we left afghanistan the way we did, those are the places where the administration had a chance to establish detergent -- deterrence. so we have to think about the families in ukraine. but the technical things are not what causes vladimir putin to recalculate his cost benefit analysis. they do not see president biden

as credible. they see the talking and pieces of paper being exchanged as not credible. they do not protect the american people, establish deterrence, and reduce the risk of what president biden called a minor incursion. it reminded me of when president obama called isis the jv, same downplaying of risk. when he talks about downplaying -- when he talks about minor incursion, this is downplaying it. host: to our democrats line next, philadelphia, this is crystal. caller: hello, i just listened to what pompeo said, it costing lives, that is what trump did with coronavirus, downplaying it. this must be a strong flavor of kool-aid these folks keep drinking. biden is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

he is sending supplies over. obama wanted to send weapons over for crimea, and republicans in congress wouldn't give him no money. they would not finance him. if you cannot finance it, you cannot send help other than a little bit of help. they wouldn't pay no money. the nordstrom pipeline going through indian tribal lands all the way down to the coast to take that dirty crude from canada, so what about jobs. how many times you going to just forget about this virus or the people that live on these tribal lands and run a big dirty pipeline through it? oh, jobs. but biden has somebody standing at for it. the trump administration, he turned his back, and ran out on it. all that time, they fighting with us. host: to john in arlington,

virginia, republican line. caller: i have three quick points. when is the myth that the russians were the first to change the borders in europe with the invasion of ukraine. actually, it was the american-led action in serbia where they carved off kosovo and set it up as an independent state, in violation of you and resolution 144. that changed borders. second thing is that the russians, when they went into manchuria in 1945, they went in with over one point 5 million soldiers, when they went into czechoslovakia, it was three quarters of a million people. not a lot of people got killed. when they went into afghanistan with 100,000 troops, it did not work out wealth. they could, but i am not sure they're going to go into the ukraine with 100,000 troops. they know with history it does not work out always, unless we

do something stupid like try to get the ukraine into nato or something like that. i think biden's administration is doing what it could. with the russians set up in november was kind of like an ultimatum, a little scary. i think we got to do this diplomatically and not go stupid like intervening in a bigger way in ukraine. and maybe we can pull out of this thing. host: robert is next, democrats line, elkridge, maryland. caller: i hope you can hear me ok. i apologize. i just want to say hello, good morning, i just wanted to make a call for everybody to have level heads. i do believe that the veterans have a greater say in this matter, and they understand firsthand that going to war is not a simple task for anybody. and i think that we should think

twice before sacrificing the lives of our citizens, especially those who work for this country to build it. i do not see biden, generally speaking, sending their own family member's to war. they definitely would be against it. if they had to choose between life or death, they would choose life. i think we should try our best to choose life. i do not believe anybody would mistake our kindness for weakness. i do believe that everybody understands america is a powerful military nation. if we need to go to war, we can. i do not think this calls for war. i believe taking a stance for peace is a greater call for justice for our future. i do not see russia having military bases all over the world and threatening neighboring countries, whereas america, we do have our own military bases scattered across the globe. we're definitely a threat to a lot of people. i think we should keep that in

mind and perhaps take more pacifist approach going forward. that is all i would like to say. hope that can reach somebody. host: you did, and appreciate you getting through. similar sentiment in this tweet, our president is working with the rest of the world on all kinds of consequences, some ingenious and. original putin takes the next step in invading ukraine. this is how you deal with a psychopath, the spartan tweets, let them know in advance what will happen if they are bad. christie is next, independent line, in pinehurst, north carolina. caller: hello, the united states of america needs to show putin its strength and true leadership. so far, it has not. the u.s. has shown weakness, cowardice, and laziness. they do not respect us, they respect strength. and the u.s. is strong. we need to show that strength, sooner rather than later.

and this is all about economics. there are rich areas of titanium and mercury, and this is what the objectives really are. thank you. host: to charlotte, north carolina, republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. i want to say that the ukraine stood with russia and the soviet union for freedom and democracy. why don't we do something with ireland? host: mike on the independent line, miami, florida. caller: let's see, already letting them pump oil, so that will not help anything, by letting them pump more oil. i guess the best thing we can do probably in this situation is blame donald trump. host: more of your calls ahead

here on "washington journal." next on the program, we will talk about the u.s. crime rate, the murder rate, going up during the pandemic. our guest is dr. jeffrey butts, from the john jay college of criminal justice research and evaluation center, joining us to talk about that. later on in the program, our monday focus on the covid pandemic, joined by insert -- insider health care reporter andrew dunn to talk about ongoing efforts to develop the next covid-19 vaccine. ♪ >> in march of 2017, lance geithner, from the basement of his house in o'fallon illinois created a new business. however, his new business can be seen all over the world on youtube. since that day in 2017, he has been known as the history guy stuff he has produced hundreds

of 10-15 minutes short documentaries on history and his home studio. he is surrounded hundreds of artifacts including military hats and ship models and he is always dressed in his trademark dark suit, black rimmed glasses and the bow tie. host: guest: >> lance geiger, the history guy on this episode of book notes plus available on the c-span now apt or wherever you get your podcasts. >> diplomats from the u.s., europe and russia discuss the situation in ukraine and european insecurity hosted by the senate for national interest , watch live today at 3 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at www.c-span.org or watch coverage on c-span now, our new video app. >> congress looked at the effect of investing in electric pickles on the agriculture industry and

rural america including efforts to achieve mitts zero emissions, the use of i/o fuel and clean sources of energy, competition with china and electric vehicles and lower-cost for farmers and truck drivers. watch this house agriculture committee hearing tonight at 8 p.m. eastern on c-span two, online at www.c-span.org or watchful coverage on her new video app, c-span now. >> the inspector general of the small business administration testified on challenges in the coming year including pandemic really programs, staffing and resources, disaster assistance and detecting fraud. watches testimony tonight at 9:45 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at www.c-span.org or find will coverage on her video app, c-span now. >> "washington journal"

continues. host: dr. jeffrey butz is the director of criminal justice at john jay college. welcome to "washington journal" guest: thank you, happy to be with you. host: tell us about your program, what is your area of expertise? guest: john jay college focuses on criminal justice but it's a full-service college. we have students that study history and english and political science and chemistry. the research center is one of about a dozen different research groups that are part of the college we get outside funding, grants and contracts to answer questions about public safety, crime and justice at large. host: the rise in the murder rate during the pandemic is not new news. we are having you on this morning to help explain what's going on in the united states. looking at the numbers from the

fbi and pew research, the homicides in the u.s., in 2019, there were nearly 17,000. a 29% jump in 2020. is there any early indication as to the primary cause for the jump? guest: yes, and early indicators are always confusing, complex and it's the excusable experts to say it's complicated but it is. there are multiple factors involved and number of my colleagues have paid attention to that to understand the various causes and looking at it and the longer term history of crime rates, sometimes journalist described this as a crime spike stop it's really not

crime in general. it's violent crime and especially gun crime which more often leads to homicide. it's the most concerning crime or one of the most and that's what we are focusing on now as researchers to try to understand why this has happened. any time someone tries to explain the homicide increase in their city by focusing on variables in their city, they are mistaken because this is a national phenomenon and to some extent international. you cannot explain the crime increase in one town by focusing on changes in prosecution or judicial behavior or policing. you have to have an explanation that would satisfy if the crime surge, the violent search is happening in multiple cities and that's why it's complicated because you have to ignore things about local and state

practices if you are trying to explain a national phenomenon . host: we hear about the murder rate in major american cities and looking at two research, the biggest jump in states where the murder rate has gone up in 2020, some of those states are very rural and sparsely populated like montana and south dakota, kentucky, new york and delaware are the states that saw the biggest increases. it's early but what should we make of that? guest: that's a very important point and it's true before the pandemic stop i did a report a few years ago looking at the relationship between population size or urban density and the homicide rate and found that in some states, you have a higher rate of homicides in small rural areas which only makes sense. i wrote in the report we tend to

talk about cities because that's where a lot of people are. to say homicide is a function of urban areas is like saying that cancer, car crazes -- car crashes and teenage heart break happened in the city but if you do it per capita, there are some very small towns and rural counties in america that have a higher rate of shooting than our biggest cities. host: you mentioned firearms but we didn't touch on this statistic. the murder rate went up 29%. the use of firearms in those murders what by about 4% from 2019 to 2020. guest: yes, there was also a big bump at the beginning of the pandemic of purchasing of firearms especially handguns. there is some research already showing what's called time to crime -- they track when a handgun was purchased and when

it appears at a crime scene and is confiscated by the police and they track that time gap they found as the pandemic settled in, the time to crime started to fall. guns are making their way to crime scenes more expeditiously than they did prior to the pandemic stop that's very concerning. this country needs to deal with the gun problem. we have been avoiding it for decades. i don't know how we get ourselves out of the situation unless we have political officials that have the courage to deal with the gun problem and not just pander to the issue for political gain. i've been in this field for almost 40 years now and it's as bad as it's ever been in terms of politics and crime and justice. host: the murder rate, historic high hit in the mid-70's at 10.5% so the current murder rate is high but per 100,000 is 8.9%.

in the 70's, was that largely driven by drug crime? guest: that's one theory that the nature of drug crimes, why homicides declined as of the 1990's until 2015 is that the nature of the drug trade changed. in 1985, if you wanted to earn money by selling drugs, you had to be out on the street exposing yourself to the risk of arrest and prosecution. people tended to have firearms on them when they did that. with the onset of mobile commit occasions and texting, there were more drug trades done off the street in private so there was less risk and the incidence and use of guns as part of the drug trade decline. i don't know if that's defensible or the reason. there is another theory that the nature of the drugs themselves changed. with crack, if you remember the

crisis in the 1980's and 90's, it was sold in small quantities. prior to that, the truck was only available in powder form and was more vulnerable to all kinds of problems. they set the onset of crack is the main drug product changed the drug trade. i think the correlation between drugs and violence, while significant and important, it's not the explanatory factor. we have to look on those causes and think more broadly with the variables we can to explain this phenomenon. the one thing you have to pay attention to his with the onset of the pandemic, it was -- it is an international phenomenon. a lot of countries experienced increases in disorder and civic disruption but americans always stand alone in terms of the prevalence of gun ownership and the use of guns and what the

pandemic did was erode the civics infrastructure and patterns of behavior that were helping to maintain public safety and when that happens, we see guns increase in the use of guns increase like no other country does. host: did we see other crimes increase? guest: there is some indicators that interfamily violence also increased but not all crimes went up, some crimes are down. if you think about the early days of the pandemic and the lot down, street life was disrupted so things like her glory and robbery actually decline. it's harder to track drug crimes. some of the interpersonal violence and assaults went down. when we talk about violent crime, the federal definition of violent crime includes homicide,

armed robbery, aggravated assault so it's a mixture in the big volume of that overall index is aggravated assault. if they go down, the overall crime number goes down well homicides and firearm homicides could go up. guest: host: we are talking about the dramatic increase in the murder rate in the united states during the pandemic stop here are the lines. how does the research and evaluation center take the information you are seeing for the murder rate and use it for law enforcement or other agencies that are involved in fighting crime or preventing crime?

guest: it's a big challenge. the timing of the pandemic happened to coincide with one of the most significant changes in federal crime statistics we have seen. people have been commenting that the major data source for national crime data is the uniform crime report from the fbi. that was based on what they called a summary reporting system so that every city catalogs, compiles its numbers and turns them into their state and police headquarters in the state hands it over to the fbi who combines at all. that makes it sound orderly but the problem is, we have a lot of states that to find crime differently and have front thresholds and can define violence differently in terms of when you call something a violent crime. that system was not mandatory so a lot of states sometimes failed to report.

we call that a sampling problem so from year to year, researchers have to correct for the very sample every year so maybe a -- maybe 85% of the country would report and if you wanted to compare it, you had to wait those numbers up to represent the national number and being careful to do so in a fair way. that system is going away because the fbi, rightly so, created a whole new system called nibrs. which has more accuracy. it allows us to understand the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. it has information about the use of a gun. that is very important for understanding national crime trends. the fbi, after cajoling states for years to participate in nibrs, they announced they would

shut down the other system and switch over entirely and they did that the last couple of years and some states have yet to comply which means sampling has become more problematic. some cities are not turning in status that is compliant with the nibrs system. host: a question for you from twitter -- did homicide by police increase during the pandemic? did police shootings, shootings of police, increase during the pandemic? guest: i would say not so much. the public awareness increased exponentially. if you look at the incidence of police shootings, it's relatively small. if you are harmed by police or someone in your family, it changes your whole world but the number of people hurt by police or killed by police have been a

low level but consistent pattern over the years. cities try to address that, some more successfully than others. what changed his especially with the on camera murder of george floyd, we all watched it and it changed the way we think about it. there has been previously viewable incidents of police violence and police shootings and deaths but there was something about the fact that the george floyd death happened while we were locked down at home consuming media that just changed the public awareness. in some ways, that may be a good thing because it raises the heat on that issue and makes people pay more attention. one of the theories of why violence went up with the onset of the pandemic is related to that, the whole country became more angry and the issue of police violence was more explosive. we won't know whether that's the

key explanatory variable for some time because we have to have an accumulation of the national data to look into that. that's related to my previous comment about the frustration that the national crime data is changing before our eyes. host: many people made the argument reflected in this headline about the defund the police movement. fbi statistics show that a 30% increase in murder in 2020, more evidence that defunding the police was not a good idea. is there evidence that a lack of a police presence has contributed to the increasing murder rates? guest: even friends of mine will say this. we don't know. hypothetically, you could explain some of the violence. the guarding of the street phenomenon where you are out in a black and you see uniformed police around you, you may think

twice about misbehaving. there is the theory that if police are facing criticism who are sick out, many police state home due to covid that that could increase the temptation to commit crimes in public. i think that is probably a minor contribution. we won't know for a while if that is a major contribution because you have to put together the data and look across cities and neighborhoods. it sounds appealing rhetorically but the problem with the crime phenomenon and the research on crime is that people often settle for an influential argument as opposed to an accurate argument. we try to replace rhetoric and ideology with facts and figures. it's a challenge sometimes. host: let's get to our callers. this is rick in temple hills,

maryland. caller: how are you doing today? i wanted to ask a quick question. is there any study that you tracked where the guns come from involved in these murders? are they more locally attained and use locally or are there being imported from lax gun law states into major cities because of easy access? the other quick question -- during covid, are violent criminals being let out more often because they don't want those guys together in hopes of mitigating an outbreak? guest: the first question,

tracking guns is not my area of expertise but i know enough about it to know that your supposition is correct. i was living in chicago for a while when they were able to do gun tracing. a lot of them came through other states surrounding states with less restrictive laws. that is a problem and unfortunately, our congress decided to prevent the atf from sharing that data. as a researcher, you cannot get detailed data on tracking guns and guns used in crimes. i would hope someone fixes that because if you don't have data, you cannot solve the problem. the issue of incarceration and especially pretrial release gets a lot of headlines. it's easy to look retrospectively and that's what

tends to happen. maybe one bad case happens and you find out the person was recently incarcerated and you use that to rationalize that that's the solution. the problem is, a lot of people come through the system and the pretrial system and you have to make this judgment about who you want to spend precious resources on to hold them. it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to hold someone pretrial and we don't do that for every little case or we would go broke. this country has to make a judgment about the risk and benefit of incarceration versus supervision in the community. i think people do a good job at that and we are getting better at it. the rhetoric and the inflammatory arguments about these can sometimes hold back policy and i hope that gets better as well. host: is there a standard definition you use and the fbi

uses as to what defines a homicide? guest: there are different gradations. a death resulting from a crime, the use terms like felony homicide. it just depends on the intent of the person and the crime it's associated with, the degree of violation or you could argue it was unintentional or accidental. there are lots of criminal judgments that go into that. states vary on how they do this. if you don't understand the court system world law, you can only understand it within one context, one state and sometimes even counties vary within a state. we do that because our country is set up to respect the idea of federalism where each state is unto its own in terms of its approach to legality and crime.

it makes the mission to understand overall patterns and explained them in order to set policy more complicated. [no audio] caller: i heard once that every 10 minutes or so, a woman is

raped or murdered in the united states but you don't hear about the number of murders that happen within the family. thank you. host: any help on that? guest: another issue here is one of the reasons criminologists use homicide as an indicator for public safety is it has one of the highest rates of reporting. obviously, someone is killed and the data for that is more reliable. the problem for other crimes that are nonlethal like sexual assault, the first layer of information is whether the crime is reported. roughly half of all crimes are never reported to the police so

half of what makes us feel unsafe in the community does not come to the attention of police which means no one is charged with means no one's prosecuted, no one's punished or held responsible. that adds to the sense of chaos people feel and it's the frustration people have where they keep paying taxes to the police department and the courts and yet they still the look free for the public safety and that's partly because people are reluctant to report the crime. sometimes that's because they have reasons to be hesitant to engage with police at all. if you are a victim of a crime, you may rather just cope with it on your own rather than draw attention of the police to your home and family. that's sometimes rational. another cause of this uncertainty is the bureaucracy of policing. one of the reasons people think about defunding the police as a negative thing is we will know

less about crime if we give them less funds. i understand the motivation behind the defunding slogan. it's just a bad slogan. any time someone says that, that's not a good slogan that you have to explain. in new york city, there is some initiatives going on now call reform and reinvent policing and that's probably a more productive slogan because it suggests the need to improve the approach to law enforcement and the impact on the community and make it more transparent as opposed to cutting budgets. host: let's go to rick in annapolis, good morning. caller: let me tell you why the crime situation is not going to change. in 1965, a small group got together and set up hud.

in that small group, they went to every major city and bought the worst sections in the city because they were the cheapest. they financed, developed and to this day, own and manage the section eight projects. there is about 42 million blacks in the country today step about 30% are doing fabulous. 70% live in these hellhole section eight projects were all we are doing is breeding criminals. mr. biden has appropriated billions of dollars for more section eight low income housing because the owners of these projects are billionaires and control hud and control many politicians. host: your thoughts?

guest: the one thing i can agree with from that ball is that we have been here before. it of book, i don't know this person but elizabeth hinton from yale wrote a book called from the war on poverty to the war on crime and it's about the 1960's and the reaction to the social uprisings that resulted often from police violence that is very well known like the watts section of l.a., newark and detroit in 1967 step that raised the anger that people had about crime and social disturbance and derailed some policies that were being developed by the kennedy and johnson administrations to support poor communities and provide more services and to make a pathway into the middle-class.

it was using federal dollars to provide that support postop when the social uprisings happened, the federal government and state officials turned on it and started taking the money that had been set aside and using it instead to get a new war on crime which has been proven through many years that it satisfies the public needs for vengeance but it does not improve public safety. we have been here before. it's said -- it said to -- it's sad to read something describing the 60's that's the same today. this will result in a withdrawal of resources in a community and crime is a function of community well-being will stop if policing was the solution to public safety, when you walked into a wealthy area in your city, you

would see a lot of police cars and that was the main thing that kept people safe and it would be visible but we know that's not true. what is it about wealthy areas they keep crime down? if we can't make everyone wealthy, what is it in wealthy communities has the effect of protecting public safety? the caller alludes to the quality of housing and i think that's part of it. schools, family stability and employment -- we choose not to deal with those things and turn to control and enforcement. i understand and -- the need to do that in the short-term but we better start thinking long term if we want to get past these problems. host: as the new mayor of new york city, how is he approaching the murder rate problem there? guest: he says things i reshape even though he has a policing background but he spent a lot of time in city government so he knows about the full panoply of public policies that support communities.

he is talking about the need to do multiple things at one time. he also has to deal with the headlines and the community anger and anxiety people feel. we have had some notorious killings recently that get a lot of attention and add to the political pressure. so far, i am seeing him willing to have a broad approach and sustain a multiple front approach to increasing public safety and community well being and i hope he can hang onto that, fingers crossed. host: of course, the city is remembering the loss of two new york city police officers. rookie police officer killed in the line of duty over the weekend in new york city late last week. the mayor was on the state of the union yesterday and talked about that. [video clip] >> i understand you're talking about introducing a series of

steps later in the week. people in new york city feel it, they are worried right now. can you give new york city viewers one concrete example of how you can make them more safe immediately? >> we are going to reinstitute a newer version of modified plainclothes anti-gun unit stop i talked about this on the campaign trail and our team has done the proper analysis and now we will deploy that stuff you will see a visible presence in our subway system. the governor has been an amazing partner where we will flood our system with mental health proof tent -- professionals and others to move out the disorder that is clearly in the subway system in our city but also, we are going to continue to build out -- i talked about this -- we were able to stop terrorism in this city when state, federal and

city law enforcement agencies did information sharing and deployed together. president biden heard me and understands that and we have placed that in place now in new york city. host: jeffrey butz, historically, what mayors have been successful in reducing the crime rates in american major cities? what has worked? guest: the premise of your question and the way you phrase it is part of our problem that people attribute causation to political leadership by saying what mayors have been successful. i know we like to attribute public policies to individuals because that helps draw political support. one of the biggest ones is the police commissioner william bratton gets credit for having reduced crime and the police like to use those active verbs. i remember when people talked about this when our last mayor

brought that -- bratton back to the city because he reduced crime so casually, i looked at the per capita violent crime rate in new york and it came down dramatically from the mid-1990's until 2015. when you plot that slope and control for the site -- size of the population, it looked like a lot of other cities in america. i don't think crime goes up and down based on political leadership but political leadership can hold back but progress on criminal justice policy by resorting to rhetoric and ideology and fostering division which some political leaders do for their own gain. i hate to do this all the time but it's complicated and you have to look at multiple data sources and compare one city to another and across different time periods in order to

understand the changes. i think it's a short cut to think that one person or one administration is responsible. host: let's hear from centerville, tennessee. caller: i have a couple of things here. initially, you said, it sounded like that these illegal gun buyers had something to do with the murder rate which is not true first they might be stealing these legal gun buyers weapons. it's not complicated and it's not global. nobody had the back of the police. none of them were backing the police and that's why the murder rate went up like it did in the other thing, one million times a

year, legal gun owners stop violent crimes. thank you, sir. host: jeffrey butz?i understand that's one of the guest: guest: themes people like to bring up and i did not say all legal gun overs -- owners were responsible for homicides. i said there was a noticeable increase in gun purchasing and the ties to -- in the time to crime when that gun is used. i agree that the gun issue can be divided into legal safe ownership and the opposite of that stuff the problem is, it's hard to control. we have 400 million guns in circulation in this country and they will not all be used responsibly and some are left on bedside tables loaded where children can get at them. as a country, we have imbued the gun issue with a sense of

patriotism and heartening back to the days of your and people are willing to use that to exploit voters by appealing to that and unless we cope with the gun issue, we will continue to lead the world in terms of deaths due to firearms. i hope someday, we have political leadership willing to engage in this conversation will stop i've been in this field a long time stop sometimes we have hoped but most of the time it seems we are stuck in this more asked of rhetoric and ideology -- in in this morass of rhetoric and ideology. host: california, good morning. caller: good morning. i wonder if you have evaluated the federal law where they turn public lands and stole the native americans sovereign rights in five states, california, oregon, washington, delaware and michigan, in 2008

where they took away the policing from the tribes and they also took away their land, their resources, their water and everything else to do policing. we have large swaths of land are now blick lands that were native americans sovereign treaty lands. in that law, it says you shall not tax native americans which is a crime because they have been taxing native americans all along. host: focusing on murder and homicide rates in native populations, maybe too specific to ask, but is there a similar increase among those populations than other parts of the country? guest: i actually don't know and

i think it would be a challenge to assemble that data because it's a different data system. i think the caller raises an issue which is important which is to recognize these issues built into our history. sometimes people say things about crime and violence today as if there is a certain group of people who tend to do that step we have to recognize that our country was built on crime and violence. using the phrase stealing land, you read any kind of history text and it says something ethical about american history and you see how history is replete with exploiting people, taking other people's belongings, forcing people to go where they don't want to go and it's part of american history. if we recognize that as our political nature and maybe human nature, it causes you to be more temperate about how to characterize the motivation for crime and violence and who's

involved today and how to reduce it. if it's human nature we have to control, you cannot accomplish public safety just by threatening people is there will always be someone willing to exploit other people. it doesn't always happen on the street with a gun. it can happen in board rooms with tricky lawyers and accountants. it's human nature and it's something we need strong communities and strong civic society to control, not just coercion and punishment. host: the murder rate in the united states is 30% higher in 2020 than it was in 2019. murder rate per 100,000, 7.8%. jeffrey butz is with us. are you optimistic or pessimistic in being able to see that rate decline? guest: the first thing to pay

attention to is if you talk about percentage tame, you need to do so with the rate as opposed to the volume. between 1995-and today, the population is 25% bigger than it was 25 years ago. you have to control for population size. the percent change in the rate is concerning stuff people hate it when we do this as researchers because we say the rate used to be higher, we had 2000 murders per year in new york city just 25 years ago. an increase from 300-500 is concerning like if you had a bad fever once, you are more concerned if your fever goes up slightly because remember the bad fever. don't overreact to the slight increase, just deal with it and try to reduce it stuff when we see the increase, the city is responding and across the

country people are responding. one historical note -- we talk about the increase in the per capita rate per 100,000 homicides from 5-7. we are in a bad situation nationwide 25 years ago when it hit nine or 10 and people were panicked at that. when you look back in history, some historians have tried to construct homicide rates using old records preindustrial times. they looked at church records in europe and people would note a murder in their church during the funeral probably. they went back and found these old church records from the 1700s and documented her estimated homicide rates in excess of 100 300 years ago. society is safer than it's ever been but we expect more than that. we expect to increase public safety to the extent we can and

when it starts to slip away from us, we have to act and i think that's what happening now. host: kathy in wisconsin, go ahead. caller: is there any statistics -- in the 90's i lived in kansas and they closed the state hospital and they lost halfway houses and back then, everywhere you look, there were mental health issues and lack of professional help. i'm wondering if there is any statistics out there retro at all? guest: there is a connection between the mental health issue and the public safety issue but if the opposite of what most people presume. they presume that people with mental health challenges in

homelessness and mental illness are more likely to be victims than offenders of crime. it is a problem that the presence of obvious homelessness in the community increases that sense of social disorder and makes people feel less safe. part of how we keep ourselves safe is by reminding one another that we are a community. when it's clear that a city or community doesn't care enough to provide adequate housing or access to housing for everyone, he gives you that feeling that things are coming apart. during the pandemic, we have seen that stuff i've been in new york city virtually the entire time and the incidents of people sleeping on the sidewalk has increased and it's concerning especially when you see that these are not people who were homeless for a long time.

their belongings, they clearly had a home in the recent past and now they are carrying their belongings with them and trying to catch sleep at night. it's very concerning but they are not the cause of public safety problems, they are often the victims. host: another new yorker tweets this -- guest: it's hard to know the extent to which the overreaction to public safety is part of the challenge of public safety. when you ask people in communities, mostly they want safety and they want their neighborhoods to be ok. if that takes policing, they will accept it at some way, we have to recognize that's a shortcut to public safety.

we have this argument all the time. root causes can be portrayed as privileged and people who make the other argument that we need to react right now and bring the police in can be characterized as authoritarian and a shortcut and disregarding the social structural causes of public safety challenges. i just hope we can meet in the middle and talk about facts and evidence and decide what the most appropriate and effective approaches are to ensuring public safety and get away from identity policies and tribal issues. what our country does with almost every issue is polarized. host: this is texas, go ahead. caller: good morning, thank you. i am calling about the crime of

failure to stop and render aid on a hit and run. it's hard to gather sister sticks about that and the penalties very from state to state. many are very low and some have worked on it to become a greater penalty so hopefully will stop and render aid to no matter what the situation. i'm wondering why these crimes are in traffic and transportation rather than in murder and crime rates when there is a fatality and a failure to stop and render aid. guest: you bring up an important issue. you use the phrase penalty and alluded to the leniency of the penalty of a need for mere -- more severe penalties. those of us who talk about crime and justice and public safety,

we often use the phrase deterrents which is multiple policies to keep crime under control and we know it's accomplished possibly -- partly by the severity penalties but also the certainty and swiftness of penalties. i am less likely to commit crime even if the penalty is rather modest if i'm confident i will be caught, apprehended and that penalty will be imposed upon me even if it's not that severe. if i think it's going to happen, i may not want to commit that crime and that means i am deterred. if we think about deterrents as a function of severity like incarceration length, that's what we did for 30 or 40 years and exploded the prison population with very uncertain returns. we spent so much money on incarceration with not a whole lot of payback if you look at

the actual metrics of public safety. that's because we were satisfying the public urge for vengeance or severity. we have to focus on certainty and swiftness as well and i would much rather have a system responsible on those multiples than one that just focuses on the strength of punishment. host: jeffrey butts thank you for being with us this morning. more ahead here in the program, up next, or monday focus on the covid-19 pandemic and we will talk to the insider health care reporter andrew dunn and talk about the ongoing efforts to develop the next vaccine. more of your phone calls and ahead as well. >> sunday, february 6 on

in-depth, georgetown university law professor will be our live guest to talk about race relations and inequality in america. she has many books. joining the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts and tweets live sunday, february 6 at noon, eastern on book tv on c-span2. >> at least six presidents recorded conversations while in office. here many of the conversations on air new podcast, presidential recordings. >> season one focuses on lyndon johnson you will hear about the 1960 or civil rights act, presidential campaign, the gulf of tonkin incident, the march on selma and the worry in vietnam. not everyone knew they were being recorded.

>> certainly, johnson's secretaries knew because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. they were the one to make sure the conversations were taped as johnson was signaled to them through an open door between his office and theirs. >> you will also hear some blunt talk. >> presidential recordings on c-span now or wherever you get your podcasts. >> c-span offers a variety of podcast of something for every listener.

weekdays, washington today gives you the latest from the nation's capital and every week, book notes plus has in-depth interviews with writers about their latest works well the weekly uses audio from our archive to look at how issues of the day developed over years in our occasional series talking with features conversations with historians about their lives and work will stop many of our television programs are also available as podcasts and you can find them all on the c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> "washington journal" continues. host: it is our monday morning focus on the fight against covid-19 and we are joined by insider health care reporter andrew dunn. good morning. guest: good morning, thanks for having me. host: we hear that people write articles and talk about the next generation of covid-19 vaccines. what are people referring to

specifically when they say that? guest: that's a great place to start stuff i think there is some uncertainty out exactly what we are talking about. one word that is thrown around a lot is pan coronavirus, covering multiple coronaviruses and depending who you ask, the use that word differently. they could be talking about sars-cov-2 variance of this particular pandemic or other people are looking at multiple coronaviruses like a family of viruses when you think of the 2003 outlook of sars in the 2014 outbreak of mers, could there be a vaccine that works on multiple families? what exactly are we talking about? for the most part, i think people are looking for the next generation vaccine designed and tailored for this pandemic with what we are seeing with the different variance coming out. can there be a new vaccine that

is more effective against a wider range of variance. host: you wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago about the omicron focus, the development of that vaccine and pfizer plans to start human test of its covid-19 vaccine before the end of january. what is it take for a company like pfizer to start a research study on of specific vaccine like this? guest: this is one of the marvels of modern science. these mrna vaccines, this is a new technology around messenger rna and you become the genetic code that ourselves -- that ourselves are taught to make the spike protein that is protective against sars covid to ideally.

it's a very quick process to update these vaccines. the one thing to keep in mind is that was the promise. there could be a quick strain change and you can stay on top of it. the timelines moving quicker. i think with the omicron search, we are hopefully past the peak. it moves really quickly. as far as where they are now, pfizer says they are on track for this 90 day timeline, looking at late march to start rolling out and omicron specific booster. modernity has also talked about a similar timeline but they started to talk more recently about preparing for this fall.

they are thinking if there's going to be another surge or another wave about raikes with colder weather later this year, they want to start thinking about that and what's the best formulation of their vaccine to take that on. host: some people could say 90 dowse -- 90 days down the road that they've survived covid so why should i get the booster? what does pfizer say about the efficacy of a vaccine locust on omaha ron? do they think this will likely be helpful in fighting future variance? guest: that's part of the thinking is that the omicron strain has strayed so far away from the original coronavirus strain we saw in january, 2020 that this could basically get your level of immunity closer to what's currently circulating out there.

this is a debate going on in research labs right now. they are wondering what the best formulation of their vaccine is, thinking about future variant s. would it go back to something more like delta? those are hard predictions to make. omicron came out of left field. we saw the reduced vaccine effectiveness from two doses. it's hard to answer that question. they hope that in omicron specific vaccine would be closer to the current state of the pandemic and be helpful against future variance but they are not making any promises, humility has been a k lesson of the entire pandemic. they are trying their best to prepare. host: what are researchers

finding in terms of the immunity levels of people who have had the omicron variant? guest: this is still emerging research. there is a lot you can based on previous variants. at the starting point, there is natural immunity from an infection and recovering from an infection of the virus, that provides real benefits and we see that with other viruses historically and we've seen that with sars covid two. some of the earliest data comes out on a daily is data suggest that will not be different for omicron. how durable is that protection. if you get infected, how long are you protected? there is really no way of knowing that without following people on a long-term basis. it's not the most satisfying

answer. unfortunately, it's hard to say. host: our guest is andrew dunn who covers health issues for insider. we are talking about the future of covid-19 vaccines and we welcome your calls and comments. we saw this headline at the bbc -- the first generation of covid-19 vaccines was developed in record time but scientists have grander plans for potent immunity and mutation proofing. do researchers feel they have bought some breathing room with the vaccines that are out there? do they feel they now have the time to develop a longer-term vaccine against covid? guest: yes,, this is happening

at a lot of universities and government funded research restart with the idea of a pan coronavirus vaccine. it's something that could be mutation resistant or variant proof. that's kind of the holy grail of the vaccine now. these vaccines are early stages in the most advanced one is that the walter reed army research where they developed a vaccine that is hopefully effective against an entire range of variants and future variances to come. we heard a lot about this in december and we haven't seen a phase one study result. there is a lot of excitement about what's happening.

it's another step. i'm looking forward to seeing some of the data that's being tested as a three dose vaccines are not ideal if you think about global immunity and something that's easy to transport and use around the world. it's the balancing act of three doses that would get you better immunity but is there a way to have a good enough vaccine in a single dose if you are thinking about a global campaign? host: we will get to your calls in a moment. anthony fauci testified before congress last week and he touched >> there are fundamentalc issues that are discovery, that once you get the discovery, then

you can do the implementation of that discovery. we were very fortunate in that the basic research and clinical research that had been made literally for decades prior to the new revelation that we had a very threatening virus among us was the reason why we were able to use new platform technology as well as image and designed to get highly successful and safe vaccines. that same thing is going on right now. it isn't well-known because it isn't front-page yet. you know as a scientist, it's only until you get the result that people really understand what you've been doing. there is a lot of investment not only in improving the vaccines that we have for covid, a lot of work as i mentioned, looking at

the tools of fundamental basic and applied science to develop next generation vaccines, particularly universal coronavirus vaccines. we won't be chasing after the next variant. we will have a vaccine that has the capability of responding to every iteration of a variant. there is a lot of work going on without right now. when you are doing basic research, which you can appreciate, that usually isn't well recognized by the public. host: dr. fauci talked about chasing the latest variant, have researchers felt like that? guest: that's the only way to look at it. when you look at the mrna vaccines, there is a new variant and we could quickly adapt to

that and roll out a new formulation. the timeline of doing that is incredibly impressive. at the same time, the speed of the pandemic has rolled that over. dr. fauci put it really well. it's worth noting that his agency has given out $36 million in grant funding. a lot of academic labs are looking at the next generation of covid vaccines. you are absolutely right. that is one of the key challenges. are we going to be chasing different strains? is there a better way to get ahead of this variant?

host: let me ask you about therapeutics. one of the leading tools in terms of therapeutics? mark on twitter wants to know why we aren't fast tracking therapeutics. caller: this has been a fast-moving with omicron. some treatments have gotten bumped down as far as their utility because of this new variant. when you think about some of the antibody cocktail's for people who have early cases of covid and a high risk of hospitalization, to treat them early with antibodies was very effective against previous variant. now some of these drugs are effectively knocked down and not that potent against omicron. we are looking at regeneron. they have showed reductions and effectiveness. the good news is there are some other antibody drugs.

that is still retaining its effectiveness as an antibody drug. finally there is this bill everyone has heard of from pfizer. supplies are extremely limited at this point because they're not having much of a real world impact. when we look at the latter half of this year, those pills should be in much higher quantities in terms of manufacturing. the idea is if you have covid or postexposure where if you are exposed to some of covid, even if you don't test positive, they are authorized for early treatment. by the latter half of this year, the hope they will be authorized for both. that could be an early treatment , easy to get eventually. it can keep people out of the hospital and knock this back to an endemic. host: let's go to our collars.

good morning. caller: i want to congratulate his excellent publication. if you don't read insider, you're not keeping up with things. my statement is this. pfizer and modernity -- modernity was conducted with public money in university laboratories. pfizer was lavishly subsidized and their affection in utilizing the technology. then they were given the patent. they quashed the use. india could've produced these early on and distribute them in the third world were most of the people live and where these new variants have a lot of room to develop. this is a fast musette in virus. coronaviruses are always fast mutating.

we faced a tough enemy. it talk about social organization, china responded with the covid free policy. they've only had four deaths since april 2020. some people say you can't test -- trust china, singapore, south korea, straley, new zealand all use the same policy with similar results. most of them were pushed out by businesses. host: specifically in the comments about the vaccine worldwide and his call for pfizer and moderna to make them more available worldwide. guest: that is one of the most interesting and depressing points of the pandemic, is the global inequity of vaccines. it's hard to reckon sometimes,

in my own mind, we are rolling out third and fourth doses in richer nations while a lot of countries are still struggling to get first doses. more recently as the supply has caught up with lower income countries, the infrastructure hasn't. in order to send out public messaging, they can prepare accordingly. all of those have been massive failures by the health system. i think he brings up a good point. the patents and how they have prioritized rich countries or taken the bulk of early orders from rich nations, it's worth examining.

is there a better way to do it? there were no easy solutions as far as india. that is absolutely true for traditional vaccines. it was not convincing if india had the capacity to mass manufacture mrna vaccines. there is a different level of complexity with protein vaccines. the fact that it's a different technology limited the number of manufacturers around the world who had the expertise. host: mark is in maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. the last caller took a little bit of the wind out of my sails with some questions about the pharmaceutical industry. what other industry has paid out more money in damages over the last 20 years, it's the pharmaceutical industry.

why are we getting pfizer wall-to-wall commercials. every time joe biden gets in front of a microphone, it seems like the population is in a mass hypnosis right now where we are worried about a disease with a 99.96% survival rate. on a daily basis, we are bombarded with covid commercials. whether it's listening to that idiot faucher sheet, he subsidized all this. he's the same men telling us the cure. it doesn't pass the smell test. host: any thoughts? guest: off that point, this gets at the challenge of science to

munication in the time of a pandemic. there has been so much disinformation and false information in general. it is hard to reckon with the idea that the vaccines are safe and effective as far as the number of studies around the world, not just looking at company-sponsored studies, which are run with and dependent researchers who run those studies. the vaccines make real difference when you look at who ends up in the hospital versus non-vaccination people. it's night and day. at the same time, we can say definitively right now that the vaccines are safe and effective. part of this, we would like more out of them. we would like a vaccine that has sterilizing immunity.

that is an incredibly high bar. we don't hold vaccines to that. a lot of the messaging in the first year was around until we have a vaccine. the fact that we have a vaccine now and we have seen a radical transformation to the world as it was before, i think that's tough to grapple with, not just for myself. how do you explain this and think about the safety and effectiveness. host: in terms of the development of a vaccine, they go through the same authorization process. they have to go through trials. they have to be approved for at least emergency use by the fda. guest: absolutely. the one quicker path would be if there was a strain change. this is something that is being

worked out in real time between the fda and vaccine developers. what level of relevance does the fda want to see to feel comfortable if you make a tiny tweak to one of these vaccines to tailor it to omicron instead of the original virus. you have to run a massive study with a placebo group. you could look at a correlate of protection as far as different measures where you can get much quicker in terms of just antibody response or immune response. that is kind of how much data the fda wants to see for vaccines that are already authorized if you want to make a strain update. for other programs, they have to go through the whole process. they have to have tens of thousands of volunteers. host: james is in virginia.

good morning. caller: i was curious, the virus that came out of texas. my understanding is it doesn't use the mrna technology. it could be mass produced by a bunch of different countries. it was approved in india. apparently, they could not get funding like pfizer did for the mrna. they had to do research and development on a small amount of money. host: what was the name of the antivirus? caller: it came out of texas university. it was approved in india. they are starting production on that. it doesn't use the mrna technology. it could be produced anywhere in the world. guest: i'm glad you brought that up. you are referring to baylor

university. i talked to them throughout the pandemic in terms of what they've been doing in texas. they've developed their own vaccine. they're working on sars in 2003, trying to develop a vaccine then. that was when my first conversations about those efforts in 2003. they were attempted to get funding 20 years ago. when the pandemic subsided, funding also evaporated. it's pretty amazing. they stuck to it. they did authorize it under conditional approval. we will see how far it makes it around the world. it's encouraging how they have a massive indian manufacturer behind it.

it should have a big impact on low income countries. we don't hear about it much in the u.s. those trial results came out a month or two ago. it's behind those early efforts from pfizer and j&j and astrazeneca. they don't have a big pharma backer to accelerate that timeline or drum up a lot of attention read it. the impact it could have on low income countries is phenomenal. it's a great program to watch. host: where are we in the development of a vaccine for kids under five? guest: i think it is still -- this is still being figured out. the number of doses and the strength of the doses, the original but during a shot was 100 micrograms.

they're looking at trying a small fraction of that for the under five population. those trials need to run out fully. how far do you paste those doses apart if it's going to be two or three? those questions are still being answered. the hope is there will be more answers than questions. i don't know if it will get all the way to authorization in that timeframe. this is an area where the fda wants to be more confident, just extremely confident in the safety and they won't have to do any tweaking after the fact. host: ron is in pennsylvania. caller: thank you for taking my call. the doctor from baylor, he announced it was the world's

vaccine. he said there is no patent on it. he is hoping other manufacturers will talk to them about establishing the infrastructure of regional vaccine manufacturers around the world. prior to baylor, they have gone through clinical trials. they went to south africa and they're trying to do something over there right now. what an earlier caller said about big pharma getting big money from the government, there was very little accountability. how could there be little cooperation from the richest country in the world with some

of these other manufacturers? i think it's important for the u.s. to take the lead on this. thank you. host: how much money will the pharmaceutical companies make off the covid-19 vaccines? guest: the short answer is a lot. form a dharna and pfizer, are company changing products. these are the highest revenue products in pharmaceutical history last year. we are talking in the range of $25 billion in revenue. it's a staggering sum of money. there is a question if that will turn into a durable business from booster shots. there would be annual booster shots. in moderna's case, can there be

a combination vaccine where you go to cvs once a year and get a shot to protect from covid, respiratory virus, the flu. can one-shot protect against multiple viruses? the short answer is tremendous amounts of money. i get why for a lot of people, big pharma making record profits isn't the easiest thing to sit with. that's a fair point. a lot of these smaller companies, if they are publicly traded, they have similar motivations. smaller on the public market, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. there is a big question. this goes back to operation warp speed, they were taking out

which vaccine candidates to fund, to throw hundreds of millions of dollars behind. which company has the capacity to ramp up and produce 4 billion doses. it is tremendous scale up of these new technologies. it has turned into four big pharma for sure. host: good morning. caller: thank you for letting me on. this long saga about the vaccines and the virus, we were hit with a very infectious virus. everything else i question. we have the patent somewhere years ago for people involved in the story.

we have -- we are seeing the origin of the virus. we have problems with our testing. the pcr tests didn't work. we had problems with the diagnosing. we fell down the stairs. that went on forever. we have weird covid protocols. they don't treat you for pneumonia. they are covid protocols. we have strange pharmaceutical test results where they have to produce the information. they stop at six months and they start giving the vaccine to the

placebo groups. they polluted the results. it's stranger and stranger. now we have -- why the high death rate for people who took the vaccine? that's not -- the high death rate is due to motor vehicle accidents. they are supposed to record deaths. what is she talking about? what are they doing? there is an aggressive push by government and pharmaceuticals for you to get a vaccine. they are so invested in it. all of this is false. it's designed to get you vaccinated. all i say is do one thing and we

will see where this goes. host: she mentioned the term vers. what does that mean? is it supposed to do? guest: that's the reporting system. this is monitored by the fda. this is a non-supervised on audited way to report side effects. i could go in, you could go in. you can type in your report. you can enter that. this is been used a lot. i don't want to say misinformation, a lot of malevolent actors have used this to cherry pick certain events from the database and say look at what this is causing or look at these side effects that are being ignored.

they do look at it. they do investigate cases that seem concerning. they go in-depth on them what it is justified. a lot of the entries are unsupervised, unaudited. it's hard to put much trust or value into that database. host: the anti-vaccine movement got a boost in washington. a protest was led by robert f kennedy junior. this is a picture of the national mall without protest happening on sunday. we are with andrew done it. we will go to mike in pennsylvania. -- new york. you are on the air next. caller: i want to thank you for taking my call. good morning, america.

as far as your reporting, you are pro-vaccine. if you look at pfizer, if you do your research on pfizer, it has so many lawsuits they paid out. pfizer is corrupt. i think -- myself, i look at the obituaries. i see people dying of heart attacks. why don't you report on that? we don't even know what's in this vaccine. you don't even know it's going to happen to people later on in life. why don't you look at that? report on that. we don't know what's going to happen to people 3-4 years from now.

you're telling me to go take the vaccine. are you out of your mind? host: to avery in florida. go ahead. caller: can you hear me? you're two prior colors are correct. i'm a physician. i've studied this for the past two years. i have followed people who support early treatment they have totally suppressed any early treatment with any drugs the been proven to be effective. if you treat early, almost one junta percent. my group has treated 150,000 patients with only for having to go into the hospital. i know some people who have been in the hospital and passed away.

they are told to stay home until they turn blue. they go in. these are people who have had a vaccine. even though omicron is less malicious compared to the prior variant. the people who go into the hospital go in and they are given remdesivir. they should not be given that. they are being given that at two weeks into the illness. it only works in the first five days. there has been a suppression in the media. it's the first time i've ever seen any sort of early treatment until they've come out. they are moneymakers for the same companies. it originally produced

ivermectin, which is proven to be effective. host: we will get some response. the fda expands authorization of remdesivir. it had been permitted in hospitals, now it is permitted in outpatient use. guest: on the idea of early treatment, there is something to the idea of the antibody drugs. they work best when it treated early. i think that is a core take away message. if you are at risk of developing disease, you want to seek out a physician and consult a medical expert. is there something makes sense for you.

the antibody drugs are taken on an outpatient basis. the anti-viral remdesivir, they are using that on outpatients. i would just add on to drugs like experimental drugs, they are experimental for over. they are approved for other uses that have nothing to do with covid-19. the majority of trials that had placebo groups and were double blinded and published in medical journals, they have concluded that ivermectin doesn't work against this virus. host: let's go to mike in new york. caller: i just wanted to find out your opinion.

the earlier caller gave a percentage, 99.6% of patients suffer death. is that correct? what is the percentage of those who are affected out of the world population with this virus? guest: i wish i knew. i think that color was referring to 99.6% don't end up hospitalized or die from the virus. i'm not sure that number is right. the general message there that the vast majority to recover, that is true. we are seeing that with omicron. it appears to be a milder variant. that is a positive even if it is

more contagious and causing less severe it disease. that would be a positive. as far as the amount of global -- a lot of modelers and epidemiologists are trying to forecast. is it 30% of the world? is it 50%. it is hard to say. a lot of the world doesn't have reporting capabilities. it's been hard to figure out what the number is. host: let's go to sean in california. go ahead. caller: good morning. i was listening this morning. i thought i should give a call. the two colors prior. it's starting to make me -- when doctors say i am from florida and a know all these things, i

would like to have known what their specialty was. i have been vaccinated. however i look at it, it keeps everyone safe. i've also been boosted. i am still alive. i'm not afflicted by this other stuff. i don't appreciate how people target scientists like dr. fauci. these scientists didn't have to tell us anything. they could've done what they needed to do. for every one who wants to attention seek and continue to keep these things going on in our country, we will never get back to what we call normal. take the vaccination.

it is not going to kill you. i do understand there are some people that have secondary conditions. i have disabled people in my home who have low immune systems. they have taken the vaccination. their doctors have recommended it. they are doing fine. please stop bashing mr. andrew. people that are coming on here, trying to tell us how to live our lives. stay at home, don't infiltrate our hospitals. thank you very much. have a wonderful day. host: final thoughts? guest: that reminds me of this quote. it's from the infectious disease expert in washington state. he said to me early on, i was asking some production questions

and i wanted to know where this is all headed, when can we return to normal? he told me the first axiom is to never underestimate pathogens. that level of humility, somebody who is studying and developing on the leading edge of hiv research for three decades. this is someone with real expertise to fight and infectious disease. i think it's worth keeping that, the level of humility of how we respond to the pandemic and the fault of our response. everything is not going to go perfectly. there is a lot of work that needs to be done, communicating science to the public. building connective fibers of truth where people can agree on a base set of facts. i would just leave it at that.

host: andrew dunn reports on health care issues. he is at business insider. thanks for being with us this morning. guest: thank you so much. host: ahead, our open forum, a chance for you to weigh in on news issues of the day. the lines are (202) 748-8000 democrats. republicans (202) 748-8001. independent and others (202) 748-8002. you can talk about the russia conflict. any other news you are keeping on. we will be back momentarily. >> in march 2017, the basement

of his house in illinois created a new business. his business and be seen all over the world on youtube. since that day, he's been known as the history guide. he has produced hundreds of short documentaries on history and his home studio. he is surrounded by artifacts, including military hats and ship models. he is always dressed in his trademark dark suit and bow tie. >> the history guy on this episode of book notes plus. book notes plus is available on the c-span now apple. -- app. >> the permethrin the u.s., europe, russia discussed the situation in ukraine.

hosted by the center for the national interest. watch live today at 3:00 eastern. >> get c-span on the go. watch the biggest political events live on demand. on our new mobile video app.

access top highlights, listen to c-span radio, all for free. download cease bow now -- c-span now today. >> washington journal continues. host: it is open form following the issues that you are keeping and i and. the lines to call in our (202) 748-8000 democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8002 independent and others. touching on the ukraine russia conflict, nato is making preemptive military moves. this is an update from a story we read earlier. it's from the associated press.

let's go to your calls and comments on open form. in washington, how do you pronounce the name of your town? caller: thank you for having me on again. before i was calling, the last guest left. i wanted to mention my question on the air. i have one for you. one of my friends died of fentanyl overdose. i feel the system is rigged to

fail. there wasn't enough attention being given. he knew too many people that thought they had the solution who were not licensed. i wonder why it rim to severe has been given the green light. that's the question i was going to ask. while i have you, the information war is very concerning to me. why did you lie about what happened with your twitter? host: with what? caller: there was a story -- am i mistaken you for another host? your twitter was hacked? then you were let back on the air. it was a different host maybe. host: i think you are thinking of a different host. we will go to tennessee and elizabeth. good morning. indiana. good morning.

caller: how are you? on the open form, i would like to talk to the country about what the gop is doing to us. host: ok. go ahead. caller: i want our nation to note that the gop stands for greed oppression and power. they are showing that every day by what they are doing to our voting rights and every other right that they can get their hands on. like the women's option for medical care. what is it going to be next? our rights for free speech? i wish the nation would start

removing the gop from office. host: let's go to north carolina. joseph is on the independent line. caller: i was calling about our intervention in the ukraine and concerns about taiwan. none of the current people in office, congress, started all this. it goes all the way back to 1912 when woodrow wilson was elected president. he wanted to make the world safer for democracy. his congress and senate rejected the league of nations. he had a stroke before women got the right to vote. he was against women getting to vote or minorities get involved in the federal government. he called himself a progressive.

a lot of stuff he did was very regressive. he did the alien and sedition act. he said he would keep us out of war. as soon as he got the chance, he said the germans were trying to get mexico to attack us. all the wars we've been in since world war i. that's all i want to say. host: financial markets are open. this is a story about how the evolving situation is affecting the markets. how the russian invasion could trigger market shock waves. it's a lengthy report. they say the threat of a ground war hasn't done much to rattle financial market so far. investors appear likely to snap

up safe haven assets. it is open form. we're looking at items in the news were following. to virginia we go. we will hear from matt. caller: i've got three comments this morning. on ukraine, i think we should support ukraine against russia. vladimir putin, give a mouse a cookie and this is going to happen. who knows what he is going to go next.

he is an expansionist ideology. he has a terrible economy. he needs to distract his people from covid. we need to stop saying going back to normal. i think we need to understand this is a new normal. we need to start telling people the truth about what the new normal is going to look like. each party should offer what the new normal is going to be. a lot of our policies are decimating our health care and education. just our infrastructure in general. young people are quitting jobs in droves. women are leaving the workforce. what is the new normal? host: david is next in pennsylvania. caller: good morning. a quick three things again.

joe biden is considering sending troops into ukraine. he pulled the troops out of afghanistan. total incompetence on his part. we had the great monkey escape outside danville pennsylvania. why did they come into the united states and get transported by truck to a research facility? who authorized this? host: did they round them up? i heard this over the weekend. did they round up all the monkeys? caller: for two days, they said four were missing. then sunday afternoon they said it was only three. the scuttlebutt is there is one missing monkey that everybody is after and they are telling people not to go looking for it. if you're that cautious, why

were we transported by truck when it was flown into a quarantine facility in new york and then transported, unmarked, no warning on the truck. he pulled into the side of a pickup truck. it's ridiculous. host: what was your third point? caller: the third point is abortion is not a reproductive right. it was designed to eliminate the black race and it was designed. there are too many people getting abortions for no good reason. it's not a method of birth control. it terminates a life.

hopefully, the united states will come to their senses about this. i had 10 abortions, one lady protesting said she's had 21 abortions. it's just wrong. host: it's open form up until 10:00. (202) 748-8000 four democrats. (202) 748-8001 republicans. independent and others, (202) 748-8002. the house and senate office week. the hill looks ahead to their return with this headline.

writing and an economy writing in fort lauderdale, this is mark. go ahead. caller: hello and good morning. it's not really a minor thing. you had something happen a little while ago that shows. i'm not going to be short on using not nice names. earlier, we heard some. you just got attacked by a more on who is accusing you of being a liar and he was trying to talked about steve scully. you said that wasn't me.

he didn't know what he was talking about. these people calling c-span washington journal morning after morning with the most idiotic arguments and comments and positions, the sad fact of the matter is this is the state of our country now and the direction it is going in. c-span is kind of helping spread misinformation. a while back, you had a discussion about facebook and how it presents misinformation. i don't know if you can hire more interns for fact checking and do more immediate fact checking. most of the time you can't get through. for the good of c-span, you are under almost assault with more and more and more misinformation

from the trappist side. if you don't protect against that or call them out or fact-check these people like the doctor that called earlier that was just full of misinformation, but he was a doctor. this leads us more in the direction away from reality. host: thank you for your insight. we will go to orlando and hear from gary. caller: good morning. i hope you are in good health. i am calling from florida. i am in a state where there is nothing but misinformation. the governor seems to think that he is a part of some kind of autocracy, he's acting like a dictator. he is promoting crazy conspiracies himself. he is spreading it.

i am fearful of the governor of my own state. the gop is nothing but misinformation and taking people's rights away. i'm a disabled veteran. i put my life on the line for this country. i have four combat declarations. i am credited with saving 17 people. i keep hearing people like me don't deserve to vote. if you've given up so much of your life to defend the country, the very party schemes to be telling you the they are for democracy and trying to take away your rights to vote and telling you it's all about fraud. it's been prison that this fraud

is garbage. host: let's go to texas on the and dependent line. go ahead. caller: i would like to make a statement to all the americans of any stripe that social bid is responsible for amplifying conspiracy theories on all sides. i encourage you to walk away from matt. let's look at vladimir putin. he was a station cheap for the -- chief for the kgb and they launched an operation known as operation denver. it was a misinformation campaign to opponent the idea that aids was created by the u.s. government to depopulate the african-american population. this myth still persists. i believe that vladimir putin was aware of its effectiveness and his amplified it through social media. i encourage americans to walk away from social media.

get off-line. stop making anonymous death threats. talk to each other. host: this is jennifer calling from oak park, illinois. caller: good morning. i want to talk about two things. i want to talk about how the christian religion is trying to take over. she was just on. she was talking about this idea that in school we have to bring back these biblical principles. she thought the christian religion was the one religion.

they were saying the same thing. i grew up a radical born-again christian. the things that they believe about women, it's really terrible. i do feel the supreme court -- these radical christians that are on there, it's almost impossible to think about any other religion. they believe if you don't believe in jesus christ, you are going to hell. jewish people, any other religion. the supreme court is all catholics. only 20% of our country identifies as religious. it is scary to hear that. host: joe is in vermont. caller: i would like to thank

you for your hard work. i would like to push back on the person that said the republicans aren't fact checked when there is no pushback on the democrats when they say crazy things like donald trump was colluding with the russians. maybe mark levine. there is so much information out there the cats suppressed by the right-wing liberal media. the legacy media that won't put forth the truth about what's going on with hunter biden. i would like some pushback on that. you've got to be able to produce an id in order to get into restaurants.

you only need one thing to vote. i wish they would do that. host: this is from the washington post this morning. the former attorney general william barr has spoken with the house select committee investigating the january 6 insurrection. several former trumpet ministration officials are cooperating with the panel. rhode island, christie is on the democrats line. caller: good morning. can you hear me? i see bill barr's face on television right now. that's another problem. i just wanted to say i agree

with the people from florida. it is time to stop this craziness. i want to thank our military. the propaganda that's being fed in this country is dividing all of this. i want to say in afghanistan, there are so many tribes. we are turning into a tribal country that is so far out. i hope that the united states and the people can pull ourselves back together. thank you. host: we appreciate all the calls this morning on washington journal. we are here every day 7:00 eastern. enjoy the rest of your day.

announcer: coming up today on c-span diplomats from the u.s., europe and russia discuss the russia-ukraine conflict. it is hosted by the center for national interest at 3:00 p.m. eastern. at 5:00 p.m. president biden and administration holding meeting on lower consumer prices for americans. you can also watch online at the website c-span.org or on the new video app, c-span now. ♪ announcer: looking for c-span essentials that will keep you warm? go to c-spanshop.org.

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thousand community centers to create wi-fi so students for low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. announcer: comcast supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ host: the geopolitical conflict between russia and ukraine became a diplomatic one sunday as the u.s., britain and other countries announced many of their diplomatic staff and families would leave ukraine. news reports this morning suggest the biden administration is weighing sending u.s. troops to eastern europe and the baltic nations as a precaution. it is monday, january 24, 2020. this is "washington journal" and we start the first hour by asking you how should the u.s.