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biden economic policies. then steven brill talks about detecting misinformation online. join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. washington journal is next. >> in which he unveiled a slew of new sanctions against russia

and what he calls the beginning of an invasion of ukraine. we will dive into those sanctions, the reaction at home, and additional actions taken yesterday by other allies. we are in for writing -- inviting our viewers to call in with your view of the u.s. response to russia. if you think the response has been too strong to this point, they number, (202) 748-8000. if you think the response has been too weak, the number to call, (202) 748-8001. if you think the response has been right, (202) 748-8002. you can send us a text with your thoughts. that number, (202) 748-8003. if you do, include your name and where you're from. otherwise, catch up with us on social media. on twitter, it is @cspanwj. good wednesday morning to you. you can start calling in now with your thoughts on the u.s. response to russia as we show you more from president biden on

new sanctions against russia. [video clip] >> we are implementing full blocking sanctions on two large russian financial institutions. sanctions on russia's sovereign debt. that means we have cut off russia's government from western financing. we can -- it can no longer treat its new debt on our markets. starting tomorrow and continue in the days ahead, we will impose sanctions on russia's elites and family members. because of russia's actions, we work with germany to ensure nordstrom to -- nord stream 2 will not move forward. we have our next move prepared. russia will pay a steeper price

if it continues its and -- its aggression, including additional sanctions. host: we will show you more from that address, but we are mostly talking about the response and your view of the u.s. response to russia. here is a take on the response from the ukrainian foreign minister with a tweet this morning saying, to stop putin from further aggression we call on partners to impose sanctions on russia now. the first steps were taken yesterday and we are grief over them. hit now, the ukrainian foreign minister tweeted this morning. and there wrap up this morning, punch will news noting the ukrainian foreign minister -- punch bowl news noting the ukrainian foreign minister likely to get at least some of what he wants.

lawmakers in both parties are promising to go even further once congress returns next week. in terms of the response at home, here is a headline from the washington times this morning. gop lawmakers call biden's sanctions on russia week, saying they are too weak. this is the official statement from the minority leader's office on behalf of republicans -- republican leadership in the house, including minority leader kevin mccarthy and his deputies. president biden they say consistently shows appeasement and his tough talk on russia was never followed by strong action. antiship capabilities were never provided. pre-invasion -- sanctions proportionate to the aggression already committed were never imposed and sanctions on nord stream 2 were waived. the u.s. and allies must now make the regime pay for this aggression. congress should compel president biden to take the steps his

administration has opposed thus far. we must end nord stream 2, implement secondary sanctions on russian institutions, and impose penalties on industries the russian military relies on to make war. house republicans have been saying president biden must promote u.s. energy development and help the united states become the european energy partner of choice. china and north korea are watching. they must see us spohn firmly. that from the republican leadership in the house. here is a few more statements from other members of the house and senate. from the senate side current tim scott saying, russia's heightened aggression is a clear violation of international law. for the second time in less than a year, the biden administration's weakness on the world stage has emboldened our adversaries. a congers meant saying putin

does not fear ordering troops or light sanctions or president biden. there is one path to beating russian aggression, a well armed, well organized ukrainian resistance. from democrats in the senate, tammy duckworth saying putin's actions in ukraine are threatening lives in europe and i support the additional sanctions that the president announced yesterday, offering her full statement. senater richard blumenthal saying we need immediate crippling sanctions on russia. president biden's announced it was a good first step but bullies only understand consequences. just a taste of the reaction on capitol hill yesterday. we are mostly interested in your reaction around the country. the u.s. response to russia so far. do you think it has been too strong, too weak? we have phone lines for responses and we will take this question in the first hour of the washington journal today. april out of new york on that

line for those who think the response has been too weak so far. go ahead. caller: i am a senior. i believe the reaction has been week -- weak. in my generation, people were patriotic and it does not matter about the ethnicity of the person. everyone felt they had this american patriotism. no one -- that is why everyone wants to be here. seeing it go across the line, i have never seen anything carried out. i know they have a lot to lose if anything is started, but the repercussions of not doing anything is going to be felt like an earthquake worldwide. just going back and forth saying we are going to do this -- we are not going to do it. that is not how we use to

operate. i think our response has been too slow, too late. now people are watching. i never heard in my entire life of a country surrounding another country and saying we are going to go in and take it. that is just not supposed to be happening as we sit and watch. that is all i want to say. i was in east berlin years ago and i saw what it was like behind the wall. people do not really know how things could really be. i know if you are too aggressive it could start repercussions, but we are already up to four dollars a gallon. it is going to be worse than that. just do it. that is what people used to do back in the day. they just did it. host: this is steve in alabama,

that line for those who say response has been too strong so far. caller: i am amazed at how easily the american people are whipped into a killing fervor by the news media. it is tragic. those people over there, i have watch their faces of the ukrainian people on the television. nearly everybody i see our white people. world war two, world war i, white people slaughtering white people in europe for the most part. most of the people killed, somewhere in the vicinity of 50 million people total were killed after and during world war two and the majority of them were white, christian people. most of them russians, the vast majority appear a lot people do

not understand that russia broke the back of the nazis. host: what do you think -- caller: such a great misunderstanding. everybody is in a hurry to kill people. i have two theories on what is happening. one thing i'm sure above -- sure of is the -- what is happening now was planned out a long time ago. in my opinion, the people setting the white people up to slaughter each other are the people in charge, the people that give putin his orders and who give biden his orders, the same group. host: that is steve in alabama. this is sherry in mississippi, saying action so far by the u.s. has been about right. caller: i do think it is about right. it is my understanding that the

sanctions biden has put on his on ukraine in the regions where the russians have already been and it is my understanding though sanctions were already in place. i do not think he has done anything. i think that is a good thing because i do not think we need to be messing with a nuclear power. host: the sanctions are on russia. it was what is being promised, just the first round of sanctions here. more are expected in the coming days. announcing sanctions on two russian banks and five individuals with close ties to president a putin yesterday. in addition, there is the sovereign debt restriction. raising money or trading new debt on u.s. and european markets. the wrap up their of the different banks and various

individuals, various russian banks targeted by the sanctions yesterday. again, harsher penalties promised today. as the washington post puts it, the sharpness of action on tuesday may have been the one that came around the time that this program ended yesterday come about 10:00 a.m. eastern. trade relations so far that moved something from germany. there have been members calling for president biden to get involved. russell in massachusetts says the response has been too week. good morning. caller: my opinion would be this. as tyrant as putin did, we did not take this from any other political person who threatened the surrounding countries.

my thing is this. ukraine has a right to exist. we cannot force people to let russia invade ukraine because they do not belong to a nato alliance. it is no different than bullying somebody who simply says if you are not with our gang we cannot protect you. there are innocent lives to be lost in ukraine. this is a point where politics should never enter. these people have a right to exist as well as palestine or anybody else. when we allow this dictator to do things like this, we empower him because sanctions never worked. we need to take further action. what else is to come? putin will not stop unless physically stopped. host: when you say further action, in your mind do you think there is a scenario in which u.s. troops could be in ukraine helping defend ukraine?

caller: absolutely. we should not be bound by religion, by authority to sit back and let innocent lives be lost. we as humans have a moral duty to intervene. whatever this menace went to do he is going to do. we are in america. the rest of the country has felt our freedom. pakistan felt freedom for 20 years. now it was taken away. craning freedom is being taken. people have the right -- i am an indigenous person. we are sovereign nations. we have a right to exist. human life has a right to exist at any cost. i do not care what religion you belong to. these people need to be defended at all costs. guest: -- host: this is robin in washington, who says the response so far is about right. why do you say that?

caller: i think we are primarily in agreement with our partners. our alliance with russia as far back as the revolutionary war has gone back and forth. i also feel we cannot predict what president putin's further actions will be. we cannot predict what his goal is as far as antagonizing these restrictions in place on russia. is it to galvanize his people further against nato and western countries? who knows? if we act together, united with international partners, it is important to show unity than to

barge in and say the u.s. is going to fix everything because we cannot. he has proven that multiple times. host: this is james in south carolina. caller: the children have to fight the war. take one man out. one man don't rule the world. let putin know that he is just one man. host: charlie in california says it has been too weak. caller: i am middle-aged, almost 75. i watch tv all day long. yesterday on one of the channels, they were talking about how weak we are. i just thought i would say this, that i know they have stopped taking oil or stop the production on that, the number two oil line from russia.

host: the nord stream 2 pipeline. the move by the germans yesterday to stop the certification got one of the final steps of the pipeline. caller: that does not help at all because germany as it stands now and will keep standing gets 60% of its oil from russia. this pipeline was going to bring it up into the 90% range. they are still getting more than half their oil from russia. everybody is jumping up and down with glee that they have stopped this pipeline, but that is not going to put a dent in germany because it is doing well now in the financial world with only 60% of its oil coming in from russia. host: you say you watch a lot of tv. i wonder if you get the wall

street journal because they focus on that and their editorial. let me get your spots to this. the editorial board says the bigger question is whether europe will get serious about energy security. we are too dependent on russian gas, and the understatement of the decade. we have to diversify our supplies and invest in renewables. putting too much hope in unreliable wind and solar energy has left europe so vulnerable to russian gas. it needs more nuclear power as france is pursuing and more imported natural gas. -- the latter also depends on mr. biden's encouraging more u.s. production and exports. your thoughts on that? caller: i was watching tv about a week ago and they were talking about wind and sunlight power. they said that that is not

enough for anybody and germany shut down all their nuclear power stations. they are now going to build about a dozen new ones, but they will not be online until at least between 2025 and 2026, which is going to help nothing for the next four years. somebody called in the other day and talks about that oilfield they found underground in texas. that field is bigger than any oilfield in saudi arabia and this was five years ago they found it. they have not begun production on it or doing anything with it. they say that field is so big it would go for 100 years. host: this question we are asking that the u.s. response to russia, if it has been about

right, two week, -- too weak, too strong. they note u.s. and european sanctions are still weak against putin and their lead editorial today. here's how the washington post editorial board put it, calling it a calibrated response, calling it a logical first step. we want to know your thoughts this morning on the u.s. response to russia. if you think the response has been too strong, it is (202) 748-8000. if you think it has been too weak, it is (202) 748-8001. if you think it has been about right, (202) 748-8002. as you keep calling in, yesterday this was the secretary of state announcing he would no longer be meeting with his russian counterpart as was expected or perhaps hoped for by some in the thursday meeting

expected to take place this week. >> i agreed to meet the russian foreign minister last week this week on february 24 to discuss our country -- our countries' concerns about european security if russia did not invade ukraine. now that we see the invasion is beginning and russia has made clear its rejection of diplomacy , it does not make sense to go forward with the meeting. i consulted with our allies and partners. all agree. today i sent the foreign minister a letter informing him of this. the united states and i remain committed to diplomacy if russia is prepared to take steps to provide the international community with any confidence that it is serious about de-escalating and finding a diplomatic solution. we will proceed in court a nation of allies and partners. -- coordination with allies and

partners. but we will not allow russia to claim diplomacy at the same time it accelerates its march to war. host: secretary of state antony blinken yesterday. plenty more today on the russia-ukraine conflict. nancy pelosi holding a news conference at 11:30 today, expected to get plenty of questions on that front and about what congress may be considering when they come back next week. you can watch it on the c-span now free video app. at 2:00 p.m. today, it is congressman tom malinowski of new jersey joining the democratic -- jewish democrat council of america on the free c-span now video app. back to her phone calls.

the question, your thoughts on the u.s. response to russia, if it has been too strong, too weak or just right. this is jason out of san diego. go ahead. >> -- caller: america has always been blessed to have the right president at the right time. i think we are blessed right now . we would really be in bad shape if trump was in there and agreeing with this guy. russia has a history. it murdered about 15 million of his own people and putin is an old-school guy from the kgb. he is starting to get rattled a little bit. then his henchmen are speaking out of turn and you can see how it is affecting him. i would like to say we are going

at it. we are not coming out with guns blazing. we do not want no mess, but we are giving him the opportunity to do the right thing. i am thankful that president biden is in there and doing what he needs to do. host: that is jason out of california. over to santa fe, robin. caller: good morning. putin was a spy and he is a sociopath. you cannot negotiate with sociopaths because no matter what you give them it will never be enough. i think that for every foot that the russians go into ukraine we should bomb the crepe -- crap out of putin's personal

property, i mean his house is, the personal property he owns. that he may care about your he does not care if everybody dies. he does not care if everybody starves. that is the true hallmark of a sociopath. you cannot treat him like a normal human being. sociopaths may make good spies, but they certainly do not make good stewards of humanity. thank you. host: that is robin in new mexico. clifford may is the -- a columnist with the washington times. putin's winter wars the headline of his column. he writes, putin committed his first serious act of international aggression in 2008.

georgia was looking to europe rather than moscow. mr. putin went to war, chipping off two provinces. they are now russian territories. he waited to see what the u.s. and international community would do and they did nothing. in 2014, with the blessing of the international olympic committee, he was given the privilege of hosting the winter olympics. the games were held in february. mr. putin organized a pro-russian demonstration in crimea. he sent in troops on march 21 of that year. he annexed crimea in april that year. russian militias began to storm buildings. 14,000 ukrainians have been killed in the simmering conflict. again, no serious consequences ensued. he says western leaders should have imposed entities honesty putin and cast him as a pariah.

that is in the washington times today if you want to read his column. joe and south carolina, good morning. he says the response has been right so far. >> everybody knows that trump and all people who work with trump work with putin. ok? host: joe biden's response now, can he focus on that russian mark -- on that? caller: the trump administration set it up a long time ago, but the response. i get that. you do not want to talk about how it happened. if you do not want to talk the truth, there is no need for me

to be talking because the truth is the truth and trump is a russian mobster. host: that is joe. this is jerry in new jersey. good morning. caller: i want to make a statement, but i have to say i am listening to the woman that called in. she said bomb russia. she is worried about putin killing people and she in turn says bomb russia. i guess you do not care who we kill, so i guess it is hypocritical to say that. the other thing, i listened to the callers and they are all sing about democracy, but we have stormtroopers in canada going after truckers. have this country saying it is mandatory that we do masks. you want to talk about lack of democracy, you ought to be looking at your own country.

i do not want to see a total war. we do not need to send our young people back to war. we do not need to do it. it is not our fight. it is nato and ukraine. please keep us out of it. we do not need to do it. host: tim in wisconsin, you are next. caller: good morning. i think he is doing about right. he has rallied to somewhat. might get a wake-up call. the europeans have been slacking on their military, letting their military deteriorate. maybe they will start coming around and do a better job. as far as putting sanctions and so on, i do not think anybody understands it completely. i do not. i try to follow it.

that is above my pay grade. they are going in the right direction as long as the europeans and everybody can stick together and the chinese do not want to go in too heavy because russia has a $2 trillion economy and the u.s. and european union have a $60 trillion economy so they do not want to mess that up. that is a good thing in our response. as far as the pipeline, that has been built through the last 5, 6 years. none of the previous presidents did anything to try to shut it down. the germans have let themselves go and be energy dependent on russia. so you do not want to go fast. as far as people saying bomb russia, that is irrational thinking. that is just awful in my opinion. you have to be cautious. russia has nuclear weaponry and

military. you have to try to deal with them without letting them take over parts of europe and ukraine. it is a touchy subject, but i think china is doing the right thing. thank you for taking my call. host: in trying to understand sanctions announced yesterday, we are expecting more sanctions today. that is the reporting. here is what came yesterday. president biden announced sanctions on two russian financial institutions as well as russia's military bank, those financials to duchenne's will not -- u.s. financial institutions will not process either of those banks' transactions and the bank will be barred from transactions involving the u.s. dollar. there is a move to sanction russian sovereign debt. the russian government access to western financial financing has

been cut, prohibited from raising money or trading new debt on u.s. and european markets. then there are sanctions on russian elites and family members, five individuals sanctioned and their family members. they are prohibited from trade or financial transactions with u.s. financials to duchenne's. the individuals can no longer put their money in u.s. banks, individuals with ties to vladimir putin. we are expecting more today would also trying to wrap our heads around what happened yesterday, events moving quickly and we are getting your reaction as we hear from you about whether you think the response so far has been too strong, too weak, or about right. carla says it has been too weak. caller: there is an old expression. he who hesitates is lost. i am 90 years old. i remember vividly world war

two. all these saber rattlers calling in, mainly old men that want to go to war, it is young men who go to war. the new way to fight a war is economically. i heard a report on c-span the other day about the russian economy and that there are 50 oligarchs propping up putin. we should have just gone in before this. we all knew what putin was going to do. why didn't we go ahead with sanctions? we give them a little tap on the shoulder. they do not do any good. people in europe do not want to have a war. they have been through this twice in the last century. i just think the whole thing is

a mess. host: would you agree with the ukrainian foreign minister, calling on partners to impose more sanctions on russia now, saying these first steps yesterday and they are brave over them but now the pressure needs to step up, hit his economy, hit now. >> -- caller: i agree. they were begging, the ukrainian's were begging us to do it early and that is when we should have done it. that could have made putin think a little. his country is not in good shape economically. it is only those oligarchs that are successful and living high, so to speak. the regular russian people are sick of war, but they are just like americans. if they have to go to war, they will be heche -- they will be patriotic and back their country

and go to war. they have lost millions of people and war, but they will fight for their country just like we would for hours. the whole thing is a mess. i cannot see having a regular war. i think economic sanctions, strong ones, would have been the way to go and it is almost too late. thanks a lot. i love c-span. host: thanks for calling in from missouri. more reaction from washington and party officials. this is the former u.s. ambassador to the united nations during the trump administration, quoted in the washington times as saying president biden promised swift and severe response and did not deliver. ukraine is a test of western resolve, a major leadership moment for biden. so far, he is failing. that is what she said yesterday. joni ernst of iowa, insecurity

in europe affects the lives of the american people at home. we need to provide ukraine resources like intel sharon cannot ramp up energy production here in the u.s.. a democratic senator saying nato allies told putin he would pay a hefty price for further invading ukraine. i applaud germany for halting the certification of nord stream 2, it will that would enable putin to manipulate the energy supply and security of europe. and a republican congress meant saying before joe biden's tweet about putin fearing joe biden becoming president, putin and x crimea while biden was vp. -- annexed crimea well biden was vp. now russia is invading ukraine. you are not going toe to tell with putin, mr. president. you are kowtowing to him.

kathleen at of new york, good morning. you say the response so far has been about right. caller: yes. biden has worked and done more -- tried to do more for we the people than the person -- that guy that was in office before him. everybody wants to fight against him, what he wants to do and help us. he is doing right. if somebody came to invade us, wouldn't we want our nato alliance to help us? because it could have happened. the person before him, there was a russian spy ship off the north carolina coast with his military bases, top-secret information on shore. he did not say anything. host: does it matter to you that

ukraine is not a member of nato? caller: it is not, but he is going to the nato alliance countries. who is to say, if he comes into ukraine, that he will not go into poland? it is all about him and his power. you know what i mean? host: that is kathleen in new york. this is bradley out of georgia, who said the response so far is too weak. caller: thank you. please show what donald trump said about glenn ray putin and ukraine. glenn ray putin has messed with our elections. he poisons people. he is costly messing with our stuff. we have to really go after him. he is a menace and the republican party, the way they have -- 30% of them just slide

over to vladimir putin and probably prefer him over joe biden. i am disappointed. we needed to get ukraine into nato immediately. we do not want war, but if he wants war i have no problem. i have two daughters who are going to join the military. host: we will try to keep the language appropriate as we have this conversation. i know tensions are high, but we cannot have a conversation unless we can actually speak without cursing. vince and pennsylvania says it has been too strong. -- in pennsylvania says it has been too strong. caller: i'm confused why the media when you watch msnbc, fox,

they all report the same story. there is no mention at all about the coup that occurred in 2014. there is no mention of russia's naval base in crimea. there was a guy named numb chomsky who wrote a book called manufacturing consent and it is scary how the news can get everybody on board for war. with no mention of past history. that is all i have. host: for past history of ukraine, a full-page spread here from usa today. it is the back page of usa today.

as russian troops crossed over ukraine's border, we look at the history and relationship between the nations. the timeline there if you want to check it out, going back to 1991 after the vote for independence. ukraine sought to shed his soviet past. crane's desk ukraine's adopt -- ukraine's adoption of d communication laws led to renaming -- decommunization laws led to renaming. support for pro-russian parties decreased to below 20% since 2014 according to the central election commission of ukraine and then a focus on recent presidential elections there. that might be something you might be interested in checking out, all that history. it goes back to the mid-ninth

century. to francis michigan, good morning. -- in michigan, good morning. caller: i think the european union and -- in ukraine right away. since putin don't want to listen to us, maybe he will then. that is all i have to say. host: donald, north carolina. go ahead. caller: everybody needs to step back and look at the big picture here. russia and china and the olympics. they met while this stuff is going on in russia. nobody's going to be watching what china does and they are going to take taiwan.

when them two get together, they have more nukes than we got. we are just going to be slaughtered, not to say all the prices are going up on everything. we are going back to jimmy carter's age. host: for our next segment, an economic roundtable, inflation is part of that conversation. we will talk about that in about 15 minutes here. a caller previously wanted to note what former president donald about a putin in the interview. this is the npr story. the former president praising vladimir putin's moves in ukraine after the kremlin recognized the independence of two breakaway russian control regions. i went in yesterday and there was a television screen. i said, this is genius.

putin declared it is independent, trump said. putin on monday recognizing the independence of those two breakaway territories, ordering in russian troops to conduct peacekeeping. potion is now saying it is independent, a large section of ukraine. i said, how smart is that? he is going to go in and be a peacekeeper. trump added it was a show of force the united states could use on the southern border. some of the former president's comments on the situation in russia and ukraine. mark, massachusetts, good morning. caller: this is mark. i am here in new england. we get our swings on the weather. i am to figure this out. wind power generation systems and solar are the future of our

planet, believe it or not, because they can produce cheaper, clean electricity then nuclear power. and as far as nuclear power, accidents happen. we do not need another meltdown like chernobyl or where the nuclear waste gets swept into the oceans. host: just a note for all our callers, is easier to hear you if you turn your tv down and just listen through your phone when you are waiting to talk. it keeps feedback from happening and that delay can get confusing. from wyoming, june says the response has been too strong. caller: it has. who is we?

is it biden? biden is doing the majority of the talking to our country. he is putting in these sanctions. isn't it nato? where is nato? why are we committing our president to make the statements to the world? host: some of what is being considered, the strongest move the came yesterday, was not from the united states. it was from germany, blocking the certification of that pipeline from russia to germany. that action taking place yesterday. other actions announced by nato allies as well yesterday. we focused on the president's actions, talking about the u.s. response. caller: what i'm talking about is biden when he was first established as president. he sat down across the table from china and china said to

biden, you do not have enough power to tell us or inform us what to do. the united states should back off and let nato make these statements. biden is making all these statements through our network. host: do you think the united states is the leader of nato? caller: i am wondering why nato wants the united states to take the lead. why? if we do that, we are ensuring a footprint on war. host: the united states has historically taken the lead role in nato. caller: i do not think the united states has enough power right now. i think we are becoming a weak nation and i pray to god that we will never have any people losing more arms and limbs over somebody else's problems.

we have enough. look at the united states. we are a mess. have a great day. host: this is roger in missouri. go ahead. caller: hello? ok. i have a sound bar and a cell phone and i want to get through to you. i would like to see the cold war started again. we have a big spy set up by the russians in cuba and we need to block that thing. they are picking on ukraine. we can pick on russia a little bit more besides the sanctions hearing i guess the sanctions will do more than anything but we need a whole committee of people trying to figure out things to get back at russia.

we ought to throw them out as we did a couple hundred years ago and tell them to get their spy stations out of the new world or we will block all the radio signals that go into cuba. host: about 10 minutes left in this segment of the washington journal. more from president biden yesterday during that address, announcing the new round of sanctions. this is the president from the white house. host: yesterday, the world -- [video clip] >> yesterday the world heard the full extent of putin's rewritten history going back more than a century. noting that -- i'm not going to go into it. nothing in his remarks indicated an interest in pursuing real dialogue on european security. he directly attacked ukraine's right to exist.

he indirectly threatened territory formally held -- formerly held by russia, including nations that today are thriving democracies and members of nato. he threatened war unless his extreme demands were met. there is no question that russia is the aggressor. we are clear about the challenges we are facing. there is still time to avert the worst case scenario that will bring untold suffering to millions of people if they move as suggested. the united states and our allies and partners remain open to diplomacy if it is serious. when all is said and done, we will judge russia by its actions , not its words. whatever russia does next, we are ready to respond with unity, clarity, and conviction. host: president joe biden yesterday from the white house. about 10 minutes left. we want your thoughts on the u.s. response to russia so far.

do you think it has been too strong, too weak, just right? ron in michigan says it has been right. caller: very interesting that you showed that last segment with biden. whenever he hesitated -- i think he was going to go into a historical perspective of ukraine, but he decided that was too much detail. from a different perspective, although i'm not supporting putin, the fact is that he has been preparing for this movement for years. it is not a yesterday type of thing. he is doing it on the pretext that he is afraid of nato becoming too close to their borders and challenging their sovereignty as well as their safety. so we have ukraine basically caught between hello and high water.

if biden is going to make a move to say that we do not want nato -- ukraine and nato my think that i would say to him is, what we are going to do is sign the agreement like you did with the land you just an x and sign an agreement -- annexed and sign an agreement with ukraine to allow them to come into nato. if you do not want us to bring ukraine into nato, pull your troops back and we will cancel the agreement between ukraine and the nato countries. the whole thing is getting out of hand. what is going to happen is that putin is going to take the land little by little or step-by-step. you just do not move that many troops up to the edge of somebody's property without

having long-term intentions. he has been preparing this for years. that is the way i see it. the only problem i am concerned about is should we make moves too quick, too fast without discussions, somebody makes a mistake. that is where the problem lies. host: this is floyd in virginia. caller: yes. my question relates to something related but a little different. when the soviet union broke up and ukraine became its own entity, there was an agreement through which ukraine got rid of its nuclear weapons. at that time, i believe they were the third largest holder of nuclear weapons in the world. part of the agreement was that the boundaries or integrity of ukraine would be recognized by

the signatories to the agreement. i believe we were one of them. do you recall what that was about? host: the u.s. ambassador the u.n. brought up that agreement in her response at the security council meeting that was called monday evening. and discussed that issue and that ukraine is one of a few countries in the world that has given up its nuclear weapons. >> in exchange -- caller: in exchange for guarantees of continuing existence, i think. what happened to those guarantees? host: appreciate you bringing it up. perhaps an issue for a full segment on the washington journal, to go back into that history. i will bring that up today at our meeting. elizabeth, go ahead.

caller: good morning, c-span. i think biden is doing a great job. in a nuclear age, he is trying to head off a conflagration or exchange of weaponry. all his tools are sticks and carrots. you have to parse those out. if they release all of their incentives at this point, then putin has nothing to fear. why would he not proceed if they do all the sanctions right up front? i think biden has done a great job. he has brought nato together. they have tried diplomacy, talking to the parties. putin proceeded to do what he

wanted to do anyway, but i think he has hesitated. i hope you bring forward that comment by the kenyan ambassador to the u.n. talking about ancient empires trying to get the band back together. that is a beautifully done small speech. i want to make a comment on the gop. on presidents' day, here we are in an international situation. they come out with something that says, happy presidents' day. they show nine presidents, except biden. they put annex -- an x over him. here you have the former president coming out and comes lamenting putin in this situation, calling him brilliant. the clown car of the gop is really not suited for the world stage. i think biden is doing a great

job. host: this is in florida, saying the response so far has been too weak. caller: yes. i would say when it comes to russia or even china america is always weak when it comes to those countries. when it comes to countries like iraq, afghanistan, panama, we will jump. i served in the military. i joined in 1979 and retired. when i joined the military in 1979, before you could eat chow your leaders would flash leads -- cards with russian type vehicles and aircraft and you had to know those types of vehicles. then when you get these callers who say we, who is the we? we are all sitting at home watching c-span. i do not understand and now the

gop is all for russia. yet we, including me, are willing to give our lives to fight russians and china and all that when i was in the military. now they just would rather go against their own president today to support russia or putin. it is unbelievable, how this country has become so hateful to its own yet they will support the enemy. thank you. having week. -- have a good week. host: this is carl in manhattan, saying the response so far has been about right. caller: let gentleman who was just on was right. this thing is already planned. there are not going to be no nukes used. the game has been played for the inside out.

the republicans have become traitors. they are doing it right in front . putin probably got -- you cannot sleep there without being observed. the media is saying he is so weak. he has 3000 troops around the world got 100,000 -- host: stick around. plenty more to talk about, including next, a wednesday economic roundtable. we will also discuss tensions in eastern europe. it could have a ripple effect on the economy. that conversation of the heritage foundation's rachel greszler and heidi shierholz of the economic policy institute. later, we will be joined by

steven brill of the misinformation tech firm newsguard to talk about how russia is using state owned media to change the narrative on the ukraine invasion. ♪ >> i can report to the nation, america is on the move again. announcer: on tuesday, the state of the union as president biden addresses the nation, reflecting on his first year in office. i've coverage begins at 8:00, the president speaks at 9:00, followed by the republican response. the state of the union on tuesday, 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org or on the c-span now video app. ♪ announcer: at least six presidents recorded conversations in office. hear them in our new podcast.

>> season one focuses on lyndon johnson. you will hear about the 1964 civil rights act, the gulf of tonkin incident, the march on selma and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew that they were being recorded. >> johnson's secretaries knew because they were tasked with transcribing the conversations. they were the ones that major the conversations were tape as johnson would signaled to them through an open door. >> you will also hear blunt talk. >> i want a report of the number of people who were assigned to candidate into me on the day he died, the number assigned to me now. if i could not to the bathroom, i will not go. i promise you i will not go anywhere. >> presidential recordings, find

it on the c-span on mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: a roundtable this morning and joining us for the discussion we are joined by heidi shierholz, president of the economic policy institute and the heritage foundation's rachel greszler. an economic roundtable at a time when the economic picture can be confusing and even more confused by what is happening now in eastern europe, but the numbers we hear about all the time. rachel, we hear about the inflation numbers and concerns about that, but then there is gdp growth, we have seen gains in the fourth quarter in gdp

growth and in wage earnings. would you consider the economic picture a this point in a good place or a bad place? guest: inflation is at a 40 year high and americans are feeling it, and businesses are feeling the impact of inflation, as well as a labor shortage. there are 10.9 million job openings, 1.7 jobs for every unemployed worker, and this is causing a struggle that is contributing to the rising costs. it's great news we have seen wage gains, but they have been erased by the high inflation numbers. and i think that we are seeing the consequences of a government trying to micromanage the economy and restrict the supply of available workers. and at the same time, massively stimulating the demand for

things with $6 trillion in covid related spending, more than half of which has come from the federal reserve purchasing debt or effectively purchasing new money. host: same question, heidi. guest: i agree that there is still pain in the economy, but the key thing is this labor market is healing very fast. to put numbers on that, over the last 12 months we have added 6.6 million jobs, over half a million per month. it is mind-boggling. and one thing that is important here, to contrast that with the great recession, we are on track to recover from this recession more than four times faster, roughly 80 years faster than -- eight years faster than the great recession. that's huge and because of

congressional action that happened at's go to covid recession. we can talk about all of these acts. the cares act from 2020. and what happened a year ago, the infrastructure investment and jobs act. congress asset set a strong recovery and it is a stark contrast to what happened in the great recession when congress did not do nearly enough and we had a decade-long, weak and slow recovery. right now, because of the actions congress took, millions of people have jobs who otherwise would not without these policies. i want to say that there is still a lot of pain, we have a long way to go, but we are on track to get back to

prerecession levels. and that is really good news for the american public. host: rachel, your concerns about inflation and people paying more, the concern about prices at the gas pump is near the top of the list. and with the crisis in eastern europe, here is a headline from the new york times, "crisis felt in the energy markets." concerns that prices could go up. how much impact or control does not just this white house or any white house have on gas prices, how much can one president duque when it comes -- do when it comes to controlling gas prices? guest: there is not a lot that the president can do, but there is a lot of the administration can do to utilize existing forms of energy. and at every turn this administration is trying to shut

down the only existing energy but to close other pathways like the keystone xl pipeline. now energy prices are skyrocketing, it is at the pump and home heating costs. and this is adding to those inflationary pressures with food prices rising across the board. and americans are feeling the pinch. the government policies enacted have been making things worse instead of better. so instead of further driving inflation there needs to be responses that are trying to fight inflation. and that really involves the government removing regulations. we should take a lesson here from president carter when he was faced with high inflation. he said, we need to reduce the budget deficit, we need to rein in spending, we need to limit the size of our workforce and eliminate inefficiencies, and get rid of unnecessary

regulations. that is the same thing we need to do today. host: heidi, on that same question -- and i was pulling up headlines just to highlight the concern about energy, oil and gas, and the prices of that from that same front page, the $96.84 is the price of a barrel of brent crude. it rose 1.5% yesterday. "oil and gas prices may climb higher, western investments face risk." the same question of what can be done. some things that past presidents have tried is release strategic petroleum reserves. one thing that some democratic members of congress have called for is suspending the federal gas tax here to help lower the prices at the pump. what are your thoughts? guest: i do not have a lot of expertise on what we should do with high gas prices, but i want

to respond to one thing rachel said about government relief policies actually driving inflation. i think it is important to note that there is little evidence to that. for one, high inflation that we are seeing is absolutely a global phenomenon, even those countries that did not do extensive covid relief. so that says there our covid relief was not a key driver of inflation. i think the small amount of inflation and that we have over and above what other countries that didn't do covid relief may have, it something to do with our policies, but it is important to look at the trade-off there. we know that millions of people have jobs now who wouldn't have had jobs without the action that we have taken to fight the covid recession and strengthen our

recovery. one thing we did do is give money to people to spend, which is crucial when jobs got cut back. in the era of covid, that created some bottlenecks that have contributed to a temporary spike in inflation, but that inflation is, you know clipping for for families, however, millions of people not having jobs would be worse. and i would make that trade-off in a heartbeat. with what is happening in eastern europe, we are likely to see an increase in gas prices. that will be felt at the pump. that will hurt americans and their purchasing power of their paychecks, but that is absolutely not a reason to say, oh, the relief we did to fight covid was a problem. host: we will give phone numbers.

now. we have rachel greszler and heidi shierholz with us for the next 40 minutes, and we want to invite you to join in on this economic roundtable. republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats, 202-748-8000. independents, 202-748-8002. this concern over inflation, the house or senate in session, this is senator pat toomey talking about how inflation is impacting wages and american buying power. [video clip] senator toomey: isn't it true that most low and middle income workers have experienced a bigger rise in the cost of the things they need to buy than their incomes? >> well, i appreciate the

concern very much, senator. we are all concerned about inflation and i appreciate that that is -- the purview of the fed in the short-term and it is important that we have a full slate of governors. i want to point out this chart on the far right. senator toomey: we know the number of governors is adequate to do whatever they need to do about inflation, so let's not go there. >> let's look at the chart. senator toomey: can you confirm the fact that for most workers wages are not rising as fast as prices? >> recent estimates by economists suggest that actually, if we look at the bottom 50% of workers, that their market income before taxes and benefits is greater now than before 2019.

if you look after taxes and benefits, they are ahead. senator toomey: so, we saw the number of 7.5% as the most recent annual rate of inflation. we know that low and middle income people have a worse experience than that because they pay a disproportionate amount of their income for things rising more rapidly like gasoline, like groceries. are you telling me you think that the average worker in america is more than keeping up with inflation? >> what we know is that households -- look, we do not want to see this level of inflation, that is why the president is focused on doing what he can, he would like the federal reserve to adjust its posture, but we know that household balance sheets, because of the effort of the federal government, have been maintained through the pandemic. host: from that hearing last

week, our economic roundtable -- so, inflation is part of the conversation but reminded viewers on what the federal reserve's expectation is right now for inflation and when these either those numbers or expect the numbers to come down? guest: i think that the federal reserve has that inflation -- ha s said inflation is not transitory anymore. we are at a 40 year high, so that will continue. 9.7% of an increase in the consumer price index indicates it could be higher going forward. and i share the concern, especially among lower income americans who are the most hit by inflation because they spend a higher portion of their income. so we need to look at ways that actually buys them more. the problem right now is employers are having to increase

compensation because there are so many job openings and few workers, but they are paying people more to do the exact same thing. when that happens, that results in them charging higher prices. labor is 60% of the cost of goods and services, so it is clear why we have higher inflation. so they are paying more to do the same thing, that leads to inflation, so how can we have people earn more money without them producing more? that is where we need to look to alternative options. that is the government getting out of the way, letting people pursue the type of work they want, looking to lower cost of training that would help people become more productive, eliminating the double tax on investments in technology, partner with people to help them produce more over the long run. we need to focus on real wage gains, not just higher paychecks. host: go ahead and respond, hiding.

guest: a really important thing -- heidi. guest: that is a really important thing but i want to make a correction -- it's clear that inflation is not coming from an increase in workers' wages. there is no correlation between increases in prices and wages. we know this if you think about the conversations coming out about inflation. we know that restaurants are raising wages, but nobody has talked about increased restaurant prices. we know used car prices are through the roof, but that is not about wages because those are cars that were built years ago. so we are not seeing the wage price spiral that would be a concern. there is no evidence that companies are raising prices because they are worried about workers being able to demand

higher wages. host: let's bring viewers in. there's plenty. ron in new hampshire, a democrat. caller: good morning. awesome guests. i love the show. there's been so much downward pressure on the general masses in this country for so long in so many different ways. take education, we do not invest in our people's education and our general masses. only if you are wealthy can you really get out there and actually good a very good education. it's difficult if you are not. so therefore, we need to import our high tech people. but that there is a party amongst us that does not really like people coming from other countries, coming into our country and taking our jobs.

but then again, we do not have that high-tech training here to take those high-tech jobs. and on top of that, we do not want immigrants coming in to pick the fruit intake jobs -- and take jobs. so much downward pressure for so many years on things like that, as well as our debt. our debt is massive, huge, and we can barely pay the interest rate, that is my interest rates don't go up. if they did, we would not be able to afford to pay the interest on our debt. we have got to make so many changes, but everybody is wrong, nobody is right. we have got to make the changes. there's no way adding more debt and getting rid of or pouring more money into gasoline will help the weather. host: thank you for bringing up

several topics. let's give folks a chance to respond. the debt is $30 trillion and counting. that's about $240,000 per taxpayer. rachel, how much debt is too much? guest: i think we are beyond that point already. we have known for a wild that over 100% of gdp has been considered a tipping point to reducing economic growth and we are already at that. i am so good you put $30 trillion into a context that taxpayers can understand. $240,000, and it does not include security obligations, and even more with medicare. so i think that debt is our biggest threat today.

the problem is you can predict it, we should know it is coming right now, but when they happen they happen quickly and you do not have time to enact more commonsense reforms that would ease the pain of peering down government. it has to be fast. and it causes significant pain. so i think we need to wake up to the fact that our debt is unsustainable today it has been unsustainable for many years. and we have got to address that, we have to rein in the scope of government and give more back to people because it is individuals who know the decisions best for them and their families, not policymakers. host: what about the u.s. national debt? guest: this discussion about that, the -- debt is a really important conversation. one key thing is the public that

only -- debt only tells as part of what we are leaving to future generations and therefore more important part is our productive capacity or our ability to generate income. if we have failed -- had failed to act to provide relief to the impact of covid, the productive capacity of the nation would have been damaged dramatically. and this is totally not speculation. estimates of the nation's productive capacity absolutely collapsed after the great recession because we did not do the kind of relief that would have gotten us back to recovery in a reasonable timeframe. by 2018, the end of the recovery from the great recession, the output of the economy was estimated to be $1 trillion lower than it was predicted in

2018. that was because of the slow recovery that happened because congress didn't do nearly enough in relief and recovery. it's 100% the case our children's living standards would be higher, not lower, because we took on the debt that was needed to get as to a quick recovery from the coronavirus shock. we are not there yet, but we are getting there quickly and we have a very strong jobs recovery. one other comment in relation to the last caller's questions. one of the things that is happening in this recovery is we have seen a huge drop in state and local government jobs. right now, those jobs are down around three quarters of a million relative to where they were pre-covid, and more than

half of those at the time is in education. that's hundreds of thousands few teachers and other education personnel in public schools. that is a disaster and it will hurt our productivity going forward. that's that for the future of this country. one of the things, given all that, one thing that our government can do is use their fund from the american rescue plan act that happened last march. we have got a substantial amount of state relief in the act. states really need to be utilizing that money to hire back state and local government workers that were lost when covid hit. getting in particular those jobs back in education is important to making sure our education

system, and therefore our impact on the kids of this country, does not fall away behind as a result of this recession. host: halfway through our economic roundtable. our guests include heidi shierholz, president of the economic policy institute and rachel greszler of the heritage foundation. aski young -- asking you to call in on lines split by political party. good morning. caller: good morning. give me three good minutes or less. i think that the ladies are talking too much. we know what is wrong. we do know that. we do know that $.18 on gas, a tax, will not help us cut that. that's garbage. we had enough gas when the past

president was in office. we were self-sufficient. we had fuel. now, we didn't have all these people coming through the southern border. you go to walmart, you go to any store, the food prices are up, gas is up. an apple is $.75. i cannot afford to buy my grandson an apple. i put two of them on the scale the other day and they came to a dollar 89, -- to $1.89. biden is going to get troops killed over there and at than the world will be upset, like they were in afghanistan with 13 soldiers were killed. do not think we do not have troops in ukraine. i am a retired military guy, i know what is going on. host: we will take those comments. heidi, i will let you start. guest: it is a really good

point. i deeply appreciate that the increase in inflation we have seen has really impacted households' purchasing power. it matters. one thing i think is important is there's a light at the end of the tunnel. the inflation is not going to last. i no that does not make it easier now -- know it does not make it easier now, but the light at the ne of the tunnel -- end of the tunnel israel. the reason we -- is real. the reason we have inflation is because of covid. in a global pandemic, we've seen a spike in prices which has contributed to inflation. and another thing that has led to inflation is the supply chain

snarls, related in that shift of spending from services to goods. and the shutdowns of ports because of covid. when covid is in the rearview mirror, these things are going to abate. that does not mean that inflation now will not cause pain, but that means this is not going to last and that is good news. the other thing is even though we still have a long way to go, we still have a big job deficit, depending on how you measure the counterfactual jobs on on the order of 4 million to 6 million jobs. we still have a long way to go but we are filling the gap so fast on the order of four times faster than during the great recession, and that is because of the congress has really acted to give us a strong recovery.

and that is good news. it is not here yet for everyone, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. host: rachel, let me give you marie in new york on the line for democrats. caller: so, you cannot compare this recovery to the great recession recovery because obviously if you shut down all the jobs in the economy in different sectors, then open them up the jobs do not come back. i do not think it is biden's economic policy, i do not think he is creating new jobs, so that is not correct. and you have to pay down the debt. we are having a crisis, there will be times we need to put money into the economy and i do not think it is a good idea to keep spending and making the debt even more. host: rachel? guest: thank you for that. it is important to point out

that this is a different recession from the 2008 recession, because this is effectively being induced by the government. we knew we would be causing a recession and we expected it to be a v-shaped recovery, but unfortunately we have not seen as strong of growth as we should have. and there's millions more people unemployed today, but i think there are millions more on top of that, there could have been more, if we had not enacted these policies with enormous government spending, limiting the supply of available workers. and the debt is a huge burden. talking about the capacity of our future generations, i have young children and i actually 100% think that they will be worse off because of the in norma's amount of spending and the setback caused by limiting a supply of labor. we need to think about their productive capacity, what are they going to be able to produce

when they have a mountain of debt upon them. at the risk of a financial crisis at any point. and the cost of that and what more has to come out of their paychecks, and their ability to provide for themselves and their families and to have opportunities going forward is that we have had in past generations. we have restricted that. we need to do as much as we can now to not put restrictions on our future generations. host: wendy, an independent. caller: good morning. i'm calling because i watch both sides, republicans and democrats. i know you are worried about the deficit and all that. right now, i am unemployed. and i am worried about what is going on with my economy, my financials. um, i feel when the stimulus

came out the first time, you probably gave out too much money and that is a problem. right now what i am looking for is when president trump was in charge, the republicans gave $100,000 you could take out of your 401(k) without a penalty. and you could spread it out for three years. now, i am sure there are many in my situation, middle-class -- i'm not rich so i do not have a lot of money to take care of me during this time. i got taxed for my unemployment. i owe for the first time. and we did not get that break for the $10,000. those are two things that would help us, the.

people. take the menu got from the stimulus, pay down the debt. we need to live below our means. and will happen with you when you retire? i do not know what will happen. but you could help -- that's another thing you could do -- social security taxes and be taken out, there should not be a limit on income because the poor people will be taken care of, the rich people are taken care of and us middle-class people who are trying to make it in this crazy world, it's hard, ok ? i saved money and now i want to help myself. i do not need another government handout. that's what i want, i want you guys to work it out and get something for the middle class. host: thank you for sharing your story. heidi? guest: i deeply appreciate the

call. i totally hear you on how hard this continues to be for you and for millions. we are not there yet. we are in a strong recovery. but you are an example of how we still have a long way to go. we still are a few million jobs in the hole. that means it is not easy for everybody who wants a to be able to find one. one thing we should do, something that your comments really pointed to, was make that kind of investments that will really help the middle class. a lot of the things that will really help the middle class were in the president's build back better act. the politics of it are murky right now but it would do things like make childcare investments that would make it easier for

middle-class families to be able to work. it would extend access to affordable health coverage. it would lift millions of children above the poverty line by extending the child tax credit revision that was in the last recovery bill. it would do a lot of things that would set the economy on track. that would not just benefit the very wealthy, so that we would have an equitable recovery. not just a strong recovery, but an echo double -- equitable recovery, where middle-class families and lower-class families, that they all actually share in the recovery. and one of the things that that build back better act would have done is it would not have increased the deficit. it would have been fine. it would have shrunk tax breaks

on the wealthy and of the impact on the deficit would have been zero over the next decade, and it would've reduced at the deficit by about $2 trillion over the following decade. so it would've been in line with the kind of things you were talking about. there is a lot of energy to do more. we know that they are trying to get things done in congress, but i hear what you are talking about and i deeply appreciate the situation you are in. guest: if i could jump in. two points. it's so important. i need to clarify that the build back better act would actually add $30 trillion over 10 years to the debt -- $3 trillion over 10 years to the debt.

middle-class americans find it difficult to save on their own. part of the reason is because social security is already taking 12.4% of their income, over $6,000 a year for is somebody earning $50,000 and not as much needed to actually save for acp and a secure retirement. one step is to limit the size and scope of social security and get it back to protecting people who are in old age and poverty and have it be a more opportunistic and wealth building program. another program or policy that could really help middle income americans is having one place to see without being taxed twice, whether you want to save for retirement or health care expenses or childcare for your children's college, to buy a home, having one simple account to save in would make it easier. this has been successful in the u.k. and canada in helping

middle income is be able to save. host: we have less than 10 minutes. and plenty of callers. good morning, joy. caller: i want to go back to a conversation and that was spoken about earlier with heidi. she was indicating that she does not believe that wages are tied into rising prices. i don't know where she comes to that point because as a small business owner, in order to recruit people -- i have a home health care company in florida -- we are in a crisis and it is related to the rising cost of wages. we operate on a small margin, so in order to keep up and recruit, and to staff the care and needs of our clients, we have to

increase our wages. i had to increase by 25% because that was the bare minimum i had to increase my employees' wages just to recruit people. because during the pandemic we unilaterally shut our business down and have not accepted new clients and have not allowed people to cross work. we wanted to protect the clients we had in their homes because nobody knew enough about covid and we were dealing with a vulnerable population. we thought it would go on for a few months, three years later we are still in that, so at some point we had to make a decision that we had to reopen our doors and start recruiting. i talk to people in skilled care nursing, their wage increases are like 200%. these buildings operate on a 1% or 2% margin. we will be in a major health care crisis. i'm not sure why she is saying

that inflated costs are not related to inflated wages. and -- host: let me let heidi shierholz respond. guest: i appreciated the question and the chance to clarify. it is 100% true that we are seeing strong wage growth. my point is price inflation is coming from -- is not coming from wage inflation. where the weak growth is coming from is we have an extraordinary demand for workers. and that is really good. we added 6.6 million workers over the last year. there's fast growth in the labor market filling in the gaps we had from the covid a recession and that is excellent news. but it means employers are trying to hire like crazy. at the same time, because of

covid, we have fewer workers in our labor force. millions are out of the labor force because of things like remaining safety and health concerns, and ongoing covid related care responsibilities. so those things, when you put them together, we have a huge demand for workers because of what congress did. and because of covid we still have fewer workers able to work right now. all that means is employers are really having to compete for workers. and that is raising wages. in order for employers to keep workers, they have absolutely had to raise wages. so your story about raising wages, it's not just you, we are seeing that more broadly. the point i was making is that evidence, and that price increases are happening, they

are not related. if you look at very detailed industries, there is not a correlation between wage increases and price increases. price increases are coming from somewhere else, they are coming from global supply chain snarls, from the fact that people have totally shifted their spending from services, or in the recession, really shifted from services to goods. those are the things driving inflation. inflation is not coming from inside the labor market. and the reason that that is important is really good news because it means the kind of inflation we are seeing now is very unlikely to create what would be a concern if we had a wage price spiral, that is when employers raise prices because they think workers will

be able to demand higher wages in the future. at that is not what we are seeing. the correlation between the price inflation and wage increases is not there. i appreciate that call. wages are rising. but it is just not bleeding over into raising prices. host: let's get some more phone calls in. anne in north carolina, an independent. caller: good morning. i called on the democratic line. i want to build on what wendy was saying. i live on a small pension and on social security. like and 401k because i was a federal worker -- like a 401k. my federal pension has been reduced by $8,000. that's because of what ronald reagan did. that's why we are taxed on our

social security, it goes back to 1983. anyway, i still owe taxes. the johnson tax act did not help me one single bit. i still owe estate taxes for north carolina. so this idea that people who live on, make or acquire $50,000 a year pay no taxes is hogwash because my whole life i have paid taxes. i never made over $50,000 a year my whole entire life. i'm not saying i am on a pity party. i have food, clothing and shelter. but this idea that people in live 50 and under income bracket or level pay no taxes, i am upset with that because we do. host: let me turn over to rachel on that. guest: thank you.

it is important to point out that taxes are significant across-the-board. americans pay more on taxes than food, clothing and housing combined. it is a burden and there are problems with our system in terms of the way it is not efficient because it does not establish a tax that is straightforward and direct for everybody. there's special interest groups, taxing some things twice. caller: special interest groups. host: anne, we are running out of time. i apologize. let me give them a chance to respond. guest: i think that we have got to look at ways to reduce tax burdens, especially for those paying a larger share of their income. on the retirement side, there are ways to help retirees, things like eliminating their retirement earnings tax that

feels like a 50% tax on earnings. we should be getting rid of that. you talked about the windfall elimination provision in terms of the interaction between the federal government and savings, there's changes that could be made there that would not only help financially but our common sense. it would help people make the choice is best for them, including continuing to work, may be an independent worker, doing contracting as they retire from their full-time jobs and can continue to pursue something else. host: we began the segment with rachel greszler, so i will give you the final moment, heidi shierholz. guest: we have a lot of changes we could make to our tax code and the most important thing would be to make it more progressive. a lot of the wealthy and corporations can exploit to not pay their fair share of taxes.

there's action we could take to make the tax code more fair and raise revenue. the other thing i want to say when you talk about the middle class is it is incredibly important to not only shrink social security but to withstand it. we know that a huge swath of people are retiring without a big 401(k) or personal savings, which used to be the three pro ngs of retirement. you would have a retirement plan from work, personal savings and a social security. we know that the other two have really fallen back. it's incredibly important that social security get strength so people can have security in their retirement age. host: i feel like we could do one of these everyday. and we have the calls and stories. but heidi shierholz, president

of the economic policy institute and rachel greszler of the heritage foundation, thank you. we'll stick around for the next 10 minutes here and continue with phone calls. we have time until our next guest to have an open forum. if you are on the line, stay on the line. republicans, democrats and independents. in about 10 minutes, we will talk about news guard's efforts to root out misinformation on the internet and around the globe. that conversation will be in about 10 minutes. one of the stories we did not get to was the impact of the crisis in eastern europe on stock markets around the world. this is from the u.s., all three

major indexes dropped yesterday, sent wall street really. -- reeling. the dow jones going down yesterday, down 1.4%. the s&p 500 dropped 1%. and the nasdaq fell 1.2%. the to do finish tipped at the s&p 500 into correction territory, that's when an index drops more than 10% from its most recent high. you have probably seen those numbers and takers over the past 24 hours. and we will be watching the stock takers today -- tickers today. jeff out of new york on the independent line. our guests are not still here but what did you want to talk about? caller: how covid exposed a major weakness of the u.s. that i do not think either party is addressing much, that's the

jam up of all the supplies coming out of container ports. they have talked about the largest in long beach and how it is paid for by the local government. why is in our federal government investing more in our container ports. china has massive container ports and ours are too small and run by local government and a small businesses. why aren't we pumping money in there? host: bob in indiana, a republican. caller: good morning. yes, i would like to share my thoughts. i come from a small community that we had automotive most of our lives here. and iron drive around the country and see a lot of empty parking lots and large

manufacturing companies. and i also was a toolmaker all my life and ended up being a tool manager as far as business for smaller companies here. and i want to share that i think that manufacturing is so much more important for our country than most people realize. when you talk about tooling, tooling is the tools that mold or sheet-metal stamp out the products. we, as a country, have given our tools to china and plenty of other countries building tools.. i can only speak from our small community, one time we had 600 tool makers in one business at delphi. and all those jobs, they are down to about two, and it is because they sent tooling

overseas. wherever the tooling goes is where the manufacturing goes. it's important to keep that in mind because you have to have engineering to engineer the tools, design the tools, and also the prototype tools. we need to work more at keeping the tools in this country and keep, i would call it the above middle-class jobs, available. if you keep the tooling in the country you will keep manufacturing in this country, therefore more taxes are being paid by the workers and that is what keeps us out of debt. that is what i am thinking in a nutshell. host: from bob to rob, a democrat. caller: good morning. on the ukraine crisis, i think we should sign a deal with

russia and it say that we will not allow ukraine to join nato for the next 10 years. however, we should let ukraine reconstitute its nuclear weapon program, much like israel has, and they will not admit that they have nuclear weapons. like pakistan has it, so india will not attack pakistan with nuclear weapons. i think that might over a crisis because putin will probably be gone in 10 years. i do not think he will be around that long, but that is an idea that we should put out there and i think it might work. thank you. host: rob in missouri. we spent the first hour today talking about the crisis in eastern europe. one article we did not get to, but may be of interest, in the new york times.

madeleine albright was the secretary of state from 1997 to 2001, putin's pursuit, writing that ukraine is entitled to its sovereignty no matter who it's neighbor happens to be. in the modern era, great countries except that and so must mr. putin. two minutes left in our open forum to get your thoughts on any political or international issue. earl in brookfield, illinois, an independent. caller: good morning. i want to make a comment about the previous folks you had on. the lady speaking from the heritage foundation, she was of course speaking from a wealthier point of view. and so i wanted to make a comment on taxes because they were talking about them. right now, anyway, the wealthy or super wealthy really do not earn money.

they appropriate it or they figure out ways to get it, but it is the people that work very hard for a little bit of money, who pay taxes at a higher rate than people who appropriate money, because they can. i'm one of those people who thinks the older wealthy really should be paying an excessive amount of taxes and at the people that do not have any money to pay taxes really should not have to. host: are you somebody in support of a wealth tax, as it has been described? caller: i'm not sure exactly how that works, but i think it is a case of not necessarily income but you have a tax on your sitting money, is that it? host: there are several

proposals and that is one of them, sometimes it is not of their earnings per year where the super wealthy have their money, it's in long-term investments and properties, and that would have a wealth tax -- in a form it would apply to that. caller: that makes sense. that was the premise of my whole thing, the super wealthy do not have to work. they have to just call people and asking them to manipulate their money. and i guess that that is work in some degree. but it's very, very -- not everyone is blessed with the ability to control finances with the genius. these people with a lot of money, they have got brains. it's not like they are -- but the abilities to making a lot of

money seem like -- if you know how to cut down trees, if you are really good at that you do not make a lot of money at that. but if you manipulate money coming can make a lot. host: cliff out of san angelo, texas, a republican. are you with us? caller: yeah. can you hear me? host: yes. caller: i will answer the last guy. i am one of those guys that manipulates money but it took me 45 years to do it. i played -- i'm the old tennis pro. host: i remember you. caller: i played in pro sports. back in my heyday, i did not make the money the big guys make today but i made good money. people do not realize that in

the 1970's i paid more than half of my income to the federal government. how did that work? my earned income was taxed at 50%. i'm an equal partner with the government at that point, which i do not think is fair, but i am equal partners. any investment income i have on the side, which was not much, was taxed at 90%. so for my career i was not even an equal partner in my own business and i gave all that money in taxes. now i bought used cars and i live in a small home an i earn a little off of my investments. going all over the world was hard work. one other thing, let me say one

other thing -- in the previous conversations about biden and ukraine, look, it is all around oil, period. inflation is around oil. we have stopped our oil production and we are begging the rest of the world to produce more, which is playing into putin's hands. and they are saying biden is being strong? trump was a strong, he made us energy independent. let me ask one green purse and that is fanatical on fossil fuel, let me ask one question -- if they had to get their husband to the hospital immediately with the use fossil fuel? what about taking their kids in school each day? you can talk the theory of what you would do, but the rest of the world, putin included, it

reminds me of these guys i would compete against in tennis, they are looking at us as weak, they are sensing we are weak. we have to compete against these people and we are not doing it. host: since we have not chatted since the australian open, i wonder about your thoughts on novak djokovic and the vaccine caller: that was a tough one. listen. in this day and age of politically correct, i am coming off 20 months of covid. i've been in treatment for long covid. i know a lot about the issue. what is that? host: i am listening. caller: i am coming off of 20 months of long covid. i know a little bit about the issue. novak djokovic had covid before

he went to australia. his doctors advised him not to get the shot for his own personal reasons. again, we have not recognized natural immunity if you have covid. i think they should have given him an antibody test. it's a shame that this is gotten into politics. he would be wanted back as a defending champion with a broader view. let me say one thing. -- host: we are running out of time. i have another guest waiting. but i would love to chat about tennis another time. caller: about long covid --. host: i have a debt -- guest waiting. he is on soon. steven brill is here to talk just after the break about the

issue of miss information and how russia is trying to change the narrative of the ukraine ovation. stick around for that discussion. we will be right back. >> weekends on c-span two are an intellectual feast did every saturday, you will find events that explore our nation's past. book tv brings you the latest of nonfiction books and authors. it is television first serious readers. discover, explore. weekends on c-span two. >> c-span offers a variety of podcast that has something for every listener. weekdays, washington today gives you the latest from the capital, and every week, book notes plus has in-depth interviews with the

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commander-in-chief, from george washington to joe biden. find short biographies, video resources, white facts, and rich images that tell the story of the lives of the presidents, all in one easy to follow c-span website. visit c-span.org/presidents to begin exploring this rich catalog of resources, today. >> washington journal continues. host: steven brill joins us for a conversation on online media misinformation. he is the co-ceo of news guard tech. he will explain what they find when they go to that website. guest: they will find a description of a company that we started three years ago that lives off of the principles that every once in a while, human intelligence better than artificial intelligence.

we have 40 experienced journalists who read, review, and write readings and nutrition labels for the 7000 plus news and information websites responsible for more than 95% of all engagement online in the united states and in the countries in europe where we operate. we apply a political standards to our ratings, -- does have a collection -- correction policy? does it handle news responsibly? does it mix it with opinion? does it repeatedly published false news? does it explain who owns the site and is behind the site? with those ratings, if you download our browser extension, each time you look at facebook feeds or twitter feeds or look

at a ring search or google search, or do anything online, you will see our little red or green icon, and if you hover over the icon, you can begin to read the nutrition label which explains exactly how we apply the rating that we applied. host: why is it important to do this? why not let an algorithm do this , as big tech companies rely upon algorithms for this approach? guest: look at how that has worked out. there are now four different companies that rate the reliability of news and information sites. there is facebook, there's twitter. there is google, and there is lots. with facebook and twitter, there is an algorithm, it is a secret. it is not transparent. with -- if c-span or the new york times went to find out how

they rate the reliability, they would have no idea. they wouldn't know who to call. if they got someone on the phone at facebook, that person would say, we can tell you. if they did tell you, it you orated more or less reliable than the washington post, and you ask why, they would say we cannot tell you because you gamer system. -- game our system. all of our ratings are transparent. we always call for comment before we say anything bad about anyone, which is what any journalist does. algorithms don't call for comment, and we want you to game our system. we want websites to say g, if i had a corrections policy, i would get a higher score. as of today, more than 1800 7000 plus sites -- 18,700 plus sites have been graded. we love that.

that's why we started the company. host: the news of the day and news guard's role -- you have been analyzing this information from russia as it relates to eastern europe. how is russia using state owned media, that you found, and what narrative are they pushing? guest: they are using state owned media to start a war and to justify a war. it is that simple. some of the narratives are that the ukrainians are being persecuted by nazis. or they have been invited in. there are a whole variety of myths that have been posted online on rt which is called russia today, but they changed the name to rt so no one would know what it is. for example, it's video service has a giant following on google.

they run ads, by the way, which are financed by some of the most iconic american brands to program act sizing -- advertising. that is the advertising done by an algorithm, so if you are a major soft drink company or retailer, your ad may appear on russian propaganda without you even knowing. american companies are financing this stuff, and one of the services we provide at the ad agency is we tell them how to filter out the disinformation sites from legitimate sites. host: rt.com -- this is the label from news guard. a 12.5 out of 100. proceed with caution is what is on the label. it severely violates basic journalistic standards, including not repeatedly -- it does repeatedly publish false

information, it does not present information responsibly, and so on. the two places where it gets a green check from news guard is that ed discloses its ownership and financing, and reveals who is in charge, including possible conflict of interest. caller: i think the one in germany that we rated might be france. there is a mix there. but there are nine criteria, straight down the line. even if it is rt, a site that you and i might not like very much, if they adhere to one of the criteria, they get a check mark. that is why they don't get a zero. host: the three sites, rt.com, ta ss, what news guard focuses on and focuses on. our report at news guard tech.com. let me tell viewers how to call

in and join the conversation because we have steven brill with us for the next 25 mins. it is (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8002 for independence. russia is using misinformation to manipulate things. guest: sure. and they will start a meth on their site and then some other sites in the u.s. will -- france, germany, other countries where we operate, and they will pick it up and they will site it and say this article appeared online. we should tell you about it. it is a real misinformation campaign. what is new is that there is a lot of wars that have been

started based on misinformation, but here, it is blatant, and it is right out front, and we started seeing this stuff about the ukraine as far back as the year ago. this is a sustained campaign. what is disheartening about it, again, to come back to the financing, if you look at the ad on tasks or on sputnik, two examples. you will see a logo on the top right of each of those ads, and they could be from name your favorite american -- for example, i was looking at task, a shoe company, and they can't possibly know that they are financing it. but if you look at the right hand logo, those ads are delivered by google. google has the largest

advertising platform for programmatic advertising. they apparently do not care. they can stop those ads going there as soon as they hear my voice this morning. they could stop it, if they want to do. they don't want to. they are making money, and there is a war in ukraine. host: one question before we get the callers. stepping back from the conflict in eastern europe, in the yard -- larger media universe, what is the biggest distributor of online news misinformation? guest: it depends on the subject matter. for example, the largest category, which actually surprised us, when we started, we thought most of it be the kind of political propaganda that we are talking about this morning, but the larger portion has to do with health care

misinformation. that was before the pandemic. the reason is that there is so much money in health hoaxes, because you go to a site like national news.com, which is a whole network of health care hoax sites, and if you go there, they will sell you a subscription, for example, for apricots, because it will cure cancer. you will cancel your appointment with your oncologist and by apricots. obviously, for covid, that stuff is just accelerated exponentially. that has been the biggest surprise, but in terms of political propaganda, probably the most successful is rt on youtube. that is of course the google product. host: on twitter, lindsay wanted

me to ask you, where you got qualified to determine what is or isn't false information, your background? guest: i've been a journalist more years than you would like to count, as you know, but i am not qualified. what is qualified is that what we do is look at specific standards of journalistic practices. there isn't a republican way or a democratic way to have a corrections policy if you are a news organization. you make corrections candidly and quickly. that is one of the things we look at. what we do is we have a team of about 40 journalists who all have experience. they all come from varied backgrounds. typically, every site we rate goes through five or six -- starting with a junior person,

then a senior person, then a senior editor, and my partner and i do the final line edit on each site that we do. nothing happens without us calling the site for comment. if they do comment, we include their comments. very often, they will explain something to us that we are about to get wrong, when we publish. they point out yes, we have a corrections policy, and we make corrections. you did not see it on our website. here it is. and we will say, thank you very much. we are wrong. it is not a matter of whether i am qualified to make a political judgment, it is a matter of whether our team is qualified to publish these completely transparent ratings. to get comments from everyone who reads them. to be completely accountable and transparent if we make mistakes. host: on the phone, this is

christopher from oklahoma. democrat. good morning. caller: good morning, john. my question is about, you are talking about algorithms and social media. i was thinking about when facebook got caught here in the last two years using algorithms in this country. negative posts and material [indiscernible] depression. my question was about legislation pertaining to that, and how can you fight back against stuff like that? it is difficult to prove that something like that caused a depression or anxiety. guest: i don't think you can do

it with legislation. i am comfortable with the largest -- government making decisions about content, whether it is online, or in newspapers. radio, or television. what i think works best is giving people information about the sources they are about to read or the sources they are about to see. that is what we do. it is also why librarians love news guard. we are now in more than 800 libraries around the world. people now go to public libraries, and it is a major source of getting broadband. they don't have broadband at home, and they use the public library for that. these 800 plus libraries call news guard on their computers in their libraries. so, if you go to the library, and you are online, you will see

our red and green ratings the virtue of that is that it does not block anything. librarians don't want to block people from reading anything. they just want to provide information about what they are reading. the way we like to think about news guard, right now, if you walk into a library, you would see books neatly arranged according to subject matter, and magazines arranged according to subject matter. you could pick up a book and read the book jacket and learn something about the author, learn something from the publisher. who is the publisher? best of all, there is library. the librarian will tell you, if you are going to read this book about world economics, it is written by a news -- nobel prize winner who is liberal or conservative. you may want to read this other book to get the right balance. librarians explained to you giving information about your sources.

imagine if you walked into a library. the only thing you would have is a trillion pieces of paper flying through the air. if you pluck one out of the air, can you start -- and you start reading it -- you don't know who read it, and -- wrote it, you don't know their perspectives, and that is what news guard does the work of flavorings. for the internet. that i think is the perspective, rather than having the government say you need to have this kind of algorithm or that kind of algorithm, and whether what you are reading is causing depression or you want to go out and do something violent, i think it has been pretty well established over the years that the government interferes to protect people from having -- how they might act. speech is not the solution we favor in the united states.

host: you said the majority of people seek out information that they want to believe in here. so they will distrust your ratings. guest: that is true in many cases. i wrote a book a few years ago, and one of the stunning pieces of data in the book was that, at that time, it was 2018. something like 10 to 15% of all americans fought -- thought that 9/11 was an inside job of the bush administration. another 10 to 15% of americans thought that barack obama was not born in the united states. for people who were on those fridges -- fringes of belief or disbelief, you are probably not going to do very much to convince them of anything other than what they already are convinced of.

it is everyone else in the middle you can inform. if you look at the reports that were written by people who participated in the insurrection of january 6, you can see, by and large, that most of those people were people who were ordinary american citizens. a fireman from staten island, there was a construction worker in ohio who just read stuff online and started going down the rabbit hole, and he ended up with extreme beliefs that he did not start with. the way to deal with that is not the government interfering, but giving those people more information about what they are reading before they go down those rabbit holes. host: you might be the first author to reference a book he wrote without mentioning its title. let me do it for you. i think you are talking about the 2018 book tailspin. the people and forces behind the

50 year fall and those fighting to reverse it. you are the author of that book. guest: i try not to promote books, especially if it is three years after they were on the bestseller list. host: matt, north carolina, republican. good morning. caller: i just wanted to say good morning. host: do you have a comment or question? caller: i wanted to say that i wish i had a patent on what he was saying. six months ago, with my wife, the bottom line was that without getting into details with myself, i used to work for the government, and what i would do, and i would do, and i'm asking you, hey, these people that you are going through and looking at, you are determining what is misinformation, how about we identify those individuals? then they have a certain

inspector general or whoever that comes out and checks those journalists, and they could possibly lose their license based on misinformation. so, desperate desk. --. host: do you think they should lose a license? caller: absently. host: mr. brill? guest: no. i am reminded of an experience i had in a former life when i started on court tv's cable channel. i wanted to cover a certain trial and judge, and they asked us to write an essay on how we would cover the trial come and how our coverage of the trial would enhance confidence in the justice system. i called the judge impliedly told him that if he actually required us to write that essay, i was going to sue him. the government should not be

[indiscernible] i would've written a wonderful essay. host: peter in florida. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i will be a 180 from your guest. i see this is the private sector doing its own 1984. i will give you some examples. they used incubators, and soldiers who them out on the floor. but under him, it would be not proved. iraq is message -- weapons of the mass destruction. the whole media said that was 100%. under his rationale, that would be considered censored news. i could go on and on and that is the scary part. when he talks about rt news, i enjoyed listening to rt news on my ipad. i watch cnn on current events that unfold. i think the american people

should have that. if you have a problem with rt news or the segments, lay it out there and show it to the people. don't panic. don't ban information. host: do you want to respond? guest: i think the caller did not hear a single word i said. i said quite the opposite. i think if you like rt news, even if you believe rt news, that is your right. nobody should ban it. but people should know that rt news is controlling -- is controlled by vladimir putin. that is a fact. just like people should know that c-span was started by the cable tumble -- television industry. that is a fact. i am not in favor of banning anything. quite the opposite. if you supply information about sources, what you are saying is that all the sources should exist. it is just that people should

want to know, if they want to know. who is behind those sources? not that they are nefarious or terrible, but just state the facts. host: a question on twitter. for example, ap and reuters are the sources for most stories. what is being done to ensure they are neutral and they are factual? guest: i think the marketplace makes them as neutral and factual as they can be because they are licensed by news organizations all over the world. and if they lose the contents of those organizations, they will suffer, and their influence will suffer. so they have all sorts of checks and balances in place in the case of reuters, governed by trust with a specific mission and specific values that the trust has to enforce. but they are not perfect. ap is not perfect. everyone makes mistakes.

the question is what does writers do and it makes mistakes. it corrects the mistakes. what rt does, or what info wars does, or what natural news does is they cover up the mistakes. in fact, they perpetuate the mistakes. host: texas, willie in the lone star state. republican. caller: good morning mr. brill. two quick things. i know where you stand now because you, politically, use the word insurrection to describe what i and most people now and what is coming out, most people believe was a peaceful protest on january 6 that went awfully arrived by some really bad actors. but the majority, the overwhelming majority of people who were there at the capital, they were doing their civic duty

by voicing their opinion about elections. second, where does use guard stand, and where did they stand when it came to the new york post, who just on twitter, basically said hunter biden issue over the laptop and all was misinformation and they took the story down off of twitter, and you couldn't share it, he couldn't read it, you could not do anything of the sort. they knocked twitter out. or twitter locked them out of their account. please, come back with an answer to either of those two questions. guest: i will answer both in reverse order. the new york post gets a green rating, and we don't block anything. we don't favor anyone blocking anything.

i hope that is an answer to your second question. this first question, i have to say, respectfully, we were not watching the same television news, i guess, on january 6. i saw hundreds of people overrunning the capital, breaking windows, attacking police officers. all for the purpose of locking the confirmation and election results. i think it is fair to say, characterizing it as an insurrection, it is not unreasonable. host: here on capitol hill, folks are concerned about misinformation ahead of elections. in the coming midterm elections, and the coming presidential elections, for viewers who are concerned with misinformation and u.s. media, what would be your recommendation?

guest: be careful about your new sources. for example, there is now a whole network of websites posing as independent local news operations. it is called the courier news network. they have a paper in arizona, for example, called the copper courier. if you read the about section on their website, they say they were founded to fill the void left by the decline of local newspapers. they are independent, nonprofit, and they just want to provide you with the facts. important local news. it turns out, their financed by a liberal democratic political action committee. they were founded for the sole purpose of boosting local candidates -- democratic

candidates. running for election or reelection. they are posing as local news. that, to me, is really -- it undermines everything i believe about journalism, as what it is supposed to be. please be careful about your sources, even seemingly innocent wonderful nonprofit new sources. the great thing about the internet is that everyone can be a publisher. the really bad thing about the internet is that everyone can be a publisher. host: let's try to get one or two more phone calls. from the buckeye state, jean, democrat. good morning. caller: hello. i just wanted to relate one story about these conspiracy theories. they are everywhere. they are even talk to your children in school. my son was in the fifth grade,

and he told me that lbj had orchestrated the murder of john f. kennedy. his teacher told him this. actually, i went right down to the school. then come in high school, he gets there, and his height -- science teacher told him that 9/11 was an inside job. ok? even educators, it is all over. is even hospitals lifework. unbelievable conspiracy theories voiced by supposedly edging -- educate people. my question is, what are we going to do about the two different sets of news? for example, on the liberal, i watched c-span, c-span and msn. my republican friends only watch fox and i don't know what else. but when we compare notes, nothing i've heard compares to what they have heard.

from the border, to opioid deaths, to this war that is probably being started here today. we are college-educated people. we are in our 60's. goodbye. guest: that is a perfect summary of the dilemma that faces the united states, which is, it used to be in the 60's, advances in technology would produce broadcast television. everyone could pretty much watch the same news. we all watched the kennedy assassination together. we all watched the reports of the moon landing or the vietnam war. we watched the same news. the bad part about that was that three broadcast networks basically had an oligopoly.

then, advances in technology enabled us to watch news that made us uncomfortable. liberals can watch msnbc, and conservatives can watch fox. better yet, they can each go to their own favorite facebook groups are look at twitter feeds that they want to look at, and that is a giant threat to any civil society, to any democracy. the only hope is that at some point, people will get disgusted with that, and they will look to political leaders and business leaders who will say that we all need to meet somewhere in the middle. there will always be people on the fringes, but now, the fridges -- fringes really dominate because there is not come as the caller said, there is not a source of news that we all can agree on. imagine if -- imagine if we

watched the moon landing. today. you would have, whether it was fox or oann or something like that, they would say it is a fraud. biden did not really achieve that. msnbc might have a whole different take on it. no one would agree, even on the most basic fact of the most basic news information. i share the caller's concern about this. host: that seems like a good place to pause for today. looking forward to have you on again down the line. it is news guard tech.com. the co-ceo there. thank you for your time. guest: thank you. happy to do it. host: just about 25 missed left in our program. we will end as we -- just about 25 minutes left in our program. we will end with an open forum.

phone lines for republicans. (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independence. (202) 748-8002. calling and we will get to your calls after the break. >> president biden addresses a joint session of congress and the nation in the state of the union address on tuesday at 8 p.m.. c-span.org, c-span, or the c-span video. >> six presidents recorded conversations while in office. here many of those conversation on the new podcast, presidential recording. season one focuses on the presidency of lyndon johnson. you will hear about the 1964 civil rights act, presidential campaign, the gulf of tonkin incident, and the war in vietnam. not everyone knew they were being recorded. >> certainly, johnson

secretaries new because they were tasked with transcribing many of those conversations. in fact, they were the ones that make sure the conversations were taped as johnson would signal to them through an open door between his office and there's. >> you will hear some blunt talk. >> i want a report on the number of people assigned to kennedy on the day he died, and the number assigned to mean now, and if minor not more, i want them. if i can't ever go to the bathroom, i won't go. i promise you i will not go anywhere. i will stay right behind the stats. >> presidential recordings, found on the c-span mobile app, or wherever you get your podcasts. >> washington journal continues. host: it is our open forum. phone lines are open for you to

call in on topics political, international, local that you want to talk about. phone lines for republicans, democrats and independents as usual. the topics we have covered so far included sanctions that the united states and nato allies have leveled against russia for the recognition earlier this week of those two breakaway provinces of the ukraine. there is also the story from yesterday we have not talked about. it is getting a lot of attention. a federal jury offering ahmaud arbery's family a measure of justice on tuesday by convicting three white men of committing a hate crime when they chased and killed ahmaud arbery. it is a high profile conviction. the verdict came after just a few hours of deliberations following a trial in brunswick, georgia. the conviction represents a

victory for president biden's justice department, which is vowed to more aggressively prosecute hayes crimes -- take crimes. there will be greater accountability in racially motivated attacks. attorney general merrick garland addressed the verdict, saying that this is a bit of what merrick garland had to say. we will show that you in just a second. we will get that clip for you. here is rudy in california. democrat. caller: good morning. sometimes, i like to call in and just really let it rip. but, thank god, whoever he or she may be, that you and other hosts of the program don't allow us to throw out misinformation and outright lies on the program. i think that is a detriment of

this country. you guys just won't let even stuff -- i can't stand trump, but i cannot stand the nastiness that people throw towards him, and the same with biden. i really appreciate you and the whole tradition of cutting off people who just want to bring out total conspiracy theories. thank you very much. host: we appreciate that. trying to have a conversation every day. sort of the water cooler conversation, a place of conversation happening around the country, and we want to hear you live on c-span every day. the merrick garland statement on the verdict in the ahmaud arbery case from yesterday. >> the justice department does not investigate or prosecute people because of their ideology or beliefs they hold, no matter how vile. but the justice department does have the authority and will not

hesitate to act when individuals commit acts that are motivated by bias or hate. no one in this country should have to fear the threat of hate fueled violence. no one should fear being attacked or threatened because of what they look like. where they are from, who they love, or how they worship. no one should fear that if they go out for a run, they will be targeted and killed because of the color of their skin. the justice department has a legal obligation to prosecute hate crimes, as americans have eight moral obligation to stop the hatred and bigotry that motivates those crimes. today's verdict makes clear from the department that we will use every resource at our disposal

to hold accountable those. host: you can watch the full statement on our website at c-span.org. speaking of c-span.org and are statement, here is what is on tap coming up in about 18 minute. we are expecting strategic and international studies on china and russia relations to start. that is where we will go after this program. you can watch that here on our website and on the free c-span now at -- app. we are also expecting that at 11:30 a.m., a nancy pelosi conference with questions about russian aggression in the ukraine. that will be on c-span and on the website, c-span now. and at 2 p.m., the new jersey democratic representative will join the democratic council on

the crisis in the ukraine, and that will be on c-span.org and the c-span now at. back here phone calls. george, michigan, independent. good morning. caller: how's it going? host: doing well. caller: i just called to vent my frustrations out. one thing about the economy, the inflation thing, i don't get why the media doesn't bring up -- look how much stuff we buy from china, which was probably 80% of the stuff you consume. there is a 10% tariff on it, and i just to understand why that is not brought up more. the other part, when we got out of the iranian nuclear deal, when you take all that oil, and they can't get it on the market, what will that cause? an oil shortage.

it is getting exacerbated by -- we shut down, and we picked back up, and now, we need the oil. so, that is another factor. when we go to war, it uses a lot of energy. the troubling thing is that we have not confronted the story of putin. he has attacked us digitally. you know, he is infiltrated. he has influenced your elections, and he has done everything to undermine us. he has undermined the data alliance, and it is just going back together. just because of fear. it is troubling. i watch world war ii documentaries, and the parallels are scary. let's just say this, john. if you pulls this off, i think -- i hate to say it, but china

will make a move on taiwan. and it is because i think we are at the point, the inflection point, we were running the show, and now we are bumping up against all these other powers, and they are trying to weaken us , and they want to be the dominant one. host: do you think there is a situation in which you could see u.s. troops in ukraine defending ukraine? caller: if russia started hacking in and shutting things down in this country, john, how could you -- if they shut the banks down, i am on social security. what if -- my direct deposit, what if my bank, i go to my bank, and i cannot get my money because they hacked in and shut it down? that is what i am worried about. host: so to the taiwan question,

are you more inclined to see u.s. troops and sailors defending taiwan in an action that you described as a china lunch for taiwan. is that something you are more comfortable with than ukraine, barring some kind of mass cyberattack or something like that in russia? caller: no. i will tell you why. i don't want to side with china, but the thing i'm not siding with china whatsoever, but the whole point is, they have more of a, i guess, claim to taiwan, but it is not, as we go into the 21st century, i don't know how legitimate that is. obviously, they want taiwan to be part of china, and if you see what happened in hong kong, they had an agreement, and once it

expired, they -- they are a control mode, and they are not going to give up. they are going to have their system, and it is not going to change, and if they feel able to take taiwan, they will do it. john, look what russia has wanted ukraine for the last -- since 2014. they have been flying missions over taiwan. missions all the time. what is the difference? to go to war with them over taiwan, i have a whole bunch of friends, they are all messed up from vietnam, that are alive still. and that still lingers. host: michael in richmond, indiana. good morning. you are next in our open forum. caller: i called you last year in october or december about

problems i was having with social security. i don't know if you remember. i recently got my back pain, after seven months, january 13, and they said i had to october to spend the money down is an account of my resources. the problem was that on the 20th, they said i made a mistake, and i/o it all back. so there is a problem with that. they kept my social security check down. medicaid only gives you 30 weeks to spend the money, so my wife is getting ready to have an operation on march 1, and i don't know if i'm going to be cut off from that. basically, if i call him -- cost my employer that kind of money, i lose my job. i was disabled, and i didn't want to win the lottery, i just wanted enough money to take care of my bills and my wife. now i am in this dilemma, and i hope my lawyer can get something done.

he is talking to me again. host: not knowing too much about the situation, i think i remember the call. have you reached out to a member of congress? it might be something that members of congress, they all have these constituent service staffers, and it might be something they can help with trade in a lawyer, too. usually, when these things happen, and we have s on who ask about it, that is one avenue that is usually recommended. have you tried reaching out to your congressperson in richmond, indiana russian mark --? . caller: no, but i think i will. they awarded me that, and with my lawyer, social security is saying they will get my back pay for two years back, and then they get it paid, until october, and two weeks later, they wanted all back. i just don't understand, other than the fact that they won to cut my payments down every month. host: thank you for calling in.

keep us updated on that. let us know if your member of congress does help. thank you for the call. josh in virginia, democrat. good morning. caller: the morning. thank you for taking my call. this morning i was listening to donald trump admiring vladimir putin. he called the part of you train as independent. -- of the ukraine as an independent. this is the idiotic thing. the goal right now is, we are dividing each other. this is how the civil war started. republicans, they think they can win points right now to get some seats for senators in congress. but the reality is, this is how we -- this is how vladimir putin sees things. he sees we are divided. he sees that we are leaderless.

we are defending his actions. people need to think about one thing. what we have today, people died for the things we enjoy in this country. i want to say one thing. we mention american troops, it is not american troops going over there. we are going to go over there with nato. this -- it will not stop. we will be seen as divided, and he will do whatever it takes to keep this division. that is the problem. i want to mention americans -- the food we have, we are going to pay this later on if we don't correct this problem. anyone who defends vladimir putin, i feel sorry for. that is all i have to say. at the people know, this is not only america, this is a nato fight. host: in terms of u.s. troops moving in and around nato

countries, this is from the defense news.com. another round of troops has been mobilized in support of eastern european countries, as russia furthers its invasion of ukraine. troops are activated in poland and hungary. the defense department announced on tuesday that combat infantry and aircraft will be moved to the balkan troops in poland. this includes of -- a task force, with strike fighters as well as an unspecified notification -- acacian on the eastern flank. they write that the attack aviation battalion with apache helicopters from the bulk goods -- baltics, and apaches increase in poland. we are tracking those latest moves of troops around nato countries. kanas, greenville north carolina, independently of good morning. caller: how are you doing?

there are so many people and writers and publications and what have you, and they are telling untruths that everyone knows our untruths, and they are allowed to do it and they continuously do it. i am a big fan of free speech, but at some point, free speech is something that you do not have to rely on openly. i wonder why they [indiscernible] there should be something done about it because they are pleading the american way. thank you for your time. host: do you think that is happening more now than it used to? caller: i think it is happening much more now. maybe we are having more information over the news programs or the internet, or what have you. this here says that the january

6 insurrection in washington was a peaceful demonstration by visitors. they are out of their mind. who brings a guillotine to go to washington as a visitor? host: kenneth north carolina. this is chuck out of covington, louisiana. republican. good morning. caller: when illegals take these flights around the country, are they made citizens with the right to vote while in flight? do any of these flights go to [indiscernible] state? that is all i have to say. host: kalamazoo, michigan, democrat. good morning. caller: i have an idea about ukraine that is kind of his board hearing on crazy debts bordering on crazy. i look at it this way.

if russia continues taking territory from the ukraine, doesn't the united states have some kind of agreement at the border with russia? shouldn't we just take a couple 100 miles of theirs and stayed there, that's ours now. too bad. host: this is joseph and the steel city, independent. caller: good morning. how are you? host: doing well. go ahead. caller: i have two comments. information and misinformation to democrats and republicans light. if you hear something, and you listen to fox or cnn or stte -- msnbc, look at your information and research if you want to. as americans, we have access to a lot of resources. don't just accept it. research it so you know the truth and the fact behind it. as far as russia, years ago, when they broke up the soviet

union, many of the experts said that russia and pruden -- and vladimir putin, survived without seaports. russia would attempt to take over countries that they lost because of the seaports. it should not come as a surprise to any of us. those are my comments, and i thank you for taking my call. host: robert. randolph, massachusetts. democrat. good morning. caller: i just want to say that i think biden is doing a great job of getting nato involved because always it is the bottom line, money, and they've got putin and his money. that is why i am saying that you will see -- unity, you can accomplish anything. this is what has happened in the last four years. biden has to repair the damage

that trump did to this country by line, and he did not mature or grow. the iran-contra thing, he didn't want to deal with nato, so he divided the country. and people are talking about biden because biden stutters, and they don't know what he is doing. he is inexperienced, and i think he is doing the best that he can with the damage that trump is done to this country. thank you. host: on the future of nato unity. the deputy director of the eurasia center atlantic council had a column in the usa today with the headline, u.s. sanctions, russia, and laying out three possible scenarios as to what could happen next. among those, she writes that nato could it mid the ukraine, probably, as a result of russian actions and further russian

incursions. she said that the west knows that it should have admitted the ukraine and georgia in 2008, rather than allowing putin to exploit them. even if parts of the ukraine, the country can be admitted into the organization, because there is no legal prohibition. last year, she said that finland and sweden could join nato. it could bring new life and purpose into nato. we could see more nato forces in eastern europe. another one that she lays out his that the first war could be a massive refugee crisis. putin could go all in and sees a third of ukraine. analysts, they say that we could see as many as 3 million refugees in poland if putin took a large chunk of ukraine. some of the different scenarios she laid out in her column of what happens now. this is brat out of the land of

10,000 lakes. international falls. good morning. caller: well, you can see the democrats are getting the fruits of their labor. you look at obama with crimea, and you have bill clinton getting the nuclear weapons from ukraine and saying that we stand behind them. none of that is true. it is really sad. we are at this point, and it is all because of democrats. i think the democrat party has turned communist. there is no other thing to say other than that this is a terrible thing that is happening. thank you. host: that is brad in minnesota. this is pedro in warrington, virginia. good morning. caller: thank you. i can only call up once a month, so this is my big call. how many times will the american people fall for the same war propaganda?

you cannot turn on the media right now, and yesterday, on c-span, you've got these people from ngo's pushing war with russia. why does thewhy does the u.s. te an interest in ukraine? biden condemned putin the other day for recognizing the two break of republics, but bill clinton recognized kosovo when it did the same thing in the mid-1990's. we want a great reset of the national leaders and the world leaders. we want a leader reset. if there is a financial reset coming anyway, which i think it is, we want the leaders reset.

that is what we want, a world leader reset. host: a couple minutes as we wait for the event to start at the center for strategic and international studies, and event on china and russia and what it means for the u.s., starting in less than five minutes. it might be getting underway right now. we will end the program here, but we will be back here tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 a.m. pacific. we take that -- take you now to the center for strategic and international studies. >> i am delighted to be coasting this event with the director and csis. our discussion does not need much set up. events that have