america, jim hagedorn talk about how his numbers are host: good me to washington journal. after days of grilling by senators, judge jackson will likely move forward to the sioux jennet judiciary vote her candidacy to join the nation's highest court. if confirmed, she will be the first black woman to sit on the supreme court. as she moves through the process, questions raised about the usefulness of confirmation hearings, which of been used for partisan grandstanding for senators rather than serious

questions. what could the senate do better next time? what questions should they have asked? what questions should the candidates have answered? you know enough now if you support or suppose the supreme court confirmation. we are going to open up special lines. if you support her confirmation, we want to hear from you at (202) 748-8000. if you oppose her confirmation, your number is going to be (202) 748-8001. you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. were always reading on social media, on facebook and twitter. you can always follow us on instagram. once again, judge jackson went

through days of confirmation hearings in front of the senate judiciary committee, answering questions from senators and sparring back-and-forth about partisan and political issues around her candidacy. the new york times has a story that talks about how the issue of supreme court confirmation hearings has become more partisan rather than questions about the substance of the nominee. i will bring this to you from the new york times.

we would love to know what you think about the hearings going on for judge jackson. once again, let's go to angela who is calling it from maryland.

she says she supports judge jackson. good morning. caller: good morning. i do support her. she has the patience, the knowledge, the ability to do a fine job. she is someone we need. we need a breath of fresh air. her integrity, her knowledge, i sat there and watched 18 hours with this lady. i don't know how she did it. i would have gotten up and left. i was ready to break my tv the way the senators treated her. host: did you learn anything about her that you didn't already know when the hearings began? caller: i didn't learn anything. she was just so knowledgeable

about everything. she was so honest. i think her integrity, she's a beautiful person. this is what we need. we need a breath of fresh air. that's what we need. i think she is going to do a fine job. host: let's bring to you what judge jackson said in her opening statement on monday, she talks about her position as a judge and how she would be on the supreme court. this is judge jackson. >> if i am confirmed, i commit to you that i will work productively to support and defend the constitution and this grand experiment of american democracy that has endured over these past 246 years.

i have been a judge for nearly a decade now. i take that responsibility and my duty to be independent very seriously. i decide cases from a neutral posture. i evaluate the facts and i interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath. i know that my role as a judge is limited. the constitution empowers me only to decide cases and controversies that are properly presented. i know that my judicial role is constrained by careful adherence to precedent. host: once again, judge jackson will be coming up for a confirmation vote in front of the senate due to sherry

committee in the next week or so as her candidacy for becoming the first african-american woman on the supreme court moves forward. what we see from the research center is the supreme court is not gaining in popularity around the united states. here is a story that comes from pew research that talks about how the supreme court as an institution is viewed by the american public.

that mission ended up being judge ketanji brown jackson. she went through the committee hearings all last week. during her confirmation hearing it, judge jackson had several exchanges with republican lawmakers who talked about several different issues around

her judicial rulings and issues they wanted to see talked about an upcoming cases. here is an exchange between her and senator josh hawley on her sentencing during a particular child pornography case. here is what happened in that exchange. >> i talked about this yesterday. you've been able to think about overnight. you had an 18-year-old who possess to distribute it hundreds of images of eight-year-olds and nine-year-olds and 10-year-olds and you gave him a slip -- slap on the wrist. >> i don't remember whether it was distribution or possession. in the law, there are different crimes that people commit. >> do you regret it or not?

>> senator, what i regret is that in a hearing about my qualifications to be a justice on the supreme court, we spend a lot of time focusing on this small subset of my sentences. i have tried to explain. i'm talking about the fact that you are talking about very serious cases. some of which involve conduct that i sensed people to 25 or 30 years. >> you haven't answered my question yet. >> i would have to look at the circumstances. i'm telling you -- >> there is a 55 page

transcript. you have lived it. you said you've been through all of this. you've looked at all the images. you gave him a three month sentence. i wonder if you regret it. >> in every case, i followed what congress authorized me to do and looking at all of the various factors that apply. that constrain judges, give us discretion, but also tell us how to sentence. i ruled in every case based on all of the relevant factors. host: let's go back to our phone lines and see what you are thinking about. let's go to michael in pittsburgh. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call.

i do oppose her. i wouldn't be tremendously upset if she got on the court. she seems like a nurse -- nice person. some of the things that she set about supporting the constitution ring true. i do not think she was picked on the basis of her strong thinking. which is why people are put on the supreme court. you compare her to some of the previous supreme court nominees and judges that are on the court, they have a long record and a deep understanding of the constitution. those are the things. this is not a popularity contest. the constitution has been

diminished in the eyes of the american people. it is what has made america great. it is a difference between us and ukraine or something like that. it is why we are free. because we have certain rights. they are taking our right to free speech. that's what is happening now. the right to own a gun it, certain rights are becoming diminished. host: what experience do you think she does not have? what experience should she have that she does not have? caller: i can't tell you for sure. it seems that in some of the

previous nominees, they were asked questions about the constitution and deep philosophical questions about where the country is headed. i do not think she has a grasp of some of those things. it's like she would be learning on the port. -- court. i don't think that's the place to learn about these issues. that's my take on it. i don't know. i just get upset when people are picked because they are a nice person or they have normal feelings and things like that, which does not necessarily make someone a great person to be

defending our constitution. host: let's go to ann in florida. go ahead. caller: i support her. i find her to be very intelligent. there is nothing she has said that i could criticize. can you hear me? host: go ahead. caller: the question what is a woman is the dumbest question i've ever heard. it is too bad she couldn't go back and ask the man what is a gentleman. they certainly couldn't ask that question -- ask that. i was impressed through all of those questions that she was so patient.

this is something that will serve her well in the court. host: did you learn anything new about judge jackson from the confirmation hearings? are there questions they could have asked her that let you learn more about her? caller: they could've asked anything except some of the stupid questions they asked. they could've asked her about her rulings instead of taking out a few sentences. they didn't even listen to her answers. it was so ridiculous. i can't believe people could be like that, instead of asking an intelligent question. she went through all of this. it really showed what her personality really is. i think she has the integrity to be a really good person.

i think it's nice to have on the court to have a man and a woman's opinion rounding things out more evenly. host: just like previous nominees before her, judge jackson did not answer several questions about hot button issues that could come in front of the supreme court. do you think they should answer these questions? caller: not when they are so stupid. she's not even going to go down as low as they are when they ask a dumb question. host: all right. let's go to john from arizona. good morning. caller: good morning.

anyhow, there are no stupid questions. there are only stupid answers. had she bothered to listen closely, she would have discovered there is a lot more. that's not an american name to begin with. she's not truthful, not honest. she was asked about critical race theory. she said i don't know anything about it. she was actually teaching a class in it. she lies. host: what makes you think it's not an american name? caller: i've never heard any american names. it's an african name.

she might have been named in america, it's not an american name. host: how much of the hearings did you watch? did you just watch -- caller: a lot of it. she was asked what is a woman. i think that was in reference to her transgender beliefs. she said she's not a biologist. she was asked what his assault. she could have at least honored the question. she knew what it was all about. she just decided to be belligerent. and give a stupid answer. there are no stupid questions. host: do you think senate confirmation hearings for

supreme court nominees are useful at all? in previous nomination hearings, others did not answer all the questions either. it seems to becoming a pattern. caller: i disagree with you there. i listen to most of them. they go by the constitution. she is not sticking to the constitution. she is not going by rule of law guidelines. he got out and committed the same crime again. if she followed the lock, this

person would still be alive. she is dishonest. she doesn't go by the law. host: let's go to melvin from florida. good morning. caller: good morning. i support judge jackson. i think she will do a great job. what she had to deal with with senator cruz and senator cotton, there questions were outside what they needed to ask. i think she did a good job. host: do you think these confirmation hearings are worth the time considering there are a lot of questions that senators asked that they know nominees won't answer. it seems to be a pattern. they all say there are questions

they are not going to answer. senators asked them anyway. are these useful to anyone? caller: i would still say so. it's important that the people can hear what our justices think to a certain degree. we've never heard of judge jackson, this gives us the capability to have some form of relationship with her. when she is confirmed, we will have that connection. i think it's important to have that. with our higher bodies of the court system, i think this is a good move. i don't think it's a bad idea. i support her. i watched the confirmation hearings. i didn't think it was right for them to do what they did. i think that senator klobuchar

did a great job of trying to balance out the insanity with more substantive questions. host: bloomberg columnist wrote about the problems that supreme court confirmation hearings have and why they should continue. i want to bring to you what he said. this is from limburg. -- bloomberg.

this comes from jonathan bernstein. where do you stand on the confirmation? let's go to kathleen who was calling from los angeles. good morning. caller: it's very early in the morning. i will preface my statement by saying why do you read from the new york times and the washington post? getting back to the supreme court nomination, i would oppose any liberal jurist.

liberal ideology from the supreme court has destroyed american culture, black americans, black families. they bast or di's the 14th amendment which was meant for descendants of slaves. these are liberal jurists. then we have democrat colors saying the republican senators were offensive. they clearly missed the hearing with cavanaugh and amy coney barrett. the democrat senators were very offensive and rude, including harris. they don't know what they are talking about. democrat colors talk about people who watch fox are ignorant or don't know what they are talking but. how is that true when fox was right about the russian collusion business.

the liberal media never talks about the data. we only have 25% black americans two-parent families. we have 87% in the 1930's. this was before liberals were dominating the supreme court. we had 65 two-parent families during lbj. they don't discuss data. we have 40% homelessness. we have 9000 black politicians and they are facing zero median wealth by the year 2053. what is the point a black fella titian's. host: let me stop you there. you brought up amy coney barrett and rhett cavanaugh.

how do we change the process so that neither side has the complaints that you are bringing up about them? how do we change the process so it is fair and everyone is happy? caller: we have had seven decades -- host: we are talking about the confirmation process so that all nominees get a fair shot from the judiciary committee? caller: the issue is this. people will complain that the questions are being rude and offensive. then the democrats were rude and offensive to brett kavanaugh and

amy coney barrett. host: how do we change the process. both sides have complaints. how do we change the process so it is fair to everyone? caller: it's about honesty. host: how do we make it honest for both sides? caller: the issue isn't changing the process. the american people listening to the confirmation hearings need to be informed. it's the issues. it's not about personalities. it's about addressing the issues. host: how do we make sure that those issues come up and it's not a political process like we have now? caller: what i'm saying is this. the democrats don't know what the issues are. they think it's about liking someone. child pornography is an issue. the first amendment an issue. democrat colors don't know what the issues are.

the first amendment is an issue. the second amendment is an issue. the public school system is an issue. these are in the constitution. host: let's go to brenda from jackson. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. there is ignorance throughout the american public based on what i've heard. ignoring does not mean stupidity. it just means there are things you don't know. i wanted to express how ashamed i am of the representation as a tennessean of who we have in congress and in the senate, who speaks for us. we have not had a voice on the supreme court since thurgood marshall made his exit. this has been a long time coming.

i harken back to the time of barbara jordan. she was first came on the scene. my hope was with that woman being the first african-american female on the supreme court. she was wonderful. her health failed just like thurgood marshall's did. she didn't get to have an opportunity to be appointed. ketanji brown jackson was worth waiting for. hands down. more qualified than any other individual who has ever served on the united states supreme court. i am the granddaughter of an

american slave. i know a lot about the constitution. i'm a retired educator. i went to law school for one year. that's what i want to say. i did hear cory booker. he began to talk about her. she was appointed the first federal judge before i turned 19 years old. i was a student at knoxville college. she is worth waiting for. we've been waiting a long time. host: how do we change the confirmation process? should we change the process? it seems like everyone whether liberal or conservative has complaints about how their candidate is treated in front of the committee? how do we make sure everyone is

treated fairly? caller: that's going to be a trick. most people view it as political theater. as someone previously stated, this was the opportunity to try to get revenge for what happened with brett kavanaugh. that's all this is. that's political theater. i didn't waste my time listening to a lot of it. they showed a chart of all the people. shiite shines the mall. -- she outshines them all. i'm 75 years old. i started out in segregated schools. you've got to strive for excellence. your reach must exceed your

grasp just so you can get in the room. host: let's go to georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: go ahead. caller: how we could stop this is stop labeling. we don't need republican. we don't need democrat. i'm a woman and proud of it. i don't understand why it's so hard when they don't answer the questions. we don't need labels. we need to judge people for what they have to do for this country that's -- the president put her in there for a reason. that is her racism and that is wrong. we are supposed to do what's

right for this country. right now she doesn't know what she's doing. the woman before, i'm 76 years old. we are not teaching the right things. i was raised where you didn't have racism. it was years and years ago. we need to stop with the racism and judge people for their character, their knowledge, not be putting people. this is wrong. that's what's going on. this is all theater and it's crazy. host: you said that he's trying to put her on the supreme court for racism. can you explain what you mean? caller: i honestly think the president we have is -- i'm not saying she deserves it.

the things they are asking questions for a do not understand. that's my point. they are asking questions. we want to know what she would do to go by the constitution. nobody right now is going by the constitution. that's a fact. we are going by what they think. the thing about it is it's our opinion. how about taking care of america and the people in it. we should be taking care of people and not the agenda. host: let's go to greensboro. good morning. caller: good morning. i support the nominee for the supreme court.

i think the republicans were very disrespectful and rude and condescending to her. they treated her -- they already decided. that is their method and behavior. she was asked a question about what is a woman, as another journalist wrote, what she should've done was turned to that person and ask her what is a senator? thank you. host: let's go to california. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you very much. i am certain there are a lot of black women that would be qualified to be on the supreme court. america right now, we are more

divided since the civil war. people want everything free. they want free health care. we are $30 trillion in debt. we are spending billions on illegals for schooling and health care. we don't have it. we can't pay off the debt if we wanted to. biden doesn't even know he's alive. of course he's going to pick somebody that is not qualified. he just wants somebody that he can say she is black. the thing is, anyone who is racist is ignoring. common sense is uncommon. we all should love one another and help one another. we believe in the constitution.

we believe in liberty. i am afraid of her. the reason biden picture, he doesn't know what's going on. he is on the world stage and he is -- people are looking at us like what the hell is going on? host: what qualifications do you think a supreme court justice should have? you don't think she is qualified. what qualifications should they have? caller: the person believes that we have the right to bear arms. we have the right to freedom of speech. we have the right to left government, less taxes. i don't hear none of that. our government is way too big. there are too many bureaucracies. we don't need all of this. we can't afford it.

they say the rich will pay for everything. he is going to tax the rich more. they will raise the prices on everything. they will just move out of the country or layoff people or pay less wages. host: going back to the supreme court confirmation process, how do you find a person you would support for the supreme court? it sounds like you are against any judge. caller: to me, if they are more libertarian leaning, they want people to have more freedom. there are too many people in government that are tyrants. hello? host: you are still on. caller: i appreciate this.

we are more divided now. i never hear it on tv. you've got a lot of young people that don't want to work. she's a democrat. even republicans, we've got 80 of them that are supporting a lot of the issues the democrats are supporting. they are worthless. we need to get back to being a christian conservative -- and promote liberty. host: let's go to ray in california. good morning. caller: thank you very much. i was so appalled at the hostile

, rude treatment from several of the senators. they did not let her finish a sentence, answer questions, it was downright hostile and disrespectful. i don't understand how people could say she's not qualified. she's clerked for a supreme court justice. perhaps people don't know what a clerkship is. she was a public defender. she's been on the court of appeals. she has a depth of experience that will be very useful. i liked her temperament. she was very calm. she maintained her composure in

spite of being viciously attacked by lindsey graham who tried to put words in her mouth. according to the pornography cases, she kept telling the senators that she had to make her judicial decision based on the guidelines that congress had provided. they hadn't updated the guidelines to take into consideration the fact that a lot of pornography now is done on the computer and not through the mail. those guidelines were done when computers weren't widely in use. that's not her fault. out of 250 judges and attorneys

who responded to the american bar association survey, not one of them had a bad thing to say about her. why is it -- soft on crime. she is supported by the fraternal order of police. host: cory booker had an exchange with judge jackson during wednesday's hearing. i want to bring that exchange between cory booker and judge jackson to you. >> your family and you speak to service service service. i'm telling you right now, i'm not letting anybody in the senate steel my joy. i told you this at the beginning. i am embarrassed. i just look at you and i start getting emotions.

i was jogging this morning. at the end of the block i live on, i put my music on loud, trying to block out the noise of the heart attack i'm having. this woman comes up on me and tackles me. an african-american woman. the look in her eyes, she just wanted to touch me because i'm sitting so close to you. she told me what it meant to her to watch you sitting where you are sitting. you did not get there because of some left-wing agenda. you didn't get here because of some dark money groups. you got here how every black woman in america who's gotten anywhere has done. it's like ginger rogers said, i

did everything fred astaire did except backwards and in high heels. host: let's see what some of our social media followers are saying about the confirmation process. . is one tweet that says oppose. her views are far outside the mainstream of america. her job is to interpret the constitution, not change it. she will change it. i don't like her liberal opinions on pedophiles. another tweet said i support her. she is supremely qualified. another tweet says we learned that she has the knowledge, patience, and temperament to be an excellent supreme court justice. one final tweet says i'm confident after the dust settles she will be the newest member of scotus. this was long overdue.

the racism in this country makes forward progress nearly impossible. that was obvious through the hearing. we want to know what your opinion is of judge jackson and the confirmation process. mike is calling from florida. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i was so impressed by everything the judge was saying up to a point. there are two things that made me decide she is weak. number one was she didn't answer the question about sex. that's a very simple question to ask. i think she thought it was a political question. she could've made to answers. if you're talking politics it's this way, if it's biology it's

this way. host: you're talking about the question about gender? caller: that's very obvious. people can say whatever they want. the politics, maybe not. you can be whatever you want in politics. the second thing was when she was talking about whether or not -- i lost my train of thought. with the pornography thing about how she had to rule one way or the other, they can rule anyway they want. nobody consume her. -- nobody can sue her. she doesn't have to follow any guidelines. host: mandatory minimums, they don't have choices in those cases. caller: they could say i'm not

judging. that's what she probably should've done. we are looking for the truth. if she can't figure that out, she's weak and her method don't work. she should take a backseat. to answer the question about what is a senator? that's what i like most about her. host: let's go to raleigh, north carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you this morning? i think it's more than time for a black woman to be put on the supreme court. i do support judge jackson, who is highly questions. -- qualified. i think the republicans were

very disrespectful attacking her. they asked questions and refused to allow her to answer the questions. even though she answered all the questions very intelligently. the process i think could've been more fair if the republicans were made to follow rules, to be civil and respectful and to be decent. caller: good morning. my opinion on the people calling in about judge jackson, they are completely confused. that woman is the most qualified person, black, white, that was

ever on the supreme court so far. you've got people that hurt judging her like just holly that was pumping his fist to the insurrection. how could he question a woman of her quality. for people talking about the name she has, who gives you the right to say people can't name their kids whoever they want. if we went with the constitution, at one time black people were not a whole person. i do believe they said it was 3/5 of a human being. everything has to be updated. we will not live by the rules that my family lived by 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 years ago. host: victoria is calling from wisconsin. good morning. caller: i am opposed simply

because as someone who was sexually abused by a pedophile at the age of five, it's a personal affront to me and to all other victims that were sexually abused. that's my opinion. host: let's go to mississippi. good morning. caller: how are you doing. i was calling because i feel like for the supreme court to the centers, they should be elected. i think she is well-qualified. when president trump -- he said

i don't understand some people. a person should be elected by the people for the people. host: let's go to kyle from illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. my problem is i don't have a race problem. america bleeds red. people bleed red. our government is bleeding green. we have a trans woman, that's what i was taught in school. i watched six lawyers and six judges try a case where the woman was claiming neglect on the house she was in charge of. these lawyers and judges interpret the law.

they interpret. they don't follow. they interpret. their own views they used to interpret the law. you watched the democrats run trump's appointees through the ringer. this woman was asked what is a woman. it's not awful hard. that's just my opinion. i've seen the lot take a 96-year-old woman take her money. the law done it. when you appoint somebody, you should have standards on the way they interpret the law. host: let's go to diane from minnesota. good morning.

caller: i just want to say that i definitely support judge jackson for the reason i've worked for 24 years with pedophiles and victims in my state court. the one thing that everybody is not taken into consideration is when you are a probation officer, you have to evaluate. you've got six weeks to make a decision. if you make a recommendation to the court, you follow the guidelines according to what the legislators. in our state capital, it would be congress. the new look at her cases, she had over 1000 cases in 10 years.

they brought up seven cases they didn't like. what happened to the rest of those cases? evidently she followed what was supposed to be done. judges have to make an interpretation around the sentencing guidelines. that is how it is done. host: let's go to clifford from oceanside. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i was just listening to callers about how the publicans were rude and disrespectful to her. i find that to be such hypocrisy. when brett kavanaugh were going on, the democrats were just

completely up the wall. for these democrats calling insane the republicans were rude, i don't think so. not as rude as those democrats work. host: you made clear that the republicans have their own complaints and democrats have their own complaints. how do we fix the process so both sides are treated fairly? caller: that's an interesting question. i would suggest getting a third party. one does not politically affiliated. that's what the american people would ask. host: all right. let's go to robert from maryland. good morning. caller: good morning.

what i see and this blows my mind, when i see josh hawley and the guy from texas ted cruz, i saw the disrespect they showed this honorable lady. it blew my mind. people like those three senators, i'm a vietnam veteran. they drove these crazy people out of their lives. the same thing -- after nelson mandela gets out of jail for 27

years, they got rid of apartheid in south africa. now in afghanistan, white racism has been driven out. ever since that is happened, we've had peace in those countries. this white racism over 2900 years have destroyed humanity. these people are crazy. host: let's go to ernest from massachusetts. good morning. caller: how are you? it used to be that temperament and qualifications were enough. since the bork hearings, judicial philosophy has come to the forefront. the votes in this century and really going back even earlier,

they tend to go for judicial philosophy. i didn't have any problems with the republican senators questions because they were making -- ferreting out the obvious fact that judge jackson is liberal. that's why she was chosen. she will be less liberal than sotomayor. when the vote comes, the vote will be almost entirely based on judicial philosophy. if you like a liberal judge, you will vote for her. she is qualified. as far as her qualifications and temperament. qualification and temperament. it will come down to judicial philosophy. it will probably come down to 52-48. host: we would like to thank all

of our colors. coming up next, heritage foundation will be here to discuss russia's invasion of ukraine and the debate over increasing u.s. defense spending. later, founder and ceo jim haik joins us to talk about the work his group is doing to support ukraine's military. stick with us. we will be right back. ♪ [indiscernible] >> only history from the source. -- only on c-span do you get history from the source. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here, here, here or anywhere that matters,

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both hearings will be live on c-span.org. the white house budget director is also on capitol hill twice. she will testify on the budget for the house budget committee and before the senate budget committee on wednesday at 11:00 p.m. wednesday. thursday at net :00 eastern you can watch that live on c-span.org and c-span now. the sec chair testifies before a subcommittee. you will be able to watch that on c-span.org and c-span now. watch, this week, live on the c-span network or c-span now, our free mobile app. stream video live or on-demand,

at any time. your unfiltered view of government. >> bring you the latest from the president and other white house officials as well as congress. we also have international perspectives and statements from foreign leaders, all on the c-span network. our web resource page, where you can watch the latest videos on-demand and follow tweets from journalists on the ground. go to c-span.org/ukraine. >> washington journal continues. >> we are back and we are joined by these fine gentlemen to talk to us about policies toward russia and defense spending. let me introduce brent, with the

heritage foundation, serving as a senior fellow. we are joined by benjamin friedman, who is the policy director for defense priorities. can you tell us exactly what defense priorities is? guest: it is a think tank. we are trying to promote realism and restraint. we have relatively skeptical. host: let's jump into the current. tell us what stood out first. guest: the big news was president biden and living the

idea that vladimir putin has to go for the sake of decency and i think that was an understandable sentiment, but i think it was exceptionally unwise for a president of the u.s. to say. it makes it harder to win the war. it makes russia less cooperative . i think it even makes regime change harder because i think that was an unfortunate part but the rest of the speech was fairly predictable, support of ukraine and trying to cast it in a different light. guest: i definitely agree with the points. there were three different speeches that the president made , and there were missteps in each one. the white house had to come back to make a correction to the

record. there should be actions behind those words, but every time it diminishes his legitimacy or credibility. we have a hot war in europe with the competitor, russia. the cost and consequences are much higher. host: we will stick with you for this question. how would you judge this trip to europe for president biden? was the trip successfully at the did we lose ground? guest: nato has already valued to the cause. the bombing and the shelling and major population centers in ukraine -- that has shocked europe, mostly western europe, out of a post-cold war slumber that they have been in.

despite what the president has done and said, his presence last week in europe, i think europe was already on a trajectory of rallying the cause. if anything, it has caused a little bit of confusion, when that is the last thing that we need. >> i agree with that for the most part. major european states have decided to increase defense spending. jimmy is doing this one time edition. they only spend $50 billion a year, so that is a huge increase one time. gdp will be faster. europe is reacting to this threat that russia poses. the u.s. is actually doing too much. we spent something -- sent

something like 20,000 troops to europe to respond to this war and with russia's weakness revealed in the war, the u.s. does not need to do that. horrified as we are by russian actions, it does not need to be us who takes the lead. host: do you agree? is america doing too much? guest: no. it is important that the current uptick and awareness that security matters -- the u.s. needs to be very vigilant. overall, the u.s. has been living for over 30 years, and the service i am most focused on is the contribution.

the real challenge is in asia for us. if we do not signal and have appropriate deterrence, we may find ourselves in a situation where war becomes inevitable. so, a penny is worth a pound. host: let me take a moment to remind our callers that they can take part in this conversation. democrats, your number is going to be (202) 748-8000. republicans can call in and (202) 748-8001. independence, your number is (202) 748-8002. you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. and we are always beating on social media and twitter, and on facebook, at

facebook.com/c-span. i will throw this question out to both of you and whoever is wanting to answer can jump in. d.c. nato rethinking its goal, post ukrainian invasion? russia has invaded crimea and now ukraine. d.c. nato rethinking its goals? -- do you see nato rethinking its goals? guest: no. it is not surprising that russia attacked ukraine. it is something that people suspected might happen. you had a ukrainian government and if anything, nato should reevaluate its open-door policy. georgia, although not a direct cause has thwarted a lot of

hostility between nato and russia with no real security payoff. we sort of left ukraine in the lurch with the open-door to join , which i think was worse than nothing. guest: as the conflict in afghanistan has come to a close, it certainly needs to reassess its role further abroad from europe, but it needs to take a more expansive approach and be more concerned about migrant flows, through the middle east that have had a significant impact on their societies and government.

it comes to nato expansion, there is another point that i would like to make. expansion was heralded or advocated most vigorously in the 1990's and early to thousand's by those countries that had been under evaluation. i'm of the mind that expansion makes what we are seeing less likely, but i am concerned about actions that could follow and right now, there is an uptick in violence. there was a war that was five and there is a russian peacekeeping element. we may see it picked up in another part of the sphere of influence. nato could have a role to prevent more from occurring, but it has to be very thoughtful and how it does that.

host: would you be in favor of a nato expansion? guest: yes. we will see some exceptions to the rule made. over 20 plus years, this has been a slow brewing conflict between russia and ukraine. it would have been better to have deterrence in place. it could have been avoided host: --it could have been avoided. host: could they expand? guest: ukraine has a border and a military that spends about 110 of what russia spends at its -- on its military. it is not feasible to defend ukraine. sides that, it is a terrible idea.

if we had put ukraine in nato years ago, russia would have accelerated their timeline and attacked at that point. it is not that we do not care about ukraine, it is that we cannot defend every country in a serious way and attempting to defend them might have led to world war iii if the u.s. did not back down, which then would have shown that our commitment to the other nato countries were not really worth all that much. it would be a colossal mistake to put ukraine in nato. it was a colossal mistake to say that nato would eventually expand. that kind of pinned a target sign on ukraine and made the war much more likely. it was an act of negligence.

guest: i go back to earlier said 1989 to 1984. there was a period of time in moscow where the liberals, and until things started to take a more conservative and nationalistic turn. there was a window of time where actions could have been taken. nato should have considered bringing in russia. the resolution of border disputes -- we could have been in a much different situation. unfortunately, we accelerated into the situation that we are in now because nato countries did not make the investment into defense. they did not look at russia as a viable threat. i agree to an extent that we did not take the threat seriously

for far too long. if we had a stronger military presence in europe, we probably would not be in the situation. host: both of you have mentioned during your answers, the russian military performance that russia, as most of us six acted russia to have been doing a lot better than what they are doing now. explain to our audience you are opinions of russia's military performance. what has their failure to achieve any military goals -- what does that tell us? guest: as a naval officer, i can speak about the russian navy, but i have worked several times at places that had to deal with all elements.

much of this is not a surprise. the extent of the logistics planning and failure to execute a rational military operational plan is the part that is most surprising, but equipment that is not kept up to standards or training of a conscript army -- these are all consequences that were foreseen and understood on the russian military itself. no surprises on that part, but the biggest surprise is ukraine's performance with western equipment. guest: number one, russia started off in ukraine with a terrible plan. they had this idea that they would do these deep drive under runs, where there would drive quickly, relatively small groups of forces to the ukrainian cities and somehow that would

scare the defenders into giving up. obviously, that did not happen. it was a terrible plan. they would have other problems in this war, which is some of what was mentioned. logistics have been disastrous. their ability to combine arms with airpower has been surprisingly bad. they have not managed to suppress defense is. most people thought it would take at least a couple days, if not a month. most importantly, low morale. they have conscripts disappearing into the fork -- into the forest, abandoning their vehicles, so that would be a problem in any country they invade. that's why i said, in large parts, this were, as horrific as

it is is good news for other european countries because it shows that the russian threat is not as big and bad as we thought it was a year ago. it is not something that will make you sleep well at night, the balance of power broadly favors european countries over russia. the u.s. does not need to do more than europe because it shows that we can do less, as upset as we might be about the war. host: d feel like you have something to say? guest: i wanted to say one more thing. based on a horrible false assumption on the russian military leadership, making the decision, they have well over 80% of their combat forces available and operating inside ukraine. there is still a lot of fight left inside ukraine, so we are not out of the woods yet.

i would not be too quick to say we can reassess the balance just yet. there is a lot of fighting to be done in ukraine. host: we will start with connie. good morning. caller: hello and thank you for letting me speak this morning. do you think that the election of 2020 was agenda met? that would tell me why you are criticizing president biden right off the bat. both of you can -- both of you gentlemen, i do not think are supporting our president. it is a problem with our strength and projecting our strength because if you are undermining because you do not

believe in the last election. guest: i disagree. i'm sorry if that is what you got from my comments. the first thing is to make sure that american citizens are safe and protected. it includes following orders of our commander-in-chief. i hope he has all the guidance and is being well advised. at the same time, it is important to give constructive criticism early. that is my concern. i was outspoken earlier that we could have avoided the situation in ukraine. i'm not sure i see the connection with the elections in 2020. i think those investigations. i think we have a president who was duly elected.

there is a legal process that should play out. that is what makes our democracy so strong. host: every time the u.s. is involved -- guest: every time the u.s. is involved in a war, there tends to be, particularly in a big war like this, an outbreak of emotion, which is natural, but then there is a tendency to limit speech, where people say, you need to support the commander-in-chief and the president. there is a sort of idea that patriotism requires everyone to shut up and go along with whatever it is the president is doing. i think that is wrong and it has always been wrong. the idea that we should quiet our criticism -- whoever the

president is, we have come as citizens and analysts, not just a right at a responsibility to be critical or at least ink critically and ask questions about what the policies are. it is foolish to say that we should be supportive host:. so -- supportive. host: so both of you disagree. guest: i think american politics saturates every decision that you make. politics is part of a democratic society. hopefully through that contested policy, you get to the best outcome. it is usually ugly, sloppy and slow.

i embrace that chaos a little bit. politics is part of a democratic society and its century everything that we do, sometimes not very elegantly. guest: we want to have politics about everything, particularly foreign policy, so i never understood the idea that it should end at the waters edge. it never has. but politics, by design, it infuses our foreign policy. a dictatorship would be worse. guest: if i could add one quick thing. president obama said elections have consequences. the american voter is empowered.

each individual is at the top of political power in the country. they may not always feel like that, but every man -- vote matters. they do not get most of the plates influence our presidential or local election, as it should. the country is being impacted. host: let's go back to the land lines. landon, good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to say that we belong to nato and if you belong to nato and support organization , nato has to provide the protection of their members. the other thing is, it is hard to understand the russians

because one comment as one question. do you remember charlie wilson? the russians tried to go into afghanistan with tanks and all kinds of motorized equipment. we ended up in the war that the afghans definitely had them covered. thank you. host: who wants to tackle that one first? guest: it took us 20 years to figure out we cannot beat the afghans either. the offensive wars are extremely difficult. even a much more professional, impressive military like ours,

which struggle to conquer another country -- we see various countries, various problems and the aftermath, but we see the proliferation intentionally of antitank weapons and other capabilities, that make it even harder to invade countries. there are these inherent advantages in terms of the morale of the fighting force with the ukrainians and their ability to generate outside support. we have given over $5 million since 2014 two ukraine and support. we gave them another billion dollars of arms that will be there soon. the fact that there is a sympathetic party and a victim is a big advantage to them, in

the way that this war is played out. host: go ahead and jump in. guest: i apologize his name. we learned time and time again, but with disastrous effects in the 2000s in afghanistan, in most cases, there was a defensive nature. you are responding to threats to the homeland, but there is a key lesson that we keep we learning. you have to understand the psychology of your adversary and competitor. vladimir putin and president jinping. it is driving this countries to make the decisions that they do, very smart, very deliberate about how they go about acting.

people he needed to have a much better understanding, and this is a bipartisan problem. it is shared across the board. they tend to look at things from our own list. we have to be smarter. the world is much more contested. they are not the uncontested superpower that they were years ago. we have to be smarter about how we employ our national wealth and power. i would just leave it at that. host: he brought up earlier that congress has approved for the -- the war in ukraine. congress passed an increase of nearly 6% in defense spending. it is a total that is expected to keep rising, despite

president biden's withdrawal. it is the u.s. government defense budget to big? what do you think? guest: no. i went back and did the math. i am old enough to remember the cold war and living in asia at the time. we were cashing in on what was called peace dividends. it worked towards defense. it was actually time to apply it to other things. so we had been taking out of this bank account. we have cut five to much. if you are simply to look at navy, the navy budget, they only

went to 1989 to today at the actual inflation rate, you would be spending $45 billion more than what the budget was last year. that's if you cap moving at the same speed. now we have china and an aggressive modernized russia, but the threads are driving us to spend more. the chief operations and to secretaries have said we need to spend 5% to 3% above in order to recover an acceptable level of naval deterrence across the world. that would be very important with china. especially in a two -- taiwan situation, which would be very dangerous. we have matching inflation, hopefully with the next budget but we are not growing and recovering what we have lost. host: is our defense budget to

vague? guest: it is way too vague. you have to spend a lot more money to deter them, but we are pretty safe in the u.s. with way less military commitments. we could have a much smaller military budget. we'll spend $813 billion as the proposed budget for 2023 and 2022. it is far too much. there was no peace dividend because a lot of money is already adjusting for inflation. it is higher than the 2016 defense budget, which was a lot higher than what we spent in the cold war. as long as the economy is

growing, if you are spending a steady portion of the economy on defense, it is growing a lot. we now spend more, adjusting for inflation, then we did at the height of the cold war. we have more purchasing power in the defense budget that we did in the cold war, and that is utterly inappropriate, a misuse of resources, given that we are not in the cold war, as much as we are concerned about russia and china. it is not necessary for us to behave as if we are. we can behave in much better ways. guest: can i respond? i disagree with some of what was said, certainly on the first in power aspect. there have been numerous studies, going back a couple hundred years. the most important ones were looking at defense spending. it is not as long, if you are

not overwhelming supplies for demand-side. inflation actually drives higher defense spending because your dollar does not go as far. this is why a defense budget is so important because as long as you are less than that, you are shrinking the military, despite what growth and gdp there might be. we have not spent anywhere near historical norms during a time when we had significant growth in our economy. up to about 6%, so the record is that we have room to grow without concerns of inflation driven by bad policy, but i would say we have to be coming back and be smart about what you have and what you will invest

in. in my mind, that is in the eastern mediterranean south see. those are the places where our adversaries are placing a lot of strategic vents. i would say you cannot be everywhere, but be in those two places first. again, that would have a much higher deterrent value, a higher return on the dollars spent. china has definitely got a vote in this. they have been spending double digits. a have grown. it is double digits for quite a long time. if you look at the annual report on the defense. they are actually expanding in places in africa for a potential base that is close to some sensitive missile testing ranges. it has come to light that they are looking at a base in the

solomon islands that scares australia. it sits astride a lot of their key shipping. they talk about inciting a response from the one country from the other. china is definitely inciting a response by its actions. it is better to get ahead of this wave of the chinese pushing forward and shaping it anyway that is positive and not a cold war redo. host: let's talk to can, calling from north carolina on the independent line. caller: good morning. first of all, you guys on washington journal really do a great job of trying to be fair to all parts. i want to say that first of all. second, i just do not understand why people keep saying that the president is weak. the man is doing as much as he

can. world war ii took four years from 1941 to 1945. this man has been doing his best for four weeks. he has had to work with several companies to try to get them to go with the boycott or whatever we call -- i cannot think of the name of it. we are resisting, giving them -- i cannot think of it. exactly. sanctions. the president does not sanction another country. we have to get our own companies to join in on sanctions. what do we want this man to do? he is just one man. he can only do but so much.

it takes several people, the congress, country, service -- it takes a lot of people. you cannot just blame one person. that is all i had to say. thank you. host: what should president biden be doing right now? guest: there is a view that the u.s. should have bluffed better. many believe that the u.s. should fight on the behalf of ukraine, but many say that we took that off the table and it was a mistake. i think that is wrong. it is wrong because it was impossible for the u.s. to make a credible threat that we would fight for ukraine because everybody knows that there is no basis of support because adding into a war with russia, because it was not credible.

nobody would have believed him. i think even if ukraine were in nato. i agree with the caller that biden has been doing a lot, as much as you can expect. we have sanctioned russia more heavily than expected. they sell most of their energy to europe and it surprised me, given the high gasoline prices and the likelihood that -- it has been a robust u.s. response, and one thing that we should do is help ukrainians find a way to settle the war on decent terms. it is up to ukraine on how they settle the war with russia, but what we can do is to be clear

that we will remove the sanctions on russia, in the event that the war in -- ends. we know between the u.s., nato and russia, we want to be neutral because we know that is what it will take to stay that way. there are a lot of people who want to push ukraine into nato and do not want ukraine to settle. i think -- i hope that the president will not be one of those people and that he will support a settlement of this war, even if it is unpleasant because it is not everything that ukraine would want. we in the u.s. should be supportive, where we can. guest: my criticism would be even more harsh than the

president being weak. the president is just the president, but he represents an entire people. there are hundreds of thousands of government employees taking their guidance and leadership from the elected administration in power right now. it is one individual but a very powerful and influential one making millions of decisions every day. then, there are those that are our allies, who look and hang on every word that our president says. i said earlier in the speeches and messages that they were confusing. i would say it is not just weakness, but misguided policies that he has made. the war in the ukraine did not start on the 24th of february.

it actually starts about a year ago, when putin started to do exercises. he demonstrated and exercised one of the largest amphibious demonstrations in crimea. much of those forces came out of the caspian sea and started moving from other parts of the world, started amassing his military everything that he would need to launch the invasion. drought that time, there has not been any private movement. if you look at it and track, you do not see a public affairs announcement of it. but there has not been any change of this position in europe to signal that we were aware or that we were going to bolster nato's eastern front. the signals he was sending from a year ago, we are just going to

ignore what was going to happen there. then, as you fast-forward to the month before the invasion, you had statements that sanctions would deter, but would not be implemented until there was the invasion. then there was the unfortunate press brief where a little incursion would not elicit as much of a reaction as a big one. it needed to be more clear and explicit. diplomacy only works when you have a military behind it. diplomacy only works when you are clear and explicit in your language. we have not been executing that very well. host: let's talk to mark on the democrat line.

good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for washington journal and c-span. you are listening to all these other conversations and it gets you going from one direction to the other. maybe you want to change your thoughts, but i thought the main thing, after listening to these guys is, when you have a panel like this, i like to see. you will get different views, but i think washington journal needs to do a little bit better research on these things because everybody in the world knows that every foundation is run by those remaining. people expect to hear from them.

guess who started and funded the defense parties foundation. there are different things. they still sound the same, as far as that. here is the real kicker. i spoke to these guys. how did they feel about cox industries? right now, there is a big to do. they are staying in russia and backing groups opposing u.s. sanctions. you know, i am almost left speechless here. they were really just attacking president biden before i got through here. he has wiped it off now, but has anybody else realized that he has been sweaty during this

entire thing? host: we will cut him off right there. i will rephrase this question. what do you think of american companies that continue to operate in russia right now, despite sanctions being called for by the u.s. and nato? guest: it is up to companies what they want to do in russia, insofar as they are complying with the law. if they are breaking the law, they should not do that, but we have sanctions. that is our policy. they should not violate that. if they want to do business in russia and take the risk of being boycotted or punished by consumers, they are right. what i would say in response to the caller is, you can look at everything i have ever written about defense spending and u.s. foreign policy.

it is almost entirely opposed to what the heritage foundation would say. i have advocated a realism and restraint for a more peaceful foreign policy. there is a pretty big difference between the size here and i think my opinions on this are not drawn from priorities, but my own experience on the subject. i think that brent is wrong and that joe biden did not do anything in terms of being overly weak to provoke this attack on ukraine. in fact, the u.s. was doing military exercises that were upsetting and arguably frightening to russia in the run-up to this war. we increased the pace and size of military exercises with ukraine, which was not great in

terms of the way the russians thought about ukraine. we signed a cooperation agreement in 2021 with ukraine that said that ukraine still might eventually join nato, which i think was terrible. bill burns is head of the cia and he said the brightest of all red lines is ukraine joining nato. you can say that it is unjust. you can say it is immoral for the russians to be angered and violent towards that outcome, but you cannot say that it surprises you. the russians have been pretty clear about the idea of ukraine joining nato. i think that we have to be clearheaded and practical about it. let's not do things, even if they feel good morally, that will make everything worse.

saying we might put ukraine and nato, but not actually defending it. i think that was a disastrous policy that the u.s. had and one that i would be highly critical of this administration, the last administration and the obama administration, all the way back, setting this up, holding the door open to ukraine. guest: i will defend myself. you can access everything that i have written, at least since i left the military over a year and a half ago. definitely not partisan. conservative, but i tend to want to find the facts and i will go where the facts lead me. no matter who is paying my check. i have never unconstrained by where those facts lead me or what my position is. that is a good thing, to challenge assumptions, wherever

they are. you should always be updating and challenging assumptions. i welcome discourse and debate from those who do not agree with me. so, on that point, as far as i have to defend heritage foundation as well, the vast majority of the money that comes to heritage is from small donations. the cook brothers have a long history. heritage is much more diverse and it does not take any government funding or funding from any defense industry with strings attached. that is heritage. as far as the point, you need to understand your competitors better. the reasons we have bad policies being taken by the administration, he is the one responsible, but you need to

understand. you have to guard against constructs on to someone. we need to do a better job of that. when i say we need more defense spending, it comes with a deeper appreciation of how to do it in the smartest way. we did not understand russia, we have not understood them since 2014. we did not understand them in georgia and we still do not have an appreciation. from this point forward, the dynamic is very different from when this invasion started. the worldview is shaken to its core. they are not going to go back to where they were before. not in this lifetime, likely.

far too many people have died and there has been far too much damage and destruction. there is new -- there is a new era that we have to prepare for and embrace. host: let's talk to john, calling from the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. i was just wondering what you thought about the comments that joe made the other day, talking about this threat of stepping foot on nato territory and telling people he is a butcher. i really do not think, if you are trying to end things peacefully -- i know putin -- we were just discussing about three weeks ago that he may -- his mental capacity, but it is smart to be doing this, -- i do not

know if it is smart to be doing this, challenging this man. i just do not understand how people cannot see things in front of their face. the one gentleman, you take him outside and say, what do you see in the sky? well, that is the moon. i do not get it. if donald trump was in office, not only with the republicans be asking for chapter 25 or whatever of competency, but even the republicans would be asking, like kinsinger and murkowski, collins and cheney. i do not get it. host: go ahead and jump in. guest: i have to say that the russia expert should have taken a harder look at those speeches and had a much longer sit down with the president.

these are things that i used to do with senior leadership before i left government when it came to china, more specifically. i do not think the preparation period was adequate. they may want to we double their efforts. the speech, the words and his body language, the whole package is a complete misreading to hell putin would respond. there is a story about his childhood that when he is cornered, he will fight. like a rat. i think he is feeling cornered. it does not necessarily mean that we should change what we are doing, bolstering nato, but it certainly should animate the way that we execute diplomatically, those moves. guest: when you advocate regime

change in russia, i think you make everything worse, certainly in terms of the war. you give putin the idea that no matter what they do in terms of trying to get a settlement with ukraine that the u.s. will continue to sanction russia heavily and will continue -- maybe they are paranoid, but they are not completely wrong. democratizing russia and having a different government there, i think even if you think that would be great, i think it would be great if they had a properly democratic government, but even if you think that, saying it all the time makes the war harder to end. we are making it harder to end the war, if we give russia the idea that nothing they can do will get us off of our regime change policies. i said earlier, if you advocate regime change, you make it

harder for whoever might want to do that, to succeed because the idea that the u.s. is behind every revolution and every movement towards democracy advocating free speech and assembly and russia is incredibly harmful. we need to be in favor of a democratic government, but the president saying that is enormously harmful and it is a problem that happens a lot in u.s. foreign policy, where we cannot stop ourselves from saying that we want to revolutionize the government of all these countries, like china, which makes our relationship worse with them. host: don't we gain in countries like russia and china? isn't president biden saying it out loud? guest: he is the president of

the u.s., not just some guy on the streets pressing his moral convictions. you need to think about what kind of effect that is going to have. to me, it has a negative one. a regime change in russia commodes would be a good thing from my perspective as a person who believes in liberal values, but it may not be. it might make things worse. the people who can overthrow vladimir putin are probably in the security forces, and the intelligence agc of russia. they are not necessarily sweethearts or great liberals. if you do not think this could get worse, you do not know much about russian history. we should not be signing up for regime change as the best policy. even think tank analysts should be careful about what we say out loud. host: i we just sang the pie

part out loud? guest: i think during president joe biden' hospital career come -- political career, he has a history of doing that. what he says and does, people hang on every letter of every word and every punctuation that he says. it has significant consequences and political decisions, even military done all over the world. consequences are truly high with what he does. i would lead with a short leave -- euphemism of be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. it is not something that we should be pushing for. we do not have a good track record of trying to dig a what government a country should have. it is for the people to decide. when we are most aggressive in

that country to figure out what works best for them. it is how germany and japan work. movements that existed before they went to a totalitarian. you have to work with what you have and allow the people to come to their own conclusions. there were a lot of russians, for a long time, who did not like vladimir putin. host: let's get a quick question from albert, calling from north carolina on the independent line. can you give a quick question or comment? caller: yes. how does nato affect american policy -- how does ukraine affect america? how does it affect our gas prices? why doesn't europe spend more supporting defense funding to protect themselves?

host: we will start with brett. guest: for much of the cold war, russia was not a threat. that was a reason for so that's the short answer why they didn't and every country is different with a mosaic of different domestic politics, as far as ukraine and the war affecting gas prices, ben can probably give more color to this than i but there's an element of speculation that goes with this that prices will shoot up right away because of unavailability. we do import or have imported upwards of 7% to 8% of oil for russia so that does come at a added cost and there is that but the rising prices in gas, you'll have to hit a pause to look at it from two different time periods. there's the day before the invasion, prices were already doubling and on the way to continue and then the acceleration of higher prices

the day after putin invaded ukraine. it's additive but other fundamentals causing gas prices to go up. host: neither ukraine or the war in it has much effect on the u.s. economy. it's not strategically important in that sense. what does have an affect on the u.s. economy is our reaction to the war, our sanctions and in the long term our decreased defense spending which adds to the deficit. i think with the other part of the question the answer is why is -- why don't europeans spend more? one, the russian threat is not that big but now it seems bigger but the other answer is because the united states does it for them. we want them to spend more, we have to do less and probably they'll do more and probably coordinate more among themselves and have more coherent defense policies as well as more expensive ones. guest: we'd like to thank the heritage foundation brent sad letter and ben friedman of defense priorities for being

with us this morning and discussing russia's invasion of ukraine and debate over expense spending. thanks gentlemen so much. coming up next we'll move to our open forum where you our viewers can call in and talk about your most important political issue. you see the numbers on screen and later after that we'll be joined by spirit of america founder and c.e.o. jim hake who will be here to talk about the work his group is doing to support ukraine's military. stick with us. we'll be right back. >> at age 16, john enlists the army in a enlisted man and then for the next five years served on duty for the air force and

after his wartime was finished he got a masters at the university of california and then at age 33 received his p.h.d. from cornell in 1980. during his 40 years in the political science department at the university of chicago, he has not avoided controversy. a recent example is the headline in the march 1 issue of the new yorker magazine which reads, quote, why john blames the u.s. for the crisis in ukraine, unquote. we ask him to explain. >> john shmeirsheimer on booknotes plus. there are a lot of places to get political information but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. no matter where you're from or where you stand on the issues,

c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased word for word, as it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span powered by cable. >> "washington journal" continues. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] host: we're talking about what you think are the most hot political issues. we'll open the lines. republicans 202-748-8001 and independents 202-748-8002 and text us at 7488003 and we're reading on facebook.com/c-span

and talk 20 chip from trinidad, colorado, on the c-span line. caller: thanks for letting me on. i just want to say i think everybody on both sides agrees these days we are really torn apart in this country. and to me one of the main things is some people, and i'm referring specifically to shawn hannity make a living as being as hateful and rude and cruel and mocking the other side as they possibly can, and the people don't know, shawn hannity, ever since president biden was sworn in he has a segment on his radio show starting up by saying america behind enemy lines. has our country been taken over by a facist leader and referring to president biden and the real americans are behind enemy lines

now and that's the exact hateful rhetoric that led to january 6 and he's still doing it. every single day even during the ukraine war, three times during his three hour show at the top of the hour the announcer goes america trapped behind enemy lines. host: to alain calling from olympia, washington, on the republican line. good morning. caller: good morning. you keep on asking a very vial question and that's how we can make the process better and one thing i think that would make the hearing process better is it all the questions were generated from the justices themselves. they could put together an entire list of questions they'd like to hear and the democrats and republicans could pick and choose what questions they want to pick. they want to ask.

they want to ask the nominee. and that way the person who is applying for the job is going to be one of nine and working with these people on a dazey basis and i think if anybody should have input into who gets into their group, you might say, it should be the justices themselves. not the political people who want to sway a court one way or the other. and i don't think that's where the justices really lie. and if you could give me a few seconds, i'd like to listen for any response but if i get a response it would have to be a few second later because of the delay between here and the east coast. thank you. host: let's go to tom calling from eerie, pennsylvania, on the independent line. tom, good morning. caller: good morning.

i noticed when there was a woman who called in during your last segment and she challengeed both of the guests you had on about their feeling about the last election. and i think that the guy from the heritage foundation told us all we needed to know. he could not bring himself to say that president biden was elected in a legitimate election. he used the -- he skirted the issue the way anybody from the heritage foundation normally would, and i want to say that i agree with the woman, that c-span fell down in who they were choosing to talk about this issue. you had people that were negative about the current

administration from both sides of the argument and that's just not right. the other thing i wanted to say was this current controversy going on about the -- about variant thomas and his wife, i think people don't realize the gravity of that situation. clarence thomas should be impeached. and i think anybody who doesn't recognize that is only because they don't want to. host: the caller brought up the recent story involving supreme court justice clarence thomas and his wife virginia thomas and the january 6 insurrection. there's a story about this in "the washington post" and i'll read a couple paragraphs to you. virginia thomas, a conservative activist married to supreme court justice clarence thomas repeatedly pressed white house chief of staff mark meadows to pursue unrelenting efforts to

overturn the 2020 presidential election in urgent text messages in critical weeks up to the vote and according to the messages obtained by cbs news and the messages 29 in all reveal an extraordinary pipeline between virginia thomas who goes by jenny and president donald trump's top aide during a period when trump and his allies were vowing to go to the supreme court in an effort to negate the election results. on november 10 after the news organization had projected joe biden the winner based on state vote totals, thomas wrote to meadows, help this great president stand firm, mark, you're the leader with him standing for america's constitutional governance at the precipice. everyone knows biden on the left is attempting the greatest heist of our history. that's coming from "the washington post" story, virginia thomas urged the white house chief to pursue unrelenting

efforts to overturn the 2020 election. let's go back to our firm lines and talk to mark calling from floral park, new jersey, from the democrat line. good morning. caller: good morning. i'd like to say i was listening to the biden speech yesterday and as a ukrainian american, all i heard was that he was basically saying that we love democracy so much that we are willing to let as many innocent men, women and children die for it as need be to preserve it. the most important part of that call to me anyway was when he basically said that you're using sanctions to stabilize the economy and supposed to effect regime change. but even less than an hour later they basically pulled it back and the explanation, you know, it didn't go with what he was saying. it's almost like they don't respect us enough to tell us

really the reality of what he was trying to say. and i get it. he saw the refugees, he got angry and it would make anybody angry but there was no need to pull back the comment at least in the way they did. it's almost insulting to everyone's intelligence because it doesn't go with everything he said around that comment. host: here's the comments from the white house that that caller was just talking about in a story in "the washington post." the white house is walking back president joe biden's fiery ad lip comments calling vladimir putin a dictator who cannot remain in power, insisting the united states is not looking for regime change in russia. we do not have a strategy of regime change in russia or anywhere else for that matter. secretary of state antony blinken said sunday from jerusalem, stressing biden's

point was the russian president cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against ukraine or anyone else. that's the statement from the white house walking back the statement by president joe biden saying that vladimir putin is a dictator who cannot remain in power. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to opal calling from nashville, tennessee, on the republican line. opal, good morning. caller: good morning. i'm just concerned about america and our military because of biden running it down. wants to apologize to every country from what we did, sold out to putin, told him he would get rid of part of our nuclear if he would and we come back and got rid of 10% of ours and russia never did. and i wonder where we stand in

the world as a power, whatever it is, power that we can defend even our own country. and i'm concerned about that and also concerned about the ukrainians and other countries around that that's not in nato. i believe what he's doing is something like hitler, he's going to take over all the countries in russia over there, that russian area. and try to show his -- and china might get involved, but i am very concerned. host: let's talk to daniel calling from franklin, new york, on the democrat line. daniel, good morning. caller: good morning. i'd like to talk to three issues. the first issue, which side are

you on? the second issue, big, big. the third is appeasement. the which side are you on? i see us at war. we're waging economic war against russia. we can go from syria, the chechen republic, republic of georgia, and now the ukraine. which side are you on, the oil companies, opec, that will not increase the oil supplies that began in may of 2020 to reduce the supply of oil to cap the oil wells, gas wells. which side are you on? the second point, the myth of big, russia is big, russia's

military is big. chechen republic, 1993-1999, there's only 1.8 million people in the chechen republic, we saw how russia struggled. georgia, republic of georgia, 2.5 million. we saw how russia struggled south of asia. now it's ukraine, 42 million. we see how russia is struggling. really struggling as they're being pushed back now. ukraine is not the republic of georgia. appeasement, the problem we're looking at was ceded in syria. when you give up our three huge air bases over to the russians, what message does that send? when you turn over syria to the russians, what message does that

send? host: let's go to billy calling from new jersey on the republican line. billy, good morning? caller: good morning, everyone. i was on the njeha.com website and they explained it pretty well with war with white people and how the zionist are trying to commit white genocide and only the white countries taking in nonwhite and can breed us out. you look at every tv show, every tv commercial, mixed couples, gay couples, and imagine the world without white people, everybody would be living in mud huts. host: nbc news put out a poll showing president joe biden's current approval ratings in the united states. i'll bring you a cup tweets from mark murray talking about the new nbc news poll of joe biden. here's a tweet that says the new national nbc news poll shows

biden's overall job rating among adults. 40% approve, which is down three points from january 2022, 55% disapprove which is up one point from january of 2022. this of course, the poll was taken from march 18-22 and has a plus or minus percentage point of 3.1%. biden on the issues according to the new nbc news poll, covid handling, 51% approve it, up seven points from january. 46% disapprove, down seven points from january. on handling of the economy, 33% approve which is down eight points, disapprove is at 63% which is up three points. handling of foreign policy, approval is at 42%, which is up five points.

disapproval is at 51%, which is down three points. once again, that's from the new nbc news poll on what americans think about the job that president joe biden is doing. let's talk to bonnie who is calling from greenville, south carolina, on the independent line. bonnie, good morning. caller: good morning. good morning. and thank you so much for giving me the time. my big concern to begin with before putin's planes threatened our planes in an intimidating way before the war started. i know, and i have confidence biden has seen putin's soul. for some reason the churches in our country are latching on to a dictator.

because why do they feel like putin is a part of their power play? thank you. host: this is our open forum segment. we want to get telephone calls from everyone. once again, we're opening up our regular lines which are for democrats, 202-748-8000, republicans, 202-748-8001, independents 202-748-8002. text 202-748-8003 and we're reading on twitter at c-span wj and facebook.com/c-span. let's go back to our phone lines and talk to john calling from long beach, california, on the democrat line. john, good morning. caller: good morning. i was wondering if c-span has responded to the studies that have come out showing the coverage of think tanks is

heavily skewed to conservatives where you cover 50% of conservative think tanks as opposed to center left think tanks only being covered 17% and as well as this program itself where the watchdog group fairness and ago recent in reporting found that 65% of the guests were republicans and only 34% were democrats. so i was wondering if that's ever been addressed by c-span. thank you. host: let's go to linda who is calling from bloomington, minnesota, on the independent line. linda, good morning. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: we can. caller: ok. all right. i wanted to address what i think it was a gentleman who talked about the justice thomas' wife's emails that had been uncovered,

discovered. i think this situation, i agree with this person, is very serious. i just do. it kind of sent a shiver up my spine. i'm an advanced aged senior citizen and this is frightening that someone who is so close to making such big decisions was in on this scheme to overturn the election. i hope that the committee calls her to testify. i think it will be interesting to see if she refuses to and has to be subpoenaed and whatever. but i think we should be paying attention to this. thanks. host: let's talk to ray calling from townsend, delaware, on the republican line. ray, good morning. caller: hi, good morning. on this with biden being overseas, he just keeps

embarrassing us more and more. he's not good at all at speaking. he keeps saying stuff and then the white house has to walk it back, and this stuff with the hunter biden laptop, got everybody saying it was russian disinformation and now we know it's not. having any votes would have changed because a lot of people were told it wasn't true and now we know it is true. there's no accountability in this country. nobody is getting held accountable for anything. this guy, it's like having mr. mcgoo leading the country. he has no idea what he's saying. it's just embarrassing. host: let's go to larry who is calling from houston, texas, on the democrat line. larry, good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call.

i just love how these people are talking about go to war, go to war, go to war. first of all, putin did the same thing bush did up in iraq. the same thing. where was all the people hollering and hooping and hollering then? you know, people don't want to holler about biden is not doing this and not doing that. he got nato all together. if trump was still in there, trump was trying to break up nato. so can you imagine all the european countries around russia now what kind of disaster we would really be in right now? host: tim calling from west virginia on the republican line. tim, good morning. caller: good morning. i'd just like to say a couple things about the nomination that

come out, i wonder if you would be so lenient so to present a picture -- host: i assume you don't mean vice president kamala harris, i assume you mean judge ketanji brown jackson. caller: i'm sorry, my mistake. i missed the judge. but if they didn't think of her children, i wonder if she'd give them the same identity, probably not. and i was born in america and someone fighting for their independence and liberty, you backed them up, you didn't try to stay somewhat neutral. and i think we're in the wrong position. we could help defend anybody's independence. host: let's go to kathleen calling from dayton, ohio, on the democrat line.

kathleen, good morning. caller: hi. so appreciate "washington journal" so much. anyway, i have two requests. one, a program about displaced children of course in ukraine which we should be focused on. however, i would love to see you also include the displaced children from our invasion of iraq, the displaced children of the syrian war in afghanistan as well as yemen. so to do a whole program on displaced children in confrontations in the middle east and in ukraine. i'm also -- i looked in your archives to find out if you guys have covered any of the four recent reports, human rights reports, about israel and apartheid. there was a human rights report called "this is apartheid"

january 12 u2 021 and another one by human rights watch on april 27, 2021 called "the threshold cross." a report by amnesty international of february 2022 called "israel's apartheid against palestinian." a recent report by the human rights council report and you guys have not done any coverage of this. so if you could talk about norman finkelstein or eric koch to discuss these reports because you guys have not touched this issue and neither has people news, joy reed and it's been touched a bit on peacock but the rest of cable news has not touched on these human rights report about israel and the apartheid so i hope you shine a light on the reports. host: of course, if you want to see anything that we've covered before, can you go to c-span. org or to our website and on our

website can you see archives of all the shows we have done and all the topics we've covered over the's existence, c pan. org. let's talk to gilbert calling from birmingham, alabama, on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning, professor, and to the c-span audience. as i listen to the president, loose lips sink ships. he's making a lot of bad mistakes and begs the question posed to me on numerous occasions, who is running joe biden? about 25 or 30 years ago, there was a book written by keyes, k-e-y-e-s, and pick it up online for $5 about the planethood and gave a diagram of the natural disasters and foot shortages and the wars and all and explained

how mankind would be coming to a point of devastation unless they came together and tried to be more at peace. but the biggest problem i think that we have in american society is that no one wants to hold the people that they vote for accountable. the reason i'm an independent is because anyone that i vote for, if they don't follow suit to my liking, i hold them accountable. the democrats won't hold the democrats accountable and the republicans won't hold the republicans accountable. host: let's go to david calling from white pines, tennessee, on the republican line. david, good morning. caller: good morning. i'm calling from the most conservative area in the united states, that's east tennessee. and i'll make it short. i want to talk about the most used word in the english language and it's free.

nothing's free. someone has to pay for it and it's probably going to be our kids and grandkids. and i'll let it go at that. thank you. host: we'd like to thank all of our callers for calling in during our open forum segment. coming up next, we welcome spirit of america founder and c.e.o. jim hake who is here to outline the work his group is doing to assist members of ukraine's military. stick with us. we'll be right back. >> this week on the c-span networks, both chambers of congress are in session with the house taking up a bill that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. the senate will vote on legislation to support the u.s. semiconductor chip industry. the january 6 committee holds a meeting monday at 7:30 p.m. eastern to consider recommending that two former advisors to president trump, peter navarro and dan scavino, be referred for

criminal contempt of congress. look for that on the c-span networks, c-span.org and the c-span now free video app. general todd walters and nato supreme allied commander testifies twice on security challenges on the continent, tuesday at 9:30 a.m. before the senate armed services committee. and wednesday at 10:00 a.m. he'll appear before the house armed services committee. both hearings will be live on c-span.org and the c-span now free video app. white house budget director is also on capitol hill twice. she'll testify on president biden's 2023 budget before the house budget committee tuesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern and before the senate budget committee on wednesday at 11:00 a.m. eastern. both hearings will be live on c-span3 and thursday at 9:00 a.m. eastern, an interview with mitch mcconnell by punch bowl news. you can watch that live on c-span.org and c-span now. then at 10:30 a.m. eastern, the

f.c.c. chair and commissioners testify before a house energy and commerce subcommittee. you'll be able to watch that on c-span.org and c-span now. watch this week live on the c-span networks or on c-span now, our free mobile app. also head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video live or on demand any time. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. >> there are a lot of places to get political demand, but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. notice matter where you're from, or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word, if it happens here, or here, or here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span.

powered by cable. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we're back with jim hake, the founder and c.e.o. of spirit of america, and he's here with us this morning to discuss with us the work that his group is doing to assist members of ukraine's military. jim, good morning. guest: good morning. host: first of all, tell us exactly what spirit of america is. guest: it's a privately funded citizens service organization, a nonprofit. i founded the organization after the attacks of 9/11, because i wanted to stand up for what america stands for, and our team are all veteran field operations team and works alongside u.s. troops and diplomats all over the world to help them save and improve lives. and we are the only nonprofit, private nonprofit that is recognized by congress and approved by the department of defense to work alongside u.s. military personnel to provide

assistance in support of their missions and in support of what the united states is trying to accomplish around the world. host: when you say you work alongside united states military and you're completely -- you're all veterans, so explain exactly what assistance do you bring to the united states military and to its mission. guest: i'll talk about what we're doing in ukraine right now, because i think that's the most timely thing. in coordination with both u.s. military and state department personnel, we are providing assistance that's needed by ukrainian says on the front lines, both regular soldiers, as well as civilian volunteers who have stepped up since the russian-launched war began. the assistance we're providing is to keep them safe, allow them to do their jobs, defending their country. that includes things like body armor, helmets, first aid kits, food, water, communications gear, you name it, everything that is in the assistance

category that is to help them be safe and more effective in their work. host: so spirit of america does not get involved with providing weapons or any type of training or any type of fighting in these areas, does it? guest: no, we do not provide weapons. that's the government's job. we're a private organization supported by americans across the country. we've sent in one chartered cargo plane last week. that assistance was on the front lines within a matter of days. our second charter flight leaves this tuesday evening. that will be, the assistance will be in ukraine on thursday morning. host: you say you're not funded by the government. so where do you get your funding? guest: it's americans across the country. our contributions have ranged from $10 up to $5 million for what we're doing in ukraine right now, and it's for people who want to see ukraine prevail in the fight to defend freedom and democracy and also stop the tremendous suffering that's happening in ukraine at the moment.

host: you've had described your group as a not neutral government ocean. what do you mean? guest: it's really important and important point, and in the world of international assistance, the dominant paradigm, the dominant policy of organizations is to be neutral, which means they will not support military personnel. they will not support u.s. troops in the case of ukraine. they will not support ukrainian soldiers and civilian volunteers who are fighting to defend their country. and there are a lot of good reasons for that. but what that policy does is leaves a really big gap when there's a situation like what's happening in ukraine right now, which is those ukrainians who were fighting to defend their country need help. the more we lean forward to help them defend their country and stop the source of the suffering at its cause, the faster this will be over and the values that ukraine shares with the united states will be protected. host: how many people do you have in ukraine right now, and how are you keeping them safe? there's an active war going on.

guest: well, our personnel are in ukraine only when they need to be. today, no one is there. and it varies based on the situation. so we've been active as an organization in ukraine since 2015. the first project, which we helped stand up there, working with the ukrainian ministry of defense and military was an armed forces radio station. ukraine's first armed forces radio station called army f.m., and that was to meet the information needs of the ukrainian soldiers on the front lines fighting the russians, going back to that point in time. maybe folks don't know that russia has been aggressive in ukraine since 2014. and what we've been doing since then, we've been active in the country. we've had personnel in and out of the country during that whole period, and we still have personnel in theory now. host: according to your website, you're describing your organization as the only nonprofit officially approved by congress and the department of defense to work alongside

deployed u.s. troops and provide private assistance in support of their mission. first of all, how did you get that designation? guest: well, it only took 15 years after i started the organization. and what spirit of america represents is a new model of private-public cooperation t. began from the very bottom up in supporting civilian efforts in both iraq and afghanistan, and we've operated around the world in west africa, the philippines. we worked just as well with the state department as we do with the u.s. military, and the model that we have of this private-public collaboration with the military really broke new ground, and there was not a frame work for it. so in 2019, it we finally achieved both the congressional recognition and the agreement with the department of defense that provides the worldwide legal and operational framework for our collaboration with the military. host: so what does it mean having that designation? does that mean you get to do

something other n.g.o.'s can't? guest: what it means is commanders and military personnel level at all levels can take advantage of our assistance when they want to. it does not give us any special privilege. it's all about empowering those who serve our nation abroad so that they can take advantage of private assistance like spirit of america can offer. and that varies. we've done things in afghanistan with soldiers and marines helping them provide sewing machines to afghan women so they can provide for their families. in the philippines right now, we're helping set up a program to stop illegal fishing in the south china sea by empowering filipino fishermen. it varies what we do all over the world n. ukraine right now, the core thing is supporting the effort to stop the russian war and protect ukraine esteem come, protect its democracy. host: let me take a second here to remind our viewers that they can take part in this

conversation. we're going to open up regional lines. regional lines. that means that if you are in the eastern or central time zones, we want to hear from you at 202-748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zones, your number is going to be 202-748-8001. keep in mind, you can always text us at 202-748-8003, and we're always reading on social media on twitter at c-span wj, and on facebook at facebook.com/cspan. let's talk specifically a little bit about what's going on in ukraine right now. are there rules that n.g.o.'s like spirit of america have to follow in the ukraine theater right now? guest: one of the biggest rules that is extremely important, there's tremendous amount of complexity in providing assistance into ukraine. i'll just say, it's not as easy as it might look. so on some of the materials that we're providing, body armor and

helmets, for example, the export of those, or the provision of those anywhere in the world outside the united states by american citizens is tightly regulated by the department of state and department of commerce. so we follow those rules completely, of course, everything we're doing where it needs to be licensed by the u.s. government is licensed. and with respect to what we're doing in ukraine, everything we're doing is need-driven. we don't, as an organization, do anything because we want to do it. we're in communication with folks at the point of need, and everything we do is to meet those exceeds on the ground. some of the needs we hear about from u.s. military personnel and state department personnel, others we hear other needs about from the ukrainian partners that we've had there, trusted ukrainian partners since 2015. host: you just got into exactly what i was going to ask. who are you getting requests from? are you getting requests from the ukrainian government? are you getting requests from ukrainian military?

are you getting requests from the american military or the american government or all of the above? guest: all the above. our principal partners start with the u.s. military and state department personnel. they are in touch and in communication with their counterparts that are still in ukraine in the thick of the fight there. those are the first set of needs that are identified by u.s. personnel, by their counterparts. military and civilians. so that's our top priority. the second is with the ukrainians that we have known since 2015, i'll give a good example of that. the ukrainian who was behind this army f.m. radio stations that i mentioned earlier, his name is ruslan. before the russian war began, he was the deputy director of ukraine's first holocaust museum and memorial. after the war began, he dropped what he was doing with that, and he's now running a training center for the ukrainian civilian volunteers who were stepping up to defend their

country. so he's running a training center. so we've heard from ruslan. he sent us a list about an arm long of different things that they needed. the meals ready to eat, m.r.e.'s, a food source for ukrainians on the front line. helmets, body armor, first aid kits, clothing, boots, everything you can really imagine. because a lot of these ukrainians who were stepping up to defend their country, people just like me and you, are doing so without any of the gear that's really needed. you'll see images of 19-year-old skateboarders who are going to be trained and then fight on the front lines. and what they have are their skateboarding knee pads. so we're trying to help them so they can be safe and successful in their work. host: i think i probably would not be too far off base to say that russia probably does not like what your n.g.o. is doing in ukraine right now. are you concerned about

confronting or having any of your people confronted by russian forces? guest: well, the safety of our personnel and the effectiveness of what they're doing is mile an hour top concern always. we have had, over the years, personnel on the ground within marine units and helmet province at afghanistan and special forces units in kandahar province in afghanistan. so it's one of the reasons why we have an old veteran field operations team, because they understand what they're getting into. i understand what they're getting into. and their safety is paramount. but we're focused on having an impact on the ground in some very difficult and dicey circumstances. so yes, of course, we're all concerned about russia. i doubt russia likes what we're doing at all, but anyone who's doing anything to help in ukraine, russia is not going to like it, anything. we see, of course, the russians are not only attacking the core values of freedom and democracy in ukraine, but they're killing

children. so we cannot stand for that, and the american people have a say in it. host: let's let some of our viewers take part in this conversation. we'll start with a caller from st. petersburg, florida. good morning. caller: good morning, guys. i'm firmly against putin. but also i'm against our corrupt politicians that have gone into iraq or going in there and ripped off people. i mean, it's a real disaster that these politicians like graham and mccain went in there and offered weapons and sold us out, and now we know with hunter's laptop, there's probably 100,000 emails that will be coming out indexed connecting our politicians, democrat and republican, to ukraine. basically it's been a money laundering operation for many

years. thank you. guest: thanks very much for the call. and there are a lot of things that i am against. and in this moment, what's really important is not just what i'm for, but what america is for, not just what we're against. and what we're for we can actually do something about. so what i am for is ukraine's peace, security, and democracy and freedom. and there we have a real say in it. what russia is doing, and it's unprovoked war. none of us asked for this. none of us wanted it, of course. certainly not the ukrainians. but they launched a war that is not just an attack on ukraine, but an attack on the ideas of freedom and democracy in ukraine and around the world. what do we do about that? i looked back, my dad, as a

22-year-old, he fought in world war ii. so he did his part. americans across the country did their part. that's why we always remember them as the greatest generation. so now in this moment we can be great, too, and we're going to be great by standing up for who we're for, help the ukrainians, our partners in the fight for freedom. we can help them the whole world is watching what are americans going to do, not just the american government, but what are americans going to do? are we going to do our part? and that's what we're doing at spirit of america. that's what all the people supporting us are doing. it's about what we're for, not just what we're against. host: one of our social media followers has been listening to us about assisting the military, and they have a question to add in here. what about helping the civilians in ukraine?

does spirit of america help civilians in america, and if so, how? guest: absolutely. we're doing three things. one of which is helping the ukrainian soldiers and civilian volunteers who are part of what's called the territorial defense forces, with the kind of nonlethal assistance that i mentioned. the second thing is we're helping humanitarian organizations that are doing tremendous work inside ukraine. so what they'll be getting this week is the same kind of protective equipment that we're providing to the ukrainian soldiers and civilian volunteers. because they are as much of a target of russia as the ukrainian military is. so they are getting the same kind of things in terms of first aid kits, body armor and helmets. the third thing that we're doing is providing support for refugees. our focus in that is in moldova, which is a smaller, less well known country, but which is receiving a great influx of refugees, and they're also a poorer country, so they need the assistance that we're able to

provide there. we're doing that in coordination with the u.s. embassy in moldova. host: let's go back to our phone lines and talk to alex, who's calling from california. alex, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. what i wanted to say is during the three decades after the collapse of the soviet union, if the ukrainians had created a modern european state, they'd have the wealth and technology to build the weapons to fight off the russians easily. however, because they failed to do that, and ukraine is corrupt and impoverished, they now need our military assistance. i think, in my opinion, that we should get a firm commitment from president zelenskyy that he will modernize his nation before we continue to provide him any more military, economic assistance, otherwise this whole effort will end in futility. that's my comment. guest: well, thanks for the call. i used to live out in your neck

of the woods, i appreciate the question. your characterization of ukraine is unfair. and right now ukrainians are in a death struggle for the fight of their country, which is also the future of the values that we share with ukraine, in terms of freedom and democracy. and ukraine has not been perfect. it is not perfect. and after they are able to win this war against russia, they still won't be perfect. neither are we, but what they believe in as our shared values, those are perfect. and we need to support them in that effort right now. there's an urgent situation. people, men, women, children are being killed in ukraine right now. let's solve that problem. let's stop the source of the suffering at its root cause, which is the russian-launched war. then we're going to have plenty of time to help ukraine further advance as a society.

but they have chosen to fight for freedom and democracy and their independence right now. that's what we have to help them with. host: what do you say to americans who want to donate items to your effort? guest: what we have set up over the last three, four weeks since the war began is a scalable infrastructure to be able to deliver and essentially an unlimited supply of the need-driven assistance into ukraine, that involves the logistics involved in that are extraordinarily complex. we have awesome people and awesome organizations and companies working with us on that, and we have, from the u.s. into ukraine, including that last mile figured out really well. it are and it's really hard to move goods through that that are not sourced responsibly, that are licensed, so the most important thing that is needed to leverage that scalable infrastructure is financial

support. and donated goods are not really that useful. they don't match up very well with what's needed on the ground, and we can move much faster with purchasing and procuring the things that are needed and getting them through the logistics chain and into ukraine, just about immediately, with financial support. host: let's go back to the phone line and talk to cynthia, who's calling from wilmington, north carolina. cynthia, good morning. caller: good morning. it sounds like your organization is doing really good work around the world, and it's based on donations from 500 to five million, so people or companies that are donating millions of dollars, are they influencing where you are helping and how you are helping, and are you transparent about those high-dollar donations? thank you. guest: well, it's a great question. and no, our financial supporters do not influence what we do.

what they influence is our ability to do it on a scale, but where we operate, how we operate is not influenced by our financial supporters. we're supported by people who, and this is what we think about in terms of prettyism without politics -- prettyism without politics. beyond this work, there's a great need for this today, which is people who believe in what the country stands for, in our most aspirational sense, the promise of a free and better life, and they want to support our work in doing that. we've been around now for almost 20 years, and we have a track record of having an impact in every situation and in every country in the most dangerous parts of the world every time we do it. our supporters trust us to do the right thing. one of the reasons they trust us to do the right thing is because of our close collaboration with u.s. military and state department personnel. so when we go into a country, any situation, what we're doing is essentially built on top of

the united states existing investment and presence and personnel. people who have spent months, years, decades figuring out what needs to be done, and we bring in kind of private assistance with entrepreneurial speed and flexibility that allows them to achieve objectives much more quickly than we could otherwise. our supporters at any level, whether it's $5 or much greater sum, trust us to do the right thing. and since we're not -- that's our accountability. we have to produce results. and we do. host: let's talk to kathleen, calling from fort bragg, california. kathleen, good morning. caller: good morning. i just want to say i'm proud of you. i don't really have a question. i've been reading along what you've got published online, and seems like your organization has really lined up with how i feel

about america, so i thank you. guest: kathleen, thank you. host: what do you say to americans who want to go overseas and help in a way like spirit of america is doing, but want to do it on their own instead of with a n.g.o.? guest: well, it's an extraordinarily complex situation over there, and i've been really busy doing what we're doing, setting up the infrastructure that we have, raising money so we can deliver the assistance, the first plane was about 20 tons of assistance and valued at about $4 million. the one leaving this week is 35 tons and $6 million of assistance, the kinds of things i just mentioned. so i have been really busy with that. and so is our whole team. in terms of the other things that people can do, you know, i can't really say, but what i would caution people, including donors, is this was also true

when the afghanistan crisis response and the evacuation. these situations are much, much more complex than they might seem from sitting here in the comfort of the united states. and a lot of times there's a lot of winging it that's going on. and as an entrepreneur, businessperson myself before starting spirit of america, i'm usedded to a certain level of flexibility in figuring things out as you go along. but doing so in a responsible way, not only responsible, but has an impact on the ground, that's what we focused on figuring out how to do for almost 20 years now. i would encourage people to president trump the bakes. but find the people who are doing the work and help them do the work in whatever way you can. host: what would you say is the best way the average american can help? guest: well, i'm going to speak to our organization, because that's what i'm familiar with. i know what we have in place, and i know what the impact is

going to be. a dollar in our system today is going to have an impact in ukraine in five days. i'm very certain about that. in terms of all the other good work, the other organizations are doing, i'm sure it's out there, i'm just not familiar enough to be able to speak to it, honestly. folks can go to spiritofamerica.org. the funds that are contributed to what we're doing in ukraine, 100% of the funds will go to the things that i just mentioned a moment ago. we call it 100% promise. our other costs, we're able to take care of that through other means of support for the organization, but people go to our website today and contribute $10 or $100 or whatever, all that money will go to provide assistance on the ground in ukraine very, very quickly. host: let's talk to it a caller from new york. good morning. caller: yes, hi, good morning.

i just want to say i love what you do. mr. hake, i love the work of your spirit of america, around the world, specifically with the focus on ukraine right now, which is very much needed. i appreciate that you also made a point to appropriately characterize president zelenskyy and the plight of democracy. many of us here in america, we take that for granted. we don't know the trials and tribulations that this country has come through to get to where we are, and still we are always ever mindful that it is a precious sight day-to-day. also, as a military mom, i appreciate that you're doing what you're doing. my son is in the region right now. i am standing with ukraine. i thank you for standing with ukraine. i will do my best to promote what you do on twitter. i hope you have a twitter handle, thank you. guest: i do, and we do. and thank you very much.

and one of the things that is true is that those who serve, and i thank you for your son's service, the moms and dads and the husbands and wives of those who serve don't really get the appreciation that you deserve. so that is a hard thing to have a son in harm's way. thank you. host: we're about out of time, so we want to thank jim hake, founder and country crew of c.ef spirit for coming on and talking about the work his group is doing to assist members of ukraine's military. jim, thank you so much for coming on with us this morning. guest: thank you. it's been a privilege to be with you. host: and we'd like to thank all of our guests, all of our callers, and all of our viewers of today's "washington journal." everyone, continue to stay safe. continue to wash your hands. and have a great sunday. we'll see you again tomorrow.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we're funded by these television companies and more, including comcast. >> you think this is just a community center? no. it's way more than that. comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create wifi-enabled, so students from low-income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. comcast supports c-span along with these other providers,

giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> if confirmed, ketanji brown jackson would become the first african-american woman to sit on the supreme court. the senate judiciary committee heard from the nominee this week. joining us later today for select portions of the hearing, including questions regarding her record as a public defender, federal judge, and member of the u.s. sentencing commission. watch starting at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or using our free video app, c-span now. this week on the c-span networks, both chambers of congress are in session with the house taking up a bill that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. the senate will vote on legislation to support the u.s. semiconductor chip industry. the january 6 committee holds a meeting monday at 7:30 p.m. eastern to consider recommending that two former advisors to president trump, peter navarro and dan scavino, be referred to

prosecutors for criminal contempt of congress. look for that on the c-span networks and the free video app. general todd walters, head of the u.s. european command, and nato supreme allied commander in europe testifies twice on security challenges on the continent, tuesday at 9:30 a.m., he's before the senate armed services committee. wednesday at 10:00 a.m., he'll appear before the house armed services committee. both hearings will be live on c-span.org and the c-span now free video app. white house budget director is also on capitol hill twice. she'll testify on president biden's 2023 budget before the house budget committee tuesday at 10:00 a.m. eastern and before the senate budget committee on wednesday at 11:00 a.m. eastern. both hearings will be live on c-span 3 and thursday at 9:00 a.m. eastern, an interview with mitch mcconnell will i bunch bowl news founders. you can watch that live on c-span.org and c-span now.

then at 10:30 a.m. eastern, the f.c.c. chair and commissioners testify in an oversight hearing before a house energy and commerce subcommittee. you'll be able to watch that on c-span.org and c-span now. watch this week live on the c-span networks or on c-span now. our free mobile app. also head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to stream video, live or on demand any time. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. host: good morning ae to washington journal. after days of grilling by senators, judge jackson will likely move forward to the sioux jennet judiciary vote her candidacy to join the nation's highest court. if confirmed, she will be the first black