harmon -- jane harman talks about the russian invasion of ukraine and u.s. national security issues. be sure to join the conversation with your phone calls, facebook ♪ host: since the russian invasion of ukraine seven weeks ago, the united states response has escalated on an almost daily basis. additional troops for nato, multiple levels of economic sanction. military weapons and supplies. increasingly sharp denunciation of russia on the world stage. but the war rages on. so what should the u.s. do now? good morning. we will spend the first hour hearing from you about that. for republicans, (202) 748-8001.

democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents and others, (202) 748-8002. you can send us a text message at (202) 748-8003 and tell us your name and where you are texting from. you can also post on facebook and send us your thoughts on twitter and instagram, @cspanwj. the reality is that what the u.s. should do now is what the u.s. and allies should do now. go ahead and start dialing, we will get your comments in just a minute. seven weeks since the invasion on february 24 of this year. what should the u.s. do now? this is from "the new york times" this morning. signs of war crimes. investigators from almost a dozen countries combing bombed out towns and freshly dug graves in ukraine were evidence of war

crimes. a wide-ranging investigation by an international security organization detailed what they said were very clear patterns of human rights violations by russian forces. "some of the atrocities may constitute war crimes, with numerous -- host: president biden said that the united states, already a major provider of defensive armaments to ukraine, would send an additional $800 million in military and other security aid. the package will include "new

capabilities tailored to the wider assault we expect russia to launch an eastern you crying," -- eastern ukraine," according to president biden. what should the u.s. do now? democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents and all others, (202) 748-8002. john kirby, detailing the military aid for ukraine. [video clip] >> helicopters, are these the helicopters you had on stock because they were going to be going to afghanistan? >> these 11 mi17's had been earmarked for afghanistan and are coming out of our stock inventory. we didn't transfer them to afghanistan, obviously. so, we are now transferring them to ukraine. as you probably remember we had already provided ukraine five of

them not long ago. this is not the first time we have given these. >> related question, you mentioned the urgency and the shift of the russian focus to the east. are you also putting urgency on trying to facilitate in some way a transfer of armor from eastern european nato member countries who would have tanks or other armor that the ukrainians would be familiar with? is that moving forward should mark >> without talking about -- forward? >> without talking about other sovereign states and what they are providing, we can tell you that there are at least a couple providing armor capabilities, tanks, largely two t72 tanks that the ukrainians are trained on and they are getting a

transfer from other countries in nato but i would leave it to those countries to speak to that more specifically. host: the opening topic this morning, after seven weeks, what should the u.s. do now in the war in ukraine? (202) 748-8001, the line for republicans. democrats, it's (202) 748-8000. for independents and others, it's (202) 748-8002. on the independent line, first. chris, simpsonville, kentucky. >> i believe we ought to keep helping them. it's absolute terrible what they doing to them people. can i tell you what the fbi here in louisville is doing? they chase people around with a spy drone and mess with their property. over $10. they have been doing it for eight years and five months. i believe we ought to help them people and the only way i think to deal with it is kind of stand up to old putin, that's the only

way to deal with it. host: glenn, detroit, democrats line. caller: hello. what i wanted to know, you don't hear much about what israel is doing, whether they are contributing, what are they, you don't hear anything about israel or china. i heard china was, they did say that what russia was doing was wrong, but i haven't heard anything from israel. and they are supposed to be our allies, you know. are they standing with putin? are you going to have someone come on to ask than that question? what is israel doing about ukraine? that's all i have to say. thank you. host: all right, good morning to

john in rhode island on the republican line. your thoughts on what the u.s. and their allies should do next? caller: here's the situation. i know warfare quite well in history. world war ii, for example, russian forces withstood the best army in world history, the wehrmacht. that wasn't stated on tv too much. the russian forces are not using all their power and abilities. if putin is cornered, he will not allow russia to collapse like the old soviet union. i sincerely believe he will launch a massive strike. good day, sir. host: ok.

vincent, on the independent line, brooklyn, new york there. caller: thank you for taking my call. what should the united states do? america should stop the weapons dump in ukraine that would ultimately be required to purchase new armaments. basically what they should do is try to refit the american military, the nato military. it's interesting that over 25 advocate countries are standing in support of russia because the united states supported apartheid in south africa. this is more involved than just a small country like ukraine. basically, never get involved in white on white crime, i would hate to divest. america needs to spend their money here at home and in america. we need our infrastructure restored. we need college loans forgiven.

there's a lot of things we should be doing. negotiate with russia, respect their sovereignty. thank you. host: previous country mentioned china -- previous caller mentioned china, who was criticized by the treasury secretary yesterday. the headline says it's time for china to push russia to stop the war in ukraine, here is some of what she had to say yesterday. [video clip] >> the war in ukraine, sanctions against russia, china has long claimed sacrosanct international principles, including those enshrined in the u.n. charter with respect to sovereignty and territorial integrity. whatever their geopolitical aims and strategies, we have seen a

benign interpretation of the russian invasion, nor consequences for the international order. china cannot expect the global community to respect its appeals to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity in the future if it does not respect its principals now. china recently affirmed its special relationship with russia. i fervently hope that china will make something positive of this relationship and hope to end this war. going forward, there will be increasingly difficult -- it will be increasingly difficult to separate economic issues from broader considerations of national interest, including national security. the world's attitude towards china and its willingness to embrace further economic

integration will be affected by the chinese reaction to our call through resolute action on russia. host: you can see all of that event from yesterday on our mobile app and online at c-span.org. question now, what should the u.s. do about the war in ukraine? this in other news, elon musk made a bid to purchase twitter with a bid that values accompany 43 $3 million with a move that could turn the chief executive of tesla into a social media mogul. on the topic this morning, keep getting them what they need while being smart, exactly what the president and vice president are doing. @cspanwj is how you tweet us. oliver from falls church, virginia. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: i can come oliver, go

ahead. caller: i wanted to say good morning to you. i appreciate it when you the host of the show. listen, give me a minute. it's such a blessing that joe biden is in the white house. i couldn't sleep at night with donald trump in the white house. i can sleep now at night knowing that joe biden is handling this country's business. the ukrainians have got to be blessed that joe biden is in the white house. no telling what donald trump would have done if he had been in the white house. you could see his love for vladimir putin. he would've said that he was a genie is for the invasion that is killing women and kids. it's a blessing that joe biden is in the white house.

thank god for joe biden. thank you. host: all right. next up is frank on the republican line, claremont, california. caller: how are you? host: fine, thanks. caller: i got a three-phase approach of what the u.s. and europe should do. it will bring down worldwide inflation, bring a faster close to the war, and it will hurt russia financially. first thing that biden needs to do is make a written agreement with saudi arabia and the oil-producing countries over there, agreed to not pursue an agreement with iran. it's the only reason they won't talk to biden. it's the only reason they won't agree to pump more oil. second, he needs to unleash american energy, oil and gas. we need to get as much oil out in the market to bring prices

down to $40 a gallon, $40 a barrel, where it was under trump. this will hurt russia financially. that is the only thing we can do. europe is going to take them years to wean off russian oils and gas. the third thing we need to do is europe should, instead of trying to stop importing russian oil, what they should do is put tariffs on russian oil. about 25%. you don't want to do too much, russia may cut them off. but if you tariff the oil that they buy, the oil and gas they buy from russia, the money could be sent to ukraine and ukraine can buy their own weapons. us taxpayers don't have to keep spending our money to supply ukraine with weapons. then it's going to take, from what i've seen, it's going to take somewhere between 100 and

$150 billion to rebuild ukraine. keep the tariffs on russian oil and gas for as long as it takes to completely rebuild ukraine. host: you are saying with the tariffs that that is a way that russia itself would actually pay for the rebuilding of ukraine? caller: yes, and supply military weapons to ukraine. in the beginning it would be used for ukraine to buy their own weapons that they want and as many as they want. because if you are buying a billion dollars a day of energy from russia, that's $250 million a day at 25%, $7.5 billion a month. with that they could buy a lot of military equipment. if it takes $150 billion to rebuild the country, seven point

$5 billion a month to rebuild their country once the war is over. if anybody thinks that putin is going to negotiate a peace, it's never going to happen. he has to be defeated. this is a way that all the taxpayers around the world don't have to pay for the equipment that we keep giving them for free. but they would also get the money to rebuild the country. host: short-term, though, frank, will that defeat him militarily? the russians may wind up with the ukraine after all this. short-term, will that not feet the russian army? defeat vladimir putin? russia may wind up with eastern ukraine if their plan is carried through. caller: if they have to purchase 7.5 billion dollars in equipment every month, that will defeat russia. host: thanks for your points, appreciate you calling in. john is next in fort rag,

california. go ahead, democrats line. caller: good morning, sir. being that we are still acting like knuckle draggers, the world needs to come together against the russians. you know? when hitler's started his campaigns, everybody said he won't do that, he won't do that. look what happened. we are in that same situation. unless the european union and the united states and all the enlightened people of this world make a unified effort to stop ukraine, you know, i saw those videos of all of those columns of russian tanks and armored personnel carriers. ukraine does not have one c-130 aircraft.

do you know what one or two of those planes would have done to that 40 mile long column? 2002. we have come from, you know, never again to here it is again. it's so real this time. ukraine has been turned to rubble. it's our fault at this point. host: what should the u.s. and its allies do in ukraine? cliff, tulsa, oklahoma, independent line, go ahead. caller: i live in the world capital of the world, $11 per barrel oil killed the soviet union, not ronald reagan. like the other collars, we have

the resources to stop this quickly if we could get the resources to the battlefield. the other thing i haven't seen, as far as our so-called subcontractors that we used in a ron that gave us -- in iran that gave us such a advantage, the blackwater group, the black ops guys, where they at? this would not be a big of a war if the we attack like it was us host: host: and not ukraine. -- and not ukraine. host: russian forces launching airstrikes inside of a besieged port city, maripol, troops from both sides exchanging fire ahead of an expected increase in violence. comments by text and social media, marianne says that zielinski should get every weapon we have if it means

saving one ukrainian life, we must defend our allies across the globe or next door. dave, from annapolis says i don't want to wait until the russians killed 6 million ukrainians like the nazis did. russ says that biden thinks money grows on trees. 800 million dollars there, who is counting? he doesn't care about the strain it puts on americans. worst president ever. jen psaki yesterday at the press briefing was asked about the presidents, -- comments calling the acts of the russian military in this war a genocide. >> he called it --[video clip] >> he called it a genocide yesterday because it is becoming clearer and clearer each day that it is the idea of vladimir putin to wipe out the idea of being ukrainian. increasing brutality every day because we are gaining greater

access to areas, with more intelligence on what's happening. leaders are speaking out more and frankly there is also reporting about it's happening on the ground. to give you some specifics i would note that of course what we saw in bucha was not an anomaly as they pulled back and moved east. the marriott -- mayor and city council of mariupol reporting high numbers of civilian casualties. the train station attack over the weekend killed more than 50 civilians. the u.n. reported 4000 450 civilian casualties since february 24. the real number is much higher. clear patterns of international violations by targeting hospitals and schools, other locations and we have seen from

the beginning of this kremlin rhetoric and saw a media deny the national identity of the indian people and the kremlin has launched a full-scale assault on the sovereignty of the ukrainian state and people. the president was speaking to what we all see, what he feels as clear as day in terms of the atrocities on the ground and as we noted yesterday there will be a legal process that plays out in the courtroom, but he was speaking to what he has seen on the ground and what we have all seen in terms of the atrocities on the ground. host: a report here from reuters, russia says clifford -- crippled warship to be towed back to port with russia saying the crew of the black sea flagship evacuated thursday, measures were being taken to tow the ship back to court after an explosion that ukraine says was caused by a missile strike. they said that the fire had been contained but had left the ship

badly damaged and did not acknowledge that the ship had been attacked and the cause of the fire was under investigation. opening question for you, with the war in ukraine, what should the u.s. do now? harold, greenville, indiana, republican mine. caller: good morning. i have an angle on this. what happens if russia does win? do they inherit all of this equipment? do they get the missiles in the tanks? the billions of dollars in equipment? do they become even more well armed to attack their neighbors? have we thought about that angle? just wondering. thank you. host: ok, kobe, next up on the democrats line, at worth, georgia, go ahead. caller: first of all i want to say i'm an air force veteran, cold war veteran, commander-in-chief carter and reagan.

i just want to say, what happens to the people in yemen being bombed and killed by saudi arabia? what happened to the people that were being killed by israel and palestine? we don't see those images on tv. i hate what's happening to the people in ukraine, but we as americans, we need to look at the whole picture here. people are being killed around the world and all we see is ukraine. i'm an air force veteran. i love this country. i'm a descendant of slaves. but this country, when we spend our money, let's spend it wisely around the world. let's get our money on some people in yemen. who are being killed by saudi arabia. we don't hear nothing about it.

that's what i want to say. get wise. don't just think about ukraine. there is suffering around the world. host: next up is bernie, pennsylvania. caller: this fellow who just spoke, we should be concentrating on what's happening in this country. we have infrastructure that needs billions to be repaired. our economy is in the two's. prices have gone up and up. this country has food shortages. there's all kinds of problems and we are worried about a region, ukraine, that isn't a recognized state. it's not a recognized country. it's a territory. that territory is comprised, two thirds, of russians. they speak russian. they have allegiances to russia.

there religion is russian orthodox. we are over there trying to split hairs with this regime with zielinski who was a comedian until three years ago when george soros put him in and just like in this country, everybody follows what simon says. they put in this particular person wearing army fatigues, that guy can't even fire a gun and he's a commander in army fatigues trying to tell us that oh my we are being overwhelmed? america has been disappearing. we are no longer a supreme nation where we are the best in medicine and technology, best everything. that all got transferred out of our country. host: question for you this

morning, what should the u.s. do now about the war in ukraine? cbs and you go have done a number of polls this past week on what people think about the war, what can be done. the polling came out late last week. should the u.s. send weapons to ukraine? a clear majority, 72%, said they should. in terms of russia's invasion of ukraine, should the u.s. keep up economic sanctions? 78% said yes. send weapons and supplies to ukraine question mark 72% said yes. send u.s. troops to protect the nato allies? 63%. the number of people surveyed who said send u.s. troops, just 25%. robert gates, the former defense secretary speaking yesterday

spoke about the proper role of the u.s. in the conflict. [video clip] >> what we have is a unique convening power. no other country could have put together, could have roused the nato alliance and put together the global coalition against russia that the united states has put together. just a fact of life. that's where we have a capacity to, to be a leader. rather than say that we are going to be the preeminent power or whatever, i would say we have a responsibility to lead in democratic countries and frankly the challenges to their interests, we have benefited in a perverse sort of way from the behavior of vladimir putin and xi jinping. it has caught the attention of other countries around the world . not just our allies but australia, japan, vietnam and

others. these two powers are a risk to them. they want to take over and be the preeminent power. in the case of russia, europe, central asia, china, and even more globally, they have ambitions. look at the felt road into their strategic communications and so on and so on. how do our political leaders explained to the american people the kind of role that we actually ought to have that doesn't lead us to get overly ambitious in terms of trying to fix problems around the world, but when there are challenges to our interest we have the ability and the will to bring together alliances of others with them to protect our interests and theirs as well. host: you can responded to our

opening question this morning by text as well, (202) 748-8003, tell us your name and where you are texting from. this is from michael in portland, oregon, who said time is long past to stop relying on sanctions and threats of brave talk, we must intervene on the ground, the air, and the sea if that's what it takes to make the brutal and relentless shelling stop. we cannot be frozen into ineffectual alan for fear of a war. we should do what she -- we should do what we have -- we should do what we should have done from the start, confront the monster. this tweet, the u.s. may have been doing too much already. we gave ukraine sophisticated weapons? that's escalation. this one says to continue to strengthen nato to make it hard for a republican to come in and dismantle it again. steve is up next in maryland. good morning, steve. caller: thank you for allowing

me to express my opinion on this. unfortunately, what the united states has to do right now is wait for the french election. if marina le pen is elected, i'm afraid they will pull out of the alliance. that would be the worst case scenario. if we went into ukraine right now militarily and she were to get elected, i could foresee where we would be stuck with ukraine the same way that we were stuck with vietnam when the french pulled out. and then of course people would be screaming that this is another failure of u.s. policy. at least i think that is an angle we need to examine at its most radical to keeping together nato. host: on steve's point, i had line "the guardian," u.n. -- marine le pen proposes closer u.n. nato ties saying it's

unjust that she is indebted to vladimir putin." sylvia, democrats line. hello, you are on the air. go ahead. caller: yes, i think that they should have a bounty on putin's head, offer people a whole lot of money to, you know, kill him. i think they should do that. host: that was suggested by lindsey graham a number of weeks ago and some other members as well. you're feeling is that he should be assassinated, then? caller: yes. host: ok. devon, georgia, independent line. go ahead. caller: yes, i don't agree that

going into ukraine, however, though, i do agree with biden, you know, sending weapons and troops into, into poland, estonia, and latvia, all these other countries in europe. protecting the country, you know . and i'm praying for the release of the prisoner in russia. their policy towards the lgbt community, you know, they don't like it over there. praying for her release, you know? speaking as an openly gay man, i want to marry my husband someday

and plan a wedding. russia is not a good place to go travel. anyway, i just wanted to say that i support president biden for protecting my rights in this country as a gay man. that's all i wanted to say. host: rosalee, next up, republican line, ohio. caller: good morning. as an american taxpayer i would sure like to know what country ukraine is buying all that stuff we are giving them money for. do you think russia might be part of it? who is getting at? i think everybody, every taxpayer should kind of want to know what's going on. host: headline this morning from

"the washington post," growing focus on atrocities in ukraine," they write that the biden claimed that russia is committing genocide in ukraine fixed a mixture of support, uneasiness, and opposition wednesday with emmanuel macron warning against an escalation of rhetoric, "hailing the true words of a true leader," and a kremlin spokesman calling the comments unacceptable. they said it revealed the difficulties responding to a conflict increasingly defined by horrifying images of mass slaughter without shutting the potential pathways to a diplomatic solution, falling out of step with key allies. a prosecutor with the international criminal court visited the rabbit it -- ravaged

host: president biden responded to questions after he called the russian action genocide. here's what he said, yesterday. [video clip] >> yes, i call it genocide. it's clearer and clearer that putin is trying to wipe out the idea of even being craney and. the evidence is mounting. more and more of the evidence is coming out, the horrible things the russians have done in ukraine. we are only going to learn more and more about the devastation. we will let international lawyers decide whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me. host: headline this morning from

"the washington examiner," trump joins biden in recognizing genocide in ukraine. host: back to your calls on what the u.s. should do next about the war in ukraine. bob is in pennsylvania on the republican line. good morning. host: good morning. hello? caller: you are on the air. -- host: you're on the air, mute your volume on the tv and go ahead with your comment. caller: yeah, we should stay out of ukraine. for a few reasons. russia has dominated the area for 100 years, they will not give it up.

they want the minerals, they want the wheat. they are not going to give up the minerals or the week. ukraine should just move out of ukraine, let other people help them out in other countries. this is just going to turn into a world war. we don't need that. nobody needs that. it's going to turn into a nuclear war. down the road? you know, i mean, my heart goes out to the people of ukraine, it really does. but here's the deal, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. comparing the people of ukraine to the people of earth, we should really stay out of it. russia is not going to give it up. host: all right, another pole for you this morning, this from quinnipiac. 74% of americans think the worst

of the war in ukraine is yet to come. rodney is next in california. good morning. caller: first of all i would like to say that c-span is a real good channel. i say that because i watch a lot of news, ns nbc, fox. c-span is really clean, doesn't seem to have a slant on it. sometimes people call into bash c-span for being democratic, but that's not true. it's just we have a lot of democrats in this country. real fast, i want to say that i believe we are doing exactly what we should be doing. genocide is the destruction of a race or a religion. i don't believe ukraine fits the description. but a thing i know we shouldn't

do, we should not be trying to extort a country in need. like jacob did in the bible. esau had a need and jacob deprived him of his birthright. we shouldn't be doing that, that's called extortion. in terms of respecting the sovereignty of ukraine, that's great. i hope we just hang in there and allow ukraine to continue making their decisions the best they can. the money that we return to russia one day, it will be there money. whatever the president gets accused of, returning money to iran? that was iran's money. the same thing will happen with russia. we need to take note of that so that when it happens we fully understand. thank you very much. host: next up is greg in plymouth, michigan, independent line.

caller: my feeling is we are doing what we should be in ukraine, very much so, supporting the military however we can. we should also take a long term hard look on making ourselves in europe energy independent from russia. that is the only way we can really make this work, to starve the ability of russia to make war through economics. it's not an easy or quick thing to do, but it's what we need to do to preclude anything from happening in the future. that will give china second thoughts about going after taiwan or any other country. we should continue the military effort to get it there as quickly as possible. i normally don't support biden. but i think he is doing the right things, though i think he is a little late on a lot of it. host: do you think he is doing

the right thing in terms of your call for the nation to be more energy independent? caller: yeah, we need to be more energy independent, self-sufficient from the standpoint of oil and gas. i know it is not in his long-term interest with respect to the environment, but look, let's decide what we do with our own gas and oil long term but we can't be dependent on russia. i don't know why europe wants to be dependent on russia for its gas and oil either. it needs to be independent as well. it makes it very difficult for them to do anything more than they are right now. host: pamela, next up, democrats line. caller: the nation should all get together and send weapons to ukraine. apparently we don't want to send

the antiaircraft missiles that they need to close the skies like they begging for. i guess we don't want to do it ourselves independently because we are afraid that obama will stop giving us oil or whatever it is. if everyone got together all over the place and the cavalry came rushing in, maybe they could get the planes out of the sky and quit bombing them. i don't know what the frozen assets are supposed to be used for but it would be nice if they could be used for rebuilding ukraine even if they are bombing it. just send in the cavalry and save these poor people. we told them we would help them when they gave up their nukes during the obama administration, we said we would protect them. let's protect them and if we can't do it individually, get everybody together to do it and bomb them out of the sky and perhaps decimate the russian army in the process to not be such a threat anymore. host: thank you for the call.

this is an opinion piece this morning from "the washington times," by john o'neill, veteran. "criminals pretending to be soldiers." "after the slaughter of bucha, there is no honor left russian soldiers. --

host: bradenton, florida, harry is on the republican line, go ahead. caller: i have a lot of good ideas. first of all, when the russians are having exercises in a neighboring state, nato should have moved in big time for their exercises. that would have prevented it. right now we have got to relieve mariupol, where they are just destroying things. and it's got to be done by fellow -- not just ukrainians, but the polls, the romanians, they must go in under the, must go in under the ukrainian flag and relieve mariupol. the russians did that in korea, sending russian pilots and meigs

to shoot down american aircraft. we can pull the same trick on putin. he's going to lose the war in ukraine and that will be the end of him. last but not least, the war crimes commission, the international commission should be putting out a warrant for his arrest and conviction. that should be immediate. thank you. host: thank you. joe is next. maryland. caller: i might be oversimplifying this and it -- this is like someone watching someone else being assaulted and raped on the subway but not wanting to get involved. we understand the atrocities, we wring our hands, it needs to stop. whether the u.n. joins us or goes in, we should give them 10 days and say it's over, we are coming in in 10 days, come in.

we could squish them like a bug if we wanted to add not play games with it. i don't understand. i'm embarrassed that we are watching this happen on the news and all the politicians are saying how horrible it is and what a criminal it is and we won't buy oil from him anymore. what a punishment. gee, that's terrible. i don't understand how there are no consequences for it. we are watching it happen and it's embarrassing. host: thanks for that, joe. thomas greenfield will be speaking today at the brookings institution. we will have live coverage of that beginning at 12:15 eastern on c-span. it will stream tonight and you can follow it on the go on the c-span now mobile app. less than 15 minutes of conversation left on the opening topic of what the u.s. should do now on the war in ukraine with the war entering its eighth week here, nearly two months of a war

in ukraine. the lines are (202) 748-8001 for republicans, (202) 748-8000 for democrats, and for independents and others, (202) 748-8002. want to show you the comments and video released yesterday from the ukrainian president requesting more military aid. here is some of that from yesterday. [video clip] >> ukraine needs weapons supplies. we need heavy artillery. air defense systems and aircraft. and we have to repel russian forces to stop their war crimes. artillery shells. as many as possible. multiple launch rocket systems. armored vehicles. infantry. fighting vehicles. text.

technology from the u.s. or germany, air defense systems. s3 hundreds. military aircraft. to save millions of ukrainians as well as europeans. freedom must be armed better than tyranny. they never seem to make it happen. the final victory over the tierney and the number of people saved depends on them. arm ukraine now to defend freedom. host: back to your calls. next up in vienna, virginia, liam. caller: top of the morning to you. i'm calling to respond to some of the things i'm hearing. i like the notion that we should get the u.n. involved and have a coalition around this. i don't think the cold war ever really ended for people like putin but we are living in the

age of hypersonic or load nukes that can deliver those payloads so we need to be careful about getting draw -- getting involved directly with our troops but the more that we can bring in our allies, the better. at the same time there are warmongers and folks with isolationism, they have the things they need but they need to be cognizant that these things could fall into the wrong hands should ukraine fall. my heart goes out to the ukrainian citizens. i hope it and soon but there is no end in sight in my opinion and our role should be minimal. host: do you think it we have so far given them sufficient weapons to win the war? caller: i do not think we have given them everything they need in terms of tanks and fighter jets. big fighters. i also think it needs to come from europe and we need to support europe and nato allies.

like i said, the cold war never really died for putin. he's in a position where he will be backed into a corner. we need to be careful. host: let's hear from liz on the independent line. caller: yeah, my heart just breaks watching these poor people. but this is just something that's going to continue. there's always going to be intolerance on this earth. what are we going to do here in our country? people beat in the head with hammers just trying to go their way. being shot, trying to get on the subway. shot in schools. people living on the streets.

you know? they are living here in the walmart parking lot. homeless people. we've got our own bores here with our own people. how can we continue to just keep shoveling onions on other countries? we need help here. america is becoming a disaster. i pray for all these people at war and i pray for all the people in america. thank you. host: certainly one of the effects of refugees fleeing his pressure on our own border. this headline from npr, ukrainians have arrived by the thousands at the u.s. mexico border, the ukrainians have been arriving in the cities by the sap -- the thousands and presenting themselves to border agents and asking for temporary admission to the united states on temporary grounds. thousands of ukrainians have

been let in on the avenues that the biden administration has used, but so many have arrived that a backlog has formed. they report that in tijuana across from san diego, the swelling numbers spurred a massive effort organized by those with ties to the region, establishing a sprawling shelter, bringing trays host: pittsburgh, texas. next up we hear from roger on the republican line. caller: thank you for taking my call, yes. host: do us a favor, mute the

call on your tv and give us your comment. caller: yes, i muted the tv. can you hear me? host: we can, go ahead. caller: ok. i've got this to say about the war. i'm a vietnam veteran. i would go in a heartbeat if i weren't 74 years old, go to help those people. it's very sad, seeing the women and children, the refugees. mothers, sisters, daughters and the little children. having to leave their country. a country that's been destroyed. [indiscernible] if the tables was turned, if the

united states was a third world country, turning into a third world country anyway, but ukraine? we'd want help. we would want help. but we have been the biggest country in the world, we don't need help. host: roger, you are a vietnam vet, you said. based on your experience you said you would be willing to go, 74 years old. do you think the u.s. should somehow make troops available to somehow get involved on the ground in fighting russia? caller: you said should or shouldn't? host: do you think they should? caller: definitely. i know biden doesn't want to start a third world war, but if you read the bible, the bible says there will be war until the end of time.

well, we need to help the people, that's what i'm saying. host: appreciate your calling this morning. winter haven, florida. good morning. caller: why should a russian punk be allowed to kill as many people for as long as he wants to? why? host: ok. susan is next on the democrats line. susan, good morning. caller: good morning. this is really upsetting. it's horrific to watch what's going on. it's hard to understand. i feel like we are all just sitting here watching it happen and it's not ok. question, why do we have all these troops in europe? i heard a count of 90,000 at one point.

we have many troops over there. why are we not going in there to help them with that? i don't understand of the sending of money when they need equipment. how do they have time? this should have been done when we surrounded ukraine at the beginning. but instead we all sat back comfortably in our chairs and watched the atrocities that are happening. when i see this 83-year-old woman who was raped while her disabled husband watched? how can any of us just sit by? the prayers, the money, none of this is going to help. we need to put everyone of those countries into the position to help if they can. zelinski has had to beg for these things. how can we sit by and watch another horrific thing happening

, just like with the nazis and the jews. they have camps set up, now. i keep wondering what happened to those thousands of russians that didn't want this to happen? how can he imprison all of those people. you know the abuse. russia, we need to go to their border and help the ukrainians and stop the madness. host: we lost you there but a couple of comments here from twitter. jody says the military aid should be flowing to ukraine because they are using it and turning the tables against one of the largest militaries on earth. rick says we can arm ukraine until hell freezes over but it won't stop the russians from trying to destroy them. they are hoping the republican gets their hands back on power just like they want the crazy woman in france to get her hands on the french government. linkin park, new jersey. cliff is on the independent line. caller: i think what's going on

in ukraine is terrible. i'm hoping that putin gets put in front of a war crimes tribunal at some point. having said that, unfortunately because of the biden administration having so decimated the country, we are being invaded on our southern border. we have got 1000 problems in this country. we are not able by ourselves to help other countries. it's a shame what's going on, but i think our priorities need to be the invasion happening on our southern border. host: more ahead, up next we will be joined by the economist stephen moore from freedom works. here to talk about a new study he was a part of looking at states across the country during the pandemic and later, former representative jane harman will

be here to talk about the russian♪ >> american history tv, saturdays on c-span 2. explore the people and events that tell the american story. part seven of our eight part series, first ladies in their own words. we will look at the role of the first lady, their time in the white house, and the issues important to them. we will feature michelle obama. >> with every action we take and every word we utter, we think about the millions of children who are watching us who hang on to our every word. looking to us to show them who they can and should be.

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of the virginia festival of the book in charlottesville. discussions on american colonialism, legal and medical injustice, and winning and losing the nuclear peace. and at 2 p.m. eastern on afterwards, republican congressman will heard with his book "american reboot: an idealist's guide to getting things done." he says america needs a restart to address the challenges of that when he first century and how to move the country forward. he is interviewed by utah republican congressman blake ward. watch book tv every sunday on c-span 2. watch online any time book tv.org. >> washington journal continues. host: stephen moore joins us on washington journal. the senior economist with freedom works and a regular contributor to a number of news networks. a former economic adviser to the

trump campaign and the trump administration. you this morning as one of the authors of a study by the national bureau of economic research. a report card on the state's response to covid-19. the nber, the national bureau of economic research, what is that? >> first of all, thank you for c-span. i love watching. national bureau of economic research is one of the most prestigious economic journals that publishes a lot of studies about what is going on with the economy and society. it is very well-established and very well respected. host: your study is a final report card. we talked about this during the course of covid. you had been looking at issues on how states responded to covid. he looked at three areas and compared them state to state. stephen: let me just back up one second. we did a lot of things right and we did a lot of things wrong

over the last few years with respect to covid. this was the first killer virus we have seen in 50 years so politicians and people were in a bit of a panic when this happened. mistakes were made, for sure. but one of the things that i think happened that i think was the right decision, early on -- and i was working with trump at the time -- the president made the decision to let the states decide their own mitigation strategies they had and i think that was right. we are a country of 50 states and we believe in federalism. there were federal guidelines, but states used all sorts of different approaches to deal with programs. the purpose of this study was to let the states do what they want and we will see who got it right. these metrics we looked at were, how did they do in terms of reducing mortality rate from covid? keeping people safe and alive was the most important criteria.

how did they do in terms of keeping their businesses open and keeping people and economies functioning? you can't have a society if you don't have people working and businesses running. how did they do in terms of keeping their schools open and allowing kids to go to school? my own opinion having looked at the evidence the last two years, shutting down schools was a really tragic mistake. kids were never vulnerable to covid. someone over the age of 65 was 1000 times more likely to die from covid than a school-aged child. did you keep your schools open? did you keep your economy functioning? and were you able to keep your death rates low. and we put this metric together. that is the basis of the study. host: in terms of education, do you think that school systems

across the country with the benefit of hindsight say that that it was a mistake to shut down for a long period? stephen: this was the reason we did the study. if we had to rewind and knew then what we know now, what would we do differently? and i really pray -- we look at it and politicians and state officials say, here's what worked and what didn't work. the evidence is really pretty crystal-clear that shutting down schools has had a really negative effect on children. you are talking about a third grader losing in some cases a whole year of schooling. that has potentially not just short-term but long-term impacts on their academic and emotional progress. so we should not have shut down

school. certainly in the first couple of weeks when we did not know what we were dealing with, taking that pause made sense. but we should not have cap schools shut down. and hopefully we will never do that again because there will be new variants to covid. i just got covid three weeks ago. i thought we were done with this. just the other day, philadelphia announced new mask requirements and things of that nature. the purpose of the study today is to look at what happened in florida versus california, new york versus tech this, what worked and -- texas, what worked and what didn't? lockdowns were not very effective as a mitigation strategy but they did a lot of damage to the state economy. host: you give each state a letter grade in terms of those three areas. stephen: the states that finished in the top, the number

one state was utah. the second state was nebraska or vermont, and you have south dakota. host: utah is a plus, nebraska and vermont, montana, south dakota, florida, new hampshire, maine, arkansas, idaho in the top 10 in terms of the cumulative school -- score. stephen: and what stands out to me is florida because it is the third largest state. florida was really criticized. governor desantis was really criticized. how dare you open up the beaches and hotels and things? what is interesting about the study is if you compare really big states like california and florida, they used diametrically

opposite approaches. i went to florida many times and it was pretty much open for business. the beaches were open, the hotels were open. people were wearing masks and social distancing. when you went to california, everything was just shut down. what happened? one of the things we do is adjust the death rate for what we call comorbidities. the factors associated with people dying. age was the major factor. diabetes and emphysema, other kinds of heart problems. you were vulnerable to covid. and obesity was a big factor. florida had almost exactly the

same death rate as california and florida did not undermine its economy. and they came out of covid and much better shape than estate like california has. host: stephen moore is talking about the study that he is part of with the national bureau of economic research with how states did during covid. (202) 748-8001 is the line to call for republicans. (202) 748-8000 free democrats. for independence and others, (202) 748-8002. back to the comparison between florida and california, they put up a graphic. florida was 22, california 18. unemployment was 15, florida was 15. california 47. in person learning, florida was second in the nation. and california are much had shut

down. is there any indication that the industries in those states, in other words, that california was more affected by those are of industry? stephen: certainly both of those states are our largest tourist states. you have disneyland and disney world. so that's what makes it kind of an interesting comparison because they are similar states in that regard. but you make a good point that some industries were very much negatively affected more than others were. and you would have thought a tourist state like florida would have really gotten creamed because people stopped traveling. but people from the northeast -- you saw a stampede of people out of new york, new jersey, connecticut going to florida because it was open. most people wanted to be in a

place where you could go to a restaurant or go to the beach or go to a park. one of the things i never really understood -- again, my purpose in the study with my colleagues was to say, let's figure out what worked. one of the things i think we all learned is that keeping people locked inside their house was a really bad idea. two of the greatest disinfectants are sunlight and fresh air. we live in potomac, maryland. almost literally my backyard is great falls national park. they shut the park down. why would you shut the park down? sunlight and vitamin d was one of the best ways of fighting covid. a lot of these things, you know, didn't make sense. shutting down playgrounds, shutting down soccer fields. kids needed to be outside and there is very little outside transmission of covid.

i think people were really dumb if they went into a crowded bar with terrible ventilation and standing shoulder to shoulder. you are asking for trouble. people being smart about it was a big part of this. host: we have calls waiting but i wanted to ask you about your conclusion of your daily mail opinion piece. you said two years ago when this killer appeared, politicians and the public were panicked and did not know what we were doing. now we have hopefully learned policy lessons, but we had to learn the hard way. let's never do that again. in the future, a protect the vulnerable policy is going to lead to better health outcomes while keeping business is open, and workers earning paychecks. explain what you mean by "protect the vulnerable." stephen: again, we will see other viruses and other variants of covid. we knew pretty much from the

start based on what was going on in europe and some of the asian countries that you could look at what was happening in italy. old people were dying at a very alarming rate. think about it this way. what if at the beginning of covid we said we know people with health problems like emphysema, cancer, heart disease, or diabetes -- you had to be super careful. if you were over the age of 65 certainly over 75, you had to be really super careful. obesity was also a factor. if we said let's make sure that we keep those people, 15% or 20% of the population safe, quarantined, so they can't be infected by other people. the other 75% of us really could have had our lives not disrupted. we could've gone to work and gone to parks. that would have been a much more successful strategy.

because the big mistake we made at the beginning and states like new york, new jersey, and michigan, was not protecting nursing homes. stephen: what -- wasn't the intent to protect them by isolating nursing homes? stephen: but what they did is they started admitting affecting -- infected people. the intention was good but the execution was terrible. you had tens of thousands of people dying in nursing homes and that was tragic. if we had done a better job, because one million people die, roughly one million people died from covid. a lot of people were deaths in nursing homes. host: so why didn't florida have that problem? stephen: they did a better job of not putting infected people in nursing homes. once you put infected people in a nursing home, it spreads like a virus. host: calls from seattle,

washington. trish is on the republican line. go ahead. caller: good morning, gentlemen. thank you for taking my call. i love c-span. mr. moore, i have to say that your talking points are absolutely incredulous. i suppose you probably still think ivermectin is a great way to treat it. bleach is a great way to treat it. that is what your wonderful president that you supported, mr. trump, encouraged everybody to do. that it would be gone in summertime and nothing to worry about. you know what? i say you are a big old bowl of codswallop. stephen: i do think this idea of bleach and all these things were obviously very stupid.

and politicians in both parties made a lot of mistakes. there's no question about that. when you look at what we should have done, and we should be doing this today, we should be spending more money on treatments. trump, you are right, he made a lot of mistakes when it came to covid. but he got the one really important thing right which was operation warp speed. i remember when we were visiting trump in the white house, we talked about this saying that we would be able to get this vaccine done in 10 months. and you can go back and read the new york times who said he's hallucinating. it's going to be 2024 or 2025 before we have the vaccine. and that was a huge development because especially during the delta variant, that vaccine probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the united states. yes, there were mistakes made and trump did say some crazy things.

but we did the two things right where we let the states take the lead and developing this incredible vaccine. the vaccines don't seem quite as effective with the new variants. host: you said you had covid a couple weeks ago. what did you do to fight it off? stephen: i took a zinc and some other drugs. a lot of aspirin and just sweated it out. it was just like a really bad flu for me. i was laid up for five days. and you can tell i'm still a little stuffed up. it has a lingering effect. it was pretty tough. host: how did the fact that the virus, the epidemic, the pandemic, happen right in the wheelhouse of an already tough

election year both on the national level and state level? because states are led by governors, the governor's response on how the state would handle the pandemic. stephen: i do remember in january of 2020 thinking -- the american economy was just booming. the lowest poverty rate, wages were growing and stock market was going through the roof. i was thinking if it hadn't been for covid, trump would've won a landslide. things were going so well with his economic policies. then we got hit by this virus and it changed everything. your question was how did governors deal with it? host: how much was it driven by a political response to the pandemic? stephen: the one thing we can argue for months and months about and you have had this discussion that is outside my wheelhouse which is the changing of the election rules as a

result of covid. mail-in ballots and all these things. i'm not an expert on that. but we did change the way we vote clearly because of covid. host: henry is on the line. democratic color, go ahead. caller: i would like to congratulate my president, president biden of the handling of the ukraine situation. he is doing the right thing allowing nato, the nato countries and european countries to take the lead. and giving all the help that we can give them. but i would like to caution the president to not take his eyes off the ball of domestic terrorism hereby were -- here by right wing militias. we have to have some decapitory strikes on right wing militias. take a leadership at to keep america safe. caller: his purpose for being

here this morning is to make sure he puts out a good report on ron desantis, ron death-sata nist. that's what i call him. they are lying. texas, florida, south dakota, all those red states are lying about their covid numbers. that is the reason why we still have covid is because they did not follow the lead of new york, michigan, and all those other states. you cannot believe a word this man says. this man is a liar. he is a shill for the republican party. stephen: new york and new jersey had by far the highest death rate and by far the strictest lockdowns. it's hard to make the case lockdowns work very well when the two states that locked down virtually everything had by far the highest death rates. michigan had a horrific record.

there was another state where they did not do the most important thing which was keep people safe in nursing homes. michigan, new york, and new jersey had very high rates of death in nursing homes. we don't mention in the study republican or democrat or red state or blue state. there were some blue states that did very well. i think vermont was third or fourth. vermont is a pretty blue state even though it has a republican governor. some red states did poorly. arizona had a fairly high death rate from covid. so we just kind of presented the evidence. we have gotten a lot of response on the study and a lot of people , researchers and so on have made some really good suggestions to us about how we might improve the study. we are taking that into account and we may do a new analysis based on things. if you look at texas, this gentleman mentioned texas. texas had a fairly high death

rate from covid. so to new mexico and arizona. the question is, those are border states. was there an issue with people coming in from south america or mexico and infecting? i don't know the answer to that. there was also a big covid problem on indian reservations. host: you kind of touched on the comorbidities. it is kind of technical but you had to say, what is the health condition of the state before the pandemic. stephen: for example, as i said from the outset, it is pretty much true but not entirely true that covid was a virus and still is that really is very dangerous the older you are. there was a study a couple weeks ago in the new york times that says we have finally discovered that children have almost a kind of natural immunity to covid. it took them two years to figure

that out? it was pretty obvious from the start. i'm not an epidemiologist but we do know children -- it keeps our species going. children have a natural immunity. why didn't we just really focus on people that were old and had other infirmities instead of shutting down everything? we spent and borrowed $5 trillion. this was not a small thing. we will spend decades and decades paying for all the costs of all of these lockdowns which did not have much of a positive effect. the best study was from johns hopkins university that just came out about a month ago and they looked across countries and states. what they found was that lockdowns reduce the death rate in a state or country by .1%. instead of one million people dying, you could have had 10,000 more people die if we had not

locked down. $5 trillion, business bankruptcy, millions of americans becoming unemployed, kids being deprived of going to school. i don't think it's a close call. i think the cost of the lockdowns were an order of magnitude larger than any benefit. host: school closures may ultimately be the biggest cost. one study found school closures at the end of the 20 2020 school year are associated with 13.8 million years of life lost. life expectancy for high school graduates is four years to six years longer than high school dropouts. learning losses from pandemic era school closures could cause a 3% decline in lifetime earnings and a loss of just one third of the year of learning has caused a long-term economic impact of $14 trillion.

stephen: education is really important. we may have caused more deaths in the long term or more life lost by keeping schools shut. why did we allow teachers unions to make these decisions? they should have made -- they should have been made by parents. another quick thing about this. i have talked to a lot of education professionals. kids who were high achievers were fine with her more learning -- remote learning. the kids that were really damaged by keeping schools closed were kids that need to be in class and need to have that instruction and we deprived them of that. host: let's hear from tom on the republican line. caller: i see you're talking about covid. i was on the county board and we

tried to get the governor to let us open up the county because in the middle of july, we had only three cases in the county. in my grandkids all go to catholic school. they never did shut the catholic schools down. they went to whole time. -- the whole time. my grandson was remote learning. i think the grandkids gained a whole year. when i went to meetings, none of us wore masks. i never did get it until our engineer got it. and the reason i didn't get it

was because john hopkins university had a study -- [indiscernible] host: you're kind of cutting in and out but the state of illinois with an f grade in the three categories you're looking at. stephen: illinois handled it very poorly. chicago was comatose for six to nine months. tragic because chicago is one of the greatest cities in the world. it was a real tragedy. illinois had a high death rate despite being locked down. i feel this gentleman's pain. i hate to see that happen but pritzker handled it extremely poorly. host: let's go to maine with joe on the independent line. caller: thank you, c-span, for taking my call.

steve, let me ask you a couple of things. you're trying to get on the trump cabinet and he would not hire you. is that correct? host: this gentleman is talking about -- caller: what are you laughing at? host: hold on. stephen: i was an advisor to president trump on his economic recovery task force. i was appointed to the federal was reported and i did not make it to the senate so i withdrew my nomination. so thank you for bringing that up. but what is your point? caller: you just said what is important is not to lie. and every show i've ever seen you on, you were crying when you were talking about the economy and now today you're here talking about covid. what are you going to talk about next? dancing? are you going to come out with a

rap album? host: we will let you go and go to tony in manassas, virginia. caller: mr. moore, respectfully, in florida, it has been widely reported that they have underreported the death rate. you said why parents and school boards are not allowed to make the decision? [indiscernible] also, it was reported when we first had the outbreak, a lot of people returned to the states that were close with the virus. that is not in your report and you have not reported the people in florida how they were affected by having an open state during that time. stephen: an average death rate

in the economy continued to function. they kept their businesses functioning. that was one of the tragedies of covid, all of these business bankruptcies that were such a tragedy. anyone who has ever started a business and you spent your whole life building up a business and the government shuts it down. most people look at florida as being a success story. i am troubled by the fact that people are so -- the pushback on this. the good news is we don't have to shut down the economy anymore. that is the point of the study. we can deal with the viruses in a way that we can keep people safe, key people on the job, keep people in the classroom. people should be celebrating that message and there is this big pushback. i don't quite understand it. there was a survey done at the

beginning of covid and another one that was done about a year later about how afraid are you of covid? and i'm just making this as an observation. about two thirds of democrats were very afraid of covid. and only one third of republicans were. i've always been puzzled why that is. there was a lot of misinformation about covid that was spread to people. people really did think kids were vulnerable to covid. they weren't. they just factually weren't. we are destroying to get the facts out to people and people can make their own conclusions. host: you talk about the trillions of dollars of federal-aid that came out during the pandemic. the cares act, the american rescue plan. do you think there are success stories in the money we used, preserving and helping save businesses, keeping people who were unemployed and giving them benefits for a longer time.

stephen: this is the biggest epic failure of government in the history of this country. we paid a massive amount of money not to work. we look very clearly at this, that those states are very problematic. they kept paying people not to work. so states like new york, new jersey, illinois, california, and michigan have unemployment rates that are way higher. and even persistent today. it is interesting if you look today, a lot of the states at the top of our list like the ones i mentioned, they recovered all of the jobs that they had. and which states are still a huge hole? new york, new jersey,

california, pennsylvania. locking down the economy and bankrupting businesses, those will last a long time. host: the independent line. caller: i'm actually libertarian. how are you this morning? i was going to ask about the benefits. so i think you already answered my question. stephen: i'm so glad you brought up the unappointed benefits. we were literally paying people as much as $75,000 to $100,000, expanded food stamps, expanded unemployment benefits. paying people $300 per month per child. we were deluging people with

money. it made it very difficult to get people back to the workforce. we are still having a problem getting people back to the workforce. we need to get people working again. and we still have something like one of the lowest labor force participation rates in our country's history right now. host: go ahead. caller: that was all i really wanted to ask. caller: you are going to get beat up and you will remember where you're at. the calls with ivermectin, that was proven. joe rogan & jacob -- had some jacob to and -- joe rogan had sanje gupta, and cnn was caught

lying. with this whole thing with donald trump and you are a liar, you've got to take it for what it is. they are already shutting down philadelphia. they have the mask mandate. this whole thing about republicans lying about their death rates, look at new york city and cuomo. that's the biggest scandal there is with more covid. you are an economist. are you better now with joe biden in office then you were with donald trump in office? the other thing i like is i like the fact that governor abbott and governor desantis are sending all those illegals to washington, d.c., and to delaware. i thought that was great. stephen: there is a lot there.

i was sent to respond by saying that on balance, the states that kept their economies functioning and were rational about getting kids back in school as quickly as possible -- some of my liberal friends talk about how important education is. absolutely. it's critical. we learned that lesson about how important it is that kids get access. there is a big movement where we are trying to get governors like governor ducey in arizona to say that if a school shuts down, a school district shuts down for any reason whether it is a viruslike covid, a natural disaster, a school strike. let's give the money to the parents so they can find a school that is open so kids can be in the classroom. and there's a lot of movement for that. let's make sure kids are getting educated and in the classroom.

if parents don't want their kids in school because they are afraid, that's fine. one of the previous colors mentioned -- callers mentioned catholic schools. in montgomery co. schools were closed down and i could see it in my stepsons that it was having a really negative effect on their emotional -- you know, their emotions and academic achievement. we sent them to a catholic school and in six months, it was amazing the way that they started back to life. host: you criticize the teachers unions for making the decisions. you said parents should make the decision. that kids would have more immunity. but what about the teachers that would be concerned going into the classroom that might be vulnerable to getting the virus? stephen: i get asked that question a lot. first of all, kids are not

super-spreader's of the virus. they just aren't. seniors are. kids aren't. that's a broad statement. not to say kids can't transmit it, but much less. in our school, none of the teachers have gotten sick from covid. there was no evidence that teachers were getting sick from it. what happens when they go back home? my point is, you know what? if that is the problem, get emma and grandpa out of the house. -- grandma and grandpa out of the house. should we have damage to their development for grandma and grandpa? host: check on the democrats line. -- chuck on the democrats line. caller: i have to say i'm not

really a big fan of donald trump. suffice it to say that he's just about everything i find utterly repugnant in a human being. but i will give him credit for operation work -- warp speed. i just retired after 29 years in public health here at west virginia. and i have gotten for modernity because i consider it my civic responsibility. what i find strange is a lot of chubb -- trump supporters who cheered donald trump for operation warp speed now are saying things like the vaccine is poison it it has weird substances in it that will alter dna. and people that are spreading these weird conspiracy theories about the vaccine are almost invariably trump supporters. stephen: that's a good point. he makes a good point. i got vaccinated.

i never got the booster. i kind of wish i had. i really believe it is an individual's choice on a vaccine. i think people should get vaccinated but i respect people who -- the truth is, we don't know what the longer-term impacts of the vaccine will be. we don't. and i take your point. you're right. trump was the one who developed the vaccine and a lot of republicans don't want to take it. i have a big problem with vaccine mandates. host: the book he published last year, how the religious growth of government is devouring our economy and our freedom. what prop did you to write it? stephen: we have seen -- what prompted you to write it? stephen: we have seen a massive

expansion of the point of this book is to let people know, our country really was founded on the idea of a limited federal government. the ninth and 10th amendments i call the forgotten amendments to the constitution which basically say that all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government reside with the state and the people. i have been in this business for a long time. the more i have an incredible respect for our founding fathers setting up the system of federalism that we have. i think it has worked out extraordinarily well. host: in the pandemic. stephen: it's a perfect example. when i first came to washington in 1985 -- when was c-span started? host: 1979.

stephen: when c-span started, the federal government was about $500 billion. today it is $6 trillion. think about how massively we have increased the size and scope of government. this book is a warning. we can't allow the government to continue to gobble up the private sector. the free enterprise is what creates wealth. you can't have government without a vibrant private sector. let's get back to limited government with a good tax system with low tax rates. things that make america the most prosperous country in the world. host: a call or two more for you. dustin in baltimore. caller: i have been listening for half an hour and i have not heard any discussion about our medical infrastructure and had today we have thousands of fewer

hospitals than we did in the 70's. when our population has increased by 100 million people. how did that impact deciding to have public spacing closed and containing the spread? i know the economy is important, but the fact that we had our hospitals maxed out more than once due to covid patients, i haven't heard that included in the discussion. stephen: it's a great point. one of the things that happened -- look. one million people died from covid but there were also about 250,000 people the last couple of years that died from what i call deaths of despair. the big one being a massive increase in drug overdoses which is really tragic. there is an increase in suicides, alcoholism, depression. all of these things in part

because of the locked and economy. another area was sans unexpected rise of deaths was cancer and heart disease. why would that be? for cancer, you want an early diagnosis people were not going in for checkups or for treatments. in the settlement is exactly right because people either did not want to go to the hospital's or could not go to the hospitals because everybody had covid in the hospital. that was another really important point the stillman makes. host: viewers and listeners can read the final report card at in ber.org -- at nber.org. stephen: thank you to c-span. i love hearing, even the complaints, about this. host: we will have an open for in a moment and we will hear from jane harman, the former

representative of the former intelligence committee ranking member. a number of years ago. next up, open forum on the program. we will hear from you on the economy, on the russian war. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. and for everyone else, (202) 748-8002. we will be back in a moment. >> the book is titled "the lords of easy money. " how the federal reserve broke the american economy. the author is chris for leonard, current director of the watchdog writers union at the university of missouri school of journalism. the publisher, simon & schuster, claims on the book flap, "if you ask most people what forces led

to today's income inequality and financial crisis, no one would say the federal reserve." arthur leonard explains why so few people understand the language or inner workings of how american money is managed by a set member board and washington, d.c. >> christopher leonard on book notes plus available on the c-span now app or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪ >> first ladies in their own words, our eight part series looking at the role of the first lady. their time in the white house and the issues important to them. >> it was a great advantage to know what it was like to work in school. and for governor and also for resident.

>> material from the biography series first ladies. >> i have a person that thinks you should say what you mean and mean what you say and take the consequences. >> we will feature lady bird johnson, betty ford, nancy reagan, hillary clinton, laura bush, michelle obama, and melania trump. watch first ladies in their own words saturday at 2:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span 2. listen to the series as a podcast from the c-span now free mobile app and wherever you get your podcasts. washington journal continues. host: it is open forum here on washington journal. a half-hour or so for you to weigh in on any public policy issue you are following.

we will get to your calls momentarily. following onto the conversation with steve moore, the story about shutdowns in china. antivirus shutdowns in china spread as infections rise. they say antivirus controls that have shut down some of china's biggest cities and fueled public irritation are spreading as infections rise prompting warnings of possible global shock waves. this is grand rapids police releasing video of an officer shooting patrick. he was fatally shot in the back of the head by a grand rapids police officer. the violent ending of a foot chase and struggle over a stun gun.

it sparked renewed protest. state officials promise a full investigation. let's hear from callers. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. and for all others, (202) 748-8002. we will go to matthew in michigan. caller: i was trying to talk about stephen moore and i was in icu worker. we have to recall in the beginning, the states that were hit with the initial wave, we did not have therapeutics. we saw a rise in transmission and deaths that was a vertical

line going up until the initial lockdowns to face. a lot of urban cities had to transport their patients to further away hospitals. and it wasn't until we have therapeutics in the initial waves started hitting other areas of the country and vaccine development that we could get it under control and have more options available to us from a policy standpoint. we went through the three phrases -- phases. it was far more lethal and effective. when you get to delta and omicron, that analysis of how it affected the economy and other choices, there is also analysis of the health care system and labor shortages now and disruption that a lot of hospitals will spend the next several years trying to rebuild

because of what this did to nursing and other support staff that have now left the field. it is a societal investment to create a world-class health care system that can deal with the most complex medical diseases. an overwhelming system for two continuous years. we were dealing with a contingent of people to get vaccinated so that we could open up. perhaps masks weren't doing it for anybody -- for everybody. when trying to look at the totality of it all, could we have done it differently? it is a selective history of what we were dealing with the initial nine months until we got a vaccine because it was night and day once we got the initial

vaccine. just trying to bring a little more nuance into the conversation when we try to say if this was all worth it or if we could do it better. there were sort of three versions of this that we went through. did we still need to have the brakes on as hard as we did? if more people got vaccinated initially we could've taken the brakes off a lot sooner. there was a second and third time because there were still enough people out there not vaccinated using these critical resources like icu beds and people whose surgeries were delayed, people who had delayed care. certain hospitals could not offer those services. there was a one in 20 chance you might need an icu bed but there was no better for you. would you still proceed with the surgery. some people say yes, but it

creates a lot of liability and legal issues about what is ethically responsible. it's not just one area. thank you for taking my call. host: i appreciate the perspective. we will go to kevin in san antonio, texas. caller: it was a pretty interesting collar -- caller. he forgot to mention the cult leader donnie dump was the one who initiated the lockdowns. his area of expertise -- he's talking about food assistance. what did he want people to do, starve to death? this is the republican party who cares about the person that is

struggling? this is ridiculous. the republican has turned into a fascist government trying to control the government like 1930's adolf hitler. it's embarrassing. and sitting there laughing on the program that i got covid and i took a couple of aspirin. that last caller just said how devastating it was across the world. host: now to basle in north homestead, ohio. caller: i was a person that had covid in the hospital and i was very well treated and survived. i am 91. host: i am doing -- are you doing ok now? your voice sounds good.

caller: i am talking to several of the nurses and doctors and they are very restrictive in making comments about covid. and there is something else going on and there is suspicion. if you go to any senior center where people need care, independent of these nursing homes, they are talking about euthanasia. you will start to see that grow in the coming year. there are so many seniors that are incapacitated drawing on social security and other government benefits, that it is bleeding the treasury system. in the way they started with the abortion issue, then six months, then partial-birth. the next step will be to euthanize seniors and they are doing that up in seattle, washington.

so beware, you seniors. if you're voting for politicians, don't be voting for the same ones. look at how they argue with each other in their advertisements. you have to have new blood in politicians right now. and you have to have -- beware of euthanasia coming up. it will be coming soon. host: let's go to christina down in georgia. caller: nobody is restricting anything we have to say about covid. these people are intentional. they are probably paid colors to say all these things. there are 100,000 beds that were

higher with mississippi, oklahoma, alabama, tennessee, west virginia, new jersey. the one thing that i will say is you better wake up. republicans are all about tax cuts and taking away rights. right now, tim scott or whatever the guy from florida is talking about cutting entitlement programs. host: rick scott. caller: yes. he's talking about medicare, doing away with social security in the next five years. republicans better wake up because this is serious business. all republicans are about is cutting rights. they don't like abortion, gay people, or anything that will help the working class and the poor. when you talk about cutting

taxes, that's all that come out of their mouth. what do you think will happen when you don't have enough taxes in the pot? host: it is open forum on washington journal. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8000 free democrats. for others, (202) 748-8002. texas governor greg abbott and the challenges he faces, he faces state issues at the border. texas buses a load of immigrants to the nation's capital. the biden administration has turned a blind eye to the record number of migrants.

closer to the doorstep to fox news, nbc news, and other major news is. many were dazed, sleepless, and broken. you can read more at washingtonpost.com. this is what the governor is doing with trucks. mike from rockford, illinois. caller: c-span is my flyover station. i love c-span. two points. i noticed a pattern with judge jackson, did urban, and blinken. judge jackson is defending, god bless. dick durbin is trying to insert them into muslim communities. and at the same time, blinken

flew over 124,000 from afghani. if you connect the dots, we will bring these people from gitmo and fly them to illinois. they are going to insert them into muslim communities. that is the first point i want to make. there is a conflict of interest. dick durbin chair on the nominating committee. they are allowed to work separately. russia was bringing people from europe.

immigration is at the border. mass migration is at the border because you have no control of the country. host: rights that greg abbott sent immigrants to protest border policies. why is he also punishing americans by obstructing legal commerce? last week, abbott -- instructed troopers to inspect trucks.

including silent claimants acclimated to the border. republicans and some democrats warned that lifting the policy and may without a backup could lead to a search of illegal immigration. in response, "texas should not have to bear the burden of the biden administration's failure to secure our order." the wall street journal rider safer point but the inspections do nothing to secure the border. thousands of trucks are backed up and traffic has dropped 60%. "this is not solving the border problem but increasing the cost of food and adding to supply chain shortages said sid miller. "such a misguided program is going to lead to those caller lemons -- two dollar lemons and

five dollar avocados. caller: good morning. i believe we should turn the buildings in moscow to match the buildings in the ukraine. whatever he does there, we are going to do the same thing in moscow. i also believe we should -- he has the largest home on the planet. if that is true, it should be destroyed. host: to megan in kyle, texas. republican line. caller: hello? host: mute your volume and then go ahead with your comment. caller: let me mute it real

quick. i'm calling from texas. i used to be far left and i have become a trump supporter. i am also native american. tribes, we have orders -- it was not utopia before the europeans came.

everyone in texas knows that mexican-americans are the most amazing citizens. they start their own businesses, they work seven days a week, they have great family structure. they should just streamline immigration so they can get people in our system. if they do criminal activity, they can get caught. if they are not, they can get taxed. i just wanted to share that. host: to aberdeen, north carolina. it is james on the independent line. good morning. caller: one of the issues i face in my life with a mental illness is discrimination in occupational hiring.

the state law board -- still discriminates on the basis of mental illness, whether they grant a license or deny you one. this is 31 something years after the ada was passed. this is absurd how they are getting away with it. they stopped me in 1990 after i had $60,000 in my own money invested in a legal education, came out with a loud degree, and they close the door on me. this is absurd. i supported elizabeth warren in 2020 because she said she wanted the ada enforced. that is what i want. that is all i have to say. host: from the wall street

journal on the brooklyn attack, the suspected gunman arrested. police arrested the suspected gunman who opened fire on a subway train, ending a 30 hour manhunt. officials had officers on patrol who took frank james into custody sturdy afternoon, officers responding to it to, recognizing james on the street and detained him without incident. he will be charged with a terrorist attack and could face life in prison. we will go to david in grand rapids, michigan. good morning. david, are you there? okay, we will go to west palm beach florida, democrat line. this is crystal. caller: good morning. i love you and i love the show. i am talking about the idea of

occupation and calling on behalf of the people who have no voice which is the situation in israel with the palestinians. i want to note that 400 hours and people in israel are ukrainian and 500,000 are russian. there are wars in ukraine. i want to know what is the difference when you talk about boundaries, when you talk about -- what is the difference? there is no difference. the way the media is treating this war, there is a lot of hypocrisy. we need to have some kind of consistency. i am concerned about the approach the media has taken. it is very one-sided and there are wars all over the world. host: russia's $800 million in

weapons -- john kirby yesterday defended the latest round of security support for ukraine. [video clip] >> how is it not too late? this will take a while to get there. folks in ukraine have known the fight in the donbass region is coming. how will this not be too late? >> we are going to move this as fast as we can. it is not like the other material we have been sending is not also being used or has not been useful, it has been. in recognition of what the russians are preparing to do, they are not doing it now. they are not fully up to readiness for this renewed push. we recognize that and we are

taking advantage of every day, every hour to get this stuff in there as fast as we can. >> the administration has been public that russia is resupplying and retrofitting everything towards donbass. what is your assessment on how much time you have. >> i am not going to detail that kind of stuff here at the podium. we have a good sense of russian efforts to resupply, refit, and reinforce. in some cases they are reinforcing now. i appreciated the seriousness of the question. we are aware of the clock and we know time is not our friend. that is why even before this was announced today, we had been moving at a very fast speed.

all of the other security assistance we had been providing at an unprecedented rate. the secretary has every expectation and has conveyed that expectation that this material move with the same speed. host: that's get back to calls, open forum. it is denise on the republican line. caller: good morning. i just wanted to make a point. the woman who called and said what happened if we ran out of money and keep giving out to medicaid and medicare, i would recommend the people -- increase our tax base. immigrants coming into our country, we have 10 million open jobs. let's put them to work.

the other thing on the medical point, there is a shortage in hospitals and in nursing. in new york state, we require a four year degree for nursing and i think that prevents people from coming into the career when it used to be people coming out of high school could see the hope that they could have it in two years. after obamacare passed around 2014, there were major hospitals that closed all over the country. allowing that to happen created part of the shortage we have for the variant. i live in a rural area, we have to keep our hospitals open. we need some of that tax money to come to us. we need to increase our tax base and teach our children the basics. math, reading, none of this sexual stuff. thank you for taking my call. host: from wisconsin, tim on the

independent line. caller: thank you for having me. if i do make a mistake or if a person i voted for screwed up an office -- i admit it. colin powell lied. -- bush also ran up our debt with all of these big government programs and everything. trump did some decent things. i know he was not the most romantic guy -- the most diplomatic guy. in the last 50 years, democrats

especially in regards to minorities -- in the 1860's the enslaved likes. in the earthly -- in the early 1900s they had jim crow laws for blacks. and that they had separate but will, segregation, and the 1960's human rights act. 7 million black babies have been killed in the womb. that shows you that the democratic party is not a party of america, they are a party of death. a party that hates the free capital system, they hate our military, they hate christianity and they need to be voted out of office. they are full of venom and hate.

host: elon musk is going to buy twitter. he has launched a takeover bid for twitter weeks after he became the social media company's largest shareholder. he said this was a best and final offer, representing a 54% premium a day over he began investing. it would value the company at $43 billion. he said i don't have confidence in management and economic -- the changes he wanted in the public market. to richard in dayton, ohio. go ahead with your point. caller: this is my first time calling. i enjoyed your every morning show and i watch it when i am in dialysis. i want to make a statement about

american people. wake up. america, wake up. it is not about trump or biden, it is about you. it is about you coming together. don't be like the russians. wake up, america, and do the right thing. thank you. host: thank you for the call. still to calm -- still to come, we will be joined by former ranking member of the house intelligence committee, jane harman, to talk about the russian invasion of ukraine. she will also talk about other u.s. national security issues. that is next. ♪ >> all this month, watch the top 21 videos from our student documentary competition. "washington journal" will air one of our winners every morning

, students talking about how the federal government impacted their lives. you can watch all of our submissions online at studentcam.org. >> at least six presidents recorded conversations in office. here those on c-span's new forecast -- new podcast. >> you will hear about the 1964 civil rights act, the eventual camp, the gulf of tonkin incident, the march on selma, and the ordinance vietnam -- and the war in vietnam. not everybody knew they were being recorded. >> johnson's secretaries new because they were tasked with transcribing those conversations. they were the ones making sure the conversations were taped as johnson would signal to them. >> you will also hear some blunt

talk. >> i want a report of the number of people assigned to kennedy the day he died. if i cannot ever go to the bathroom, i won't go. >> presidential recordings on the c-span mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> washington journal continues. host: jane harman is with us, the former ranking member of the house security committee and a washington expert on for policy. welcome to "washington journal." guest: it is nice to be back and i think what you do on c-span is so important because you do

longform and so much of our media is little blurbs. this is a good way for people to understand the issues and speak their minds. host: we have you on this morning to talk about the state of the russian invasion of ukraine as we enter the eighth week. if you look back two months, is this how you thought this war might go? guest: actually not. i did not think there would be an invasion. i was at the munich security conference before the 22nd time. it was an annual richer -- annual ritual of john mccain when he was in congress. a lot of us learn a lot about foreign policy him and the event. after he died and i left congress, i kept going. there i was and volodymyr zelenskyy appeared in person and

said please help us. we think we will be invaded by russians and don't be appeasers. my own family story is that my father's family lived in southeast poland and in 1942 he was rounded up and you know the rest of the story. there was a lot about the u.s. appeasing hitler's in the beginning. i sat there and thought, i understand why he is doing this but i don't think they will be invaded. i don't think russia will be that foolish. i was wrong. he has been amazingly impressive and great leader ever since. country has outperformed its classical capability because of its great and skill -- its

grit and skill and devotion to protecting sovereignty. host: are you getting a better sense of what you think vladimir putin's ultimate goal is in this. guest: he wrote his version of the long telegram talking about greater russia. he needs to handout red hat saying make russia great again. i don't agree with him but i understand why russians feel offended, since the end of the cold war. i just wrote a book called "insanity defense" about the u.s.'s failure to think about what the world would look like after the cold war ended. we thought it would be perfect and we were wrong. i can understand some of his reasons. i disagree because he has the largest country on the planet

and a lot of economic issues to deal with. the russia he is president of has a storied history. there was this interest in an western nation. he doesn't share that. he wants to attend to his own garden and make his country great again. i think he is missing the mark, thinking about aggrandizing ukraine and keeping crimea and maybe invading the baltics and moldova and georgia. it seems to be misguided and from our point of view, very dangerous. host: one of putin's goals was to prevent ukraine from joining nato but he seems to have

exacerbated the problem with the possibility of finland and sweden joining nato. finland went to within weeks whether to seek nato membership. this is backfiring on vladimir putin -- is this backfiring on the vladimir putin? guest: you would think. many scholars and tank types have talked about finland's neutrality and it has worked for finland. you can see russia from finland. i think after this experience, they don't want to feel they won't have nato troops in their countries and in their skies if russia invades.

they have been pushed into nato, the exact result putin did not want. sweden, another rich and wonderful country, it has not been in the same security vice finland has been in, but i can understand why it would go, too. i don't know where we are with george and moldova. it is a decision the countries should make and net to has to agree. it is not the u.s.'s decision. host: do you think nato is more united and it has ever been? guest: yes. how long it will be disunited is a question, but yes i do. i think the fact that germany step up for the first time since the end of world war ii and offered to not only pay more but to provide more in the way of

hardware is unprecedented. why you heard a little bit of caution is germany has a fairly new coalition government. they don't all agree perfectly. over time, there may be some pushback against this new commitment to hardware and nato. there was also not yet a pushback against cutting off purchasing gas from russia. and why that matters -- pardon me. host: i will let you get some water for a moment. a reminder to our viewers, you can call in with your questions. we welcome your calls at 202-748-8001 for republicans.

democrats, 202-748-8000. for independents, 202-748-8002. a headline, "the u.n. has been awol on ukraine, let's have a do a peacekeeping mission." that seems a difficult prospect even russia is on the security council and they had vetoed some measures. how does that happen? guest: let me finish my last answer -- it is not you, my fault. putin is thing for time hoping the u.s. coalition will fray and france, led by macron, will have new leadership. that would be marine le pen. she is not favored to win the election the election is a week and a half.

russia will try to so disinformation and do cyber attacks. but back to the u.s., i have said on air that the you in has been -- in this endeavor. they published statistics about how many civilians are displaced in ukraine and how many kids are displaced. it's infrastructure is almost in ruins. yes, we do need a fact checker to get us that information. but the you in was formed after world war ii to protect the sovereignty of its members, the sovereignty of its members. hello, here is the sovereignty of ukraine being invaded. the you in was one of the signatories in 1994 to the agreement which caused the

ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons. the other signatories were russia, u.s., and u.k. obviously russia has violated that. the you in tried -- the u.n. tried to -- it passed in the general assembly. ambassador jim jeffrey and i ate a point that the general assembly, which does not have vetoes, has enough authority to convene a peacekeeping force which could patrol humanitarian corridors in ukraine. this is what was done in 1950 in korea by general counsel resolution. there is not any talk of that. the only talk is, we pushed russia out of the human rights council. why don't we push russia out of the security council where it is obviously violating the security

of an independent sovereign country? host: let's get to calls. mary in potomac, maryland on the independent line. good morning. caller: my comment is mr. zelinski asked for the -- mr. volodymyr zelenskyy asked for the no-fly zone and we did not comply. putin only fears a strong force from the other side. when we backed down and did not give them the no-fly zone, it empowered him. i feel there was no risk of world war iii because putin was not willing to take on a nuclear

bomb falling on moscow or st. petersburg. we actually let them down. a no-fly zone would have definitely stopped all this massacre going on now. guest: thank you for the thought. many people shared it. the view of nato -- we are matched up with nato and the european union on this. that is a change from our last administration which pushed nato away. the elected view was that that was too risky. not just because of nuclear war, because of the fact that planes would have to take off from airports inside nato countries.

that would involve nato in the war. ukraine is not a nato member and there are better ways to do this. that view is being debated. yesterday we agreed to get helicopter to ukraine which can take off and land in ukraine. one thing putin did do was destroyed most of the airfields in ukraine. if there were plans -- if there were plans taking off from europe flying into ukraine, it would be hard to imagine where they would land and refuel. at any rate, hindsight is always better. should we have believed ukraine would be this effective, i would say absolutely. host: let's go to john in

plainfield, new jersey. caller: i know this war sounds more like the war of 1939 with the fins -- the finns and the russians. you have seen things about this war they go to the time of stalin. i know that is one of putin's heroes. he is like the one who used to be in charge of the earlier version of cia in russia. one of the things we are not dealing with is this guy is a monster and he wants to bring back the soviet system. one of the things we have not done with ukraine as there are other options we could have used. one option are the cobra

helicopters from vietnam times. that would have an an interesting thing. also, we could have had a tiger operation by using the f 20's and planes like that or take the stuff we had in the agreement with iran and see if we could use those equipment for the ukrainians. host: several things there, john. congresswoman jane harman? guest: he do -- he who does not understand history is doomed to repeat it. it is good to understand this. some of the surplus military assets that may be around, i have a feeling -- i don't know, i was not inside. i left congress in 2011 and now had a think tank in washington and am now president america --

resident america -- president emerita of that think tank. i don't know where that equipment is. we are urging the neighbors of ukraine to take what they have and push it into ukraine. we will back sale or advanced equipment. that is enticing to them, that is why slovenia is sending in the f-3 hundreds. it is a russian designed system. i agree with you, if it had been in earlier, it could have projected that missile from slamming into the train station in the donbas area. that was just about a week ago. i don't know where that surplus

is. i think we are inventorying what is there and pushing it in faster. hindsight is always better. one comment on putin, everybody is demonizing him. i am not saying it is not fair, but i don't know if calling him names is the most effective thing. it plays into his propaganda. teddy roosevelt said talk softly and carry a big stick. i think we would do well to carry a big stick and talk soft. host: you mentioned in your book that a failure to face security problems makes us less safe. have we failed to confront putin along the line?

did we let the silent war going on in ukraine without giving enough support to ukraine to win that wearer -- to win that war after 2014, for example? guest: my book is not just about putin and u.s.-russia, but if i can answer in the context of the book, when i left congress i wanted to write about my expenses in congress. people said right mmr about your wife. i wanted -- people said write a memo more about your life. i did not want to do that. it is about the years after the cold war and the fact that the united states never had a strategy for what the world would look like after the cold war. we thought we one, they lost. everybody wants to be us. we missed the rise of china, the

rise of terrorism, and russia's grievances. what we have is a lot of tactics. we're going to do this in afghanistan and that in ukraine. we were performing well in ukraine, not so much in afghanistan. we are too busy to put the other pieces together. what worries me is that the so-called liberal world order we fashioned after world war ii where we won but we were magnanimous to our enemies, especially germany and japan, and we worked on a marshall plan to rebuild those we had vanquish. we built a world to reflect our values, our life-support. not only do we need to pay attention to europe -- i

mentioned germany's new beliefs that they should be a full-fledged member of nato. there could be a population in youth -- in france that wants to -- other people say we are not so confident u.s. leadership will be there. what is during the about the putin area -- the putin era, what scares me is we do not have a day after strategy. even if we can push him back, and hopefully we can in ukraine. certainly push him out of the donbas region or end up in a place where he has to negotiate a deal from a point of weakness and that is favorable to us, even if we can do that, then what? what does the rest of the world look like?

what are we doing? we have to have a good china strategy, we don't want war with china. we want cooperation, competition, and calling china out where we disagree. we want to -- we could argue that china wants both sides to lose in this war. of course they want us to lose but they also want to rush her to lose so they can turn russia into a gas station for china. there are big issues that require more thought. the fact that the you in -- that the un is not a player right now is colossally disappointing. caller: just a quick comment, you set history repeats itself. the u.s. went to iraq and wanted

to create a country. that did not work out. ukraine also has a really big bad neighbor. finally, [indiscernible] or if india took over another country or any other nuclear country took over another country. the world won't go to nuclear war just because a nation took over another nation, especially smaller nations. finally, i would like to say

that we are talking softly in the u.s. but we don't have the big stick. host: i missed that last little bit. go ahead. guest: he said we don't have a stake. is that correct? host: he dropped off. guest: okay. that is an interesting set of comments. the last answer is that we are now in a world in which many countries, some responsible and some rogue countries have nukes. if we don't understand the new geopolitics like we did not in iraq, we end up creating vacuums and opportunities for prop rogue countries to increase their power which is what we are not tried to accomplish.

in my book, i talk about going to war with iraq and that it was based on fraud intelligence. i voted to go to war with iraq. i have a story about my own husband who, when i told him i was going to do this, said you are going to do what? i told him i read all of the intelligence, traveled to europe and the middle east. as far as i know, the intelligence is accurate. he said you will see, it is not. he was right. the point is, we went to war in iraq. a bad guy was leaving iraq. we knock him off, we did not have good strategy for how they would rebuild a strong country. that created a vacuum and iran has moved in. we still don't have a good strategy for iran. we are trying to resurrect the nuclear deal that i think at the

last administration wrongly pulled out of. the deadlines are short and some of the new demands like removing the -- from the list and letting russia trade with iran may be too hard to swallow. we are ending up in a world where, as i said, we have more nuclear powers where we have created vacuums. south korea and japan are talking about whether they should create a nuclear capacity after four years and under the nuclear umbrella. that is because i think our leadership is doubted. president biden was talking to the prime minister of india the other day about ukraine and russia and what biden said was please do not increase your oil imports from russia.

he did not say cut them off. it was more of an nuanced call because he is recognizing that not only is india a major power in the world, it is a nuclear power. we have to structure our relationships in this world carefully but we better get on with it. if we don't have a day after strategy in ukraine and we did not have a day after strategy after saddam hussein, we will have an unbelievably unstable world. it might be really bad for the u.s.. host: let's hear from richard, oceanside, california. good morning. caller: good morning. guest: you're from california, paradise. caller: i am in oceanside, san diego county. the weather is good. i used to live in orange county.

i have lived here all my life. i have not and around the world much that my wife has a lot. she went to high school in baghdad in the 1960's. i have a palestinian brother-in-law and i read a paper one of her friends wrote when she was going to university which described a period when the airliners were being hijacked. there was a big disaster. now they have big airport security. i'm going to purchase your book today. you are right, we are always a day late and a dollar short. i am tired of it. you know more than i, but i think putin is a chomp and a bully -- a chump and a bully. i don't think we have to use new weapons against him. i think it is getting close to the time when we are going to have to get tough with these guys.

if we don't get tough, we are going to have a mess when this party is over. this paper describes how there was no real airport security back in the day. nobody mentioned hijacking airplanes. look what happened in 9/11. host: richard, we will let you go there. would you like to respond? guest: you are from california so everything you say is right. on 911 since we have not talked about that -- of course, it is in my book. i was walking towards the dome of the capitol at 9:00 a.m. on 9/11 which was the target of one of the airplanes which failed because of the courage of the passengers. i was on a commission called the national commission on terrorism formed by congress.

a republican from virginia, retired now, insisted congress take a look at this. we predicted a major attack on u.s. soil. we testified before congress. on september 10, 2001, we were bemoaning the fact no one was listening. the sad thing is about history and about now is there are signs , there are ideas, there are better things to do. sometimes our political establishment just is not here and does not act. host: i wanted to ask you about president biden's comments about calling what is happening in ukraine genocide. a piece today from bill hunt omar saying -- from the

congresswoman saying equality under the law is one of the core tenets of our legal system. if we truly believe in prioritizing human rights and enforcing international law, how can we not be part of the court that upholds that law, the international criminal court which would be the body that would hear arguments on crimes -- on war crimes. guest: i don't know her. her and the other members of the squad came to congress after me and i don't agree with some of her views but i agree here. i think the international criminal court -- has prosecuted people for war crimes. for instance, in bosnia. i think we need an international system to do that.

another thing the u.s. has never done is join a -- convention. here we are protesting actions in the east and south china sea because they have violated international law. there has been resistance to these international conventions because it is somehow giving up our sovereignty. i think one of the tenants in the world order are to be that the u.s. is prepared to share power with like-minded countries around a set of interests and values, one of which is bringing those who commit heinous crimes to justice. host: with hear from karen in davidson bill, maryland. republican line. caller: this is not a political comment by any means, but a

comment about military readiness. my family is involved in the military, my husband and my children. i have a concern about the army and the army of the last two years is quite different from the army of 3, 4, 5 years and prior. the army of the last two years, the young people coming in have a whole different set of rules. my son happens to be a second attendant. he has a -- a second lieutenant. he has a platoon and he has no ability to discipline his own platoon. if they are late, if they are not performing, they are getting paid to do a job. sometimes they don't do it.

he has no ability to reprimand them. you cannot say drop and give me 20, that does not exist anymore. you have to go two levels up to report someone. when you go two levels up, they don't want to hear about it. he and many of his young officers are beyond frustrated in the inability to have their own platoon's -- platoons performing at a respectable level of competency. it is the young people coming into the army over the last two years, and those coming in this year and next, just a very different level of fitness, lack of discipline, and lack of

habits, good habits. fitness, being places on time, and proud of their work, etc. he is getting geared up to have to be deployed. host: thank you for your input. guest: i am not aware of that. i served for 10 years on the defense policy board which is an outside advisory ward to the pentagon with the late great madeleine albright, a dear old friend of mine, kissinger, and others.

i no longer serve on that and i don't have access to conversations about things like this. the board has been reformed and madeleine albright as its chair until her death just a few weeks ago. at any rate, something we have to understand is that the military reflect the society it operates. i don't think that comment is different than a comment about kids that age in many other occupations. the difference is that the military is supposed to instill discipline in young kids. i know one who used to tell me how important it was in changing his life. the person was colin powell who

joined the military at a young age, became a soldier and became a leader and a hero. there is a wonderful book by a man who was in the navy called "make your bed." it is a summary of a graduation speech he gave. he was the guy who took down osama bin laden. he was in the special forces and is now in the university of texas system. he said having to make your bed precisely at a young age in the military was a huge way that kids learned discipline and focus. if what you are saying is true across the military, that is very disappointing. i hope your message gets out.

i think you said your son is in the army. one good piece of news there, i was very focused on sexual assault and rape in the military when i was in congress. one of the things we kept talking about was these cases would be dropped by the chain of command. they would be reviewed by more senior levels and dropped. recently congress signed and biden passed a law to take these cases out of the chain of command. i think that is a good thing because i think young women going into the military, at least back in the day, were at enormous risk. they are prepared to put their lives on the line for our country and instead they are being victimized by people on the same team. host: karen is in florida on the republican line.

caller: one thing, my husband served in vietnam. he just passed a test to be a helicopter pilot but they did not have time to get him pulled out paper-wise. when he got there, he was happy he did not get to be a helicopter pilot because it was a disaster. i am glad i got him home. the other thing is i cannot understand why we would even deal with any nuclear power for a ran. -- for iran. they really do believe they have to destroy one third of the

world to bring back the 12th imam. the saudis do not. i feel like that is why they want the nuclear weapon. i cannot understand why we would even deal with iran. i will hang up and listen to your answer. guest: very quickly, iran leadership, which changed dramatically. i don't know how many callers were alive at the time but i was. i left the carter white house and i saw hostages were being taken in iran and i saw the rise of this new government. i don't want to characterize it, i will just say it was a very different government. and then the efforts to obtain

bombs. iran is close to account. they have enough enriched plutonium that if they decide to build a nuclear weapon, to build one. that was the impetus in 2015 for the obama administration to contain any development of the bomb. that is what the agreement was for. we were not dealing with them because they were our best friends, but in order to contain it their nuclear program and in exchange for that, free up some money with some debts we already owed them. i agree it had deficiencies. it did not curtail their maligned behavior, it did not curtail their development of advanced missiles, some of which are now in north korean hands. it is a dangerous story. my bottom line would be as we

develop a underworld order, we have to think very carefully about what role the nuclear powers, the responsible ones are going to play and how we are going to persuade require the non-responsible world nuclear powers to behave. i don't know what happens with this iran deal. it may not happen. some we'll see what happens with that. but it's a bigger story and we have to be strategic how we view all of this or we will, i think, play a smaller and less and less influence in the world. host: our guest book is "insanity defense: why our failure to confront hard national security problems makes us less safe." jane harman, thanks for being

with us on the program this morning. guest: thank you, bill. thank you, informed listeners. host: that will do it for "washington journal" this morning. we are back tomorrow morning at 7:00 eastern. we hope you are, too. have a great day. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2022] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> today, u.s. ambassador to the u.n., linda thomas greenfield discusses the importance of global coordination in a conversation with the brooking institution. watch this live at 12:15. watch on c-span, c-span.org or

c-span now. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we're funded by these television companies and more, including cox. >> cox is committed to providing eligible family access to affordable internet, bridging the digital divide one connected student at a time. cox, brings us closer. >> cox supports c-span along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> during the service, plotting how i could escape without giving the media a satisfaction of a picture of me outside a church. i made an exit out of a side door before it was over that i had never exited before and it turned out there was a reason for that. it didn't actually exit out. [laughter] >> but it rather went into the

priest's private residence and yard. i'm standing there in the yard and there's a fence. i faced a choice. i could either hop the fence or i could go back out the front and give them this picture. so i decided in my high heels to climb the fence. >> when i was being nominated people said i wasn't smart enough to be on the supreme court. that hurt me. cut me to the quick. and i realized, you know, coming from princeton with the honors i received there, going to yale, doing fairly well -- [laughter] >> being a district court judge and circuit court judge, it felt like, what's enough, and when is it enough? ok. and really, the reality is that for some people, if you're a minority, particularly one from new york, they believe that affirmative action opened the door for you.

they forget that you don't judge a person by who opens the door. you judge them by what they did when they went through the door. >> supreme court justice amy coney barrett spoke recently about life in washington, d.c., and public scrutiny during her confirmation hearings. then, supreme court justice sonia sotomayor. watch both conversations tonight on c-span starting at 9:00 eastern. >> white house national security advisor jake sullivan sat down for a conversation about the war in ukraine. north korea's weapons programs. and u.s. relations with china. he was interviewed by david rubenstein of the economic club of washington, d.c. david: as i said earlier, i introduced jake sullivan, the president's national security advisor. thank you ve