professor of political science and urban studies and boston university professor. join the discussion with your comments, text messages and tweet. washington journal is. host: a recent poll on those who have been following the hearing. those who approve and those who disapprove. the hearing has brought forward renewed interest. in our first hour, we want to hear from you about what you have learned from the january 6 hearing. let us know what you have learned.

independence -- if you want to text us about things that you have learned from watching these hearings, you can do so. you can post on facebook and twitter, and you can follow the shell on instagram. a recent poll taking a look at approval and disapproval numbers and rankings of those following the hearings. when they look at the topic of all voters of those following the hearing, there is an approval of a from the period of july 28 of 2021. as far as the january 6 hearings are, the hill posted a story taking a look at things learned

from watching the hearings. when watching the hearings, the first thing gay is that the president ignored the advice of his aides. the president spent weeks forecasting that if he suffered a loss, it could be due to fraud. he jumped into claim victory. the president's campaign manager told the president the night of the election. amongst other things learned from watching the hearings, some in his orbit, including his daughter accepted that there was no voter fraud. the president's daughter said she believed the conclusion that there was no widespread voter

fraud -- she goes on to say during the hearing, i respect that what he was saying, that there was no widespread election fraud. there are other categories as well. with that in mind, from you, watching the hearing, we are interested in learning from you what you have learned from watching these hearings. if you want to call and let us know, this is the number. you can also text us your thoughts. it was shortly after that hearing last week with cassidy hutchinson that members of congressman on to talk about the hearing and the overall impact

of the committee hearings themselves. a republican from illinois talked about the work and what he sees as the future of that work. >> and you are getting new information and i know you have taken a little bit of a pause and will be coming back sometime in july. >> i think we are going to do a couple more hearings. when the report comes out, we will do a hearing or two, but we can tell the rest of the story that we know so far, but they are a lot of details that have to be filled in and by the way, every day, new people are coming forward and saying, i have this video.

i happen to have a lot of video of the oval office. that kind of stuff happens every day. you are going to know the truth and someday your kids are going to be taught -- taught the truth about january 6 because of the work this committee is doing. host: they talk a little bit about cassidy hutchinson's testimony. tentative plans to hold the final hearings, including a primetime proceeding focused primarily -- you can watch these hearings on c-span and follow along with what you have learned from them. in philadelphia, we will start with horace. as far as what you have learned, tell us about that. >> i am so disappointed.

>> he did nothing but bring our country down but i'm glad that it is coming out. i think he should be made to pay the price, like anybody else. host: have you learned anything specific from watching the hearings? caller: what i have learned is that a man that was the president of the u.s. encouraged our people to invade the capital. that is one thing that i cannot get out of my mind. these are the top politicians of our country, the president of the u.s. arranged a coup to overtake the government.

host: we will go to north carolina on this idea of what you have learned from these hearings. >> maybe you can help me out with something. when you say insurrection, demean the insurrection that the fbi led? host: how would you respond to january 6? caller: can you please just let me talk? january 6, 2016 -- you know this. to the white house and talked about russian collusion or are you talking about the white house? host: we are talking about january 6, 2001. one more time, what --

let's go to judy. hello. what did you learn from the hearings, from watching them? caller: i hurt -- i learned that the president is a lot less patriotic than i thought he was. i thought that he was a very rude man, but i thought he had more patriotism and him and i have seen examples of. host: how did you get that from the hearings? caller: seeing the different clips of him calling in the proud boys and the other people to attack our sacred ground at the capitol building. host: that is judy in oklahoma.

robert on twitter says from things he learned, he said, i learned getting one side of the story does not prove anything. others were saying they have learned that there are two justice systems in america, one for which white men like donald trump and the other for people like us. people are posting on facebook as well. mike is next. montgomery, alabama. good morning. >> the american people were in existential danger in the last part of the trump presidency. the mainstream media ignored all the signs that led up to january 6. i am a moderate and a cautious person, and i am afraid that the conservative media sold out the

-- host: what did you learn? caller: courage. it took a professional female's testament to bring forward the truth. host: why cassidy over the others that have testified over the weeks of this hearing? caller: i think she had an ear to the ground and her testimony proved that there were some people who were conspiring with thought process of what the trump presidency was going to plan and do that day with the weaponry and knowing that. everything else that mr. trump was going against the grain of all legal foundations -- even his top-notch lawyers were telling him that this was not

the way to go. host: that is a beer from alabama. again, this story is available. john eastman crafted a memo advising them vice president to but ceremonial duty. there was also doubt about the legality of the plan. i think i raised the issue of the problem. eastman acknowledged it was the case and even what he viewed as it would violate several provisions. noting that president trump may have been president during the meeting. he said in his view, it was unconstitutional.

again, as far as things you have learned, what would you tell us about that? go ahead. caller: good morning. i do not watch these hearings. they are as much as a sham as the three, so-called impeachment trials. they pick and choose. they have hollywood producers doing things. nothing more has been said about colbert's people inside the capital. but one thing that we have to remember is that the date that trump was nominated, the democrats went crazy and conspired against him. the reason for that that is never talked about is that decades, he was a loyal democrat. he donated millions of dollars to the democratic party until he realized what was the direction in the country that they were taking. he said, i am leaving the

democrats, and i am going to run for president. from that moment on, this country has been torn upside down because the liberal left refuses to acknowledge what they are doing. host: have you not watched any of the hearings or did you watch a portion and then not decide to watch anymore? caller: i see little clips of the hearings on your show in the morning and i cannot believe the depth of depravity and the lies that democrats have put out. and trump was elected, they said, he is going to bring us into more, ruin the economy and take this and that away, and in actuality, if we look at the last five years, biden has done everything that they told us trump was going to do. he brought us into a war that was not ours.

host: people are telling us why they are watching the hearing or why they are not. on our line for democrats from greensboro, north carolina. go ahead. caller: pedro, thank you so much. i would like to say two things, but the biggest thing, i cannot how much decent workers have been terrorized by these people. a few had to move from their house, change their number -- it was their business. these people want a war. they are terrorizing people like this and what really bugs me is

not they were in the police station one time and they got 20 threatening calls. the police do nothing about it. we have caller id. i do not know why they do not prosecute these death threats over the phone. it was a felony to communicate a death threat over the telephone. the police do nothing. i think all they do is sit there. if i can say one more thing about the psychosis of this bunch who claimed the election was stolen? this was the most secure election ever. host: we will they -- we will leave it there. one of those comments was made by the former president -- he

was talking and was asked about the hearings and their impact. here is former president trump. >> holding a session of what they are calling some new evidence. they had a junior staffer, cassidy hutchinson, who made some wild secondhand announcements about you. mr. trump: when you look at what they are doing to the country -- the good news is that a lot of people are not watching or listening to it, but we went through russia and ukraine and the mueller report and no collusion after 2.5 years, and now we are going through this. it is a one-way sideshow.

it is a horrible thing they can do. they do not talk about making america great anymore. they just investigate everybody and it is a terrible thing. host: another view from twitter saying that the former president knew that the crowd was armed and he knew widespread voter fraud was a lie. twitter is one way that you can reach out to us. we will hear from minneapolis on the independent line. caller: i think it is going to take its rational course, but i think the tragedy of the whole thing is that working-class whites have a sense of entitlement, but they do not

realize that they are descendants of ottoman empire slavery. they had people enslaved up until the 1890's. host: let's go back to the hearings. what have you learned from watching them? caller: the case has already taken its rational course. host: what do you mean by that? caller: if people went for a fax, as far as the committee is can learned, you will address those facts and a rational manner. host: how much of the hearings have you watched? caller: i have watched tidbits of it. there was white slavery going on. host: you have made that point

already. let's move on. caller: the one thing i have learned from these hearings is that true to form, donald trump is a marketing genius. he has figured out a way -- he always figures out a way to manipulate the media and the system, to basically put himself any light wear a mask amount of people put all of their faith, trust and belief into what he says. host: how did you get that from the hearing? caller: my wife runs marathons. if she got on social media and started professing nine months in advance before a vase that if she did not win the race that the whole thing was made, how much weight would that have with anybody in the racing community? host: how does that go back to what you learn from hearing? caller: from the hearing, i

learned that he set the step from the beginning. donald trump has figured out a way to basically captivate public opinion by saying it so many times, over and over again that people just buy into it. there are a vast amount of people who believe what he says. you have these hearings that step-by-step proof. i am a republican. i do not want to believe this, but they believe everything he says. host: what proof would you offer for the allegation that you made? caller: well, who sets up a war room? no other president could set up a war room to prove that they won an election when the other person did. most run their race that they based it on the best that they did. nobody has stood there, time and

time again and just professed that the whole thing was a crime against them they just lost the race in general. host: let's go to kathy in michigan. go ahead. caller: i do not have a television -- are you there? hello? host: you are on go ahead please. go ahead. caller: i do not have a tv, so i watched leo's embedded but what i have learned is that the trump eminem -- the trump administration was very toxic administration and the president was so emotionally impaired that it is striking.

the hearings are so different from when i watched watergate. i watched a lot of that as a teenager. i do not like this lack of professionalism with members of congress. that includes the democrats i prefer to see more stoic presentation in their behavior. liz cheney seem to be a little overboard with that. host: you are saying the actual format is an issue for you, when it comes to the hearings? caller: well, i would like to see it presented in a more professional manner. i did watch the video of miss hutchinson, and she was very direct, but she had the opportunity to speak when all of this went down. she knew what was going on. if you wait until now -- it got

very bad. people came very close to dying. host: as far as viewership from the hearings with cassidy hutchinson, you can still find that. the hearings themselves, that hearing last week attracted more than 14 million viewers on tuesday, the most-watched of the daytime sessions that highlights the hearing. it was the most-watched program that afternoon also, it is hard to compare the numbers with other shows because it aired on multiple networks. the first hearing, most of the

major broadcasting networks attracted about 20 million viewers and it aired the daytime. leanne just doing networks for those who stream and watch on other devices. the viewership numbers from last week, as far as what you have seen, tell us what you have learned. dan, go ahead. caller: thank you for having me on. i watched a lot of the hearings. i watched a lot of this stuff that what -- that happened with trump over the years as well. as well as watching live what was happening in the senate on the sixth, the whole narrative

of how this is being explained, how the mob went and to stop the certification is a lie, pedro. you know that. host: go back to the hearing this. what did you learn from them? caller: i learned that it emphasized the fact that a whole group of unelected officials in washington and people associated with the deep state had one thing in mind when donald trump came into office, and that was to get him out. host: how did you get that from the hearing it self? caller: there was no cross-examination of any witnesses. the two so-called republicans on the committee are not republicans. a rhino, if you have to say,

republicans in name only. from the testimony from the witnesses and being allowed to say this stuff with no cross-examination -- is just horrible. there is no reflection whatsoever about any type of democratic type of process. this last witness, the surprise witness that came out -- she had all these stories about second and third hand people saying things, but when the actual people were asked, did this happen? they said no, but the democrats are not interested, whatsoever. questioning some -- host: questioning some of the stories that came out. hello. thank you for taking my call.

here is a guy who can straighten things out. i also learned that the former president trump did not call the national guard. mike pence did. the former president trump -- he led -- he let people with arms march to the capital and he told everybody, i'm going to go up there with you. and then the coward did not go, so the people who follow him now are following a coward. this is joan from minnesota saying, i learned that we will never know the truth. no true representation of both sides. it has been very one-sided. sandy from texas said, i learned our government is one-sided and

unfair. this is from carol, saying the hearings have not told me anything i did not already know about the former president. he was an embarrassment and a danger to the country and still is. no one is above the law and president trump must be held accountable. from nina, i have learned the following. the president is a liar. he is looking like his friend vladimir putin. the committee will get to the bottom of this. some of you texting us this morning and you can continue to do that, if you wish. we will read more of those as the morning goes on. andrea in new york -- she hung up. let's hear from rick from indiana. good morning. go ahead.

caller: see my she testified and this is all a big thing. abandon ship. adam schiff would not allow that to happen. the democrat did not want the republicans of any type to run for president, and that is the way it is. and trying to get trump into trouble and he has not done anything but help the country. host: because the secret service question some of the testimony of cassidy hutchinson, do you think everything else she said was true? caller: nothing she said was true.

there are a lot of things that i can see just by looking at her eyes, she blinks too many times. that is a liar right there. look at the gas prices. all the democrats do is tell lies, and they do not believe in jesus christ. host: rick in indiana giving his thoughts on what he has learned from watching the hearings. let's hear from jim in kentucky on the democrat line. caller: what i learned from this is that -- how many of trump's top echelon people had actually looked into the fraud claims and did not find fraud.

you had a constant theme in conservative talk shows saying nobody has the into it, but it was his top guys. host: how did you get that from the hearings specifically? caller: the actual testimony of the campaign managers and his lawyers said they had looked into it and filed lawsuit, and lawsuits were dismissed on merit, not standing. some had actually looked into this. other than the pull workers from georgia come everybody as a witness was a trump loyalist at one point. host: ed joins us on our independent line from california. caller: can you hear me? hello.

a lot of these people are not getting the question that you're asking, what they got from the hearing. when cassie came on, she talked about how he wanted to be there with the people. it is unreal. people do not understand his character. since day one, he is constantly lying and been saying that he did not do it. first words out of his mouth were that it is the democrats phone. what i am getting out of this hearing is that we get a lot of evidence and a lot of things have come out. it shows the amount of evidence that we have.

they turn around and say, this is what we are doing and this is why i do not want to work with him anymore. my thing is, i hope that what i want out of these hearings is to make sure that if something is done wrong, the punishment is what they are supposed to get and they cannot get away with executive privilege. host: there have been other facts coming out of this. installing jeffrey clark, a lawyer specializing because he was willing to send a letter to other state asking them to

falsify result. rudy giuliani said that is part of why they landed on clark because somebody should be put in charge of the justice department. the justice department was filled with people like that. several hearings took place in connection with january 6. if you want to go back and watch them all, you have the ability to do so on our site. all you have to do is go to our site to do that. you can also follow along on our c-span at. let's hear from susan from oklahoma on the democrat sign. caller: good morning. what i learned from the hearing was that i thought people were

-- trump was the mid be later behind all of this. it was not people giving him advice. he was getting people doing what he wanted them to do. i look to the call to georgia and how did he know that they would get rid of 11,000 votes to make him a winner down there. what i learned is that instead of playing this, i think i'm going to join some of these republicans and switch and become an independent because trump is playing a divide and conquer game. we need to focus on the issues and get away from all of this democrat and republican stuff. >> hello.

what i have learned is that pbs is incurable. that is what i have gotten out of this. the fact that the secret service agents came forward and are willing to testify, under oath that what hutchinson said did not happen -- unless the committee brings those people forward, how can they possibly say that this is a fair hearing? this is ridiculous. host: do you think those people are going to show up or not? caller: they cannot just show up at the door and say let me end, can they? host: there is a process there. they highlighted the fact that came out from the last hearing. how closely have you been watching the hearings overall? caller: enough to know what a

sham it is and go trump 2024. if not trump, sanders. host: how do you follow along? caller: i have been watching a lawyer in arizona. he does commentary. he will go down and examine everything. i do it that way, but i see all of the highlights. host: operate. stephen on the republican line telling us but he has observed and learned from the hearings. some of them guarding reaction from members of congress. senator lindsey graham from last week talking about how they buy everything thrown out, hook line

and sinker. one asking, why is nancy pelosi nontestifying? democrats in congress are so upset with january 6 that have not made any effort to fix the problems that americans actually care about like inflation, open borders and energy dependency. we will show you about what the democrats have to say and the impact of hearings overall in just a few minutes. frederick, in annapolis, maryland on the independent line. caller: good morning. what i learned from the hearings was that trump smashed his plate of food on the wall.

he wanted to go back. i used to live a few blocks away from the capitol building. i had friends working in the senate. america needs to understand that when the president goes to the capital, he must be invited. that is a huge overstep of his branch of power. what i learned is the to attempt was a real coup attempt. i have heard the colors on c-span talking about, if it were a two, why were more people getting -- my were more people not getting violent? trump wanted to get rid of the metal detectors at his rally because the people were not going to hurt him, but they were

going to hurt somebody. host: you highlighted the secret service. what do you make of what the previous caller brought up in what was said about the occurrence in the presidential limo? caller: i understand that they have to protect not only themselves but their service and what they do. it is called secret service for a reason. the facts are going to come out and the behavior in the limo was with the behavior of our president in times past, but the issue is that he directed an insurrection at the capital, on the day that the election was to be certified. there is no getting around that. i really encourage all americans to look at the facts.

host: senator durbin adding that cassidy hutchinson's testimony has been praised as courageous and also dismissed as unbelievable. some of the darkest moments of our democracy coming forward to tell their stories. a democrat from california saying the committee is exposing the behavior of the organized crime boss and devastating details. stay tuned. representative from texas saying that sometimes the smoking gun is a gun. he highlights a political story. including that the president knew that some of his supporters were armed, but he did not care because they were not there to hurt him. we are hearing what you learned from them.

anthony, in new jersey, go ahead. caller: i am learning that the democrats are so scared that they will do anything to tarnish him, but they always think that they are right. how come the hunter biden investigation was not televised? we never got an answer from nancy pelosi. why did they not interview epstein on tv? all of the technology -- we do not know. they were blocking people from talking to the prisoners.

they were being kept way past their time in the d.c. jail. host: why are those important things to add? caller: they are showing that it is biased. they said they are going to be the great uniter's. they are going to include everybody. all kinds of social justice. then they come in and they are the real rants and bipartisan people. they are liars. they should have had pelosi get up there and say why she would not let jim jordan and josh come in there to talk. why did he -- they actually think they have the gall and the nerve to think that the american patriot is stupid. they really thing that we are going to buy this show? they are mad because they know

that their swamp buddies, all their money and all their dollars is going to go away one day. host: speaking of -- serves at the vice chair of the committee. she is also running to gain another term as a representative of her area, liz cheney. she talked about the january 6 events. we will show you what she had to say. >> there is a real tragedy that is occurring, and the tragedy is that there are politicians in this country, beginning with donald trump, who have lied to the american people, and people have been betrayed. he consistently said that the election was stolen when it was not. it is clear that they determined

the outcome. he watched our hearings, predominantly, made of republican witnesses. the former and deputy attorney general from the head of the trump campaign, including one individual from new jersey who is now advising one of my opponents in the race, who says that he believes that the election was not stolen. he wanted to be part of team normal. so, i would be interested to know whether my opponent is willing to say that the election was not stolen. she knows it was not. she cannot say that it was not because she is completely beholden to donald trump. if she says it was not stolen -- we have to be truthful. public servants of that the people that represent.

>> i am actually the only person who has been campaigning in wyoming. the only time that the situation ever comes up is when people talk about how unfair this entire committee is. they are concerned about the lack of due process, the fact that there is no ability to cross-examine witnesses, and they recognize that you may have 15 hours of videotape depositions and the committee shows 15 seconds or 2.5 minutes of something. what people are concerned about is that it is totally unfair, so contrary to everything our country stands for. i think the people associated with the price and the democrats you want to deflect attention from the biden administration -- they talk about january 6, but that is not what the people in

wyoming are talking about. they are talking about the gas prices. they are talking about the fact that they cannot travel. host: that debate, you can see it on our website. democrats line hello. ginger? caller: hello? are you there? host: you are on the air. if you are listening to the television, do not do that. caller: no, i'm not listening to the tv but talking into my phone. i learned that -- [indiscernible] in that moment, i thought, all the way back to the debate, when he said, stanback and watch the

proud boys. i was like, who are the proud boys? [indiscernible] they are there to tell you what they know. when people want to testify, all they have to do is contact them and they will let them testify. she did testify, under oath. let them do the same and then you can hold them up as good people. caller: thank you for taking my call. i learned the most damage information came from the attorneys general, the fact that this was all happening, even before january 6 that trump was

trying to take the election and call it corrupt, saying, just sign this letter and we will figure out how to make it work. i do not see how people are skipping over that. that is so crucial. because these attorney general said no, we cannot do that, that is against the law -- that is when he started pushing, come down to the capital. everybody is wanting to focus on this one thing that cassidy hutchinson said about the secret service, and they kind of skip over the fact that she was in the room during all of these meetings. if mark meadows is going to sanction a liar, then -- he has not come forward and if

he is really wanting to say that this is not true, where is he? host: that is katie in maryland. everett in grand junction and -- in grand junction? caller: i did not listen to much of the hearings, but what i am learning from this whole thing is that if somebody is accused of something, then they should be there to hear the accusations from the people that are accusing them. the gentleman from new jersey had a lot of point. if you are accused of something, you need to be there to listen to your accusers. i think a lot of this is a lot of gossip. if it is true, then prove that

it is true. that is what i have learned. host: other collars have said others have been subpoenaed. do you think that they should just tell their side? caller: i think i need to be counter witnesses that need to either agree with somebody making these accusations or they are actually there and they witnessed it, somebody bouncing around the vehicle. what she in the vehicle? when you make an accusation, you should be an eyewitness. hearsay or what people are saying in a room full of people, when we have all of this going on -- everybody has a right to their feelings, but carrying them out is a different story.

host: how much of the total hearings have you watched? caller: i have probably watched maybe an hour of it. i have other things to do, but i have watched the important things and i appreciate that i can access c-span and go back to watch things, but i listened to a lot of the points and it just seems like a sham trial to me. host: he can go back and watch on c-span. we invite you to do the same. just to show you a little bit more from the hearings under what we have learned, white house lawyers worried about legal exposure of the president's speech saying that they told hutchinson that they were worried that if the president marched on the capital , it could appear that she was

trying to obstruct justice. these make sure that we do not go to the capital. relaying a message to her that morning. we are going to charge him with every crime imaginable. the others raised concerns about the language used in the president's speech. he had relayed that we would be foolish to include language at the president's request that would use the word fight and urge marching on the capital. they were urging speechwriters not to include that language for legal concern. leanne in michigan, democrats line. >> if i do not answer a subpoena, i am going to jail. i am guilty. so let's forget about that.

i know what i saw january 6. i know i heard that young lady say that mark meadows was looking at his phone and did not want to be bothered, but i'm trying to figure out, maybe that man needs to watch it because i know what i saw january 6 and i know what i heard about him not carrying and on that, so i'm trying to figure out, what is in the kool-aid that they are drinking because i know what i saw. host: a call from new jersey. republican nine. go ahead. caller: what i learned was that it was black lives matter and the fbi that stirred this. donald trump was in cahoots.

i'm a registered republican. he was in cahoots with these losers. he just kept lying to us and stealing money from fellow citizens, begging them for money and then taking the money and giving it to mark meadows. it is a total disgrace and i cannot believe this is happening in america. a lot of republicans are in a cult now. they are in the trump colt and they -- cult, and they are drinking the kool-aid. host: speaking about the hearing for the january 6 committee. here is a little bit of that conversation. >> any attorney that goes into the court of law and does affect

us, you will be thrown out on your butt. your hearing hearsay but it's from a staffer who was not even in the room when a lot of these discussions were being read. there is no backup evidence, but here is the key detail. they wanted to know what happened january 6. they should go and watch the oversight hearings. i know they are basically gone anyways. when we were looking at january 6, the democrats were flustered. they had nowhere to go. we were clearly bringing down what happened and what the failures were. do not want opposition. host: donna from missouri, go

ahead. caller: i witnessed what i thought was a spontaneous incident, but i have learned what i have learned during watergate. i have concluded that that they planned, plotted, instigated and continue to lie to the people. i could go on and on because i have watched every minute of these hearings. what i found to be most telling is that when general flynn had pleaded the fifth when asked the question, do you believe in the peaceful -- host: from bruce in south carolina, democrats line. caller: i would just like to say a couple things quickly.

hutchinson, when she commented on the secret service incident, she stated that she was not in the car. she was following in another limousine and she quoted that she came up the steps. i do not remember the gentleman who called her into the room, but she was talking to him in front of the secret service men that accused the president. to focus on that is completely ridiculous. she states it. lastly, to my friend to call in and say it is a sham, a dan, the deep state -- i want to tell you that when you say you know this but you have never watched the hearings or you caught snippets from some right-wing media outlet that filtered it to you, you have to wake up and smell the coffee. this man lied to you.

i am a new yorker, born and raised. host: as far as what hutchinson relayed about the limo, what you make of the secret service questioning that? caller: there is no question that they have a job to do and to protect their image. i would question their rebuttal of this. i would love for them to come down to testify. i know that the committee would gladly have them. but it is secondhand information. if anybody made it up, it is the secret service men -- but she clearly states to anyone watching the hearing -- they would know that she said it right on national television that she got it secondhand. she was just repeating what she heard. host: one more call in detroit, michigan. caller: i have been watching

some of the hearings and what has come up for me is how involved the president was. that she got it secondhand. host: jean in detroit,, michigan go ahead. caller: i wanted to say i have been watching some of the hearings and what has come up for me is how the president was in conflict and even calling for -- that day when he knew the votes were going to be certified. i feel our nation is in a spiritual warfare. donald trump -- host: chris

wilson a political strategist will be joined by carly cooperman. later on in the program we will continue with our landmark legislation series. we will look at the law that created medicare and medicaid. that segment coming up later on washington journal. ♪ >> since the summer of 2020 roughly 214 public monuments have been taken down across the united states through official processes or by force. tonight on-q end day -- on q&a erin thompson talks about the current debate over statues and which ones should be taken down. >> americans protested to say

that black lives matter and often these rallies focused on monuments as a symbolic meeting point for showing who was imported in america. >> erin thompson with her book " smashing statues," tonight on c-span's q&a. > c-span has unfiltered view coverage of the hearings investigating the attack on the capital. go to our web resource page to watch the latest coverage of the hearings and the subsequent best ignitions -- investigations.

go to c-span.org/january6 for a fast and easy way to watch when you cannot see it live. >> c-spanshop.org is c-span's online store. browse through our latest -- c-spanshop.org is c-span's online store. browse through our latest collections of accessories and home decor. shop anytime at c-spanshop.org. >> washington journal continues. host: 2 guests joining us this morning. chris wilson is a political pollster and strategist, a partner at -- carly cooperman is a partner at sean cooperman.

carly cooperman, how did you see midterms going before the courts handed down their decisions and tell me what you think might have changed because of that?car ly: -- because of that? carly: before the supreme court decision, midterms were looking good for republicans. biden then the dome -- and the democrats have low ratings. after the supreme court ruling the democrat base and democrat voters are going to be galvanized in a way we have not yet seen before, in particular the ruling on abortion is something that is resonating

with those voters. they believe there should be a legal right to abortion and they do not want to see roe v. wade overturned. inflation and the economy is still the most important issue to voters right now. while the issue of voting rights has increased since the rulings but i do not believe there will be a change in the big picture of the midterms as long as aspect -- gas prices remain as high as they are. host: chris wilson, same question to you. chris: i do not have much to disagree with. we are basing our responses off of survey research. they should say the same thing, right?

a decision was handed down in texas. that was the first time republicans have ever held that seat. it is pretty remarkable. anyone who is a student of political history, this is -- know it is represented by a pro-life republican hispanic woman. i do think there is a short-term bump amongst enthusiasm in democrats but i did the polling for governor youngkin virginia, and we did focus groups with women. a woman said to me " i worry about the cost of gas and groceries every day. abortion is not something i think about every day." it is an illustration of what carly said.

we are looking at a november election that will be determined by issues that biden is extremely weak in. host: you heard president biden while he was away, and back in the united states saying that this roe v. wade issue will be the most important issue. what would you say to republicans to reframe the debate? chris: the first problem democrats are going to have with that, they increasingly come off like chicken little. voters will wake up in october and november that in the states they live in, very little has changed. i happen to live in oklahoma. in oklahoma there will be no more abortions. for voters who live in california and new york, nothing will change. there will be abortions right through the ninth month. voters will realize that is not the case and they will go back

to those original issues that carly mentioned and that i agree with. the price of gasoline, the price of groceries. we notice no tweets coming out from the white house that prices are up so much that it is difficult to estimate how much the fourth of july will cost. host: you wrote a recent op-ed discussing reframing and where republicans go from here. carly: the research we have been doing around abortion and reproductive rights show democrats are on the same as the -- same side as the majority of voters. voters went to abortion. voters want -- voters want access to abortion.

there needs to be a right to abortion, rather than talking about it in oh way -- a way that voters want access -- abortion to be legal but they want restrictions on it. they are reframing it as a matter of women's health care and being able to access safe health care when they need it. that is the way for the democrats to build their broader base of support around that issue, and especially given that they want to be driving home this issue, november, in terms of raising the urgency of voters. it is so important for the democratic party to get their messaging right in a way that is inclusive and positive on this issue. host: both of our guests will be with us until 8:45, if you want

to ask them questions about the midterm, you can call. it is democrats, (202) 748-8000 . (202) 748-8001 for republicans. and (202) 748-8002 for independents. you can also text your thoughts to (202) 748-8003. aside from roe, do those other issues make big strides in terms of changing how people vote? carly cooperman, start us off. carly: guns is something that will hit home with democratic voters in particular. we saw a law that had been in place for a very long time that prevented private individuals

from carrying guns on the street return. the fact that it happened right after the shooting in texas, it certainly is going to connect with voters as well. we still come back to the fact that as long as gas prices are what they are and food and housing is dominating the conversation in a way that it will be able to dramatically change the outlook for democrats as we go into the election. chris: we keep agreeing on everything! there is very little that is going to change on this. one of the things where i believe there are opportunities for republicans here, are -- when it comes to the issues of abortion, when democrats languages to extreme on an issue, it hurts them. she is going to increase turnout from where it already was with

pro-gun rural voters. you saw the same thing in arizona. this decision on guns has the chance to flip three seats back to republicans. it helps odds in pennsylvania. you have to increase turnout in the rural areas. that is a great illustration because the type of voter -- i would come back to what carly ended with. will that dominate or will that somehow supplanted inflation? absolutely not. host: before we go, i went to get your thoughts as far as how midterms might play out as far as how the house and senate remain in terms of balance of power. who has power in congress after november? chris: i think republicans will

take both houses. i think it is highly probable that republicans flip the seats in georgia,, arizona and nevada and there are other seats that are up for grabs. you had democrats try to impact the nomination in colorado, did so unsuccessfully. that seat is now in play. there are a couple of others that could be surprises. nancy pelosi is biding her time. she will not be the speaker come november. if you look at the generic ballot as of today in a post-dobbs world, you are looking at a flip somewhere between 54 and 65 seats -- 45 and 65 seats. the house will be very different come january next year. host:, carly cooperman same question to you. carly: i agree with chris.

it is likely that the republicans are going to take control of both the house and the senate. i was looking at the report numbers yesterday. the likelihood that this is going to be. -- that this is going to be the case is high. recent events between the supreme court into the january 6 hearings still favor republicans. the bump that the democrats have got recently is something that can have a lasting impact. i am watching races in georgia and pennsylvania as well. swing states, democrats are in a position where they have to take on the republican and straddled the fact that they are is unpopular right now. at the end of the day, the

republicans are still likely to take control of both houses. host: chris wilson again with -- and carly cooperman. we will start with kyle. he is in indiana. caller: here is my problem with the way that you posed these questions. historical data has proven that can be wrong. trump won. regardless of numbers he was able to win his election. when you are looking at the republicans and democrats, republicans get an office, they do nothing. they say hateful things. even your guide there now is demonizing the democrats for no reason. the democrats are so complacent. the other times we go to the

table and help them when they get in power. your two posters are evident of that. what the senate has done, what the supreme court has done, people are agitated and want to do something and they will not sit back and let history play out. do not get demoralized by these talking heads. host: we invited our guests on for a reason. carly: the democratic policies are popular. that is something that should not be lost on voters. voters agree with democrats when it comes to abortion rights. they agree on health care. that is the perfect example of what the color was saying. republicans have been attacking obamacare for years and have yet to put forward an alternative,

but it is a really tricky balance, because the democrats have plenty of policies that appeal to voters, but they risk seeming out of touch with voters. unfortunately, the president gets credit for the economy when it is good, and he gets blamed when it is bad. with inflation driving the conversation, it is a hard decision that -- position that the democrats are in. chris: i do believe that the caller mischaracterized the approach of republicans to challenges. when you are out of power, it is irrelevant if you introduce any legislation or try to do things. i would point to the election of glenn youngkin in virginia. glenn youngkin ran on school choice and education. we on protecting parents.

he ran on outlawing crt, which are issues that resonate with voters. i bring up ones we thought were really connecting to voters who felt like their heart had not been heard over the last 8 to 12 years. when you see candidates in florida who have a positive agenda and to speak to issues that do help people, they win races that people do not give them a chance of winning. youngkin was in an uphill fight. host: this is tony and pennsylvania. caller: good morning to the guests. being an independent in this country is an interesting position to be in. not a lot of representation in the media, and i definitely

don't feel represented by the republican party or democratic party. i see them as one corporate bird with two wings. recently it has been interesting to see how good legislation and our inability to get policy passed highlights a real problem. if 90% of the country support something, and we cannot get legislation -- event 50% of nra members support legislation. if we cannot get it, there is something fundamentally broken about our democracy. showed that voter preference -- a study out of princeton showed that voter preference has no impact on voting outcomes. if there is not representation of the people, i would call it a fascist state. i have no use for the democratic party. i have no use for the republican party.

those are filled with liars, fraud, bribery that is legalized. host: we got the point. both guests, independents, where are they these days? mr. wilson, what would you think? chris: we are popular with your callers this morning! i don't know how to respond to that, other than to say that independents are outside most elections right now. if they are not doing a good job at connecting with people like tony, then we are failing in our role. carly: i understand tony's sentiments. we see the pessimism among voters is really high. there is a lot of cynicism towards our political system,

towards election outcomes. passing gun safety reform is an incredibly frustrating and challenging issue for sure. the system we have in place is one where we still need voters to comment about, voice their opinions -- come and vote, voice their opinions. host: this is paris in north carolina. caller: if you do not know the difference between the democrats, and i would say conservatives. i have been a republican, but i would say i am not an independent, i am a conservative because i like to conserve those things that help the country work. when we had a conservative president like donald trump, look at the state of the country

when he left, and now look at the country one month into democrat rule. not only did trump help our country, he helped all americans. he did more for the black community than obama ever did. host: carly cooperman, you can go first. how much of a factories president trump and these midterms? carly: president trump has been a factor in the republican primaries. we watch closely to see how much influence he has had. he continues to weigh heavily, has a tremendous influence on the party right now. the big looming question as we go into the midterms is whether he will throw his hat into the ring for president in 2024.

while democrats have tried to tie republicans in many cases to trump where he is unpopular, at the end of the day it seems like voters are more interested in moving forward and dealing with the issues in front of them. chris: carly is right. this will be an issue driven election. i do not believe that donald trump will have much of an impact on the general election. i think he has had an impact on some primary races. we have seen primaries he has gotten involved in where the candidate he endorsed lost. he looms large the way any former president wants to remain in politics looms large. voters will make decisions about what joe biden is doing when they cast a ballot in november. host: chris wilson and carly

cooperman joining us for this discussion. paula and washington, d.c.. caller: thank you for taking my call -- paula in washington, d.c.. caller: thank you for taking my call. i am aligned with a couple of collars ago, but not quite as -- callers ago, but not quite as has mystic. i believe this -- i am aligned with a couple of callers ago but not quite as pessimistic. i believe both democrats and republicans are about winning the next election, and when you have that kind of environment where that is what you care about, then -- and not the country itself, we will be spending in this circle forever. we will have a president that cannot act because the house is

not aligned with his perjury because nobody wants to work together anymore. i am 59 years old. i have seen where things were at -- where they were with president obama and the stalemate there and even some democrats were, we remember the blue dog democrats, were not necessarily aligned with the president at the time, and i believe that was due to race. host: that was paula in washington dc. chris: i agree with some of the points paulo was making. it is unfortunate that there is an inability of people in washington to work together today. i grew up under ronald reagan. that shaped my political philosophy.

his tax cut bill, one of the co-authors was kennedy. -- co-authors was bill kennedy. it is unfortunate that you do not see this sort of cooperation like that. we have not seen it in a long time. i hope there is a little self reflection from those in power now that doing things like trying to change the rules is in no one's best interest. you had them change the rules where judicial nominees were accepted and changed it from being 60 votes down to being 51, and i do not think democrats are happy with those results. the beneficiary of that will be the next house and the next senate. the founding fathers knew what they were doing. as we go into the fourth of july

holiday, we need to reflect on the lack of identification among the founding fathers. we may want to find a way to work together and find common ground. carly: i think paula makes a very good point. i have done a of research on the divisiveness in our country. i read a book about it last year. i found in this research that above all there is this really strong desire among voters to see some kind of consensus, some effort among elected officials on both sides of the aisle to work together. while there is a lot of talk about the liberals are very far left and conservatives are very far to the right, and the two sides of the aisle are not even talking to each other, there is

a desire for elected officials to find common ground. whether that speaks towards the electoral reforms we are seeing where they systems are designed to be more inclusive and get more voters to elect the candidates that are less negative because they are trying to get the second choice vote of voters. when -- any kind of effort to make an environment that enables there to be people working together, rather than just having divisiveness is something that voters support. while it does not feel like a good political climate right now, we know that is what the -- that is the direction people want to go with. host: let me ask you about some recent numbers. perry bacon makes this point about recent polling -- "

compare with 56% who disapprove." he goes on to say " 43 percent would support a democratic candidate for congress, making the case that even if it voters do not like president biden, they will support a democratic candidate." the associated press reported that one million people have switched abouts to become republicans -- switch to votes to become republican. carly cooperman, what do you think? carly: it is absolutely the case that biden's numbers are really struggling right now. the generic vote is consistently much closer than what we have seen, bidens ratings which are negative -- biden's readings,

which are negative -- biden's ratings, which are negative. the tide is still in support of the republicans. republican registration is higher. even the primaries to date, republican turnout is higher now than it was in 2018. turnout for democrats is lower than it was in 2018. voter enthusiasm right now is stronger among republicans, hence the turnout and registration numbers as well. the hope is that some of these issues that have come out in the supreme court ruling are going to be something that connects with democrats and gets them to turnout. chris: to that point, what we

have seen is the opposite. since dobbs you have seen a higher increase in voters switching to the republican party. there was a little bit of a miscalculation going on with the democratic party so's -- so biden's favorable rating is interesting. what is a fascinating trend is no incumbent president had improved their favorable rating after january 31. from february 1 on, it only gets worse. they will continue to get worse as we lean closer to november as gas prices go up and grocery prices go up. it is a bit -- the way in which national sampling is done, it is a bed as a -- bit of a

misrepresentation. we do not see it actually catch up to the representation in congress until wayne advance. -- until way in advance. i am involved in the nevada race. looking at the change in voter registration that has taken place there over the course of the past year -- you are going to have -- we already saw florida flip from a majority of republicans to a majority of democrats. it did not begin with biden. it goes back to donald trump, which surprises a lot of people who do what i do for a living.

, nevada, arizona, south texas are absolute representations of that. that is the biggest take away we will see from an enthusiasm standpoint. not just republicans enthused. host: here is a sample of a tv ad from susie lee against her republican opponent april becker. lee represents suburban las vegas. this race is listed as a tossup. here is the ad. http://twitter.com/cspanwj -- [video clip] >> april becker, threatening every woman's right to choose, exactly why we need susie lee. endorsed by planned parenthood,

lee will protect our right to choose always. host: this or wilson, we will probably see more ads -- mr. wilson, we will probably see more ads this one tweet? -- mr. wilson, we will probably see more ads like this won't we?> chris: she leaves in recent polls. carly: brian: -- carly: all of these candidates will put ads about abortion on tv. is this going to connect with voters? voters did not want to see the

legal right to abortion go away. it is going to be appearing more and more on ads in swing states and certainly in democratic races this fall. the messaging i think is critical, but democrats know they are on the side of the issue that connects with voters and they will try to use it as much as they can to their advantage this fall. host: let's hear from a viewer in chesapeake, virginia. this is jean. caller: independent, republican for years, retired military, opened up a business during the pandemic, and what i see -- i say independent now because i like to the biden-obama team and voted for biden.

i would love to go back to the republican party. i would only do that if cheney won. the young lady paula, i was in agreement with a lot of things she said. they young man from north carolina though, i was taken back by some of the comments he made. we must remember that what happened january 6 -- i could never go back to a party that is in any agreement with that. what we must also remember is, it starts at the bottom at the local level in our cities, and our council representatives, and then it goes up. we put a lot on, the president and we are holding biden accountable for a lot of things, but at the ground level, i am

seeing cities where their cities are not being managed by the people in charge. overall, that has to do with -- we think overall that has to do with the president, but we need to make sure we elect the right people at council level. our state delegates -- we have the government we elected, but we must start from the bottom. host: that is jean from chesapeake, virginia. chris wilson, you go first. chris: i do not know anyone in the republican party who said they agreed with what happened on january 6. i would not work with anyone who agreed with what happened on january 6. it is something we should look back on with shame and embarrassment. the hearings have not done much

to take us beyond that shame and embarrassment. they are not meant to. i appreciate the caller's comment. with anybody who was brave enough to try and start a business during the pandemic, has my utmost carly: respect. what happened -- during the pandemic has my utmost respect. carly: what happened during the january 6 was tragic january 6 was tragic. that tied to what was going on at the moment, republicans running on the issue that 2020 was a fall selection.

everywhere voters want to move on and move forward from this, but that being said, it is concerning to elect somebody who is running on this idea that trump was inaccurately and falsified in terms of the election outcome. , otherwise i agree with what the caller said. it starts from the bottom up. host: you talked about economics. both of you referenced gas prices. we have a viewer off of twitter who says where he lives gas prices have gone down $.30 or $.40. any chance that if those trends continue, a change in who somebody supports could happen? carly: absolutely.

if gas prices are able to go down in a meaningful way between now and november, that is exactly how democrats and biden can change the narrative and take the focus off of inflation like it is right now. host: chris wilson? chris: if gas prices go down, everything else will go down with it. that is not just enough. the fact that gas prices are a leading indicator of other aspects, -- but looking at the aaa numbers in terms of gas prices nationally, they are not going down. they continue to go up. in the last week we said new records for what gas costs. if the viewer is seeing gas prices go down $.30 or $.40 it

is probably small businesses. it is remarkable what it can cost to fill up a car right now. that is probably not a trend that you will see manifested itself nationally. we do see them go down. it is not worth any political benefit my party might receive after it. host: we will hear from brian in massachusetts, republican line. caller: thank you for letting me talk. washington journal is just a wonderful show. first, i just would like to say, isn't it about the economy -- it isn't about the economy, but i remember back when al gore had a first end goal, and he could not score.

national public radio show had all things considered interview the fellow from tennessee, and al gore said -- he said that al gore wanted to kill babies and take guns. we have the supreme court hearings, and i am wondering how, miss carly, how they joe biden recover from that, and mr. wilson, without being triumphalist or overconfident, how do you feel about those sentiments going -- the election is coming up in november. i will take your comments, if you have any. host: carly cooperman, you go first. carly: big picture what we have seen over this year as biden's

numbers have been negative is he has tried to make a big pivot in terms of what -- i think the state of the union going back to march, his speech was really reflecting of this pit to come a little -- this pit it to come -- this pivot to come back off the issue. there was clearly a disconnect where voters thought that i didn't into the democrats were out of touch and not hearing them. there has been a pivot of the democrats to talk about crime and public safety and come back to more moderate policies and looking at what is impacting voters in their day-to-day lives right now.

there is a clear effort from the democrats to make this pivot and connected to voters right now. all they can do is continue to hold in on inflation right now and connecting with voters about that. that is the only way they will be able to make any kind of change going into the election. chris: i think if biden and the democrat leadership did they would be doing much better. first they inflation. then they blamed it on trump. then they blamed vladimir putin. now they are blaming the energy companies. the challenges they have done everything but accept responsibility for their policies. if you look at it from an economic standpoint, 40% of the

cash used in the united states is new. that is what is driving up inflation. all of the other policies we have are messing around with the edges. until something is done about that you will continue to see inflation go up. it is basic economics here. the problem the democrats have is biden was tweeting yesterday. it is a complete lack of understanding about how the economy works. it will have zero impact at all. it democrats are hamstrung by a lack of articulate leadership in terms of things that would make a difference and that is why barack obama was so successful. that is why jimmy carter was so unsuccessful. until they can find someone who can be a leader who will articulate real policy that would bring down inflation and acknowledge some of the things they have done cost of this inflation they are in real

trouble. host: chris wilson and carly cooperman, democratic pollster and strategist, and to both of you thanks for the conversation this morning. chris: thank you. carly: thanks for having me. host: today we will focus on the legislation that ended up creating medicare and medicaid. our guests will be -- we return to the question we started with this hour. it comes to the january 6 hearings, what did you learn from them. you can call in. (202) 748-8000 for democrats. (202) 748-8001 for republicans. (202) 748-8002 four independents.

>> life today on in-depth carol anderson will be our guest to talk about race in america, and gun regulation. she is the author of several books including " white rage," and most recently " ray send guns," -- " race and guns." today live at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. >> book tv features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. on in-depth joint air live conversation with emory university professor carol anderson. she will discuss race relations,

and voting and her latest book " -- they discuss what they see as attacks on traditional western culture and the need to embrace conservatism as a political philosophy. watch book tv every weekend and find a full schedule on your program guide. ♪ >> c-span has unfiltered coverage of the u.s. response to russia's invasion of ukraine, bringing the latest from the president and other white house officials, the pentagon and the state department as well as congress. we have international perspectives from the united nations all on c-span networks and c-span.org/ukraine, our web resource page where you can watch the latest videos on demand and follow tweets from

journalists on the ground. >> washington journal continues. host: several hearings have taken place in the committee looking at the attack on january 6. what have you learned from these hearings? if you want to call us and let us know, (202) 748-8000 for democrats. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. this was from the washington times last week. " wednesday's hearing may clear the -- made clear the committee wanted to disqualify trump from running for office again.

they wanted to marginalize voters who support mr. trump, made sure they are unable to participate in the political life of the united states, and they sent a message that transgression of policy norms will be met with the harshest possible measures. phenomena like black lives matter riots, assassinations of supreme court justices." the patriot news also posting an editorial taking a look at the hearings. " the strongest evidence is coming from people like hutchinson. it is coming from people who he appointed to chief positions in his government. they are testifying as to have former president try to coerce them into election fraud.

they investigated voting irregularities, and they led nowhere. the man they revered refused to accept the truth." that is some of the editors take. arizona starts us off, democrats line. caller: hello. i watched january 6. i was appalled by what the republicans were backing trump. all the time they knew the truth. the election was not stolen. i do not believe trump should ever be allowed to run. i think what the republicans are doing will backfire on them from abortion, gays, guns. host: as far as the select committee hearing, what have you learned from those?

caller: it is so important that these people speak. they do not have the authority to do anything, but they are letting the truth come out, and that is the most important thing. every witness we have had, i believe are telling the truth, and i do not know the outcome of it, but it was so important that we do find the truth. the lady that spoke the other day, she was amazing. 25 years old, just an amazing person. host: that is currently hutchinson. you can watch that interview on our website. topeka, kansas, you are next. caller: i have not learned anything new. it seems to be all rehashed information we already knew about. however, this young lady who spoke the other day, that is

supposed to be all brand-new news. that is fine and dandy. she said he acted a certain way. what i have heard is that the actual secret service agents say he acted another way. if that was a legitimate hearing, the head of the hearing would be calling up those two agents right now so that he could backup her testimony, but that is not happening. i do not believe it is anything new, and i think the democrats are making a mistake by continuing to hauler " trump -- holler "trump. trump, -- holler "trump, trump, trump,"

because it only makes them want him more. caller: guest: --caller: at first i kind of believed the line that " it was something accidental, and trump did not really planet or wanted -- plan it or want it," but now i realize he and mark meadows where involved in the planning of the attack. if they knew there were weapons there, and they knew what was about to happen. trump wanted to go there and personally disrupt the proceedings. it just struck me that was new information to me. that he was so deeply involved in carrying this out. i want every american who is

listening, it does not matter what party you are, i am an old man, i am 70 years old, we have never had in my lifetime a violent transfer of power. we have taken pride as americans on the peaceful transfer of power. host: that is texas. this is from a viewer saying " liz cheney was a republican and adam kinzinger was asking the questions to republicans. there is a counter narrative they can speak under oath anytime they want." this is from sheila furman on twitter. " when is enough enough? the truth has two sides. fast and fantasy -- sex and fantasy." -- facts and fantasy."

host: next caller. caller: i watch your show all the time. what i learned from watching the hearing is very sad. what was done was very un-american, and i think that they really should be prosecuted to the fullest. i am african-american, and everyone knows our history in this country, but i am still loyal to the united states of america. what happened to january 6 was not just one day. host: as far as the hearings what have you learned? give me a specific. caller: how fragile democracy is. however people need to be educated on democracy, on

equity, unfairness, on being a -- on fairness. host: from virginia, this is dominic. caller: what i have learned is that the left , and i include nancy pelosi, has hijacked judicial process and the ability to face your accuser by stacking this particular hearing with two rino republicans and a host of partisan republicans. it is more like a clown show than a hearing. you can tell by the number of people who call in on your different lines. they believe this is a fair and impartial hearing. this is a kangaroo court. host: how much of you have -- of

it have you watched? caller: i listen to your show every sunday morning. i have listened to the hearings every day. i have listened closely to the witnesses who came forward, including the young lady who spoke. she spoke about things that were hearsay that would never be admissible in any court of law anywhere. she obviously has delusions of grandeur in my opinion. she wanted people to believe she was at the center of decision-making. she is nothing but staff. basically, she is a hack. host: dominic in virginia. we will take calls for another 15 minutes or so on the topic of what you have learned from the hearings. the viewer brought up members of the committee. adam kinzinger was those. here is a portion of his

statement. http://twitter.com/cspanwj -- [video clip] >> host: i know you are getting -- >> i know you are getting more information. you will be taking a pause and coming back in july. do you have any sense of how long this will go? >> we will do a couple more hearings. the investigation will continue. we showed yesterday that as we need to, we will add more hearings, so we can tell the [video clip] i know you are getting new information. you will be coming back sometime in july. do you have any sense of how long this will go? >> we will do a couple more hearings. the investigation will continue. when the report comes out, we will probably do a hearing around the report. we showed yesterday that as we

need to, we will add more hearings. we will tell the rest of the story in the next couple. there are a lot of details that need to be filled in. every day, new people are coming forward and saying i have this video. we have a documentary maker that says i have a lot of video of the oval office. ok, we are interested in that. that kind of stuff happens every day. when your kids go to school, someday they will be taught the truth because of the work of this committee. caller: i don't understand -- host: let's go back to the hearings. you said you did not learn a lot. caller: i knew a lot about it anyway. i was a political science major in college and was great on history. i am 69 years old. it was important. i watch tv all the time, pbs and

all the other stations. i agree with the hearing. i think they were persuasive, but you are not going to get people to have a mindset to change their mind. host: got you. finishing off this 15 minutes or so on your thoughts. on the january 6 hearing. you can go to the website and watch them in their entirety. on sundays, we have been looking at landmark legislation. we are going to talk about what led up to the creation of medicare and medicaid. two guests for joining us to talk about the legislative process. james morone from brown university and laurence kotlifkoff of boston university will join us.

landmark legislation on medicare and medicaid is coming up next on "washington journal." >> listen to c-span radio with our free mobile app. get complete access to what is happening in washington wherever you are with live proceedings and hearings from congress. campaigns and more. plus, analysis of the world of politics with our informative podcast. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime, anywhere. >> c-span brings you an unfiltered view of government. our newsletter recaps the day for you from the falls of congress to daily press briefings to remarks from president.

scan the qr code to sign up and stay up-to-date with everything happening in washington each day. now available in the c-span shop, c-span's 2022 congressional directory. go there to order a copy of the directory. it is your guide to the federal government with contact information for every member of congress. also, contact information for state governors and the biden cabinet. every purchase helps support c-span's nonprofit operations. >> there are a lot of places to get political information. but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source.

no matter where you are from or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span, powered by cable. >> "washington journal" continues. host: on our landmark legislation series, we are going to look at the creation of medicare and medicaid. two guests joining us. james morone is apolitical science and urban studies professor. also joining us is laurence kotlifkoff of boston university, an economics professor. thanks for joining us. looking at this legislation, there is a couple things that

happened before. it was before the 1960's bill. in 1935 from the social security act passed to create the social safety net in 1938. with that as a backdrop, how does this lead up to us getting medicare and medicaid? guest: roosevelt at the end of world war ii look for another cause. he died before his plan had been written. that plan went to harry truman who embraced it like nothing else. it was the passion of his life. he never got anywhere close to getting it through congress pre-congress was not interested in the plan. he fought and fought. finally, blue cross official said this is a pretty big g

ulf, national health insurance. why don't you start with the elderly and show national health insurance for all woodwork by making it work for one portion of the population? the advisors went to harry truman and talked him into reducing the national health care plan. that became the plan. national health insurance got boiled down to national health insurance for the elderly. eisenhower wins the next election in 1953. they pushed and pushed through their time out of office. by the time kennedy wins, it is maybe the great legacy of the roosevelt era of the new deal that had not passed. kennedy's father has a stroke while kennedy is in office. it makes him acutely aware of how difficult it is for older

people to manage their health care. that becomes candidate's cause -- kennedy's cause. johnson takes all the martyred president's causes and pushes them with the kind of flare only lyndon johnson had. this might have been the most difficult to pass. he pushed and pushed. that is how this package came to be. host: he spoke about president truman. did you want to add to that on how we got to its creation? guest: even back to teddy roosevelt, the initiative for national health insurance, we have a long history in this country of people pushing for it and it being blocked. the american medical association

plays a big role in blocking national health insurance along the way. there is private industry that tries to buy off the unions during this period to obstruct truman's initiative because they figure, why not just take care of our own people and not have the attacks on workers in general? whatever reason. there is also the communist red scare of the 1930's. the idea of socialized medicine was for many people frightening because they thought it was connected to communism. we have a troubled history of having issues not directly related to health care for the public getting in the way of

universal care. now we ended up with this vulcanized system. i think truman should have stood firm and not said we will do it for this group and then this group. i think that was the wrong direction and continues to be a terrible path for the country because we now have five or so different programs. i would say the most important thing about medicare/medicaid legislation is that it does not coverage -- full coverage. and for the poor, medicaid, $.70 out of every numeral $1 of medicaid is being spent on the poor elderly. we have a system of means

testing locking the poor into poverty. that is a very big issue with what we have in place now. host: we will go on with our guest looking at the legislation and where medicaid and medicare are today. if you want to ask questions about her guests, 202-748-8000. let's hear from president truman himself. he was recognized at the signing ceremony in 1965. here are some of the remarks at the celebration. [video clip] [laughter] >> thank you very much. i am glad you like the president. i like him, too. [laughter] one of the finest i ever ran across. president johnson, distinguished guests, you have done me a great

honor in coming here today and have made me a very happy man. this is an important hour for the nation. for those of our citizens who have continued their tour of duty, these other days we are trying to celebrate for them. they are entitled among other benefits to the best medical protection available. not one of our citizens should ever be abandoned or absent from the dignity of charity. charity is dignity. we have to have it. we don't want dignity to have anything to do with charity. we don't want them to have the idea of hopeless despair. mr. president, i'm glad to have this law. [applause]

with us today, the signing of the medicaid bill. your inspired leadership and responsiveness, forward-looking and responsive congress, have made it possible for this day. i think you all for coming here. it is an honor i have not had done for me in quite a while. [laughter] host: those were the words of former president truman. he spoke of those finishing their tour of duty, those put on the sidelines, his care for them. pick up on that in light of the president's words. guest: i'm not sure the veterans administration was authorized for that. certainly, that was the group

that would be helped by this medicaid/medicare legislation which was joint legislation, part of the great society bill passed in 1965. truman tried and failed to get national health insurance pass ed, so this was a partial victory for him. the basic problem is the whole thing was set up the wrong way from the get-go. you had medicare providing only partial coverage to the elderly. they still had to buy supplemental policies. that is still the case today. you have medicare being quite expensive. you also have premiums not fully indexed to inflation so we will

see people facing very high medicare part b bills that will go much higher through time as inflation makes that happen. for medicaid, we have this program for the poor that says if you have too much turning and too much assets, if you have done what we think you should do, which is work hard and save a lot, guess what? you lose medicaid for yourself, your spouse, for your kids. it is all different in each state. we have 51 street medicaid programs including the district of columbia -- we have 51 state medicaid programs including the district of columbia. welfare, food stamps, the earne incomed tax credit,

all of these have means testing. medicaid is among the worst. you could earn an extra $100 and lose your benefits or those for your kids. all of these things together, if you take a cohort like 30 euros and look at the poorest 20%, about 1/4 of these people are in marginal tax brackets. benefits are lost. if you save more than a couple of thousand dollars, you will lose benefits. medicaid and obamacare and all these other welfare programs, obamacare, you earn too much money, you start losing your subsidy.

the system is byzantine. it needs to be entirely scrapped. we need to get rid of employer-based health care, medicaid, medicare, obamacare, and move to a single national system like we have been discussing. host: mr. morone, you heard mr. kotlifkoff talk about who's pushing back against these ideas. if you go back to 1964, there were those protesting at the dnc in favor of medicare. supporters of l.b.j. had that kind of support as well. who was supporting it in the united states at that time? guest: let me back up a second and say who was opposing it. then i will get to who was supporting. when truman first proposed the bill, the american medical association hired a law firm.

this was the first time ever a single bill created politics of people pro and con. we take that for granted today. they did not used to happen. this was the first bill that did it. this lobbying firm created all the tropes and arguments like this is socialized medicine, an extraordinary thing to say in the middle of the red scare. that defined the terms of our health care debate to this very day. the kinds of stuff that they made up like lenin said socialized medicine is the keystone arch to socialism. we defined our health care debate positive and negative in 1948. they are all variations on the theme whether it be death panels, socialized medicine, or democracy run amok.

it has run through our history to this very day. on the pro side, medicare was an item of faith for democrats, liberals, labor unions, very strong for health care. but to be a democrat in the 1950's and 1960's was to be pushing for medicare. one other thing to say about the passage of this program, very dramatic. laurence is absolutely right to say it was a very narrow package. it was only medicare part a. in the ways and means committee, i don't know how any people are interested in this level of historical detail, but in the ways and means committee, the congressman from arkansas who had fought medicare tooth and nail all of a sudden says we have three bills before this committee. one pays for hospital costs, part eight. one pays for doctors bills, part

b. one pays for poor people. let's pass them all. they work competing bills. in the last hour, congressman mills with a secret backing of lyndon johnson who pretended he did not even know about this, made the bill three times larger than it would have been. absolutely right. should we have tried to get everybody under the system? laurence is right. it would have been great. if you studied the politics of the day, what they got was something extraordinary, the tripling of the size of the program in the historical context of 1965. and get it through the senate finance committee where the finance chair was absolutely opposed was nothing less than legislative genius by lyndon johnson. this was a very difficult package to pass and they managed to do it because of the landslide and because lyndon johnson helped spear this thing

through the ways and means committee and senate finance committee, something many other presidents, including kennedy, could never have managed. host: our guests are with us to talk about the creation of medicare and medicaid. our first call is from homer in louisiana. caller: it is very confusing. i am 80 years old and a vietnam era veteran. right now, i am in pretty good shape with medicare and the v.a. it has been a confusing thing all of my life. we send people up there. you think you're going to get something good. they fight it. it has been a confusing mess. thank you for taking my call. host: mr. morone, you hinted at

the widespread expansion. do you think that led in part to the confusion the viewer talk about? guest: no, i think what leads to the confusion is a constant war over our health care system set up in 1948 that continues to this day. if you could imagine an ultimate universe where democrats and republicans agreed on the principle of government provided health insurance, a principal every other nation endorses, if they agreed on that, it would not be such a political football which has had enormous consequences for the running of the program, for the definition of the program, for the simplicity of the program. we have had changes in medicare that were designed by people who clearly did not like medicare because they sought as part of the government, medicare and medicaid. i think the kinds of troubles homer is talking about are a consequence of partisan warfare

that pushed government health care in the middle of the political scrum, partisan political scrum. that goes right back to the 1980's and the reagan era with conservative congressmen who would have liked to rollback medicare. the consequence is a patchwork of fixes and complications that need not have been. host: mr. kotlifkoff, go ahead. guest: going back to the issue of whether i agree with james, john, right? i agree something is better than nothing. medicaid and medicare have delivered enormous good. obamacare as well.

on balance, as opposed to not having them for millions of people over the years. the problem is when you give something to a certain set of people, all they want to do is protect it. that is the balkanization. that is where you lose support for fixing an entire system from scratch. we need to scrap all of these programs and have medicare for all. senator sanders from vermont has been pushing that. i think he has been pushing the wrong version. he has been pushing it as part of his socialist agenda. he uses the term socialism. we have a great aversion in this country to that word. we get hung up on words. i actually love bernie sanders. i think he is a terrific senator, one of the best we have got ever.

i think what we really need is medicare part c for all, the republican version. that is the idea that everybody signs up for a health plan once a year. the key problem underlying health insurance which is the reason we don't have a private sector that provides health insurance and we have so many uninsured people is the fact that if you have a pre-existing condition, nobody wants to ensure me. that goes under medicare part c taking care of by telling the company this person has diabetes, so you will get a bigger premium for this person. when that happens, then we can

have a complete plan. we can have an even playing field where the companies are competing. about half of new medicare enrollees are enrolled in medicare part c. we need to move in that direction and maintain employer-based health insurance to the extent those plans are willing to take in people who are not employees. gm has a plan. they would be offering a medicare part c plan like everybody else to their employees. but if i don't work for gm, i should be able to join it. that is part of what would be a feature of the system. that is what we need. highly competitive. if you look at france, germany, switzerland, japan, israel, they

have a version of medicare part c for all at play. they are getting better health outcomes for 12% of gdp. we are getting terrible health care outcomes for 18% of gdp, and we are going broke in the process. host: gerrit in virginia, go ahead. caller: glad to have supporters of medicaid and medicare on the show. i want to making comments. -- i want to make a comment. i think president truman should have done all he could to pass whole medicare and not just for adults 65 and over. i have medicare and it works. i have had private insurance. there are good things about private insurance for dara good

things about medicare. medicare only covers you for 60 days. after that, you have to keep spending $1500 every time you go to the hospital. that is one bad thing about it. it only pays 80% of the doctors fees. they should revamp medicare, get rid of the deductibles, put more money into it, get rid of medicare part c which is a scam anyway. it is not providing care to people. it is like private insurance in the private market. it is just to make money. host: that is jerry in virginia. he mentioned some technicalities. the social security amendment of 1965 created medicare in two

parts. it created medicaid for low income families in federal matching funds involved. mr. kotlifkoff, to the caller's point? guest: james may differ with me. i don't think medicare part c is a scam. i think in the early stages when it was first introduced, there were some entities trying to scam the system. things have improved dramatically. you have the ability to walk with your feet. if you feel you are being scammed by a particular hmo, you leave after a year. this is a pretty clear system.

you just sign up. the government is basically paying the bill. they are paying more if you have a pre-existing condition. there is competition. you leave if you are not happy with it. new participants are above 40%. there is a reason these people are signing up for medicare part c. it is not to be scammed. it is to have some peace of mind that there will not be extra bills coming at the end of the day, which is what the caller just described. medicare traditional does not cover all of your bills. in effect, you are partly uninsured. if you have a long stay in a hospital, you could lose coverage. you could hit a maximum. we need a single system for

everybody that is highly competitive and will operate like other markets. they go between different apple cellar ifsame thing here. the reason this works in all these other countries is because it works. it is designed well, and it can be designed. and personally, every health economist i know, the top health economists in this area come advocates for medicare part c for all. host: sorry. did not mean to interrupt, mr. kotlikoff. go ahead. guest: i just wanted to clarify a couple of things that people who do not know a lot about health care be confused about. the debate that laurence is

responding to is the debate about whether we should inject competition into the medicare program. the original medicare is a basic old-style great society program paid for by the government. and after that, over time, particularly republicans pressed to have competition in the framework of medicare, so this is really a debate between jerry and laurence. jerry is saying i do not like these principles, and there are people who don't for various reasons. but what we are all agreeing on is one basic first principle, and that is this, that when someone is sick, they should be able to assess care without all kinds of barriers to their care having to do with their income. it should be easy and simple as

it is in every advanced democracy in the world but isn't here. laurence is giving some specifics about how economists can see a better function system, all of which i agree with, but the way viewers can see this is first, just think of the first principle. what we want to get to if we can just get agreement on the principle is when you are sick you get care. we have to figure out a way to finance it, but when you are sick, you get care. then there is a secondary question we have basically been debating over the last decades, and that is, how much do we want competition to discipline the medicare program itself? most economists say that is really helpful. it creates all kinds of good effects as long as people can easily access the program and make their choices. not everybody agrees with that. we just had a caller who said it is too confusing for me.

some people would just like to go back to the big government program, which has been beggared over the years because republicans are eager to push people into a more competitive program but that is the big principle. big government versus a little government frame where people, different committees can compete . maybe that will help our listeners and viewers sort out what we are talking about here. host: the amendment i just mentioned, it passed the house 307-116. that was on july 27. it passed the senate 70-24 on july 28 and was signed into law on july 30. our just joining us to talk about the medicare and medicaid bill. in illinois, thank you, go ahead. caller: good morning. my perspective has been in private practice medicine for 50 years but also been at the v.a. for 50 years.

what i would say now, i would never have thought of 50 years ago, but to have a national health system, i am for it 100%. the only problem is it has the facilities. the hospitals have to be owned by the plan. right now, we are headed to health care owned by 150 entities in the united states. that is what is going to be in 10 years, but that is not national health. national health is where the hospitals are actually owned by the entity. the physicians are paid by the entity. and i would make my last point, you need to have it so that everybody at point of service doesn't pay. it is the same, regardless of income. how we raise the money is

obviously going to depend on your income. and how we raise the money for this is a totally different problem. i have totally changed over the last 50 years based on that perspective. i think the v.a. is a fantastic entity. i do not think this is craziness. i am telling you, medicare and medicaid is craziness. it is a nightmare and i am glad i am about ready for the exit. host: thank you for giving us your time, your input. mr. marone, go ahead. guest: there is a lot to what the doctor has said. it is one of the great irony is the american medical association fought so hard against a government intervention in the health care system back in 1965 only to discover that capitalism is a much harsher driver than government would have been.

so there is a great many physicians who if they could go back to 1965 would take a very different stance. he touches on something, and laurence is far more expert than me, but we have seen hedge funds moving into the health care system. capitalism is constantly remaking american health care now driven by financiers trying to squeeze an extra dollar out of the finance system. the caller is absolutely right. that is not really a development that is going to enhance health care generally or make it easier to get to the kind of universal system that laurence has most effectively been playing out over the course of this program. the great irony of that 50 years the caller refers to is we have gone from a system where the physicians fought like crazy against government sponsored

health insurance. not a health system, but health insurance, 21 now where the positions are the most impressive forces in the health or system. that is a great irony i think the caller has lived through over the last couple years. host: mr. kotlikoff? guest: we need one system. we don't need 5, 6 different systems where the sharks are coming in to try to set up something. originally with medicare part c, when the caller was talking about scamming, they were setting up these hmo's for healthy medicare participants. as soon as they got sick, they were switched back to traditional medicare. we cannot have this back-and-forth. we need to have this one system. bernie sanders's traditional

medicare for all improvements that fully covers everything, i would much prefer that over what we now have, ok? but more relative to that and what is politically more acceptable to the public is explaining that if we just went to medicare part c for all and bernie would have come out and publicly endorsed that, that would happen. public and would be trapped and they would be forced to say, ok, we will do it. it is our part of medicare. and we can maintain it, but you have to open yourself up. you cannot restrict yourself to just your employees. now we have an apples market. now we have competition. the cost of financing, you save the country, our children from a fiscal nightmare that is coming down the road because we cannot pay all these bills.

but you generate these efficiency gains. i think it can be done with traditional medicare too. it would put the kebabs on paint when he thousand dollars per infusion, per drug, which is insane. it costs $10 abroad. whatever we need, we need to do one thing. imagine you had 535 members of congress designing the brooklyn bridge from scratch with no engineering degree. they would make a mess and it would collapse in a few years. that is what we have done. that is the history of national health insurance in our country. it is people that don't know what they are doing engineering the brooklyn bridge and watching it fall apart bit by bit. host: we are showing the viewers at home a photo of president truman, actually president johnson signing the legislation of the law. president truman and his wife

receiving the first medicare cards. what is the sign up like for the country or the response of the country once it becomes law? guest: johnson told them don't go out to independent missouri -- independence, missouri, because he is associated with socialism. he said, no, we are here and i am going to do it. at first, the physicians struggled against the legislation. but here is something most people don't know. as they were implementing the law, the rules and implementation said you may not segregate the hospitals you want to get medicare from. overnight, american hospitals throughout the south went from absolutely segregated to desegregated. so medicare is what desegregated the hospitals in many cities in the north but throughout the south. within a year, there were 30 small segregated hospitals left

that could not get medicare funds. the sign-up was extorted every. people thought part b was voluntary. part a, hospital care, you were already signed up with, but part b was voluntary. no one dreamed that would be that much demand. it awed everybody involved in the program to see people rushing forward to participate in this program. so the early years of the program are a triumph of participation, of desire. people wanted those apples, to use laurence's metaphor. and you had the desegregation of the hospitals. but it all came with a kicker, and it was an important one. back before medicare, hospital inflation and health-care care costs were rising, but they were spread out through private insurance so people did not really pay that much attention. once the medicare was signed,

all those costs directly go to the federal government so people could see that health care inflation that had really been rising since the 1930's. and that created what many people consider a crisis on rising health care costs. richard nixon takes over in 1969, becomes president, and he immediately, first republican now, democrats have passed over republican objections, and now the republicans are in power, but richard nixon defends medicare but worries about the cost prices. so the immediate first decade of medicare is triumph of enrollment, triumph of desegregation of american hospitals, and great worry about costs, which are now visible because they are immediately confronted by the federal government rather than less visible because they are in a thousand different insurance programs.

so that is the trio of things. host: james marone of brown university joining us. laurence kotlikoff also joining us from boston university, here to talk about the creation of medicare and medicaid. mary in new mexico, hello. you are next up. caller: hi there. i am hoping one of you can answer a question i have had about original medicare and going into the medicare part c. if i am an original -- in original medicare and i think i want to try part c and i go there and discover it is not working for me and i go back to original medicare, why do i pay a penalty for the rest of my life for going back into original medicare? host: mr. kotlikoff? guest: i'm not -- i don't believe you are going to pay a penalty.

i never heard that. maybe james -- caller: i read it in medicare books. i went through them. we all know it is a fine mess. it just perplexed me. guest: hang on a second. if you don't sign up for medicare part b, there is a penalty for signing up late. maybe you are referring to that. even under medicare part c, you have to pay the premium for medicare part b. i just don't know what you are referring to. i don't think you are correct. i don't think there is any party for switching from one program to the other from one year to the next. not that i heard of. caller: i hope. host: caller, go ahead. finish your thought. caller: i hope you are right about that because, you know, folks are only trying to go along with all the multitude. guest: we can figure this out

together. host: ok. color, thank you for the input. mr. marone, do you want to add anything? guest: no. i think laurence is right. i don't know about that. you can get in touch with us for the security office. they are usually helpful about medicare. give them a try. you will have to make an appointment and wait for a while, but they will walk you through it. i think this is probably a glitch that will not trouble you as much as you are worried. i think this will be ok. host: here is lois in iowa. hello. caller: hello. i have some comments to make too. my understanding, and i don't have this officially from anyone at medicare, but a friend of mine who had had the regular medicare, i am calling it, and switched to part c finds that her original carrier for a supplement was under no

obligation. they do not need to take you back. and if they do, there could be a change in your price. it would not be less. it would be more. i think this is something people should check very carefully before they switch. i can see where the medicare part c sounds marvelous with these commercials. and i think insurance companies like them obviously a lot because they put lots of commercials on for them. but i don't think in the long run they are the best deal. i am 89 now. i took out the regular medicare back when you can have plan f. i have a supplement that goes up every year. i pay quite a bit of a supplement now. but it has paid every bit. i have had lots of scans because of some cancer problems. i have had lots of scans, cat

scans, every kind of scan you can mention. everything has been paid by my supplement. i just have one bill paid out of my pocket other than what i paid for my medicare. host: ok. thank you for your example, caller. gentlemen, who wants to start? guest: let me jump in and just say very briefly that, and good luck to the caller with the health issues she mentioned, this is basically a fundamental debate about whether markets work for this population. markets have made a very elegant case for yes, this is how we ought to go. people ought to have a choice. others say keep it simple, stupid. architect complicated. they are treacherous, but particularly for people who are not as nimble about shopping as maybe they once were. so that is a basic debate. we need to have explicitly -- i

agree that all the economists would tend to be for markets, but the basic choice we are talking about is, do we just keep a simple government program? it sounds like heresy to say one-size-fits-all, but sometimes that kind of simplicity for something as complicated as health insurance really does work. or do we want to get people lots of choices? not about doctors and hospitals. we want those kinds of choices. but in terms of insurance products. that is a fundamental choice we have about how to run medicare and hopefully someday an entire national health system. host: mr. kotlikoff. guest: you know, i think if we really had traditional medicare for all and put the clamps on the suspending and went down from 18% to 12%, that would be better than what we now have. we need to go to one system, whether traditional medicare for all that covers everything, does

not leave a supplemental payments to be made by this lady, or whether we go to medicare part c for all, which eliminates the information problem, compensate insurance companies for your pre-existing conditions. it does not complicate the playing field and let one system into the old system and start playing games with that, which is the big problem under the current system. let me respond to the caller. the problem she is having is not with traditional medicare. she leaves her traditional medicare, goes to part c, comes back to traditional medicare, gets back on traditional medicare, but to up a mental insurance she had before -- but the supplemental insurance she had before which was privately provided, they are the ones telling her because of her

pre-existing condition she can no longer rejoin. so it is a problem with the way competitive systems work. if you did medicare part c for all, you would not let anybody turn you down, deny you coverage for supplemental insurance to the extent that that was part of, you know, the landscape here. we have to make sure that in the competitive system nobody can be turned down for pre-existing conditions. that is the only way we can get health insurance competition to really work here. that is the core reason why you had back in 1965 98% of the people signing onto medicare. they did not have anything before that. the whole system -- the old system, the private provisions did not work. they did not insure me because i thought i might have cancer. that is why the whole system

broke. there was no provision of coverage of which to speak of except employers. because they are hiring people who basically are coming them to work with pre-existing cancer. that is why there is a tool that could be used by the employer, the insurance company they are hiring. you have to understand the problem here, an economic problem. the health insurance market does not work like the apples market. fix that so the issues the caller is calling about disappear under a competitive system. we go from 18% to 12% of gdp. am i ideologically stuck? politically, the only way we get to is if bernie sanders traditional medicare for all made improvements. it is a problem the way it is

operating and driving us broke, so we have to fix it fundamentally. would i prefer that over what we now have? absolutely. no question. i have written that in public. i am not strong left or strong right. let's get something that makes some economic sense. both of these can work. but one can work a lot better and faster. host: here is allen in indiana. hello. caller: yes, hello. good morning. thank you for taking my call. huge fan of the "washington journal." really appreciate this show. thank you for being here. i had about four comments or thoughts i wanted to ask you. one, i was very fortunate i work for a company that was unionized. it was through our union we were able to get health care even through retirement. i pay way less than other people do for, say, private health insurance.

that is a thing that has disappeared i guess with unions not being able to provide that for people. but i also learned that big businesses stopped competing a long time ago. they learned competition is bad. i think about five major health insurers, they don't compete with each other. host: i am going to have to apologize because we are running short on time. what would you like our guests to focus on? caller: ok. one, was it true back in 1948 with eisenhower, the main people against the southern politicians because they did not want black people showing up at white hospitals? and two, did richard nixon come up with a plan but it was blocked by ted kennedy? we all remember hillary clinton had health insurance, but that was also knocked down by the republicans because they did not like hillary. host: ok, thank you, color. mr. marone? guest: yes, the caller is

absolutely right. segregation was the big issue in the debate. the debates were very passionate, and no one mentioned segregation, but it was there. it was the passage of medicare, as i said earlier, that really desegregated the hospitals.and , it's and had a plan. it passed -- and yes, nixon had a plan. it passed through. nixon was the one that got us to where laurence has been criticizing, which as he said, let's create a system where employers pay their part of it, medicare pays their part of it, and he cut the system up into different pieces but wanted everyone covered each in their own track. and ever since then, whether it was the clinton plan or obama plan, we have had a very divided mosaic of health insurance, which makes it a very complicated system. so that really comes as the

caller rightly implies out of the era. kennedy did impose it. he was working secretly with nixon. his union backers and said, no, we do not like this plan. we want something much closer to what laurence has been advocating for, so kennedy backed off but later lamented the fact that he backed off. but nixon really pushed us further down this road of each segment of the country employed into their own health care piece. that is part of why we have such troubles with the health-care system today. host: mr. kotlikoff, the centers for medicare and medicaid services tell us in 2022 that the total income of the program for medicare was $373.4 billion. the expensive, $329.9 billion. what do those figures tell us? guest: medicare and medicaid is

paid by general revenues so if you look at this situation by the congressional budget office, all the spending by medicare, obamacare, medicaid, and florida, medicare has a huge subsidy because people are not paying taxes on the premium. that cannot be added to the equation either. 18%, a huge chunk of that, the majority of the federal money. so we already have socialized health care. if you look at these projections, it is a major component. we are already kind of broke given where we are in terms of saying if things continue the way they are, but the cbo is projecting increases in medicare, medicaid, obamacare, and this employer-based subsidy

as a share of gdp going forward, which will make us further broke. so we have to have a president and congress that starts addressing more than who won the last election, which is quite obvious. we have to start talking about our real problems. and our real problem is making sure our kids are not bankrupt, bankrupted by what we are doing here. not everybody is covered. our real problem is we have a vulcanized system put together idiotically for reasons that had nothing to do with -- for racist reasons and other reasons. the union was trying to cover its own skin in the game. we have to discuss where we are, where we are going, why we cannot start from scratch, and why the brooklyn bridge cannot have this part built by these

southern democrats and this part built by northern minnesota republicans, neither of which have engineering degrees. host: two just joining us to talk about the legislation that created medicare and medicaid. laurence kotlikoff it is from boston university. he serves as an economics professor and is the author of a book. also joining us, james marone of brown university, political sciences and urban studies professor. he has a book, "the heart of power." to both of you gentlemen, thank you for your input. guest: thanks. thank you so much. host: as far as events today you can see on the network, former u.s. ambassador to the united nations under the trump administration nikki haley was the featured speaker at a family picnic in iowa. it was during her remarks that she talked about her background acceptable and a governor, working for former president trump, and encouraged attendees to vote for conservative republicans in the 2022 midterms. you can see that event 9:40

tonight on c-span, c-span now, and c-span.org. that is it for our program today. another edition of "washington journal" comes your way for july 4, tomorrow, at 7:00 a.m. we will see you then. [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] ♪ >> since the summer of 2020, 214 public monuments have been taken down across the u.s. by official processes or by force. the city university of new york, the author of smashing statues talks about current debate. >> after the death of george

floyd, millions of americans marched to protest racial disparities, to say that black lives matter. often these rallies focused on monuments as the symbolic meeting point for showing who was honored in america, whose lives mattered and whose lives did not. >> tonight. >> comcast is partnering with 1000 community centers so

students from low income families can get the tools they need to be ready for anything. >> comcast supports c-span along with these other providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> watch this campaign 2024 event tonight at 940 eastern on c-span, c-span now or anytime online at c-span.org. host: a recent poll on those who have been following the hearing.

those who approve and those who disapprove. the hearing has brought forward renewed interest. in our first hour, we want to hear from you about what you have learned from the january 6 hearing. let us know what you have learned. independence -- if you want to text us about things that you have learned from watching these hearings, you can do so. you can post on facebook and twitter, and you can follow the shell on instagram. a recent poll taking a look at approval and disapproval numbers and rankings of those following the hearings. when they look at the topic of all