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infrastructure, upgrading technology, empowering opportunity in communities began small. charter is connecting us. >> charter communications supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ host: good morning. it is saturday, december 3, 2022. a three hour washington journal on tap. we will discuss the latest job numbers and take a look at swing voters. we begin today on an issue impacting 580,000 americans -- american communities across the country, homelessness. the decision sparked plenty of backlash. in the wake of that move, ware

asking you for your solution to the issue of homelessness in youcommunity. if y are in the eastern or centl time zone, (202) 748-8000. in the mountain or pacific time ne, (202) 748-8001. a special line for those with experience for the issue of homelessness. (202) 748-8002. you can send us a text at (202) 748-8003. if you do, submit your name and where you are from. otherwise, catch up with us on social media at twitter/wj and on facebook/c-span. you can go ahead and start calling in now on the issue of homelessness and how you would handle that problem in your community. here is the headline from the new york times this morning. the new york city mayor,

eric adams, directing the police and emergency medical workers in the city to hospitalize people they deemed too mentally ill to care for themselves. even if they pose no threat to others. that was a story from earlier this week in the new york times. it was in the wake of an announcement from the mayor. here is some of what the mayor had to say. mayor adams: my administration is determined to do more to assist people with mental illness. especially those with untreated, psychotic disorders. who pose a risk of harm to themselves, even if they are not an imminent threat to the public. it is not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past. for too long, there has been a great area where policy, law and accountability have not been clear. and this has allowed people in need to slip through the cracks.

this culture of uncertainty has led to untold suffering and deep frustration. it cannot continue. we need to change that culture and clarify our expectations. no more walking by and looking away. no more passing the buck. going forward, we will focus on action, care and compassion. if severe mental illness is causing someone to be unsheltered and a danger to themselves, we have a moral obligation to help them get the treatment and care they need. host: mayor eric adams, that was from tuesday. we showed you the headline from the new york times earlier this week. one of the reporters on that story, andy newman, joins us via zoom. good morning. guest: good morning. thanks for having me. host: what prompted this new

policy from mayor adams? guest: in new york, as in most big cities around the country, there are a lot of people who are on the streets, maybe talking to themselves, the mayor gave examples of the guy who is standing and mumbling or jabbing at an invisible adversary. there are a lot of people on the streets of new york who are on the subways and who are pretty clearly, severely mentally ill. what has been happening for decades is that people cycle in and out of hospitals and jails and the streets, never really getting the help that they need over the long term. and the mayor is trying to tackle this by saying ok, if you are someone who is obviously clearly mentally ill and can't take care of themselves, we are going to take you to the hospital and we are going to

make sure that the hospital keeps you there until you are stable and that you will be, you know, released only when there is an aftercare plan so that you will not cycle back into this same thing. all of this sounds great. but, in new york, as of right now, there are a lot of gaps in the infrastructure. there are not enough psychiatric hospital beds. there is certainly a shortage of housing for people who would be coming out of the hospital. there is a shortage of outpatient mental health care for this population of people. the mayor is having a lot of pushback, because people are saying it is one thing to say we need to help these people. but there has to be a system in place to make sure the help is effective. and it is not very clear that that exists, yet, in new york. the mayor said this would take some time.

so, i guess we will be seeing what happens. host: the coalition for the homeless has the chart on the total number of homeless each night in new york city hovering around 60,000. this is a subset that we are talking about. so, severely mentally ill. who gets to make those decisions of who gets to fit into that category of people who could be involuntarily moved to a hospital? guest: the mayor, basically one thing is he is focusing on people who are not just homeless, but homeless and living on the streets and subways. there is a much smaller population, of at least hundreds of people, who are -- would meet this threshold. there is a state law that empowers the police or medical providers, the old clinicians like nurses or social workers to go out and evaluate someone.

and if they appear to be a danger to themselves, to have them transported to a hospital and then it is the hospital's decision to admit them or what to do with them. host: we mention some of the pushback. this is the new york civil liberties union, a statement released shortly after the mayor announced that policy. the mayor is playing fast and loose with the legal rights of new yorkers. the federal and state constitution imposed strict limits on the government's ability. limits that the mayor's proposed expansion is likely to violate. the mayor's attempt to police away homelessness and sweep individuals out of sight is a page from the failed rudy giuliani playbook with no plan for housing services.

the administration is choosing handcuffs and coercion. how much of that pushback are you seeing? guest: i'm sorry. you faded out for a second. your question, how much pushback? host: is that just the one example, how much pushback are you seeing? guest: from advocates of people with mental illness and advocates of people who are homeless, there has been tremendous pushback. they feel like the mayor is going after people's civil liberties. and one of the things he is doing is he is trying to broaden the definition of what meets the criteria for dangerous and a lot of people are concerned about that. host: they mentioned the giuliani playbook, what is that? guest: it was to be very

aggressive, especially in manhattan, and kind of chain people to the fringes of the city. it involved the mayor and the police chief declaring homeless people do not have the right to sleep in the streets and that if they try to take someone to a shelter and they won't go, they could be arrested. it was a time when the police had stop and frisk in new york, which is not used anymore. police in new york were much more aggressive then and rudy giuliani was the architect of that. host: mayor adams has been in office 11 months at this point. what was bill de blasio's policy when it came to this issue of homelessness? guest: bill de blasio tried a lot of things to tackle homelessness and tackle untreated mental illness. at one point, he had a program where -- i'm trying to remember.

he had a program where there was a list of like dozens of people who were deemed to be dangerous and violent and there was a list of people who couldn't even be necessarily released from the hospital with that approval from the mayor's office. that program was legally challenged, successfully. mayor de blasio has tried many, many things to tackle homelessness and mental illness and had a mixed record on that. host: when does this adams policy go into effect? and are there legal challenges in the works? guest: it is going into effect gradually. there has to be training for the people who are going out and assessing the police and health care professionals and medics.

there is training that will happen that is already starting to happen and it will be rolled out in the coming weeks. people will be -- it is unclear when they are going to start rounding people up. that is the wrong word. it is unclear when there will -- when they will start being much more aggressive about taking people in. host: as this happens, you can find andy newman writing about it. social services and part of the in new york city and for the new york times. i appreciate you getting up and chatting about it with us. guest: thanks very much. host: taking your phone calls on this issue of homelessness, not just in new york city but in cities across this country, asking you your thoughts, your solutions on this issue of homelessness in your community. the phone lines, (202) 748-8000 in the eastern and central time zones. (202) 748-8001 if you are in the

mountain or pacific time zones. and for those with experience with homelessness, (202) 748-8002. we begin on that line, deborah from new haven, connecticut, independent, good morning. caller: this is such a loaded topic. if i'm not mistaken, this began with willowbrook. when willowbrook happened. the horrific conditions in that facility. and i do believe that this all started with letting them go with that situation. as far as i'm concerned, with this issue, i believe that it it is done properly, it could work. because there are definitely several instances where people really do need to be hospitalized. i live in connecticut, i am in

new haven. i started going out and feeding the homeless. i watched the population grow. we have a city that had to move them from the downtown area because they were the -- there were so many of them. i was homeless as a teenager. because the system failed me. when i came here, due to a separation/divorce, i was homeless again. god i pushed and pushed and within two years, i became a homeowner. your mom -- you are a meal and a prayer away from being homeless in connecticut because rent is so high. it is absolutely ridiculous. host: when you are homeless, were you sleeping in shelters? was there a point when you are one of the unsheltered homeless in this country?

caller: as a teenager, i lived in abandoned buildings. when i got to connecticut, i had a room, i had a friend who lived here that i knew for a long time and he happened to have a room available. i didn't have to look for shelter or anything like that. when you are on house, it is a very scary situation. if you do not have the wherewithal to prep and find the program that can help you, because you really do have to press and dig because they don't advertise, you can really find yourself in that situation. host: how many people do you feed meals to on a weekly basis? caller: when we did it, i had to stop because i came sick. i am 63. i now have a health situation. what we did at least 40. and it just kind of like group

-- grew to maybe 10 or 12 meals. and then it was like oh my god, where are all of these people coming from? we can't start with less than 100 meals. it is absolutely unbelievable. when i tell you that the rent has skyrocketed, there is no way that anybody who is psychologically impaired, i will say, is going to be able to manage. this is going on in every major city in the country. to help these people is absolutely our duty. it is absolutely our duty. host: thanks for the call and sharing your experience out of new haven, connecticut. rob is next in new york city, good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for c-span. host: have you been following this story from the mayor's

office in new york? caller: well, i've been living here for over 30 years. i have lived this story. you see it, homelessness in the subway system, in libraries and on the street. i don't think it takes that extraordinary amount of expertise to determine when someone is not right, when they are off or when they are crazy or when they are acting out. you know, as new yorkers know, it is almost common sense when a person is not right. i don't know if the rest of the country has quite the appreciation. when you are on a subway train and there is someone who is just

sleeping in garbage closings and urinating and smells and everybody leaves the subway, the person needs help. i don't know how much expertise it takes to determine that. host: the two words from the new york times, involuntary removal, that doesn't give you pause? caller: you know, listen, i am a liberal. but, no, it doesn't. once you see the dire circumstances of the people, i am talking about the subway for some reason. i don't mean to make myself out to be some person who is just so privileged that i can't have feelings for the person who is

in a dire situation, but they need help. i don't think it takes that much expertise. i don't have the answers for all of the support. they just spent $1 million to house the immigrants that were being bossed up here from the south. i think they built it on governors island. beds and computers and showers and food and it turns out that they did not even bring the immigrants to this place and they wound up closing it down. i'm thinking the whole time, of course, like probably a lot of new yorkers, why aren't you using this for the homeless people? it was on an island. my heart goes out to all of the people in need. but, i don't think that new york should have such an intense

amount of -- in our public subways and libraries and things that it just becomes overwhelming. i am behind the mayor. host: thanks for the call from new york city. we mentioned that about 60,000 homeless people in new york city each night -- there are about 60,000 homeless people in new york city each night. new york, the state with the second most homeless people in this country. california has the most at 161,000, rounding out the top five, florida has an estimated 27,500. texas has about 27,000 and washington state has about 23,000. those are all estimates on the numbers of homeless in each state. we will go to texas, houston, texas. this is stephen on the line for

those with experience with homelessness. good morning. caller: my experience with homelessness goes back to 2011. there was one wonderful success in one case and a lot of failures since then. host: what were the successes ? caller: the success was with kevin. his case has been documented. he was homeless, on the street, sitting on the curb of a walmart roastery store -- grocery store. he had a huge lesion on the left side of his face.

i began talking with him in 2011 about would you like to go to the hospital? his answer was no, no, no. i kept asking him and i would give him a little bit of money. eventually, he would say yes. the cancer was starting to get into his eye and he was starting to go blind in his left i. it took a long time to get help. host: what is a gold card? caller: it is the harris county program for those -- you can't show up at a harris county hospital and get any help at all unless you have a gold

card. they won't even talk to you. getting it is not easy. in 2011, the hospitals did not have administrators to issue them. we had to go to a church that had a program for homelessness once a week. it was a harris county administrator there at a certain time once a week. we would show up there and be interviewed. host: when we talk about solutions to homelessness, is that somebody who cares enough to stop and talk to somebody? caller: it is much more complicated than that. i have worked with people who became homeless because -- kevin became homeless because he got

injured. he was framing houses and he injured his knee and could no longer do that and that is how he became homeless. i have worked with people who used to drive for ups and they injure their box -- back and they no longer can drive for ups and they become homeless. it goes from bad to worse. you can ask any psychiatrist and and homeless person on the street is -- and being homeless on the street is extremely damaging to the mine. one of the workers i spoke with at a shelter at the turning point center in houston, he said when i brought kevin there to see him, those that are on the street are very against being in a shelter. they don't want that.

they don't trust it. they have to have their freedom. and so, working with them in something that works for them, to shorten the story, i had a lot more money back then. but he found a hotel where he could live for $25 a day. i was successful in helping him get social security and supplemental income. he got $750 a month. with that, he was able to pay $500 a month toward his hotel bill and i paid the other 500

until we got him section eight. then he got an apartment. then he got treatment for cancer. it is completely eradicated. dr. merrill keyes was his doctor. he healed kevin and actually presented -- he actually presented a paper in germany on his incredible response. host: thanks for sharing kevin's story. a lot of folks want to chat on this topic. this is mark in milwaukee, wisconsin. thanks for waiting. good morning. caller: thank you. i was a professional conservative. in 2000 seven, in february, i was diagnosed with being bipolar. in june, i was asked to resign.

i was given six months of health insurance. and because i was mentally ill, my disability coverage only paid for two years. i ran out of the disability coverage a month before i got social security. so, i was lucky. very lucky. it was -- it is a very big problem, homelessness. at least the mayor of new york is trying to come up with some type of solution. and i think all of the cities need to address this. immediately. host: thanks for the call. denver, colorado is next. bianka. caller: good morning, how are you? host: i am well. how are you? caller: great. i think we are a little hard on our local leaders, on our local mayors.

they have to do something. and i think what the mayor of new york is trying to do is something. i think it is unfair to not even allow them the grace or the opportunity to move people off of the street. living on the street is not a right, it is a safety issue and a health issue. if there are resources getting these people off the street, i think we should allow our local leaders to do that. i understand the last -- what the last few callers are saying. it is a big issue. but is there something our local leaders and mayors are doing it? allow them the grace to do that. these organizations are so anti-moving people off the street. i understand that is involuntary. they are living in public spaces. they don't get the right to live

in a public space. that is why we have housings and buildings and apartments to live in. they need to create and develop a viable system that can counter or work alongside what our local leaders are doing. host: thank you for the call from colorado. lila in california, the state with the largest homeless population in this country, lila, go ahead. caller: yes. i live in a very rural area. homelessness is not really a big problem here. we don't have people sleeping on the streets. but, when i saw -- when i heard what they were going to do in new york, i was so appalled because i saw where they put up some kind of a shelter for the immigrants. and i think meals and

everything. i thought why can't we do this for our homeless? they are citizens of that united states. we are treating the immigrants much better than we are our citizens. i was very appalled about that. because in 1977, i became homeless because i was a victim of a crime. and i did have a pickup. it was a camper show. there was a mattress in the back. i was not exactly on the streets. but it was horrible. i do believe that people who experience homelessness, i think that whole experience creates mental illness.

what people have to go through, how can you not -- how can it not affect your mind? host: lila in california, it is 7:30 on the east coast. having a conversation with our viewers about solutions to homelessness in this country. homelessness in your community. phone lines in use, regionally. eastern and central time zones, mountain and pacific time zones and a line for those with experience with homelessness on the screen. as you are calling in, i want to keep you updated on some of the other news happening. it has been a big newsweek in washington and around the country. this is from washington, d.c. democratic leaders with the democratic national committee voted to adopt the early 2024 presidential nominating schedule that was proposed by president biden that gives south carolina the leadoff position, followed by a joint primary day for new

hampshire and nevada with later primaries by georgia and michigan. that is the story from the washington post. it ended decades of tradition where iowa and new hampshire held the first two spots for democratic and republican primaries and caucuses. biden says it will better reflect the economic and geographic diversity of the democratic party. that coming from here in d.c. from the bureau of labor statistics, the job numbers for the month of november. here is the lead story from the wall street journal. the u.s. labor market remains historically tight. despite an uncertain economic outlook, employers added 263 thousand jobs, holding a strong gain of the past three months where they averaged 282,000 jobs increased. we will talk more about the

economy in our next segment of the washington journal. for this segment, focusing on the issue of homelessness. this story from the new york times, based on an announcement from the mayor of new york city. new york city involuntarily removes -- will involuntarily remove mentally ill people from the streets. that was from eric eric adams. here is what he had to say on tuesday. >> i want to talk to you about a crisis we see all around us. people with severe and untreated mental illness live out in the open, on the streets, and on subways and in danger and in need. we see them every day and our city workers are familiar with their stories. the man standing all day on the street across from the old and he was evicted from 25 years ago, waiting to be let in.

the shadowbox or on the street corner in midtown, mumbling to himself as he jabs at an invisible adversary. the unresponsive man able to get off the train without assistance from a mobile crisis team. these new yorkers and hundreds of others like them are in urgent need of treatment and often refuse it when offered. the very nature of their illnesses keep them from realizing they need intervention and support. without that intervention, they remain lost and isolated from society, tormented by the illusions. they cycle in and out of hospitals and jails. but new york -- new yorkers rightly expect our city to help them and help them, we will. host: eric adams from tuesday of this week. about 60,000 people sleeping in

new york city shelters each night. another 3500 or so are estimated to be living in the streets and new york subway systems. there is about 580 thousand total homeless people in the united states. sunday percent homeless individuals. 30% families with children. about 6% of the 580,000 are under the age of 25. 6% of that 580,000 -- asking you for solutions to homeless this that homelessness. -- asking you for solutions to homelessness. caller: i belong to a place, i volunteer there to work. i see a lot of homelessness on the street. this is the greatest thing i

have seen on tv. it takes a lot of money and it is an effort to do something. it is dangerous on the street. this is a great thing. it needs to be -- it is expensive to care for people. i went through a bankruptcy. i can't imagine being on the street like this without medicine. it is very scary. it is dangerous. they do it with other people on the street. i think it is the best thing to take somebody out of the cold and help them. i agree, it will be a tough job

for the police. if they can get any kind of help at all, any kind of funding, they will help society. it may help in the future with alcohol and stuff like that. i think it is a blessing that this is on tv today and has been brought to the american public. host: thank you for sharing your story in wisconsin. in napa, california, this is mark. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. this is a topic of homelessness and mental illness. it has been happening for a long time. and it is a great big topic and something to talk about.

it was napa state hospital. i work at night in a luxury hotel and we sometimes have to deal with homeless kids at night as a security guard on the property. and find out what they are doing, let them know that they need to go. but first, we try to have a discussion with what is going on with them. a lot of these homeless people that i encounter are young men in their late teens or early 20's. it appears to me that a lot of them don't want to be sheltered, they want to be on the streets and have the freedom to ride their bike around. they are getting cigarettes and alcohol from somewhere. if there is a problem with homeless people at my

employment, they would call the police but the police don't really do anything about it. even if they are intoxicated, with any situation the police come out, they just pat any person on the butt, tell them to go away and behave themselves. with governor gavin newsom, he promised to end homelessness 10 years ago but month by month, i see more motorhomes parked in certain areas. the only time, locally, our city seems to help the homeless people is during the winter when they open up the fairgrounds as a temporary winter homeless program. even that is limited because you have to be sober to get in there and once you get in, you can't leave. it is an ongoing thing. host: thank you you for the call.

161,500 people are experiencing homelessness in california. about 40.9 homeless people per 10,000 residents of california. this is michael in detroit. you are next. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a couple of things i would like to say about the solution as well as the situation with homelessness. i noticed in our city, on every major thoroughfare, you have people who are out there. the fact that they use it as a job, it appears to me, many cars come through day in and day out in weekly, how much money they bring in. my other thing is the solution, i noticed we have a lot of empty

county hospitals in our city. there are annexes attached to them. what a wonderful place that would be to house these people, including shelters, whatever. you can have a nonprofit. by being a hospital facility, you have all of the things you need in order to address certain issues of homelessness. you can also have workshops and give them certain traits and skills. at our church, every sunday, we tell the homeless that if you attend a service, we will feed you. we will give you a hot meal.

we also have people who donate clothing and we have access to that -- they have access to that as well. host: this gives you a sense of the overall trends in the homeless population in this country, going back about 15 years, back to 2007, the numbers were higher. 647,000 homeless people in this country. the number as of 2020, 500 80,000. -- 580,000. the overall trends show that in more recent years, the numbers have been picking back up. we are asking you for solutions to homelessness in your community. back to california, linda in lancaster. good morning. host: good morning to you -- caller: good morning to you. i experienced something terrible when i was eight years old.

my aunt tried to kill me. she was in the mental hospital for a while and i felt safe. when i had my first seven, she came to the hospital. she had left the mental hospital where they could keep the people who are mentally ill and she came and told me she loved me and she was sorry for what she did. and i was so terrified and scared because she came up to my room read i just had my first son. this happened in in 1974. nixon said he would close all of the mental hospitals all over the country. nixon said that. my aunt was a nurse at the mental hospital and she said that would be terrible, because all of these people, they had grandkids and everything and these were mentally ill people and they are on the street today. host: when it comes to the story

that sparked the conversation, new york city, said they would involuntarily remove seriously mentally ill people from the streets, that is something you are ok with, correct? caller: no, i'm not. i'm saying i am terrified when they let the people out of the state hospital. i feel like it is out of control and they will never get these people that need help into facilities to keep the american people safe. host: that is linda. in connecticut, you are next, howard. caller: that lady is right on. i remember mental institutions in connecticut. newtown town, they shut that down. wing dale, that was shut down. i understandhat people were

involuntarily taken out of their andeft on the street. the word was we are going to empty the mental institutio. there were people ck then that you could involuntarily have committed. somebody pulled a knife on somebody and i helped take this person to a mental institution. now, these days, if you are considered violent, i guess you just go to jail. back then, mental institutions would actually take somebody like that. but, i think the problem is something that we have made.

they are out on the street because they have nowhere else to go. that is the way it is. that's all i have to say. host: in oregon, you are next. caller: good morning. i live in the suburbs of portland. portland has been -- had a big problem with homelessness. almost every street you see downtown is just tense along the sidewalks and around the city. they will come in and they will clear out a homeless area. they don't people -- put the people anywhere, they clear out all of the tens, tell them they can get services and go to the next one. and then a week later, they are act. so, our mayor has come up with a solution, where he is going to put six different large homeless encampments in areas around the city.

have them in these big areas where everybody can pitch their tents, they will have a campsite and electricity. and in the center will be a large area of homeless services. they will have food, medical, mental, all of that. drug addictive treatment. and then they will also have an area for employment. so, they can employ these people while they are living their. and a lot of employers, we need people to work, because we have a large problem with not having enough workers. so, the idea is to help train these people. they have also said that these people, the reason they don't want to go to shelters is because they smoke or they do drugs or whatever it may be. they will allow that, as long as it is within your own camp.

but you have to agree to go to services for alcoholism. they have interviewed a lot of the homeless and they really do want jobs and a place to live. the idea is eventually if they have a job in these homeless camps and they maintain their job, then they will be transitioned into housing and housing at maybe half the cost. to try and get these people helped and transitioned. they should have never closed down all of the mental hospitals. they should have put more resources in and treated the people humanely. host: this conversation this morning sparked by the mayor of new york's announcement. a new policy to involuntarily remove mentally ill people from the streets, directing police and emergency workers to hospitalize people they deem too mentally ill to care for

themselves, even if they pose no threat to others. one more statement in response to that policy. this is from the coalition for the homeless. their statement in the wake of eric adams announcement. homeless people are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrator. but mayor adams has scapegoated homeless people with mental illness and violence. the focus on treatment -- rather than further involving police in mental help -- mental health response and urging city workers to voluntarily transport more people to hospital, -- hospitals, the administration should focus on inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, and cutting through the red tape that has left far too many housing units vacant.

this is deborah out of atlanta, georgia. on the line for those with experience with homelessness. good morning. caller: good morning. i am 69 years old. when i was in my late 30's, i experienced homelessness for the first time. i lost my job. i went into a psalter -- shelter for women. they didn't treat us very good pre-they put us out in the morning and we had to go to another shelter to get a token. then we would come back at a certain time. but me, i was determined. i did not want to be homeless. i found other solutions and went to other places to get help. after i got my help, i got a job at the airport and i saved my money. in three months time, i was out of there and got into a room and house. i kept my job and i got another job. i worked two jobs. when i finally got -- then i finally got an apartment.

instead of relying on the government, you have to do something yourself too. i consider myself a success story. i am retired now. i get a pension and i get social security and i am living very nice. if you want to do stuff, you can do it. but there is a lot of homelessness out hereee people all around, the alcohol us -- alcoholics and drug attics, they don't want help. they don't want to leave the block. they just want to be there. i feel sorry for those people but there is a lot of mental illness out here. if i had been rich, i would have bought fort mcpherson. that could have been a one-stop shop, a place for them to stay, the hospital would have given the medical attention and they could set up a job referral for people to train with jobs. but nobody is thinking out the box. you have these old army bases

that you can turn into a place for a shelter and for help. that is what i have to say about it. host: thanks for the call from georgia. harley from spearfish, south dakota, you are next. caller: hello. i ran a veterans program for a long time. and spearfish, south dakota, does not have a veterans or homeless program because we are really small. but rapid city, south dakota and sioux falls, south dakota, they do. and they have agreed to allow stepmom houses or something like that. and they are doing many house villages, making many houses for the homeless and staying off of a designated area.

dealing with the issues, they have to approach each individual and understand why they are homeless, and not just mask -- mass assume everybody is homeless for the same reasons. some people are homeless because they can't function in society, so there is not really any way to help that, other than trying to give them a place where they feel safe. another problem was, running my veterans program, i ran into a lot of homeless veterans. there is no homeless program for veterans that will house veterans with their families. and allow the family to be part of the treatment for the mental health, and letting the families learn how to deal with the person suffering in the mental health program and having them

housed together, rather than isolating the mental health people from their families. they need to be taught as a family unit how to work through the issues. a lot of the times, the families get left out. and the mental health patients get isolated and treated, but when they are reintroduced to a family unit, the family does not know how and the prejudices of their experiences with the homeless people interfere with the treatment that the homeless person got because the families aren't involved. host: that is harley in south dakota. two callers back was talking about why the government is not using surplus military bases to house the homeless in this country. that was actually part of the process that you might remember,

the base realignment and closure process from back in the early 2000's. part of that process involves seeing if these facilities could be used to meet homelessness needs in various communities. this is a gao report that looked at that process for reusing property for homeless assistant needs. this report from 2015. it gives some background to this process. the 2005 brac resulted in 100 to five closed bases with surplus property -- 120 five closed bases with surplus property available. housing and urban development assisted communities in determining the best reuse of land and facilities, balancing the needs of the local economy and those of homeless individuals and families. gao doing a full report on how

effective that was. that report is available at gao.gov. the military base realignment and closures, it is gao's 15 to 74 report. this is celia in texas. good morning on the line for those with experience with homelessness. caller: i've been dealing with homelessness, since i was 11. not because i was homeless but my dad was, in louisville. they don't acknowledge people who are mentally ill. he was a veteran. they didn't help him. so, we ended up letting him live with family members and stuff and trying to deal with him. he didn't want to stay home half the time. part of the time, he was under a bridge. he lived in different places.

sometimes he would live with different family members. the states don't allow family members to give education, they do not help them to help their family members. texas is different. texas has a lot more help. so, my father went through a lot of that. my mom ended up moving because he was threatening his kids and we were too young to understand any of it. i went to college, as a teacher and they started talking about homelessness and i started learning more and more about it. i ended up going at the age of 40 and getting my father, who was 80, off the streets, out of his house. he was at the point where he could not take home -- take care of his own home. the brothers could not get him to do anything.

the state of missouri stole all of his money. they left him with no money, forcing us to take care of him in texas. so, i took him out of the care facility that they forced us to put him in. they said he couldn't think. but if you are not teaching the children in school and the college students, you are not going to help them. host: that was celia in texas. this is angela out of indianapolis, indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you? host: i am well. go ahead. caller: with you mentioning the new york mayor and what he is

attempting to do and looking at the topic of conversation, this -- they are separate topics. first of all. the homeless crisis is one separate topic all on its own. what the mayor is attempting to do is he is targeting people who appear mentally ill, and forcibly removing them from the streets by using law enforcement. basically to arrest them and force them into some sort of treatment. that is two separate topics. and so, those that appear -- that don't appear mentally ill, but they are on the streets, bundled up in the winter months or whatever, winter, summer, spring, fall, they my -- they

may not be appearing mentally ill, so do they just pass them by and leave them on the street? and they are not forcibly removed from the street? they are there and they might be homeless. and if you dig deeper into this, what else is the city doing about homelessness? this is about new york, the city is piloting a separate program that provides 80, 80, 80 homeless people with supportive housing, food and health support , and financial literacy support. this program is modeled after initiatives in other cities across the country and has proven to produce positive impacts on homelessness in texas, utah, and others. so, there are two separate topics here and i think it is kind of being intermingled. if you want to bring up what is

happening with the mayor and his initiative, that is a whole separate topic. but it is controversial and people are getting away from that controversial topic and speaking more about your broader there are two separate topics here that are getting intermingled. if you want to bring up what is happening in new york with the mayor and his initiative, that is a whole separate topic but it is controversial and people are getting away from that controversial topic and spanking more about homelessness. host: is there much homelessness that you see in indianapolis? caller: yes. my family had a mentally ill person in our family, but she was not homeless.

her parents and family surrounded her, took care of her. the mental institution she did frequent and was institutionalized for a while, that closed. when she did come home, family members could not be with her 24/7 so she was home. she was safe. she was well taking care of. her parents -- taken care of. her parents had to work. she would get up and go out into the street freely. it was nothing but the grace of god that kept her safe. she knew her way home. a a lot of worry and stress on the family as to where she was and the mistreatment that happened in the mental institution was another thing,

and one of the reasons why it was closed. these -- host: we will take a closer look at this week's employment numbers. later in our spotlight on podcasts segment, the republican accountability project representative will join us to talk about her book, the focus group. we will be right back. ♪ >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington. keep up with the day's latest events, white house events, the

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>> sunday night on q and a, in her book adam smith's america, glory lou looks out the continued influence of adam smith. >> i had read in a seminar paper on adam smith's ideas about poverty. we know smith is a nuanced thinker who is not a libertarian. he is not an economist, so why did we get that image of smith in america? >> 8:00 p.m. on -- watch at 8:00 p.m. on c-span's q and a. >> washington journal continues. host: we are joined by

politico's economics reporter guido. 200 30,000 jobs were added last month. -- 230,000 jobs were added last month. guest: that is better than economists were expecting. it could be bad news because the federal reserve is trying to slow the economy. one of the reasons you saw stocks go down on the news is they are worried that this might mean the federal reserve raises the interest rate even higher to try and slow growth more aggressively. they were looking for a jobs report that was more in terms of

adding 100,000 jobs and we got more than twice that. a really healthy pace of job growth. no signs that we are yet dropping into a recession, but there are still those fears out there given what the fed is doing. looking at the numbers straight up healthy job growth. wage growth ticked up, concerning for the fed but good for workers. host: here was a little bit of president biden's reaction to the economy numbers. [video clip] >> our economy continues to grow. gdp is up even more than it was previously thought. we continue to create lots of jobs, and today we have learned that the economy added 263,000 jobs in november. we have created 10.5 million jobs since i took office.

750,000 of them are domestic manufacturing jobs, made in america. the unemployment rate remains near a 50 year low and wages for working families, in fact, over the last couple of months have gone up. these wage increases are larger than the increases and inflation during that same period of time. we are in a situation where things are moving. host: that was president biden yesterday from the white house. he started by mentioning the gdp numbers. a revision on the gdp numbers of july through september, a 2.9% growth rate up from a 2.6% rate. what does that mean? guest: the economy was doing

better in the third quarter than we had previously thought. this matters because you may remember that the gdp numbers in the first half of the year were negative and there was a lot of debate as to whether that meant we were and during a recession by some technical terms that is a recession, but a lot of economist pointed to the fact that the reasons for that was more technical, companies building up their back stories of rooms. the third quarter, the stronger growth we saw in the third quarter, and that 2.9% is an annualized number, so that means if the economy grew at that rate for the entire year it would be 2.9% growth on the year. we could end up having slower

growth. we might end up staying in positive growth territory for 2022. as i mentioned earlier, there is a watch whether or not we are falling into a recession. host: we played you president biden's reaction from yesterday. there is one more reaction. this is kevin brady, the republic in the leader of the house ways and means committee. " this report sounds more bad news. america's workforce shrinks for the third consecutive month. for many workers, they are struggling with pay cuts making sticker shock a big part of this year's holiday shopping

experience. families and mainstream businesses will have a hard time celebrating this year." on the workforce participation that he talks about their -- guest: this is a concern. basically when you talk about what the unemployment rate is, it depends on the people actively participating in the workforce. when you have fewer people participating in the workforce, you can have the unemployment rate look lower, but you still have a lot of people out there who are not working. this is a particular problem right now. the unemployment rate is low, 3.7%, and a lot of businesses in different sectors are looking for workers and cannot necessarily find them. it is problematic when the reason for that is because there are not enough workers. there has been a lot of advocacy

to bring those people back into the workforce. one of the reasons is we have had an uptick in retirements. you think about what happened during the pandemic, people were close to retirement age but not at the classic retirement age they either lost their job or with their job and now they do not see a reason to go back. maybe some of the run-up in the stock market helped ulster their ability to retire, that sort of thing. we have also seen a decrease in immigration. the job market has a lot of demand. employers are having to pay people more in order to attract workers, which is good for workers, but the said worries that could lead to a situation where workers have enough

leverage to keep pushing up wages in a way that will then push up prices, and they fear a situation where prices and wages keep pushing each other up. wages will grow high enough that some of these people are incentivized to come back into the workforce. i ist harder to get people back because there are also a lot of people who have died from covid. there are a lot of people who may be have long covid, so they do not have the same capacity to work. it is a difficult problem. host: this is a chart giving a visual representation of that inflation issue victoria guida talked about. the redline on this chart from the times, the average hourly earnings up.

the consumer price index that shows inflation up 7.7% in the month of october. you are seeing that chart in your local paper with this story. victoria guida is breaking down a lot of economic data that we got this week. we want you to join the conversation. , republicans, it's (202) 748-8001. democrats, it's (202) 748-8000. and independents, it's (202) 748-8002. after that meeting from jerome powell this week -- guest: their main policy rate

is, almost at 4% which is the highest it has been in right sometime -- quite some time. inflation appears to be easing. we will see when we get more data in a couple of week. there are 2 official inflation measures. there is the consumer price index and the personal consumption expenditures index. that is the one -- the latter is the one the fed watches most closely. one of the reasons for that is supply chains are finally starting to ease a little bit. a lot of the supply and demand challenges are starting to write them self and prices are coming down a bit. import prices have come down in

part because the dollar is stronger than so many other princi's and that gives us an advantage when it comes to buying -- currency is and that give -- princ -- currencies and that gives us an advantage when it comes to buying. wages are the wildcard. they need to get inflation down to 2% and the pce data we got shows us inflation is 6%. it needs to be three times less than it is. this is one of those things where none of us want our wages to be growing less, but from a macro perspective the fed tried to make the argument that we want wages to be growing because of positive factors in the economy and not because prices are going up.

we are may be moving in the right direction on inflation, but still a lot of ground to cover. host: if you want to chat about the economy, victoria guida is the person to do it with. loretta is up first in cleveland, ohio, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning, john and victoria. that was a lot. now i do not know where to begin. jay powell, he imposed a zero interest rates on trump during his term, and trump pushed out trillions at zero interest rates, so what does that do to an economy? my original question was what

happened to the republicans' job creators? every year we give them $2 to $5 trillion to create jobs, and they didn't do it. they took the money. biden had to come in and replenish everything. i sit and i watch this, and it is like insulting your intelligence! it is to the point where something has got to get. --got to give. host: loretta in ohio. guest: on the fact that the fed, you mentioned the chair jerome powell, they cut interest rates to zero in 2020 at the onset of

the pandemic. there was a very deep recession that was caused by us essentially trying to mitigate the health effects of the pandemic. the fed went all out, and congress did spend trillions. there is a general thought that, that bipartisan effort was one of the reasons the economy was able to recover so quickly. we will probably be studying that for years to come in terms of how much and how fast we needed to do all that really, but we sit today with an unemployment rate below 4% and that is way faster of a recovery than we had in the 2008 financial crisis. that was the reasoning for that. in terms of job creation, you

are right. i mentioned earlier that productivity is an important part of having healthy weight growth. when you have wage growth outpacing inflation, the way you get that is by having productivity outpace the economy, how much we can produce per worker. one of the ways you can achieve that is by having companies make investments. we did for a time during the pandemic start to see a surge in investment in certain types of equipment as companies switched to people working remotely, but we have not seen this sustained increase in business investment we would like to see, so it will

be interesting to see whether that burst that i mentioned leads to productivity gains. another thing to watch out for is there was a bipartisan infrastructure bill that was intended to increase the productivity of the economy, but that will take many years for us to see how that plays out. host: to the buckeye state, this is jane,, independent. caller: i want to add to what the previous caller -- i think she was from cleveland as well -- what she said was exactly on target. the fact that you piggyback these 2 issues, inflation and homelessness is perfect because we do focus on productivity in this country. we focus on getting as much as

possible out of workers without paying them adequately, and their housing policy. all of the profits go to the top. in tax benefits and lack of limits and regulation, and that is all the mantra. i worked for 40 years with poor people, and a lot of addictive people in poor communities and people had skills but were not given a chance. during that 40 years i saw a drug treatment go away so we make tremendous profits on drugs. we get people addicted here, and that is a big industry. host: let me stop you there. jane referring victoria guida to our previous segment, we were talking about homelessness in this country, but we also do not pay adequately workers in this

country coming back to this issue of hourly wages. what more did we find out from that report yesterday? guest: hourly wages really picked up. this is one of those things that can be really frustrating about this whole conversation. by and large wages have not kept up with the inflation we have had over the last few years. even though people are getting nominal raises, technically paid more, the prices of things are going up, so they are not ending up with more money. there is some data that suggests the lowest income workers have seen their raises outpace inflation, in part because there has been such high demand for some of those. you think about restaurant workers, things like that. they have in some cases seen some gains, but by and large people are seeing their wage

gains eaten away. this is frustrating. this came after a long period where wage growth was stagnant. we did have a situation where before the pandemic, the economy, which took forever to fully heal after the 2008 financial crisis, but we got to a point where unemployment was 3.5% heading into -- inflation was 3.5% heading into the pandemic. there is a question of " do you have to wait a long time to get the economy to a point where people are actually making substantially more than inflation?' there are a lot of structural issues that play into this as well.

there are a lot of questions whether corporations should be forced to pay people. that is a whole other rabbit hole. this is a frustrating problem because the fed is worried about wages growing too fast. for workers who have not necessarily seen their wages keep pace with inflation, it feels unfair. host: jacksonville, florida, this is george, republican, good morning. caller: i am an engineer and i have worked all over the world. i see countries who do things right and do things wrong. there are 2 ways to deal with inflation. one is to raise interest rates. if you build more companies to compete with existing companies, bring -- that will bring prices down. if you look at those who retire

from congress to become lobbyists, china is behind a lot of the problems we have by paying people off and getting them to not vote in the interest of the middle-class workers and bringing people out of poverty by paying people off and getting them to not vote in the interest of the middle-class workers and bringing people out of poverty. host: victoria guida, the united states, china, and the economy. guest: globalization is a big factor in wage growth and in price growth. there was a thought that one of the reasons inflation was low for a long time, it is easy to forget, but for decades we have very low inflation and after the financial crisis the fed was worried that inflation was below its 2% target.

one of the reasons people thought inflation was low was because of competition from abroad. it is because you can have -- it is very complex because you can have countries where the labor standards are not what they are here so it is harder for us to compete on price with those countries while paying work is a fair wage. how that plays out going forward because the factors round globalization have shifted even where countries are choosing to locate their supply chains but has shifted. the dust has not settled on that yet. host: there were 263,000 jobs added, 88,000 and hospitality, 45,000 in health care, 19,000 in

media and tech. one of the areas where there were jobs lost was retail. why is that? host: -- guest: this is the other thing that also plays into inflation. consumer spending is still really strong. we are starting to see situations where retail companies have had a rough couple of years. when the pandemic happened they had all this inventory. people shifted what they were buying. maybe what they had on hand was know what people wanted to buy. they had these supply chain issues where they had trouble bringing in the goods that people did want to buy, so they stocked up on the inventory. now they have a lot of inventory they have to sell at a discount. i think that the retail sector is reflecting a couple of

different factors, and it could mean that we are seeing this slow in the economy, which we are seeing a slowdown in the economy. retail could be a leading indicator of that. the retail sector was also suffering before the pandemic. you think of brick and mortar stores, competing with amazon were suffering. there could be a lot of things playing into that number. host: glen bernie, maryland. this is roland. caller: thank you for taking my call. i would like your guest to actually contrast and compare the trump economy with the biden economy, because if i am not mistaken all trump had to do was pass one bill into law and that was to give big tax cuts to the

rich. he was saying, " it is so great! on the best president ever!" the economy is doing -- biden can control oil prices. host: i think we got your question, roland. a comparison of the trump economy to the biden economy. when was the exact date that it becomes the biden economy. was that on day one of the biden administration? guest: people think that sometime in the first year is when the president is more responsible for the economy. economic trends often take many years to play out. the trump economy and biden economy were extremely different because of the pandemic.

you do not necessarily have back-to-back presidencies where the economy is very different. as i sort of mentioned earlier, by the time that president trump became president he presided over the last part of the economic expansion we were having after the 2008 financial crisis, which was very sluggish. it took forever. this gradual growth that got us to a point where the by late 2019 early 2020 the unemployment rate was 3.5%, which is an unemployment rate we have not seen since the 1960's. wage growth was outpacing inflation . w saw somee increases in labor force participation. we saw some positive trends that seem to be a result of years of

the economy expanding. for the biden economy it was the opposite dynamic. they had the pandemic recession impact, but then congress and the biden administration through everything out the problem because they wanted a different kind of recovery where they wanted us to explode into recovery and grow really fast. we. have seen that inflation -- we have seen that. inflation has been a side effect of that. which approach is better, to have people dragged along for many years not doing very well until we finally get to a good place or getting to that good place really fast and also having what we have now, which is inflation and really good

job growth, wage growth is picking up, all positive dynamics for workers, but signs of an economy running really hot? host: if you want to give victoria guida on twitter you can find her @dtg2. this is danny in laurel, maryland, republican. caller: let's highlight some of the failures of the democratic party and joe biden. he stopped the pipeline. he does incentivized oil investment. democrats injected $1.9 trillion into the economy when we did not need it. now we have huge inflation and now i heard the economist speaking with john the other day that we are going to head into a

recession. this is all because of biden and the democrats. would you agree on that? guest: i'm not sure that it is all on biden and the democrats, given that we have inflation globally. inflation is a problem in countries around the world. there is a thought that one of the things that contributed to inflation is we had all the stimulus checks that were sent to people that allowed people to build up savings. there is a lot of debate as to how much you attribute to each factor of inflation because the things that cause inflation are multifaceted. there was government spending, there was the fact that we had suppressed all of this economic activity during the pandemic, and all of a sudden there was an explosion of pent-up demand. there was the fact that people shifted what they wanted to buy.

people wanted to buy goods for a while because they were not going out and doing things. i think that a piece of the puzzle was definitely government spending. the question is how big of a piece. economists would disagree on that. there is a lot of fear, as you mentioned, that we will enter into a recession next year. that is because the fed is determined to tame inflation. the hope is that that will not be too difficult and maybe we will see growth flatline rather than entering into a more severe recession. the jury is still out on that. host: is that what we mean by the term, " a soft landing"? guest: a soft landing is where ideally you do not enter into a recession.

you could imagine the fed basically viewing it as a soft landing, if we only have an extremely mild recession where growth only sort of dips into the negatives and may be the unemployment rate only comes up a little bit rather than some more severe pain. that is still possible. it depends a great deal on how tight inflation -- tied inflation is to wage growth. if inflation comes down, the fed isn't necessarily trying to hurt the job market for the sake of it, but if inflation stays high it well. host: this is andrew, independent, good morning. caller: 2 quick questions, victoria, if you could comment about the huge amount of reverse

repo operations starting around august, there were upwards of around one trillion, and it kept climbing and sustained that rate for a while. why did the fed feel the need to buy over $2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities. we are seeing black rock having to limit requested withdrawals. in november investors only received 3% of the withdrawals they requested. a lot of people loaded up on real estate and we will see something odd happen. that is all. host: define some of the terms. reverse repo? guest: this is an impressively

detailed question and it has to do with the financial plumbing. technically the way the fed cut interest rates is either by paying banks interest on deposits at the fed, so that sets the floor on interest rates. they will essentially borrow overnight from money market funds. it is a collateralized loan. it gets very weeds-y very fast, but these are the two ways the fed sets interest rates. w havee seen a huge surge in usage of this reverse repo facility and the practical reason for that is so that said during the pandemic was buying up a bunch of assets to boost the economy. they were buying up mortgage-backed securities.

this was an effort to push down long-term interest rates, to make sure credit cap flowing, that the gears of the economy kept moving. as part of that they printed a lot of money. basically, it got to the point where there were so many reserves that the banking system could necessarily handle all of them. think about the banking system of a tank and it was overflowing. the fed is sopping up the rest of it through this reverse repo facility. one of the things that has been interesting as the fed is in the process of reversing that. they are shrinking their asset holdings and therefore shrinking the reserve supply, but that has been draining from banks first. that could, the practical meaning -- the practical meaning of that is the fed does not want

to get to a point where banks do not have the that the need in order to play the role with depositors, so they might stop shrinking their assets the sooner then you might have expected. that is very weeds-y as i said. in terms of mortgage-backed securities, both u.s. government debt and mortgage-backed securities are long-term debt instruments. they basically view those as useful assets to buy that will help bring down long-term rates across the economy. there is a debate as to whether buying mortgage-backed securities has an impact on mortgages because fannie and freddie are intermediaries.

they changed the dynamic there. sorry, i hope i'm not losing too many people! [laughter] the fed kept buying assets until march even though we started seeing inflation as early as last april thanks to these initial supply chain problems. there is a sense know that the fed kept buying assets for too long. part of the reason they did that was because they told markets they would buy assets. the fed felt like it had to follow through on its commitment of the types of asset buying markets expected. host: just a couple minutes left

in this segment. let's head to pittsburgh. this is chris. caller: it seems like one of the trickiest things in this whole deal is the time lag between when the fed does something and the economy's response to it. real estate response, quickly maybe we just respond the slowest -- real estate responds quickly. maybe wages just respond the slowest. what do you think about that? who came up with 2%? what is wrong with 2.5%? that is it. guest: on the latter point on who came up with 2% this was a goal that the fed has had since 2012. it was thought to be enough

inflation that the fed did not have to clamp down on the economy any time there was any inflation at all to give the job market more time to grow. but low enough that people would not necessarily notice it day-to-day. they might notice it over time, but it would not affect their economic patterns. there is a lot of debate over whether the fed should slightly increase its inflation rate to allow for the economy to run a little hotter as economists say but that is not something the fed will be thinking about right now. they are worried that would undermine their credibility and make it look like they are not able to get us down to 2%. i forgot what the first question was. host: he was talking about the percentage increases and that half a percentage rate. guest: you are talking about the

lags that is right. it is very difficult for the said because every time -- said because every -- fed because every time they raise interest rates it takes time to hit the economy. durable goods, maybe furniture you would finance, and then those sectors are impacted much more quickly. the fed has raised interest rates very quickly, and they do not know how much that well smack of the future. to give you an example, there were a lot of businesses that during the pandemic were able to refinance their debt at really low rates, but at some point that will have to roll over. a question is when all of a sudden those companies have to start paying a much higher

interest rate, what will that do? there is a delayed effect. the fed has to be very careful. they do not want to back off too soon and lead to become more entrenched. this is what they saw happening in the 1970's when the fed would raise interest rates then back off. people got more and more use to inflation and inflation got higher and higher. they don't want a situation where they go way too far, because by the time they realize the effect of what they are doing the economy has been whacked really hard. this is a delicate process. that is why they're watching so many. different indicators very closely all data is. you have -- that is why they are watching so many different indicators very closely. all data is imperfect.

it will be a delicate process host:. -- it will be a delicate process. host: we will have to end things here. thank you so much for joining us. w we'lle see you down the road. coming up, it is our spotlight on podcasts. we will be joined by the republican accountability project to discuss the podcast " the focus group." coming up in the next 30 minutes is our open forum. any policy issue you would like to talk about, our lines are open for you to do so. start calling and now, and we will be right back -- in now, and we will be right back. >> 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 here, or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span, powered by cable. >> next week on the c-span networks tuesday at 11:00 a.m., nancy pelosi and other members of congress will hold a congressional old metal ceremony honoring the metropolitan police who predicted the capital on january 6. on thursday at 10:00 a.m., the judiciary committee investigates politicking on the supreme court. the house and senate are both in

session. the house will take up the 2020 three defense program and policy bill. the senate will vote on president biden's judicial nominations. watch next week live on the c-span networks or on c-span now. head over to c-span.org for scheduling information. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. ♪ >> american history tv, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. on lectures of history, nicole on the early development of slavery and on the presidency. in his latest book, john me chapek -- john meacham studies abraham lincoln's life.

tch american history tv every weekend and catch a full schedule on your tv guide. ♪ >> listening to programs on c-span through c-span radio just got easier. tell your smart speaker, " play c-span radio," and the to washington journal every morning. weekdays at 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. catch washington today for a fast-paced report on the events of the day. listen to c-span anytime. just tell your smart speaker, " play c-span radio." >> washington journal continues. host: about 30 minutes here for our open forum.this is where we let you lead the discussion. phone lines are yours. republicans, (202) 748-8001.

democrats, (202) 748-8000. s independent -- independents, (202) 748-8002. here is a story from twitter yesterday. elon musk is making news about hunter biden. he said he would publish the internal discussion among twitter executives on whether to -- he gave that information to independent journalists who posted the first installment of what he calls the twitter files. in a more than 40 tweet thread he references messages between twitter officials. he also released what he said was evidence of twitter staff yielding to outside pressure to manipulate speech, first a

little, then more often, then constantly. those tweets posted yesterday. plenty of new sites with that story this morning. there is this story from here in washington yesterday. president biden signing legislation to prevent a nationwide rail strike. the next step involves a long-running dispute between workers and major freight railroads. mr. biden forced them to accept a contract. the agreement does not include an expansion of paid sick leave benefits that was sought by the unions, and it marks the first such intervention in 3 decades. [video clip] >> the bill i am about to sign

ins a difficult real dispute and helps -- ends a difficult real dispute -- ends a difficult rail dispute. much of what we rely on is delivered on a rail. the rails shut down, it would devastate our economy. without rail many u.s. industries would literally shot down. my economic advisor said that as many as 650,000 americans would have been put out of work for the first time. within the first two weeks of the strike alone. the community could have lost access to chemicals that assure clean drinking water. farms across the country would have been unable to feed their

livestock. thanks to the bill congress passed, we have spare the country that catastrophe. at the same time we assured workers will get a historic wage increase, improve working conditions and peace of mind around their health care. i know this bill does not have paid sick leave, which every american deserves. i did not commit that we would not stop just because we could not get it in this bill. i have supported paid sick leave for a long time. i will continue that fight until we succeed. host: that was president biden from the white house yesterday. taking your calls in open forum, what topics do you want to talk about? up first is nancy, a republican. caller: good morning. hello. i never called anybody like

this. this is my first time. i don't understand the american people. the whole thing started when biden came in and stomped our energy -- stopped our energy when he stopped all the gas and oil. i got my first oil this winter and it was $1204. it would have been $500, $600 for a tank when it was -- it was never like this. everything started with all our problems we have today started with gas and oil. when you have the supply chains truck send everything else trying to come and have to pay all that high gas, that is where

it started and that is where we are going to have it from now on until we get our energy back. let's face the facts. host: what is the place for dylan of guest -- gallon of gas? caller: $4.03, but it went down only because he to get the strategic oil thing. we will never get it filled up at the price we will today. let's face facts. that is where it started. we will be in trouble until we get our gas and oil back. if he ever closes the border, what is the use now? all of these people are here today. what are we going to do? they get more than what a regular person in pennsylvania

gets. we give them everything and we get nothing. that is nancy in pennsylvania. from gas buddy.com, a chart of gas prices over the past 18 months. back in the summer time, gas no down under $3.44 a gallon as of today. those are the latest numbers from gas buddy. this is mike in washington, independent,. good morning caller: good morning -- this is mike in washington, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. we always talk about the things going wrong with the world. my question is why don't we talk more about the total population in the world relative to how it is putting more of a load on our

climate? it seems to me it is one thing that could be done to help reduce that overall load, which will have effect on making and helping the planet become a more livable place. host: what is the thing we can do? reduce the population? caller: slow population growth. every person that is born eventually puts a load on the planet because they want a car. .they need oil they burn gas -- they need oil. they burn gas. the plan for the people in business as they need to expand, expand, expand. is it necessary to do that, if we are overloading the planet? it seems like talking about population is like the third rail. nobody wants to touch it.

host: there is this story recently when the world population hit 8, billion people on earth saying " it is not causing climate change.it is not the number of people. it is how we live." caller: certainly true. i think we need to have more of a conversation. i am not a deep enough thinker. i know along with an opinion. the planet, i believe i read recently, there are 250 to 270 parts per million of carbon dioxide is what the planet can handle. we are over 350 and on their way to 400.

i want to throw that question out there for people to hear. it might help the planet recover and find out where it can be in some sort of equilibrium with an amount of people. if we are at 8 million today, and we were at one million in 1900 we are overstretching the number of people the planet can handle. host: i got your point. this is joe in fayetteville, north carolina. caller: your talk about homelessness earlier didn't take into account all of the people who are couch surfing, just living in parents' houses . i was in the national guard for 11 years, and a lot of guys were living out of their car. they deployed to do the border fence in 2008.

shutting down a lot of those means people will be on the streets. it took world war ii to get us out of a depression. we might be headed for -- host: this is oral reading -- earl, redding, california. caller: so many topics, so

little times. i am involved in a group of 30 people. temperatures are below freezing. there are a couple of topics. you are the fairest. i don't know if you are a democrat, independent, or republican. you are the fairest man on the show. january 6 these papers are still being held in january 6, these people are still beinn

prison without bail. i have watched people from other organizations for two summers burned down the cities across the united states. i have watched them burn a police station in portland and set it on fire -- i paid over $1000 a month with this train wreck and no end in sight. they are giving me back half of what they stole but i am looking at another year of the same thing. host: this is ron in pennsylvania, democrat. caller: good morning.

a lot of people call with misinformation about the keystone pipeline. first of all, the pipeline was stopped by the u.s. supreme court and biden signed off on it. the reason it was stopped was because of the numerous amount of lawsuits that were on the pipeline. the number for sacred lands and republican governors were against it because of the aquifers. when these people called about biden stopping energy, that is a lot of bull. just to clarify that situation. thank you. host: this is perseus in florida, independent. caller: good morning. you were speaking about the homelessness before.

i think i have a lot of information because i worked with the homeless 24 years in the streets of new york. now i live in florida and all those 24 years of administering and helping the homeless and the people of need in the street, feeding them and taking them to shelters and programs. i believe that is a combination of a lot of things. it is not only the mentally ill you will find in the streets. in the 24 years i did this work, i am also a nurse. in the years that i did this work in the streets, i found it is not only mentally ill. you will find a whole bunch of people affected by other issues on the streets of new york. for example, drugs and the mentally ill. people that are suffering from

so many other needs that contributes to making them act in a way that they are mentally ill but they are not. i took people like this into my home. when my children were young i had an extra room. if they were in desperate need, i would take them home with me and i would take them to my church. and we would seek help for them. many of them were put through christian programs because they had drug habits they had to break. many of them were homeless because their families put them out or they ran out of money and could not the rent. they ended up in abandoned buildings.

i would bring a team of workers with me and we would feed them and anybody we would help, we would put them into christian programs and take them to the church and lead them. take them to the hospitals to be evaluated. we had a team of social workers, doctors, nurses. we did tremendous work. host: thank you for telling us about that work. how many years were you involved? caller: 24 years. host: thank you. this is charlie in jonesboro, arkansas, republican. caller: morning. i wanted to call about that twitter release. i called you back after the election when joe biden won and i thought it was suspicious. i said, trump was trying so hard with the four rallies a day and all of the people were saying, i love you.

joe biden was not even trying to win the presidency. you could tell. it looked suspicious and i called the next day and you said everything was fair. but i trust you will take a fair and impartial look at this and see what happened. if these are high crimes that are worthy of looking at, geez, i think integrity matters. host: republicans in the house are promising to hold hearings about hunter biden. caller: they have to. it is past time. that would have changed the whole election. in other words, they cheated. do you see it the same way? host: i am only here to hear how you see things. this is herbert in high point, north carolina, independent. caller: good morning. host: go ahead.

caller: i want to say thank y'all. host: we are going to try to work on your line. this is john in lake geneva, wisconsin, independent. caller: good morning. the previous caller took some of my thunder. twitter. i have been watching the mainstream media channels this morning. have not heard anything yet about breaking news about what i believe is going to be the next big scandal, but that is because they were all involved themselves. in suppressing the information which would have changed the outcome of the previous election. i am not an election denier. joe biden is my president, however, i believe that is due to big tech and monopolies. they should be treated the same way john d rockefeller was treated by the government during

the standard oil monopoly and breakup of the oil company monopolies. it will be interesting to see what transpires after this all comes out. thank you for taking my call and i appreciate c-span let regular americans like me have our voices heard. one last quick things. i watch all channels. a lot of the callers say, fox news is this and that. fox news is the only media channel which gives you more of a conservative view. i do not follow oen or the other channels. i tried to be independent and get all the sides. thank you for taking my call. host: mary in martinsville, virginia. caller: hello?

i am a 77-year-old woman and i can look back and remember when gas in my area was $.25 a gallon. that was when i was in my late 20's, early 30's. it has been a long time and gas in my area is $3.29 at most stations for regular. but that is not the only issue seniors have. food is hard to find, the things that we want, the things we were used to. and then you have to be careful how you use it so you do not use it at one time. but fruit is getting harder to find. meats are harder to find. inflation with the food products, those on social security, it is difficult to get groceries you can afford. if you have to go with the other

quality of products that do not meet standards just to make it, that is not the way we are supposed to be living. god created this country and he made it where we should be able to share and love each other. not fight and worry about things we are having to do every day. host: couple of minutes left in the open forum. a very capitol hill story to share with you from "the new york times." the cheers and sneers filled an ornate room on capitol hill friday coming from 73 soon to be freshman house members. that is the lottery for selecting their new offices. basically a college room draw. they can be stressful and

raucous. the process went remote during the pandemic. participants brought down dancing and chanting & waving for good fortune. here's where max miller, republican from ohio, got the first place spot in that lottery. [video clip] >> mr. miller. >> go on, max. [indistinct conversation] >> number one. [cheering] [applause] host: that moment from on capitol hill yesterday. that is the room full of the 74 newly elected freshman members of the house.

that will do it for our open forum but we have about 45 minutes left in our program. in that time, it will be our spotlight on podcasts. we are joined by sarah longwell of the republican accountability project. we will discuss her podcast "focus group." announcer: live sunday on in-depth, chief new york times correspondent peter baker and new york staff writer will be our guests to talk about russia, the trump administration and u.s. foreign policy. the husband-and-wife team have written three books together. join the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments,

text messages and tweets. in depth with peter baker and susan glasser at noon on book tv sunday on c-span2. announcer: next week on the c-span networks, tuesday at 11:00 a.m. eastern, house speaker nancy pelosi and other members of congress will hold a gold medal ceremony honoring the u.s. capital ndc police who protected the capitol january 6. at 10:00 a.m. on wednesday we look at politicking in the supreme court following allegations of leaked decisions. the house and senate are both in session working to pass legislation by december 16 to avoid shut down. the house will also take up the 2023 defense policy bill. the senate will also vote on president biden's judicial

nominations. watch next week live on the c-span networks or c-span now, our free mobile video app. head over to c-span.org for scheduling information. c-span, your and filtered -- your unfiltered view of government. announcer: only at c-span do you get this straight from the source. no matter where you are from or where you stand, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. if it happens here or here or here or anywhere that matters, america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. announcer: congress gets back to work in the wake of the midterm elections. watch in the next weeks as the 118th congress elect leaders, makes key committee assignments, greets new members and sets the

agenda for january 2023. the outgoing congress uses its final weeks to tackle unfinished business such as defense spending, judicial nominations and funding for the federal government, which is set to expire december 16. follow it all live on the c-span networks and c-span now, our free mobile video app, or anytime on demand at c-span.org. announcer: washington journal continues. host: each saturday in this segment of "washington journal" weep focus on a podcast. sarah longwell was founder of the bulwark. you may not know the podcast "the focus group." what is the focus? guest: in 2018, i started doing focus groups.

i was trying to understand the trump phenomenon and why voters found him to be a champion for their values. as someone who had been republican my whole life and found donald trump to be different from what i expected, i was interested in why republican voters like to. i begin doing focus groups and back then, it was in person. i would fly all over the country and i would listen to voters talk about why they supported donald trump. when the pandemic hit i was so addicted to the focus groups. i was so interested in consistently hearing about what voters were thinking about current politics that we started doing them over zoom. that allowed us to do them more and more. i talked to democratic voters, republican voters, trump voters, swing voters. over the last few months,

we do about one a week -- we have focused on the independent and swing voters. too often it washington people think they know what voters are thinking. but when you listen to voters all the time patterns emerge. get a clear understanding of what is on their mind what is driving their behavior. i have been doing them for four years and, at some point, i was telling people about the focus groups. people were skeptical. they did not believe me. i started the podcast a year and a half ago because i wanted people to hear directly from the voters. i wanted them to hear their voices, their rationale, so that we could -- one of the problems in our country is we do not understand each other.

we live in these isolated geographic bubbles and we do not interact with people. people have a hard time imagining this person on the opposite side of the spectrum. i think allowing people to hear directly from voters can be something of a service. that is what the podcast is about. we listened to voters talk about why they think what they think. host: what does it do? how does it work? how do you find the people? what you ask? guest: there are dedicated companies for people that have agreed to be in the focus groups. most people who do focus groups are looking for people who are the shoppers in the grocery store or they are trying to understand the user experience of a new program. for us it is politics.

we work with these people who have agreed to be in focus groups and we get information from their voting history, their education level, their geography. and then you do a screener. in the last two months we have been saying, we would like to find people who voted for trump in 2016, biden in 2020. those we categorize as the swing voters. those of the people democrats had to hold onto. we do them almost the same way and ask the same questions every time so we can compare things over time. you always start the same way, how do you think things are going in the country? and then you ask, what is most on your mind? what do care about the most? how do you think joe biden is doing? why did you vote for donald

trump in 2016 and joe biden in 2020? how are you thinking about upcoming elections? how are you thinking about your political party and its future? that is the information we are able to get. we did several groups this week where we were able to ask, donald trump announced his run for president. are you happy? for those who voted for him twice, do you think it is a good thing? are you interested in 70 else? if so, who else? those are great conversations to get the pulse of where any given political group and their political party. host: those comments not unusual for people who listen to this program. i want to play a clip of a focus group talking about former president trump potentially running again in 2024.

[video clip] >> i do not want four more years of orange man bad and everybody screaming about every time he tweets and he did some really bad tweets. i do not want four more years of that. >> i think trump did a great job for this country. especially since so many presidents focus on the east coast and sometimes the west coast. they forget all the rest the united states. it was nice to have a president who is focusing on the rest of us. and so many things he did were great. but then we had all this stuff that happened that the media pounced. since then, with the trials and everything, i think if he won the presidency, there would be so much backlash. i do not know if it could be as effective as a presidency as he

did with his first four years. >> i would love for trump to be president again. however, my only concern is what he actually get elected? i want to make sure whoever does run as the very best chance of beating the democratic candidate. i think that democrats would have a firestorm if he ran again. i think he would pull out every punch, every trick to not get him elected. for those reasons, even though most of these were probably media based, i think it would cause too much of a firestorm. >> he is older and not to say someone of that age is not able to do the job, but if you want to get eight years, you do not know what is going to happen your early 80's.

biden has been having issues and the same happened to reagan. host: that was from a focus group for "the focus group." what is the science and art of turning those individual conversations and comment into broader interpretation of the electorate as a whole? guest: it is one of the reasons i like to do them every week. i would say it is more arts and science. it comes down to the difference between what polling does, which is quantitative, and focus groups which are qualitative. a lot of times polling, which is an imperfect instrument, can kind of tell you what. like, what percentage of joe people think joe biden is doing a good job and what percentage think he is doing a poor job? when you do them every week one

of the things that happens is you here across different geographies. people in the midwest and the east coast. you hear republicans talking about things and what happens is patterns emerge. you hear the same thing over and over again. you played all of those clips. those were very diverse geographies of people. but they were trump voters. they like trump. as you can hear, they are consistent in what they're saying. i like him, i think he did a good job, however, i am worried about his electability going forward. i am worried because he is so polarizing the left will come after him so hard and we need to look around for somebody new. i hear that in every focus group with trump voters. and have since the january 6 hearings began. that is when i started to see a decline in interest from

republican and trump voters who wanted trump to run again in 2024. is less of a science but more i am able to say, i went from seeing consistently in groups trump voters -- more than half would say, i would love to see him run again. suddenly, lots of groups where zero people want to see him run again. and now more and more you get people saying they would like to turn the page. i think that allows us -- and a lot of times you have to use them in companion with polls. you seen polls where they have become skeptical of the idea he should run again. i see that reflected in the focus groups and i can explain to people, here is why those numbers are going down. host: 30 minutes left in our program to give you our own form

of focus group that we do every day. sarah longwell is here to talk about her podcast "the focus group." phone lines as usual. republicans (202)-748-8001, democrats (202)-748-8000, independents (202)-748-8002. as folks are calling in, the tagline if you go to apple podcast for yours ", unfiltered uncompromising, a into what the average voter that is about politics, policy and current events." what is the average voter in america look like? guest: we want to distinguish them from people in washington. one of the things i felt so illuminating as someone who is interested in politics, i could not understand the trump

phenomenon. they're are all these things that i missed. even though i considered myself a republican, i believed in limited government and american leadership in the world, i was not a good representation of the voters -- the republican voters that were interested in donald trump. one of the things that is interesting wishing factor is i do politics. that is my job. but most voters, their engagement with politics is a much smaller percentage of their mind share. they are much more focused on things like their families and how politics is impacting them economically. i listened to your callers and there was one woman talking

about food scarcity. in the first time she could remember, she had these problems getting things at the grocery store. i think it is really important that people in washington hear from people that that is their main concern. you're talking about the hunter biden investigation. is that what voters want? maybe. some people do. or is what they really want somebody to do something about inflation and gas prices and supply chains? look, there are people that want different things, but it is important to hear from voters. they are not sucked into washington. they are thinking about what is happening in their life. host: thomas is in humboldt, texas, independent. caller: hey.

i hope everybody is doing well. host: you are going in and out a little bit. caller: can you hear me? host: just for a second. let's go to jail in columbus -- jill, in columbus, ohio. caller: i listen to your podcast. i am able work subscriber and i love the podcast. i want to ask you about some of the most recent -- actually, a lot of the focus groups, i noticed republicans say what they want in a candidate is a fighter. i find that kind of scary. what do you think they mean by "fighter? " guest: thank you for listening to the podcast and subscribing. this is a very consistent theme

across trump voters, republican voters. one of the things they liked about trump was the fact that they saw him as fighting for their values. would listen to the trump voters, a lot of them will talk about the culture changing in ways they object to. they feel like america has changed in ways they do not recognize. they want somebody -- their oppression of the republicans of the past is they were not tough enough to stand up to democrats culturally. they thought they capitulated too much to democrats and were too soft on things. what they liked about trump's they felt he was really tough on democrats. that he was trying to punch people in the nose and they liked his combative style.

there were a lot of people who liked it and other republicans were like, ugh, i am not sure i like that. but they started to get more interested in seeing that kind of fighter mentality out of politicians. as they look forward to other candidates they do not like the idea of going back to the mitt romney style. you do not hear a lot of people in the focus groups excited about mike pence. they want to go more with somebody like ron desantis or kristi noem or other politicians. these are primary voters. some of the most committed, partisan trump republicans. what they want is somebody who is going to fight with the media and pushback on democrats and liberal orthodox. that is one thing they prize more than policy.

host: what is the republican accountability project? guest: the bulwark is an online magazine. thebulwark.com. we have podcasts and people who write every day, bill kristol, tim miller, and most of us come from the center-right. most of us were longtime conservatives. bill kristol ran the weekly standard. most of us come from the center-right but are concerned about the direction of the republican party. that was the core of the group that started the bulwark back in the beginning of 2019. the republican accountability project is different. i run a number of projects that were focused on helping pro-democracy republicans win primaries and defeating the election deniers in the general.

we were one of the biggest outside spenders against kari lake. we fought hard against the election denying secretary of state's. s. it is focused on keeping election deniers out of elected office. host: donna is a republican. caller: i would like to share my point of view. i am a republican and i will tell you how i see things. since biden took office, our food has gone up, milk is six dollars a gallon. they say trump's is like a bull.

well, trump did a speech close to the white house. he did not tell nobody to charge the white house. i am responsible for my own actions. he did not tell them to charge no white house. i watched the impeachment on tv. not one time did he run from impeachment and he was found innocent. he is old-school and i like old-school. when trump runs again there are going to be a lot of republicans like me that are going to vote for trump. host: sarah? guest: i hear this concern about inflation and grocery prices. they are related to the supply

chain disruption coming off of a pandemic. a pandemic that donald trump did not take seriously and did very little to address and downplayed. but i do think with voters -- and i hear this all the time -- if you are the president while something is happening, while you are existing under this inflationary problem and people are hurting, people are going to want something done. but we also came out of an election where the fundamentals of the election were that you had high inflation, high gas prices, an unpopular president in joe biden, and yet, many of the candidates that donald trump endorsed and brought to power, like kari lake, doug mastriano,

like dr. oz. they all lost. they lost because, as i said in the focus groups, i have been listening to swing voters. even though the swing voters were very concerned about inflation and very concerned about the economy and gas prices and crime, they did not want to vote for these really trumpy candidates. they did not want to vote for blake masters or kari lake or doug mastriano, who lost by 15 points in a year that should have been good for republicans. the reason republicans are underperforming what they should be doing is because swing voters are moving away from the republican party long as it is trumpy. i feel that way too. while i understand there is a deep well of support among a group of base voters, the

candidates they are nominating are unpopular with the general election voters. that is why those candidates are losing. host: the latest episode of "the focus group" is with amy walter. four hours ago you posted a new episode focusing on georgia. let's go to georgia. marietta, georgia. caller: good morning. i am a descendant of a black slave, i am a black nationalist and a panafricanist. i voted for him in 2016 and i will vote for him again. everybody knows about him. they knew about his history.

he did not hide it. to me, he is the most honest of the politicians i have ever encountered. no, he is not perfect, but he stands on his square. he is not going to sit in front of one set of people and say one thing and sit in front of another group of people and say another. other politicians will say anything to get elected. they lie all the time. i hear all the time about donald trump, he is constantly lying. it only takes once to be considered a liar. i do have no one single person on this planet that has not lied. guest: that caller and the color before sound like the trump voters in the focus groups. these voters are still very

committed to donald trump running again. this is the thing i have been trying to parse out now that donald trump has announced and we are going back into presidential primaries. how deep is the commitment from that core of voters who will not abandon trump? these voters and these callers, it does not matter to them. it does not sound like trump had dinner with a noted white supremacist. and kanye west who has been talking about hitler did good things. for a lot of voters, that is bad and they do not want to vote for a candidate like that. but i have heard people say what that woman said about -- people say he is a liar but to me, he sounds like he tells the truth.

i understand. that as a sentiment i have heard over and over. the question is, if he is telling the truth, do you like what he is saying? do you like it when he calls immigrants criminals and rapists? do you like it when he tells members of congress of color to go back where they came from? do you like it when he has dinner with very well-known white nationalists and white supremacists? if you like that when he tells the truth, if he tells the proud boys to stand back and stand by, if you are for that, ok. but most voters are not in donald trump and candidates like him -- while people may find them more authentic -- based on the last three elections were donald trump and the republican

party have done poorly, i think there is a majority of voters who do not want that. host: i imagine your latest episode of "the focus group" is about the runoff between rafael warnock at herschel walker. what did you find when it came to georgia focus groups? guest: we talked to a group of trump 2016 voters and most that voted for him in 2020. is a really interesting group. i hope people listen to the episode. there were two people in the group that were going to vote for rafael warnock, the democrat. one of them had not voted in the general election. she was just going to vote in the runoff and her reasons had to do with herschel walker's extreme positions on abortion. another woman had voted for walker in the general but changed her mind to vote for

warnock because she had seen more of the ads about how he held a gun to his wife's had. and his son talked about how they had to move because he was threatening them. they had clips from the woman he allegedly paid to have an abortion. over time -- listening to these voters it is clear they are seeing ads every minute of every day. they are very exhausted by the ads and the negativity but i also think it has been breaking through that herschel walker seems underqualified. listening to the ones that were planning to vote for walker, there analysis was, yeah, walker is not a good guy. he is not a qualified candidate. but they were looking for numbers. they were doing a calculation about the math.

they wanted a 50-50 senate. they know the democrats will be able to win because they have a tiebreaker vote. but they wanted it as even as they could get it. it was not about herschel walker at all. it was about wanting republicans to have more control in the senate. host: this is wes in spartanburg. caller: good morning. the worst you could say about donald trump is having dinner with a pro-nazi and kanye. they might think it is very bad? host: what is the question? guest: that is the question. if all you can say is that it is very bad and we cannot say abhorrent, disgusting, repellent.

from a person that is representing the republican party, i think you could have the spine to say that. that is the problem with the republican party. scott galloway has a great youtube channel. he calls it the "duck dynasty was quote stupid. that is what the -- "duck dynasty" stupid. guest: i think you would hear from most of these voters that they think it is abhorrent. i can say a lot of worst things about donald trump in terms of

his actions and things he said. but what i'm trying to categorize is speak to the median. they think it is horrible and they will not vote for him. but the anger was coming from the caller on the idea a lot of republicans have not spoken out against donald trump openly having dinner with -- it is astonishing and deeply concerning that the past president of the united states was fine sitting down with a webster premises and notable antis -- with a known white supremacist and anti-semite. you do not hear a lot of republicans condemning it.

a lot of them did not name donald trump but the republican party have always been too accommodating of trump. he cited against the american intelligence community. he has done some of the most astonishingly corrupt and indecent things i have ever seen in my political life. one of the greatest disappointments to me has been the inability of republicans to stand up and say how wrong it is what he is doing. host: what you think of kevin mccarthy and mitch mcconnell's reaction to that dinner? guest: take mitch mcconnell. i think i'm getting it right when his response was anti-semitism has no place in the republican party. well, there are two members of congress, marjorie taylor greene and paul gosar, and both of them have attended nick fuentes white

nationalist conference. they are members in good standing of republicans in congress. there has been too much tolerance and there is always been too much tolerant of anti-semitism. the republican party has a problem where white nationalist are being given far too much accommodating hearing. they are allowed to exist within the party without total condemnation. those are just words. they are not doing anything about it. they are not saying, donald trump disqualified himself and we will not back him under any circumstances going forward. they leave the door open to supporting him because they were afraid of his committed base of support to do not care. and nobody is sure what is going

to happen in a republican primary. they think trump is weaker. they want glenn youngkin to run, they want ron desantis to run. nikki haley, i think they hope a lot of people will challenge trump, but they will not take him on directly because they are afraid if he wins, the support and again. host: we are speaking with bulwark publisher sarah longwell. the podcast in this week's focus on podcasts is "the focus group ." 10 minutes left in our program. 10 minutes before that united states-netherlands world cup game a lot of our viewers will head to after this. byron has been waiting in cleveland, tennessee, republican. caller: good morning. i think donald trump was one of the best presidents we have elected in a long time. what i like about him is he

focuses on the united states of america and doing what is right for them. i think you will come up for reelection and i will vote for him. i like his personal use on the way he handles the united states. i worry about communist china and i think joe biden is a member of the communist party. host: do you mind if i ask you about that topic we were talking about? the former president's dinner without white supremacist? with a noted anti-semite? what you think of that dinner? caller: they are part of the

united states also. they have their right to say the way they think. everybody does not support them. host: do you think of former president should have dinner with them? caller: why not? they are part of the electorate. i think they have the most right to say what is on their mind as anyone else. donald trump's for protective united states and i worry about the communist party. i think joe biden is a communist. that is the way i feel and i will vote for donald trump again. host: sarah? guest: went a lot of voters are

willing to accommodate things i believe and many, or hopefully most americans think are disqualifying, like a presidential candidate dining -- calling them white supremacists is not hyperbole. this is how nick fuentes defines himself. you can say these people have freedom of speech and the right to their opinions. of course. they have the right to be free of violence and think what they think. the idea that a presidential candidate in america in 2022 one sit and dine with a self described white supremacist. dine with somebody saying hitler was fine, hitler did some good things. i cannot tell you how astonishing that is. it is not a thing that happens

in modern america but it is happening. i am always disappointed when i hear somebody say they do not think that matters much. i understand that there are things donald trump does that they like and they think are good. is that more important than living in a country where we actively reject white supremacy? when people are holocaust deniers and do not admit 6 million jews were murdered by the nazis and hitler, kanye west after the interview released a star of david with a swastika in the middle. that is who donald trump had dinner with. these are gross, despicable, unconscionable things that no president should tolerate and should have no place in american politics. until republicans find their voice to condemn donald trump,

the house judiciary committee, the republican house judiciary committee tweeted months ago three words, "kanye, elon, trump." holding them up as great examples. one of them is a very noted anti-semite who tweeted out a star of david and said hitler did good things. donald trump had dinner with them and another white supremacist. if we think that is ok for politics, that is a scary place for america to be. host: minnesota, stan is an independent. caller: good morning. after that rant i can paint her with a broad brush of a communist. i was living in alaska and when sarah palin got elected -- she

quit. trump did not quit. i am fed up with the trump haters. as far as i'm concerned, she is a regular old russian bot. guest: i spent 15 years working on conservative policy and working for republicans. whatever. i am not going to dignify somebody who wants to name call about things that are untrue. host: phyllis on the line for democrats. caller: good morning. i am pleased to get on your program. i get up very early and i love to turn on c-span. one thing i am concerned about is trump has always talked about the media being evil.

i am wondering in your podcast if you ever ask people if they watch anything besides fox news? i turn on fox news now and then but i read all the other evil medias. i am just concerned that when i hear people call in and they are parroting what they're hearing on fox news. guest: one of the things we ask about his media consumption. there is a lot of people -- actually, after 2021 fox news called arizona for joe biden, there were fox news watchers that were angry. they went looking for other

sources of media. there were people who watch newsmax, oann, steve bannon. the right wing media ecosystem goes much more -- it is much bigger than fox news. for sure the people that are the most committed trump partisans consume that media. those are people that put forward the idea that your political opponents who have different policy ideas or do not like trump are communists or socialists. which is very silly and not a good analysis. but often people are watching things like their local news. their local news is a big source of news. and the swing voters tend to talk -- like the caller did -- where they watch different things. they watch a little fox, a little cnn and they're trying to get a diverse range of

information. people have started to understand that the media has bifurcated in these ways that are meant to cater to specific partisan audiences. they are beating people -- feeding people back what they believe. if they hate democrats, they want media that gives them the reasons they might hate democrats. and vice versa. there is a number of places on the left where if you want to hear things bad about republicans, you can get that too. our media consumption is one of the things contributing deeply to our polarization and the fact we don't understand each other. we go deeper down these rabbit holes of getting media that reflects what we already believed and feeds that as opposed to challenging us or giving us new information. is one of. the problems in our politics. host: will have to end there but

for folks who may be interested -- host: we will have to end there. but for folks interested in getting your podcast, where can they do that? guest: you can get that from apple podcasts. you can go to thebulwark.com. we publish episodes on saturday. today's the season finale for 2022. we will be back in 2023. host: you can also find her on twitter @sarahlongwell25. guest: thank you. host: we will be back here tomorrow morning. in the meantime, we can cheer on team usa and have a great saturday. ♪ [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] ♪