coming up on washington journal, the rgeon general's warning on youth mental health. josh golin with the group fairplay. and watergat50 years on. catherine scott and rutgers professor david greenberg are our guest. "washington journal," starts now. host: good morning it is

saturday may 27. still no deal on the debt ceiling in danger of possible default. we will keep an eye out and update you if anything should happen. it is graduation season and the house passed legislation nullifying the student loan forgiveness. do you agree with that? in the first hour we will get your thoughts on student debt relief. if you currently have student loan debt your number is (202) 748-8000, if you have paid off your debt (202) 748-8001, everyone else (202) 748-8002. you can text us at (202) 748-8003, on facebook facebook.com/cspan and twitter http://twitter.com/cspanwj.

here is the latest on the debt ceiling from the washington post, they raced to submit deal before the june 5 deadline. the article is the u.s. government will run out of money to meet all of its payment obligation on june 5. if congress does not raise the debt ceiling janet yellen told lawmakers on friday. providing a more precise timeline. her projections came as lawmakers struggle to strike a deal that would raise the nation's borrowing limit which republicans have saiis necessary to get there support to borrowing limit. our original subject for this hour is student debt and we put on the scresident bidens recommendation what his plans

were. that is up to $20,000 would be forgiven for pell ant recipients. those are low income borrowers. up to 10,000 for non-pell grant loans, it applies to those making under a 125,000 a year. it would b250,000 for married couples. there would also be a cap on payments for student loans at 5% of monthly income. let's take a look at the debate in congress that happened earlier this week. first up is bobby scott, a democrat, he speaks against the repeal of the student debt relief plan and the impact it would have. [video clip] >> my republican colleagues have

refused to acknowledge how the resolution would be implemented. under the congressional review act, you don't get to pick and choose which rule you are overturning, you would have to overturn the whole rule. how do you un-pause of payment? what will happen to those interest payments? what happens to the credit of participants they were promised during those months. firefighters, teachers, police officers who may have had their loans forgiven now on the hook for additional payments. it would trigger a wave of delinquencies and defaults for our most vulnerable borrowers.

it would create chaos for borrowers and their families as well as loan servicers in the congressional research service confirmed that this chaos would be triggered by the retroactive application of this rule. anyone in this country he wants to take advantage of the benefits of a college education should be able to do so, not just the wealthy few. that is the way it used to be. adjusted for inflation, states are paying less for colleges than they used to. this proposal does nothing to help students pay for education and i strongly urge my colleagues to oppose the resolution. host: that was bobby scott, here

now is representative virginia foxx, the chair of the education workforce committee. a republican speaking on favor of the repeal of the student debt cancellation. [video clip] >> enacting student loan cancellation could also lead to rate hikes by the federal reserve. billionaires don't feel the effect of inflation. they don't notice when eggs cost $5.99. working americans do. inflation already has a vice grip on blue-collar americans. in fact, the hill reported a record share of americans in a new survey from the federal reserve board say they are worse

off financially than they were a year earlier. that is troubling. it should be enough to nullify the bided administration's deficit increasing plan. but in typical liberal fashion, they want future taxpayers to foot the bill. americans shouldn't buy it. america also should not by accusations from the left that this will charge borrowers back interest payments. it could not be further from the truth. nowhere in this resolution doesn't mandate back pay. his perspective not retrospective. if anything it will be the secretary cardona plan.

we know who will pay for the loans going forward, those will pay are those without degrees and those who paid off their debt. those who cannot afford to put gas in the car or food on the table. the rest of his political noise. host: that was representative virginia foxx, talking about student loan debt forgiveness and we are asking your opinion. if you currently have student loan debt that number is (202) 748-8000, if you had student loan debt and already paid it off (202) 748-8001, everyone else can call us on (202) 748-8002. take a look at this politico article, how supposed to repeal

bidens student debt relief plan. it now faces an uncertain path in the senate. the house passed republican legislation to overturn president bidens student debt relief program and nullify the freeze on federal student loan payments. they cleared the house on a 218 -203 vote. it now heads to the senate. two democrats broke with biden in voting to block student debt relief. nearly all house republicans already voted to block student debt relief as part of their bill last month to raise the debt ceiling alongside spending cuts and policy changes. that is before the supreme court currently as to whether or not

president biden has the ability to forgive student loans. let's go to the phones, dorothy is calling from north carolina. caller: good morning, how are you? host: i'm good. caller: i paid my way through my masters program but for my doctorate program i owed $33,000. i worked in a county that took off $5,000. i think people are in trouble with student loan debt today because they take the entire amount every semester. if tuition is 6000 and they loan you 10,000, you should only take that 6000 because that is what i did. now that i paid off my student loans, i put that money in a

money market account. i want the president to help those who are in trouble with their student loans because i could been that way. i was grateful that the lord saw an helped me through paying off that $33,000 debt for my doctorate. host: do you feel that you've already paid it off it would be unfair for other people that have taken loans and would not have to pay back like you did? caller: no, i don't think it's unfair because i could have been in that same situation and i would've really needed that help. host: let's talk to michael in north carolina. caller: good morning. i want to wish americans a happy memorial day weekend. i totally agree with virginia

foxx, is another tax for the average american. i don't want to seem hard and unfair. some americans are already being helped with pain education, especially the poor. they can receive federal-aid and a lot of tuition being paid with scholarships. that is how i feel about it. i think there should be a little bit of a bed not full aid and student debt being paid off. host: what is your situation? caller: my situation is, i had to pay for my schooling in the past i tried to get a pell grant. my father passed away when i was 16 so it 18 i went to community college.

i was not able to receive help because of income. i have a hard path and it is made me a better person. host: let's go to danny in south carolina. caller: good morning. host: i think we should help people instead of having people -- helping people overseas. thank you. we have eileen and ilan park, new york. caller: yes. host: go ahead. caller: what information do you need from me? host: you are on the air so do you have student loan debt? caller: you're on the phone, you're on tv. host: you're on tv eileen.

caller: oh my god, can't believe it. i have student loans of $15,000. host: do you agree with president biden's plan or the republicans? caller: anything that helps me eradicate this debt, i will be for it. host: let's go to dusty in north carolina. caller: i think they should go ahead with this plan. i am really weary of the maga congress we have because they won't let bided look good. they did not come across on 2, 3 bills that were bipartisan.

this congress we have, jim jordan. host: why do you believe that student loans should be forgiven? caller: this is 2023, not 1980 when we were living in a whole different world. things were cheaper. britt was cheaper, houses were cheaper. -- rent was cheaper. you can hardly buy a car right now, the rent is so high. there are so many other expenses, a lot higher than when we were coming up. when i hear people saying i had

to pay mine. quit being so selfish. listen, when they don't have to pay that, that bill. for that education, they will take that money that they don't have to spend on that is some of them will put it in the bank and some of them will spend it somewhere else and put it right back into the economy. they will spend it somewhere. it's a real benefit. host: dusty, take a look at this article from npr. this is from last fall and the headline is, joe biden's student loan forgiveness plan will cost $400 billion. the white house quickly disputed

that number. it says that it downplays the 400 billion cost on the student forgiveness plan mostly because the cbo argued 90% of federal student loan borrowers would take advantage of the forgiveness plan, that number is too high and it's unlikely it would be 90%. we will talk to tom in zion, illinois. you paid off your debt? caller: good morning, i went to college in the late 80's. i am from illinois i went to college and the neighbor state where my sister attended. back then, to follow up on your last caller, the cost of going to college was so much different, so much cheaper.

i was a good student so i got an academic scholarship. but mainly i went to college on student loans and when i graduated with good grades, i came back to the chicago area is started working to pay down my loans. i didn't enter the business or corporate world, i had a different kind of career. it took me a while to take on the student loans because i didn't have a high income. however, rent back then was only $300 a month for an apartment. you could get a one bedroom for that price. the price of gas, the price of your first car. cost of living was much cheaper. this to me, the whole debate is

not just about joe biden and politics as usual and gamesmanship. this is about a generation that is paying twice the amount for college than i had to pay back in the late 80's. host: you see the problem as the cost of college? caller: that's part a of the problem. part b is that they are graduating into a world where they had to deal with covid and everything being shut down, the job market is not so healthy for people graduating. it's a totally different landscape out there and i feel sorry for these kids. that's why a lot of them, their parents are sending them to

community colleges because it's cheaper. host: let's take a look at some of the floor debate from earlier this week. this is representative bobby good. he introduced the house resolution and talks about the cost of the student loan relief plan. [video clip] >> it doesn't make the debt go away, it shifts the cost from the borrowers and transfers it to hard working american taxpayers. the key to the role this policy plays to the fiscal health of our nation as we address the debt ceiling. the principal of this resolution, nullifying the transfer scheme was one of the key provisions of the limit, save, grow out. asking americans to honor their commitments to pay back their own student loans will help us get our country spending under

control. student low borrowers are responsible for the debt they incurred in congress is responsible for the money we've spent. house republicans take that seriously which is why we passed a plan to raise the debt limit while providing historic savings. i invite pelosi to stand by her word and vote with me today in favor of this resolution to nullify president biden's transfer scheme. congress must reclaim its power and act today to stop the unilateral action that is exacerbating the higher education financial crisis. my resolution will do what should've been done a long time ago, and the repayment pause that has already cost taxpayers $195 billion. host: we are talking about the

student loan forgiveness plan. if you would like to call in you could do that. let's check in on a text we got from norfolk, virginia. i currently have a private student loan and i am responsible for paying it off. should we pay off mortgages or credit card debt? how do we get the cost of education more affordable without loans is the question. this is from mary who says, no one should have to pay for someone else's choice of school. if you can afford school the new stay home and go to local schools and make better financial choices. half these kids pick jobs that would take a lifetime of work to pay back loans it cost to get the degree. no pay 100,000 to get a degree that pays 20,000 a year.

on facebook, republicans don't want to pay for anything that helps normal people because that would take away from the giant tax breaks they give to millionaires and billionaires. let's go to stephen and miami, florida. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. the first thing i want to say to all of the callers the whole she was being politicized and not be presented properly. i have $20,000 in student loan debt and i am 58 years old. why haven't i paid off my loans? because of my income i am not allowed to deduct my student loan interest every year. if you make a certain amount of money you loose a deduction of student loan against your income taxes. here in florida, our property

insurance is gone through the roof. the money i was paying to pay off my student loan is being paid to pay off my property insurance which is gone up under ron desantis. i'm not taking money from other taxpayers to pay off my student loans, and in fact is the other way around. i being overtaxed and my money is being redistributed to pay off subsidies for others who have children where i should get the deduction on my taxes i get it back so i can pay off my student loan faster. that's not being said and those who are saying your money is paying for my student loans, that is false. that is not true. please stop listening to these

talking head shows because that is incorrect. host: paul is in cornwall, new york. go ahead paul. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i think you'd be responsible for paying your debt back. if you can't go to one of the larger universities, you start off at a community college. you work part-time and pay your bills that way. that is what i had to do and i was fortunate to get into a company that paid my bachelors degree and i was able to get it through a reimbursement program that my company had. there is nothing wrong with going to a community college. some friends of mine cannot wait to get their kids out of the house. they cosigned on loans with their kids, maybe that's not the way to do it. host: let's talk to ginger in wilmington, delaware. caller: i think what this

reveals what is so bad to me is that americans are so much more selfish than i realized. it doesn't affect anyone personally if the government forgives student loans. all this talk of the hundreds of dollars. we don't know what goes on as far as where are tax money goes dollar by dollar. these people find themselves in situations that are impossible. is there something wrong -- the government gave them the loan in the first place, is there something wrong with trying to alleviate an economic problem the government got them into to begin with. when i went to college years ago, la's city college cost

6.50 a semester. host: let's take a look at pramila jayapal. she out who stands to gain from the student loan forgiveness plan. [video clip] >> this absurd approach to block the student debt relief plan hurts those who are most at risk. older americans owned 1/5 of student loan debt. it is increased fivefold in the last five years. black americans oh 44,000, 6 million americans living in rural areas owe an average of 35,000 and a reversal would put 260,000 public servants and servicemembers under the thumb of these crushing payments.

those who receive the public service -- sacrifice too much to steal relief that they were already given and counting on. our job is to protect working people ensuring that no one goes into unpayable debt just to get a degree to pursue their dreams. this would increase the likelihood of defaulting for teachers, public servants across the board and it would be a drop in the bucket to addressing the deficit. republicans took money from taxpayers and handed it to corporations and dozens of them had no problem pocketing 22 million and ppp forgiveness just in this body. congress should be prioritizing aid to seniors to working families and not the wealthy. host: that was representative

pramila jayapal talking about student loan forgiveness that we are taking your calls this hour. take a look at twitter, this is margie who says i paid my student loan so we don't approve the repeal. student loan cost or exorbitant. the plan costs the taxpayers. the banks didn't lose a dime. the structure of these loans need reorganization. we talked to erin from louisville, kentucky. caller: good morning. host: what do you think? caller: i ended up paying off my student loans two years after i

graduated. i graduated 2017. i went to a local university in indiana and ended up graduating with a bachelors in political science. i don't get americans that think this is some handouts of people who are making exorbitant amounts of money. i was encouraged to go to university: my parents and a lot of people are in the same situation. host: how big was your debt if you don't mind me asking? caller: because i mostly focus on school while going to college it got up to $30,000 and i ended up transitioning to a job and working through that.

but i ended up forgoing retirement to pay off student loans. so i paid 30,000 in 2020. host: ed from west virginia. caller: i got tired of working minimum wage at 39 years old. i decided to go to college to get a little bit of an education and maybe i could make a decent wage. i borrowed $1500 and went to a community college to get a two-year degree. i borrowed $1500 and then found out i was going blind. there i was going blind and i

got $54 in food stamps. i am not completely blind. i got a loan and i paid it back and nobody will think much of this. 54 months at $34 a month. i know it doesn't sound like much money but let me tell you, i went on to disability and my disability was 360 a month in 1975. i paid that often 54 months. my friend had two children and they kept all of her income tax

that she was going to get back. they have the deal with the children where you get money back. host: what do you think of the plan to forgive up to $20,000 for low income people and $10,000 for those making a little more. what you think of that? caller: i think they have to pay it back. i'll tell you why now, i could have gotten more than $1500. i had a friend that went to college for seven years i said romney, how can you do that? he said that's how i live, i get a loan. this year i'm going into coal mining.

he got into trouble for drugs and messing around. but he lived for seven years that way. they buy a car, thus all included in the loan. the car, the trips to florida. that is all part of the school loan, they live it out. they go down to the beach. that's how my friend lived for seven years. it is not just the school loan, they live on that and they live high on the hog. host: let's talk to luca next in newport, pennsylvania. caller: good morning, hi. i used to work for a company where we serviced federal student loans. there are programs for people to

help people. without getting too far into the weeds. depending on the type of federal loan, there are programs where your payments are based on your income. it's called income-based repayment depending on the type of loan you have. is 10% or 15% depending on specifics of your adjusted gross income, your income becomes your adjusted payment. there are plans, after 20, 25 years whatever is left on the loan is forgiven. i know a lot of these people are complaining, they have to work with these plans. i put people on these every day for five years. i know what i'm talking about. host: kathy is in hanover,

massachusetts. caller: in morning. this is what i think. i think it's a bit of a racket in terms of this is the only diet you can't wipe out with bankruptcy. i think the bind and plan is a band-aid for a more institutional issue. as people of mentioned individuals cap make enough income to pay back all the loans that have been taken out. my feeling is, the lenders should be held partially responsible for allowing the loans to be given to people if they can't make the income to pay back loans.

we put ourselves in a situation where it's not a good place to be. parents have taken out loans to help their kids pay for college. thus the way we've always lived in the past 20 years. they put themselves in a situation where they're at risk for their retirement capability. i think the bind and plan is a band-aid. i think the one time relief package is a band-aid to a larger issue that needs to be addressed systemically. host: thank you kathy. let's take a look at this paul they came out earlier this month. support for student loan

forgiveness varies across different amounts. the doctor as all americans, the turquoise is for those who have student loans, 47 percent of americans, nearly half do you agree with forgiving up to 20,000 of federal student loan debt for pell grant recipients and up to 10,000 for non-pell grants recipients. this is paradigm -- the numbers decrease for forgiving all student loan. that is the poll from ipso. let's talk to crystal from kansas city, missouri.

caller: yes i paid off my student loans but i also had public service pell grants because i work for the federal government and i think one thing people forget is that a lot of these universities and colleges, they get a lot of money off of student loans. that is just reality. that is why you have a lot of these universities and colleges that are closing because they no longer have the student pull because a lot of people are getting college educations from universities online. i think there is a downside when you say not to forgive. i paid off mind but do i think someone else should be afforded that? yes. because these universities charge very expensive prices and that is why you have a down effect with closings because

people are marketing towards verifications or online degrees. host: what you think of people who say we are just transferring this to taxpayers. caller: i would say this, it does not transfer to taxpayers per se. there needs to be something done about universities who charge excessive amounts. a lot of students who borrowed the money, some of those universities are even in existence. who wrote off on that? i don't think taxpayers are paying i think people are not educated and say things like that without looking at the

larger picture. host: anna is in melbourne, florida. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead, what do you think about student loan forgiveness? caller: i have three grandchildren and a couple of great-grandchildren and they go to school, university. what happened is, the interest is very high. one of my granddaughters she owns 50000 and she is struggling to pay that. you need to be aware, now she has to pay high interest and they don't have insurance. if they don't pay the percentages that the bank wants,

i fought for my grandchildren to go to college. that's where it's at right now. host: here is karine john pierre talking about this before the vote late on wednesday. [video clip] >> if i left you with any doubt about how the republicans, they will vote on a resolution to block president biden's plan to provide up to 20,002 student debt relief most of whom make less then 75,000 a year. the president's plan is a good one, a popular one and it will help prevent borrowers from default when payments restart the summer. the choice we make today will send a clear message to their constituents. let's take a look, marjorie taylor greene who had 183,000 of her own business loans forgiven look to deny debt relief to the

92 thousand student borrowers she represents? will representative vern buchanan who had over 2.3 million of business loans forgiven vote to deny student debt relief for 95,000 of his own constituents? to the more than 40 million eligible student borrowers who are eagerly waiting to learn about the state of their debt relief, i urge you to tune in and to today's vote to watch which republicans shamelessly vote against debt relief after having their own loans forgiven. know this, president biden will not stand for it. he will veto this bill. host: that was white house press secretary talking about the legislation that passed on

wednesday in the house nullifying president biden's debt relief plan. tom is in charlottesville, virginia. good morning. caller: i paid back my student loans. anyone who signs a contract, borrows money for anything, a car loan, all mortgage should pay it back. i think the reason we are in this problem right now is the federal government took over student loans and a big way some years ago. they thought they would print money and then loan it to students for six persons and then pay for obama care. student loan should come directly from the schools so the schools have something in the game and they would fed the borrowers more if they were on the hook for the loans. host: let's go to mary in

minneapolis, minnesota. caller: good morning, i find it very interesting that those who receive student loans such as myself and repaid them find it difficult to say, because i paid all of mine back so why shouldn't everyone else? i find it interesting that many of those folks don't have a history of knowing what it meant not to have a new student loans. i am old enough to tell you when i went to school in the 1950's before student loans, one went to school by working 2, 3 jobs as i used to do or doing any number of things to make less of a payment for their student debt. it is sad for so many do not

realize, to have compassion should really recognize that it is a matter of we are responsible for one another and to say that taxes, i want you to know i and my husband paid back a hundred $50,000 because we went to school again in the 1970's when those loans were available. we received professional degrees at that time. in doing so, we were grateful. i don't begrudge the fact that there are people who after they graduated or even if they don't graduate, after they made the obligation to repay the loans but find their life

circumstances are different they don't deserve the compassion. if you received a pell grant you were someone who had to work while you were going to school. to say we are giving back 20,000, if their reasons are feted, that should be something we should be proud of as americans. we have gotten to the point where we as americans have an attitude of all for me and we aren't thinking about the fact that as americans we won't progress in this country unless we come back to feeling as though we could help one another. i am 85 years old. i was married to someone who had five degrees, four of which did not have any student loans but the medical degree, he had a

fine career for 45 years after completing his studies. the student loans, we repaid them and it was extremely difficult. the fact is, we were grateful and i don't think we as a nation should have this attitude that i paid mine let them pay all of theirs. host: david is next in valdosta, georgia. caller: good morning. that was quite a call. my point is exactly what mary was saying. when i went to college i went on the g.i. bill. i didn't have a bunch of degrees, took what i needed. i did what i had to do. what's going out today with forgiving these loans. they are not forgiving loans they're letting someone else pay for their loans.

if i wanted a new car should i buy your car? host: wouldn't you argue that the federal government paid for your degree? caller: i worked for it, i earned it. i did something for that. the fact is, i words. my work is what got that money for me. in other words i didn't get it free and clear. we are subsidizing these higher education schools because every time they subsidize something they raise the price of the school. if you have lending organizations? -- host: how do you tell a private organization you can charge more? caller: i'm telling you what's going on, joseph biden is buying

votes. this whole organization, he is giving away money to people if you vote for me. that's the intent of this. everything he does, if you do this i will give you money. you look at some of his programs, doesn't it appear to you that if they give you a dollar i'll give you a dollar 50. when they do subsidize these things like education, that increases the price because it's free money. someone else is going to pay for it. like the lady who called in saying that american taxpayers will pay for this. host: let's talk to dee and

maryland. you have a student loan? caller: thank you for taking my call. i think they should help with those student loan debt. there are students coming from other countries who are able to come to school and they know how to pay those loans back. those loans are being paid by taxpayers. i also think we should make wealthy americans pay their fair share of taxes. they get so many tax breaks. people like me who are middle-class have to pay a lot of taxes and we pay taxes for services that people get free and i think they should help pay for kids going to school. host: let's talk to lynn in oregon. good morning. caller: i have a couple of

different perspectives on this. i have a friend he was in his 50's and had a business degree and had a large student loan who was unable to find a job because of his age. he was able to pay his back through an inheritance. i have a grandson that just turned 19. he started school and he soon realized that even though he was getting some help with school, he would not be able to keep out and he decided to put it on pause and go to work full time. and then at another time when he's saved something and has a better perspective when he was sure what he wanted to do. that is to perspective on things.

the lady from florida said about her three grandchildren and high interest. i wonder why instead of forgiving the loan which just encourages others to get loans. why don't they just not charge interest? those interest compounds on some of those high loans which drives up the amount that they owe. that would be helpful. another man said that i thought was very good. once you get the government involved, things tend to rise at cost. half of the colleges have some skin in the game and fed the loans and have partial responsibility. i don't know how you would put that into place but i think that would cut down on people going to school to go to school and not knowing what they are going to do and getting degrees that

are not helpful. host: let's speak to catherine in bolingbrook, illinois. caller: good morning, i would like to tell you a story. my husband, after he got his undergraduate degree at wayne state university, he was accepted at carnegie mellon for his phd. carnegie mellon is very expensive. the government paid for his education as well as gave him a stipend to live. the reason is he was working and nuclear research so the government spent six years, got his phd and i am sure the amount that he got was over 100,000. host: was he required to work for the government? caller: no. it was a program where the

government was trying to get people who are smart work and nuclear fields. so he got his degree and nuclear chemistry and worked at labs after he got his phd. the government was beginning to cut back on nuclear research so they said he could go to a national lab in california and help develop a product that would be a bomb that they would drop during war that would kill people as a buildings. my has been to do that kind of work. he never did get back into research. he was accepted as a teacher at stanford. this whole thing about who pays. if you are in the right field, the government will pay for you no matter what. if you want to get a degree that is going to develop you and you are sensitive to certain things.

you are going to have to pay for that of the government will pay for a very smart people to get their degrees no matter what. because they need people to work in fields. host: are there programs going on like that right now where the government pays for your degree? caller: after my husband got his phd we went on with our life. he never had a student loan ever in his life. i don't know if those programs exist. it is possible. host: let's talk to shelby and auburn georgia. caller: as we go forward, remember the sacrifices of our fallen that gives us the privilege to be able to call c-span that is the voice of a nation. this topic is about a resolution, not a bill that will be signed into law whereby they

have signed a bill into law that will forgive public student loan. these are not private loans, this is public. the structure of our united states is that we create opportunities for our peoples. through the development of many structures of payment for that. we did it as a press secretary said when we gave congress people hundreds of thousands of dollars, for the ppp. web businesses do they have that they would even need that forgiven? let's look at the polling you showed. i went to google because i wanted to see where the

intersection of the 80%, 90% of people that have student debt. those are students, residents. in florida, 2.6 million, ohio, georgia 1,470,000. west virginia, the state of west virginia they have 227,000. host: i apologize to cut you off but this is the time we have for this segment. if you didn't get a chance to weigh and you could do that later in the program during open forum. next up, fairplay executive director josh golin discusses the warning from the surgeon

general on the impact of media on youth mental health. and then later catherine scott talks about the legacy of the watergate hearings which happen 50 years ago. stay with us. >> american history tv. exploring the people and events that tell the american story, c-span's washington journal segment looking back at the senate watergate hearings 50 years ago with senate historian catherine scott on the presidency. --his latest book and his assessment of the demand and his presidency. exploring the american story. watch american history tv every weekend. find a full schedu your program guide or watch online anytime at the span.org/history

--c-span.org/history. ♪ >> le sunday, june 4 on in-depth. author and journalist david -- will be our guest to take calls about natural history and the origins of deadly viruses like ebola and hiv. a contribung writer at national geographic has written many books including the reluctant mr. darwin and spilver. his latest is about the race to identify the virus that created the covid-19 pandemic. join us with your. comments live on sunday, june fourth on book tv at c-span2. ♪ ♪ >> book tv every sunday on c-span two features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. at 2:00 p. eastern, dign

mom.com founder gabrielle flare shares her book ejaculate responsibly where she argues the abortion debate should focus on the lack of accountability i'm in in venting unwanted pregnancies. --contends leftist ideologies passed along to today's young people through education, entertainment and culture. watch book tv every sunday on c-span two and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch on nine any time at book the.org -- book tv.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: i'm joined by josh golin, the executive director of fair play. we are talking about that surgeon general warning about social media and youth mental health. well,. -- welcome.

start talking about what the mission is and how you are funded. guest: fair play's mission is to build the world where kids can be kids free from the harmful manipulations of big tech and also promises of marketers. what we do impract is is a lot of work to try and make it safer for kids online and to it less addictive for kids online so they can get the off-line activities they need in order to thrive. we are funded entirely by individual donations and by foundations. we do not take any money from the tech industry or any corporation. host: if any of our viewers would like to weigh in, you can do so. our lines are by region. if you are in the eastern or central time zone, call (202) 748-8000. if you are in mountain or pacific it is (202) 748-8001.

we also have a line set aside for parents and caregivers. you can call us on (202) 748-8002. take a look. i'm going to show the new york times article here about that, surgeon general warns of social media may harm children and adolescents. the report cited a profound risk of harm to adolescent mental health and urged families to set limits and governments to set tougher standards for youth. we will put it on the screen, an overview of what those findings were. it says thi ts is from the surgeon general. social media may perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordere eating behaviors, social comparison, low self-eee 46 percent of adesnts age 13

to 17 said social media makes them feel worse about their body image. 64% of adolescents are often or sometimes expos to hate-based content. me social media platforms show suicide and self-harm related content. that is from the hhs.gov if you would like to see that. break that down for us, josh. talk a little bit about what is going on here and what the major findings were. guest: sure. first, i would like to say i think this report from the surgeon general has the potential to be a game changer. one of the things we have seen in the --our advent ski -- our advocacy to make social media safer these last several years is the tech industry likes to deny the research. they are working from the same playbook as the big tobacco and fossil fuel industry.

any doubt they can cast on research they will do so. two doubt a medical official with prestige and expertise like the surgeon general saying unequivocally that the research shows there is significant harms and risks that come with social media really has the opportunity to move the conversation forward so we are no longer just talking about the problems, but talking about the solutions, which is what we need to be doing. in terms of what is in the report and some of the findings, some of the most concerning things the surgeon general documented is that teens who spend three or more hours on social media have doubled the risk of mental health problems like anxiety and depression. you might think three hours is a lot. the average amount of time that teens are spending on social media every day is three and a half hours. the average amount teens are spending is going to more than double your risk of mental health problems. mental health problems are just

some of the risks young people face online. cyber bullying, more than half of teens say they have been cyber bullied. cyber bullied has led to mental health problems and an increase in suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts. young people report they are frequently having unwanted content from adults. --kids say they have had an explicit sexual interaction with someone they say they believe is an adult. there is other things that become harmful content that is recommended to kids. one of the things we know is that you create a account on tiktok and say you are a 14-year-old girl and then you indicate in some way you are depressed or struggling with your mental health, you will start getting videos recommended to you by tiktok that talk about how you can do self-harm without your parents knowing. if you express any dissatisfaction with your body or look for tips on healthy

eating, you will be barraged with content on how to have an eating disorder without your parents knowing. viral challenges are also recommended to children that encourage them to partake in all sorts of dangerous behaviors. the choking challenge alone has killed hundreds of children in the united states who have attempted it just because they want to go viral and be popular. host: what is the choking challenge? what was that? guest: sure. the choking challenge is a viral challenge that appears on all the major social media sites where kids are encouraged to film themselves as fix ea and themselves so that they pass out --as fixie eight in themselves so they can pass out. something like this is incredibly dangerous. hundreds of kids have accidentally killed themselves.

it appears everywhere on all social media sites. host: you mentioned eating disorders. your organization put out a report about that and instagram. can you tell us what you found? guest: sure. what we found is that there are 90,000 unique accounts on instagram that are promoting eating disorders that are viewed by more than 20 million young people on instagram. this proceeding disorder content is getting out very widely, is pushed widely by instagram. the reason it is pushed so widely is because instagram is making hundreds of millions of dollars from the accounts that are following these pro eating disorders. this bubble of pro eating disorder accounts were kids are being force-fed this material that encourage them to have an eating disorder. meta is profiting from this.

host: another issue is privacy. what kind of data are these big tech companies electing on kids? -- collecting on kids? guest: they are collecting just about every kind of data on kids. everything that we do online, every post we like, every video we watch and hover over and even consider watching is recorded by these platforms. it is not just what we are doing on their platforms. they are tracking us when we visit other sites. they are combining that with off-line data with things we have about our parents income or where we live and how we are traveling around the world and all the locations that we visit. they are using that data in order to target advertising that is there most likely --that is most likely to be effective on children and to target children with the content that is most likely to keep them on the platform longer.

one of the things that is so harmful to children about social media is this business model, which is, design your platform in order to keep kids on your platform as long as possible so you can collect as much data as possible so you can use that data to target advertising to children, but also target the content that is most likely to keep them on longer. you have this cycle where the more kids that are on their, the more the platforms are doing to keep them on even longer. that exposes them both to extremely harmful content and keeps them online too long and prevents them from doing things that they need to be doing like their homework, sleeping, physical exercise and interacting face-to-face with adults and peers. host: speaking of amount of time spent online, take a look at the article itself from the reports at hhs.gov. you can read that online. this says up to 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 report using a

social media platforms with more than a third saying theyse social media "almost constantl y." that is a lot of time spent online. let's talk about what congress is doing and what the legislation that might be out there, the proposals that might be out there that would limit and regulate social media use for children. guest: sure. there are two bills currently in congress that my organization is extremely excited about. we are working with advocates and parents and public health officials around the country to build support for this legislation. one bill is called the kids online safety act. what this bill, it would do. a number of things probably the most important thing it would do is create a duty of care for these companies to identify and

prevent and mitigate the most serious harms to children online that result --as a result of these platforms are designed and operated. creating a duty of care to prevent eating disorders and self-harm and suicide, and also patterns of compulsive use. if you are designing your platform in a way that is causing addiction in kids, that would not be ok if this law passed. this is important because right now, the only duty these companies have are for their shareholders. the way they make more money is getting kids online even longer by any means necessary. they do not care what kind of content they show to kids to keep them on longer. often, it is extremely harmful. this law would crate this duty of care to force companies to evaluate, are the features we are using to keep kids online a safe for children? we believe that would be a game changer.

that is not all the law would do. it creates more tools for parents so they can understand what their children are doing online and help their children set the settings that keep them safer. it gives kids more tools to protect themselves and gives researchers access to the algorithms these companies are doing so we can better understand how these platforms operate and what they are doing to our children. right now, the only people who understand these algorithms are the people who operate within these companies. these transparency requirements would go a long way in holding these companies accountable and forcing them to build their platforms in a safer way. i mentioned another bill, an update to the children's online privacy and protection act. the only bill we have that protects children online right now passed in 1998. it is a children's privacy law. it was passed before we have things like smart phones and social media, so it needs to be

updated. that bill only coverts kids up until their 12th birthday --their 13th birthday. we need to get teens privacy protection. that is what this law would do. it would also ban data-driven advertising to kids and teens. that is important because first of all, data-driven advertising can be harmful to kids. it allows advertisers to target kids at their most vulnerable moments and target their individual vulnerabilities. a few years ago, facebook was caught bragging to advertisers how they can target kids at the exact moment they were feeling bad about themselves and feeling bad about their bodies. we do not want advertisers to target kids vulnerabilities like that. the other effect this law would have is that it would cut off aid of flows used in order to hook our kids and ended them and serve them that toxic content. we need to limit data collected on our kids because that is the

fuel used to run these harmful algorithms. host: what are the challenges of legislating social media use and the enforcement of it? guest: well, i think the biggest challenge is getting legislation passed because the tech industry is incredibly powerful, has deep pockets and has lobbyists all over washington right now trying to defeat this legislation because they want to do business as usual because there is a huge amount of money to be made off of children. so, this is a question for lawmakers. are they going to decide with big tech and continue business as usual and kids literally dying every day on social media? or, are we going to create guardrails and safety mechanisms just like we have for every other process? are we going to make these

products safer is the big question for lawmakers. in terms of challenges of regulating, what we need is resources for regulators. the biggest challenge is the federal trade commission, which is charged with regulating these companies right now, does not have enough resources. they might have to make hard decisions about which companies and which teachers to go after and try and prosecute. we need a fully resourced federal trade commission to keep up with these companies that are moving at the speed of light and changing the way their platforms are designed. it is hard for regulators to keep pace with that. host: josh, let's talk to some of our viewers. greg is first in fayetteville, north carolina. caller: good morning. i am a high school teacher. it seems like schools are having a hard time coming up with cell phone policy that works. if you ban the cell phones, that

does not seem to work. if you give them limited cell phone access, none of that works either. the kids, if you try to talk to the kids about social media and cell phone addiction, they roll their eyes at you because they think you are just an old person in another generation. my question is, how can we talk to the kids and help them realize themselves it is not a healthy situation? and also, address it with the parents who are allowing their kids to have cell phones at such a young age and also seem to be a part of the problem? host: what do you think, josh? guest: that is a great question. i do not in the being a teacher in this age and trying to teach the students who have phones

while you are trying to teach them how to have access to the world's biggest arcade and world's biggest porn and music collection and can talk to each other while you are trying to teach and trying to get their attention. i cannot imagine what that is like. in terms of what we can do with students, i think we should have --in school, we should ban cell phones during the day. that is going to take parent education. parents get nervous they cannot contact their kids during the day. a lot of us were raised and never talked to our parents during the school day and turned out just fine. working with parents around that anxiety of not being able to reach their kids is something schools can do. in terms of talking to students directly, i highly recommend schools show the film the social dilemma. it is on netflix. it is one of the most watched documentaries in netflix history. what that film does is break

down the ways in which these platforms are designed in order to addict us. and to take away our at tommy so it makes it much easier for us to keep mindlessly -- our baton ami -- autonomy. one of the things i recommend this movie, it is well done. teens hate the idea that adults are manipulating them. i think one of the things we can do with teens is to teach them about the ways these platforms are deliberately trying to manipulate them for profit in ways that goes against their best interests. i think that can be helpful. having said that, i do not think we are going to educate our way out of this problem. we need regulations that change the way these platforms operate because it is not a fair fight using the most powerful technologies ever developed in order to addict kids and ask

kids to resist that on their own. host: here is a quote from the rgeon general's report on their advisory for parents and caregivers. it says parents can make plans in theseho such as establishing tech re-zones that rotect sleep and better er iperson relationships, teach children and adolescents about responsible online behavior and model that behavior and report problematic content and activity. let's talk to ed in ocean city, new jersey. caller: hey. what i stressed with my nieces and all young people, spend your life loving, helping people, charity work and physical help -- physical fitness. if young people feel good physically, the ocean, the pool, sports, they are not going to need this addiction. do you see what i mean? host: what do you think, josh?

any comments there? guest: yeah, i think it is important we help kids find alternatives to being online. being out in nature and sports and outside is some of the most horton --important experiences kids can get. the time spent online is interfering with that. i would agree with the caller. if we give kids those opportunities, they frequently will log off of social media and look for other things. it can take work to get them there, so we need to help them find those opportunities. host: we will be taking your calls for the next 20 minutes or so on this topic. if you would like to call in, you can do so on our lines by region. if you are in the eastern or central time zones, (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific, (202) 748-8001. if you are a parent or

caregiver, call us on the line set aside for you, that is (202) 748-8002. todd is in moreno valley, california. good morning. caller: how are you? i just wanted to say, if parents would use filtering software that keeps their kids --we would not have the need for dangerous bills such as --or age verification which is nothing more than an attempt to infringe on everyone's rights, including adults. as a kid, i did not -- it is up to the parents to teach their kids. it is not up to the government. host: what do you think of that, josh? guest: i understand what the caller's perspective, but i do not agree.

parents are overwhelmed right now. what they are facing is different than any other generation of parents before. this is not something where kids are spending 15 minutes a day on social media. we are talking about in many cases, the majority of their waking hours. there is no parent that has the time and technical savvy to monitor all of that time. deplatforms make it harder for parents to understand what is going on. they deliberately make parent controls confusing and hard to use. it is unfair to expect parents to be able to counter these companies which are using psychological manipulation, technology, all of this data in order to liberally hook our --two deliberately hook our kids. parents have a role to play.

we need more responsibility from the companies themselves. what we have seen after many years of this experiment on our children is tech companies are not going to change on their own. that leaves regulation as the only answer if we want these companies to change how they are designed. we cannot do this through better parenting. the other thing i would say is, parents face and unfair choice right now. you can try and keep your kid off of social media and you would have many good reasons to do that because of all the toxicity on social media and the addictive nature and the harms. if you do that, you are isolating your child from their peers. as children reach adolescence, the most important thanks for them to be his with their peer group. parents face this terrible choice, do i want my kid to be online with harmful content and become addicted, or do i want

them to be isolated from their peers? that is a terrible choice for parents, a terrible choice for children. we need to create, help these companies create safer online environments so we do not have this choice, so parents have good choices instead of choosing between two terrible ones. host: we've got a question that came to us on text from mike in keyport, new jersey. can you address the latest supreme court ruling on internet content and why would children be different? guest: sure. so, let me see the best way of explaining this quickly. [laughter] so, the supreme court --basically, social media companies are not liable for content that users upload to their sites. that is something that the supreme court, there was a recent case they were deciding and kicked that case back to

congress and said congress should be the one to decide this. we do not think -- basically, i understand why companies would not be responsible if i post something to their site that says kids, you should starve yourself. when we think the companies response ability should come in is if that company starts promoting that content to kids. there is a difference between content living on a site and actively being pushed to kids as a way to keep them online longer. that is one of the big questions to be decided by this legislation and some of these court cases, are these platforms responsible for the deliberate design choices and ways they are using to addict kids, are they responsible for that? i think the clear-cut answer is that they should be. that is something the courts and congress are going to have to decide. host: just put on thecreen the recommendation for technology companies from the surgeon

general. it says technology companies can better and more transparently assess the impact of their products on children, share data with ident researchers, increase our understandingf thempts, make design and devepmt decisions that prioritize safety and health inclprotecting children's privacy and better adheri t age minimums and improves the system to provide effective and timely responses to complaints. here is margaret, calling from saint augustine, florida. caller: hello. i understand that in order to make money, you emphasize so much how meta is making money from this even on a site that is talking about disorders because you can sell a product. for sites that are teaching children to choke themselves or do other harm, how does meta make money from it? there is no product to sell. how 14 and 15 year old children,

wouldn't they have to have a credit card to be spending money on these sites for someone to make money? host: josh? guest: these sites make their money through advertising. so, the longer a child is on a site, the more videos they watch, the more they interact with other users, the more time they spend, the more advertising the sites can sell to be delivered to that child. so, the way they make money off the choking challenge is, the choking challenge it turns out is good at getting kids to watch videos. it is good at getting them to spend more time on a platform. they push the choking challenge out as a way to get kids to spend more time on the platform so they can deliver more advertising to that child. it is all about delivering kids eyeballs to the advertisers. they do it by any means necessary, including by serving

toxic content to keep them on a longer. host: alfonso is next in virginia. caller: yes, go ahead. hello? host: good morning, you are on the air. caller: i think it is ridiculous, that kids use cell phones. they say cell phones are babysitters. you tell a kid when they get home from school, go in the room and talk on the cell phone? they talk all they want about nothing. host: alfonso, you are a parent. do your kids have cell phones? caller: they are too old to have anything else. i do not have kids, i have grown children. i am 87 years old. host: all right. you are just saying, do not give kids cell phones at this point. caller: do not give them cell phones. there is no federal guidance for that. host: josh, what do you think

about? realistic? guest: four younger children, yes, do not give them cell phones. my advice for parents, hold out as long as you can before giving kids their first smartphone because that is going to change everything once they get that phone. it is going to change the way they interact with their peers. it is going to change the way they think about themselves, the way they spend their time. waiting as long as possible is advisable. i hope parents do that. having said that, kids do not live in isolation, particularly as they get older and towards high school, to not have a cell phone means being isolated from your peers. that is a hard decision. for some kids, maybe that is the better choice. for others, it may not be. that is one reason we need to change the media environment and have safeguards in policies and regulations to protect kids and make this less addictive and toxic, is because we cannot

expect parents to deal with this in isolation because kids live in a culture. every other kid is on a cell phone. even if my daughter does not have one, cell phone culture is deeply impacting her. we need to change cell phone culture and not just say, parents, do not if your kids a phone and this will go away. our kids live in a youth culture that is very much online these days and very much phone oriented. doing this in isolation is not enough. host: what you mean by changing cell phone culture? guest: what i mean by changing cell phone culture is, i think there are things communities can do. there is a great pledge called the wait until eight pledge, families pledge together in a school not to get, their phones get their kids phones until eighth grade. that is a game changer. when your kid comes to you in fifth grade and says i am the

only one in school that does not have a smartphone, you can pull out your list and say i know there is 15 other kids who do not have cell phones. not having a cell phone does not make you an outlier and an outcast because there is a whole culture of kids that do not have cell phones. when kids go to places like sleep away camps, they are happier because camps take their phones away and they do not have it as an option. adults creating cell phone free places for kids, working with other parents to delay getting cell phones, those are community based solutions that work so much better than trying to this in isolation. our kids, we are not there only influences. they are deeply influenced by their peers, by the places their peers are hanging out online. the more we can do this together as parents, the better. that works better when kids are younger and we have more control over what they do and who they are hanging out on. as they get to be older, that

can be hard and another reason why it is so important these platforms have safeguards and are designed with kids best interest in mind, rather than going designed to make money off of kids. host: lafayette, indiana. zachary, good morning. caller: good morning, thank you for. a few things. i cannot help but be reminded parents not having enough time sound similar to the pmr see and parents did not have enough team to --i think the guest is proposing a false dichotomy on the isolation component. if we are trying to have children engage in meaningful relationships with each other, what that her way to do that than off-line and make sure we are providing opportunity as parents, a community, to make sure kids can have meaningful relationships outside of the screen whether in homes, our streets, our parks?

two, i am very tech savvy. parents are ignorant on how technology works or how parental monitoring systems or observation systems work. it is easy to get trained on that. it sounds like an education issue. the most important component is making sure you are raising children to be resilient and critical of the world around them, and not victims to peer pressure or societal wins or fads. finally, i see a lot of similarities between food diet and media diet. just because everyone's a group might be eating fast food does not mean your child has to eat fast food. we need to be very critical of the conception of media our children have so they have the tools to evaluate what would be considered a healthy media component and an unhealthy media component. like food, there is junk media based on content posted on social media is of the junk variety.

if we empower our children to be critical thinkers and resilient to those kinds of influences, the world would be much better off. this is more of a society problem, not a government problem. government cannot make children more critical. that is the job of the parents and community. host: josh, any comments? guest: sure. i agree that as communities, we should be doing more to get our kids off-line experiences and we should help get our kids become critical thinkers. the fact of the matter is, adolescence is a time of rapid brain development. kids are impulsive, very susceptible to peer pressure. this is part of their natural development. as long as the majority of teens are living on nine and these are the spaces in which the social drama is happening and relationships, this is where the action is, it is understandable

kids are going to want to be whether peers are. expecting kids that we can equip kids with the facilities to completely resist this manipulation that goes on, when these companies are doing all of this testing to figure out which features are going to manipulate kids into staying on my longer? collecting so much data to understand, what is the content kids are most vulnerable to? using tricks like the fact kids want to be popular, they want to emulate their peers, using that against kids to keep them online longer. these are fundamentally unfair. yes, we need to give kids more critical faculties so they have more ability to resist. we need to make it easier to resist. right now, the companies are designing these platforms so it will keep scrolling and

scrolling and scrolling without thinking of what we are doing. we need to create more friction on these platforms so it is easier to break away and activate critical facilities. that will not happen by educating kids alone. we need to educate kids, parents, we need to make these platforms safer and less addictive, too. host: mary is calling us from wisconsin. good morning. caller: good morning. when i moved here, my son was a freshman, the only one in school who do not have a phone. i gave him a flip phone for sporting events. there is no reason kids cannot have flip phones. parents need to just say no. kids also, i do not know who is in charge of having computers and tablets at school, but the first thing teachers do is hand you a tablet in elementary school. it is like a tv. it is less work for them. teachers have control of what is going on in school. they would be hailed heroes if they took away computers and

only allowed flip phones in school. it is the parents that need to say no. i had an expense where my daughter was a freshman. i took her to a friends house. she didn't know she had to log off when she was on the computer. the boy online said this is not america --this is not erica anymore, is it? it was not. keep your kids away from sleepovers. it is the parents responsibility to say, no, you see a computer, do not go to that house. host: i want to show the surgeon general's op-ed he posted in th washington post. for too long, parents have borne the entire responsibility of managing social media use. there are steps parents and

children can take to set boundaries, buthey ould not have to do this alone. st social media platforms are designed to maximize user time and engagement so ultimately, agerand their parents are pitted aga some of the world's most talented engineers and product developers. thist a ir fight. , inast nufacturers of physical product from medications to car sea are required to meet safety consumers are not expected to evaluate the safety of these products on their own. the same should be true of social media. let's fit in leah in south carolina. leah? caller: hey. good morning. i have been a middle school teacher, taught eighth grade for 10 years now. over those 10 years, i have seen more and more and more of my students having cell phones and having social media.

because of that, we have seen an increase in suicide rates in our youth. that alone makes me think, as a parent to two younger children, i do not want my own kids to have access to cell phones with capabilities of going on to social media. also, there are a few, not many, but always a few kids every year that do not have cell phones. those are the most well-rounded, respectful, all-around good kids that have those good social skills and know-how to to talk to their peers and not be easily influenced by peer pressure. it is one of those things where i, have seen over the years every year we have suicide risks go up and up and up. part of that has to do with social media.

host: let's get a quick response. josh, last word? guest: we heard from two teachers today calling in and what they are seeing in the classrooms. we should listen to people on the ground and who understand not just what is happening in their own household, but how this is affecting cohorts of children. we need to change the way social media is designed. we need to treat it as any other product and have basic product safety rules around social media. we need to make it less addictive, make it safer and help get kids the off-line time they need to thrive. that will not happen unless congress acts this year. host: josh golin, executive director of fairplay. thanks for joining us. guest: thank you for having me. host: still ahead, senate associate catherine scott discusses the watergate hearings

which happened 50 years ago. first, we will hear from more of you during open forum. you can start calling in now. we will be right back. ♪ ♪ >> 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the vietnam war. sunday night on q and a, we discussed the war with meriter -- metropolitan museum of art president and ceo mr. weiss. his book tells the time of poet and musician michael o'donnell, missing in action during the war after the helicopter he was piloting was shot down over cambodia. >> because no one else was there o'donnell made the decision he would rescue these men. he went into these landing zone

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nonfiction book publishing industry with insider interviews, industry updates and bestseller lists. find our podcasts by downloading the free c-span now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/podcasts. ♪ >> a healthy democracy does not just look like this. it looks like this, where americans can see democracy at work. where citizens are truly informed, a republic thrives. get informed straight from the source on the c-span. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. from the nation's capital to wherever you are. the opinion that matters the most is your own. this is what democracy looks like. c-span, powered by cable. ♪ >> "washington journal".continues host: welcome back to "washington journal." it is open forum.

i will take your calls up until 9:00 a.m. eastern. to update on where we stand on the debt limit negotiations, this is foxnews.com. the headline is the hitchhikers guide to where we stand on the debt ceiling. debt deal crumbles as dems refused to budge despite gop concessions, but there is good news. it says the pact fell apart when neither side could get the guarantees they wanted. the hope was for negotiators to finish some text last night which would let house republicans begin to run their three-day procedure :00 as soon as possible to schedule a vote. foxnews digital is told congressional leaders will aim to get text out this afternoon. we will stay on that in case anything happens in this program. it is open forum, i want to hear from you on what is on your mind. good morning.

caller: good morning. host: go ahead, robert. caller: i am calling because i am thinking about the gun problem. i think i came up with something that might work. i am thinking of in these guns they have, all they have to do is put a chip in it that when they activate the chip, the gun cannot work. they can have the chip in there around schools. the police would have control over it. use a gun if you want, they would be able to stop you from using the guns. host: based on location? caller: what? just have a chip in their and the chip can be activated by the police. if somebody is using an assault weapon, the police would activate the chip and the assault weapon is mute or you can use it around schools where

you cannot use an assault weapon around schools and the problem is solved. host: do we have that technology available? caller: yes, we have gps, we definitely have that technology available. if you put the chip and the gun and try to deactivate it, they take the gun away from you. host: let's talk to todd in san francisco, independent. caller: high, yes -- hi, yes. i was watching the previous speaker, josh. a term came up in terms of the legislation on the table. the term was duty for care being embedded in legislation to protect kids. that is a great thing, but i wanted to put it out there as an employer, we have a duty to protect, which is different. i just wanted to put it out there i think the standard should be raised a little bit. an employer, we have to have

osha. we have to be regulated by osha and workers compensation. there are protections we have to abide as an employer. why not have those protections applied to kids, rather than just care, which is an ambiguous word from my point of view? thank you. host: tina, maryland, democrat. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. my open forum thing is the debt ceiling. all i want to say is, i hope and pray the congress can get together because there are so many of us. i am a senior citizen. it is a scary thing to think that i might not get my social security payments. my only thing i want to leave with this is, if we can remember, united we stand, divided we fall.

thank you ms. mimi, have a nice day. host: ingleside, texas, republican. hello, andy. caller: hello. host: go ahead, andy. caller: i was wondering how concerned the congress and the president is about our budget. they all went home for the weekend and does not appear they give a hoot about the people. i just wondered also if they do default, will they get their big $250,000 a year check? host: yes, they will, andy. i believe they will still get paid. caller: like i said, i am a veteran of world war ii, korea and vietnam. i am 96 years old and would not be able to manage too long without what i deserve.

i would just like to tell those people to get off there can and do what is right for the american people. we deserve to be treated like we should be. those people could not care less about us, it appears to me. thank you for taking my call. host: john is calling from fork river, new jersey, independent. caller: good morning, mimi. god bless that gentleman that just spoke. mimi, i want to talk about our concern our president uses all the time is price gouging and he talks about gas and oil. i want to think about, i just received my bill for my homeowners insurance. it went up 30%. i called up my broker and said, it is because of the supply chain and cost of labor. credit card debt is insane, what

they charge interest rate. when you use a credit card, they are charging 3% or four percent to the consumer. what i really feel is the biggest price gouge we are not talking about is what we are doing to our 17-year-old, 18-year-old high school graduates. we tell them to do well, get a good education and move onto the next step, either college or getting a trade. but, the biggest price gouge in my opinion is the federal government, when they give these children loans, i consider it price gouging because you have to realize that this money starts to accrue interest immediately. when you come out of school, you can have $100,000 college debt. host: what do you think is the solution?

is it interest-free loans? is it trying to bring down the cost of education? some people have said free four year degrees paid for by the federal government. what do you think of that? caller: that is a bad idea. i am embarrassed the president, bernie sanders, elizabeth warren, that is their best plan is to give back $10,000 and $20,000? i have the best plan, it is simple. if children borrow money, they have to pay it back. you do not charge interest until they complete school or drop out of school. you level that interest to 2%. yes, nothing should be free. nobody is saying it should be free. i am shocked that is the best plan bernie sanders and biden could come up with. what i am saying makes sense. the next problem i see is

simple. obama put out a law that you can never get away from that college debt. if you cannot make ends meet and you have to clear bankruptcy, that loan, you cannot declare bankruptcy on that loan. why wouldn't a college raise the tuition every single gear? -- year? i am shocked that is the best plan these three -- host: got it. let's go to robert in california, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning, everybody. this debt limit, i am supporting the democrat side as far as, every year it has to be assured it is going to be paid.

i do not know why it is not an automatic function. the state of our economy is at risk. just now, you have insurrectionists in congress. my representative is a insurrectionist. host: you do not think there should be a debt limit at all? caller: i do not think -- i think it should be an automatic, if it is voted on in the budget and approved by the methods we have with congress and the president signs it, it should go ahead. to have an insurrectionist now, what they want the united states to be is not what i fought for

when i was in the air force. i took an oath. all of these people took an oath. and do not support the united states and to drive it into a economic cliff. it is not democratic, it is not patriotic. it is more like they are trying to hurt the country. host: i got your point, robert. doris is in georgia, independent. hi, doris. caller: i guess you got tired of me shouting at the tv. i have been trying to get on four days. host: why are you shouting at the tv? caller: i do not like what i am hearing. some of these do-gooders are lots of smoke and mirrors. it gets down to basics.

we are our own worst enemies. this permissiveness in our society where we raised a bunch of spoiled brats that all have attitudes, give me, give me, i want it all, i want it now. that is the attitudes most of these young people have. if you do not give it to them, they will take it. they are learning criminal behavior off of the internet. i have a quick solution for some of these situations. a hammer and a pair of scissors. start with the hammer and these kids social media devices. scissors, use them to cut up your credit cards. stop charging things.

remember the trucker strike, how quick they got results when they took matters into their own hands? it got some of these bureaucrats attention. did not last long, but that cliff is crumbling. it is our fault. we let our bureaucrats in washington have too much power. host: all right, doris. morgan grove, illinois, max. good morning. caller: good morning, hope everyone is having a good day. glad to have a chance to talk about whatever we want. recently on your program, nine learned there was --i learned there was a narcotic track down, specifically opioids, running through the mail.

they called it operation blue lotus. the problem with that is that blue lotus is a traditional plant for pain and aphrodisiac qualities, still used to this day. sometimes, people who are informed in the u.s. by calling it operation blue lotus, does that mean they are going to come after that medication after closing down on the narcotics? the problem is that blue lotus is a plant you can use to wean yourself down from narcotics. so, my question is a general one to any government officials that

may be watching. what is the message that you are trying to send to users of narcotics who would like to wean down to blue lotus? host: max, we are out of time unfortunately. it was 50 years ago when the senate watergate committee heard the explosive testimony that led to the downfall of president nixon. next on "washington journal," we talk with associate senate historian katherine scott about the history and legacy of the senate watergate hearings which happened 50 years ago. first, of the proceedings during a 2017 event looking back at the water gate break in. [video clip] >> somebody challenged the

president of the united states. until richard nixon the position it was involved or nobody questioned the president. after watergate everybody felt they could go ahead and question the president of the united states. we established the fact the president is not above the law and up until that point that was not the case. [indiscernible] >> i think the significance of watergate was you chose between two people. you can get together and make something happen that has not happened since that time. we put that thing together in

two months with the collaboration of people. i think it shows that we do not have to have political discourse and that is the think i'd take on every night. >> to take off of where he left off and say this is an opportunity for the american people to see the government in action at its best. i think baker put together a vivid demonstration, a story that taught the american people what was going on in a way that everyone could understand and could evaluate for himself or herself what was wrong with the next administration and how the government could go about correcting it. the government, not an outside force. >> watergate was significant for

number of reasons. it dealt with the very fabric of what we are as a nation. our values and in this case for corruption. it was successful because knew how to tell a story. she started and -- he started it and bolted up and doing the summer of 1973 watergate was the best soap opera on television. the other reason watergate was successful we found the white house tapes. >> "washington journal" continues. host: welcome back. the summer of 1973 and millions of americans were tuned in to watch the senate watergate hearings. the testimony led to richard nixon resigning the following year. captain scott joins us.

she is a associate historian and author of the book congress in vietnam and watergate area. catherine, thank you for joining us. take us back to 1972, 1973. what was happening in washington and what led to the creation of these senate -- the committee in the senate? guest: it is important to understand the context of the special committee. 1972 was a presidential election year. richard nixon was seeking reelection for another term. he was going to face as yet undetermined democratic opponent. prior to june 17, 1972 the name watergate in washington dc was known primarily as the name of high end condo and office

complex situated along the banks of the potomac river. after the break and watergate ju 17, 1972 became synonymous with the largest political scandal that had ever occurred in the country. to set that stage, on the early morning of june 17, 1972, five burglars broke into the dnc, democratic national committee headquarters at the watergate complex. they were apprehended. they were arrested. they were strange group of regulars. they carried with them a lot of high-end surveillance equipment. among the five, were four cuban emigres. one of the cubans carried a contacts notebook that included

a notation for howard hunt with the cryptic next to it w house, the white house. they have thousands of dollars in bills in their equipment. immediately people began to make connections between the burglary and president richard nixon reelection campaign because there was a money trail. thanks of the dogged reporting of washington post journalists, carl bernstein and bob woodward, it soon became clear there was a connection between the president's reelection campaign committee and this burglary at the dnc. the question was how i up -- how high up did it go? that was set the stage -- would

set the stage for the investigation. even before the order to get committee is formed by the senate, there is these burglars, the original five they broke into the dnc and then the additional two who served as accomplices are arrested. they are arraigned and indicted. they await trial. as the trial unfolds in federal district court, five of the defendants pleaded guilty. two of them enter a not guilty plea they are found guilty by a jury. as a trial unfolds, the federal judge becomes really troubled by the prosecution's case. he thinks there's a lot of holes in the case. he thinks not everything has been revealed over the course of the trial. he decides to hold off on sentencing these defendants

until the senate when he left the senate is going to create the special committee. host: who made the decision? who is controlling the senate at the time? democrats or republicans? guest: in the senate, people are reading the same headlines. they're watching the trial with interest. senators are asking questions about the connection between watergate burglars and the white house. the white house has been denying the connection to his reelection campaign and above varies -- burglary at the dnc. the senate is controlled by democrats. many of them are eager to get to the bottom of these allegations. they also are watching the federal prosecution, the federal case and saying there's a lot of unanswered questions. the way things are going it looks like we're never going to get to the bottom of the

burglary and find out who was behind it. the senate does what congress has done in the past which is create a special committee. early 1973 the senate leadership is beginning to think about what the committee will look like. one of the senators, senators arvin rice resolution that will create the special committee and the senate leadership begins is think seriously about who will be on the committee. and the purpose of the committee. host: i want to remind viewers if you would like to call in it is the 50th anniversary of the senate hearings in washington dc our phone lines are by region. eastern/central timezones, 202-748-8000. mountain/pacific timezones, 202-748-8001.

you can text and interact via social media. i want you to talk about how it was made up, who was working there and the relationship. guest: this committee has potential to be politically very revelations that may comeut of the course of the investigation may be politically explosive. we have a senate controlled by democrats that will be investigating republican president. senators are deeply concerned that t investigation cannot be partisan. the people assigned to the committee should not be seeking some kind of political or partisan advantage. by having this big platform. the senate leadership works carefully to establish the makeup of the committee. they -- the really smart choice

majority leader mansfield make some assigned the tax chairmanshipo senator durbin of north carolina. he sets the tone for the committee particularly in his really fantastic relationship with the polyp that republican leader of the committee and they work exceptionally well together. i want to say couple of things before we get to the other members about senator irvin. senator irvin was a conservative democrat. he cannot be labeled as a liberal out to get the president. that was a really important of his resume. he had come into the senate in 1950's. it's taken part in other important prominent senate investigations including the investigation to senator mccarthy in 1954 that led in

part to his censorship by the senate. senator durbin was -- senator sam ervin has voted on a number of policy issues over the course of the next demonstration. he is not someone who's going to be perceived to be out to get the president. he was known in the senate to be a constitutional expert. he served in enough, supreme court. he had a harvard law degree and although he exuded a folksy charm, he was absolutely look smart. he knew the constitution backwards and forward. he like to quote the bible. over the course of the investigation he would have his questioning with charming stories from his native north carolina. he was low-key but he was also incredibly smart. host: what really stated goals

of the committee? guest: to get to the bottom of three things. the watergate burglary and any effort to cover up the connecti from the burglary to thwhite house. thsecond stated goal was to understand better any kind of dirty tricks that have been employed over the course of the 1972 presidential campaign. the third piece of the investigation was understand -- better understand any financial improprieties that had occurred. a financial transaction. money that had been donated over the course of the presidential election that had not been declared. that been made under the table. three primary goals. the structure the committee was such it have a broad mandate to investigate the 1972 presidential election broadly. howard baker as the vice chairman of the committee was very much in favor of the at broad mandate. he comes from -- he has powerful family, political connection

himself. his father was a member of the house of representatives. he represents the state of the tennessee in u.s. senate. he had just won his second term we joined the commite. he has -- he is deeply ambition. he comes in with a lot of political knowledge. he understands t situation very well. he is himsf low-key but ambitious and rks really well established as quickly a beautiful working relationship with senator ervin. host: the here in on the way in mid may 1973. the first major witness was john dean, former white house counsel. i'm going to play clip riser marks began in late june of 1973. [video clip]

>> it is a difficult thing to testify about other people. it is far more easy for me to explain my own involvement in this matter. the fact that i was involved in instruction of justice, i assisted another in purging testimony. the fact that i made personal use of funds that were in my custody. it is far easier to talk about these things myself than to talk about what others did. some of these people i'll be referring to our friends. summer man i greatly admired and respected. protected with reference to the president of united states i would like to say this. it is my honest belief that while the president was involved, he did not realize or appreciate that at any time to application of his involvement. i think when the facts come out, i hope the president is forgiven.

i will commence with a general description of the atmosphere that existed in the white house prior to june 1972. to one who was in the white house and became somewhat familiar with the inner workings, the watergate matter was inedible outcome of excessive concern over the clinical impact of demonstrators, excessive concern over leaks, an insatiable appetite for political intelligence, all coupled with a do-it-yourself white house staff regardless of the law. however, the fact that many of these elements in this climate culminated with the creation of covert intelligence operation as part of the president's reelection committee was not by conscious design, rather than accident of faith.

these of course are my conclusions that i believe they are well-founded in fact. this committee however is not interested in my conclusions. their interest in the batch as i know them -- interested in the facts as i know them. host: what were the impacts of his testimony and the fact that came out of it?\ guest: it was just explosive. his testimony came six weeks after lower-level white house staff and lower-level stock from committee to reelect the president testifying. they're putting the case in pyramid form to the top level staff of the white house. by the time john dean testified in late june 1973, washington was on fire. he offered explosive testimony that suggested the type of culture that permeated the white house that permeated the white house the allowed for the creation of this special intelligence gathering unit that broke into the watergate office

complex for the second time they were arrested, that was the second break-in. what it did was set up a he said he said situation. john dean suggested the president knew about the effort to cover up the watergate break-in. john dean offered over the course of the testimony which lasted over several days, his opening statement was more than 200 pages long and took him about five hours to read. he was the type of person who had carefully document everything. he offered details about meetings that suggested he was a really reliable witness. what he was suggesting was the president himself had been involved in the cover-up. that was explosive. it was up to the senate committee to figure out how they were going to get -- how they were going to determine whether john dean was telling the truth or whether richard nixon would

always denied being involved was telling the truth. host: chris is first up. louisville, kentucky. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you doing this morning? host: good. caller: i wanted to share i am a 70 one-year-old vietnam veteran. i was a young command with was happening. i want to get contacts with the lady -- context with a lady. back then there were three tv stations that rotated got to be sold big they rotated which station was covering the hearing and during that time that was the first time my recollection that politicians freely began -- really began to become work stars because watergate engulfed the whole country. the important names i want to share.

john dean. john dean opened it off and set it off and we watched it like it was a soap opera. every sing day. some of the other names. one of my heroes for the rest of my life was sam ervin. sam are fed was such a brilliant man -- sam ervin it was such a brilliant man. it was like watching -- listening shakespeare. he was so brilliant. another hero was barbara jordan. she had everybody enthralled. the statement i remember that changed the whole thing was when howard baker said we need to find out what did the president know and went to he know it. that statement set the whole think in a different place. the other names elizabeth

holtzman. john butterfield. the two organizations part of the president and the plumbers. host: remember all of this? caller: it galvanized the whole country because we just washed it and washed it and we knew even as it was happening, we could hear and see the historical significance and how in america no one is above the law. guest: thank you for the call. it is so cold with chris -- what is so cool about what he just explained it feels to him even 50 years later. he was not alone. millions of american households tuned in to watch these hearings. before cable television there were three major broadcast networks.

abc, cbs, and nbc. the first two weeks of the senate hearings they display steadily programming. the point about the soap operas is dead on the because the soap operas were all for a time. these hearings play live. pbs recorded all of 200 hours of hearings and play them every evening some people came home from work they could watch them in the evening. it was a media sensation. after the first two weeks, the three networks began to take rotational turns broadcasting being supplied. -- the hearings live. every american was touched by the hearings in part reflected in polling numbers. only six weeks after the watergate hearings began, 97% of americans polled they knew about watergate. 67% of those polled said they believed richard nixon was in

some ways connected to the burglary or cover-up. it was a sensation. chris really offered those sentiments very thoughtfully. and he would not be alone. his memories of those names. it has been 50 years people still members john dean's testimony. host: "howard baker. guest: and what the president know and what do you know it. a question he offered several times over the course of the hearing. their lease stuck in people's mind and it was coming from the -- it stuck in people's mind is coming from the lead public in the committee was significant itself. caller: great conversation. a couple of quick points. who adjudicated nixon did not own the tapes? john deere

facilitated the cover up meanwhile kissinger was up to their eyeballs in the cambodian incursion. the third think they changed journalism. thank you. guest: i will start with the third one. the duo, dynamic duo of woodward and bernstein. without their target reporti in the second hf of 1972, the story may veied. it is interesting to note despite their go rorting in the second half of the year, nixon won reelection in a landslide. the allegations never seem to undermine his popularity among the american public that he handily won the election. host: the cambodian incursion? nixon and kissinger. guest: there are so much going on in the white house at this

time. a part of the story about getting the access to the nixon tapes is that we get -- we have an understanding that the watergate story, burglary and cover about -- cover up is going on at the same time to make the administration is working on these major foreign policy initiatives that were always for him, first and foremost in terms of what he wanted to leave behind as a presidential legacy. host: deborah is next in allentown pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i wholeheartedly agree with the last two callers about how galvanizing this event was. i am of the road where i voted the first time in presidential election in 1972. when 18-year-old were given the right to vote. my question for the guest, given the fact that president ford

then pardoned richard nixon for his act, i have to wonder, the death set a new precedent -- did that set a new president for the peril of the country is in now with all the allegations of president trump and the difficulty trying to hold him accountable? these things that are factual and proven. could you comment on what went into resident board decision on that? who guided him in that way? i know on the blanket note is supposedly he did not want to do detriment to the country. guest: president ford would later explain about his historic decision to pardon richard nixon after richard nixon resigned from office. one, he did not want the nation

to become further mired in the watergate scandal. he wanted the nation to move on. he thought a pardon would help to do that. he also suggested that by mixing -- nixon excepts of the pardon was a kind of admission of guilt. ford maintains it was the right thing to do up into the end of his life. he always maintained that was a decision he stood by until the end. in terms of setting a precedent, i did not know it set a precedent. i do know that it was a decision that was -- that bothered many people across the country, including my parents. they still talk about the pardon in a very disappointed way. host: let's go back to more testimony.

alexander butterfield deputy assistant to president nixon. this is from mid july 1973. he was the one that revealed there were white house tapes. [video clip] >> are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices. >> when where those devices place in the oval office? >> approximately the summer of 1970. i cannot begin to recall the precise date. my guest is -- my guess is the insulation was made between april or may of 1970 and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall of 1970. >> are you aware of any devices

that were installed in executive office building of the president? >> yes, sir. >> where they installed at the same time? >> there race taught at the same time. >> can you tell us how they worked? how they were activated? >> do not have the technical knowledge but i will tell you what i know about how those devices were triggered. how they were installed for historical purposes to record the president's business and they were installed in his two offices. host: what impact that testimony have? guest: it was huge. after john dean made this statement linking president nixon to the cover-up and then establishing that john dean said it in the president denies it. how will we ever find out what was the truth?

the committee, fortunately, in the course of interviewing alexander butterfield, learns the president has recording devices installed throughout the white house and in the executive office building where he also works. it was explosive. it launches a new phase of the inquiry which is the hunt for the tapes, access to the tapes. host: let's talk to eli in newton center, massachusetts. caller: good morning. i am curious about the watergate connection of someone who is still currently involved in some of our modern day political scandals. i know roger stone testified at the watergate hearing. i'm not familiar with his actual connection with the event. can you talk a little bit about that? how he could -- how it

could shed light on the current political medscape in the skin as he is currently wrapped up in. guest: i know he was employed by the committee to reelect the president. whether he was a witness of the hearings, i will have to look into that. i do not recall. i don't recall his testimony. 50 years later we are still learning about some of the details of the watergate scandal. in terms of what we know today i would suggest -- say it will take us a while to piece together stories of current events that are currently gripping our headlines. host: we got a guess joining us on zoom to talk about media coverage during that time. david greenberg history journalism and media studies professor. welcome to the program.

give us a sense of how big a media event these senate hearings were. guest: it was unlike anything the country had ever seen. there had been televise senate hearings before. but nothing on this scale where it went on for so many days, so many people tuned in to watch. the hearings were not only broadcastive during the day, but we play at night -- replayed at night on pbs. other news channels showed excerpts. people had a chance to follow the developments on detail on a daily basis. all of the revelations you have been talking about, butterfield and dean, had people in real time -- hit people in real

time. it was millions in video audience and some estimates say almost 80% of americans watched some of the hearings live. it was national gathering around the television and also radio and of course, plenty of press print coverage that provided the country in a way that was hard to find. host: explain how it was broadcast. you talk about it will be live and replayed and the networks that would air it. guest: initially, there is not a lot of hope that this would get. great ratings i believe only one of the major networks, i forget which one, plan to show during the daytime and preempted viable so

barbara's which are so popular -- soap operas which were popular in the afternoon. but after it was on for a while and proved to be much more popular and of great public interest, the other networks followed suit. it became -- back in those days the president gave an oval office address, all the major networks would cover it live. nobody thought it a problem. competition for ratings was not the same thing as it is today. in the evenings -- we now know pbs newshour which has been the mcneil newshour. step got his start with -- it got its start with watergate because they would each evening show this type of it from that day's hearing with their own

neutral, non-bias, objective analysis. other networks would also show clips, highlights from the day watergate hearings. some of them may have also shorted late at night in every broadcast. ample opportunity to see it throughout the day. host: i was going to ask you about wanting to watch it afterwards but this would have been live during the workday. people miss work? guest: absolutely. it became must-see tv. people stayed home or found ways to put it on at the office if there was a television at the office. it was magnetic. it became something you would go by a store window with a television in it.

it might be showing their. there is a sense that this is topic a, the leading story, especially during those weeks when you had to some of the star witnesses. there were other weeks may be that coverage lag comparatively. it was not a constance -- constant but over the course of months it was regular viewing for millions of americans. host: what impact it eventually had on public opinion, given so many americans watched it? guest: there's a lot of evidence from the polling to suggest it did turn the tide. it was an important step in the erosion of support for president nixon. once with john dean and some of the other witnesses we began to

realize the president himself was up to his neck in the scandal. the scandal winced so much further than a single or even second watergate break in but it amounted to what the john mitchell called, the attorney general in next campaign manager, the white house horrors. because all the way from kissinger and nixon doing wiretaps in 1969 on reporters in national security council staffers to track down weeks all the way to -- track down leaks to all the way to parts of the cover up so going on in 1973. the erasure of tapes evidence that was necessary for the prosecution. watergate comes the encompass so much more than just the break in undemocratic headquarters in 1972 -- the democratic

headquarters in 1972. people get involved in learning the details of this whole enterprise. these colorful figures testifying before the senate panel who seem like out of a mafia film. self-styled tough guys. unapologetic. arrogant. this created a sense of lawlessness amuck in the nixon white house. you look at where people were at the start of the hearings, where despite everything we had learned, the president was still in decent shape, politically, and by the end there was a real seriousness -- precariousness

test for density -- to his presidency. host: because something like this happen -- could do something like this happened as far as tv media reaction? guest: certainly, we can debate with the trump scandal which of them rice the level of watergate and the sweep temper democracy. my own view is that it is not surpassed nixon. it ranks right up there. we did have hearings, the january 6 hearings. we found perhaps because of today's fractured media environment and perhaps because of our polarize politics, we did not have the same effect from january 6 hearings. for a lot of people that watched

him they were relevant tory. they help connect the dots to show much greater premeditation and involvement on the part of donald trump and his inner circle. in the capital right the days leading up to it. they did not turn public opinion in the same way. people remained come after those hearings, pretty much of the views that they had held beforehand. the media environment changes the national mood changes. the current polarize and partisan media environment we have now will not last forever. we do not know what it will look like in 20 years but as things change there's an opportunity for things like this to happen again.

we really cannot predict the future but at the present moment it seems like the hook for watergate moment, hook on the part of a lot of president trump critics, did not materialize. host: david greenberg professor of history journalism and media studies at rutgers university. thank you for joining us. guest: glad to be with you. host: will go back to the phones now. thank you for your patience. mike in ohio. caller: thanks for c-span. i was a freshman at texas state in 1971. i was very disappointed that got a landslide in 1972. the first election i ever voted in. that said, i went to an all boys

high school before going to college. i learned a lot about forgiveness. i for gave nixon the day he resigned august 1974. i supported general ford when he pardoned. both of my friends did not want him to be pardoned but i thought we all need forgiveness. i can say this safely, nixon was the last person i ever hated. from that point on i could hate nobody. i cannot hate dick cheney. i do not hate donald trump. i do not like the guy but i do not hate him. i do believe nixon, had to be at -- had he been alive, he would told the republicans did not do this for me because are part of clinton -- [indiscernible]

i would to see senator ted kennedy say -- host: what you think about the relationship between clinton impeachment and nixon not impeachment? guest: it is a different situation. we never get to the impeachment situation with richard nixon because he decides to resign. there's an senate piece of the story. the house judiciary committee approved three articles of impeachment against nixon. it looks as though the house is poised to approve the articles of impeachment is getting broader body which would then send the impeachment trial to the united states senate. there's a critical meeting on august 7 soon republican leadership -- one of those

present as barry goldwater, 1964 republican presidential candidate. they tell president nixon that if there is a senate impeachment trial, he cannot count on the support of even 10 of the senators out of the 100. at that moment barry goldwater confesses he is not one of these 10. he would not support the president if there was a presidential impeachment trial and escalators richard nixon resigns -- and two days later richard nixon resigns. that piece of the story is important because he realizes this is not a process he wants to roll out in public. host: jack in idaho. caller: good morning. i am struck by the consequences how that happened during the watergate.

i just came out of the service out of vietnam. i had my first job and i watch the whole hearings. i was very much involved in would bid on. -- see what went on. when i look at the book rainy in the state, i'm totally drawn to what is going going today and the similarities. or the not so good similarities that have happened. back in that day there is a cemetery. there is the meeting between the republicans is a walk nixon's office and asked them to resign. and he did because he did not have support. now you have a presidency, donald trump's presidency and all of the -- i will call them dirty tricks that went on in regarding his quote russian collusion.

then we have a report that comes out and says we got an issue with four major institutions within the united states. one, the fbi. two, the justice department. three, the democratic party. and have a great -- and hillary clinton's apparent support for the negotiation and four, the legacy media. host: let's they only watergate by any relation with with the happened 50 years ago to current politics? guest: we talked about the senate watergate committee was a great success. but we have not mentioned and i think it is worth talking about is the ways the senate watergate committee did not wrap things up. there were questions unanswered. they could not over a course

every year explore and completely cover definitively all the information the broad mandates that have been offered. when the issue the final report in february -- june 74 it is a luminous report, more than 2000 pages. it offers a lot of legislative recommendations and what happens is the senate decides to create another special committee in 1975 to explore some of the unanswered questions from the watergate investigation. that investigation is known as the church committee, investigating the national intelligence community because fbi and cia have been located in watergate scandal. the committee wanted to determine how and why. it is one of those stories where once in his body does a bit of work and then the next

investigation picks up from there. host: jay in indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. i wanted to follow-up on some things speaker said about mcgovern. if i recall, watergate was still going on. george mcgovern ran against richard nixon. nixon was not terribly popular at the time. there was resistance to vietnam. there are people who did not like nixon but they ran a successful smear campaign against george mcgovern. he had chosen a running mate name thomas singleton who was found to have had under psychiatric hold a some time.

george mcgovern had been a decorated war hero during world war ii and was believed by mcgovern's campaign that would not be helpful to him in campaign in which war was figuring so heavily. i wanted to mention that. it is not necessarily support for nixon, it was a successful campaign against mcgovern that helped put in office. i would also like to say thank you for c-span which would have covered all of this. host: how to be existed we definitely would've covered them gavel-to-gavel. guest: does a to points from the caller. thank you for that. george mcgovern was a decorated world war ii veteran. he was a prominent vietnam war voice in the senate when he ran

for president in 1972. the caller is making a great point about what we know about watergate and the scandal over the broad scandals that in because business -- that it encompassed. the election company was focus -- committee was focus on narrowing down the foot the democratic candidates in a way that he might run against perhaps the least effective of the least strong democratic candidates. we know there was 30 tricks played against various candidates in 1972 year including george mcgovern. president nixon did when 49 states in the rhetorical estates. the next year in early 1970 three, richard nixon had an approval rating of about 68%. i understand the colors point

that some people did not support an exam but he did have high polling numbers that first year -- second term. host: how do explain his high polling popularity and it was going on with watergate? guest: he had been largely untouched by the scandal. demonstration had been effective at keeping, suggesting it was not related to the president. the president did not know anything about it. it is just people trying to protect the nation's best interests and going after doing these dirty tricks. that worked for a time. but it is the senate watergate investigation that revealed over the course of the hearings, really educates the american public about the nixon own it ties to the watergate scandal. host: chris in pennsylvania.

hi. caller: good morning. jack in utah it a good correlation. it had to do with then and now. i'm talking about the context of the things nixon did. here is the question. where are the bernstein's and would worse today? were they more committed to a ferocious pursuit of exposing corruption because they were younger and popular more formidable in the idealistic kennedy years? could you mention a few things about that? considering all of the things that are coming out about the doj and fbi and president today. thank you. guest: woodward and bernstein's work in helping to uncover watergate kind of launched a new investigation -- investigate

of journalism. i think their youth was a contributing factor. i think there may be less encumbered by some of the old assumptions that other -- their superiors may have had about how to approach these stories and maybe how to challenge power. they use their sources very effectively. the senate watergate committee does establish a relationship with woodward and bernstein. sam --, chief claims he did not get information that was particularly useful for them. they were running ahead of bernstein and woodward investigative reports. i'm not a media specialist but it is a very different media landscape that woodward and bernstein were operating in 1973 as david greenberg noted earlier we have a much more fractured media environment today. it is difficult to draw a lot a parallels between then and now

in terms of media. host: rob in arizona. caller: good morning. i hope everyone remembers the reason for this holiday. my question is deep throat. the person who gave bernstein and the other reporter the information on the watergate scandal. was the name ever produce who deep throat was? thank you for taking my call. guest: yes. deep throat was market felt, a deputy at the fbi and likely to step into directors position. he believed he was only to become director of fbi after j edgar hoover death. at the he was passed over for the job he began to do the work of the third -- to do the work

of deep throat. host: evan in california. caller: can you hear me ok? host: yes, go ahead. caller: i remember the watergate hearings. i remember the pardon of nixon. i remember clinton investigation, especially now the chop investigation right and left. on the one hand, think factor -- i would like to say when investigations like this take place at the highest political figures in our country, people oppose it because they say it will make us look like a third world country, which the disparaging comment on other countries. i like to observe these politicians are third world type politicians and they are the ones that make our country look like a third world country, not the investigation of them. your comments. guest: just to take a watergate

example, those faces we saw at that committee day, senator arvin, howard baker, they become national figures. sam ervin was not necessarily widely known beyond the senate or here on capitol hill. prior to this investigation and these hearings. he becomes a kind of folk hero. one of the earlier callers mentioned that. a couple of people created senator samrvin fan club in california and for a few dollars you could join the fan club and you could be a card-carrying member of that the fan club. the interesting piece is many of the people who embrace sam ervin because of his role in watergate probably consider themselves to be politically liber, beral democrats. but he had not been embraced by liberal wink of the democratic

party did most of the senate career. he had filibustered civil rights legislation that came before the senate. he had been a pump -- an opponent of civil rights act of 1964 and voting rights act of 65 and medicaid of 1965. it is to say these characters who people came to admire over the course of the investigation, they were complex figures. host: let's take a look at a clip from woodward of the washington post reflecting on watergate. [video clip] >> conducted what is the gold standard of congressional investigations. nixon miscalculated, as many of you recall, nixon said i'm going to invoke executive privilege and not let them testify. then nixon in one of his many

delusions thought, i will let them testify and they will help me and of course, they came up and tore nixon apart. this led to the discovery of the tapes. sam ervin the great thing other than the investigation that senator arvin date is his final report. four 4000 pages and in that he asked the question, what was watergate? he answered it. he said watergate was an attempt to subvert and destroy the process of selecting presidential candidates and a president. then he goes through this. he would not -- never abated the

tough questions and he said why watergate? why did this happen? his answer and it is the end of the report. the lust for power. host: bob woodward. one more call. al in des moines, iowa. good morning. caller: good morning. fascinating show. a huge c-span band. i had to pick a bond with one of the gentlemen earlier who said -- bone with adjustment earlier who said nixon was the first scandal. andrew jackson right after u.s. grant as president. he was impeached by the house

and hurting in the 20's also had his scandal. host: we will get a quick last comment. guest: it is true this was not the first presidential scandal although in the 20th century i would say it is the largest presidential scandal and thanks to the senate watergate hearings it became embedded in national consciousness as the political of the nation's history -- that is the lasting tribute. [laughter] author -- host: author, thank you so much for joining us. guest: thank you for having me host: host:. that is it for today's "washington journal." have a great memorial day weekend.

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