♪ host: good morning. it is wednesday, july 5. if the 2020 for presidential race comes down to a biden-trump rematch, some voters will be

open to a third-party candidate. we are asking for your thoughts on that. when you consider a third-party or independent candidate? democrats can call (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. you can send us a text at (202) 748-8003. be sure to send your first name and your city. we are on social media. facebook and twitter. welcome to washington journal. i want to show you an artie that says this. more docrats and republicans are op to a third party presidential candidate. the overall share of vers interested is similar to what it was in 20 when third-party candidates ultimately played a pivotal role in the outcome.

nbc ran a poll so let's look at ose results. 44% of registered voters with definitelyr obably consider the other candidates include biden and trump. that's overall. by party, 45% of democrats say they would consider. 52% said they would not. ong republicans, 34% said they would consider and 63% said they would not. take a look at what collins peggy noonan said in the wainon -- 70% of voters don't want mr. biden to run fo reelection and safety percent don't want mr. trump to n again --60% don't want mr. trump to run again. 44% of republicans don't want mr. trump as the ninee. these are huge numbers.

if you believe them, roughly comport with my observation, then the predicates for a successful third-party are there. here is another view. this is from david brooks for the new york times. this is what he says about the topic. "a second trump presidency represents an unprecedented threour democracy. in my view our sole focus should be defeat tru this is nothing time to run risky experiments, the outcomes none of us could foresee. if america wants bipartisan dealmaking, it has one. office.ready sitting in the oval joe bide not get sufficient credit that he has negotiated a bunch of deals on infrastructure, the chips act, and the debt limit. as long as biden is running we don't need a third option." i wonder what you think about

that and if you would support a third-party candidate. we are seeking your calls for the first hour. democrats can call (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. let's take a look. this is from the no labels ceo. nancy jacobson. she defended the group's role in 2024 in an interview with fox news [video] >> there are many on the left who believe a third-party option would pull voters away from biden but trump would still win. there's an accusation, maybe it's true, that no labels says if ron desantis is not the nominee then you will decide to go ahead and do this. what is the clarity on that? >> let me set the record straight.

our focus -- if there is an opening where this ticket, a unity ticket, one republican, one democrat walking into the white house in 2025 focus on the first 100 days for results for the american people, finally getting results. if it is clear they don't want the choices and this is a winning ticket and we can win and not spoil, we are going to do it. if it look for any reason like this is going to spoil it, we step down. we are not cowboys. we are people that want to give the megans a choice -- the americans a choice and they will decide. host: they said they would step down if they played the role of spoiler. we will start with the phones with rebecca in merced, california. independent. caller: good morning, everyone. yes, i would be open to a third party. i would like to share my thought with you. i believe if things don't turn

out the way trump wanted to, he will create the third-party. i don't know if anyone else feels the same way but the man is not going away. he is going to remain, whether the stats are for him or against him. i believe trump could actually become the third party. we have to wait and see what happens. it is still a year off. a lot can change. have a good day, everyone. bye. host: along those lines of what rebecca said, here is the hill. this is from february of this year. "trump will not commit to endorsing the eventual 2024 gop nominee." it says this. he said that he would not commit to endorsing the eventual republican nominee for president if it is not him. "it would depend. i would give you the same answer

i gave in 2016 during the debates." he said, "it would have to depend on who the nominee was." -- on who the nominee was." mary, a democrat from houston, texas. caller: no, i would not want a third party. president biden is doing real good. i know what he has already done. if we give him a chance, he will continue to do it. i want to go with someone i know rather than taking on a third party i don't know. host: here is chris in deerfield beach, florida. independent. caller: good morning. i would say no third party. i think everybody should be an independent. all this fighting back and forth between the republicans and the democrats is a waste of time

that is causing segregation. just everybody independent. host: let's take a look historically. this is from statista.com. the performance of third party or independent candidates from 1892 to 2020. take a look. this is what i found interesting in this spike. this is theodore roosevelt in 1912. he got this lighter line, the popular vote. a dr. light is the electoral vote. the was a former president. historically, from this graph, the best of any third-party candidate. in recent memory, you remember ross perot in 1992, 18.9% of the popular vote. 1996, 8.4% of the popular vote. no electoral college votes here in recent memory.

the last time a third party or independent candidate got electoral college vote was 1968 with george wallace. we are taking your calls this morning on that topic. want to know if you would support a third party candidate or not. the numbers are by party affiliation. let's look at brookings scholar bill gellson, cofounder of the no labels organization. he recently left the group because of their 2024 -- what they said about 2024. he was a guest on this program earlier. [video] >> i know the leadership very well. they are honorable people. their effort is not a stalking parts to reelect donald trump -- parce to reelect donald trump.

i think you will be more difficult than they imagined to make the judgment they are not viable to ward off that result. because they are going to be, as i understand it, nominating their ticket in mid april. at that point the polls will not be terribly revealing. i speak from experience here. one of my first ventures into politics was as the speechwriter for the national unity campaign of 1980 which featured a bipartisan ticket of john anderson and pat lucy, former democratic governor. john anderson was a moderate to liberal republican. when i joined the campaign the indocin campaign was within hailing distance of jimmy carter in the polls. they were in the mid-20's. by fall, when the votes were

cast, they ended up with under 7% of the vote. so, the question is not just what people are thinking and saying when they answer pollsters' questions. what people say enable is not necessarily what they will say in september and october. i am very worried that there may be more initial enthusiasm for the idea of a bipartisan ticket that support for six months after it is announced and then it will be difficult to pull back. remember, each state has different procedures for getting on the ballot. each state has different procedures for getting off the ballot once you are on it. and getting out is a complicated procedure in some states, not at

all. i don't doubt the sincerity of the declaration that they don't intend to be spoilers. i take them at their word. how are they going to carry that intention and operation? -- into operation? host: would you consider a third party or independent candidate in 2024 for the presidential election? jodi in williamsburg, kentucky, republican. caller: good morning. no, i will not support a third party. trump is the best person. host: what is the nominee for the republican party -- what if the nominee for the republican party is not trump? would you support him as an independent or go with the gop nominee? caller: well, i'm going to vote

for whoever the republicans -- anybody has to be better than biden. look what they found in the white house the other day. they found cocaine in the white house and everybody knows it's from hunter biden. host: i did want to update people on that story. let's look at usa today. this happened yesterday. cocaine found a west wing to white house for president was away. what we know. it says this. the white house was temporarily closed after secret service agents discovered a white powdery substance suspected to be cocaine inside a work area in the west wing. secret service said in a statement the white house is temporarily closed to allow members of law enforcement to investigate the substance and the district of columbia fire department assisted in evaluating the substance.

the fire department quickly determined the item to be nonhazardous after an initial evaluation, a spokesperson said. a fire department and emergency medical services field test sunday evening identified a yellow bar, meaning cocaine, hydrochloride, after a dispatch at 8:49 p.m. according to a publicly available recording of thencrypted call. d.c. fire and ems crews were dispatched to 17th street which borders the white house. neither called mentioned the white house. that is what we know so far about that. thomas in florida, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i think personally we all have lost faith in our elected leaders. a third-party -- a third party candidate is someone the people have to choose who they want to

be a third party instead of the system or people in the system picking and choosing who they want to be a third party candidate. we don't trust each other enough to really get to that point where we could trust them and trust them not to spoil somebody who was supposed to win. i am supporting president biden. even though it is a good idea but i would not like a third party candidate. host: let's take a look at facebook. john says no in response to that question. ask ralph nader how that worked out for the country. wait. hi my support a third party conservative candidate, referring to the bush v gore election in 2000. this is from priscilla. i consider all candidates but unless they pass rank-choice

voting i would not chance splitting the vote unless i feel the country would be ok with anyone of the candidates. the candidates would need to have a lot of very good experience and record of action that benefits the country. this is aaron who says, no. not in our winner take all system. i except primaries are the time to choose my preferred -- about the general direction of the country. elections have consequences that are too dire for millions of people to irresponsibly throw a boat away on a candidate with zero chance of obtaining the plurality necessary to get elected. andrew is calling from gaithersburg, maryland. independent. caller: good morning. definitely i'm an independent. i would definitely like to see a

third party candidate on the -- democrats fight the hardest against the third party candidate because they know the third party never gets -- ever gets in it would implement the policies the democrats pretend to care about. they can, meant universal health care -- implement universal health care. they don't even pretend to care about that. you have that. a living wage. democrats cannot get themselves to a minimum wage, which you cannot even survive on what that. as far as policies like reparations for black americans, the descendants of slavery, a third party, you know, might attack those things. would implement those policies. the democrats will always have an excuse of why they can't do something. is the parliamentarian. it is joe manchin.

it is kyrsten sinema. it is joe lieberman. they will always have a reason why they cannot do anything for the people. the minute the voters wake up and realize the republicans and democrats work in concert. the democrats are the good cop. the republicans are the bad cop. the elite person that gets hurt -- the only people they get hurt are the american voters. the minute people start to wake up and see things as they are the democrats are warmongers, just like the republican party. you have to pay attention to look at the things they already are in lockstep on as far as economic policy. then you will be able to accept a third party. until then, people will, you know, choose their teams and keep getting played. that is held trump is even an option -- how trump is even an option. trump is what the system brought you.

that is why you have a trump. you would not have a trump if both parties were serious about policies that actually help people. trump is a creation of both parties' foolishness. host: got your point. this is a tweet from robert. i would rather be nothing except independent candidates. i mentioned on a number of occasions to political parties are detrimental to democracy in america, citing george washington's farewell address. vote for people, not parties. here is cornell west, a guest on the program earlier this week. he spoke about why he decided to run as a third party candidate. [video] >> i think about the creative, imaginative, courageous citizens and we end up with

trump on one hand and biden on the other. good god. trump, you have a gangster. i don't hate brother trump. i hate his activity. he's pushing almost a kind of civil war. biden. i love the brother but he's a hypocrite. he's pushing world war iii with what he says about china and russia in the last two years. we can have high-quality citizens become politicians, but you can be politicians in the traditional way. many are paid out by big money. they are captured by wall street and silicon valley. we, the citizens to become politicians, concerned about the plight and predicament of citizens, especially the vulnerable ones.

shiloh baptist church and deacon anthony shakey. i look for the man who is the least of these. >> you said president biden is a hypocrite. he pointed out the conflict with ukraine. for st think the president's policies -- where else do you think the president's policies have been hypocritical? >> he promised student loans. he promised a $15 minimum wage. he promised voting rights. when it came to voting rights he would not touch it, would not deal with nancy. when it came to the debt ceiling agreement, what happened? expand military, make a deal with manchin.

one of the few times and not just biden but the democratic party is a whole -- i was close to brother bernie sanders. he was not treated justly. not treated right. the democratic party don't really want to hear a variety of voices. big pharmaceutical companies and so forth keep the issues. if we are concerned about truth and justice and preserve whatever is left of democracy, we have got to engage the oligarchy and the corporate duopoly. both are tied to big money, big military, corporate wealth. 60% of american citizens of all colors are struggling to make it month by month.

host: the question this morning is would you consider a third party or independent candidate in 2024? john is a democrat in pennsylvania. caller: good morning. i have been boating for 50 years. i am 68 -- voting for 50 years. there was a democratic candidate, a republican candidate, a green party candidate, a congress candidate, maybe some off-the-wall candidate. there are more than adequate representation in the polling -- in the pole booths. it is craziness. trump should be in jail. biden is that he's getting old. that's a fact. i'm worried about that. right now he's doing his job. host: would you consider another

candidate, john? caller: no. no. host: because they wouldn't have a chance? caller: you mean biden? i'm not worried about who wins. i'm worried about the fact that one candidate we are talking about, trump, should be behind bars. the one that we have, everybody is beating up on him. there is no reason for him to be beat up on. do you understand? host: i do. john mentioned the green party. this is a map of the green party. where it is on the ballot. these are the states that are on -- it is on the ballot. that is green. the yellow here for these states is valid access under legal action. -- ballot access is under legal

action. pink is where they are building the green party. in montana it is unclear if he will be on the ballot. all these gray states, not yet on the ballot for 2024. that's an issue for a third party to actually get on the ballot for all those states. jerry in carrollton, ohio. republican. 3 i don't think we need -- caller: i don't think we need another party. we cannot corral the parties we have already. they are so corrupt it is pathetic. i just don't understand what a green party or another party would help us any at all. they would be corrupt too. you take joe biden. i want to know what everybody says the stuff they say about donald trump. i'm 65 years old. the best president that i've

seen since i've been alive. it is just amazing the lies, the thievery in our government. it is amazing to me. i -- joe biden is a puppet on a string. if anybody should be locked up it is his whole family should be locked up, if you ask me. why did we want more people like that with another party? i don't care what a party it is. they all do it. host: you would support donald trump if he was the nominee? caller: yes, i would. host: what if he did not get the nomination? what if it was somebody else and he decided to run? caller: i will not be the one out on the street burning down buildings because my cannot -- candidate did not win. host: let's say donald trump

decided to run as an independent. caller: yeah. i see. who's the lady from south carolina? i cannot think of her name right now. she was the governor. host: nikki haley. caller: nikki haley. she would be my second party that i would vote for in a heartbeat. i kind of wish donald trump would take her on as vice president or something. from what i've seen of her, the last time she was in there and she was taking care of her stuff, she put her foot down and took control of that place when it was her time to stand up and talk. heck of a woman. i don't know that much about her. from what i have seen i would vote for her in a heartbeat. host: all right jerry. let's talk to mike in north charleston, south carolina. caller: hi, this is mike.

i have never called and before with this question -- but this question has given me strength to call. i cannot think of a more horrifying situation than the two that are running -- the two leaders, either being in the race again. i have never voted for trump. i would never vote for biden. in the last election i voted for a libertarian. i can look at the mere and faced mice -- mirror and face myself. if i voted for either of those idiots i would not be able to. host: who do you like? is there anybody you would vote for? caller: i do like nikki haley. i like tim scott. both of them i would vote for in a heartbeat. trump is a crook. trump and biden are both too old and crooked. either belong in nursing homes or jail, both of them. host: all right.

let's look at social media. this is from twitter. my state's electoral votes are already decided. i will vote for the best candidate and a completely ok with that being a third party. gigi says no, it would be a wasted vote. sheri on facebook says, an independent will not get the backing from congress needed to affect change. we must start voting for better candidates for congress and the presidential election or it will be america's demise. bill is on the phone from new york, independent. caller: hello. i am a registered green. every election i vote for my party if they have candidates running. if cornell west gives the green

nomination, i will be voting for him. host: tell me what. what do you like about the green party? caller: because of their principles. it is a green new deal essentially. i support that. if the democrat, and there is no candidate for green, i would consider a liberal democrat. biden is too old, too weak. i'm going with cornell west. host: let's talk to doc in baton rouge, louisiana. independent. caller: good morning. i am going to go with this aunt is -- de santis. i think he is a good guy. he's not a criminal like trump and biden. to me that is the main thing. hell, you can't even walk the

streets in baton rouge without getting shot. host: you are an independent. i wonder who you voted for the last election. caller: the last election i voted for trump. host: what has changed your mind? why will you not vote for him again? caller: he's -- i like his policies. i don't like him as a man. i think he is corrupt, like biden. that is my situation. host: what you like about this santos -- de santis? caller: he is clean, as far as we know. i vacation in florida twice a year. it is a wonderful, wonderful state. we don't need all these northerners coming down.

stay up north, freeze to death if you have to, but don't come down here and -- host: why not? why don't you want people coming down? what is wrong with northerners? caller: they bring their politics with them. host: ok. staying in louisiana, shreveport. marty on the line for democrats. caller: good morning. i -- the possibility of a third party is always in the air. i'm going to vote democrat. it would have to be a dynamic person on a third party that could sway people to even look that way. a philanthropist. an x athlete -- ex-athlete. someone people know and trust. politicians, you can listen to the rhetoric. they are not really to the godly

to the point where god said loveday brother -- love thy brother. a third party will take a real dynamic person. i will say with the two parties are now. host: is there anyone you can think of that would fit the bill of the real dynamic, well-known person? caller: not offhand. i don't want to throw names out. whoever that person is, he knows who he is. he would have to get his -- his life has been not put under a microscope. that's the first thing that's going to happen if you not a politician. host: this is from susan on facebook. she says, yes. the rnc and dnc should not tell the voters who are choices are. take back the power of the vote.

it was never intended to be a two-party system. why do we allow them to force it upon us? this is alvin on facebook. yes, i support a third-party candidate. i am voting for dr. west, a green party candidate for president in 2024. this is a post by ballot pedia.org. reminding you with the qualifications are for running for president in the united states. this is article two, section one of the constitution. no person, except a natural born citizen or a citizen of the united states at the time of the adoption of this constitution shall be eligible for the office of president, neither any person eligible to that office who has not have attained the age of 35 years and been 14 years a resident within the united states. let's take a look at -- since

today's the day after independence day i wanted to show a clip from president biden with his wife, first lady dr. jill biden. they honored the troops at the new white house military barbecue while commemorating independence day. [video] >> as we remember for next urinary country this is, we hope we all rededicate ourselves to the work of our democracy. the unified -- the unified, unify the nation. see each other not as adversaries but his fellow americans. let us remember that. more than any other nation based on things like geography, ethnicity, religion. america's alienation and history founded on an idea. an idea that as we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are created equal. all people.

endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. [applause] [cheers] among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. we have not always lived up to those words but we never walked away from them. today, all days, we have to say clearly we never will. we never will. [applause] this year, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the all volunteer force, the 75th anniversary of desegregating the military -- [cheers] end of 75th in diversity of the woman's integration into the military, it's a great honor -- [indiscernible]

this is a great guy, by the way. [cheers] incredible integrity. we have made enormous progress as a nation. that is due to the people of this nation. the people's nation, not the politicians. the people. we just have to keep going. we have to keep the faith. we have to remember who we are. we are the united states of america and there is nothing beyond our capacity if we work together. ladies and gentlemen, we have come out of every crisis stronger for the last 245 years. happy fourth of july. god bless you and may god protect our troops. [cheers] host: that is the fireworks from yesterday on the national mall. i hope everybody had a good

independence day yesterday. we are taking your calls for about 20 minutes on this question on would you consider a third party or independent candidate for president in 2024? raymond is next, republican in north carolina. caller: good morning. i would not consider a third if it is possible hits, he was able to create a movement like donald trump has. we need to get donald trump back. i don't care what party it would be. we need summary like him -- somebody like him to be -- the deep state has taken over our country. i watched that speech from joe biden. the truth of the matter is -- i a to state that he is so full of crap. life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. people go down to school board meetings in the protest the children being indoctrinated.

he 60 attorney general on them for domestic terrorism -- sicks the attorney general on them for the missing terrorism. host: you want somebody like donald trump. would you be willing to vote for donald trump if he was not the gop nominee? caller: i would be willing to vote for donald trump for anything. the reason why they are so intent on going after him and all these charges is because they know he will break up the google boy network. he will break up the deep state. he will go in there with an ax instead of a scalpel this time and get rid of the people who have taken over this country. the average american community in chicago -- the african-american community in chicago, there's a genocide going on. going down the street everyday with moms and dads and siblings

crying behind these hearst. there was a talk about the distraction going on. i'm not anti-gay. i have gay people in my family but you have these transgendered dancing in front of children and in schools. come on. host: got it, raymond. mike, desta, california. -- mike in modesto, california. caller: people have to understand what happened with ross perot. there's no chance. all you are doing is influencing the election by giving yourself a charge and a moral victory. i'm not sure what it was with ross perot. i think it gave bush victory. somebody smarter who still has brain cells could get to the point of that. it put the republican in because

perrault siphoned off enough -- perpt siphoned up -- perot siphoned off enough votes. donald trump is like a sick religion. there's to be a disneyland work donald trump comes in and molests her. as far as this indoctrination of children, this ron desantis woke business, slavery happened and jim crow is what they totally want to deny and down to think about. in happened. -- it happened. in the south, your grandparents probably witnessed the lynching. that is how the culture went. i'm no hero. i was not going to jump up and say stop this. people go with the flow. you are stuck in a certain movement. it is very difficult to stand up.

on this indoctrination of children, you need to give children a chance to get to a certain age, at least approaching or around puberty to make any of these decisions about -- i think people have weird homosexual fantasies or impulses. host: we got your point. this is a gallup poll result from may. it's asking about party affiliation. we have republicans, 30%. this is up one point from a year ago. democrats are at 27%. these are how many people identify as democrats. that has gone down by four points from year ago. independents is 41%. identify as independents. that is up two points from year

ago. independents are increasing. let's go to clearwater, to robert, a republican. good morning. caller: how are you doing today? the leeway i would vote for donald trump if he was the front runner. besides that, i believe ron desantis will win. host: why do you think that? caller: ron desantis is a veteran. there are different wars going on right now. i think he is the louvre when that -- he will be the front runner and i will vote for him. the only way i vote -- host:host: go ahead, robert? caller: desantis is going to win. host: i'm curious why you think that given he's really behind in the polls. really behind donald trump, i should say. caller: he's behind donald trump

now. when it comes to the polls he will be upfront. host: if donald trump beats him, would you vote for him? caller: yes. that is the only way i vote for donald trump. host: all right. caller: thank you. host: bill in new york. democrat. caller: good morning. how are you? mimin is that right? i would consider a third-party candidate. i am looking very well at cornell west. he's come up with a lot of strong things. good points. i wanted to express to everybody that everything we believe, everything from the chicago killings, everything has been taught to us.

it has been taught to us by the dominant society. another thing. we need a candidate that is a true patriot. a true patriot to our country, which means they are willing to fight and replace the system we have with a system of real justice. i think that is what we need. host: i have a question. you say you liked dr. west and the green party. would you still vote for him if that meant taking votes away from the democratic party? you are a democrat. caller: this would bring the most constructive result. the most constructive result. yes. if that is going to bring the most constructive result and we were going to get real change in the system, absolutely. host: let's talk to solo in

houston, texas. independent. caller: good morning. i think the democrats -- i'm an independent but more democratic policies. the democrats should wise up. i remember what happened with the election in 2016. when they lost it. i don't have any problem with cornell west. the gentleman said it best. if people listened to him, more independents, more people that are going to vote for neither party support democrats more. you should prove that. the green party, no way in the red leaning states. they don't even get out the

ballot -- get on the ballot. that proves they are spoilers. for them to really reelect republicans, they should continue with that, the green party or low-level party. definitely there is no doubt republicans will reelect former president trump. he is going to be there nominee. -- their nominee. host: let's look at what nancy jacobson said in the l.a. times last month. the two-party status quo is a iled sysat inot working for the people it is designed to serve. bestay to refresh a stale system is through competition by forcing incumbents to improve their ideas to survive. voters are calor this and their desire for a t option

in the 2024 ential race. no lab preparing to offer that choice. the two parties sould rather sk to squash our efforts they compete against it. they don't seem to realize that by trying to suppress our movement they are showing the country exactly why we are needed. i wonder what you think about that. taking your calls for the next 10 minutes or so. kelly is calling from brookfield, florida. caller: how are you? i don't think it is a good idea to have a third-party. right now we need to be careful. we had four years of trump. we really need biden to win again. i just feel it is taking votes away from the democrats. i wish people would wake up about trump. like i is a con artist. he did not do anything for

anybody. all he did was -- everybody thinks they saved on taxes when they didn't. he voted for corporations not to pay anything. desantis. i live in florida. he is not doing anything for our state. my car insurance went up 50% in one year. all he is doing is running around the state calling everybody woke and fighting with disney. it is totally ridiculous. as far as him attacking transgendered, that is ridiculous. my son what the public schools. they do not try to put any sexual thought or anything into children. it is unreal how many people believe this. it is like a cult. i think people need to get help. it is really ridiculous. a third party is not going to

help the united states. host: jack and upper marlboro, maryland. also a democrat. caller: good morning, guys. thanks for taking my call. i completely agree with the previous caller. the election is far too important to entertain any third party candidates. the two-party system works. the issue is now that the republican party has been completely taken over by a cult of personality in donald trump. these are not serious people. take a look at what happened in the house and these hearings. these are not serious people. they are not serious about legislation or governing. they literally stand for nothing. they no longer stand for democracy. they no longer stand for the rule of law. that is the issue. host: do you support president biden? would you vote for him? caller: absolutely.

host: is there anybody you would prefer? caller: no. it is just too important. what cornell west is doing is actually dangerous. he was on your show. for whatever reason he wants to make this false equivalent that the democratic party is no different than the rnc, which is false and dangerous. there is no equivalency to donald trump. no equivalency to a qanon or a january 6. that happens only in the republican party and the so-called conservative movement. that comparison is a false comparison. it is dangerous. we cannot entertain, especially in this election, a third-party candidate. anything that will take votes away from biden would be a catastrophe. i can't imagine another four years of donald trump. host: anthony sent us via

twitter, absolutely he would consider a third party. i have been voting third party candidates for 25 plus years and will continue to do so. blind followers of the system are killing this country. better choices are out there if you are willing to leave the two parties. robert says this. i would rather be nothing but independent candidates. we have read that one before. sorry. i read that one. anyway, let's go to kevin in texas, democrat. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. there are only two choices there. people don't realize is between donald trump and joe biden than that is the issue. i agree with the other caller. another four years of donald trump would be devastating to the country. host: kathleen is next in

montana, independent. caller: good morning. ok. i tell all my family to vote independent, because if you vote for either party you will be destroying this country. please, please vote independent. host: is there a candidate you are supporting right now? caller: there are two of them i really like. one is scott. the other one is trump, unfortunately. host: when you say vote independent, those are republicans. caller: i'm telling people to vote independently. host: independently, not necessarily the independent candidate? caller: independently. you have to read the pamphlets. host: what is it you like about scott? caller: i like the way he's

talking. what he is saying to this country about what we need to do. and i like him. host: ok. a republican caller from florida, henry. caller: i want people to realize the last time any third party presidential candidate won electoral votes was back in 1968. 55 years ago. it will be very difficult for a third-party candidate to ever become president. host: all right. this is virginia, republican from baton rouge, louisiana. caller: good morning. i think we ought to have a third party, because -- they should stop.

everybody should quit lobbying and paying our people that do run so they can actually run on their own merit in what they believe and what the lobbyists are telling them to believe. we should have gun control. you should not be able to get one of these assault rifles. host: this is an article from third way, an organization. thirdway.org. this came out in december of last year. it isn't the first time and certainly will not be the last but american voters are frustrated with the state of our politics and approval ratings for both the democratic and republican parties are low. data showing the discontent and

interest in alternatives have led some to consider running a third-party candidate for president and 2024. -- in 2024. it might sound high-minded for the moment and a shakeup for the system, but a well-financed third-party candidacy will most likely benefit the present the republican nominee donald trump or a trump acolyte in 2024. our two-party system has evolved in a way that makes it close to impossible for a third-party candidate to actually win the election outright. instead they would act as a spoiler. anything but a staunchly conservative third-party candidate would be far more likely to pull support from the party in power in the white house, the democratic ticket rather than the republicans. given that recently discussed third-party candidates are either moderates or from the far left. for the purpose of this report we will not focus on the possibility of a candidate

running as more far right then trump. -- than trump. i will talk to glenn, a democrat from detroit, michigan. caller: how are you? i have been a democratic voter but i always thought about a third party. when i talk to family members about a third party they say we can't allow the republicans to get back in there. on the republicans are in, we have to get rid of them. i want an independent that walks down the party line. if a republican had an idea that can benefit the people, go for it. if the democrat has the idea, go for it. i saw you when he first came on. i thought you looked familiar. you interviewed one of my favorite artists back in the day, layla michaela. that is how i recognized you. host: that was a long time ago. caller: go ahead.

host: are you done with your comment? caller: yes, i am. host: bobby from grayson, kentucky. republican. caller: may? -- me? if you are for joe biden and kamala harris, you are stupid. most of them independent people dislike them. host: bobby, would you consider a third party candidate? caller: no. they try to put in the same agenda as joe biden and kamala harris. host: jonathan is next in ohio, republican. caller: i'm in ohio. i will vote for joe biden. donald trump is a troublemaker. he is a liar. he said he won the election with no proof. host: you are calling on the republican line.

do you identify as a republican? caller: i am a republican but a vote for joe biden if he runs. host: why? caller: i will not vote for donald trump. he is causing problems for our country. host: did you vote for him in the last election? caller: no, i never voted for him. i have never voted for him. i have been a republican for years. host: are there others you would prefer? caller: i would vote for -- what's his name? do used to be in the senate. host: is there anyone alive he would vote for? caller: no. i would vote for a democrat. it's joe biden. he is bringing our country together. donald trump is spoiling our country. he's the only man who knows everything and knows nothing. just a liar. host: this is karen and

alabaster, alabama. republican line. caller: two things. to me, trump is a third party candidate. number two, how come you are not talking about robert kennedy junior? newsweek says he has 31% of joe biden's supporters. i think he would be a big contender for biden and you guys are not talking about him. i wondered when you would have him on your show. host: we are trying. are you still there? on there and you have not been able? host: we will keep trying. caller: trump.

he does not like the other candidates at all. host: got it. next, kirk bado will be joining us. he is the editor of national journal hotline. later, semafor reporter morgan chalfant discusses the debate in congress over reauthorizing section seven hundred two of the foreign intelligence act. we will be right back.

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c-span through radio got easier. tell your smart speaker play c-span radio and listen to washington journal daily at 7 a.m. eastern. weekdays, at 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. eastern, catch washington today for a report of the stories of the day. listeno c-span anytime. tell your smart speaker play c-span radio. c-span, powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. my guest is kirk bado, editor of national journal hotline. welcome to the program. in talking about where congress is going for the next election, i want to show on the screen real clear politics. this is their polling average for a generic congress vote, which means not specific to a candidate.

43% of respondents said they would vote democrat, 43% republican. what does that mean? guest: it reflects the reality in congress. we are very nearly divided. democrats have the majority by one seat in the white house -- in the senate. the race for the house and senate will be extremely competitive and it will be on the margins. host: president biden's approval rating is at 43%. how are democratic congresspeople reacting to president biden? are they distancing themselves, embracing him? guest: they are still embracing him. they are dancing with the one that brought him -- that brung them. they are not fully running away

from him yet and running on his popular platform. the infrastructure bill. you will see president biden touting that a lot. they are not running from him. president biden has the line, do not compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. democrats are looking at the alternative of former president trump and the more extreme views on some of these republicans and saying this is what we have now. host: we will take your calls for our guest. democrats can call (202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001, and independents, (202) 748-8002. i want to show you something president biden said in chicago last week talking about biden omics. here's a portion of what he said and then i will get your response. [video clip]

>> guess what? bidenomics is working. supply chains were broken millions of people unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses on the verge of losing after so many had already closed. today, the u.s. has the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economy, since the pandemic. the highest in the world. [applause] we have created 13.4 million new jobs, more jobs in two years than any president has ever made before. it is miraculous. that is bidenomics in action. bidenomics is about building an economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down. there are three fundamental changes we decided to take in

with the help of congress have been able to do. first, making smart investments in america. second, educating and empowering american workers to grow the class. third, promoting competition to lower costs and help small businesses. host: that was the president in chicago last week. kirk, how is that playing in congress? guest: the employment -- the unemployment rate is down, the economy is in pretty good shape, but are voters feeling that? right now, in survey after survey we have seen, voters rank the economy and battling inflation as their number one and two issues and they are not feeling the same effect that resident biden -- that president biden is talking about now. the president has very little control over those things so that is why he's having the investments in making things in america but it's about transferring that to voters and that will be challenging as he

ramps up his reelection campaign. host: let's talk about the house. democrats will need five seats. how is that looking? guest: it looks about like that real clear poll we showed earlier where it is equally divided. we have had a few supreme court cases these last few weeks that have kind of upended what we thought the redistricting process would look like. it looked like republicans were going to be able to draw themselves a few more seats in ohio or north carolina, but after these rulings that broke in democrats favor, we will have 's in alabama, probably louisiana. it will almost be a wash. it's a tossup. the biggest races where both parties will be looking will be in the 23 crossovers seats, where representatives from a different party hold the

district that the presidential candidate of the other party won, 18 republicans, five democrats. the republicans are mostly in new york and california and that will be the center of the race for the house. host: going back to that supreme court case, the alabama case, does that mean that alabama and louisiana are most likely going to pick up a seat for the democrats? guest: the ruling found how the gop drawn maps in alabama violate parts of the voting rights act. they will have to redraw the lines by july 21. and it has to be a black majority district because there's only a single black majority district in alabama right now. democrats will likely be favored in those seats. it depends on if -- on in this game of redistricting which republican ends up in a seed

that is not in their favor. the same thing in louisiana. but those seats should favor democrats in a redraw. host: i know it is still too early to make a prediction about control of the house, but it looks like it is in play for the democrats to retake it. guest: absolutely. when you have narrow margins and summary districts -- and so many districts that president biden won, they are in a strong position to retake the house. we could have a scenario where both changers -- both chambers flip. host: let's have a look at elise stefanik. she outlines gop priorities and its stance toward the biden administration. [video clip] >> the biden administration continues to weapon -- to

weaponize the executive branch. the unequal application of justice by joe biden's doj must be stopped. there cannot be one set of rules if your last name is biden or clinton and another for everyone else. house republicans will continue to deliver much-needed oversight to cut out the rot in these federal agencies and deliver accountability and transparency for the american people as we continue to work hard to implement our commitment to america. last week, while it should not have taken a threat of contempt, the oversight committee reviewed critical documents from the fbi relating to joe biden's corruption. we will hold the administration accountable by standing up for the american people to stop the outrageous and insane that idea that started in new york is now being embraced by every democrat and the biden administration.

we will pass acts. house republicans will stand up for second amendment rights with a resolution restoring constitutional rights, especially for our disabled veterans, our wounded warriors. host: she talks about a lot of stuff there. how is that playing? are those good general election issues? guest: the gives you a reminder of the benghazi hearings in 2015 that were designed on paper to hold the then secretary of state, hillary clinton, accountable, but were really about bruising her up a little bit were the primary -- a little bit before the primary. she mentioned the different applications of the law. these are important things and

oversight is important but if you are a voter who is deciding whether or not to vote for a democrat or republican based on gas, you are probably not a swing voter. host: let's talk about the senate. what are you watching? what seats could be in play? guest: the senate is just as divided as the house and it's a tossup. the map does favor republicans slightly. there are 23 democrats up for reelection, 11 republicans, and the top seats republicans are targeting our jon tester in montana, sherrod brown in ohio, and joe manchin in west virginia. of those 23 democratic held senate seats, those are the only three were trump has blown them out of the water. 39 points in montana -- in west virginia, 18 in montana and eight in ohio. those will be vulnerable seats.

however, it is not just the map that is your destiny here. it is also the candidates. republicans had a big issue last year in the senate with poor candidate recruitment and some more exotic nominees on the republican side who were able to sail through a primary but were a little unpalatable to general election voters. republicans are trying to counter that. host: i want to ask you about recruitment. there are some states struggling with that. guest: yes in second-tier competitive seats. we mentioned montana, ohio and west virginia. republicans have gotten big recruits in all three. they have tim she he in montana. ohio has a few competitive people there too. then there's the next level of competitive seats, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, even nevada. they are struggling to field a

solid general election candidate there. in wisconsin, mike gallagher, former moderate republican, said he's not going to challenge tammy baldwin. in michigan, a democratic representative who has won competitive race after competitive race, a fund-raising juggernaut, is the only major candidate in the democratic primary without much of a republican challenger. she would be tough even in the best conditions and republicans are not putting themselves in the best condition. host: you wrote an article for the national journal called courting disaster about the supreme court's decisions. tell me about what you think that would be -- how you think that is going to play in the congressional campaigns? guest: we mentioned the redistricting cases.

so those were big decisions on their own. if you look at these other supreme court cases that dealt more with cultural wedge issues, affirmative action, student unforgiveness. in that article, i wrote about how progressives are going to start calling for biden to expand the court, to do something about this, and president biden has said we are not going to expand the court. the most he can do is kind of shake a fist at the supreme court while he is getting these defeats. it just shows him to be, at least in some voters eyes, ineffectual.

you have all these questions about his age, about how dissatisfied voters are with him. this could trickle down to congressional races, where younger voters might end up staying home. in a presidential race, that's influential, but has effects down ballot as well. host: what about roe v. wade? how big of an issue will abortion be? guest: massive. i think we might have underestimated it last cycle. the democrats really seized on that issue. after the court overturned roe v. wade, republicans really did not have an answer for it. they were able to talk about, you know, our stance on abortion is we do not like it but this is

the precedent. they don't have that anymore. they have struggled to find a palatable message that gets them to their primary -- gets them through their primary, was voters who are a little more extreme on abortion, and the general election. voters are still uncomfortable with even a 15 week abortion ban. republicans have not found a good talking point to solve that issue and democrats are going to seize on it. host: let's talk to callers now. henry is first up, a democrat in alabama. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: yes. i would like to speak about a

thing that happened in alabama. what they did was they put in a law where if you help any person fill out their absentee ballot, it's a felony. host: let's get a response. guest: i know there have been some ways that especially republican-controlled state legislatures are trying to regulate more the mail and and ab the ballots -- the mail in and absentee ballots. it's part and parcel of what we have seen after the 2020 elections. host: debbie is in pasadena, maryland. good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to ask a question about the unemployment and they say it's the lowest it's ever been and i know that the reason

is the lowest is because people were collecting it a year ago getting $600 or -- $600 more on top of their unemployment a week. and you cannot collect unemployment again until you have worked a certain amount of time. i think it is three quarters of a year. so of course unemployment is going to be low because the fact that people cannot collect it now. they have already used all they can use. i was wondering why don't they tell us the reason that this is happening? host: any response? guest: how we calculate unemployment is so interesting, where we make a big deal out of the first of the month, where the new numbers, and. it's a big political event. a month or two down the line, you look at the revised numbers. in terms of how we calculate the

unemployment numbers, i am kind of wait and see. host: we have a tweet. this was sent via twitter. it says, will new york be able to change the gop four seat gain? guest: that is kind of the ballgame now for democrats. you have the democratic super pacs and house majority pacs already committing to spend $45 million in new york alone to get back those seats in districts that president biden carried. that will be the center of the house battlefield right now. there are lawsuits and legal pushes to change the map in new york. democrats at the state level, including governor kathy hochul, are pushing to redraw the lines again after last year's redistricting fiasco delayed the primary. we are waiting to see how that plays out right now, but the

question is 100% correct that this will be the center of the battlefield. democrats and republicans will make a lot of investments there. in a presidential election year, when turnout will be high, democrats have a good chance of flipping at least a few of those seats. host: john is calling in maryland. good morning. caller: how is it going? i want to tell you how things are going out there. i have been self-employed since 1982 and made anywhere from 50,000 to $100,000 a year. on my way to my minimum-wage job now because of this economy. you could call it anecdotal, but -- it is not that biden is wrong on all aspects. you have to do these things in baby steps. the lunatics are running it. you talk about issues, you know, abortion, all that, but you

don't have food and money, people look at it differently. that's all. thank you. host: what do you think? guest: i am sorry you are having tough times. that is what we were talking about earlier, where president biden and democrats can tout this low unemployment number, look at all these rankings and indicators that the economy is in strong shape, but if voters like john are not feeling that, what is it worse for them? host: there's an article in the washington post titled swing district republicans strike back and it's about more moderate republicans in seats that could be flipped. they are pushing back against their voters on the more conservative side. guest: we are starting to enter into it.

we are in the third quarter of an off year. reelection campaigns. it was like a scenario in the senate where joe manchin and kyrsten sinema where the most powerful politicians in washington because they needed those votes. you are kind of not seeing that play out in the house even with it so narrowly divided. you are seeing kevin mccarthy is being led a little bit by the more extreme members of his party. they have the biggest microphones, the loudest voices. they got the biggest concessions. moderate republicans, the majority makers, the republicans we are talking about in new york, are feeling the squeeze. they don't want to move certain things onto the floor and they are pushing back because

they want to go back to their districts and say i'm showing you what i have brought. send me back to congress. host: let's talk to marion in cincinnati, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i was interested in what you said about ohio. there's been so much corruption in ohio on the part of the legislature in ohio. the previous speaker of the house in ohio was just convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for bribery. a $5 million bribery. and it is beyond me how people cannot see past all this gerrymandering and ignoring supreme court rulings that the ohio legislature has been doing.

and i just wondered how much influence the state legislature has on the presidential campaign, especially in ohio. thank you. guest: thank you for the question. ohio has traditionally been a more swing state, battleground state. it has become less of that in the trump years and now, but there's been more political investment in ohio for both parties. republicans in the state are pushing for a special election to change the rules on how you can change the state constitution because of the push in the state to codify abortion protections in the state constitution. so ohio republicans said we

now need to change the constitution to change the threshold for how we change the constitution. you have the republicans in ohio trying to make it harder for abortion changes to happen. at the presidential level, i don't quite know yet. we will have a competitive senate race with sherrod brown up for reelection. you are already seeing joe biden, former president trump making tons of trips out there now. i don't think ohio will be a swing state. however, the conditions are getting there or it could be competitive potentially. host: i want to ask you about arizona and kyrsten sinema, now running as an independent. is it possible we have a three-way race now? guest: what is going on in arizona is like a political scientist's dream. it is so interesting to see these unique conditions. you talked about the condition

of a third party presidential candidate playing spoiler. you could have a legitimate third-party candidate or independent in kyrsten sinema. and so far senate democrats have to play a tricky game. they are annoyed by kyrsten sinema for any number of things. they would probably prefer the democratic candidate to be a comfortable vote and not come up the works like kyrsten sinema does -- not gum up the works like kyrsten sinema does, but they need her. you are starting to see that crack a little bit. you saw nancy pelosi saying she would hand -- would headline a fundraiser for the democratic candidate.

my question is who do the republicans have on the ticket now? the governor passed on the senate run. the only candidate i have seen mentioned seriously lost the governor's race in a winnable state. she has not necessarily moderated since she lost. if she is on the ticket, you could have sinema and ruben gallego in the general next year. host: good morning. caller: i have a comment i would like to make about our election ballot systems.

i don't want to oversimplify it, but i think it is time we all put our thumbprint on our ballots when we cast our ballots. i just feel like you should be able to know two years after the election how you could actually go to that person and say how was it that you voted in that election? as it is now, when you leave the ballot box, you have no copy of your vote. you don't know where your vote goes. you don't know how it is cast. i think a thumbprint will illuminate a lot of the -- will eliminate a lot of the worries from the people at vote. you could call your election bureau two years later and say i want to review my vote for two years and i want to know how it was cast. thank you very much. host: what do you think? guest: i don't know if thumbprint verification is the

most effective and efficient way to increase election security. i know it's a huge issue for republicans and democrats. states have really struggled to find that balance of making it easier to vote but harder to cheat. that is kind of the line that people use. i think what we are going to see in the next election is different innovations in the process of how we count ballots and everything that previous elections kind of laid bare. host: let's talk to tom in connecticut. republican. guest: -- caller: yes, ma'am. good morning. it's going to be a total republican sweep in 2024. the election process will report back to same-day election -- will revert back to same-day

election, all 50 states, paper ballots. the only exemption will be absentee ballots, the same as essentially jury duty, someone is in the military and have under penalty of law an injury or disability that prevents them to go to the polling place. host: why do you think there's going to be a republican sweep? guest: i live in -- caller: i live in connecticut. it's a totally democratic state. we have zero congressional representatives. our senators are democratic. but i have many hispanic friends. we have a significant hispanic population. i happen to be white, military veteran, and they are all to a person, male and female, and

young, college educated, hispanic people are definitely voting republican. they are appalled at what happened with respect to religion in the roman catholic church and applaud the recent decisions of the united states supreme court. the repercussions from that will be parents who cosigned on student loans will start losing their homes and they are going to lose their suvs and they won't be able to take their dogs to the overpriced veterinarians. host: we will get a response. he mentioned the latino vote. guest: republicans are really trying to court the latino vote now, especially after they made some significant inroads in that community in texas and florida, even arizona. what i see with tom's question is about reverting to same-day , only paper ballots and

everything. that is a deal within the republican party now. when former president trump announced his campaign, he was saying that. but now you have the rnc starting to invest in their mail-in voting infrastructure, voter education, changing the stigma, at least in the republican party, over vote by mail and mail-in ballots, because there's a huge gap between them and democrats on that and it's easier to vote. you can vote at your convenience. you are not at the whims of the weather or some emergency to go vote. that type of disconnect, voter education from the top of the party, making sure that trickles down to voters, is something i will be watching closely, because that has huge implications for the presidential race and the balance of congress. host: zach is next, harrisburg, pennsylvania, a democrat. good morning.

caller: thank you for taking my call. i can tell you we have things that make our vote in pennsylvania very safe. i want to put that out there. i hear people lie about -- in my opinion, it's all about suppressing the vote by coming up with this bogeyman that does not exist. the mail-in voting -- talking about kitchen table issues. in this day and age -- and i'm also a military veteran. people, especially handicapped, i have to accommodate at my polling place. they will sit at their kitchen table and put in their ballot. they can get on their phone or laptop, research the candidates. the people who do mail-in ballots are probably more

informed than the people standing in line. in places like georgia, you are going to put somebody in jail for giving a bottle of water to exercise their constitutional right? you know? and at the same time, these guys are gerrymandering and taking money from pacs and all this stuff. the corruption has never been on the side of us patriots. host: let's get a response. guest: well, to his point -- first of all, thank you for your service and for overseeing these elections. is a tough job -- it is a tough job a lot of the time, especially with rising threats to pull workers. pennsylvania was extremely secure and it will be secure in 2024. the difficulty here is pushing back on a lot of those conspiracies about either widespread fraud that the former president pushes -- and that is,

again, kind of almost voter suppression. you saw that in georgia, where former president trump said this is rigged in georgia, sow in the 2021 special senate election, you had a lot of republicans stay home in those red leaning districts and everything. it is kind of a dangerous game republicans are playing. host: i want to show you a headline from nbc news that says trump's gop lead grows after latest indictment, poll finds, but a new poll shows the party is split over whether trump should remain the leader of the gop. what are you seeing as far as the trump indictments and impacts on congressional leaders? guest: congressional leaders, especially on the republican side, largely mimic what trump is saying. kevin mccarthy is calling it

politically motivated right now. he is standing by trump, even when he said that former president trump is the strongest candidate they have, but he might not be the strongest. even floating the possibility president biden might beat him, trump was outraged. he went on this long apology tour about it. mitch mcconnell is keeping quiet, as he is wont to do, to see how the chips play out. you have hakeem jeffries fundraising office a lot -- fundraising off this a lot, trying to tie republicans in congress to trump. democrats are painting the republican party as a party of extremes and they point to the indictments of trump as evidence of that, that they are not distancing themselves from this politically vulnerable, at least on paper, former president. they are looking for an opening there. i pulled the real clear politics

polling averages at this point in time in 2016 and 2020, and it was kind of, at least at the presidential level, a done deal at this point. president biden was leading in 2020, president trump in 2016 at this time. it seems like these other presidential candidates on the gop side, if your best case scenario is ben carson in 2024, i think you are in trouble. host: next caller is in new york, a republican. caller: i would like to hear a little bit more. most of your criticisms on the republicans, the extreme republicans, all their weaknesses, what they are doing wrong. let's turn the table a little bit and be more bipartisan about your criticism.

what about the democratic extreme ideas, like doing away with fossil fuels, open borders, indicting somebody that's, you know, he's a former president and they rushed this special counsel through. it took a couple months to come up with 39 indictments. we have not heard anything about the special counsel looking into biden. i cannot even tell you who he is. i didn't see any photos of the documents they found, what the makeup of the documents were. and are there any extremists that affect the senate, they keep the senate kind of -- you know, with their ideas about student loan cancellations, reparations? i can go on and often, but how about putting a little light on with the democratic party is

going through instead of just focusing -- and, ok, you read the washington post. everyone knows what the washington post is. in bc, everyone knows what nbc is all about. the new york times, we don't even have to discuss this, because it won't go anywhere, but let's shine some light on the democratic party so i can get an idea of both sides. if i hear only one focus on just this, that, and the other -- i want to hear both sides. host: got it. guest: let's look at some democratic vulnerabilities. you stop at the top of the ticket with president biden. these losses in the supreme court are showing he's a little bit ineffective. it reminds me of the summer of 2021, when congress was not moving on his agenda at all. he tried to be the senate president and chief and was really just not getting anywhere there. his age is an issue as well. that could drag down democrats. and as a voter in new york, as

our caller was, he would know that the defund the police stigma on democrats really hurt them in the last election. one of the big reasons you saw at the national level surprising republican wins in the house was because republican successfully painted democrats the party of the fund the police -- of defund the police and the state legislature there pushed through a cash bail reform program that was unpopular with voters. that kind of soft on crime reputation democrats have struggled to shake really took effect, especially on long island and some of the outer borough races. that is a huge issue, huge issue for voters, especially -- even in new england, where there's a massive amount of fentanyl coming across the border.

that's a political issue democrats have struggled to answer. host: stephen is on the line for democrats. caller: good morning. i find it funny that the republicans have -- are trying to mess around with the opportunity to vote, so they have, like, 70 places where you can vote in a county in texas, and they cut it down to three places, so now it takes a lot more money just to be able to get in your car and drive to the new polling place if you can find it at all, and they say, well, you still have the opportunity to vote. you still have the opportunity to vote. by the time you get to this new voting place that's now small in numbers, you have to wait in line six or eight hours in order to vote. which of you white guys on the republican side would even consider doing that? so i have a hard time dealing

with the democratic party not fighting. they have so many opportunities. the republican party -- i cannot even recognize this as being a republican party anymore. i don't even know what they are. it just continues. and what are we hearing from joe biden? well, when we all work together, that is when we get things done. how about a little bit of passion, joe? if you said, if we all work together, that is when we get things done. that is when america comes to its best and when we really get things done in a logical way. anyway -- host: all right. a lot of criticism there of joe biden on the left. guest: a lot of passion on that call that apparently joe biden needs. this is going back to what we said about some criticism from the left of joe biden.

his approval ratings are underwater even in the democratic party. part of that criticism is he's not taking the fight enough, not talking about expanding the court, not saber rattling like former president trump did, but that is not his style. that's never been his style. he has been in washington for 50 years. he's a dealmaker and a back slapper and everything and he knows how the sausage is made. if you are looking for him to change that at almost 80 years old, you kind of know what you are getting already. host: kirk bado, thank you so much. editor of national journal's hotline. nice to talk to you. guest: thanks for having me. host: coming up later in the program is semafor reporter morgan chalfant. she discusses the debate in congress over reauthorizing section 702 of fisa, which is expiring at the end of the year. coming up, more of your calls on open forum.

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substance was cocaine. secret service agents were doing a around when they found it. officials were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to the ap on conditions of anonymity. the complex was evacuated at about 8:45 p.m. sunday. fire and emergency crews were brought in to do a test and preliminarily identified cocaine. the white house was reopened and the powder was sent for further testing. that is what is happening there. a tragic mass shooting. this is nbc news. five killed and two injured in a philadelphia shooting. police saw a man with a semi-automatic rifle, a handgun, body armor, and a police scanner. he opened fire and continued shooting as officers pursued

him. five killed, two minors wounded by gunfire. he opened fire in a philadelphia neighborhood on monday. the injured were boys ages two and 13. they are in stable condition. here's a quote from the mayor, who says this country needs to re-examine his conscience and find out how to get guns out of dangerous people's hands. a person walking down a city street with an ar assault rifle and shooting randomly at people while wearing a bullet-proof vest with multiple magazines is disgraceful but all too common -- but an all too common situation in america. all those killed were male. they were ages 20, 29, 59 and 31, and the boy aged 15.

we will start taking your calls now. bill is up first in albany, new york, a republican. good morning. caller: good morning. i did not call for that reason but that is awful news you just said. i did not know that and it is just hard to hear that news. something should be done about the gun control, especially when kids are involved. it is terrible. the only people i would even listen to are the parents of the children involved. but anyway, the reason i called when you had your other guest on were for two. try to use common sense and not politics. one is -- talking about the economics today and the other is about the elections coming up being constitutional. first of all, using common

sense, the price of gasoline still being much higher than it was before biden was in office and made the change, i do not understand why people cannot use common sense and see what is happening. in november, when president trump -- two months before he was out of office, i remember getting gas for $2.09 a gallon. when biden signed the executive order stopping drilling in the united states -- now, i could see if he was going to get clean energy in right away, but what happened was we had the same type of gas, maybe even dirtier gas, flowing around our country, because we are buying it from other refineries in, you know, other countries, so it's costing

more to go over there and get that gas and use the same gas. it almost tripled the price. that is what really hurt the economy. and everybody i speak to is really hurting. not just gas, but because it's affected the trucks that ship, the food in grocery stores. it's affecting grocery stores. you go to a restaurant or a diner, prices are high. everybody knows this and i don't know why people don't see that. it's hurting the average person. i myself have noticed it. i have to go into my savings now, which i did not have to do, and i'm not saying -- i don't want to make it a trump/biden thing, but i did not have to do that in the years trump was in office because we were energy independent. we are not energy independent right now and we need to just put that switch and turn in and

start producing the energy here -- turn it and start producing the energy here. that is one thing. i will be quick. on the election thing, what we had were three states, arizona, philadelphia, and georgia, who the legislature is supposed to change the election laws constitutionally. they did not do that. it was not changed by the legislatures in those states. host: changed in what way? changed in what way, bill? caller: because of covid, they changed -- the board of elections changed the law and said you can come in later" after election day, you can mail-in ballots, this, that. that is supposed to be done by the state legislatures. it was not done in four states, four key swing states. i think that is why the republicans mean by -- about

fraud. they are not talking about fraud. they are talking about, constitutionally, those states did not really elect the president that is in office. host: ok. bill, i have to move on to other callers. here's another bill in palm springs, california, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning and thank you for taking my call. we are all over the map here, hartley? i was born in southwest philadelphia, christmas day, 19 53. the neighborhood, there was never any problem with guns. i walked about a mile to get to school, never worried about anything, and i was a little squirt. but i will tell you, in the 1970's, when gambling came to new jersey -- my brain is not working -- atlantic city, trump

was pushing for his casinos, and trump's name was in the newspaper all the time. trump and his family have been criminals forever. i mean, forever, and the people that are in love with this man, it's like, there's something wrong. i moved to northwest indiana in 1978, worked in the steel industry for 32 years, ran for public office as a republican in indiana, and ran the polls. i was a precinct person. i worked with thousands of people. it took me 11 years to get two college degrees. i worked with a lot of uneducated people and uneducated people will believe lies over truth all day long. one thing -- but i truly believe that during the last election cycle, the one before last, i cannot ever believe there were not subliminal messages sent out through fox, news max and the rest of them from our russian

buddies, putin, trump's buddy, and i cannot believe people believe the things they believe and cannot be swayed. when i was a precinct person and i ran the polls there for several years, we never had issues like we have now. i think most of the issues here are manufactured by out sets like fox and newsmax and the rest of them. appreciate being on. thank you. host: let's move on to reverend wallace in marrero, louisiana, independent. good morning. caller: let me say my prayers go out to the king family for dr. king's sister's death. i want to save the reason mr. trump is leading in the polls is you can bawl those people up in one ball. they have the same philosophy as donald trump.

i am not talking about immigration -- they are not talking about immigration much more. they are talking about crime. it is a problem but it's not just a local problem but it's a national problem. one of the reasons crime is a problem -- that is one of the major problems, but i want to say that the major thing that's going to hurt the republican part is three major things. one, they have -- did everything they can to suppress african-american votes. secondly, they have -- as we celebrate the fourth of july, many people have died to give us the privilege, the freedom to vote, to bear arms, but also, the lgbtq community, women's rights, abortion.

those issues are going to come back up and haunt them. and i can tell you that it's a possibility that the republicans will certainly lose the house because of all of the gerrymandering they are doing, diluting the vote and that's going to come up and hurt them in the community. the reason they are attacking mr. biden with his son is to keep you looking that way, when really, they have no issue, no platform, they have not said anything. the way they are running from the country, from their perspective, is everyone else is second-class or not american. they do not show the respect for others in this democracy and give people the liberty to come to this country and be part of this country. all of us in this country came here through some other way, through immigrants or something, parents.

the republican party come up with the supreme court decisions, and some of them could possibly be good, but some of them are just as bad, that is something that could be tweaked and challenged down the road. one thing trump has done, he has pulled down the institution of government. freedom of expression, freedom of the press, all of those things will come back and hurt him. host: all right, reverend. got it. let's take a look at this "wall street journal" article that is on the front page. it says, "judge limits contact with social platforms." a judge issued a preliminary -- policing of social media posts likely violated the first

amendment. it is a 155 page ruling. it bars white house officials and multiple federal agencies from contacting social media companies the purpose of suppressing political views and other speech normally protected from censorship. the judge's injunction came out led by the attorney general's of missouri and louisiana, who allege the biden administration fostered a "enterprise" to stamp out what it concluded was rampant misinformation on social media. social media platforms were pressured to scrub away disfavored views of covid-19 health policies, the origins of the pandemic, the hunter biden laptop story, election security, and other devices. the justice department has said it has denied the plaintiff

allegations and said the federal government took necessary and responsible actions to deal with the pandemic and foreign attempts at election interference. it is open forum. michael is next, from north carolina, republican. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: i notice you were not on the air last week. i hope you had some great time off. i just wanted to talk a moment about gun-control. i think it was last night, they may have had the press conference during the day sometime or sometime yesterday evening. but in philadelphia, i heard the mayor speak and another city official. they were saying that the gun laws are very relaxed in philadelphia and that contributed to the mass shootings there. i believe it was this week, maybe monday.

that was disappointing because they were saying that it was just beside them in new jersey there were more strict gun laws on the books. that was a bit confusing, how new jersey could have stricter laws they in philadelphia. i don't believe that taking all weapons from the people is the solution. what i believe is more background checks, especially for mental health. this is a mental health crisis, it appears. it is not a failure of government congress, as it is personal choices. if we could get more money to the states for mental health and mental health research, and more laws for background checks, i think that would make a big improvement. host: all right, michael. dennis next, democrat. caller: good morning.

i would like to talk about the problems we are having right now . this is a republican and democratic problem we have right now with bill gates trying to block our sign from -- and china buying up foreign land. i think it is terrible that we are selling out our farmland to china. all the chinese -- ♪ i mean, i can't understand which party is involved in this arid nobody knows, you know what i mean? it is our whole administration that we have going on right now that is letting all of this take

place in the united states. everybody has got a little bit of common sense sense left, i think. i don't know if anybody has got any common sense left or not here in the united states. people are down on the united states right now, on account of the way our country has been run over here by both parties. host: dennis, this is not regarding the farmland issue, but regarding china, this is also on the front page of the "wall street journal." it says the u.s. is curbing china's access to cloud. they aim to close loopholes in chip export controls as tensions percolate. it's is the ministry she is preparing to restrict chinese companies's access in a move

that could further strain relationships between the world economic superpowers. if adopted, it would likely require u.s. cloud service providers, such as amazon and microsoft, to seek u.s. government permission before they provide cloud computing services that use advanced artificial intelligence chips to chinese customers. the biden administration's move on cloud services comes as china said monday that it would impose export restrictions on metals used in advanced chip manufacturing. the high-stakes conflict over supply chain access to the world's most advanced technology is escalating in the days ahead of treasury secretary janet yellen's visit to china. a trip that the biden administration hopes would ease tensions. stephanie is next in pennsylvania, independent.

caller: yes, i want to talk about china, too. i want to expand it further. it is about the decoupling versus the delinking issues. we need to decouple from china completely. i would expand that to, we need to decouple from all authoritarian governments. the authoritarian governments should be separated from international institutions, like the united nations and others. we are making them rich. i hear people coming into the united states border and to europe, and those are the democratic countries. i neighbor hear of anybody -- i never hear of anybody risking their life to go into russia, to

go into china, to go into any authoritarian country. if we would just decouple from the authoritarian countries, their countries would empty because people want to go to democracies. host: stephanie, let's talk about specifics. how would you decouple the u.s. economy from the chinese economy? some people would argue that it is too late, that the two are just too dependent on each other. caller: i think the only ones to say it too late are the billionaires. you notice you have a few little issues with china and all of a sudden, janet yellen and tony whatever, they are trying to smooth it over. i don't want to smooth it over. i want to tell our companies, you choose one or you choose the other. but you cannot have both, because we are funding the rise

of china. we better get smart and decouple from that and every other authoritarian country, including india. you try to decouple from india, i will tell you something, the indians would throw modi out in a heartbeat. even those people don't want to be authoritarian. we just have to decouple from the authoritarians and start all over with the united nations. let them do their thing, because they will smother themselves. nobody wants to live under an authoritarian government. if you call it a war, you go to jail for 15 years. host: got it, stephanie. bob in san diego, california, democrat. morning. caller: good morning. am i on? host: yes, you are. go right ahead. caller: i am picking up on what

that lady said. she is being extreme, because you cannot decouple. host: our economies are too intertwined? caller: they are because of our corporations, where we give all of our rules -- the supreme court passes laws for the corporations are not the individual. the employee does not have as much right as the corporation. corporations are like humans now. they have more rights. anyway, my point would be that she wanted to decouple from the authoritarians. well, never mind. never mind. host: all right. let's talk to teresa in lemont, illinois, republican. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. yesterday, there was a three-hour session on how

patriotic people are. stte ever can americans said that they were not patriotic, that they absolutely hated this country. they have their own national anthem, their own juneteenth. they don't believe in july 4. you know, we have open borders. they can go to africa anytime they want to, to the country that they love. if they don't love this country, they don't belong here. and thank you for taking my call. host: all right, let's go to eric, who is in tucson, arizona. hi, eric. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: i want to touch on two things. first, i want to touch on the loser, who is donald trump. when he was growing up, and i am 73 years old, so he has got me by a few, there were games that we played, board games.

we played "war," "monopoly," and "electric football." trump lost in all these games. he tried to cheat. it came from real life. when you look at him as a monopoly, he went bankrupt. when you look at him with electric football, i am sure the kids, he put magnets to try to win, he still lost. he is a loser. the first thing, he is definitely a loser, it is war. he is a dictator. we don't need dictators in the united states. i am a retired military guy. this dude is a loser. host: all right, let's talk to barbara, concorde, california, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. i was listening to your arizona caller.

everything he said was right on. the lady prior to that from illinois, talking about the blacks don't celebrate. excuse me, i have been married to an african-american for 33 years. she needs to go read her history. they were forced over here as slaves. get it right. two, the man is right. donald trump and the republicans have to go. he ruined our country. all of these stations follow him down the rabbit hole. get over trump. he is going to jail. vote blue. host: dylan is in sturgis, south dakota, republican. hi, dylan. caller: hi. when i was in vietnam, there weren't any color lines, you know what i'm saying? we all fought together for this country. i don't believe that blackstone love our country. we have a lot of veterans around the black hills here and we have mount rushmore, crazy horse.

so, i don't buy that about the blacks. they are all good people. when i was homeless on the streets, the black people helped me out. so, anyway, god bless america. it is beautiful here today. all the smoke is gone and it is beautiful. you have a wonderful day. thank you all. host: all right, dylan. that is all the time we have got for open forum. up next on washington journal, we will talk to semafor reporter morgan chalfant. she will discuss the debate in congress over reauthorizing section 702 of the foreign intelligence surveillance act. that is the fisa expiring at the end of the year. we will be right back. ♪ >> since 1979, in partnership

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washington. scroll through and spend a few minutes on c-span's points of interest. announcer: "washington journal" continues. host: welcome back. my guest is morgan chalfant, a reporter for semafor. we are talking about section 702 of the foreign intelligence surveillance act, that is fisa. give us an idea of what it is. it was originally signed into law in 1978 by president carter. what is it and what is 702 allowing governments to do? guest: fisa is a law that allows intelligence collection on foreign targets. 702, basically what it does is it allows the government to surveilled foreign targets overseas without a warrant. it also collects, in that process, there is incidental election on americans. the reason it has been subject

to so much green in congress is because there is a way for the government to access those communications, therefore communications on americans, without a warrant. it is that collection list that americans are worried about. -- that congress is worried about. host: why did they see 702 as so important? guest: they say it has been into mental and counterterror operations and cyber crime investigations. i think there was a government official recently who testified to congress that it was a big part of how they were able to fall back the funds for one of the major cyber breaches that recently happened, the colonial pipeline breach. they were able to track down the perpetrators and also get the money back. they say it is critical to their operation. without it, they would not be able to see what foreign targets are doing and it would hamper

their investigations overseas. host: we will take your calls if you have questions or comments about section 702 of fisa set to expire at the end of this calendar year. you can call on our lines. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. and? -- and independents, (202) 748-8002. you can also text us or interact on social media. we want to talk about the debate going on in congress. what is a major sticking point that congressional representatives and senators are talking about here? guest: there's a lot going on here. 702 is confusing because lawmakers, particularly on the republican side, have issues with the fisa warrant that was used to surveilled carter page,

a campaign advisor for former president trump. there was a doj inspector general report and more recently the john durham report that showed there were errors in omissions, big issues with that surveillance. several applications for that surveillance warrant. now, republicans are critical of the fbi in general for that. and also other issues they have with the fbi. for example, the search of the former president's home, related to the classified documents case. they want to see broader reforms with the fbi. they are also saying that because they cannot trust the fbi because of these instances, some of them say they don't even want to reauthorize 702 at all. there are others on both sides of the aisle, particularly the democratic side, that have privacy and civil liberty concerns with 702, particularly

that collection on americans, the incidental collection that allows for some of that warrant list access of their data. there was a government report recently that said there were over 200,000 improper searches of a database of data on americans from 702. host: let's take a look at senator dick durbin. this is from last month in a judiciary committee hearing, where he talked about some of his concerns. i will play it and then get your reaction. [video clip] >> it was my view when this program was first established, first authorized by congress in 2008, and it is my view now, that section 702 does not sufficiently protect the privacy and civil liberties of americans. that is why i joined with senator lee in a bipartisan 2012 effort to amend to require a warrant for any backdoor search of american communications.

the government can then search these databases for emails, phone calls, as i mentioned earlier, and what is known as a backdoor search. the fbi alone conducted more than 200,000 warrantless searches of americans in 2022. since senator lee and i offered our amendment in 2012, the problems with section 702 have continued. the court charged with overseeing this program has found "persistent and widespread" violations of the rules governing section 702. in just the latest example, it was recently revealed that the fbi issued section 702 to conduct backdoor searches on the communications of americans who were arrested in the racial justice protests following the murder of george floyd, as well as individuals who participated in the january 6 insurrection. i understand the recently implemented remedial measures

have already begun to reduce these egregious violations. i understand additional compliance measures are under consideration. these are good steps, but congress also has a constitutional responsibility. at the outset of today's hearing, let me say this, i will only support the reauthorization of section 702 if there are significant, significant reforms. host: here, senator durbin is talking about backdoor searches per he mentioned several times just in that small clip. guest: exactly. that is what is motivating members on both sides of the aisle to really look at what can be done, in terms of reforms. durbin did not really specify exactly what he wants to see done, but what i think is clear from what lawmakers during that hearing and lawmakers on the health side -- the house side as well is the fbi says what they've implement it isn't enough. this is not just the fbi, it is

the broader national security agencies or ecosystem. i think the question is, what do lawmakers actually look at to put more safeguards into effect and maybe increase oversight of some of these activities? host: let's take a look at the other side of that, the republican argument. this is from the same judiciary committee hearing last month. this is senator mike lee. he spoke about the failures of the fbi to improve its compliance. [video clip] >> i have raised significant concerns in hearing after hearing after hearing about fisa and the fbi's shocking disregard for americans constitutional rights and civil liberties. i have been given basically the same answer by fbi directors and attorneys general and other

officials. during three presidential administrations, involving both major political parties, and the answer every time is a very -- is a variation more or less of the following. trust us. we have good people, law-abiding people running this paired we have lots and lots of procedural safeguards in place to prevent this type of abuse that you are facing here. these are not the droids you're looking for. that's what we are told. here again today, just last when he four hours, we got a new call. this one is finally going to fix it, you tell us. this one is going to do it. meanwhile, what has happened? in 2014, a shocking report was issued, confirming a lot of what i have feared over the years. but i found it difficult to prove. a report regarding crossfire hurricane, the fbi's secret surveillance of donald trump's 2016 presidential campaign. a subsequent memorandum dealing

with the fbi's failure to maintain the so-called woods files. that is basically the evidentiary record underlying a fisa order request, in violation of fbi policy. year after year, in hearing after hearing, we are hearing instances of noncompliance, including the disclosure just last month that the fbi illegally surveilled 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign. americans participating in protests in the summer of 2020, americans in washington, d.c. on january 6, 2021. even a sitting member of congress. hundreds of thousands of searches of americans's private communication's and information are conducted each and every year without a probable cause warrant. host: morgan, he talked about americans's communications. what specific information can

the government access about americans's communication see? -- communication's? guest: basically, messages and telephone records, that kind of thing. host: is it the actual content or that metadata, which is that this person called this person at such and such time, and that call lasted for this time? guest: the metadata, but still obviously, the lawmakers are very concerned about access to that information, particularly due to privacy considerations. host: let's start talking to callers. linda is first in orange, connecticut, democrat. good morning. caller: good morning. how are you today? caller: -- host: good. caller: personal, i'm a daily viewer faithfully of the "washington journal." first of all, i am disappointed with a couple of colors the last

couple of days, one with yourself and one with bill, who are extremely ignorant with black americans and how they got here. i really wish you in the chair would hang up on people like that. it is sad for us. but to fisa's surveillance we have done this before. we did this with j edgar hoover. the fbi periodically has to have a cleansing of spying on american activities. it seems like no matter what we do, we wind up having this conversation over again. surveillance of americans is subjective, i understand, for law enforcement. personally, i would surveilled someone who was there on january 6, not convict them, but surveilled them. but not someone sitting here, like me, who is sending a letter to whomever. the problem is that we are

sitting here in the nation with employers. they look at their employees's communications and we are sitting here with a government who can look at employees. i don't think we have clearly defined lines of who can look at what anymore. convicting people of a crime and spying on them, surveilling them, maybe they are one and the same, but they are two different things. i don't think congress has clearly defined lines in private communication. period. that is why law enforcement, employers, anyone who really wants to are to are allowed to muddy these. is there any appetite in congress to provide privacy for all communiques without probable cause, not just law enforcement?

guest: i think, returning to 702, a lot of the criticism and concern is the warrantless side of that. there are warrants that are applied for when americans are swept up in investigations. there is a lot of conversation on privacy in social media which is interesting, because it is a bipartisan concern about social media companies, but you don't see a lot of proposals for bigger issues. i think capitol hill is trying to tackle. there are a lot of lawmakers on the democratic and republican side who are concerned about privacy issues for sure. host: eastpointe, michigan, independent line, darrell, good morning. caller: thank you for allowing my call. excuse me, i'm going to take

issue with incidental american overhearing phone calls. about a year ago the pfizer committee was talking about it. they said 3 billion calls of americans and one billion calls with foreigners. that's confusing to me. number two, nowadays with today's technology anybody who has the means to buy the equipment can monitor any call they want on cell phones. we have lost the opportunity to put policy on privacy unless we get hard lines from at&t which are soon to be extinguished. host: can you explain, morgan, what does it mean, the incidental surveillance?

guest: 702 specifically is used for foreign targets on foreign soil. foreign targets and foreigners will be communicating with americans in many instances. because the government is getting access to those records they are also incidentally sweeping up records of americans who communicate with those individuals. that is where the information comes from. host: in 2018 came up for reauthorization. what happened during that debate? guest: there was a lot of debate about reforms, but former president trump wait in -- weighed in last minute and it was critical in the reauthorization. the senate did in-depth approving it in a pretty tight vote over the 60-vote threshold. since then we have seen come out in terms of this.

a warrant that was not specific to 702 but fueled some republican concerns. i think the civil liberties and privacy-minded individuals on capitol hill have only gotten more concerned with the law because of these reports about improper queries that we've recently seen. host: david in texas, republican, good morning. caller: good morning. it is a nice coincidence that this conversation is happening two days after whatever it is the federal judge, the white house, and federal agencies limited conversations on social media for all of the obvious reasons that i won't get into because i'm sure that you know about them from the reporting going on in the last few weeks. i'm a very patriotic american. i love this country. at the same point, if you spend any time studying american

history over the last several decades with the things that have gotten us into the recent wars we can't seem to win anymore, nationbuilding if anything. run as hard as you can in the opposite direction. with 2016 with the spying on trump campaign and administration, with the audio slides in investigations, not the least of which was devin nunes when he was the chairman of -- i forget which of the top committees. foreign -- well, whichever one shift was in. he was accused by a bunch of others of doing stuff. his report was 100% correct.

it wasn't nearly far enough. my point is after what we have gone through and what has become public knowledge to anyone who wants to pay attention, you cannot trust the government with the spying capability that all.i don't see how they can have any way to monitor them and look over their shoulder to make sure they won't do anything wrong because they going to keep doing it. people are getting calls swept up in the first place. i don't know if you admitted that he lied, but he came back and told the truth after snowden revealed -- host: let's get a response. guest: i think he is voicing a lot of the concerns that you hear on capitol hill from republicans about the fbi and a lot of them have alleged political bias per the fbi. john durham, who investigated the russian investigation,

during his testimony and long report said that he found confirmation bias among fbi officials who were investigating the trump campaign's contact with russia. that is different from political bias. they are basically pursuing the investigation without looking at other opinions, but we saw the text messages that were surfaced and showed their personal political opinion. i think that there is a lot of concern among republicans about the fbi. my question is, how many of them are there and what does reauthorizing this program look like if many of them will say don't reauthorize it because of our concerns about the fbi motivations? host: that's talk about the fbi specifically. they have instituted some reforms in the past. have they just not worked? guest: i think they say that the

numbers are going down when it comes to the number of improper queries. they certainly testified to that. host: shouldn't that be zero? guest: i assume that there are just going to be errors if you look from their perspective. i believe one of the officials testified two weeks ago to the judiciary committee that one improper query was responsible for 100,000 of the list of queries that they deemed were not correct. i certainly think that people on capitol hill think that it should be zero. the question is, what can you do beyond what they have done? what is needed? how can you get republicans and democrats on the same page with meaningful reform? host: peggy is a democrat in washington. good morning. caller: good morning.

i think you need to keep that in place. the reason why is it targets foreign nationals or foreign people, foreigners. if an american citizen gets caught up in talking with a foreigner, why is that american citizen talking to a foreigner that the fbi is targeting? it makes me suspicious. that's all. host: what do you think about the idea of this american is talking to a foreign national who could be engaged in cyber crime, terrorism? that is fair game? guest: there is an argument for that. specifically going out foreign nationals who are suspect. i think that the problem is, there is so much collection. again, the republicans on the hill specifically do not trust

some of the law enforcement officials who are doing these things, and i think that is where the issue comes in for them. i do think among democrats and republicans who are supportive of this program, of which there are many, especially on the house intelligence committee, both parties, it's getting to a place where they can increase the accountability for agents who are found to be, accused of wrongdoing. finding a way to increase transparency as some of these operations. to do that and make the program better without doing away with it. i think that there are a lot of lawmakers who believe that that is the best course. host: tim in michigan on the republican line. caller: good morning. i was concerned that it seems

like all americans should be worried about what we are talking about today, not just democrats or republicans. i am a republican, but it seems like we have come to crosses negativity towards republicans when journalists, on. not trying to be mean to y'all, but that seems the way it is slanted to me. it is kind of disturbing to think all americans should be worried about this instead of just republicans or, you know -- it is all slanted to one side. host: why do you say that? i showed the clip of senator dick durbin expressing concerns about it. he is obviously democrat. caller: the reason why, well, he has been in congress for

forever, so he knows what is going on. he understands the situation, or whatever, so they have to play off of each other. they have to make sure that they get their digs in, we get our digs in, and it is the way that the ball works. but all americans here living, we have to be concerned about that. if you feel like the republicans are always out to get the democrats then that is never going to correct the situation that we are in right now. host: morgan, how is it looking as far as specific proposals, on the democratic or republican side, to reform 702? guest: things are being worked on. one group is the 702 working group under the house intelligence committee that is chaired by darren the head --

darren lahood. they haven't released anything yet, but he said they would be releasing some proposals fairly soon. you have lawmakers on the senate side. i would be watching dick durbin and senator wyden who has been outspoken on this issue for years is going to be releasing his own proposal that deals with 702 and broader law enforcement surveillance activities. an executive order that authorizes broad lead the u.s. intelligence collection. host: in hawaii, independent line, good morning. caller: this is an interesting topic. i have a lot of tangents. if you can tolerate a couple of questions. one question, i am in hawaii and it is a small population relatively. i know several people who work for different agencies which are

covered under different levels. where edward snowden worked at the nsa caved. it is interesting that i talk to someone several years before that who was actually in the middle of doing transcription on a conversation and discovered that the call was taking place right here. told their boss, i cannot transcribe this, because this call is here in hawaii and i cannot do that. that triggered a whole problem for that person. i won't go into that. the other thing that i'm curious about was, robert malley. he just lost his security clearance and that has been covered up by the biden administration for a few weeks, if not months. he is the iranian delegate for the negotiations going on with biden trying to get the po

waiver structure. the supplying weapons to russian things. these are things not being covered well. it is extremely hard to get information in the media on that and i would be interested what we can learn on that. i was told that that may be because of intelligence that is gleamed from that mechanism we are talking about now. host: morgan, what do you know about that? guest: i don't have any reporting of 702 being involved but i do know that rob malley's security clearance has been suspended and he is on leave. it has to do with his handling of classified information, i have been told. i assume we will get more information once the investigation is complete. it has been really quiet. we did not get the information until recently and he has been on leave for some time.there

trying to keep a close hold to the information. host: jim in parsons, west virginia, democrat. caller: hiya. it is an interesting topic. i wanted to mention a couple of things. too muc -- people develop too much of an oversensitive eyes sensitivity to surveillance. democrat or republican, we do not want crime prevailing or drug dealers making drug deals. we do not want terrorists being able to plot and plan and things that we learned after 9/11. it is necessary to have surveillance. i did not see any republicans complaining about massive surveillance and investigations of hillary for three years leading into the election of 2016, you know? carter paige.

everyone should read more from a variety of sources. i read some interesting details about carter paige. he is an nice person like paul manafort and donald trump are nice people. people like to fantasize everyone is nice. carter page, my understanding, is that he had two or three years before he worked on the trump campaign in 2016. he had been brought in by the fbi because he was working with i think russian speech specialists working in the energy sector. he was being groomed and used to develop information by the russians and the fbi brought him in to make him aware with his travels back and forth to russia that he was being used. they played tapes for home where

the fbi had done some surveillance of these russian folks who were conducting these activities. carter page, it was brought to his attention. this whole thing about the abuse of carter page, it was probably quite necessary. i don't know if people understand that. i think there are a lot of things that people don't understand about -- host: all right, let's get a response. guest: i don't remember the particulars of the report that he -- although it does sound vaguely familiar. i think that the issue with carter page is what the inspector general found which is errors in omissions of the warrants used to access his communications. that is where the criticism of the fbi lies. we have heard about carter paige's russian ties with no

wrongdoing found there. he was one of the main targets of this trump-russia investigation. sen. booker: talking about timeline -- host: talking about timeline, there is a deadline at the end of the calendar year. is it possible that this drags on and 702 could expire? guest: there is a possibility. the issue that we have seen with many must-have legislation is that the house is a narrow republican majority. so, it depends on how kevin mccarthy handles this issue, how much pressure he may be getting from certain members to make certain reforms. we obviously have other big pieces of legislation to pass, including the national defense authorization act which is moving now. it is possible, but i do think that there is enough appetite among members of both parties to see this reauthorized with reforms. i do not see it being

reauthorized without some kind of reform because you are seeing so much energy in that space from both parties. host: what have you heard from the white house administration officials about the reauthorization, the importance of 702 from their perspective, and if they point to any instances where it has helped national security? guest: the white house really wants to see this reauthorized. not only the white house, but other agencies like the intelligence community. they will be making a push for this. i think that you will see lloyd austin and sullivan, all of these individuals want to see this reauthorized. christopher wray, the fbi director. pointing again to the colonial pipeline hack. there have been a number of cyber investigations that have been helpful for the take down of an isis leader or al qaeda leader recently. that they point to as this being

critical in. i think that you will continue to see them make the case for this law particularly in the most recent examples of investigations where it has been fruitful. host: good morning. caller: good morning. retired marine. good morning, c-span. i have something to say about the surveillance issue that's going on. the fbi, law enforcement, they are really behind the bell curve. i will give you an example. there are 17,000 satellites and 16,000 dedicated to the united states of america. what i did is i reached out and i took two possible points and -- narrowed it to 6:29 p.m. and

15 seconds. the time of abduction changed to 7:00 p.m. and i found another one at 6:48 p.m. america, you need the surveillance is in place to assist you if you are of the them. law-enforcement nationwide uses cameras on top of your stoplights. you need to expend them. if you are a victim this will assist you in determining whether or not you are the victim and if someone was actually at fault. the he said/she said goes away if you are the victim and you can get it on your overhead camera. congress, you are really behind the bell curve and you need to update your satellites to assist you and law enforcement in stopping crime. a prime example is the pentagon pushing email hack. president biden, he got hacked. we got shut down on the east coast. our technologies that we invented, america, who has it?

china. they manufacture it. my point is we need surveillance mechanisms in place to safeguard your way of life. host: all right, let's go to russ in liberty lake, washington, independent. caller: thank you for taking my call. the whole thing about surveillance reminds me of the article back in the old mad magazine from 60, 70 years ago. it had spy versus spy. there is so much money and classified information that is hard to understand. too much information. host: what is your point? caller: well, i think that the classified information keeps expanding and we are wasting money and it is creating government jobs. they are befuddled. they are so confused as to what

is classified and what isn't. we just need to have more transparency. there is too much classified material. it's crazy. host: not really related, morgan, but if you want the comet? guest: it is not related, but there are legislative issues to deal with that. we have seen the focus on the cost of information because of the classified document case involving former president trump and the investigation into the classified information found at president biden's home. i think that what lawmakers are looking at is, in the senate particularly, some proposals that would incentivize agencies to reduce the amount of information and declassify things when it can be d's -- can be declassified. you're seeing a lot of attention on this due to the indictment of the individual in massachusetts for the pentagon, the pentagon leak of the ukraine documents

and other documents. i think that if lawmakers are trying to bridge from two ends, there is the issue of over classification, so too much information is classified and sun does not need to be classified, and also access. too many people having access to classified information and reducing that universal there is less opportunity for a week or the release of that information. host: michelle in new york, a republican. caller: good morning. this is about the 702. first, under no circumstance should a senator or vp have classified documents. 702, carter paige was proven innocent. the gentleman who read all of the false information to talk about carter paige is the problem. the problem with 702 is that we have bureaucrats who are abusing

it lying to the judges. illegally surveilling people. they use this kind of net that scoops up all of my information and my family's information. they are abusing the system. this has nothing to do if we should have surveillance or not. it is if they will hold the people who committed crimes against the country by breaking the existing laws accountable. you do not get to continually break the law and not be held accountable for it. if you like to a judge, if you are in contempt you should be in contempt. if merrick garland lied about hunter biden's investigation then he should be held in contempt, right? it has to be both ways. the american people want to know that they are safe, but i cannot think of one thing in the last

2.5 years that joe biden or his administration, or any of them, has said to help bend the truth. guest: my answer to that would be that john durham was the trump-appointed special counsel to investigate the origins of the trump russian investigation and some of the misconduct that we've seen come out from these various investigations. he obviously pursued indictments. there was one plea deal. that investigation is done, so i would like to say that there is an effort to get accountability of some of the figures involved in the carter page warrant and the russian investigation. obviously , he completed his investigation earlier this year and release an extensive report and testify to the house judiciary committee recently. host: tony in western, massachusetts, independent.

caller: i am a pretty law-abiding person and i usually don't worry too much about having some kind of surveillance on me, the unwanted sort. my concern is not so much about intrusions into the private sphere. it is more about, is this identity theft? if there is so much surveillance about metadata, can't they figure personal details to falsify bank accounts or something? is this something that i should be worried about for my day to day standpoint? host: any link with identity theft and privacy concerns? guest: i have not seen an link between the fisa issue and identity theft, but private he -- but privately concerns are something that lawmakers are concerned about. that seems more of an issue for a hack, data leak or cyber

incident rather than the government's intelligence activities. host: morgan chalfant, nice to talk to you. reporter for semafor. if you programming notes for you before we say goodbye. first, at 11:00 a.m. the former joint chief of staff chair and former national intelligence deputy director discuss foreign policy towards taiwan and china live hosted by the washington post at 11:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. c-span now, our free mobile video app. or online at c-span.org. at 1:30 today, a look at how the events in belarus are unfolding since the wagner group leader stopped his march on moscow. that is live hosted by the atlantic council at eight: 30 p.m. eastern on c-span and our free mobile video app c-span now

and c-span.org. that is all for today's "washington journal."i hope that everyone had a great fourth of july and we will be back tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. in the meantime, have a great day. ♪ >> coming up live on c-span, at 11:00 a.m. "the washington post" holds a discussion on chinese and taiwan relations with michael mullen and former national intelligence deputy director susan gordon. at 1:30 p.m. eastern, and the discussion about how the president belarus played a role in negotiating a deal between his russian counterpart and the wagner military group leader.

then a look at the supreme court recent ruling on voting rights and how it could impact the 2024 election. five coverage begins tonight at 8:00 p.m. easrn. >>ongress returns next week for legislative business and votes following the fourth of july holiday. the senate gavels and monday at 3:00 p.m. eastern. lawmakers e expected to work on more of president biden's execute and judicial nominations,ncluding the former new mico democratic congresswoman to serve as the deputy agriculture secretary, the number two leadership po at the u.s. fda. and at director the justice department's violence against women department. the houses in session on tuesday with members expected to debate and vote the annual defense programs and policy bill. watch live coverage on c-span and the senate on c-span2. you can watch all of our congressional coverage with our free video app, c-span now, or

online at c-span.org. >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including buckeye broadband. ♪ >> buckeye broadba support c-span as a public service, along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> fbi director christopher wray talked about the bureau's values and mission during his speech at a judicial conference in greenville, north carolina and the importance of democratic principles and the rule of law in the work of the fbi. he once