junior c-span, unfiltered, unbias. word for word from the nation capital to wherever you are. the opinion that matters the most. this is what democracy looks like. c-span, powered by cable. morni,

producer of police state. why did you decide to make this film? >> i'm an immigrant to the united states. i came to the country as a teenager in the late 1970's. i was exhilarated by the freedom of america, the opportunity, but also the kind of basic rights enshrined in the bill of rights. free speech, freedom of conscience, right to assemble, to partition the government, equal rights under the law. and then we fast-forward and i realized that all those rights today are to one degree or another in jeopardy. and i looked at police state around the world, places like north korea, china, the old soviet union. and when i look at the defining features of these police states like mass surveillance or censorship, ideological indoctrination with schools, the attempt to create kind of a one-party state, lock up the leader of the opposition party, political prisoners. and i go down the checklist and

i go wait a minute, a number of those things are now visible to one degree or another in this country. so that's what the film asks. is america ceasing to be the free society we have been championing for and is it becoming a police state? host: you are asking the question. you answer it? guest: yes, i think there is an alarming movement in that direction. obviously we are not a full-fledged police state. in a full-fledged police state you can't make a movie called police state so we are not north korea, we are not china. but the rapidity of the erosion of our liberties is what has really troubled me. and the pretext has varied. some of it started with 9/11. some of it was covid, some of it january 6. whatever the rationale, the movement has been toward we are going to be curbing your liberties over here and over here and then you add it up and you say wait a minute, we are

not quite the free country that we've always imagined ourselves to be. >> do you feature people who perceive that they've been targeted, or do you present evidence of targeting by the federal government? guest: i present evidence. by evidence what i mean is case after case after case after case. and i want to answer the guy who is going to say to me something like i'm not donald trump, i didn't go inside the capitol and january 6 and i pay my taxes. the fbi will never come visiting me. and they want to argued ob so sure. i profile a lot of ordinary people in the fillmore going about their ordinary business. they may be involved in civic activity, moms concerned about what the kids are learning and then they come face-to-face with the police state. we have a lot of surveillance footage, in some cases re-creations, even hiring some fbi consultants to make these

accurate. host: what is the evidence? guest: the evidence is an accumulation of cases. there's no other type of evidence you can have except this happened to me, this happened to me, this happened to me. we just lay out the statue cases k-fed -- case after case. there's an elderly guy who lives in new york named joke alano's. he's an apartment manager at new york. he came down to washington, d.c. on january 6. he actually just more wanted to be part of the excitement of the day. he takes office video. ecf always going to the capital. he doesn't go in. he sees people climbing the rafters, is like, i'm not doing that. he goes to new york, rounds of his own bodies. he showing them the footage of the event, and a neighbor of has kind of eavesdropped on this and goes, this guy was obviously a i january 6. he wasn't, but the neighbor called the fbi.

this is very police state stuff. someone rats on you, they call the feds, and the feds do a massive raid on his apartment, trashing it. the interesting thing is because he is a high-tech guy, he has hidden cameras in his apartment. so you see the fbi come up, they take the tape and they tried to cover the door camera because they don't want people to see what they are doing. right away, why not? if what they are doing is legal, but they obviously want to block anybody from recording what is happening. you see this. you can see the battering ram, you can see them coming crashing through the door, armored vests, and then they take this guy into a van, they interrogate him for four hours, they tip off nbc, so the media is there. he's humiliated that day on tv, he has a stroke. and for what? the guy did nothing. just case upon case upon case. again, unrefuted.

no one is even challenging that this happened, it is just that this is what they are doing these days. host: you are found guilty in 2014 of voter fraud. remind people about that. did you include your own story, that part of your motivation? guest: not really. it wasn't really voter fraud. i exceeded the campaign-finance limit. the campaign-finance limit is 10,000 dollars, i.e. 20,000 over the limit. the issue with my case is simply this. no american who a first-time offender, no corrupt motivation has ever been prosecuted, let alone locked up for doing what i did. the issue with selective prosecution is not that i didn't do something wrong, i admit that i did, but what happened in my case was it was a little bit of a vendetta because i've made a movie about obama that was 2000 theaters. five weeks later the fbi was at my apartment door. even then, it was 20.

i probably upset obama, he lashed out at me. i didn't see it as a prelude to what would happen to carter page, papadopoulos, michael flynn, now of course, trump. the rapid expansion of the police state has occurred under biden. host: they saw them, they wrote none of the alleged victim are innocent people like george floyd or breonna taylor, who literally died at the hands of overzealous cops. instead, they arabortion activists who are arrested for harassing patients at abortion clinics or people who were busted as part of the investigation into the january insurrection. then there's fairfax virginia schools activists who spent the to get books banned from public school libraries. but banning is often a ha of authoritarian police states, but she uses her story to claim that the fbi was tracking bombs,

like her, who have been speaking out at school board meetings about rumors. guest: let's look at that for just a minute. if a parent is calling for these books are inappropriate, they are pornographic, they should be in the library, that is not a police state tactic. why? the definition of a police state is something that is done by the government. if you or i are calling for this are calling for that, we are not part of a police state, we are citizen speaking out. when they talk about these pro-life guys, we profiled one of them who lives in pennsylvania he takes a 12-year-old kid and they go to an abortion clinic and there are activists who want to talk to women, don't go in there, come talk to us. but on this particular occasion, there is no one there. the planned parenthood counselor comes out of the building, comes up and starts screaming at the kid. your dad's people, your dad is against women. so he kind of gets agitated and he pushes the guy.

the guy falls back and then he runs in the building, he files an assault claim, it goes to court and is thrown out, no merit to it. two months later, a massive raid by the fbi and they accuse him of " violating the face act" which says you cannot interfere with reproductive facilities. but within the deposing himself, blocking women, no. this is an argument between two guys outside the clinic, no women involved. he wasn't violating the face act. how do we know that? he goes before a jury in blue philadelphia. he's facing 11 years in prison. the u.s. government wants to lock this guy up for 11 years for pushing a guy. he goes before the jury, they take one hour, acquitted on all charges. so this is what i mean by case upon case upon case. it is happening far too often. this is not just about -- i'm not talking about people who got into fights with the cops on january 6. host: what do you say about

those people who got in fights with cops and who went inside the capital? guilty? guest: anyone who got into a violent clash with the cops should be prosecuted that. the issue for me is also proportionality. there's violent clashes occurring right now, that occurred last night. i think what really worries me is that when i look at jamaal bowman pulling the fire extinguisher, when i look at others palestine protesters, i don't see any fear in their eyes. it never crosses their mind i'm going to be arrested, i'm going to be locked up, i will be in solitary confinement, it's going to be 46 month before my trial, i could get three years in prison. it doesn't across their mind because they know -- host: are you equating those protesters inside the capital with those that went inside the n january 6? guest: yes, to this degree that when you look at the specifics -- i'm saying they are different

circumstances but when you look at the charges, what are they? parading in a public building, they were doing that. obstructing or interfering with an official proceeding, they were doing that. in some cases clashing with the cops. they were doing that. even the protest outside the dnc, you can see pepper spraying the cops, blows to the police. in the police state, you have two systems of justice. the people who are helping the police state, and the people who are ruthlessly targeted. host: raymond in florida, democratic caller. caller: hey, how are you doing? i'm right with you on the police state, and here is a little analogy that i have. not really an analogy, the last election was trump and biden,

and that right -- right at the end, coney barrett it's in. i said to my brother, you know what, even more so than having trump be reelected, to me more important is getting the extra supreme court justice. because what you're saying is at least i have a good confidence that those things go all the way up to the supreme court. most of them they have laughed at them and sent them down. so i appreciate what you're doing. what has happened to donald trump, i look at every single case. it is so weak. what is that? anyways, just respond to that. i look at this stuff as we've come a long way since you come to the united states and since i've been born because it is kind of embarrassing that we are basically just allowing the police states to do whatever they want.

i they were mike flynn, you're treated one way, or you are the guy out of new york that walked in and got acquitted. host: got it. guest: on trump, i've been following politics since the late 70's, and we have to see that what is happening is unprecedented. unprecedented in the sense that you have the leader -- not only the former president, but the leader of the opposition party facing a kind of shock on indictment. if we can get him in d.c. we are going to get him in florida. if not there, georgia. if not there, new york. one indictment against trump, you're such an obstinate guy, you won't give them back, so this is the only way we can extract them back out of you. but when you see federal and state charges and if we can't get him on the criminal we will get him on the civil, we will

accuse him of overvaluing his properties even though no banks are claiming he never pay back the loans, there is a real element to this. people are like, something is wrong here. if you take the exact same circumstances and put them into another country, the other party which is in power has put 91 charges against him. human rights agencies around the world, the u.s. state department would be screaming authoritarianism, police state. but it is happening here and we are a little blinded to it. host: if he is found guilty in any of these cases, will you accept the outcome? guest: of course, i will accept the outcome as a legal outcome, yes. does that mean it is fair, not necessarily. the problem with our divided country is the jury pools are litigate it in d.c. vs. texas

you are going to get totally different outcomes. that is not what we are led to believe because we have this rhetoric, jury of your peers. but increasingly it is not a jury of our peers. increasingly we are dealing with people who use the legal system as a form of vendetta. i saw this even in my own case with the plea-bargain system when i was dealing with lawyers. they were like, did you exceed the campaign-finance? i said yeah, and i should get the same penalty as everyone else. and they said you know what, we can get you one bank fraud. because you took your money out of your bank account. and i'm like, what? and they are like, we will get you on mail fraud because you put your check in the mail. you are taking the same thing i did and re-describing it for different ways and now trying to put me in prison for years and years because of the same thing? and then they go, all you have to do is agree to this & here. and of course if i do that, the left will jump up and go see, he admitted it.

but i didn't accept the guilt, i'm getting illegal bludgeoning that would force an innocent or guilty person to say it makes sense for me to sign. host: maryann, ohio, republican. caller: hello, good morning. host: yes, hello. caller: i'm like, really amazed and kind of stunned that you even have him on. i'm a woman living in the suburbs. i may never trumper. he's is a convicted felon. i'm not going to call him a complete liar, but he's definitely a conspiracy theorist. also he lies by omission. his movies are just a joke. and he's part of the problem. and i'm just really upset that you even have him on. he's not good for the country, he's not good for the viewers. he is a liar, and this thing

about the fbi and his conviction, the whole thing about the trump convictions, he's not telling the whole truth. there's a whole lot more to it. we haven't heard everything from jack smith yet. host: ok, let's let him respond. guest: look at the mentality of this. what i'm saying is all right, let's say that i am presenting one side, right? host: are you admitting that this is one side? guest: i'm telling you my point of view. obviously i'm making a film, i'm getting my point of view. when you present a film in an intelligent way you always take into account the other point of view. breaded the beginning of this film i say the question is not so much our week -- are we becoming a police state, but who is running the police state? when i talk to people on the left they are like yeah, we are becoming a police state, a police state run by trump. in other words, the republicans

are trying to take away our rights. you've got the mutual sense on both sides of the aisle that there is authoritarianism and tyranny coming from the other side. in the film i go alright, well who is right? how do we adjudicate this? we adjudicate it by looking at what is a police state, one of the definition of it, how did he get started, how is organized, how is it that together, and who is running it? you will know exactly isn't coming from the left are from the right? what i say in the film is all right, the origins of the police state are in the aftermath of 9/11. i will freely admit that the police state was a bipartisan creature at its creation. why? after 9/11, many people, me included said we have to give the government enhanced valence towers, we have to get rid of these distinctions between intelligence and criminal prosecution because there are foreign terrorist to kill us. in fairness, none of us thought

that these exact powers once given to the government could then be redeployed against conservatives, republicans, patriots, christians. that hadn't happened. so the escalation of the police state is not something we are responsible for, but i would take blame for a certain naivete as an immigrant in believing that the institutions of our government could be trusted with enormous powers of surveillance and fracking in the belief, naive as it turns out, that they would not be abused, but they have been. host: all of your examples are of conservatives. guest: yes, they are, for the reason that the police state is today going after conservatives. however, we have profiles in the movie of muslims who targeted after 9/11 and entrapped by the fbi because the entrapment that we saw, for example, in the witmer kidnapping case and to some degree in january 6 was

invented after 9/11. the fbi -- not just the fbi, all of the government getting huge shovels of money from the government. but 9/11 didn't continue occurring. so the fbi figured out how do we manufacture terrorism? that means finding muslims were angry at america and then luring them into a terrorist trap and then busting them and having a press conference, we are amazing, this guy is a danger to america. no, he's just an angry kid at nyu has been talking about jihad but you are the one who put in his mind why don't you join isis, why don't you go to a training camp? we will eat with passport, we will buy you a ticket. then he shows that jfk, arrested those evil schemes, which again started out with the muslims is now targeting many other americans. host: los angeles, independent. caller: yeah, hi.

i'd like to make just a comment and have him respond. i'm going to agree 100% with your previous caller. dinesh desousa's last movie was completely filled with falsehoods, and just to give you one example, he claimed that people were stuffing ballots into ballot boxes in the republican georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger, a republican, examined one of the instances and found no wrongdoing. they investigated i think five ballots that were turned in and they were all for a guy and his family. dinesh desousa is currently being sued for defamation right now from one of the gentlemen, i don't recall his name. secondly, your house of cards is falling. three lawyers just admitted to lying about fraud, three trump lawyers. ruby freeman won a defamation

lawsuit. your whole lie about this election fraud, the house of cards is falling. host: let's get a response. guest: ok, yeah. the one case he mentions i unfortunately can't talk about because it is a litigation. but in the movie we have surveillance video from battleground states, and what you see is this is a typical scene and we show lots of this in the movie, a couple at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, a guy jumps up, looks around suspiciously to make sure no one is following him as a backpack chock-full of ballots. he then goes to a dropbox, rips open the backpack, starts dropping ballots in and then having finished that, steps back, pulls out a cell phone and takes photos of the balance going in the box. think about this. try to put a significant or meaning as to what is going on. we say these are mules, the

trafficker of ballots dropping illegal ballots in the box and then taking photos so that they can get paid. no one to this day has given an alternative explanation to what is going on. when you make a movie and you put out a theory like any scientific area, it's open to reputation. go talk to that guy. he's on camera. if you talk to that guy and asking what he's doing, maybe he'll give you an innocent explanation. but no law enforcement authority has interviewed these mules. isn't that suspicious on its face? host: reuters today fact-check on 2000 mules, providing evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 u.s. presidential election. they take issue with your geo tracking that you said in the movie shows evidence of ballot boxes being used in the way that you just described. what they say is that technology is not as accurate as you claim it is, and they say that drop

boxes can be high traffic areas such as public libraries, schools. for example, a map of drop boxes and five metro atlanta counties shows that all are clustered in locations. you can't tell that they are dropping down. plus some people may be dropping multiple ballots because they have collected ballots for family members. guest: right. because if you collected from family members would obviously drop in in one box. the other thing is look. in january 6, d.c. is a very busy area. uber drivers, pedestrians. how was it that the u.s. government can easily track the cell phones of people to went inside the capital with pinpoint accuracy -- in fact, if you look at the charging documents, 20 feet in 5 -- inside the front door, then he moved over here. i mean, think about it. we live in a time where every burglary, every murder case

involves cell phones geo tracking. the case in idaho right now, they are using cell geo tracking to show that they circle around the targets, the people that he's accused of attacking. cell phone geo tracking is considered extremely reliable by judges, by juries, by prosecutors, by defense attorneys, but somehow in the one case, suddenly reuters, we can't tell, this technology is very primitive. it's absurd to get this technology has come a long way. no one is claiming that putting you within five feet of the box that if you go from one box to another to another you have to have same explanation for why the same cell phone is following this male man's route. remember, these drop boxes are not all in one place. some of them are off the road, you got the turnoff to get there. we track more than 2000 mules going to these drop boxes. something is going on. host: rockville, maryland, democratic caller.

caller: i just want to say you are an utter disgrace. you are a magnet like that rapist from mar-a-lago. rot down there with michael -- host: new york, republican. caller: hello, first i want to say how much i appreciate your work and dedication. the second thing is i don't know too much about the cell phone thing, but it is alleged that the fbi strong-armed charge card companies like bank of america to give them the names of anybody who came there on january 6 and shops or collect food or went to a hotel, and that they strong-armed the charge card companies like bank of america to give them the thousands of people to investigate and put in jail.

the standard joke is if you need to buy a gun to protect yourself, don't use a charge card. anchor. -- thank you. guest: it is very troubling that the fbi can go to the banks, bank of america being one of them, and say not just this is a list of people who we found were inside the capital, we want to about them, because it is normal for an authority to look at a crime and then track the activities of the suspect. it is a whole different thing to go to a bank and say listen, give us the entire list of everybody who came to d.c. on that day, or to go to airlines and say give us a manifest of everybody who flew into the country. all the people i then going to go onto a watchlist. to this day right now, we have a whistleblower from the air marshals, and she says that anyone who came to d.c. between january 3 and january 7, not for the rally, not to go into the

capital, but flew to d.c. for any reason, could be a kid coming to see his dad in a divorce or whatever, those guys are now on a list. an air marshals are flying with them to this day because they are of course the nested terrorism suspects. last the whistleblower, was in the air marshal following some kid or some guy came to d.c. for a business meeting? don't they know this has nothing to do with anything? and they go yeah, but what police state bureaucracies do is they create lists because that is how they get funding. host: did she show you list? guest: she didn't show me the list but she is saying and as a public matter, unrefuted that everything a person visiting d.c. in that bracket is followed by air marshals right now. >> "washington journal" continues. host: back at our desk this morning, bob deans, the strategic engagement director for the natural resources defense council. here to talk about the national climate assessment. what is this assessment that's

done? who does it? guest: the federal government does this about every four years. the congressionally mandated report. the point of it is to tell us the stone cold truth about climate change and what it means for people across the united states. host: who is doing the actual assessment? guest: there are 14 federal agencies. it's the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. it's the national science foundation created by congress 70 years ago. the bedrock truth about what's happening in our world. the national aeronautics and space administration, folks who put the man on the paopb. the pentagon, security issue. health and human services because it is a health issue. it's a state department because it's a global issue. 14 federal agencies, greta, about 750 experts around the country within and without the government. a lot of scholars, independent researchers, scientists contribute as well. this consolidates the best science we have about the

state -- state of the union of the state of our climate, if you will. host: where does the data come from? guest: the data comes from -- they look at journal articles. pier reviewed science -- peer reviewed identify science. they look at the temperature that we monitor around the world and this country. satellite imagery. just the full range of geophysics, of spheric chemistry, all the data that go into figuring out what's happening with our climate. host: the white house released this latest assessment. what are the take aways? guest: big take aways here. number one, the climate crisis is inflicting rising costs and mounting dangers on every aspect of american life and every community and every corner of this country. it is threatening our jobs, our homes, our health. it's damaging our oceans, our wildlife, forests, farms. it's widening inequity and

injustice because it's pry hairly low-income people and people of color who are on the frontlines of climate hazard and harm. it's not just happening someplace. it's happening everywhere. a couple examples. in the midwest we are seeing more of the droughts that have dropped the mississippi river to its lowest level ever this fall. in the pacific northwest, more of the kind of heat and drought that created the conditions for wildfires two years ago did $40 billion in damage. in the southeast, intensifying storms like hurricane ian that did $113 billion of damage in florida alone. in the northeast, torrential rains like those that caused the record flooding in vermont this year. and across the country heat waves that exposed 2/3 of americans to the dangerous extreme heat of last summer. we are seeing it everywhere. host: how does this report compare to the last one that was issued?

guest: it takes us one step further toward a situation where we are beginning to be overwhelmed. our capacity to cope with this is beginning to be overwhelmed. one important sign, insurance companies, raising rates, pulling out of coverage in states like california, florida, and louisiana. making it harder for folks to insure their homes or get a mortgage on a home. a few new things. a new chapter this time on economics because it's such an important economic situation. there is a new chapter on equity and justice. and there is a new atlas that's interactive so people around the country can go county by county to see the impacts climate change is having on their county. host: what is the united states doing versus countries like china and india who viewers on this program and others point to and say, we can't -- we can do everything that we want to do to try to address this problem, but

if china and india don't do their part, it's useless. guest: a couple points. great question. number one, the united states, while we are not the largest climate polluter right now, historically we are. the united states has historically put more carbon pollution in the air that's driving climate change than any other country. we have a leadership role. we are also about 25% of global g.d.p. we have a leadership role to play. we are playing it. what president biden has done is what we call a climate triple play. first thing, he helped pass legislation, best climate law in the history of the country last year. that's already driving investment, innovation and jobs nationwide. number two, he is cleaning up our -- the tailpipe emissions from our cars and trucks. number three, he's cleaning up our dirty power plants. together, cars, trucks, dirty power plants, that's about half the problem. host: i want you to listen to the senate leader, mitch

mcconnell of kentucky, accusing the biden administration of being naive when it comes to economic competition with china and addressing climate change. here's what he had to say. >> strategic competition with china is going to determine the course of the next century of american history. and yet the biden administration has too often got this historic moment with weakness and naivete time and time again and sacrifice competition on the altar of green climate policy. in the administration's quest to turn the american automobile industry electric, he's apparently made piece with sending american tax dollars to the chinese industries that dominate battery making input. in pursuit of grand climate diplomacy, the administration's envoys have been literally left

out of beijing by state that keeps on increasing its carbon emissions and has no plan to start cutting them literally for years. guest: here's what's actually happened. joe biden met yesterday with the president of china. the first meeting in four years. and very close to the top of the agenda was what both countries are going to do to combat and confront the climate crisis. that's important. between the two of us, china and the united states are 43% of global g.d.p. 36% of greenhouse gases. these two countries are a third of the problem. we have to be leaders in terms of the solution. what do they do? they put out a kaoupb kay saying we are going to -- communique saying we are going to cut carbon emissions. triple this decade renewable power so we are relacing the dirty fuels driving the climate crisis. three, we are going to cut down on methane, a very powerful

greenhouse gas. this is important. so china is the world's leading investor in clean energy. it is also the largest coal user. china burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined. this is the kind of thing we are working with china on. what's very important is that the united states and china are cooperating on climate. and we can't solve the global problem without that. host: want our viewers to join us this in conversation. bob deans is our guess this morning. talking about this climate assessment. national one done every four years. it also includes solutions. guest: absolutely. it talks about what we are doing. the purpose of the assessment is not to make policy recommendations. but it does talk about what we are doing. we have cut our carbon footprint in this country, 17% since 2005. while our economy has grown 40% in real terms.

adjusted for inflation. we are making real progress. here's how we are doing it. we are getting 15% of our electricity nationally from the wind and sun. that's important. we are increasing efficiency in our homes, workplaces. we are moving toward electric cars. that's important. we are going to sell more than a million of them this year alone. that's important as well. and finally, we are investing in a modern, reliable power and storage grid system nationally so that we can meet the moment. host: this is the business section of the "new york times." heat pump adoption slows and climate goals suffer. and they say biden's plans counted on highly efficient devices. but steep interest rates and confusion over government incentives have curtailed sales. guest: sure. no question that parts of the economy are being impacted by interest rates and other factors. heat pumps are important. people are making the transition. and the climate bill we talked about earlier that the president

passed provides people with up to $2,000 of rebates to help pay for those heat pumps. that's important. i think as word gets out more people will be investing in that. that's not the only part of the picture. what we have seen in just the year since that bill was signed are $108 billion in private investment to build factories all over this country to make solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles, advanced batteries. what the president has done is strengthened the domestic sly chain so no longer is the united states going to be dependent on overseas countries for the building blocks of a modern economy. host: get to calls. bill in milwaukee, independent. caller: hi. host: go ahead. caller: hi, greta. you guys have a great show. i'm a veteran from vietnam. i'm getting sort of -- when i

hear these people talking i am ashameddy that the way they are talking. both of them. the republicans and the democrats. biden talked about making chips and batteries in the u.s.a. it was trump that sent that stuff over to china with a deal he made with them. i think the climate like mr. deans said is very important. it's what our children and grandchildren are going to be going up to. if we don't want to bite the bullet on taking some of the bite out of gasoline cars and making -- where we can put up our wind generators. our other form of electric generating equipment it's going to cost us more, but somebody's going to have to pay a little bit more for that. host: i want to go back to the announcement made yesterday by the climate envoy. john kerry, in his talks with his counterpart in china. that they are talking about

reducing methane. talk about that and why it's important. guest: methane is very important. it is about 16% of the problem with global greenhouse gases globally. methane is much more potent as an agent of climate warming than even carbon dioxide. it's about 830 times for power -- 80 times more powerful. the big ones are leaps from oil and gas operations. the biden administration will release any day now final rules to cut those -- that methane pollution from oil and gas operations. greta, the leading companies in the industry are already doing what this safeguard would require. this safeguard will make sure everybody else catches up. host: jim in missouri, democratic caller. jim, are you with us? caller: hi.

hello? host: yes. we are listening. caller: you are -- your guest mentioned drought in the midwest. here in northern missouri we are separate interested that drought. our crops have been very poor this year. i am watching a mature oak tree die this year. it turned brown a month earlier than it should have. mostly because of lack of rain. at one time the sahara desert was green and lush. a drought continues in the midwest, can we turn into a desert? how long before we have wildfires? back in the 1960's air quality in l.a. was so