"washington journal" is next. >> i don't debate as i used to but i know what i do know. i know how to tell the truth! [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy visit ncicap.org] host: good morning. it's saturday, june 29, 2024.

that was president biden yesterday campaigning in north carolina acknowledging a rough performance in thursday's presidential debate which has prompted some to question whether he should stay in the debate. we want to hear specifically from democrats. do you think president biden should step aside in 2024? four phone number for democrats who believe yes, he should, 202-748-8000. if you think no, 202-748-8001. if you're not sure, 202-748-8002. you can text us as well at text 202-748-8003. including your name and where you're writing in from. we're also on social media at facebook.com/cspan and on x at @cspanwj. while some of those calls for president biden to step aside are happening in private conversations, there are some public calls as well, including from the "new york times"

editorial board, with the headline "to serve his country, president biden should leave the race." that editorial reads in part, the president appeared on thursday night as a shadow of a great public servant. he struggled to explain what he would accomplish in the second term. he struggled to respond to mr. trump's provocation and struggled to hold mr. trump accountable and more than once, he struggled to make the end of a sentence. mr. biden has been an admirable president. and the wounds ripped open by mr. trump had begun to heal but the greatest public semifinals mr. biden can now perform is to announce that he cannot continue to run for re-election. president biden is getting quite a number of support including on social media saying -- then

another from --to mere showing jimrn on his message to democrats pee concern by biden's performance. and rertg from the biden campaign -- team biden-harris race $14 million debat day. -- more now from that rally from

president biden in north carolina on the campaign trail where he was acknowledging his rocky debate performance. pres. biden: i know i'm not a young man. [laughter] [applause] [cheering] pres. biden: i don't speak as

smoothly as i used to. i don't debate as well as i used to. but i know what i do know. i know how to tell the truth! [cheers and applause] i know. i know. i know right from wrong. [cheers and applause] and i know how to do this job. i know how to get things done. and i know that americans know when you get knocked down, you get back up. [cheers and applause] i know the truth. our economy is the strongest economy in the world. i know what it will take to bring this economy for everybody. i don't take the rally the world to stand up against putin and not yield to him.

and i know what it takes to keep the world safe in years ahead. folks, i gave you my word i can do this job. [cheering] host: now, the question is for many and here in the headline in "the washington post" with that specific question, could biden be replaced as a 2024 democratic nominee? and that reads in part, is it too late to replace biden onhe ticket? the simple answer is no, but to do so, it's likely he would have to first agree to step aside there. was no indication on friday that he was planning to do so though someratic strategists and office holders have quietly said it's a conversation the party

will have to have. ife does, it's actually quite sy procedurally for delegates of the democratic national conventi to vote for som else when they convene in chicago. through biden'srimary and caucus victories, he has assed support from the mast support of delegates. -- and that is from "the washington post." now, let's go to your calls. we'll hear first from jerry in detroit, michigan, who believe yes, president biden should step

aside. why is that, jerry? caller: biden should not step down. i believe that in any way, there's always room for comeback. greeting from motown, by the way. i think there is absolutely way too much at stake amidst donald trump, the leader of the insurrection back into the white house. because there's a lot going on on the line right now. president biden should stay the course. because there's too much vested in it. and i also want to bring up something else if i may if you'll allow me. the day after the election, i tried to get on but the line was busy at that time. and i wanted to answer a lot of the conspiracy theories that donald trump and his supporters are promoting concerning the attack on the capitol and

they're blaming nancy pelosi for it. for any trump supporter listening, nancy pelosi was not in charge of security nor had any authority -- host: ok, jerry. we are going to keep it on this topic for the morning. next up, we have susan on our line for yes. go ahead, susan. caller: hi, yes. i do believe that biden should remain in office and he is the perfect person right now. he is trying to rebuild america and keep the country moving forward, not backwards, unlike the maga g.o.p. leadership who are trying to move the country backwards in time. and women's meth issues to me are important. i have daughters. i feel that biden will protect their rights and trump and maga leadership in congress are

working with the states to implenty laws -- implement laws that impede my daughters' health. and i believe that biden needs to repair the supreme court. it's out of bounds. it's quite obvious that maga is in the supreme court there. are justice loss quite clearly supporting maga agendas. so that's all i need to say today. so thank you and biden should stay in place. host: ok. alma is in new jersey city on our no line. good morning, alma. caller: i don't think biden is -- he has worked for everybody in this country. he forced the civil right. he is also standing up against

very powerful republicans who know that donald trump is a loser. anybody in this country who have any more or less and vote for somebody that we cannot even let our children look up to is really going crazy. i'm 81 years old. i'm the same age as biden. i have a very active life. just because you are old and can't walk around the way everybody thinks you ought to does not mean that there is something wrong with you. he's probably in better shape than donald trump. donald trump is overweight, but nobody says anything. donald trump is 78 years old and

from what i listen to when he talks, he sounds like he's senile. host: ok. pat is in brick, new jersey, on our yes line. good morning, pat. caller: yes, hello. i just wanted to say joe biden should step aside because he claims to be a good catholic as he makes the sign of a cross in an abortion clinic. he stated he would -- roe v. wade which he agrees to a full nine months to kill a baby in the image of god. abortion is not health care. god calls this murder and an abomination. here's the verse st. john 8:44. you are the father the devil. he was a murder and a liar -- host: ok, we're going to keep it on the topic this morning. so john is up next in fallton, second-degree, on our no line. good morning, john.

caller: good morning. no way should joe be taken off the top of the ticket. that would legitimize everything that trump told last night. it would all of a sudden be well, it must be true. joe's packing it up and taking off. if joe biden were doing a poor job, i might listen for a minute to this, but this is just dumb. and democrats want to hand it to the maga people, just go ahead and knock joe off the top of the ticket. we might as well fold up and go home at that point. that's all i have. host: ken this florida on our no line. good morning. caller: i don't think joe biden should step aside because at this time -- i mean, because it goes by name recognition. yes, there's a lot of people that has good name recognition but for president, i don't think joe biden should step aside and

that's because the people wouldn't even know and how would that person even -- if he do step aside, who will they put there? another thing that if you let me -- is that during the debate, donald trump said that the illegal immigrants were taking black jobs. could you have them explain what is black jobs? sometimes people are so prejudice they don't even know if they are prejudice for him to say they are taking black jobs. every time i did a job application, i didn't see where they say oh, this is a black job. and still, no one has explained to me what is make america great again and when was america ever great for everyone? hey, we live in some rough times now. and i just believe that between donald trump and as a black person between donald trump and joe biden, hey, we got to pick the worst of two evils. so, thank you so much, and please explain what is black jobs. thank you. host: all right, john is in

alabama on our line for yes. good morning, john. caller: good morning. well, yes, i think gavin newsom should be placed on the ticket. he could beat donald trump. donald trump is the -- i guess you could say he's a non-democratic. he's against the policies of this country, he has destroyed the constitution. and gavin newsom is a younger person he's smarter. biden is just won't accept the fact that he is really just too old. he could hardly walk or do anything. and he's a real nice guy now, you know? but he has a lot of other issues that probably we don't even know about. but i think gavin newsom would make a better candidate at this time but that's not going to

happen. that's just my opinion. host: thanks for your call, john. john mentioned gavin newsom, the "washington journal" has an article with 10 options if democrats actually try to replace biden saying making a change would be far from easy despite concerns of president biden's debate performance but here's who has surfaced before and could again. excuse me. let me go back and find that list includes people like vice president harris. it is doll see how harris wouldn't be the alternative unless she, too, voluntarily steps aside. gretchen whitmer is a name that you will likely see ahead. the michigan governor saying a plausible alternative with looking almost ideal on paper. pete -- and then on you have

more. now let's glow to leo on folks who are not sure. caller: i'm not sure for the simple reason. i just don't know if he's capable of making the tough decision and i hope to agree with the fact that i would love to see him take a coggive test. i just don't think if he could make the tough decisions. host: ok. thanks for your call. devin is on the line for not sure. good morning, devin. caller: i'm not sure. and i think as we continue to

move forward in this election, it's all about confidence, right? americans are in shaken times with inflation and all sorts of thought abc the economy and how things -- and all thoughts -- with this specific debate might not be too important. if this results happened a week before the election, that can really shake some confidence and sway votes. and it is scary, you know? when you're a candidate -- your candidate is up there not providing confidence to the nation. so i'm not sure what could happen if this was close. i would be much more afraid. more serious thoughts but i think we need to keep sticking it out for now. but we need a confident leader going forward. so, thank you.

host: vice president harris was at a rally in population yesterday with an endorsement and support of president biden saying that he is still capable. let's hear some of that. vp harris: we've got 130 days. i'm counting. [laughter] until election day. 130 days. and this race will not be decided by one night in june. this race will be decided by you. by us, who sits in the white house next year will be determined by what we together do in these next 130 days. and ultimately in this election, we each face a question. what kind of country do we want to live in? a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law or a

country of chaos, fear and hate. we each have the power, each of us, has the power to answer this question. with our vote and with our voice. so today, i ask nevada, are you ready to make your voices heard? [cheers and applause] host: next, we have roxanne from maine on our line for no. good morning, roxanne. caller: good morning. yes, a definite no. i do not want to see joe biden and i understand the reason why he does not want to step down. and the man -- and what he has done and the traveling and everything that he has put forth, i would be exhausted.

and so i commend him for his efforts. i honor him for his efforts. and it should continue people to listen because the reason that he won't step down is because we don't need donald trump in office. if anybody listened the debate when donald trump lost the election in 2020, he said he talked to putin and right after that. so this is all -- and he just continues to have these conversations with putin. it's scary. trump is scary. i knew this a long time ago. and of course, too being a factor of this, calling joe biden a criminal.

joe biden is not a criminal. it takes a big man to say their fall and donald trump -- fault and donald trump never recognize that and even though he knows he's at fault. thank you so much for listening and have a wonderful day. host: you as well, roxanne. next up, we have christina in south dennis, massachusetts, on our line for yes. good morning, christina. caller: really, good morning to you. thank you for taking my call. i agree with some previous callers that president biden should step down and it would be good. he said he was going to a one-term president and he should step down with some dignity and respect. and the world is too fast. and he's done a great job with the infrastructure, maintaining the health care and he did attempt to work with on the border crisis but that didn't pan out. and i am just afraid that the world is too fast and he's getting elderly and it's almost

like taking the keys away from an elderly person who shouldn't be driving a car. and i'm sorry, but i do think that the democratic party can find another eligible person that might fit everybody's needs. there's a lot of people around here saying that. they don't want biden and i don't think some of the democrats are listening to us. thank you very much. host: next is dean in aington, virginia, on our no line. good mning, dean. caller: cannot believe that president biden should step down. actuly, we need to find out ho this happened. cae one cannot change from norm perso to somebody who just cannot keep up with the discussion. he sounded like an elderly person who is sedated. and t qstion is with -- we have to findut whether anyone slipped anything in hisat or

whatever ee. i think -- has become very careful and diligent in, being who has access to anything. so no, i think, one, we need to investigate why this happened and how this happened. soi do not think that he should step down, at as not now. thank you. host: thanks for your call can. next up is diane in st. paul, minnesota, also on our no line. good morning, diane. caller: good morning, c-span. i am 75 years old. and i have been through president ronald reagan who went through the same thing that president biden is going through now when they said that he was senile and he was old. but guess what? his party stood by him.

and they supported him. and that's what we as democrats should be doing for joe biden while nancy reagan ran the white house. and guess what? if he's so far gone, jill biden should run the choice white house and don't have to worry about the -- i'm a military family. so there are more than one person that has a bag with all the keys in it o? so now, he's not doing this on his own. the one thing i like about joe biden, he's been around for 50 years. and when we ask the black community for something, he gave it to us. because we asked him for that crime deal that got passed and everybody want to blame him for. as leaders, in our community because we were tired of what was happening with the drugs. so we asked him to help us and that's how the crime deal got passed about the cocaine and stuff like that.

so everybody want to blame him for that. so stop blaming joe. and take a look at your own candidate donald trump, who would not even -- who won't even recognize that president biden is president to this date. he does not change over like everybody else does. he didn't brief the cabinet when they came in. host: so diane, you brought up former president donald trump and former president donald trump has been talking about the debate as well at a rally in chesapeake, virginia, yesterday. he spoke about thursday night's debate. >> hello, virginia. did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate? [cheers and applause] eh. that was a big one. but as you saw on television last night, we had a big victory against the man that really is looking to destroy our country. he's the worst. he's the most corrupt.

the most incompetent president in the history of our country. [applause] and we have to take it back from that party. that's an evil party, despite the fact that crooked joe biden spent the entire week at camp david resting, working, studying. he studied very hard. he studied so hard that he didn't know what the hell he was doing. [laughter] he got the debate rules that he wanted. he got the date that he wanted. he got the network that he wanted. with the moderates he wanted. no amount of rest could help him defend his atrocious record. host: "variety" reports numbers from nielsen that show that 51 million viewers watched that biden-trump cnn presidential debate across 17 networks. nielsen has released an update on thursday's presidential debate and the average audience

has climbed to 51.3 million viewers across 17 networks. networks include cnn which originated the debate as well as abc, cbs, fox, script news, telemundo, univision, bet, hln and others. now then let's go to lee in buffalo, new york, on our line for yes. good morning, lee. caller: hi. joe biden is a very good man. he's an honorable man. i think he did an admirable job given the mess he was handed. but i believe at this point, he really needs to step aside for the good of the country. i don't believe he has the support to win the election and it is absolutely essential that someone other than donald trump wins. i like him. i appreciate his service. i thank him for his service. but i can never, ever forget the

vacuous look on his face during the debate. it sent chills down my spine. and we must have someone that we can come together and elect. thank you. host: lee, is there someone in particular that you would have in mind? or someone you think you can support? caller: i would support many. certainly, rafael warnock, pete buttigieg, gretchen whitmer. but yeah, i think we have wonderful candidates out there who are up to the job. and we just need him to do the right thing and step aside. you know trump won't. so we need him to show who really is the honorable person here. host:host: thank you. we have jim in pennsylvania on our line for yes. good morning, jim. caller: good morning.

i called in two months ago and got cut off for calling president biden a criminal. i was not asked what the crime was. host: are you a democrat to respond to our question about whether you think president biden should step aside in our 2024 race? caller: i think he should be impeached but yes, he should step aside. host: thank you. let's hear from tom in st. paul, minnesota on our no line. good morning. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. this is my first time calling. i have to say, and i'm going to quote fannie lou, i'm tired of being sick and tired, first and foremost. everybody now is saying, my fellow democrats are saying he should step aside. step aside to what? did we forget barack obama, he

had a bad debate too. how many times have we seen mitch mcconnell stand up there and they got him on tape standing there and he froze i don't know how many times but the republicans stand with him and they stand with trump. my fellow democrats, oh, he should step aside, he should step aside. we have to remember, this is a fight. there was no fat check. who is he debating against? a pathological liar, a guy who has been convicted 30 something times. he has fouled out numerous times and every time, they said the election was not stolen, it was not whatever. now all of a sudden, we want to put the pressure on biden, he

should step aside. let's get real. he's dealing with somebody that stands there and he makes up every live. if you listen to the debate, -- every time he says something, it's a sin. last but not least, former president barack obama said something that made a lot of sense. as far as i'm concerned, president biden is my guy. people need to look inside themselves and say hey, look, now we need to roll up our sleeves and do one thing, vote. get out and vote. host: thank you, tom. hillary clinton on twitter said something similar to tom's sentiments, saying t choice in this election remains very simple. it's a choi between someone who cares about you, your rights, your future, versus someone who's ly in it for himself.

i'll be voting for biden. there is a new ad from the trump campaign that echoes and includes clips from thursday's debate. here is a course of that -- portion of that. >> when you think about the joe biden you saw tonight, ask yourself a question. do you think the guy who was defeated by the stairs, got taken down by his bike, lost a fight with his jacket and regularly gets lost makes it four more years in the white house? and you know who's waiting behind him. vote joe biden today, get kamala harris tomorrow. >> i'm donald trump and i approve this message. >> that ran during the debate on thursday night. host: we have alexander in florida on our line for no. caller: i just want to say i do not believe he should step down. i say that because what i saw

during the debate was not an incompetent, incapable man. i saw someone who was over prepared. inc. you for having me. host: next is neil in florida, on our line for yes. good morning, ne-yo. -- neil. caller: good morning. yes, i think president biden should step down or not step down, i think he should finish out his term and not run for reelection. how he can look himself in the mirror as the most inept, corrupt president in our history is fascinating to me. host: are you a democrat, neil? caller: yes, i am. host: which of the other

candidates, if any, do you think might make a better candidate in 2024? caller: which others are out there? host: biden is the nominee but i was curious if anyone else was on your mind. caller: when you go through the list from the washington post, you are pulling up names that i've never even heard of. rafael warnock, come on. he has about as much experience as obama did when he ran. so, if that's the case, why not put up -- host: thank you, neil. stephen is in gainesville, florida on our line for no. good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call and absolutely not.

-- not, should the honorable joe biden step down. you can go on the debate stage and have a lot of thoughts rushing through your head and it's tough. people who have not been on the debate stage do not understand how tough it can be. you are on the clock, i'm 75. you get tired of being on the clock at night. the president should have a morning debate and i promise you, you will see the real joe biden. i'm looking at the real joe biden right now on the screen. what an amazing human being. he's a kind, decent man. i'm no christian but i will say, some of the stories in the new testament, they say many false prophets shall follow me. and the guy who is running against him is a false prophet and loves people who are uneducated.

go, joe. beat him. god bless you and thank you so much. host: ron is in michigan on our line for yes. good morning, ron. caller: good morning. i love joe. i think he's doing a great job but i think it is time for him to step aside. and the person who must replace him is michelle obama. this attack by trump, this retribution campaign is directly aimed at president obama, because of the beating that trump took at his hands. and michelle obama is a fighter. i wish she had been president instead of her husband. if we give her the chance, she will carry the house and the senate and we will have solid democratic majority for two terms and we willeat these racist republican scum once and for all. host: ed is in laurel, maryland

on our no line. good morning. caller: yeah, good morning. boy, i will tell you. it's quite obvious that we have republicans calling in on the democratic lines. first of all, for the true democrats that are calling in and saying for him to step aside, you are jelly belly drama queens. we must fight for our guy. it has only been one night and you are calling for his head. obama had a bad debate. george w. bush had a bad debate. they were two term guys. and whatnot. and remember this.

it's not what you say, it's not what you say and it's not how you say it, it's if you are telling the truth or not. we are telling the guy who told the truth as compared to the guy who was lying all night long, we are telling the guy who told the truth to, to step aside. that is just nuts. host: jan is in west hills, california on our no line. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. i definitely do not believe that the honorable joe biden should step aside. i agree with the caller from a few calls back that said we need to have an investigation. can you hear me ok? host: yes, we can hear you, jan. caller: i believe that president

biden was sabotaged. something was put in his water. he was given a pill. i've never seen him like that before. so, i think we need to investigate what happened there. because donald trump would be awful for this country and i love joe biden. go, joe. let's all vote for biden. thank you for taking my call. host: thanks for calling in. kim is in columbus, ohio. caller: i'm immersed in the black community and i don't know nobody who likes trump. i don't know nobody that likes trump in the black community. i don't think joe biden should go nowhere. we have a liar on one side and one telling the truth and a newspaper telling joe biden he needs to step down with grace. go, joe. we need to fight for joe just

like they are fighting for trump . we need to fight for joe on the truth. thank you very much. host: jaclyn is in dayton, ohio on our no line. good morning. caller: no, i don't think the honorable joe biden should step down. who's going to control that awful legislation from the bench supreme court if not joe? host: ok, thank you, jaclyn. larry is in detroit, michigan on our yes line. good morning, larry. caller: good morning. i think he should step aside. i've known that when he first ran. they should have left it to somebody who is young. it's not going to get any

better. we have to quit looking at flowers and look at the reality that is going on around us. donald trump is the most dangerous ex-president or president to be that could ever happen to this country. and we have to have somebody who can fight for it. biden is not up to the challenge. it was that donald trump was such a horrible president that we could have put anybody in the office at that time. you have two thirds of democrats who do not want biden. host: did you have someone else in particular you would rather see as the democratic nominee? caller: i'd like to see witmer or the governor of california. i'd rather see you run. it doesn't take much to beat donald trump. i keep telling the democrats when i call in, why don't you

tell them where the economy came from? it came from obama. it wasn't donald trump that created it. he assumed a great economy and took credit for it. all republicans have done in 70 years, they come in with crime. that's all they have and they take credit for the economy the democrats have put together. host: thank you, larry. we have commons from social media. colton hammons says no, stepping down would be the worst move. i agree the debate was a train wreck and biden should have been more on task but tlies overwhelmed the night. it can be quite disorienting to on stage with donald trump. he does not communicate in a typical bulike manner. trump asked like a bully -- ask like a bully.

-- acts like a bully. trp was not present at all and was not deti true trump did not answer any questions, chged the subject and lied. the moderators did not call out on any of it. they asked him the same question three times. dewayne robertson, no. biden should not step asi or democrats and.care sabotaging him because other partmeers want the spotlight. the democratic party should respect the state and the voters that already gave him enough imary votes to be the nominee and picked him. lee saysbsutely not. he has de much in his first term. president biden informs me, the voters tt can do the job. president biden is on top of s job and takes it very seriously. i like his ability to get members of congress to work together very much and i want

that to continue. elvin brow y. if the demra want a chance of a win, and theyavuntil august 19 during the democratic convention to decide who will run against trump and the third-party candidate will have a better chae an biden. greg mozer says personally, i like pete buttigieg a klobuchar to be the candidates. sadly, people of gatharacter are reluctant to run because they don't want toutheir families through the awful experience of the presidency. that said, i will take feeble over phelan any day of the week. johncnly, no, at least not yet. joe had a bad night but the real faurwas cnn's utter failure to merate, to push back on the firehose of lies being spew by trump. cnn failed the american people. and that was the last of those comments. now, let's go back to your calls. carol is in st. louis, missouri and is not sure.

what has you on the fence, carol? caller: i am not sure. if you would decide to run again, that would be ok with me. but i'm not sure he should absolutely say yes. the other thing is why did you run that terrible campaign thing and nothing about how donald trump is? i don't understand, this is a democratic calling, what's going on? host: we were out lying the -- outlining the physical condition of president biden, which has been discussed as a potential reason for why some people think he shouldn't run. what do you think about that argument about his physical condition? caller: i don't have a problem with his physical condition. and i do have a problem with running that add, big time. [laughter] it was nothing about the debate. host: ok.

thank you, carol. next up, we have joe in louisville, kentucky, who says no. good morning, joe. caller: yes, hello? host: we can hear you, joe. caller: i think it's too late in the season to get a new candidate. i don't think that y'all have enough means, those people aren't news junkies like i am. they don't have enough recognition. we should just go with joe. we have the strongest nation in the world economically. we have the strongest military. we are the in the of most nations. i think it would be a serious mistake to replace him. host: stanley is in el dorado, arkansas and says yes. good morning, stanley.

caller: this is stanley in arkansas. i was lying about being a democrat. host: this is a line for democrats. let's hear from robert in will stir, massachusetts, who says -- worchester, massachusetts, who says no. caller: i believe biden should not step down. the person that needs to step down is the vice president, harris. because she demonstrated to me that -- i remember years ago in san francisco, when willie brown was running for mayor of san francisco, she was dating this man. they didn't think willie brown was going to win. host: let's move on to donna in pennsylvania, also on the no line. caller: good morning.

i just want to say you have democrats throwing joe under the bus because he had one bad debate. come on. look what this man did for this country. something was wrong with joe that night. i said to my husband, was there something in his drink? that was not joe biden. donald trump is a convicted mob president and you want to put him back in the white house? come on. let's move on and let support biden and get behind him. all of us. host: nancy is in rhode island, also on our no line. good morning, nancy. caller: good morning. host: good morning. caller: good morning. absolutely not. i am behind joe, 100%. the job he did for this country

and all that he accomplished, he compromises with the republicans. trump is a liar, a criminal, a convict and a felon. he's waiting for his sentencing, july 11. we hope to god the right thing is done for our country to protect us. our freedoms are being taken away. we have to be strong. the democrats have to unite behind him and i am behind joe, 100%. >> carolyn is in charlotte, north carolina, also on our no line. good morning. >> the morning. i am 100 percent behind joe biden. i can't understand why these democrats are approaching joe biden with republican talking points. because trump called him sleepy joe from the beginning. and he has pushed this narrative and the democrats are saying exactly what the republicans are saying. if trump can act like a prodigal

monkey and they support everything he does on the podium, line 100% and no republican is saying bring trump down for anything that he does. but the least little thing joe biden did, the democrats, they are all over him. they want -- do you want the man to be president or do you want trump to be president? if you want trump to be president, keep talking about republican talking points. and for the african-americans out there, trying to vote for trump, you better go back to reconstruction because trump is about to create the second reconstruction. if you call yourself christian, make sure you are not operating that the christian kkk. you better check yourself. i am 100% behind joe biden. host: jason is in ohio, also on the no line. good morning.

caller: good morning prayed i'm in full support of joe biden. i don't think he should step aside. i believe the other no callers are spot on. i believe he was over prepped and was not able to react to what trump said. i don't agree with him anyway or anything they say. go, joe. >> next up is rudy in california. caller: good morning. like i said, i'm saying no. president biden should stay where he's at. and for all the democrats talking, you should take the words of -- words that john fetterman said.

host: clean. caller: i wasn't going to do that. he was very colorful. thank you, kimberly. host: thank you for your call, rudy. clayton is in marion, indiana on our yes line. caller: good morning. first off, november 3, 2020 is when gas prices started going up. host: do you think biden should step aside in the race? caller: he should be in prison right now. yes, he should step aside. you guys need to release footage of joe as the vice president. and then give him prison time. host: thank you, clayton. let's hear from jesse in rosedale, maryland. and can you turn down the volume on your tv? caller: one second. by the way, no.

no, he should not step down, no kind of way. and the people who are scared, don't worry. come along with us. host: bernie is in ohio on our no line. good morning, bernie. caller: no, he should not step down. with age becomes wisdom. if you will remember, his opponent said only i can fix things. joe has advisors that he is willing to listen to. and that makes a team instead of a demagogue. and for all the christians out there, i wonder how they cannot see an antichrist in the form of donald trump. he's a danger. he is chaos, he's divisive. he has the character that no one

would want their child to grow up like. and then with the issues, there are so many issues that we can't even enumerate all of them. i think the democrats need to stand up like one of your callers said, regarding republicans with mitch mcconnell. and stick with him. and so, there's no question in my mind that this is a very important election. i wish there were two different candidates myself but we have what we have and we have to stick with it. host: michael is in tampa, florida on our yes line. good morning, michael. caller: hi, how are you? host: i'm good. why do you think president biden should step aside as a democratic nominee? caller: i like joe biden, i think he's a good guy. but after seeing that debate, he definitely has problems.

he couldn't complete a sentence. and even though i liked him, i think there is no dishonor in him stepping aside and passing the baton. i think gavin newsom would be a good possible replacement. but, yeah, joe has problems. and like i say, this is important. our country and democracy is more important than joe biden. i like him but he needs to step aside and pass the baton to someone else. host: robert is in new york on our no line. caller: i think everybody back -- better backup. i was for trump last time but not this time. trump can't tell the truth and he's with putin, he's with china and he never spoke to any of the

questions he was asked. biden had a cold. let's face it. when you have a cold, you talk a little bit like that. biden has done a great job for us. trump is against a lot of things that we don't want. if you want a nation to be nice again, everybody better stand with trump and we all have to go with trump. if we all go for trump, he will be our president. there is nobody else to replace him with an its too late to do that. i heard a woman say he ought to be replaced. i don't think we need to replace anybody. it takes too long to replace anybody and start from scratch. you should know what trump has done to this country. he's lied. i don't know how people can even think about going to vote for trump at all.

we need to back up biden and stick with him. if we all stick with hyden -- biden, we will have a nice united states. host: thank you, robert. harmon is in seattle, washington, also on our no line. good morning. caller: how are you? host: i'm good, thank you. caller: i think joe biden should stay right where he is and go on and win this. that guy he's running against, they didn't fact-check him. they just let him lie, lie, lie. he told more lies than any person. if anyone wants to vote for donald trump, they have a problem. nobody could lie like that. you would like year children like that. and that's all he does.

and he was in fact checked at all and nobody has said anything about it. what kind of people do we have running this country? all of these haters? host: we've run out of time for this segment. thank you, harmon. next up, we will hear more about that presidential debate on thursday from matt peterson. we will examine what the candidates said with matt peterson. on monday, the supreme court will hand down its final opinions for this session, including president trump's immunity case. chris geidner will join us later on to discuss news from the court. we will be right back.

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45 years of governing congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of federal government. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> washington journal continues. host: welcome back. to discuss the economic topics covered on thursdays president of the bay, we are joined by matt peterson, the -- presidential debate, we are joined by matt peterson. welcome. guest: thank you. host: can you explain what barron's is and what you cover? guest: it is a business

magazine. we are a sister publication of the wall street journal that focuses more on the stock market. host: what do you cover specifically? guest: i cover just about everything as the ideas editor. i try to find interesting angles going on in the economy and a wreck -- i write a column about politics. host: earlier this week, before the debate, you wrote an article about five questions that you hoped would be asked about the economy during the debate. what were those questions that you wanted to hear? guest: i wanted to hear them talk about big things that they disagree about. and those are taxes, the debt, tariffs, immigration and a couple of other big picture ideas. we didn't hear a ton of policy. host: talk about what you did here in terms of economic policy and debate. guest: sure, the biggest

disagreement that the two of them have is about taxes. we did get a little bit of back-and-forth about taxes. the back story here is that next year, we will have a big tax break in congress. because trump signed a tax law that cuts most people's taxes and those taxes will go up again, next year if congress does nothing. congress doesn't want to get blamed for raising taxes. the two men have a big disagreement about how we should deal with those tax cuts. trump just wants to keep your taxes where they are, which is relatively low, given where we have been in the past several decades. and he wants to cut corporate taxes a little bit further. biden on the other hand is running on a novel idea of raising taxes. raising taxes is a popular idea. he only wants to raise taxes for

the rich. he thinks taxes should stay the same for anybody making under $400,000. he talked a little bit about how he wants to make billionaires pay more and wants corporate taxes to go up. the two of them have a pretty serious disagreement there. host: a lot of this disagreement around taxes is centered on the topic of the national debt as well. president biden discussed the national debt, medicare and social security in thursday's debate and we will hear a bit of that and the response from president trump. >> president biden, i want to give you an opportunity to respond to this question about the national debt. >> he had the largest national debt of any president in a four year period, number one. he's had a $2 trillion tax cut that benefited the wealthy. we have 1000 trillion errors in america. not even billionaires. they affect 8.2% in taxes.

if they paid to 4% or 25%, they would -- it would erase $500 billion in a 10 year period. we would wipe away the debt and we would make sure all of the things we need to do, childcare, eldercare, making sure we continue to help our health care system, making sure that we were able to make every single solitary person eligible for what i've been able to do with covid -- excuse me, dealing with everything we have had to do -- look. if we finally beat medicare. >> thank you, president biden. resident trump. -- president trump? >> he beat medicare to death. all of these people are coming in and they are putting them on medicare and social security. they are going to destroy social security. this man is going to

single-handedly destroy social security. millions and millions of people coming in, they are try to put them on social security. he will wipe out social security. he will wipe out medicare. he was right in the way he finished that sentence. it's a shame. what's happened to our country in the last four years is not to be believed. host: one of the other recent articles matt has headlined, trumps debate dominance puts the spotlight on u.s. debt. what did you think about their comments as well as overall how they addressed the debt in the debate? guest: you can hear in biden's answer in particular, the outlines of the big problem of the country, which is that we have committed to doing a ton of spending. we want to give people social security, medicare and medicaid and lots of other government programs. and cutting those things is very unpopular. on the other hand, we have not raised enough taxes to get everything that we want.

so, you need to solve this problem, somehow. and biden is sort of gesturing at part of his answer to this problem, which is raising some taxes on the rich, which would help us close this gap. the deficit this year is about to hit $2 trillion, about 7% of gdp or everything we make in this country. that is a high level and it is happening. one of the things that neither one of them like to talk about, whoever becomes president will be president at a time in the country where we have had more debt than we have ever had in our history. the peak of debt was after world war ii in 1946. we had 106% of growth domestic product. it will beat that number by 2027 according to that nonpartisan forecaster that helps congress.

they are suggesting ways to fix it. i did not hear from trump in particular any sort of serious suggestions about how he's going to try to raise more funds for social security. he's suggesting that somehow cutting immigration is going to fix that problem. it's probably not true. most of the time what happens with immigration, including illegal immigration is they pay something in play role -- payroll taxes. they don't get benefits so they don't train that part of the system. cutting immigration is probably not a sufficient answer. also, it's not -- on biden's side, raising enough taxes on the -- raising taxes on the rich were probably not solve the debt problem. we need better answers from them both. host: who's fault is inflation?

trump and biden claim each other. biden was asked about inflation in that debate and about the broader economy. it's a bit of a long cut of tape but i want to play that too. caller: you have to -- >> you have to look at what trump left me. we had an economy in freefall and many people were dying. they said it was not that serious, inject bleach in your arm and you will be all right. unemployment rate rose to 15%. it was terrible. but we had to do was try to put things back together again. that's what we began to do. we created 15,000 new jobs. we were in a position where we have 800,000 manufacturing jobs. there's more to be done. working class people are still in trouble. i come from scranton, pennsylvania and a household where --

the price of gas, the price of housing. that's why i'm working so hard to make try deal with those problems. i'm going to make sure we reduce the price of housing. we will make sure we cap rent so corporate greed can't take over. in addition to that, we are in a situation where if you had to look at all of what donald trump has done in his ministration, he did not do much at all. we were in chaos. i made sure we had a situation where we brought down the price of prescription drugs, which is a major issue for many people. $50 for an insulin shot as opposed to $400. the situation, we are going to

make that available for anybody, all americans. we are working to bring down the price around the kitchen table and that's what we are going to get done. >> thank you. president trump? >> we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. we have never done so well. everybody was amazed by it. other countries were copying us. we got hit with covid. when we did, we spent the money necessarily so we would not end up in the great depression the likes of which we had of 1929. by the time we finished, we did a great job. we got a lot of credit for the economy and military. no wars and so many other things. everything was good. the thing we never got the credit for and we should have is getting us out of that covid mess. he created mandates that were a disaster for our country. other than that, we have given them back a country where the stock market actually was higher than pre-covid and nobody thought that was even possible. the only jobs he created were for illegal immigrants and

bounce back jobs to bounce back from the covid. he's not done a good job, he's done a poor job and inflation is killing our country. it is absolutely killing us. host: matt, i want to get your response to what they said there and also how much of the president in the role of the presidency -- and the role of the presidency has to do with inflation. guest: the president does not have as much control over inflation as either candidate is suggesting there. although they do play some role. they are having a fight about who caused inflation. there is a little bit of truth to the idea that biden is responsible for some of the inflation that we are seeing now. we came out of this tremendous economic calamity in 2020. and the economy was bouncing back when biden became president and he decided to put a little more money into america's pockets. a lot of economists at the time thought this may have been

a little overdone. the biden administration had reasonable worry that if we did not spend enough, the recovery was going to look a lot like the recovery after the financial crisis where the economy moved very slowly for over a decade and it was hard to get a raise and things like that. they did not want that to happen so they spent too much money. that contributed to inflation. it's not the only thing that is contributing to inflation. you also have the high cost of housing in this country, which has nothing to do with what presidents do. so, the two of them disagree about where this was caused. but what i didn't hear from either of them, really was any real analysis of what to do going forward. biden has some specific policies to try to put through to cut prices on individual things lexus -- like prescription drugs. inflation is still very high and expensive. -- and it is extensive to buy

groceries in this country. i didn't has not given an answer on what to do about that. we can talk more about that if you want. host: let's hear from our collars now. republicans who have questions for matt can call in at (202) 748-8001. democrats can call in at (202) 748-8000. independents on (202) 748-8002. once again, if you would like to text us, that number is (202) 748-8003. please be sure to include your name and where you are writing in from and you can also find us on social media. let's start with lillian from lewisburg, pennsylvania, on our line for democrats. what's your question for matt? hi there, lillian. can you hear us? caller: no, i can't. host: hi there, lillian, you can ask your question for matt. we lost lillian. let's try paul in pennsylvania

on our line for republicans. good morning, paul. caller: yes, i would like to know why 99% of this country is brain-dead and things bryden is doing -- biden is doing a good job. you can't even afford gas for your vehicle. guest: matt -- host: matt, would you like to respond to the inflation point? guest: people feel it. the price of gas, gas is $3.50 nationwide, that is higher than what it was during trump. it's been a lot higher historically. this country is now producing more oil and gas than it has ever done, than any country has ever produced in the history of the world. which is a pretty amazing feat. if you believe trump, he says he's going to accelerate that even further and let oil and gas companies merge. that make up the price of gas

even further. if that is frustrating you, take a listen to what he's saying. host: next up is scott in new york on our line for independents. good morning, scott. caller: good morning. the debate actually got me fired back up again. when you go to the bank, you get brand-new money, steven mnuchin's name is still on it. four years after trump got out of office, we have not printed any money. here's what i see out of the debate. an old man is trying to go against our nation versus a man who hates us. i have news for him. i served in the cold war. i've done all kinds of things. this fourth of july, the fourth of july used to be so great for this country. host: did you have a question for matt about the economy or

the debate? caller: the economy is so good, why don't you people shut him up because it's not true. we haven't planted out any money since he was in office. if you people continue, he doesn't have a clue on what he's going to do except for drill baby, drill. how is that going to help our economy? host: i will stop you there and let matt respond to whatever point you want to. guest: this country is going through a pretty incredible energy boom. we are producing a lot of fossil fuels as we are -- at the same time we are producing solar energy. the way energy enters the economy is interesting and these guys have different views of it. biden has to be -- has the climate package called the inflation reduction act. it's a climate bill. that will put more money into

renewables. people like this legislation for what it's worth. one of the things trump has said is he doesn't like this package. he wants to switch us back to an energy mix that is a lot heavier on oil and gas. that industry likes him a lot. so, this is an important point of contrast between the two candidates. you have one who wants a fossil fuel future for the economy and one who is putting more money toward the other side. host: eddie is in new jersey on our line for republicans. go ahead, eddie. caller: yes. the way i see this thing is people think in very small packages instead of what is actually happening. you have a republican for more than 20 years. i'm saying voting for addict or

-- a dictator or a person who rep since the people of the country, -- represents the people of the country. i'm a republican, i would never vote for donald trump. i understand what he is. he's a dictator. host: eddie, did you have a question about the economy or what the candidates have set about the economy so far for matt? caller: yes, but that is minutia. the minutia is the economy. you can get caught in talking about that minutia or you can talk about the reality. it's a dictatorship or it's a president. host: matt, eddie makes an interesting point. the economy is polled as one of the top issues. how do you think the economy is

going to matter when it comes down to people are going to decide how to vote in november? caller: this is the 64,000 dollar question. i think you saw this at the debate very clearly. the two candidates were not trying to make solid points. they were fighting about other things. the thing that is drawing people's attention to politics in a lot of ways is the economy. it's the inflation, the price of gas, the housing, all of these things that drive us nuts. and, you know, presidents have some control over this. over the course of their presidency, they can put in place policies that shipped us in one place or the other. i think this election has frustrations that the candidates are aware of. host: allen is in sterling,

colorado on our republican line. good morning. caller: could morning. host: what's your question? caller: i have a question. why can't it be proposed for flat taxes, may be two different tiers for corporate and may be two different tiers for private for people that are -- have jobs or businesses. they don't have to be the same flat tax for each individual set. for lower income, another two different tiers for lower income people. how about that? host: really quickly, do you mean more of a consumption tax or an income tax? caller: income tax. go ahead and do it 25% for corporates that are making over a certain amount of money. just so they are not shutting down the corporate companies, so

that they don't start leaving the united states and go and crash the border building. they want to bring jobs into the u.s. and not get rid of them. so, you can't tax them so that they are going to leave the united states. i know trump had done quite a bit on trying to keep the corporations in the u.s., so that they would pay taxes for what they were producing in the u.s. and that was a good point for what trump had been doing. i don't hear anything about doing private tax or straight, flat taxes. host: let's let matt respond to that. what do you think of allen's idea? guest: i haven't heard the candidates talk about flat taxes. it comes up every now and then trade next year will be our big europe talking about texas. -- taxes. one thing that did come up in

the debate that hints along these lines is the idea of tariffs. tariffs being attacks on everybody. being kind of a flat tax on every buddy. -- everybody. trump wants to set up 10% import taxes on everything that comes into this country. so, every little thing that you buy from amazon that has come from china will be subject to a little bit more taxes. parts of cars and things like that as well. that is a tax that is felt by consumers across the economy relatively equally. it's one of the taglines that biden has been trying to roll out at the debate. trump is saying that he wants to lower taxes on everybody. but actually, he's imposing import taxes. we will have to see how this shapes out next year.

the makeup of congress, whether republicans win the house and senate, or if democrats win them, probably matters as much as if trump or biden is elected this year. host: looking at an article in the associated press, some tariffs have continued under the biden administration and there are some new tariffs. it says the u.s. plans to oppose major new tariffs on ev's, other chinese green energy imports according to ap sources. this was back from may that the biden administration is plays -- planning major new tariffs on solar equipment and medical supplies. how have the two administrations handled tariffs differently? guest: they have some interesting different ways in how they have handled this. one of the changes on the economy that trump made in 2017 was he started raising

tariffs on a lot of different stuff after years of which tariffs have been falling in this country. tariffs are import taxes we pay at the border. if you ship something from china, you pay more to bring it into the country. trump raised those taxes on china. he also raised import tariffs on steel and aluminum, washing machines and a couple of other specific things. when biden won in 2020, a lot of people excited him to drop those tariffs and he didn't. he kept them going. he kept the tariff on china and changed the steel and aluminum tariffs a little bit. then he added new tariffs on. this is a big change in the way both democratic and republican president have dealt with tariffs for decades. the strategy has been to lower them. the difference between the two

candidates comes in how the two think about tariffs and what they are for. trump at the debate, you talked about this explicitly, he thinks tariffs are a way to gain power in the global economy. and he used that power back when he was president to negotiate a deal with china. it was not a particularly effective deal. it came in before covid started and that sort of overtook everything. what he is suggesting is that when he is president, not only will he raise tariffs across the board, he's going to use them to negotiate things. we don't really know what he wants to use them to negotiate for but he has a track record. biden on the other hand, as you were saying, raises tariffs on specific things. industries here that he wants to protect like electric vehicles. he put a lot of money behind

giving cars subsidies so they can -- car companies subsidies so they can build electric vehicles. he also put tariffs on solar panels and a couple of other things. he has this targeted approach. again, this is a place where the two of them will diverge and trump will import tariffs on a lot of different goods and biden will continue to target specific industries. host: next up is laura from baltimore, maryland on our line for independents. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span and c-span radio. i want to make a comment about inflation. things like the consumer price index and housing costs. these are all based on people

buying things, the consumer price index and how much stuff americans are buying and how expensive housing is for americans. my guess is we have about 20 million people in the country who are not on the books. we don't know who they are. it's like a shadow economy. and they are all buying stuff. and they are all renting houses. and they are paying -- they are going to pay a lot of money to stay in the country. that's going to drive up costs. they are buying stuff. that's making the consumer price index look like wow, people are really buying a lot. it's these folks who we don't even know are here. our government is not really acknowledging they are here. i just want to hear if you have any thoughts about that.

thanks again. host: go ahead, matt. guest: i don't know how the government measures specifically inflation and things like that from the price index. i suspect that their purchases are included in the cpi because the government wants to get an objective look at how prices are rising. it's true, of course, the more people we have in this country, working and buying stuff and buying buying stuff, buying hous in particular, the higher prices are going to go. this is something that the federal reserve, which sets our interest rates, is pretty concerned about. a big concern that we are going to have under a trump administration is whether -- kicking people out of the country is going to do to prices, to the labor market?

generally speaking, immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, tend to add more to overall economic growth than they take away in benefits. the congressional budget office recently said that if you look out 10 years to where immigration is going to go, the course of immigration is going to reduce the deficit by several hundred billion dollars because they are going to work and buy stuff and pay taxes. that effect is actually greater than the benefits that they take out of the economy. if the flow of people into this country slows, there are fewer people to do jobs. wages in some industries may increase, but that might be something the federal reserve is concerned about and they may raise interest rates and make your mortgage costs go up as a

result. it is not a simple story, unfortunately. host: new york, the line for republicans, what is your question? caller: good morning. it seems to me that inflation peaked at 9% under biden because of the energy policies he instituted saying he would get rid of gas, oil, and fossil fuels. that drove up the price of gasoline for dollars to five dollars a gallon which is cast on throughout the economy and higher prices because everything is based on energy. then he decided to sell off our oil reserves, which puts us at risk now. more than 50% of the oil reserves was sold off. also, he decided -- well --

host: let's let matt respond to the idea you brought up about, how much does the cost of energy factor into overall inflation? guest: it does play pretty significant role. energy is contriving list to inflation. the falling price of energy, it has fallen recently coming into the summer. gas prices are going down in this country which is unusual. usually we drive more and that raises the price of gas. earlier he said the price of gas is $3.50, which is down earlier from where it was earlier in the biden presidency for sure. when inflation hit 9%, that is the correct number, in 2022 part of that was because of rush's invasion of ukraine which sent a big -- russia's invasion of ukraine which sent a big energy shock around the world and sent oil prices up quite a bit. biden did release oil from the

strategic reserve to try to address that. he has released a little more, though they have started building it back up. so, again, energy policy is a place where these two candidates disagree quite a bit. the president doesn't have that much direct control over what the price of gas is in the country beyond releasing energy from the strategic petroleum reserve. there is relatively little flexibility for them to do that. the bigger questions on energy are how you deal with this driving energy industry. dude you say, -- do you say this is the beating heart of our economy and put more fuel behind it, or do you say we want to move off of fossil fuels because we have a climate crisis that is raising the price of home insurance and car insurance and stuff like that?

do you address that as a long-term issue and spend more from the government budget to try to make that happen? that is what biden wants to do. tom has a very different point of view on those questions. host: melvin in fort lauderdale, florida on the line for democrats. what is your question? caller: i want to ask -- well, two questions. number one, you keep talking about what inflation was when biden took office. you can't measure inflation when you have the world not doing any business. if i want to find out who they are talking to, what professionals are telling what inflation was when he took office, the whole country and the world basically were out of business for years. to the gentleman before talking about the oil reserves were sold off, that happened as a result of trump, because in the pandemic all of those companies were closed, especially the small businesses.

they couldn't come back and do anything dealing with the oil, so they went out of business. the price of gas, they had to go ahead and reduce by 100,000 barrels during the pandemic because the prices were going so low. host: i think matt already addressed most of those oil questions, but i wonder if you could talk about the idea of how well we are understanding this measure of inflation when president biden first came to office versus now? guest: that is a great question. inflation has been a lot more slippery and more complicated than everyone thought. it is true that the economy completely stopped four years ago, almost exactly four years ago. we were in the middle of this economic calamity. what is wild about it is that that economic calamity was followed by an economic miracle

where the country bounced back in this incredibly short period. this was i think the shortest recession in american history. it has obviously had a lot of long-term consequences. one of them is inflation. inflation was pretty low under trump's presidency and it has been pretty high ever since we started recovering from the pandemic. there is a lot of disagreement among economists about what exactly causes it. larry summers the other day, the former treasury secretary, was saying that he thinks, in fact, the background rate of inflation is actually much higher than people think. in part, because of climate change, because of changes in the way that goods trade across the world. he thinks that we are in a world where inflation is going to be much higher for the long run. that means that interest rates are going to be much higher for the foreseeable future.

those are not things that necessarily started during the pandemic. the pandemic turbocharged us spending money to crawl out of it. the truth is, we don't really know and practice exactly what's causing inflation. we are in this national experiment to figure out what exactly it is and how to bring it down without crashing the economy. the good news is, we haven't had a kind of inflation-driven recession that people were expecting for the past couple of years. if you ask folks a couple of years ago, including me, they would have said if the fed raises interest rates to fight this battle the economy would grind to a halt again. that hasn't happened. there is debate over where that will eventually catch up with us. host: virginia on our line for independents. good morning, joan. caller: hello. i wanted to address what he said about immigration putting more into the economy then they take out.

i wish that he would distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. traditionally we have vetted emigrants for their skills. today we have people who may have no skills. it looks like we are spending a lot of money to put them in housing and provide things they need. but that is not my question. my question is, do you have any information or statistics on the effects of what would be on our tax revenues if we got rid of most of these nonprofits? there is a big expansion of nonprofits. some of them are almost ridiculous in what they are set up to do. rescue mules and things like that. guest: i don't have any statistics off the top of my head. i was talking to some folks about this the other day. there are a lot of big foundations in this country that have billions of dollars in

wealth. this includes, of course, universities, which are mostly nonprofits. the leading universities are nonprofits with the giant endowments. there has been discussion of taxing them. nonprofits exist in this country to get a subsidy from the government. they are allowed to not pay taxes, which mean the rest of us pay a little more in taxes to enable these things to exist. i don't know offhand of any serious proposals to start taxing nonprofits or what that would do. a pretty big change in that sector of the economy. host: bill in albany, new york on the line for republicans. go ahead. caller: yes, thank you. i would like to go back to using logic instead of politics. in 2020, when president biden came in, he used executive orders to stop -- if you look it

up, there is a pause on drilling. there is a pause on drilling oil in the united states. the reason he did that was to please the environmentalists in his party, but did it without a solution. in other words, we stopped drilling oil here and we got it from venezuela, overseas, opec, etc. it is still dirty oil. it is dirtier actually, because our refineries are cleaner. why doesn't he take this executive order because of -- executive order pause off? we were energy independent paying $2.90 in gas in november before biden took office. it slowly went up to almost seven dollars. that really hurt our economy. i know that it hurt my pocketbook. my checking account -- i am

taking more out of my savings account. i really feel it. people i talked to really feel it. the reason it is taking more is because the prices are so high, that the people who bring food to the grocery stores by their trucks, their prices tripled. instead of $2000 to fill up the tank, a truck, it is costing $7,000 just to fill that up. host: we are running low on time. i want to let matt respond to some of the points you are making. guest: i'm not sure exactly what the drilling pause would be. the biden administration biden administration has taken some executive action on some energy issues. recently, they said they aren't going to approve permits for the export of some kinds of natural gas. going forward in the future.

coming back to what i was saying earlier, the united states is producing more oil and gas now than any country in the history of the world. the permian basin, texas and new mexico, is absolutely booming. the companies that operate there are doing well. they are producing oil and gas hand over fist. that is surprising. folks who thought that sort of -- that part of the energy industry is slowing down, it actually sped up. the biden administration does have a few on what fossil fuels should be in our economy. they want to grow other parts of the economy faster, other parts of the energy industry. solar, wind, other types of renewables.they have put some money behind this, but they are also spending money to the oil and gas companies to do things like store carbon dioxide in the ground and things like that.

oil and gas companies like this a lot. oil and gas tends to donate to trump more than biden. energy in this country is booming right now. we are in a pretty favorable place compared to where we were. there was not a big oil shock after the ukraine war started. prices went up significantly, but they also went down pretty fast again. so, the country has been in a lot worse energy crises over it's time. it is a good moment to sit back and think about where we want the future of energy in this country to be. host: norwalk, connecticut, the line for republicans. caller: good morning. i would like to comment on some of the things that biden mentioned, president biden mentioned concerning taxes and the fairness of taxes. he keeps repeating how the billionaires only pay 8.2%

taxes. he compared it during the state of the union to the teachers and firefighters. that is like comparing -- you can't even say it is comparing apples and oranges. it is comparing apples and a doorknob. 8.2% was based upon a study conducted by the white house office of budget and management over an eight-year period of time. what they did was they took the actual taxes that the billionaires paid, selected groups of billionaires paid, during that period of time dividing that by their income on their tax returns plus unrealized gains and losses. if they had stocked it went up during the course of the year, they added that as if it were income. if they had buildings -- host: we are running a little low on time. you want to finish up and ask your question for matt? caller: i would like to --

i would like from matt to comment on if i am saying what is true. guest: my understanding is that you are right. that they are doing some economic projections of what the super wealthy, a lot of their wealth is in stocks. this is the argument that the biden team is making. that if you are super rich in this country most of the way that you gain money is when your stocks go up in value. our tax system treats that, treats those gains differently from normal income. i don't know specifically how well they've done those types of calculations, but the mind and ministrations -- but the biden administration's proposing a big change, which is to try to treat people's gains in the stock market for the very, very wealthy very differently from how other people who pay regular income taxes due.

-- income taxes do. host: matt peterson, the ideas editor at barron, appreciate your time. in half an hour we will have chris geithner are, the author of the sub stack newsletter "law dork" to talk about the supreme court decisions and what is coming next week. first, we will go to open forum to hear your thoughts and ideas about the news of the week. the line for republicans is, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. we will be right back. ♪ >> friday night watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail, a weekly round up of c-span campaign

coverage providing a one-stop shop to discover what the candidates are saying to voters across the country. friday, july 5, a sneak peek at this year's democratic national convention in chicago. we will speak with the dnc executive about the message, a preview of the convention, and efforts to involve the community. and the cities visitor bureau in its efforts to connect local businesses to the convention. you can watch the campaign trail preview of the republican national convention any on our website. watch c-span 2024 campaign trail friday nights at 7:30 eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or download the podcast on c-span now, our free mobile app wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, where you get your politics. ♪ >> on january 16 of this year,

after nearly 30 years, he retired as a judge on the circuit court of appeals for the district of columbia. on the cover of his memoir is a photo of him and his black robe with his dog standing on his left side. the book is entitled vision, a memoir of blindness and justice. he says he wrote the book together with his wife, "day in and day out we sat at our long desk overlooking an oak tree and the hills beyond," she on her left with her laptop and me with my braille computer. we argued, we laughed, we deleted words, paragraphs, pages. slowly but surely a book emerged." >> david tate oh and his new memoir, vision, a memoir of blindness and justice, on this episode of book notes plus. [gavel falls]

>> the house will be in order. announcer: c-span celebrates 45 years of governing congress like no other -- covering congress like no other. we have been your primary source for capitol hill providing balance, unfiltered view of government, taking you to where the policy is debated and decided with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. announcer: washington journal continues. host: welcome back. we are in open forum ready to hear your ideas about the news of the week. we will start with herbert in romulus, michigan on the line for independents. good morning. we can hear you. caller: i would like to talk a little about the last guest when he said that spending has caused inflation. it seems like they want to blame

biden p the trump administration one year in 2020 spent more money than the biden did but no one is blaming him. the second thing that i would like to talk about, i think tariffs had more to do with inflation than anything. i'm in the steel business and i will give you a reason. when tariffs were put on steel they gave american steelmakers an advantage. they didn't use this to ramp up production and so more s -- sell more steel. all they did was raise prices on import steel which raises the prices on everything in the country. other will say why didn't biden take off tariffs? companies do not lower prices. all they do is take profits. that is why every company out there loves donald trump. he gives them a 25% profit off the top, and they didn't have to

do anything. my opinion is, these tariffs, if he gets in office and raises tariffs again, then the u.s. will be in a depression. host: erase the idea of tariffs and their overall impact on the economy -- you raise the idea of tariffs and their overall impact on the economy. i think tank has a tariff tracker that they updated within the last couple of days. it includes, so far, the imposed tariffs that equate to an annual tax increase, according to the tax foundation, of $79 billion. they argue that a decrease in long-run gdp by .2%, long-run full-time jobs 142,000 according to their model. that is referencing the nearly $80 billion worth of new taxes

on americans by levying tariffs under the trump administration. that was on thousands of products valued at approximately 380 billion dollars in 2018-20 19, which they call one of the largest tax increases in decades. pointing out that the biden administration has kept most of the trump administration tariffs in place. in may of 20 to four, announced tykes of an additional $18 billion on chinese goods, including semiconductors and electric vehicles, for an additional tax increase of 3.6 billion dollars. we estimate that the trump-biden tariffs will reduce long run gdp by .2%. altogether, the trade war policies currently in place add up to $79 billion in tariffs based on trade levels at the time of tariff implementation and excluding behavioral and dynamic effects. did you have anything else to add, herbert? caller: that is my point

exactly. taking tariffs off will not help. companies only take profits. they are not going to lower prices. this is why they are making record profits. people need to think about this. spending did not cause this. host: thank you, herbert. william and kingsport, tennessee on the line for docrats. caller: yes, our economy is very good right now. it is not the best in the world right now. it is the best in the world, but it is not the best, but it is the best in the world. we are drilling a lot of oil from the united states. the other thing i want to know is trump got on the debate stage and was saying hispanics are taking black jobs, i want him to

tell us what a black job is. black people work everywhere. we do news like you are right now. we do it all. i want to know what a black job is. nobody is perfect, but he is the best out of the two evils we have. a lot of people want to fact check everything, but they need to fact check everything that both of them do. everything that needs to be done is fact checked and they need to let people know the truth instead of lying to everyone because we know the trump lies. i have voted democrat and republican. it is about who will be the best for the country. trump is going to take everything away from the women, from minorities. you have people like tim scott and byron donalds, they are not nothing but stephens, if you know what i'm talking about. guys like that don't care nothing about america, don't care about their own race.

thank you very much. host: sun city center, florida on the line for republicans. good morning, john. caller: i have a few questions. all of the democrats have been talking about being above the law. what gives biden the right to break the law and allow all of these undocumented people into this country? they are un-vetted. if you can imagine 1000 of those people coming in had tuberculosis, they would kill this country. you have all these people in and you have no place to put them. you have no way of knowing who they are and what they are. now they are killing american children. what biden has done is insane. he's not worth anything, because

he is not using any common sense. if it is absolutely ridiculous with all the spending they are doing. they don't need to do all these researches on these ridiculous things. as far as the electric cars, they don't work. they freeze up. we have only one place that will buy them. it turns around they put all the money into electric buses. how much does it cost if you have an electric car and you have to charge it at home? how much is it going to take? the whole problem is, these people are crazy with this climate change. you can't change the climate unless every country and everybody goes by the same standards. like i say, biden is way, way

out of line. he has no common sense. host: thank you, john. matt in new york on the line for democrats. good morning. caller: hi, i just wanted to say a few things about donald trump. it looks like the january 6 thing is pretty obvious. everyone should be, that is very dangerous. two, he says he is going to be a one-day dictator. that is very dangerous and scary. they have to open their eyes. three, he never answers questions. if you watch the debate, he never answers the question. he just does his own thing. a debate, you're supposed to answer the questions. four, what happened to jeffrey epstein? where are they? that gal on the boat.

i haven't seen -- in a while. abortion, it is really the female decision. sure out to a certain point, but it is the female body up to a certain age. host: i think that is probably enough, matt. let's move on to grant in dixon, california on the line for republicans. caller: good morning. i'm calling in on the last segment about replacing joe biden. i think that they should drop him from the ticket. that way america will maybe finally understand that it's not joe biden doing this. whoever they have come in to replace him will either continue

or change course completely. it's not joe biden himself. it's the democratic party that's pushing this open border and electric crap -- excuse me, electric nonsense. then the public will know. it is the democratic party doing this. via joe host: houston, texas on our line for independents. good morning, cheryl. caller: i get so upset from these people outside of texas that call in and starts talking about oil and gas when they have no clue. i'm a seventh generation with strong republicans before trump turned the party into his cult. at the end of 2023, the state of

texas produced more oil and natural gas than in the history of the country. texas is already the top oil producer and gasoline and diesel refining state. texas made so much money from big oil that we have a 33 plus billion dollar surplus in our state budget, the highest of all time. actually, president biden has done a lot for the oil industry, not that, you know, he definitely thinks there's climate change. my husband is a chemical engineer, there is climate change. we don't happen to agree with how he wants to handle it but america is now the top oil producing country in the entire world and we're also the top exporting country in the entire world. when trump was president, he almost cratered the refining

industry. he was worried he was going to lose the vote for the corn growers who produce ethanol and so he tried to force the refinery to add more ethanol to their blended gasoline at the worst time when all the profits had fallen out of the oil and refining industry. and the refiners were in dire straits and the summertime gasoline blend is always more difficult and more expensive to produce. so a lot of the refiners just shut down force w trump by an executive order tried to force them to add more ethanol to the gasoline and diesel mix because it's not just tweaking the software, it was actually involving spending a lot of money for different equipment at the refineries and a lot of that equipment has to

be imported and this was when covid was going on and all the imports and the distribution and everything were totally disrupted. we don't feel we've -- >> host: it's a good description of the industry so thank you for sharing that. let's go ahead and move on to mike in massachusetts. caller: good morning, i'm talking about security clearances, i was an air force security police k-9 handler and actually for six years, but every security police officer had to be vetted with the security clearance. the problem that i have is that as far as i know and i would love somebody to fact check this for me. convicted felons can't join the military so they can't get a security clearance. i'm trying to find out how trump

can be president when he can't list in the service as a convicted felon. so being vetted even in a federal job requires vetting and if you've been bankrupt and you have bad financial history, you can't get a clearance. so i'm kind of curious how's this could all take place with a man that's got such history. host: i was able to find the story from "washington post" where it looks like they answered this question in a live chat back in may and i am just going to try to scroll down and find it but it's still loading. but over here ocnn they can looked to this and whether or not felons lose his rights and can he get his rights back. secret service protection. let's see if i can go back and find this here where the post addressed it. can a convicted felon receive a

top secret security clearance? presidents do not have a security clearance the way other government employees do simply by winning office presidents are given access to classified information and are considered the ultimate classification authority in the government was the answer from the "washington post". caller: so he can list in the military? host: the military i don't think he would want to. host: it's just contradictory so thank you. host: mary in south carolina for democrats. caller: good morning. i have a question if you can look it up or have a comment on it. i remember you had a guest on from the heritage foundation and

they have a project 2025 it's 900 page book and i would like for everybody that's listening to me look it up and read it. this is what the conservative republican party is going by. and most people don't really know what project 25 is, and when donald trump was asked about daycare he never answered that question in the debate is because a lot of stuff daycare, all that's in that book. so i would like for the people that's listening go and look it up, read it, and see what's in here. that's what donald trump is going by. and the republican party, and if we don't educate ourselves we're going to be in a lot of trouble if he wins. and the next thing i want to say, the last thing i'm going to say is the standards of the

president is being changed. that means if you're convicted, if you're a convicted sex offender, a convicted tax fraud, you can run for president. so where is our standard? it's gone. we don't have any standards any more for the decency of the white house. host: thank you very much. we appreciate it. on c-span we actually had the director of project 2025 on as a guest. you can find that interview that we did here on "washington journal" on our website if you're interested in learning more about project 2025. next up billy. good morning. caller: i would just like to talk about this debate a little bit that's gone on.

everyone could see that our president ain't running the show here. we know obama and the democrats is running the show. it's pretty obvious, the whole world had to see what happened here. we know that there is no way that we got any respect from any leaders around the world. and this oil stuff, i don't know what people are talking about that does drilling in texas and stuff, that's bull-crap. host: drilling. caller: they're not drilling in texas. everything is shut down because biden got in office and shut

everything down and opened -- let russia open up all their oel and we had to shut all our oil off. iran has made billions of dollars off of their oil because we shut down all our oil in the united states. host: our previous caller was in texas and says that she sees there that they are drilling and doing a lot of oil and gas exploration. in indiana, what are you seeing? caller: well, i can tell you right now our gas fluctuates 50 cents overnight. oil ain't supposed to fluctuate like that. i've been around here, i'm 74 years old and i'll tell you what. when i started buying gas it was 20 cents a gallon and you can't

tell me that the gasoline can cost that much. there is no way that it's, why is it that everything is so high right now you think it don't -- american people ain't stupid. we know how much money it costs to transport our goods all over. that's why our prices is high. host: ok. next up is bob in columbia, south carolina for democrats. caller: good morning. i would like to comment on three things not necessarily what everyone is talking about but we had a former president who refused to go and visit a military cemetery in europe because he didn't want to get his hair wet and he called those

that were suckers and there was a marine general that was with him that overheard that and he later fired the marine general. and he said lately on a presidential debate this marine general was not good, he was very bad or whatever. and then again he talks about nato in which i agree with him, everyone should pay as much as they can in those nato countries. but if anybody knows anything about military, the ocean no longer separates us. when they have hyper sonic missiles can be here in minutes, anyone that's going to be the commander in chief, if he doesn't know that should not be the commander in chief. and the next thing is for all you young people, someone that again i'll point it out the former president who said that climate change is a hoax.

and then last, gun control. that's three things i wanted to comment on. thank you. host: thank you for your call. anthony in new york on our line for republicans. good morning. caller: great show. a lot of things i want to talk about but my thing is the border and i'm listening to republicans and democrats, and everyone has great points. i just would like to ask them when is enough? how many people from south america, mexico, china, wherever they come from not vetted. what's the number? 10 million? that's the number i hear that came in since biden was here. and this is a republican-democrat issue with the border, because before trump the republicans were letting

people come in also. but is it 20 million? is it 50 million? is it it 100 million? i want some of the democrats to answer this. is it to change the face of america? is that it? because i don't get it. and i love immigration, no one talks about legal immigration any more. never. they used to show it on tv, too, when people were sworn in. it would make you cry. they had to pledge allegiance to the country. but now it's just like even where i live in statten island, you go to brooklyn, queens, manhattan. like how many more? in all costs money. no country could survive without a border. >> so i'm going to hang up and i want some of my democratic friends to tell me what's the

number. thank you. host: thank you. the answers will have to wait for another time because ware done with open forum for today. but coming up next, on monday the supreme court is going to hand down the last of its opinions for the session including likely the opinion on former president trump's immunity case. the court also put out several significant decisions this week. we're going to talk about all of that next up with chris, the author of the news letter. we'll be right back.

>> the house will be in order. >> c-spans covers 45 years of covering congress. since 1979 we've been your primary source for capitol hill, providing balance source of government, where policies are debated and decided. c-span, 45 years and counting. powered by cable. >> "washington journal" continues. >> welcome back. we are joined now by chris geigner, the author, an award-winning journalist who started writing as a blog in 2003. why did you decide to start it

guest: well, i had been a journalist before law school. i had worked as a number in ohio the tribune chronicle, and had been an editorial writer before law school. and after one year of law school as i was getting to the end of law school i told a friend that law school was going to lose, take away my ability to write well. and he suggested starting a blog and this was way back in 2003, it was in the early days of blogging. and i was like, ok, sure, whatever. and so sort of did that on the side would just do little three, 200 word stories on what i was thinking about in the legal news that day. and that sort of continued throughout that point, it continued once i was a lawyer, it was something that i, when i was a practicing lawyer in

columbus, ohio, that i had. and then i got rid of it as i went in to sort of full-time journalism here in d.c., and eventually decided two years ago basically right as we were awaiting the dobbs decision that it was it time if i was ever going to try to take a moment to try to do it for myself and see if i could make it work. >> and now you have 33,000 subscribers. guest: yeah. host: who is your audience? guest: i don't know. i think it's a combination of what it sounds like law dork would have. it's a few audiences. i think there are people who are very focused on the supreme court and want to know what the court's decisions are day in and day out. but i also over the course of my

career in journalism have garnered some expertise in lgbtq issues and crypto issues that certainly from the start of law dork brought me a pretty large segment of my audience. and then as circumstances have wasn'ted for better or worse i've gotten a good number of subscribers that i think are there for the post roe land scape and landscapes, and cases that we had this term. and then immigration cases, and sort of what i term democracy issues which verge all the way from donald trump to voting rights to just questions about the course themselves and there

have been a few ethical questions surrounding the supreme court since i launched law dork that readers have been really interested in. >> host: so let's talk about the court this session. what cases are still left? guest: we've got the big one the trump immunity decision. we still have not heard from the court on that. it's been more than two months since they held argument in late april. we are expecting that on monday. we also have two cases challenging texas and florida's content moderation laws that they are purporting to tell social media companies what they can and cannot have on their sites and the supreme court is expected to issue those decisions. and then there's another decision that actually in light of friday's chevron decision could become more important that is about when you can bring a

challenge under the administrative procedure act, which sounds very law dorky and it is, but basically the rule in most of the country right now is that you have six years to bring an administrative claim. and that would normally be from when the rule is created. but in one circuit in the sixth circuit they've said that it is when you are injured that you can bring the claim. and so basically if the challenger corner post would win, you would be able to bring a challenge to any rule no matter how long it's been in place if you formed your company within six years. so you could have gotten rid of chevron, so now -- host: i'm going to stop you there because i think we'll need to explain about the chevron and the case that brought this up whfs loper bright enterprises and ro manado of the department

of congress. can you explain this case? guest: since 1984 we've had this thing called chevron deference. and basically what it is is that when there's so many laws out there, there's so many things that agencies are doing, that when a law has some ambiguity in it, so chevron only came into play when you found there was ambiguity. what chevron said is that courts will defer to a reasonable interpretation of that law by an agency. with that gone, which is what the supreme court did on friday, the court doesn't have to defer to that agency judgment. there are a few situations if the statute specifically says that you are to defer, but generally they wouldn't. and with that, if you combine that with this corner post basically the courts would not

have to defer to the agencies rules. and, there would be no time limit for a rule to have been a law so you wouldn't be able to challenge it. so that six-year rule would be out the window. if you formed a new company on monday, that would be the first day that you could be injured by the rule because the company didn't exist. host: i think a lot of people might wonder why a rule on deference matters in our day to day lives. how is that going to show up? guest: anything that you do that the federal government has an agency that does anything with, clean air, whether it be the ftc, all of the abbreviations of agencies when

they get laws there are what justice kagen referred to as gaps. there's no matter how long a lot is there are going to be thing that is it doesn't account for. and the idea behind chevron deference is that we wanted to defer to those agencies because they have the expertise. they are the ones who are dealing with this issue in and out as opposed to judges who literally need to deal with everything. they don't get to specialize. they have to deal with all of the agencies. and so what we're going to have now is that any issue from any agency is just going to be up to what the judge says. and right now we have a very conservative court and we have a lot of judges as we've seen who if you file your case in the northern district of texas you get a judge who i believe had

another ruling last night about ronny jackson having standing to bring a lawsuit. he issues a ruling that isn't deferring to an agency, that strikes down an agency rule. that gets appealed to the conservative fifth circuit and gets upheld. host: there have been so many big cases this session. can you talk about the one that you think that we've at least received so far? i know we still have the trump immunity case coming. which case has been the most consequential? guest: i do think it could be loper bright. as it falls out and as we see how courts -- it's going to be difficult on courts because in some ways it was something that made it easier for courts because they were able to sort of say like ok, i don't need to

get into the nitty-gritty of everything behind this if it looks like the agency is being reasonable. so in some ways that made particularly district court judges. it might be easy for the supreme court to say we'll take this on ourselves because we only take 50, 60 cases a year. but if you're a district court judge who has 300 cases on their docket this could make it difficult for you. it makes it difficult for industry who is now figuring out what rules apply, what rules don't. maybe they're happy about it because they'll be able to challenge more of them. but in the interim at least in this transition period that will be difficult and then it's going to be more difficult for consumers and for people who counted on those agencies to be able to use their expertise to create rules that would protect them. host: some of the other big cases that they heard this or

they made decisions on this session preserving access to the abortion pill, striking down a ban on bump stock which surprised a lot of people, tossing out the claims president biden forced social media companies to remove content. upholding a law on guns. reducing the profarma settlement. how would you rate this session? guest: i think in some ways loper was an exception to the rule this term. three of those cases that you mentioned, medication abortion, the biden administration's social media case, and obviously this weak with the emergency abortion care case. the court didn't really decide

the underlying issue in both cases the court said that the challengers didn't have standing. that they didn't bring a real claim that was able to be before the courts. and so they didn't even reach the underlying legal question about the permissibility of metdzle priston through the f.d.a.'s process and in the social media case for the biden administration it was about whether they had improperly coerced facebook and twitter to remove certain content. and so they didn't decide those decisions and they could as justice s said in the case this can come back. >> the idaho abortion case.

host: they've been loathe to make interpretive decisions. what does that tell us about monday? guest: i think that's why the trump immunity case took so long. they know they have to reach some resolution there. i think that we're also going to see as i said this question of how corner post, this case about when you can bring an e.p.a. thin the question about what states are able to do to restrict content on what are generally speaking national, global, web-based services and whether or not they are going to be able to free those companies,

like companies as opposed to what the companies say you need to treat us like "the new york times." our content decisions are no different than "the new york times" deciding which letter to the editor to publish. host: we want to get to calls in just a moment. for folks that want to call in with a question about the supreme court this session or what's coming up on monday or any of the cases that have been decided so far republicans can call in, democrats can call in, independents can call in on the numbers listed on the screen. before we get to the calls, i want to ask you about one of the other cases that's been decided about the january 6th defendants and what exactly how they can be charged. can you tell us about that decision? >> yeah. this was the decision that was -- you had to obstruction law that was related to the other part of the law related to

evidence specifically. and the question was whether or not this decision allowed for prosecution of any obstruction or whether or not -- host: of an official proceeding. of. >> of an official proceeding. or whether or not it had to relate back to the first provision in the law talking about evidence. the court sort of found a middle ground that said that it has to relate to the evidence. you don't have to have the evidence in your possession. you don't have to have taken it. but your action to obstruct had to relate to evidence and in the case of the january 6th prosecutions, i don't think it is going to make a huge difference. it does appear that the ruling will still count prosecutions, if anybody who entered the capitol because you did have this issue of the actual

documents, the actual electoral certificates, certainly in trump's prosecution, there are the charges related to those false certificates of electors that can and would be the sort of evidence. >> because the original law that they are referring to about financial fraud. >> enron. host: right. it had the financial sort of -- official document. and documents related to -- >> i think shredding documents, anything official. reporter: host: i think they have to do the same. >> the government documents. it is a fair -- it is a fair reading. it is a fair reading of the way that courts and prosecutors normally read laws. if the law doesn't put a limit,

we're able to charge as ebbing tensively as the text of the law will let us. host: and the supreme court putting a limit. >> and the supreme court. i often say that -- that the supreme court we saw this in another case. if it is a corruption case, the supreme court narrowly interprets it. there was a case about whether or not under a law that criminalized state or local officials from receiving bribes, whether or not the way that statute was worded which had -- literally had the word. i forget the first word. it was or rewarded. which to me sounds like after. you are rewarded after. you are not rewarded before you do something. whether or not that law covers bribery and gratuities which you would receive afterwards which is the nice word for post action

bribery. and the court said, no, because both the law looks more like the federal bribery statute relating to federal officials. we're just going to say it has to do with bribery. when you have a corruption case, the court interrupts the law narrowly. other criminal cases, they often interpret them broadly. the one exception that i have written about is if justice neil gorsuch had a question about it and is able to get one of the other conservatives to join him. this, however, was a mix and match. you had justice barrett joining with kagan and sotomayor. they had the upholding of the narrowing reading of the statute. her concurring opinion did explain sort of what i was

saying. that she said, yes, what happened on january 6th bad. yes, it should be prosecuted. as permitted. that's not what i'm here to talk about. i'm here to talk about what the law saws and how because of the fact that it is part two of a law we have to read it in conjunction with part one. and that means it has to relate to evidence. host: all right. let's get to some calls with questions. mary is in las vegas, nevada on the line for democrats. good morning, mary. caller: good morning. citizen united really opened up the flood gates for bribery and corruption allowing all of the big money people to, you know, lobby. hobby our congress and our politicians. and it has affected our supreme court. now protecting justice thomas

who made $4 million over 20 years, giving the likes of leonard leo and harlan crow. the guy has a garden of evil filled with dictators. i don't know how. chevron deference is really a bad, bad decision. the supreme court can't decide on an immunity chase they shouldn't have taken. they have taken thousands upon thousands of lawsuits that are going to evolve. you know, it is just a jolt. they are destroying the country. host: i want to give our guest a chance to respond. i want to point to the article in the associated press that points out that seven in ten americans think that supreme

court justices put ideology over impartiality. that's in the ap poll. only about three in ten u.s. adults think the justices are more likely to provide an independent check on other branches of government being fair and impartial. you can see how it breaks down, democrats in particular are, you know, think that the justices are more likely to try to shape the law to fit their own ideologies. >> i mean it is definitely coming out of this past year almost two years of stories about the ethical questions underlying the justices, the facts that neither justice thomas or alito are recusing themselves from cases where it appears that they should have accused themselves from.

-- recused themselves from. it certainly leads me to feel there needs to be continued scrutiny. i do think that the public pressure, the public attention, the media attention, the legislative attention, even if they aren't passing legislation is important. because we saw most recently when there was the call from two senators, including senator whitehouse and chair durbin of the judiciary committee to meet with roberts over the justice alito ethics questions, as opposed to in other times where we might have not heard anything from the court. we did get a response. even though it was a response we didn't want, we got a response from justice alito and chief justice roberts. while we're not necessarily

getting the results that we want from the court, i think that attention on these issues does lead to responses from the court that means that as long as we keep showing them that we're paying attention, they will know it. hopefully keep spondeing. host: kate is in new york city. she's on the line for the republicans. good morning, kate. >> hi, chris. this is about whether or not -- you mentioned that in chevron the judges were directed to the defer to the state agencies. i'm just curious now are they prohibited from doing that or if the judge were so inclined could they still use the agency that's the soundingboard? and my second question is could you elaborate a little bit more about how it will affect the timing to make the decisions? i know you already hit on the case volume already being quite high. i was curious to know if perhaps by bypassing and not including the state agency in the process

that it could speed things up a bit. >> yeah. we talked about the fall agency. >> yeah. this is federal agencies. because it is a separation of powers issue allegedly. and so what we're talking about is whether or not when a federal agency passes rules how a challenge is looked at. it is what 90% of these sort of cases are. and so what will happen is there are a few circumstances. one of the things that they talked about in their opinions was some laws specifically saying that this area of the law is to be interpreted by the agency. this provision is to be decided by the agency. and in those situations, there will still be deference to the agency. even that i should note that in chief justice roberts decision,

he says within the institutional limits and in a concurrence from justice thomas, he suggests that those limits could be -- could be quite stark. in addition to that, there's a general overarching deference you are going to hear more about in the future. another is skidmore deference. it is another watered down. it is the pre-chevron agency deference. it basically just says you should look at agency and their designatures. that's where we're going to be back to now. in answer to your question, courts should look at agency's actions. they just are not going to be -- they are not going to be

determinative even if they are reasonable if a judge decided that they are not the best in interpretation. >> what about kate's question regarding the timing? because if you are sort of changing the way that you consider an agency's input, how does that affect the timing of cases? >> yeah. i think that -- the biggest issue with timing that i can see right coming out of this is that they are going to be more complicated issues that a judge feels under the rules they are obligated to make all of the determinations about it themselves. even if they look at something and see that an agency put time into it, they are going to need to basically start over and do the work themselves. host: does that answer your question, kate? caller: yes, thank you so much. i appreciate it.

host: all right. thanks. let's go to terry in vanita were oregon on the line for the democrats. good morning, terry. caller: yes, good morning. i'm concerned about the -- real concerned about the immunity case that's going to be coming and revealed to us on monday. but the ones that just broke my heart was the homelessness. and how they can be arrested for not having a home and for living in your car. could have a blanket rolled up and you could be arrested. we're losing the county. i mean most of of the homeless people are veterans, people that fought for the country. and the other one is how, you know, how senator whitehouse has been really calling on the

hiding -- hidden gifts that the leader has been taking. thomas is revealing they are not too bold. we find out more. all of the sudden they come down with a decision where if you -- it is a bribe if you take money before you make a decision or say a governor, you know. and it is not -- it is legal now if that govern say allows a company to ruin our water or, you know, i'm having trouble articulating. i apologize. but did it -- did the supreme court justin -- just give them and cover themselves to take gifts vacations from the rich billionaires to protect themselveses? did that happen? i'm having a nervous anxiety attack just being on the phone. thank you very much. host: thank you for your

questions, terry. >> i'll start with the last one. i think it is important. the law was affecting state and local officials. the law did not do anything to the federal officials rights. it didn't have anything to do with the justices. but it is important to note the decent made it very clear that the concerns that justice jackson expressed really sounded like if you read them it was hard to not think that she did see this was at one point she said this was a decision that only this course could love. it was hard not to imagine what she was suggesting there. in terms of the homelessness decision, grants passed, i just

strongly agree with you. i wrote about chevron yesterday. i will be writing at today about the grant's past decision. if you read justice sotomayor's descent, we talked about the fact that what happened here was you have the city that essentially wanted to get rid of homeless people. they had been doing things. they had been talking in city council meetings about how we get rid of homeless people. they had previously tried to give them money to take a bus out of town. i mean this is -- this is as cartoonishly evil as you think it could be. what they have passed was a law that basically said if you -- if you camp, you are not allowed to on public lands. the way they defined camping

essentially involved two things, any covering on yourself. as you mentioned, a blanket, or a rolled up coat, used to protect yourself from the cold and if you don't have another place to live. that is -- that is a distinction that subjects you to this law. justice gorsuch on behalf of the conservative justices said that that law was legal. that was not classifying people based on status, but rather actions. and justice sotomayor in descent said the action was blanket and sleeping. that was the equivalent of you could just add to a law breathing. it could be a status that you then add breathing to and under

the majority's reasoning, that no longer becomes a status-based law. host: lots of questions coming in for you. next up is karen in the alabaster line. caller: good morning. a couple of things i want to discuss real quick then a question. please don't cut me off. the chevron case. i think it was a good thing it was overfunder. it allowed a fourth branch of government. you had federal agencies unelected bureaucrats saying to do x, y, and z, enforcing the regulations that were passed by congress at all. you can take the idaho case. they try to cut off of the farmer's water. and finally the farmers work with the governor and the state agency to come up with a plan. we don't need the unelected bureaucrats coming in and telling us what to do. number two on the fisher case,

there are a lot of -- there are several -- january 6th plaintiffs or defendants, i guess, that were charged with this particular ruling. now the cases have to be dropped. now the department of justice is trying to find other crimes to charge them with. my final question is how do you feel about joe biden's administration ignoring the supreme court ruling? for example, on the student debt loan. they told him you do not have the authority to pay off student loans. you have to take it through congress. he's ignoring it. he's using the defense budget to pay off the student loan debits. thank you. host: all right. first of all, she was saying that chevron it was good it was over turned. there were unelected bureaucrats effectively making new laws. >> yeah. i think that's the basic argument against any agency

action. part of the issue there is congress needs to pass laws. often times they don't. that was a point that justice hagan made in descent. you often aren't able to pass legislation that has all of the details worked out. just because it is sometimes members of congress don't know the specifics of certain scientific questions or certain technical questions. this isn't always controversial things. sometimes it is, like, how long can a truck be when it is safe on the road. do you want congress deciding that or do you want an agency that can do testing to decide that? host: i'll follow up on karen's other two points. first you want to read a section om the full descent. congress knows it does not and

cannot write perfectly com regulatory statutes. it knows the statutes will contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve and gaps some other actor will have to fill. they would prefer it to be the responsible agency not court. the agency givestself exclusive power over every issue involving the meaning of regulatory laws. as it ifes not have enough on its plate, the majorins itself into the country's administrative czar. it defends that move as one enly required by the nearly 80-year-old administrative ocedure act, but the act makes no such demand. today's decision is not one congress directed. it is entirely the majority's choice. that's from the descent. karen's second question was

about -- or second point was about the fisher case. the case related to the january 6th defendants and the idea that the department of justice is now looking for new charges for many of those folks. >> yeah. we're not quite at new charges. there might be some new charges. there's also the issue of interpreting -- not interpreting, but going through all of the indictments and seeing if they fit the new standard, and the defendants can now go back and question their -- either convictions or their -- if they are still at trial and try to make the justice department re-prove its case. we could have some cases that need to go back. and if there are other charges, they will do that. that's also again -- i mean this is a situation where this is how prosecutors work. it is great if the january 6th

treatment of criminal defendants has gotten more people paying attention to criminal law. i just hope they keep doing it after the cases. host: then just very quickly. the idea about joe biden ignoring the supreme court and president biden ignoring the court on the student loan's argument. >> that's the one we're okay. the fact of the matter is the supreme court turns down one way of the biden administration trying to under the hue row's act get -- hero's act get rid of student debt. they've looked for other authorities. they directed the administration to find other authorities that would authorize lesser amounts. they haven't got the same amount. i'll tell you that because i'm still paying my student loans.

host: all right. in the few minutes we have left, let's see if we can get a few more people in. bill on the independent line. caller: good morning. chris, my question goes back to the eloper decision. you go back to the founding -- soon after the founding of march -- marberry versus madison where they decided the supreme court. going back further, the illinois supreme court answered the question. how often should a person have their eye pressure checked for glaucoma. and the decision was court was -- the court is ultimately has the power to decide that.

the court should not be the decision maker. it is good. people can go to the courts. even though the courts could not be expert on each subject. once the court is breached, i think it is a very healthy thing that people in the administration state in the experts that you have a political agenda and have a -- i mean they have an intent to direct the regulations in certain ways. i think it is a -- really a positive thing that the court is saying -- host: i think we have your idea. i'm going to let chris respond. >> yeah. i certainly think that one of the concerns that chevron raised is that you did have this possibility. there were some limits on it.

you had the possibility of administration's shifting and changing how laws were interpreted. and that obviously leads to some instability. and a main goal of law to provide stability. in theory, there was stability in the sense. but the concern on that front is that -- to the extent there was instability, it was instability that reflected the election. it reflected what voters wanted. and if you get rid of that and you have a court system that is not balanced, like we have now, then you do risk having court rulings that end up creating regulations that are totally out of line. >> i'll just point out if you would like to go back and hear the oral arguments for any of

the cases that we're discussing, we have them on the web site, c-span.org. go back and listen to how the court came to the decisions. last caller for today, kim from albany, new york on the line for the independents. caller: thank you. this is interesting. i'm just looking at it. i just wanted to ask about the chevron case. and make comments that it -- if trump took a big endowment, which he asked for, and decided to drill for oil up in alaska or in the gulf of mexico, he could likely do that for the reverse of the chevron ruling. >> there are still limits. depends on how cynical that you are.

if you think that the supreme court will just give him a free pass, the answer is yes. the answer would have been yes under chevron too. so i mean you still do have this -- under the apa you have -- under the administrative procedure act the challenges that people bring to rules. you have the arbitrary and capricious standard that rules can be tossed out if they are bound to be arbitrary and capricious. you'll have courts reviewing that and not needing to defer to agencies. in theory and independent judiciary, there would be a greater chance without chevron of a trump administration action like that, a hypothetical trump administration, hypothetical action like that being struck down. but i'm not sure -- i'm not sure we have that exact situation. and i'm not sure how it will

play out. host: all right. that's all of the time we have for calls today. thank you to chris geidner who is the writer of the "law dork." i appreciate your expertise this morning. >> thank you, kimberly. we don't like expertise anymore. host: well, we appreciate the expertise and opinions of all of the callers as well. thank you to everybody that called in today. we will be back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern with another edition of "washington journal." i hope everybody has a great day.