organization. shop now or anytime at c-spanshop.org. >> coming up on "washiton journal," we will take your calls and comments live. then the former commander of cincom, retired general kenneth mckenzie, talks about the aftermath of the u.s. withdrawal from afghanistan and escalating tensions in the mideast. and a bloomberg reporter previews the new term a key cases ahead. and harvard institute of politics' john della volpe discusses the institute's new poll of young voters and campaign 2024. "washington journ" starts now. ♪ host: good morning. monday, october 7, 2024. we will talk about the new supreme court terbeginning

today and spend time focusing on young voters in campaign 2024. we begin only one yea anniversary of the attack on israel and 12 monthsf wider conflict in the middle east. vigils in israel and cities around the world today. phone lines are split as usual, by political party. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. you can also send us a text at (202) 748-8003. please include your name and where you are from. catch up with this -- with us on social media, facebook.com/c-span or on x with handle @cspanwj. a very good monday morning. here are some of the headlines this october 7, 2024.

the washington times israel uses october 7 to fortify its footing in the region. hamas, hezbollah, iran and a year of bloodshed. new york post headline, bring them home, a number of hostages still held a year after october 7. front page of new york times, a-year-old war endures and threatens to spread. the lead story noting it the longest were between israel and arab since the end of the conflict that set the boundaries of israel in 1949, also by far the deadliest. more than 1500 israelis killed, mostly during the attack on october 7, and others abducted. more than 40,000 palestinians killed in israel's counterattack. a were betweensrael and -- a

war between israel and hamas, invasion of lebanon, and bombardment of israel. protests and vigils and memorials today around the world. statemts from world leaders, including president biden, with this statement. on the state last year, the sun rose on what was supposeto be a joyous jewish holiday. i sense i come october 7 had become the deadliest day for jewish people since the holocaust. vice president harris and i remain committed to this security of israel. today and everyay, he said, i think of the hostages and their families. i have met the families of the hostages and have ieved with them. they have been through hell. my administration has worked for the safe release of hostages, including americans. october 7 is a dark day for

palestinian people because of the conflict unleashed that day. tens of thousands have been kill, a human toll made far worse by terrorists hidi and operating among innocent people. we will not stop working for cease fire that brings hostages home and eases the severing on the ground and ensures israel's security and an end to this war. the one-year anniversary of the hamas attack on israel. getting your reaction in this first hour of the "washington journal." your thoughts on this anniversary. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (2) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. starting in maine, ann, democrat. ller: hi, good morning. i am 75 years old, an american jew, a zionist.

i have followed israel in the american pss and the israeli press for years. i have been opposed to netanyahu for decades. i think that people have not looked into theact thahe aligns himself with hamas against the palestinian authory because both netanyahu and hamas are opposed to a twstate solution. i am heartbroken that october 7 -- but what led up to it was not in yah! -- we netanyahu, he ignored warnings about hamas.in , in the wake of october 7, he could have said we have told you these are dangerous people, now

help us get our hostages back. instead, he went on a disproportionate military response. i tnk netanya has inserd himself into american politics in favor of donald trump before. think he is doing it now. i think many republicans have wanted the united states to be in a shooting war with iran for a very lontime. and i think people who are tempted not to vote for kamala harris because of the issue of ga are ignoring that trump would be much worse, noonly for the palestinians, not only for the israelis, but for t american pple. host: you said, im a zionist. what does thatean today? ller: timmy -- to me, that means i am dedicated to there being an isrli state. i would prefe 1948 borders and

without any jewish settlement on the west bank. if certain jewish people want to live near certain jewish holy sites, they can do so within the palestinian states. i think one of netanyahu and trump's wor sins is tota support for the settlement, which president bided for cades has been opposed to the settlements which is one reason why his relationship with netanyahu has n been as good as that mighbe. butetanyahu has always thumbed his nose atmerica bause he has aipac, houthi, and a loof support from people who confuse netanyahu with the state o israel, just as people might confuse ump with the united states.

t, no, these are bad policies by cynic politicians. we have a choice between harris and trump, and tnk on every single issue hris is a better choice. host: this is gary in sterling, virginia, republican. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. that is a dove we have got on your shoulders. i have to agree with everything that lady said who called before me. but i see a lot of nihilistic behavior, and it starts with the taliban because when they destroyed the statues of buddha, that signed the death form for the rohingya and the enslavement

of the uighers, one of the main reasons we have so much problems over there. the taliban had 75 millimeter french cannons that they were taking apart those buddhas with, and they did it for two or three days. host: when it comes to october 7 in this anniversary -- caller: it is a terrible anniversary. benjamin netanyahu, he has always been arrogant and belligerent. i never thought of him as naive until he got caught on october 7. he emascated his intelligence for over a year and a half, before october 7. he destroyed his intelligence gathering network, the people on

the ground that had their ears to the ground and knew what was going . he ignored tm. terrible thing. ank you very much for your time. host: cynthia in melbourne, florida,ndependent. caller: hamas attack on israel one year later, what about all of the israelittacks over so many yrs on the paltinians? hamas are prably not considered freedom fighters r some, but for some folks they sure were, or they are. it is insane that america is taking these funds and supporting the genocide of the palestinians. they are killing those folks. look athe weapons that they are using. i am tling you now, you talking about one year later, an

anniversary that these notes are celebrating, then look at what they havdone over 70 years to the palestinians. host: cynthia, who do you think is celebrating today? caller: i think thesraelis, the zionists. i think that those destinatis that are supporting it -- the natis that are supporting it, probably the idiot in the white house, biden, and it is insane to be an african-amerin and here kamala -- hear kamala speak to the pain at the israelis. speak to the pain of the palestinians. host kamala harris in an interview with "60 mines" that is set to air tonight on cbs, she talked about the mile east conflict, the u.s. influence in the middle east.

here is about two minutes from that interview that is set to air tonight. [video clip] >> we supplied israel with billions of dollars in military aid. prime minister netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. the biden-harris administration has pressed him to agree to cease-fire. he has resisted. you encouraged him not to go into lebanon. he went in anyway. he has promised to make iran pay for the missile attacks, and that has the potential of expanding the war. does the u.s. have no sway over prime minister netanyahu? vp harris: the aid we have given israel to allow it to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles meant to attack the israelis and the people of israel, and when we think about the threat that hamas, hezbollah, presents iran,

i think it is, without any question, our imperative to do what we can to allow israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. the work diplomatically with the leadership of israel, an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and create as cease-fire. and we are not going to stop in terms of putting the pressure on israel and the region, including arab leaders. >> it seems that prime minister netanyahu is not listening. vp harris: well, they work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by israel that were very much prompted by or a result of

many things, including our advocacy for but needs to happen in the region. >> do we have a real close ally in prime minister netanyahu? vp harris: i think, with all due respect, the better question is, do we have an important alliance between the american people and the israeli people? in answer that question is yes. host: kamala harris in that "60 minute interview. that is expected to air in its entirety tonight on cbs. taki phone calls on this october 7, 2024, looking back year ago to that attack on israel and everything that has happened in the middle east since then. taking your phone calls. harrisburg, penylvania, zach, good morning. caller: good morning.

i am 65 years old, was in the air force. the particular names have been associated with the words turmoil since my youth. netanyahu and putin. i mean, i believe most of what the people said earlier. you guys do america a dservice when you claim stuff like this without context or historical reference. like the one woman said, these palestinians have been living in apartheid for 70 years. from my understanding, netanyahu was paying hamas to keep a certain position. like the one gentleman, the republican, said, netanyahu put

the reins on his intelligence people so that they would be in the dark that an attack was supposed to happen. so i think it is the activity guy who, like trump, knows once he is out of power, the wheels justice will start turning again. he will everything he can to stay out of jail. just like the one woma said about give billions of llars to these people with zero accountability. you know. we spend a couple dollars -- and republicans go crazy. where is the mey? where is the money? it is evil. one last point from a guy to

move that embassy i believe started us down this path. host: diana butu in usa today. she is a lawyer based in israel, eviously served as legal advisor to the palestinian negotiating team during peace negotiations with israel. she writes this today, unless or until the underlying causes of violence that we have been witnessing for the past year are addressed, palestians and israelis are doomed to unending death and suffering. president biden has the power to put the regn on a path to a more peaceful future, but he has continued to flit israel with billions of dollars worth of weapons -- continued to flood israel with billions of dollars worth of weapons. contrary to the will of the majority of americans who support a cease-fire an end to weapons transfers to israel as

long as the violen continues. goesn to say even after acknowledging israel has been engaging in indiscriminate bombing of civilians, giving israel a clear green light to continue killing and destruction. it has emboldened netanyahu to spread the word to lebanon. pushing the region to the terrifying precipice we face today and risking direct confrontation between iran and the united states, which would be disastrous for everyone involved. intervention from the u.s. and the international community is urgently needed, she writes, to avoid further expert -- to avoid a further regional conflict escalating. ma in indiana, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. republican police officer. you have to remember the people killed that day, the children, the ladies, the men who did not

anything. our country is weak right now. that is what is disgusting the most. the people did nothing that day. everybody talks bad about trump herend there, this were would not have happened, the other -- this war would not have happened, the other one would not have happened. i am not a big trump dagger, but was i better off four years ago, absolutely -- am not a big trump backer, but was i better off four years ago, absolutely. our country is a joke. she gets in, we have seen nothing yet. those people did nothing wrong that day. innocent people were murdered, destroyed. peop calli in, you have to defend those people. that is ere i am at th morning.

we need major changes in america because if it continues the way it is right now, there will not be respective police officers, firemen, military people. it has just gone downhill in this administration. thank you for your time this morning. host: one of the people from that day on october 7, maybe you saw this picture of this woman, then 85-yearld yafa addhar, e of the many images fr a year ago, one of the defining images of that day, being turned back into gaza after being kidnapped. she wrote a column in today's new york times about her experience, her thoughts a ye later after that kidnapping, after she was eventually released. the headline of herpes, my heart -- the headline of her peace, my heart remains captive in gaza.

now 86 years old, she writes, my freedom, security, and peace were brutally taken from m i was kidnapped from my home that day near the fields and autifu farmlands that were turned into a battlefield. terrorists rated our homes, murdering, kidnapping, burning, and looting. many murded or kidnapped. i am 80 siyears old. in my life, i never experiend this sort of horror. for 49 unbearably long days, i was held in horrible conditis. she says, i experiencedhis hell an implore world leaders to help us bring all of the hostages home. they are like me, human beings, parents, grandparents, siblings, children, suffering and afraid. they nd help. each of them is a story of courage and survival come about their time is running out. not an iue that should concern only jews or israelis, it

should ba concern for anyone concerned about human rights. from war only comes destruction and sadness. yaffa adar kidnapped that day on october 7, her picture a lasting image from that day. back to your phone calls. stevin newersey, independent. good morning. caller: good morning. as i look back on october 7, i realize the war was not only in isra, it was worldwide. there were insurgents of people who came into wester -- it is about western civilization and a saving of civilization. before anyone speaks on israel, ask one queion. have they ever en to israel? host: have you been to iael? caller: many times. i was just in israel in march

afr the war broke out. let me tell you, israel is a jewel of democracy. there are like 25% of israel that are arab. do people know that on october 7, muslims were executed by hamas? do people even question that? do people know that jews in arab countries were kicked out, thrown out? israel had to rescue jews from yemen, iran, from iraq. and i hear people using the term apartheid when it comes to israel? they know noing about it. even the concept of palestinians ow that israel gave him gaza. they gave up gaza in 2005. they pulled their citizens out. they dragged their citizens out. for one reason, for peace. fopeace. and whatever yowant to quality

palestinians -- whatever you want to call the palestinians, ey went to gaza to turn it into a terrorist network. we hear about casualties, casualtieset me ask you, did anyone ever report on the casualties in ukraine and russia? no, why not? host: what was that trip in march le for you? where did you go? what did you see? caller: i volunered with the idf, spent time in army bases. i saw in march the call to muslim prayer five times a day in yafa. i saw country of different cultures together. i saw the vunteers, me than one-third of the volunteers were non-jews. host: how did you voluner with the israeli defense force? caller: i volunteer with ornization called cerel.

host: what did you do? caller: basically preparing food for the sviceman, giving out -- making barbecues, and stuff like that. nothing very heavy physically. host: what was your sense from the soldiers at that time in march, at that point, after five months of fighting, andere we are 12 mths since october 7? caller: my sense washat they did not want this war. theyere shocked at the brutality of this war. they were shocked at the indiscriminate kilng of children, of muslims, of everyo. speaking to every idf soldier, they do all ty can to avoid

citizen casualties. creatingore casualties to themselves. what oth country warns people where they are going to bomb? what other country does at? when i say warns, i don't mean literally warn, i mean telling people on their phones, every way poible day warn citizens when they are coming. and in eve way posble, hamas keeps their citizens there, as does hezbollah and all these terrorist organizations, because they want their citizens to die. ho: that is steve in new jersey. do, fairfax, south dakota, democrat. caller: yeah, you know what is going on over there is terrible. i have to say that. hamas, when they killed and people and took them for hostage, that is terrible. like everybody else said before this guy from israel or whatever that just got done talking, this has been going on for 48 years,

since 1948, actually before that. but they are killing -- what is it, 42,000 people? 3000 jewish people killed? and they are using 2000 pound bombs, and now killing over 2000 people in lebanon, using 2000 pod bombs in populated aas. as forhe cop, he says innent people were just cold in israel -- just killed in israel, what out those in lebanon and gaza? they are slaughtered. benjamin netanyahu will be with hitler in history. host: this is henry in amher, massachusetts, republican. good morni. caller: hi, i just wanto say that if we put ourselves, americans, in the place

israel and the exact same thing happened t us, would we not be responding in the exact same way? as the israelis are right now? and the gentleman who just spoke bere, i agree with him. others really do not know what they are talng about when it comes apartheid, no clue. host: have you ever been, henry? caller: i have not been there, but i read a lot about it. there is a lot on youtube about israel itself and what a wonderful place it is. but for anybody to expect they certai amount -- that a certain

amount or a group of people can just come flying into your country, wiping out 1400 people, kidnapping 1500, oone hundred 60, sorry -- host 250. call: and counting, we don't know. and still have not returned all of them. what do they expect? they expect israel to just sit back at can we do to make it better for you? nah. what is gog on isxactly what amera woul do if it happened to us. 911 waa good example of it, and we took care of business then, everywhere. host: henry in massachusetts on hostages, a year since this began, 97 hostag still being

held by hamas, many of their ces hilighted by the new york post in their special ece today on the anniversa of the attacks. 64 hostages are still believed to be alive, 33 confirmed tbe dead and remains being hd by terrists in gaza. amg them are seven amerins, three of whom have been kled. among e americans bieved to be alive, aidenlexander, age 20, a new jersey high school gruate who went off to isrl join israeliefense forces and joint as a membeof the 51st battalion station neaone of the kibbutz near gaza. that is in the new yk post today. this fm the shingt post, a longtime columnist, what october 7 did not change in the region.

for those who do not read the post often, david writes on national security issues in foreign affairs issues. this is what he says, israel regained footing over the past year by waging a rentless campaign of retaliation for the ame of october 7. if tre was any constant theme other than the resilience of israel's military and intelligence servis, it was a lack of clear israeli thinking of what would come next. netanyahu ignored planning for the day after, and idf chatters lebanon -- shatters lanon. netanyahu --ut this is the middle east. and more likely outcome is at at the cost of so many thousands of dead, they have resorted to the old paradigm of a strong israel that willrush any until the next round. perhaps the said legacy will be that this could so evilly happen ain. we know the old adage about

folks who do not learn lessons from history. we see the hurt in faces of israelis, palestinians, and lebanese, we know they are thinking of the next conflict even as they fight this conflict. fighters are not likely to forget. in the middle east, memory is an addictive drug and a poison. roberto, houston, independent. caller: good morning. i will be very brief. there has been atrocious behavior on both sides, plus the united states. the so-called solution from harris -- and i am puzzled by it has not been questioned, the two-state solution? i mean, it is three states right now,est bank government, because our government under hamas, and isrl. all three are failures in democracy, let's be real. my solution is this, dissolve

israel, gaza, and west bank governments, have the u.n. takeover them as territories, and that will end this ongoing nightmare. ye, let's face it -- host: to what end? you want the u.n. to take over, and then do what? caller: ok, before israel was created, there was territories that the u.n. administered. it was under truman that would recognize israel as a state. israel is a complete failure, ok. what it has done to gaza prince -- by the way, let's all remember this, it has nuclear weapons, israel. it is going to be using them eventually then they are going to tell us use them for japan or for iran.

they are not going to use it on gazar lebanon because that is too close to them. so this is atrocious behavior on ou part, too, especially us, united states. i am ashamed to say this, i am ashamed of the united states. i am an american citizen. and this is what is going on? and you journalists really have failed, all of you, on and off c-span, to bring the two-state solution -- what do you mean? if they got hamas back into office, because you know they hate each other forever, and we are -- we, united states, have a budget defic. we areoing backward, folks. let's lp the hurricane victims and futu florida victims this wednesday. so we have our priorities comptely backwards. we are no longer t moral leaders of the world.

we are complete failures host: that is roberto in houston. he mentioned nuclear weapons. president biden said last week he would not supportsrael targeting iran's nuclear program in the we of the attack by iran on israel. that comment hitting a lot of reaction. yestery, house intelgence committee chair mikeurner was on cbs and was asked about it. this about two and it's from that " face the nation" interview. [video clip] >> this is another area where the administration has not risen to the occasion. president biden said the nuclear program of iran is off the table, it should not be a valid military target by israel and/or the united states. the esident himself has previously said that the united states will not allow iran to get a nuclear weapon and that he would use military actioif necessary.

it was said more than two weeks ago that iran's breakout time to become a nuclear state was two weeks. >> u.s. intelligence is not sent iran hasade the decision -- >> they have not publicly stated the current status of the program, other than the breakout time was two weeks. looking to proportionality, where biden says israel can only respond in proportion, it is as if this admistration says israel can sand 200 missiles into israel, and as long as we have missile defense that takes them out, we will not look at iran's provocation there, trying to kill and destroy individuals and towns in israel. that should be the response. the understanding should be that iran has moved beyond their proxies, to have direct attacks to israel, and israel is going

to defd itself. >> decent, commander is currently in israel hoping to advise -- the centcom commander is currently in israel helping to advise. the u.s. really only has the equipment that could take out the kind of underground facilities essential to the iranian nuclear program. are you advocating for the u.s. to be involved in defensive activities? >>e has previously said it is on the table. for him to give iran the comfort that their actions of attacking directly iran will not have any consequences f the nuclear weapons program is irresponsible. host: the house intelligence committee chair. republican from ohio. that was yesterday on e sunday shows. friday at a rally in north carolina, donald trump criticized joe biden's comments about what is and is not a legitimate target. donald trump sing israel

should hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later. frank in pittsburgh, democrat. you are next. ller: yeah, i am getting kind of sick and tired of the president of israel -- [indiscernible] and these ople getting on the air and calling our president an idiot harris a comnist. hear them all the te saying -- talking about trump, just doing it all the time. thank you. host: to atlanta, rick, republican. caller: good mornin thank you for c-span. i would like to say i do condemn hamas, of course condemn october

7. i do not agree with them politically, and i do not agree with just all of the war hawk rhetoric of the world going towards iran. on the eve of of this rrific act that both israel and america, because america is just as, if not more, responsible for these actions, for this genocide. these acts were not, to be clear, committed because of an attack on jews. that one call from new jersey, i believe he said he was a volunteer in the idf, and said both jews and arabs were killed. this attack was a shocking, brutal human moment of just revolt. it was the last resort.

st resort because of the actions for decades and decades of this occupation. i appreciate c-span brought on journalist norman solomon and another guest, and ty very well elaborated on the history of why turbo seven occurred -- on why october 7 occurred, because of the occupation and the apartheid system. people in gaza cannot leave. they do not have free movement. people need to ask, why did america spend billions of dollars to build a pier for gaza? why didn't gaza have their own port or an airport? october 7 was committed with gliders. it was a dollar store attack. it was pathetic and shocking, shocking to the whole world that such brutality could occur. the reason behind this is because of the activation. gaza was under war since before

october 7. host: rick, how do you e the sending? you see this moving toward any sort of settlement anytime soon 12 months in? caller: all wars, and wish could've gotten in when mccormick was on because he was such a war hawk, all wars end with a treaty. we just did this. the only suppower in the wle world, if they could not kill the ideology of islamic national terrorism, what could israel do, even with all the bombs and all the war? there needs to be a dissolution of the apartheid. boides, but hamas, after october 7, has vunteered all

of the hostages for a no grou invasion. this is how you stop wars, you have treaties. the reason we do not get this is they do not care whabiden wants, and why should ty? our administrati has made clear that we will not step away from israel and their genocide. st: ahead of a treaty usual cos a cease-fire. background from thnew york times piece efforts to move towards a cease-fire deal before the expansion of the conflt ended in lebanon. this iwhat they write, everything appeared to be heading in the right direction for a breakthrough in middle east peacemaking to everett a spiraling war that would be part of the region, officials from the u.n. and france in the u.s. addressed this, calling for a three-week cease-fire aimed preventing a broader conflict

between hezbollah and israel, and once the two sites to consider. the hezllah leader sent wor that hisowerful militia supported the call for a cease-fire. on september 25, as world leaders gathered in new york for the un's general simply, president biden and president macron france announced a plan and released a statement expecting the warring parties to publicly embracet. two days lar, before a proposal could be drawn up, netanyahu of israel declared at the united natns that israel must defeat hezbollah in lebanon. soon after, huge bombs fell on beirut, killing mr. ness rola and extinct -- mr. naslla. officials had been working to prevent this war, and now it is raging. that from the new york times today, this october 7.

this is vaughout of missouri, independen caller: good morning. how you doing? nobody er spea for god. i know he don't need any help from me, but iave to ask, you people, y'all give god such a d name. host: who is you people? caller: i am talking about the hawks tt called up this morning. and all the other ones what abouthen god said vengeae is mine? what about when he said, you know, don't oppress the stranger? at about love your neighbor? i don't understand people anore. but theseuys they called in

that said the things they said and you gave them time -- i appreciate that, you do my heart od -- sayhe this that you say, i have to ask this guy that cald in wanting to be part of the idf, i guess. why do they have walls around these places? sincet is such a democratic place,hy do they have walls? they are so granand so great that donald trump praised these walls. why do you think they have them? since they are such loving people, this needs to stop. iran, hezbollah, and all of them, they are trying t say stop the killing, stop the destroying, and sp the killing.

that is all i got to say. thanks. host: front page of the washgton pt this mning, the picture and leadandlin kibbutz for october 7 never ends, an israeli flag hung inside a house that was destroyed dung thahamas attack one year ago, october 7, 23. pete in auburn, alabama democrat. goodorning. caller: yeah, i just want to point out something about onism. in the latter ds, srt of the early 20th centu, thectual territory for israel to occupy was spefied, d that include the west bank and also included southard lebanon up the river.

1982, the iaelisnvaded lebanowith much loss of life, anforces withdrew but left an occupying force in southern lebanon that was there for 18 years, until the year 2000. they were partially driven out by the much maligned terrorist organization hezbollah. ok, so -- host: 2006, i believe israel ba in after the kidnapping if an idf soldier come into that same territory. here we are in 2024,ring me to e prest day. caer: so at i agettinat , following -- my theory is

thatctually ham attacke october 7, it was a horrible thin but tre is a possibility, in my opion, tha they are, besides being a terrist ornization, they are actually an instrumen that thiss all part of the aack, which was horrible, horrible enougho justifyeducinaza to rebel. -- to rubble. host: y think this was all a false flag? call: yeah, let me get to the point, whais really goin on -- host: we argoing move o to kelly, about 1minutes left. kelly inhio. caer: morni. would like to say,s far as theeople go, theyo not knowheir htory a all, most

of them. and i would like to go back to jimmy carter's in 444-d hostagea of americansy held from our embassynd he had fr american still alive being held hostage israel. i cannot belie as americans are so sympathetic to the emy. during the carter ministration, they held us for 444 day until the day rald reagan was elected president. on that day, they let those hostages go. i am thinking that thi administraon is weak, and they ow it. and what they need is trump, because as soon as trump gets elected, i guarantee these guys will have a different opinion about hothey treat our hostages a how they treat israelnd how they tat america, because it has been proven before ring the trump

administrati that when you tell them no and they believe that humane no, -- they believe th you mean no, they have a tendency t behave. i think we are in someeep doodoo if we do not vote in trum host:sa today with arofile of each of the four american still he hostage by hamas includin eid alexander, 20 years old, omar nut who w kiapped that day, and two others, a profile on each them in today's usa today. this is bly in spanish fort alabama, iepende. od morning. are you with us? caller: good morning. host: what is ur comments, billy? i thk we lost bill

allen inhicago, indiana, decrat. caller: good morning. thank you for having me on, huge fan of your show. i wod like to ask ameri to remember the people of southeast america from hurricane helene, pray for them, until t representaves toet theall the aithey need. those people are goi throu some really rough times,nd i hear there is another hurricane on the wayoming up. we have to help protect ose people. thank you. i am kind of upset with america, that we are hypocrites. we talk about huma rights, free will, self-determination, but our gornment seems tsupport dictatorshipsnd oressiv occupis who were apartheid. i am glad c-span had th guts -- thk you for having the guts t haven a cole people, the

solomon gentl andan -- the solomon geneman and anoer woman from the state department who were notro-israel, they know exactly what was happeni with the occation, and our governnt just ignores what i happening. ey havblockehumanitarian d. they are using srvatioas a weaponf war and ey have targeted journalists d aid workers there, and our government continues to support them. i am ashamed abo that. but am glad you did haven ople in the pt year that reminded what life was likely becae the za before october 7. for somodyears, ople he come on show and have said it is an open air prison, they are walled in. everything you need to survive is supplied by israel.

they are sposed to be sending in like 0 trucks day with food, fuel, clothing, everything, because these peoe have no resources there. but by the time october 7 happened, the trucks was down to 450. looks like they we atteming to -- t starve out the palestinians, but they certainly cut back on thei rources. you have to ask, what chan do these peop have? what else could they possibly do host: me from the sunday shows yesterday. john fetterman is foxews suay talking about the conflict in the middle east. this is what he had to say. [video clip] >> i am not going to politicize what is in israel right now. for me, it is about following israel, and i have been very clr that my voicand vote will follow israel on that. responding to iran, i will suort that. beuse israel has a better idea

the intelligence and circumstances on the ground, and that is why i will support and llow that. i also wanted to celebrate what israel has been able to do. they have demolished hamas, and now they have humiliated hezbollah, and they are now cowering. an shot 200 misles and vaporize to those -- anthey vaporized those. iran was left exposed and humiliated, and israel has put them back on the ropes, and i am gointo support what they continue to do ho: johfettern f pennsylvaniademocr, on f ws sunday. this ithe usually coervative edorial ard of the wal stet journal, writi about the ssons of october 7 one year later loing back one year, they say the worldhould never forget the videos of hamas' atrocits, the terrorist livestream says they slaughtered defensele, kiing pele and taking hostages,01 who remain in

captivity assuming they are still ali. there has been suppo for hamas' argument on t west, especially from elite colle can business --ompasses. it is a reminder that amicans cannot withdraw fromhe mide st. irans bentn america's destruction as much as it is on israel. theditorial board of the wall street journal. a couple more calls. jessica in wichita, democrat. caller: good morning. i would like to say a few words. iran does not care whethe america survives or not, they just want our destruction. same time, you have to remember that israel has done atrocities. and i feel like we need to remember that, as well. yes, hamasas donwhathey

did, taking hoages and innocents. same time, what choice did they have ithe matte because ty ve beeoccupi for so long? thank you, god bless. host prestonn flora, independt. caller: good morning i never knew that defending your own land was a proble those people are defending their land, and sohow th are the people in the wrong. understa what i am saying? that is crazy to me. they are killing innocent children andnnocent people for agenda foril and land. that is what it isll abo, l and land. that has nothing to do with peace and is about land and about oil that is what it all boils wn to. for them to say they shot 200 missiles, they wasn't trying to hit anyon they was tryi to hitnfrastctures.

mitary ss they was no trying to do wt they areoing to gazand everything else. those ople are committing genocide. that is all i ha to sa ho: laura in skane, washington, republican. ller: good morning. my opinion is at hezbollah a hamas have both sworn they want the death ofhe jewish people. they want it wiped out. and there was no occupatn, no apareid, ne ofhat. what it is is an ideoly that has volved themselves in crimesgainstumanity for 10 years. that includes africans christians, and jesh pple. and they want control andower. anthey will not stop. they are the ones that refused to be reanable. they are the ones that continue this slaughter o innocents, becae of tir ideoly. my heart is with israel and withhe jewh peop, because

they derve that. st: that is laura and washington. last call is from chicago, democrat. caer: good morning. i am really tired of hearing t antisemitism. i am tired of hearing ignorance. the wrong, absolutely wrong statistics, makes up. you had a pers on, i belve his name was norman solomon, he quoted hamas as giving information out on what is going on in gaza. why can't this country undersnd that hamas is a terror organization? they are proxies of the iranian government. the iranian government has stated over and over again they have two goals. the destruction of israel and then the destruction of the united stas. why is it so hard for people to

understand? why is antemitism so lethal everywhere in theorld, and why is it ner eradicated? thank you. host: stephanie and chicago, the last call in the first segment the "washington journal." plenty more to talk about, including next being joined by former centcom commander, retired general kenneth mckenzie, talkinabout escalating tensions in the middle east. later, john della volpe from harvard institute of politics, joining us to talk about young vote attitudes and presidential elections. stick around. we will be right back. ♪ >> attention middle and high school students, time to make your voice heard. c-span's studentcam documentar contest is here, your ance to

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washington journal continues. >> retiredeneral kenneth mckendry is our guest this morng. he serveas the head of u.s. central command currently executive director at global national security institute at the university of south florida an the author of the melting point. general mckenzie sir what exactly is u.s. central command? guest: first of all and happy be here this morning. u.s. central command is one of 11 combatant commands the united states has that is a mechanism by which the president ercises command and control of the united states forces. seven of those 11 geographic mbat cmands. a geograpc combatant command is responsible for a portion and the officer who is in charge of it in that region.

central command is 21 countries from egypt in the west to pakistan in the east from because extent in the north to yemen in the south. 21 countries and in 21 israel join to make it 21. we can talabout that later if you like. the other thing is it's a very short chain of command. you work with the president of the united states and the secrety of defense. so you know exactly who you work for and that comprises the chain ofommand. it's a very short chain of commd. also as a combatant commander you have the opportunity to give adce, sometimes that advice is taken and sometimes it's not what ultimately you are responsible for executing the results of those policy decisions madey civilian leaders. it's a unique job and it's a reason i wrote the book because i've been at a unique vantage point and the opportunity to reserve a lot of this and provided the just for what i

wrote about. >> how many u.s. troops are stayton -- stationed in that portion of the world or least when you were u.s. central command, how many bases are there? guest: i would say today here in october of024 therere probably 45,000 u.s. troops in the region. en i wasn command it was higher than that with operations in afghanistan and larger operations in iraq it could range from 60 to 70,000 and could get larger at times depending on warships that came in. it's a pretty large ornization. you also work with allies and coalition nations so that can make theorce even larger bra 10 or 12 main bases acrosthe region. headquarters just uth of doha

and there are number of other basescattered across the region and then smaller bases th may not have an airbase associated with. so it's a large organization. >> when you are ahead of centcom how did you define success in the job and were you successful in your job? >> you're given a set -- you're given guidance about what the objectives are for the region. we had several things one of them was to deter iran, prevent them from unching a major attack and to assist in the goal of assuring iran did not possess a nuclear weapon at the same time carrying out operations in iraqgainst isis. the islamic state of iraq and syria dedicate to attacking the united states came back to life if you will in 2011 and 2012 after a disastrous decision to

withaw abruptly from iraq. so we operated against that and we conducted operations in afghanistan ultimately of course based on decision made by the united states to withdraw. we executed that withdrawal in the summer of 2021 we were generally successful. not always happy with the results that occur but against iran which was a centr threat that took most of my energy and the free -- three years i was in command. because they pose a primary threat to the region and a primary threat to u.s. interest in the region. host: on the withdrawal would you say it was successful, is that howou look back on it? guest: i did not recommend that we withdrawa it was ultimately decision made by u.s. nation leadership who executedithdrawal -- we executed withdrawal from afghanistan and got our people out pray it was not without loss of life both american and among afghans as well. so that's a thing that will stay

with me forever. i would argue the force on the ground executed the task it was reired to do and i'm very proud of the men and women who had to do that. d what that has mnt to isis and al qaeda abilities genere and attack the amecan homeland. and also lessens the dictors may have learned from the abrupt americ withdrawal in afghanistan including for example president putin and might have emboldened him to attack ukraine later. >>oming back to iran for a second, what is the u.s. centcom job today, how hard is that job asou look at it from not to distant past and what do you make of where this is going. >> the job hasn't gotten any easier. to be sent, commander requires that you not only manage u.s.

forces but you have to work with allies, friends, many interest in the region. so the commander has got to master the art of commanding and leading a coalition force that may share some als together but not all goals together. i think the current commander of u.s. central command has done brilliantly. we are in a very difficult place as israel conducts operations against hezbollah and hamas iran is continuing its dangerous and reckle behavior. all of those things the central commander watches, talks to the president abt it, our national policy but ultimately the responsible for execution is can he come back to central command. >> general kenneth mckenzie is our guest. his book, high command and war in the 21st century recently

released having to talk to you aboutt wh quesons fo phonlines lit as usual b political rty. repuicans, 202-748-8001. mocrats 202-748-8000. independents 2-748-82. as viewers are cling in general mckenzie take us back to what you were thinking on october the seventh of 2023 and how likely athat point did you think we are today with israel now in lebanon, iran ballistic missile attacks on israel. israel weighing its options for how to respond to that. did you expect we would be here. >> it took a while for the scope and scale of the attack to become evident in the united states and i was no longer reading classified material on it. i was reading the wall street journal and other sources of

information. so the fact of the matter is hamas gained tactical surprise and strategic surprise. they did that by ruthlessly compartmentalizing who knew about the attack that would occur. they cut out the uranian's and kept it very small number of people who knew the attack would occur. they were successful in that attack. what followed from that i knew it would be a long -- for israel. one of the key things, i'd been down that the gaza strip in june so i had an opportunity to look at the ground and it was very familiar witit for my time at central command. hamas relentlessly embedded inside the civilian populati of gaza which made operations in there for israel if they went after hamas i difficult thing to do balancing a desire to go after hamas commanders in urban areas, i knew it would be a

difficult slog for them. what was surprising little bit although in retrospect perhaps we should've seen it coming was the lack of support for hamas that's come from iran and really the lack of support for hamas that's come from hezbollah. both of those organizations iran as a state, hezbollah is a large nonstate military entity in the world. they support the destruction of the state of israel. and while they both applauded what hamas was doing, they did not particularly support that -- iran did not support it at all in any msurable way. hezbollah did it with low-level attacks across the israeli border up north but wouldn't launch essential central stock of precision wpons. they chose not to do that. that is very revealing.

i did not see that happening. and that's one reason the war -- the colict is extended until now for reasons not directly related to what's going on in gaza. iran and israel are now in a conflict. with the fact over the last couple of years israel has out fought iran in the proxy war they fight across the region with security services and other groups tha struggle against various places across the region. an israeli strike on the republican guard in damascus, iran thought it had to respond to that. there attack was by any objective measure -- the israeli response later was measured, circumscribed and was designed to demonstrate to the iranians the israelis possess an overwhelming ability to do what they want inside iran they just

chose not to do that attack. at the same time the did not push their air of neighbors away by going heavy against iran and they did not push the biden administrationway by doing that so i thought it was a pretty deft response. now if what happens since then the pressure of low-level hezbollah attacks in israel and having the effect of pushing about 60 to 80,000 isrli citizens to the south, this is becoming a political problem in israel. over the last 40 weeks israel is taken under operations to -- they did that three series of attacks that began with the peeper attacks, the handset attacks. then the strike against the leader of hezbollah whi effectively removed the leadership echelon of hezbollah at the same time the israelis operated with great effectiveness against hezbollah

stocks of weapons so hezbollah is on its back heal. they've been badly damaged by israel. they are still north on the ground because they have to clear far enough north so their citizens can return to villages and homes in israe that's can it be -- going to be someing not easily done. iran is trying to -- is very much in a corner now. hezbollah is not a player as they were month ago. iran's attack last week was an attempt to reset that balance as they did in april. like the april attack it largely failed to do tha it was not particularly effective. israelow possesses the initiative. how israel responds in the next few days will be important. they will do something larger than their response in april. i don't have any prior knowlge on what they might or might not

do or they have a lo of targets to choose from. some more escalatory tha others. the very good question you asked by saying iran has no larger options at hand to attack israel and what they've already displayed. because of the number of unchers with ballistic missiles it is hard for themo genera a larger attack than they generated. like the o last week, instead they always counted on hezbollah muchloser to israel with a lot of rockets and missiles to come in. hezbollah does not appear to be in a position to do at. so iran is in a tight spot right now. it should be interesti to watch atappens ho:allersaiting to chat with you and we nt to ntion we do se aside a specialine for current and former members of the mility. 2-748-03. wespeciay appriate your

estionand coents ts morning. beginning onhat line for independence, alan is waiting for you very early or ver late out in hawi. good morning. caller: good morning, iis a little bit early here but it's important. really good to hear from you general. i happened to hear michael -- what micha put out this week, you may be familiar. john bolton and david albright and many eerts are kind of amazed that the den administration would say something like -- saying israel should not be targeting a certain component of iran. they are saying -- and apparently the's even statements coming from the israeli press saying that israel somehow the.s. government

ying to entice israel to really quash a major campaign against iran and that is sad because right now a lot seem to be feeling there's a good opportunity to really reverse the trend. obviously the biden administration is giving a lot of money. 6.5 billion just this week and this was after the attack from the 182 missiles. i'murious what you think of these tngs alo with the biden administration support o rob who was -- he is not employed officially, but refused to divulge why his security clearance was recalled. and all the other people he brought in as advisors on the iran group and what's going on with that. host: let me give general mckenzie a chance to respond.

guest: what i can talk about is the iranian targets. as you look at the targets isel could strike in iran if we group them from highest most escalatory to ast escalatory the most escalatory thing they could do is probably strike at the supreme leader. we would all recognize that would probably be the most escalatory. immediately under that would be striking against the nuclear program. the nuclear program is a large complex target. it has many components preyed that's the second most escalatory thing. going down the laddethe next one would be the oil infrastructure. there you can strike refineries, wells, reservoirs, pipelines preyed you can strike loading points.

so the oil target is not a monolithic target. you can pick a lot of targets within that, some are more escalatory than others. then you keep going down the ladder. you can look at intelligence headquarters. intelligence facilities preyed military headquarters because we know iran purposely tried to strike the sod headquarters. so you look at the levels of things you might choose to strike. there is sort of a hierarchy. i know the israelis are working through that right now. it's never a good idea to tell your opponent we are taking some ing off the table. that's just not good strategic planning and it allows them to narrow their resources against targets they think you might strike. i have no idea where the israelis are going to strike but as i look at it i think they will probably bear in mind the framework something like i discussed here about the iranianss a target they might

choose to strike. i do believe they will do something larger than they did the last time they suck. thank u. >> on the oil targets, who does that hurt? >> 90% of a reigning goes to china. so if we carry out the sanctions now we could have a heartore -- f more significant impact than we do. for reasons ouide the department of defense we have t chosen to do that. it would affect china most of all and affect others. a perturbation anywhere in the oi market is one everywhere in the oil market. i think china will probably feel that most directly if we in fact produce iran's ability to export oil. >> question from a twier viewer, he asks what did hamas try to accomplisby attacking israel one year ago today? is the outcome and aftermath

what hamasxpected and the same question goes for hezbollah and the who the rebels iiran. what were they trying to accomplish or what have they been trying to accomplish? guest: we will talk each one in turn preyed let's begin with hamas. their view of the world is negative, the destruction of the state of israel. they don't have a particular plan for governance or the day after. we know there really hope for success. i'm not saying it was a viable goal, they saw the dutch sought the distraction of t state of israel. it did not happen. but hamas is purely negative in its view of the future. that's what they say. i have no reason to disbelieve their assertions. so they are probably not unhap with where they are right now because they really don't care much about the palestinian people.

i do care about the destruction of the state of israel and believe as long as israel is in gaza they further isolate israel on the world stage. it's a game you are content to continue to play. he hit will fight to the very bitter end. that's e hamas position. let's take lebanese hezbollah. a little more complex. their leader was a pretty sharp strategic observer. he would not choose to come in in order to support hamas. now hezbollah is also dedicated to the destruction of the state of israel. i's in their fundamental philosophy. we should not doubt them when they say it. but always thought he uld attack israel three conditions were met. if israel's army was so drawn down because it was mired in gaza or someplace else that he would have a chance to attack

with success. that condition has not been met. second is the israel government is so fractured they are unable to marshal a concerted force against a hezbollah attack. that has not been met. the third is if i use -- israel was so isolated on the world stage. they are certainly more isolated but nowre enough to meet that condition. so hezbollah won't come in unless there's a possible strategic success. strategic success defined as deruction of the state of israel. what you saw was this low level back-and-forth but that probably got out of hand little bit when we -- when the force the israelis to take a move against hezbollah. let me be real clear. hezbollah is dedicated to the destruction of the state of israel so i don't want her to be any concept that somehow hezblah is a calculating calm rational organizatioin terms of destruction of the state of israel.

but they were going to make a strategic decision instead it was forced on them by israel. as was mentioned in the diussion earlier, hezbollah is now on its back heel. the leadership echelon is gone. and they are unable to coordinate attacks effectively at a large scale in israel. how long that will last, do not know but israel i think will continue to push north until they are able to end the relatively short range rockets landing on their citizenin israel. houthi are probably the most radical of all the iranian splinter groups. they fought a bloody war to withdraw from saudi arabia. the same thing with the uae. they hold only a fraction the country but they are dedicated to the principal destruction of the state of israel and the united states. it's fundamental to all their philosophies.

they, unlike hezbollah and unlike iran have come in with full throated support for hamas. they have attempted to attack israel as often as they can. iran supplied them with weapons that come down by sea or across oman and other ways. but only a relatively small number. theho these are actually very good aeronautical engineers. they made these weapons better and if attacked israel at low volume which isn't going to stress israel so they will attack israel massively if they could but they can. what they can do is -- if you close that, you effectively close the suez canal. as a result of that, maritime commerce unless you are chinese has slowed to a crawl. in fact a halt because maritime insurers won't want ships to sail through there.

they continue the attack, the united states has set as a matter of policy not related to israel that we will not allow them to maintain this chokehold. we have warships down there that are engaged in acts of defense, not offense, so the houthis have had great success closing that. we have had to take a moment to actually stop this. we have the capabilities to make it not possible for them to carry on these actions. we have not, through the political will necessary to carry out these tasks. that sort of where we are with the three main groups that are out there. thank you for the question. >> 20 minute former commander u.s. central command a book recently released, the melting point. high command and war in the 21st century. maxwell is waiting in las vegas, a line for republicans, good morning. caller: first of all i want to

say thank you for your service, i appreciate you. and my question today. host: we are listening. caller: my question today is do you think as a country when it comes to israel, ukraine, instead of us just sending weapons and money, because i know if i had an ally i would want us to go all in. i think is country we are confused but sending money i think this makes us look like cowards. if you're going to back your allies you go all in. this is just in a cause more money, more lives if we are going to back our allies shouldn't we just send our troops and everything we've got and just go for it? show the world we are not weak? host: you're talking about in israel specifically? caller: i say go all the way to iran. we know they have nuclear weapons, we know what they are capable of.

we know what's come. i think we are just preventing the inevitable. we know 's can happen. >> general mckenzie on a full on shooting war involving.s. troops. guest: if israel were attacked in a way that stretch their capabilities to defend have no doubt we would go all in to assist israel. iranoes not have a nuclear weapon today a we are having this conversation. it is a stated objective of u.s. policy that we do not allow iran to possess a nuclear weapon. they are very close to breaking out and crossing that line whether they have enough material to build a nuclear weapon. that is very concerning and the united states stated goal is they are not allowed to do that. iran today does not want to possess nuclear weapon. what they want to be able to do is to be able to possess a nuclear weapon.

because by flirting with breakout right at theine, they can extract concessions from us because we want very badly to prevent them from doing that so it calls us to dance and our european allies as well. what is is of -- what they need is a vast infusion of money because their economy is in the gutter. spending on military project and other things they don't really know how to run an efficient effective economy. they need a mass infusion of money. by flirting with the nuclear threat they hope to be able to get sanctions relief and infusions of money. if they cross the line and declare themselves a nuclear state a couple of things will happen. you can never go back from that. you've crossed the rubicon and you are on the other. the other thing is just practical. you can have a nuclear device pretty quickly, they could have the fissile material to do it in a matter of weeks. but noyou've got a big device, you have to take that now and

make it into you have to take te and turn it into a nuclear weapon. you have to build a missile to get it there. you have to build a reentry system and have it explode predictably. that will take a long time, many months. that valley of death where you have declared you have a nuclear weapon and you are still working on the aspects, you are very vuerable. the iranians know that. the iranian decision to go forward with him nuclear weapon is not as easy a decision as you might think, particularly when they gain so much of dancing with us on the possibility of breakout. to go back to the question asked at the beginning, i have no reason to believe we would not do that if it look like the could be overwhelmed. host: speaking of north korea, did th do the same thing, did they flirt with the lineefore

crossing the rubicon and becoming a nuclear nation. are there lessons from when that happened? guest: north korea is so irrational it is dficult to find lessons. they believe verstrongly if they demonstrated they were a nuclear weapons state, they uld be treated as a nuclear weapon state. they have not. i think it is hard to draw a lot of conclusions about inian behavior based on north korean behavior. that is a great question to se, actually. host: maryland, lynn, thanks for waiting. caller: usa centcom happens to be headquartered in the emirate of qatar, a nation about the size of a postage stamp. yo immediate next-door neighbors also headquartered in

qatar happens to be an orgazation called hamas, which islso funded by the emirate of qatar, which suggests to me that hamas, like is and al qaeda before it, are basically nato proxies, that is to say, they are a false flag, psychological operations being run by nato. host: do you want to respond? guest: no, i think i will let that statement snd by itself. i do not need to say word. host: good morning. caller: good morning. my understanding is during the obama administratn, iran's nuclear equipment was going deeper and deeper but not too deep to be taken out by israeli bombs as the syrian facilities had been decades before. and yet, the u.s. put the brakes

on netanyahu so israel was not capable of using regular bombs destroy it. numberwo, the ivy league colleges a the university of californiand others have tten massive attention for grou that are outside israel -- anti-israel. here, a jewish professor stood up to vile comments regarding october 7 and the most ve anti-semitic remarks and was suspded without pay. her car was vandalized. i want to suggest they not just look at the big name colleges but the small ones like the one in branchburgor federal sanctions went ouide groups like american muslims for palestine, into agitate for antisemitism. thank you very much. host: general mckenzie? guest: let's talk about the

iranian nuclear prram. i first began studying it in 2010 when i was the plans officer for the centcom commander. from 2010 until now, the iranians have dugery much deeper. it is a very much more difficult prlem to address now. if you choose to a tack the iranian nuclear program, the iranian response would be massive. it is very deep and some of those things are so complex that only the united states has the ability to address some of these charges. you have to recognize it is one of the most escalatory options you cod choose. you may want to do it, you may need to do it, but i think you need to recognize that if you do

it, the iranians have only a limited number of lessons that can hit israel but they have thousands that can strike targets in saudi arabia, the united arab emirate kuwait, qatar, bahrain, and other areas of the gulf states. they are far more vulnerable to an iranian response. anytime you think about striking the iranian nuclear program, any responsible decision-maker has to keep those factors in mind. host: comg to that aspect of the centcom job or any regional commander, when it comes to the latter of operatio of escalations you can do, what is your job when it comes to recommending to the president what should happen, what sort of military response should hapn? it a recommendation? what was your experience in that

role? guest: great question. you want to give civilian leership options. you want to give them several different choices. you are not planning in a vacuum. you are given a task. the predent, the secretary gives you a tk and says we want you to do this. i look at the rources i have been given. i say here is what you asked me to do, mr. president, mr. cretary, i can do it with what you have given me, i can accomplish it. or i go back and say i cannot do it. if i say i cannot do it, i will tell them why i do not think i can do it, theaps. thenhey are given a series of choices. they can give me more stuff to it. they can change what they have told me to do, or the third thing is they can say we know you say you do not have enough to do it but we want you to try

it anyway. that is a perfectly reasonable decision. the risk bearer then becomes the civilian decision-maker. that is important to understand. we say here is the risk. the word i never used when i talked to a civilian leader was "unaeptable." i never said this was an unacceptable risk. i would say if we adopt this course of action, my judgment is we might lose an aircraft carrier or this might cause us the loss of this many u.s. lives if we exute the course of action you have asked me to do. but i do not say that is unacceptable because it may be unacceptable to me as sitcom commander but the decision-maker is actually the president or the secretary and they are in a position to see the global loss better than me.

i might add this decision-making process was used in the second worlwar with great effect by president roosevelt as he talked over options with his mitary chiefs. this is not new. it works reasonably well. iid not always get the answers i nted to get but that is not important. at is most important is civilian leadership makes these decisions. if it is a legal order, the u.s. military joint forces are bound to execute those orders. host: if we could execute an orderly withdrawal from afghanistan when weere coming to that decision-making process, what did you and your solid colle say the risks were during that time? guest: ware talking about a couple different thing the withdrawal in afghanistan was to bring out military forc. i would argue we executed that

precisely and it was done effectively. we also said if we withdraw, i said it is my judgment the government of afghanistan would collapse and there would be a disaster. i had the opportunity to give that advice. that advice was given. i was not the only senior militarydvisor that gave that advice. we continued on. the evacuation operation in august was completely separate. that was ordered by the partment of state and was not ordered until the middle of august and declared in the middle of august. that is when we begin to bring out the embassy, our cizens, and afghans. it was not the withdrawal. it was recognizing theffects of withdrawal. but the fact we did not begin our evacuation operation until after military withdrawal was complete and we had to put forces back into get out all of our people. we did get the embassy out.

we got almost all the american citizens out that wanted to get out. some did not get out but they all came out later to the best of my knowledge. i do not track that closely. i am not in a position to have that information. we did not get out the tens of thousands of afghans that foug with us that we wanted to bring out. that haunts me to this day. ultimately, americans lost their lives. that toos with me to this day. host: gary in alexandria, virgin. caller: my question is first, the u.s. and israel have nuclear apons. israel is our only democratic republic in the middle east which i understand the u.s. wants to back completely. there ever been any direct

talks with those who think israel should not exist in terms of an ultimatum, to have the two-state solution in place, or the other ultimatum instead of going to all of this back-and-forth with the military. given ultimatum -- give an ultimatum. if you do not accept israel and you do not want a two-state solution, there is no way iran can [indisceible] the situation so you have to give them an ultimatum. guest: diplomatic issues are not necessarily military issues. it is hard to see how the united states would use the threat of nuclear weons in the region. we have not done it to this day. i do not see condition in which

we would. i do understand your question about the existence of israel and i do believe the united states is prepared to defend israel should it become necessary should israel be faced with the threat of extinction, i think the united states would be all in under those circumstances. the abraham accords that are now seral years old began to mark a path to normalization of ts with israel. uae, bahrain, other nations have entered this track. i believe eveually lots of nations in the region including the kingdom of saudi arabia will embrace this. that includes threcognition of israel. it is a bumpy path. it has been slowed down by the war in gaza. nations recognize the importance of israel in the region. they recognize the importance of having military,conomic, and cultural ties with israel.

all of this is driven by the imminence of the iranian threat which is not just a threat to rael but also a very real and vital threat to other nations in the region. a further normalization of ties i think is inevitable. host: a couple of minutes left. i want to turn towards the topic of your book. the questionomes up often on this program we talk about military budgets and the size of the military, right now, the u.s.as 1aircraft carriers. china has e next most with three. why do we need eight more than china has? guest: we are a nation with global responsibilities. china is not the only thre we face. the threat of russia is very real. the threat of iran and the middle east very real. aircraft carriers give you a

remarkable sense of strategic mobility. we can move u.s. forces around very quickly in the body of the aircraft carrier. you do not have to worry about access and overflight issues. you do not have to for permission to bayshore airplanes somewhere. the aircraft carrier is floating u.s. sovereignty you can put anywhere you want and move it quickly. from a practical point of view, 11 carriers does not mean 11 carriers are operating. three are typically operating because the navy is struggling to keep them up and running right now. china's three carriers means they probably have one that can operate. their use of pattern will be different -- their usage pattern will be different. the united states is worried about the entire globe. host:he big chunk of iron, are you ccernedhat becomes obsolete in a future of drone warfare and ny cheap drones that can fly and go underwater? guest: i think that is a very

real threat. we are looking at it real hard right now. i think unmanned systems going to become increasingly prevalent on the battlefield. i do not know they will become a dominant capability on the battlefield but i think we need to be able to harness that capability for our own use in terms of our own clouds of drones we should be able to generate. i know the department of defse is working towards that right now. at the same time, we need to be able to defend our high-value assets against these very inexpensive access that can attack. offense and defense are goin back and forth. it happens every once in a while in warfare. new concepts emerge. they are digested. sometimes, they change the nature of warfare. sometimes, they do not. i think the use of drones and unmanned stems will have a significant effect on warfare. i do not know that it will make everything that exists now obsolete.

but our ability to adapt to this new thing and blended into current syems will be key to our future success. host: the book is "melting point." the author is retired general kenneth mckenzie, former centcom commander currently at the university of south florida. thank you for the conversation this morning, sir. guest: thank you, john. i enjoyed being with you. thank you so much. hostoming up this morning on "washington journal," in about 30 minutes, we are talking about campaign 2024. we will be joined by john della volpe from the harvard institute of politics. until then, it is open forum. the numbers on your screen to start calling in. start dialing and we will get your calls right after the

break. ♪ the book is titled "all the presidents'oney." it is about how the men who governed america governed their own money. the author specializes in financial planning for high network individuals. she says the american presidents are a complexroup to tace. the moment theiterm ends, they become historical figures card in stone. >> megan gorman with brian lamb on booknotes+, available on the

c-span app o wherever you get yourodcasts. >> [gavel pounds] >> the house will be in order. >> c-span celebrates 45 years of calm very congress -- covering congress. we have provided balanced, unfiltered coverage of government all with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and counting, powered by cable. >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring your unfiltered view of what is happening in washington live and on-demand. keep up with the biggest events with livtreams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns, and more, all at your fingertips. you can also stay current with the latest episodes of "washington journal" and find

scheduling information for c-span'tv networks and c-span radio, plus compelling podcasts. c-span now, scan the qr code to download for free or visit our website. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime, anywhere. >> "washington journal" continues. host: it is time for our open forum. y policy or political issue you want to talk about, now is your time to call in. this is the part of the program where we turn the program over to you. 202-748-8001 for republicans. 202-748-8000 for democrats. independent,s, 202-748-8002. we will take our open forum until about 9:15 eastern. we will be talking about young voters.

john della volpe wilbe joining us for that discussion. stick around for that but al give us call to let us know what y want to talk about as you a calling in, this is the heline from "the washgton times" today. speaker mike johnson says the biden administration showst was not prepared argui there was more than a week's notic and yet t disaster response was not ready. we still have peoplnot yet rescued in northarolin it is heartbreaking and infuriatin that e fedel governme has failed as it s. mr. johnn said lawmakers will be back immediately after the election to fight for the kind of work congress can do to provide resources. mike johnson on the sunday shows

yesterday. this is lowell out of fredericksburg, virginia republican, good morning. caller: just wondering. we give the people in north carolina $750. as understand, we give illegal aliens who have been invited to break into our country get $9,000 and they understand. -- as i understand. i do not understand how they get health insurance. i do not understand how they get a debit card for money. i do not understand how they are even being flown in my jets with my tax dollars from locations so theyo not even have to bother with the border. i do not get it, really. i think history is going to show

that this an insanity. some people would say we need enough peoe to pay for social security so six people working for every one person retiring. i just think that all that is going on -- and the people want to actually think about the possibility of hiring kamala harris to be the president. kamala harris was never a person anyone would even allow to be anything. if you remember the first debe with all the republicans, everybody running for president, she was the first person out. nobody wanted her. i always thought biden hired r for one reason only, as an insurance policy to ensure that he would be safe and at the same time she was a woman of color.

you know something, guys, this is really an embarrassment for our country now. host: got your point. this is mike in plymouth, massachusetts, independent. caller: good morning. name is mike. i am wondering why people go to flint, michigan, and have forgotten republican rick snyder sent his people in who were incompetent to take over city management. we saw what happened. they poisoned the entire cit that is what is going to happen in 2025 if the republicans take over the congress becae they will be able to fire anybody they like and put in anybody they like. that is the incompetencehat happened in the city of flint host: when you say that will happen with this policy, what poli are you talking about? caller: the 20 policy that says

-- the 2025 policy that says the presidt can re anybody and reple all those positions wi peoe that are loyists. st: mike in massachusetts. this is ea out of texas, decrat, good morning. call: good moing. i am jt curious to know, sin they say donald tru did not take [indiscernible] the office of president, i'm curious to know how much he did make off the united states when he took his security guards places. i'm curious to know how much he did make off the presidency during the time he was in there. host: richard in minneapolis, good morning. republican. caller: yes, good morning. i have two things. don't cut me off. number one. i wonder why the mainstream

media does not play the full statement trump said on january 6. he said let's go to the capil and peacefully protest. number two, on the charleston deal where he says i am sure there are good people on both sides, if the mainstream media would play the rest of his statement, he said in the next sentence, he says of course i condemn the white racists and the nazis and those bad people. e media is lying to us. even "frontline" is doing the same thing. i do not trust "frontline" anymore on channel 2 where i get my news. host: who do you trust now? caller: not too many. i listen all of the news

outlets and read newspapers as i can. i think i trust is station somewhat, mostly. i trust fox news. i catch all of the news channels. i am a news junkie. host: richard in minneapolis. this is sean out of sarasota, florida, independent. good mning. caller: yes, good morning. i wanted to piggyback off the gentleman talkg abounuclear issue in iran. i think it is a matter of time before putin ves nuclear weapons to iran and north korea. fulloperational. they will not have to do any work at all. i think that is what mad men putin will be up to. host: north korea already has nuclear weapons. it is already considered a

nuclear state. caller: but they are not fully operational as far as delivery systs. host:o what end for vladimir putin doing that? caller: becau he wants to rule theorld. he is a megalomiac. he is the incarnation of stal. he ia tota madman just like trump, h good ddy. host: sean in florida. newport news, virginia, james, republican, good morning. caller:ood morning. how are you doing? host: i am dog well, james. caller: during all the tax moves made during trump's and biden's time in office, i am a 60-year-old white male retired now. at the end of the day, about 10%

of all my inme goes to taxes. a lot of the difrent proposals that come up, no one ever seems toddress that snippet of a taxpaying democrat. there's a lot of money availabl married people. a lot of other entities get it. it does not seem there is a lot that goes to the demographic i am in. i am kind of frustrated. the second point i would like to make is vice president harris, one of her proposals is to build 3 million new homes. that is a great idea. but who is going to build them? we do t have construction people that are unemployed to be le to just go build 3 million homes. that is a fantasy i would believe. the last item i have got, and

then i wl let you go, is i usedo be ithe government and used to go and state in hotels when there were emergencies. buwhenever fema shows up or the government and say we wa book your hot for the next two years, that displaces all the locals that nd the hotel fema workers like live pretty rich and havnice pces to stay for the most part. they can be putn mobile failures because they will be mporary. the displaced locals tt need somewhere to stay long-te should be givefair stiffs. st: have you t femaorkers caller: i he met fema worrs. i rked with fema workers at one tim host:n what cacity? caller: i was doing survey work. host: what were you doing, what were they doing?

caller: well, we would all work a 12 or 14-hour day. we would go back to hotels and sleep, eat, get ready to go the next day. it is not that they are not working. that is not the implication i am trying to make. it is not that they do not work hard. but at the same time when you have local people that have had their homes destroyed and have nothing, lots of times when fema goes in and works somewhere, at least there are standing structures left where the local inhabitants. they will get power back on and they probably do not lose runng water. but in the case of the carolinas , there is very little lodging to be had to start with. with the dplacement of having no infrastcture and nothing to stay in, these people are doubly

, don't want to use the word cursed, but they are doubly challenged. the workers will come here within the next two months. the people with no housing and no running water, food, and heat, it will become a real challenge for them. there is nothing that says fema workers should be saying in relative luxury as compared to the locals who have nothing now. host: that is james in newport news, virginia. about 15 more minut of op forum. phone lines for republicans, democrats, and independents. today is the opening day of the new term of the supreme court. joining us at our dk for a preview this morning is the supreme reporter with bloomberg news.

they start right away with a gun rights case this week. explain what we will be hearing. >> this is a case about so-called ghost guns which can be manufactured at home through kits that do not have serial numbers that make them traceable. the question is whether alcohol, tobacco, explosives, and firearms, a.t.f., can regulate the guns, which means dealers have to conduct background chec, put serial numbers on them, things like that. it is not a guns rights case in terms of the second amendment. it is more like the case they had last term when they shut down the ban on bump stocks. host: we will be airing this on c-span. you can watch it in the usual way. we will give you the live oral arguments and show you who is speaking. that is set to begin at 10:00 eastern.

that case will be heard tomorr. likely to be decided in june? >> it is possible it will come out before then. we have gotten used to the biggest decisions coming out in june. the court could resolve it earlier. host: what are other decisions that could come out in june? >> so far, it is a relatively slow term compared to the last few terms. but it is early. the biggest case not yet scheduled for an argument date is involving transgender care for minors. a number of states including tennessee have bans on things like puberty blockers. the by demonstration and some families say it violates the constitution's it will protection clause. host: the headle is about the trump wild-card. guest: if it is an especially

close race, the trump campaign has made it clear there are ways to challenge anything that looks suspicious to them. we have seen the court in 2000 essentialldecide a presidential election. if the election ends being not down to one or two very close states, it is less likely the supreme court will have the kind of case that might determine who takes the white house. host: as weook ahead to t presidential election, the supreme cour justices nominated for a position is one of the main jobs of the president. who is on retirement watch, as they call it? guest: it depends on who wins the election and who takes the senate. if donald trump were to win and republicans ta the senate, we would be looking at clarence thomas and sam alito who are in

their 70's. very conservative justices. if kamala harris wins, if democrats control the senate, perhaps sonia sotomayor who is the oldest of the liberal justices. it would not guarantee any of those folks retire. if one party controls the whit house and the other the senate, a very different situation because there is a decent chance nobody will get confirmed in that environment. host: wt happs on the first day of the supreme court term? guest: we t an orders list in a few minutes at 9:30. it will be a long list. it wilbe mostly casethey will not hear. we get a long list of that. the court will hear a couple of arguments starting at 10:00. host: one more questi before you go. here is a picture from the metro section of "the washington

post." guest: other justices have gone to seek god's help in the upcoming term. host: have you ever attended one of the red masses and seen the justices there? guest: i have not attended one of them. stephen breyer who is jewish would attend every year. it is not just catholics. three justices are catholic. host: you can look for his stories at bloomberg and follow him on x. we will let you go to begin your busy day. back to your phone calls this morning. it is our open forum. 202-748-8000 free democrats> -- for democrats. 202-748-8001 for republicans.

202-748-8002 for independents. about 10 minutes left in our open forum. arkansas on the line for democrats, thanks for waiting. what is on your mind? caller: good rning, john. thanks for c-span. i be watching c-span and fox news every morning. i try to watch all the news channels to get a picture of what everybody is thinking. i am just so disgusted about how people are putting these republicans out there speaking stuff they know is not true. the democrats are not try to kill the republicans. i just cannot understand people that are supposed to be christians doing the kind of things they be doing, man. this will cause our country to be so messed up to have neighbor hating neighbor. it is political stuff.

it has always been one party against the other party expressing our views of what we think the country should be like. not in violence and all of this, man. i am 77 years old. i have been here a long time and seen a lot but i have never seen nothing go this far. it is scary. it is actually scary to listen to what some people really think. when i listen at c-span and i be listening to what some people really think, and i think, could they really believe what they be saying? host: maryland, line for democrats, good morning. caller: good morning. how you doing? host: doing well. caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a couple of things.

i want to see the supreme court in lifetime. -- live time. we are seeing all these issues. it is why we are seeing all this judgment. if we have a supreme court that has about 10 years of service in, i believe they will be able to do their best and lead rather an picking sides unnecessarily. i am tking about the economy. i kept wondering why many people are saying mostly the republicans saying the economy is bad under biden. the economy is not bad. inflation isll over the world, all over the world, not just in the u.s.. it is everywhere. you can traced that to the pandemic, to the ar.

the u. economy is strong. i do not know why people keep saying the econo is bad. the republicans are trying to divide the country. they are working so hard. everything that comes out of thisdministration ll be bad. it is just as fair we have people supporting trump dpite everything he's doing to make sure this untry is put into chaos. i think people need to wake up. host: north carolina, lynn, republican. good morning. caller: good morning. i am a republican and i am very proud to live in north carolina and see theelp. everyoneere isathering supplies and donations and taki directly to black

mountain and asheville, places like tt. there is a lot of togetherness. when kamala harris comes to charlotte, she is not seeing the damage done by the hurrine people are experiencing. you know, i am afraid in this election that people are voting for the wrong thing. this is not a personality contest. it is not based on race. you do not vote that way. you need to do your homework of who is going to run this country like a business, keep us safe from harm and wars, and put money in our pocket. and believe in america. i have seen trump put his life

on the line. this man don't have to run for president. he is rich. but, him and elon musk together, could get us out of debt. you don't think about the trillions and trillions of dollars. i do not understand why kamala harris wants to help assist people with the sacks gender -- sex gender operation. after 21, do what you want to. i do not understand how gavin newsom can get by with peop not showing their i.d. to vote in california. host: that is lynn in north carolina. wisconsin, allen, independent, good morning. caller: good morning morning, john. i am a fierce independent.

i cannot stand either party. i think there are way more independents out there that might -- than might show up in the polls. i have a warning for the republicans. donald trump cannot win this election as long as he cap tells to the republican mind of -- cap kowtows. the people texas over the department of education $120 billioa year. that is around $8 billion in interest, profit alone that gets sucked out of texas and sent to the department of education. it is similar for the other southern states. georgia is the worst. maryland is among the worst. this is not a democrat problem, this is not a republican problem. people have been massively misl by the media. donald trump was saying the right things in 2015.

he said, why is the government making such a massive profit on student loans? there are 40 million people in the couny underwater on their student loans. it is like 85% of all borrowers. they are going to voteheir pocketbooks. host: do you have student loans? caller: i have student loans. i am actually the first student loan activist in the united states. i published the first book to be critical of the lending program. i started the first group in 2005. i been watching this like a hawk for decad. host: what is your bo called? caller: "the stent loans scam," published through beacon press. host: how many copies have yo sold? caller: i have no idea. i still get residual checks of maybe $500 a year. it was critically acclaim. it was not rightly -- widely read unfortunately.

the unarty has found a way to weaponize these loans. the iue has been put into partisan cracks of this country. it should not behis way. of the 30 million-plus people able to pay thr student loans, more than half of them are either republican or independents. people whose gut instinct is to wag their finger at students, this is not about students. thiss about people whose age average is far greater than 4 host: howld are you? caller: i am 54. the average age in our group has got to be mid-40's or so. this is not a young, blue haired, liberal elite issue the media would ve this is an american issue. states like georgia, michigan is terrible. north carolina is horrendous. the entire south. the republicans need to wake up to this and quit allowing

themselves to be duped by the democrats. i guarantee you if they do not do anything between now and november 5, i see no way trump can carry the states i mentioned plus also nevada may be in play. host: that is allen in wisconsin, our last call in open forum. for about 45 minutes, we will focus on the issue of young voters in campaign 2024. we are joined by john della volpe of the harvard institute of politics. stick around for that discussion. we will get to your calls right after the break. ♪ c-spanshop.org is c-span's onli store. browse our latest apparel, books, decor, and accessories. there is something for every c-span fan and every purchase helps support our nonprofit operation.

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>> c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source for capitol hill providing balanced, unfiltered coverage of government with the support of america's cable companies. c-span, 45 years and couing, powered by cable. >> ♪ >> the book is titled "all the presidents' money." it is about how the men who govern america govern their n money, according to the subtitle. the author, megan gorman, is the founding partner of a san francisco-sed firm specializing in tax and financial planning for high net worth individuals. megan gorman says the american presidents are a complex group tackle.

the moment their term ends, they become hisrical figures carved in stone. >> megan gorman with her book on this episode of booknotes+ with host ryan lamb. it is available on the free c-span now mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> "washington journal" continues. host: we welcome back to the program john della volpe who oversaw the latest edition of the harvard youth poll. ung voters 18-29 have consistently turnout rates well below older voters. aryou excting anything different i2024? guest: thanks for having me back, john. the last couple of cycles when the young cohort has included members of gen z, we have seen something quite dramati

in fact, for the first time in about 50 years, we saw record levels of participation and turnout in 2020 and 2018. in 2020 and that presidential election, for the first time ever, we saw young voters exceed turnout by over 50%. for those on college campuses and was a college degree, it was well over 60%. we saw similar effects in terms of record turnout in 2018 as well. one of the messages from this and much of our polling over the last couple of decades is this coho of young americans is paying attention and voting in generation when they were young voted at. if you are a baby boomer, gen xer, or millennial, they voted

at a lower level than today. we expect turnout to be closer to what we saw in 2020 than the previous elections in the early pa of this century. host: when that turnout does ppen ang young people, what are you expecting this year? what did the harvardouth poll find? guest: we have seen a dramatic shift overhe last several months. we conct two surys a year. this year, we have one that wil be out in a few weeks. we saw a dramatic shift. six month or so, joe biden had a 13-point lead among the most likely young voters. today, we see kamala harris has a 31-point lead. she is in the high 50's among restered voters. that is what you would expect

for a strong democratic candidate to be at that 60% level. over the last few decades when democrats hit thatumber among young people, things work out well for them. obama did it twice in 2008 and 2012. other candidates, gore, john kerry, hillary cnton were shy of that. we knothey lost the ectora college. ho: for visual arners, here e the charts from the harvard instite of politics. u can seehe numbers get bett and bter fokamala harris as young people are more lily to vot kamala harris leading 46-29 percen likely voters, 61% to 30%.

what else did you ask besides how likely they were to vote and who they would pick? guest: we asked a series of questions. likely to vote, one of the things we found was relative to the march wave, we found young democrats were more likely to vote today than they were back in march. however, young republicans in this wave said they were less likely to vote. that is of interest and something to watch in the final weeks of this campaign. beyond that, the asked about overall favorability, approval ratings. we also had a series of questis i think are incribly important in terms of personal attributes and issues. that is somethinwe do not spend enough time talking about. we talk so much about the horse race and who is winning or long on a particular day but understanding the attributes and where younger people believe

which candidates would do a better job with the issues they care about, we did a deep dive into those areas as well. host:e are going to dig into those numbers throughout this half-hour of "washington urnal. jo della volpe with us. we are splitting the pne numbers by age. 18-29, 202-748-8000 30-5 202-7-8001. er0, 20248-8002. go ahead and start calling in. john della volpe, what we just talked about in terms of preference for candites and how kamala harris is doing with young voters, can you square that with this headline about this year'sarvard youth poll? the share of young american men who say they intify th sele political ideologies shows younamerican men are

muchore conservative among 18 to 24-year-olds. 26% say they identify as conservative to the 22% who say they identify liberal. another 48% say they a moderate. guest: that is one of the most important things from ts researchnd other research over the last couplof years. we noted relative to 2020, the last presidentl cycle, has been a net 20-point shift among younger men. i think they were nine points less likely to identify as democrats. 11 points more likely to identify as republicans. that is a sigficant shift in just four years. more than that, we see a ift in terms of ideology as you noted but also in their proach to issues. they are significantly less likely to believe in government,

investing in a significant way in climate change. they question free-trade and other issues thathowot just politically but ideologically they seem to be picking up some of trump's messaging and identify more as conservative th they had in previous cycles. i think that is one of the key drivers in terms of whether or not kamala hars can get to that 60% magic number i talked about. that is the place where democrats who wi the white house usually hit that number. the degree tohichhe will get that number, a lot of that is coming through the support, weaker support from men, then democrats are used to the last couple of cycles. host: on younger voters being more conservative than in the past, you talk about donald trump's messaging, these were

kids when donald tmp was first electe aged somewhe between 10 and 16 years old if they are 18-24 today. guest: yeah. thats an incredibly important point. in 2015, when he desceed down the golden escalator, a first-time voter might havbeen nine or 10 years old. that individual is not processing most likely that news or the early years of his administration like younger voter now in theirate 20's who was late highchool or college age or in the workforce. that cohort of youer people, and we can see a difference between the first time and more experienced voters who had a different experience with trump. they saw him more as an antihero. a lot of older folks saw him as a villain. you can see that reflected in

those numbers. r younger people, it was less about issues and ideology. it was more about the persona. there are a lot of younger men i taed to today that remember he was their idea of what it means to be masculine when they were in middle school or early high school years. they remember him not being afraid to speak his mind regardless of what the consequenc might be or who he was talking to. some of those aspects are notable to help understand some of that continued appeal. that 12-year-old was in high school during covid. that was traumatic. very stressful. they spent a lot of time isolated in their rooms. thousands of hours isolated. they spent a lot of time online hearing similar points of view from their friends, from podcasters, a very different

expeence than people who are older in his young cohort. remember, this is a group tha voted 60%, just four years ago, oviding. and it looks to me, relative to where we were four ars ago, trump may be doing better than he did during that cycle. host: i want you to compare how younger voters field across a couple of different issues, asking the younger voters have more concerns about economic issues and policy or global issues like international policy and climate change? guest: it is often issues related to the economy, the cost of living. they are among the most vulnerable economically of anyone in our society, and they are impacted specifically by

costs of living, regarding rent, you know, home ownership. these are real concerns, that are everyday stressors, but it will question the kind of future they have. broadly speaking, economic issues, economic stress and angst is what is driving a lot of young people, andof course, i think the second issue is the concern about loss of basic freedoms and rights of which reproductive health would be ki of at the top of that list, specifical, of crse, with younger women. st: i think i found the right crosstab here, digging into the report when it comes to top issues, thinking for a moment about tional issues, what issue concerns you the most, net economic issues, 32% of respondents saying some economic issue was their mosimportant

among young voters, and then at 8% is abortion and reproductiv rights, women's rights, saying that is the most important issue. and then illeg immigration, 6% of respondents sayg that is the most important issue or the issue that concerns them the most. environmental issues as 6% and foreign policy issue at 5%. john della volpe, did you want to follow up on anything there? guest: "washington journal there yeah. ther are a lot of ways to address that question. what is the most pressing concern you have? it is not as a policy, immigration, crime, etc. are not important. it is fair to say it is the most important. back in the spring poll, which also available on our website, we did something that was a totally different version of this question, where we match up all those issues you mentioned, john, and you say what is more important, this issue or that issue? we match up education with

heth care, integration with reproductive health, etc. what we found, again, is economic issues, cost-of-living, the overwhelming number of matchups against every other issue except abortion. so that is an issue, a cohort where young people feel very paionatebout. i thinkt is really about those two issues that are driving most of the political, you know, headspace of young people today for the most part. host: john della volpe with us. looking at the website, iop. rvard.edu. mike is at first on that line for thos between 30 and 50 years d. manor, texas. good morning. ller: good morning. can you hear me ok? host: yes, sir. caller: the united states is

about $37 trillion in debt, and the reason i say this is a couple odays ago, liberty ball hosted a debate between by vic ramaswamy, who imore aligned with my age five a a known war hawk, but i will concede, experienced john bolton. they posed a question, the u.s. should continue to use it diplomatic and military power around the globe to ensure america's national security. now, i say that with the understanding that we provided over $24 billion to ukraine, over $11 billion to israel, $2 billion to ethiopia, 1.6 billion dollars to jodey and. host: -- to jordan. bring in the question. caller: does america have the bandwidth for this policy, not necessarily

isolationistbut does amera have the bandwidth that the same miset second old-school mentality has had? host: mike, where do you think younvotersre on that? caller: i think young voters, we are especially tired of providing all this or an eight when we had our own country and despair. if i get your house in order before youan, you know, be the type of people who can be a philanthropist come in a layman's term. i feel like i could bring it home, but i wanted to get c-span's opinion on this. i'm a first time caller. i lien to you guys everyday while working. guest: it's an excellent question. actually to thousands of young people, service trips, town halls, i think michael does tap into the sentiment that, you know, there are very systemic

issues that require investment and foc in the u.s., talking about, you know, climate, education, access to health care, the mental health care, the list goes on. and i certainly think that young people say this is a priority, cost-of-living, an opportunity to afford an education or a home. at the same time, young people also understand and appreciate the role that america has around the globe, specificall being there for other countries in times of crisis and when humanitarian needs are required. i think it is a nuanced issue. certainly i think he taps into the sense that americans are asking for more robust investments in those basic programs, but it does not mean

that the generation believes we ould withdraw responsibility that leadership requires around the world. host: you mentioned earlier that the harvard youth poll, you usually due to a year, y are doing a third this year. guest: well, obviously it is an election year. this is a moment where younger people are going to play outside impacts. i will give you an example, john. four years ago, i argued that younger people, you know, in many ways were kind of responsible for joe biden winning the white house, when you look at exit polls and other data like the few validated voter survey, you found that donald trump won the vote over the age of 45, in the five battleground states that went from red to blue, the state of

pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, the sunbelt states, arizona, jordan, donald trump won that vote. joe biden won the youth vote by 20 points, by a 20-point margin. young voters continued to play an important role, and we think it is our responsibility to continue to, y know, help kind of share their views and empower campaigns with the real-time data, so that they can reach out and speak to the concerns that many young people have. host: how does this become your responsibility? you have done more than 40 harvard youth polls guest: over the years. yeah. we just released the 48. we have been dng this for 25 year this was never my idea to focus on the younger votes. it was the idea of two harvard undergraduates ithe late 1990's and 2000's. they looked at this campus and

campuses around the country, highchools around the country, and they thought was a disconnect. they sell many memberof their generation, which was millennials and some gen xers, engaged in a meaningful way in volunteerism and community service, but they looked at turnout data from, for example, the 1990 six presidential election, only one-third participated in voti. when gen xers, my generation, wereoters, two out of three did not even vote for present. and what aan and trevor, the two students wanted to do, was to elevate the concerns of young peop, with the idea that if we could show research them elevate their concerns of the candidates, parties of mediacom etc., would know what they care about, could communicate better, and that would lead to them feeling like they are part of the system and more likely to vote. for a riety of reasons, we are so, you know, pleased, i think,

that you people continue to vote at levels in this generation that other generations never did. host: the connecticut, this is greg on that line for those over 50 years old. good morning. caller: hi, john. love your presentation. i actually listened to the audiobook, which was great, and i was going to go to fairfield university the night you spoke, but i had covid. thankfully i'm good now. here's my question, i'm 69. i miss vietnam by one year. they stop to the draft. i have a proposal or question. that to me was the last time to use really come "hell no, we will go," and the whole anti-vietnam movement. like the frogs in the pond, where they keep turning up the

heat, and that was the last big "hell no, we won't go."do you see anything on the horizon to mirror that? thinking about the crushing student debt, "hell no, we won't pay." and johnson, maybe the whole course of history. what do you see down the road, because frankly the last time they really stepped to the plate was the vietnam war. that's my question. guest: thanks for calling. glad you are feeling better, greg. i think about it almost the other way, which rather than "hell no, we won't go." i think younger people are looking r something bigger than themselves to be called for. i think a national service, program that calls younger people to service actually will

be something that connects younger pele. this is a generation where they care deeply about helping other, more vulnerable people, they feel disconnected from each other because of covid and so much of ourolitical disions today. this is a generation that, f the most part, 10 years come i remember 9/11. in fact, they don't really have a memory when all of us could kind of come together under the same cause. so i think rather than "hell no, we won't go," if they were inspired to engage in more meaninul ways, i think that is something this generation would support, and i think iis a topic that you bring us all together. host: you mentioned the 2020 book -- 20ook, "fight: how gen z is channeling their fear and passn to save america."

the author, john della volpe, the introduction, david hawkins remind us of david hogg is. guest: david hogg, thank you. , it is a young man who was witness to the parkland shooting at marjory sneman douglas high school on february 14, 2018, and thankfully h oiously survived, and davidas a key figure with many of s classmates who organized the march for our lives and became one of the most significant young activists of our time. i got a chance to visit with david the days following that tragedy, before he organized his march them and we stayed close over the years. itas verkind of him to write that forward. he graduated from harvard, from

coege last year, and has dedicated his li to inspiring other young people, and he has a p.a.c., political action committee, that suppts young people rning for office, mostly i think at the statehouse level. host: tom in illinois on the line for those over 50. good morning. caller: hi there, john and c-span. appreciate the opportunity. when you talk about the youn vote, i real feel like the surprise is women, and about health care, especiay with abortion, and i think women always outvo men, and i really thin that youth with abortion especially is really going to surprise a lot and especially red states, and especially young man, and i think a lot of younger men, especially college education, are, you know, more for more guns, having less

rights on thatbut i think abortion ithe number one issue, especially with young women, because women generally, even young, if young women, also young men, that's what i want to know, because i think abortion will be e number one issue, and that iall i have to say. thank you very much. st: john della voe, iill just mention the numbers from your pole, among likely male voters, harris is leaving trump 63% to 33%, among likely fale voters, harris is leading 73% to 23%. guest: that is significant, obviously. she is mentioning among both men and women. she has the majority come as you noted, and that survey of younger men. so she is pushing to 70%. i'm not sure how much more room she has to grow there, but i

think that the caller is correct, that there is far more enthusiasm today than there was six months ago, as was raid, has kind of narrowed, young women are extremely supportive and passionate about harris. but, again, reproductive health is not just a women's issue, it is an issue that is also, i think, motivates young man. it is beyond reproductive health, and really speaks to word basic fundamental freedoms. the springtime, we he long surveys, and we see the theme foseveral years, where younger people are concerned about the lack and losing basic rights, well before roe v. wade was even overturned. the concern about clean air, clean water, and quality education, the right to feel safe in public spaces in schools because of gun violence, like

the mentioned. -- likely caller mentied. i think reproductive health care is the tip of the spear. host: is there any demographic at you've measured were donald trump's leaving kamala harris in young people? gues he was leaving and some otr poles i conducted the summer among all young people. in early july, donald ump was leading among all the young pele. since kamala harris has topped the democratic ticket, you know, we seen a complete shift in terms of enthusiasm and support. it is something that i compare committee feels like 2018, e hopefulness, excitement, enthusiasm that we found among millennials at that point, obama, but also 2018, when david

hogg registered young people, organized th a mission in mind to win races, like aoc's in new yorknd other races and maka difference. so you hap hopefulness, and so the determination and organizing on the ground that i thk is notable. , again, but the margin with youngemen is fairly narrow. it could evoe. it's another reason we have another pole coming out in a couple weeks. host: to cj in minnesota, the line for those between 30 and 60 years old. good morning. caller: good morning to you, and thank you for letting me get in on thi i want to know if this and it is going to block everything that kamala and walz tried to do if they win the election, the same way they blocked everything that obama was trying to do when he won. and know that when obama first

won, the senate said they were going to make him a one term president, and then they turn around when he won and said, "we are not going to work with you at all." host: cj, is there a young voter element to your question? caller: well, that's the concerning behavior of our government when it comes to trying to get revenge for their party not winng. host: john della volpe. guest: yeah. well, a couple of things, we don't know whether republicans or democrats wl, you know, le the senate, one, but i think the other point is, let's look at what young people, as i id, voted in record numbers in 20, 60% voted for joe biden. when i asked people back in 2019, 2020, why they were voting, they mentioned three issues predominantly. they talkedbout ccerns about their debt, they taed about concerns about climate they

talk about concerns related to gun violence, and we have an extremy divided nation, clearly has been difficult to move things through congress. i think that young people, i think the bidenere is administration actually delivered -- biden-harris administration actually delivered, whether you appro or not, they delivered much of what was promised. i believe the last i saw come over 160, $170illion h been approved, deste the fact that the supreme court ruled one of biden's plans was not actually imemented still through other actions, 170 billion dollars. he obviously has a large investment in climate change in the nation's history, and the fact that we still have

far too much gun violence and we ve t first bipartisan gun violence prevention legistion in over years. it is hard to get things done, but one of the messages i think need collectively to share is that politics and government c make real differences in peop's lives, that if you participate and you vote, things can happen. i n't think there's enough recognition, and it is important to recognize when things get done, especially when things are at the top of their concerns. host: on congress, there's an old adage that people don't like congress but they like their member of congress. that's why some of these folks, many of these folks stay around for a long time. is that true among young people? do young people generally like their member of congress, even if they do not feel eat about congress as a whole? guest: wl, they certainly don'feel great about congress as a whole.

it's a question we don't spend a lot of time working on. i think there's probably not that much recognition of who their member of congress is and what he or she h been doing on their behalf. one of the most impornt predictors of whether young people participate ithe big leaf to where th see that member of congress making a tangible difference in their lives and the lives of those they care about in their communities. i think this is an incredible asset that democrats and republican members of ngress and resource that they should tap into in terms o the re of many people in their community. from the 1980' to the 1990's and 2014, only one in five, at the most, young ople even turned out to support or vote in the midterm congssional elections. when gen z turned of age,

inspired by david hogg and the parkla movement, we found that 35% voted. and we saw similar numbers in 2000, in 2020 two midtms, especially in those battleground states. still a lot more wk to do, both young voters to understand what is haening locally, members of congress, to reach out and tell their story come of the things that they care about, inspire young people to participate. host: less than 10 minutes left with john della volp if you want to go through this pole youelf, the latesversion was conducted in ptember by the harvard institute of politics, it is iop.harvard.edu. edna, chicago, on the line for over 50, you are next. caller: i would like to know why "good morning america" fir evolve, but i would like to know

why young people hesitate to vote. don't they realize this vote -- their vote will save this country for them? guest: that is a terrific question, and now. as i said, there are a lot of groups in this country helping younger people to vote come to register them and just let tm know what the process is as well as, you know, how to access absentee ballots, it's that rough i personally do not think weo enough work in terms of reminding people why they should vote. when i look at the various subgroups of all young americans, there are two groups that i have identified, that represent about half of young people. for shorthand, i call one of them "show me." it's not about those 30-second

ads, it show me why i should vote, show me where we can do something meaningful, like at a red flag laws or restrictions for young people to access automatic weapons or invest in climate. but we need to show people, we need to show young people the effect that participation can have. that is one group of young people. there's another group of young people, edna, that i called to teach me cohort. these are folks that may be do not have a high quality of civic education, and they, sometimes they are intimidated to ask important questions about how issues that care about can be affected by voting, or which party stands for reproductive health versus restricting, you know, abortion, which party is focusing on an economic theory that believes investing in tax

cuts for companies will then trickle down to workers and others compared to tax cuts from working class. these are basic questions that re young people, that we appreciate may not know the answers to. beyond these 30-second ads, though something we can all do can have conversations with young people in our community, help them see the tangible difference that voting and make. host: this october 7, a year since the hamas attack on israel, what is your read about protest on college campuses, the war in gaza, and expansion since? and what it has told us about young people specifically and how they feel about this conflict that continues to grow regionally? guest: yes, i think it lls us a few things. i think that one is, we talked about it at the outset, that it

is driving issues for most young voters, related to the da y-toay stresses and out, asked that they have, -- and economs that they have, concerns about losing access to abortion, medical care, and other basic freedoms, number one. number two, it does not mean to say that what is happening in israel and gaza and throughout that region isn't important. we did kind of a deeper dive on these issues in the springtime, and whate found was that younger peoe wer unique relative to other generations in terms of the high vels of sympathy they felt, both for the palestinian people but ao the israeli people, and, of course,

too many people were held hostage to that. however, that sympathy did not extend to theovernment of israel were the organization leading the palestinian movement. so, agai i think the message from young people is that they see the vulnerability, and they recognize that fact on either si of the border. host: the third youth poll that is coming out this year, when is a coming out? how many people are you surveying? the issues you're talking about, israel, hamas, the middle east, are they going to be included in that survey? guest: yes, we will include some of that, some of the open-ded questions, "what is driving your vote?" we will find out which candidate they believe they trust moreo handle issues, including israel-hamas, gaza. we will talk to 2000 young americans, all young americans, registered voters and likely

voters, and things are moving quickly. we want to see the degree to which things have evolved since the last survey. look for that survey in the nal week of october. host: final week of october, and we will talk about it when it does come out here on c-span. john della volpe, harvard institute of politic appreciate your ti, sir. guest: thank you. host: that will do it for our program this morning. we will be back tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. eastern, 4:00 p.m. pacific tomorrow. in the meantime, have a great monday. [captions pyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ >> today marks one year since the october 7 hamas terrorist attack on israel.

here is a look at our live coverage on c-span surrounding the annirsary. 11:45 a.m.astern, president biden and first lady jill biden will take part in the candle lighting ceremony in the white house blue room. at 4:00 p.m. eastern, vice president kamala harris and the second gentleman will plant a memorial tree on the ground of their residence at the naval observatory. former president trump speaks at an event in miami marking the one-year anniversary of the attacks. you can watch these events live on c-span now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. >> do you solemn swear that in the testimony you are about to give will behe truth, the whe truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? >> weeknights, watch our encore presentation of american htory tv's 10-part seriescongress