congress or the senate, i mean it. we reelected a democratic governor to find a replacement for me. but teddy and ethel kennedy would hear none of it. you know, the fact is she did for the country, ethel helped my family find a way forward with principle and purpose. we saw how she picked up bobby's cause and stamped her own mark on our country. marching for civil rights that you heard about today. and so much more. she once said for anyone to achieve something, you have to show a little courage.

you must give it all you've got. it reminded me of my mom. my mom used to say, courage lives in every heart and one day it will be called upon. she meant it. for over 50 years, she give everything she had and we are a better nation and a better world because of ethel kennedy. let me close with this. this year, i delivered the commencement speech at morehouse college in atlanta. i noted that had we been in church that day, there would be

a reflection about the resurrection and redemption. remember, jesus buried on friday and then sunday he rose again. we don't talk nearly enough about that saturday, when his disciples felt all hope was lost. all hope was lost. and our lives, and the lives of our nation, we have those saturdays. thank god your mom, your grandma, your great grandma was there for me, to bear witness to the day before glory. to see people's pain and not look away. what work is to be done on

saturday is to move pain to purpose. how can faith get a person, get a nation through what is coming. my message to all of us here today, to the entire country is look to ethel kennedy's faith, to the kennedy family. presumptuous of me to say this and maybe sound and appropriate, but to the kennedy family, the biden family is here for you. as you have always been for us. you change the life of my boys. you really did. when i lost my son beau, attorney general of the state of delaware, he volunteered to join

the national guard as attorney general, you either have to be state property or federal property. he temporarily gave up his office to go with his unit for a year in iraq. unfortunately, that was in and out of iraq as barack knows and afghanistan 30 sometimes and i got to see him several times, but the bad news was he was about a half-mile away from a burn pit. 100 yards long, 10 feet deep. burning every night from waste to everything. poisoning the air. auntie came home with stage four

geo blast oma and he died. your mom was there then too. i apologize. so, from the biden family to the kennedy family, a hymn that is very close to our heart. based on the 91st psalm goes like this. may he raise you up on eagles wings and bear you on the breath of don, make you to shine like the sun, and hold you in the palm of his hand. may god bless ethel kennedy. and may she be reunited with the blessed pieces of her soul in heaven. god bless you all and thank you

for letting me participate. thank you. [applause] [applause] [applause]

[applause] >> my sisters and brothers, before we go our separate ways, let us take leave of our sister ethel, may we express our affection for her, may it strengthen our hope and ease our sadness and one day we shall joyfully greet her again when the love of christ destroys even death itself. ♪

♪ ♪ >> ♪ may angels leave you two abraham's side receive her soul and presenter to god to god most high

give her eternal rest o lord and may your light shine on her forever receive her her soul and present her to god to god the most high. ♪ ♪ >> into your hands father of mercy we commend our sister ethel in the sure and certain hope that together with all who have died in christ, she will rise with him on the last day. we give you thanks for the blessings you bestowed upon her in this life. they are signs to us of your

goodness and of our fellowship with the saints in christ. merciful lord, turned toward us and listen to our prayers. open the gates of paradise to your servants. help us to comfort one another with assurances of faith until we all meet in christ and are with you and with our sister forever. we ask this through christ our lord, amen. may the lord bless all of you. father, son, and holy spirit. let's go in peace to love and serve the lord and one another. ♪ ♪

>> ♪ o beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain for purple mountains' majesty above the fruited plain america, america god shed his grace on three and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea ♪ ♪ ♪

>> join now in singing o when the saints go marching in. >> ♪ o, when the saints go marching in o, when the saints go marching in oh yes, i want to be in that number when the saints go marching in o, go marching in oh when dear ethel goes marching in yes i want to be in that number when the saints go marching in o, when the throngs o when the drums begin two

yes, i want to be in that number when the saints go marching in o o when the stars fall from the sky when the stars fall from the sky o yes i want to be in that number when the saints go marching in o when the saints go marching in o when the saints go marching in oh lord, i want to be in that number yes, when the saints go marching in o when dear ethel goes marching in goes marching in when dear ethel goes marching in

yes i want to be in that number when the saints go marching in. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> ethel kennedy, the widow of the late senator robert kennedy died last week at the age of 96.

she was born in chicago in 1928 and raised in connecticut. she went on to mary robert f kennedy in 1950 and shortly after her husband's assassination, she founded the robert f kennedy human rights organization. in 2014, she was awarded the presidential medal of freedom by president obama, she died october 10 from complications related to a stroke. she was 96. ♪ >> the house will be in order. >> this year, c-span celebrates 45 years of covering congress like no other. since 1979, we have been your primary source on capitol hill, providing balanced unfiltered coverage of government, taking you to where the policy debate is decided. c-span, 45 years and counting.

powered by cable. >> up next, vermont governor phil scott and esther charleston , his democratichallenger participate in a debate leading up to the state gubernatorial election. candidates field questions on abortion, climate change, and the state budget. the debate hosted by a nonprofit news site. >> good evening and welcome to the 2024 dicker debate series. i'm the editor-in-chief. every few years we have the opportunity to introduce you to those vying for vermont's top political offices and ask you questions on their behalf. it is to produce rigorous journalism and explain complex issues for those public accountability and foster democratic and civic engagement. tonight, we will hear from the leading candidates for governor of vermont. we will be joined by candidates

from the u.s. house and senate. before i introduced the candidates and moderators, i will begin with the rules. we will open was 60 seconds or less. some have been submitted by readers. candidates will have 90 seconds

to respond to such questions. the moderators may pose brief follow-ups or allow the opposing candidate to respond. we will generally now -- allow a candidate named or invoked to respond. follow-ups and responses will be limited. we will ask both candidates to pose a question to one another. we will have a brief lightning round during which candidates will answer questions. our moderators will be timing answers and they will hold up a yellow card when there are 15 seconds remaining and a red card when time is up. i have the pleasure of introducing her candidates and moderators. first we are joined by governor phil scott, running for his next term as the chief executive. a republican and former small business owner, he previously served as a governor and state senator. challenging him is esther charleston, an educator and consultant.

i want to introduce our moderators. take it away. >> we will begin with an introductory question for each of you. governor scott, please name one concrete policy goal you have not achieved during your nearly eight years in office and how will you get it done in a fifth term? you have 60 seconds to respond. gov. scott: well, i think when i first came into office, i had a few goals. make vermont more affordable and protect the most vulnerable. i would say making vermont more affordable has been challenging. over the last two years especially with all the taxes and fees that have been raised in making vermont even more

unaffordable than before. from my standpoint we have to continue to work on all three of those initiatives. making vermont more affordable is critical. >> thank you. miss charlestin please name one goal that you have seen this got administration not achieved and what would you do to make it a top priority if you win? ms. charlestin: housing, housing, housing. as i travel the state and campaign around, the one thing i hear the most is people cannot afford to live here so i agree with the governor. affordability is a priority. would my administration would do would increase affordable housing. so that would mean prioritizing the development of mixed income housing. >> thank you. we will now turn to general questions, which you will have 90 seconds to answer. this fall, the state has continued to wind down its

pandemic era motel emergency housing program for vermonters experiencing homelessness. this has resulted in a mass wave of evictions. what plans do you have to find or make homes for the many homeless people in vermont or the folks who are temporarily homeless through difficult circumstances and those who have been unable to live on their own due to mental or physical problems? ms. charlestin, we will start with you. you have 90 seconds. ms. charlestin: i believe in a housing first model. winter is coming. families are on the streets and communities are getting check tents for families. behind the library. behind the library is a tent community. i would focus on making sure

people are housed and then supporting them with mental health services, substance abuse services and job placement. we know housing is the beginning, but how do we help them transition to permanent housing? >> governor scott, what plans do you have to find or make homes available to those experiencing homelessness. gov. scott: we have re-housed more homeless vermonters and invest in into homelessness. the solution to all of this is more housing. i'm glad to hear esther leading the charge on that as well. we need all the help we can get. we also have to make sure they can afford their rent or mortgage as well. the legislature has fought us at every turn. the hotel motel program was never meant to be a long-term housing solution because it is not good for the people in it. they are isolated and they need

to have interaction with our dcf and so forth to get them the help they need. the democrats in the legislature understand this, the short-term safety net is what it was meant to be. the mobile home program, i would like to talk about this a little more, probably running short on time. we will have more units online to re-house the families who need it in the near future. we hope to have 30 online by the end of this year in terms of the mobile home program and we hope to have 100 done by the end of next calendar year. >> thank you. we will stick with this topic for a quick 32nd follow-up. governor scott, of the vermonters who have been evicted from the program this fall, many are children. if one of those children were

watching this debate, what would you have to say to them? gov. scott: yes, we are working on that. we have our folks at human services who have been interacting with them we are coming up with can tinge see plans. -- contingency plans. shelters are part of the answer. we want to make sure they have a place to go. what makes them homeless, what is it that created that in the first place. we want to know. we know we have a long way to go, but we are making ground there as well. >> ms. charlestin, the same question for you. 30 seconds, what would you tell one of those children who have been affected this fall? ms. charlestin: i would say icu. i remember as an administrator knowing students going through this.

i would say icu and it is on except bill you are in the streets with your family. them being housed should be a number one priority. >> thank you. i will handed over to neil for the next question. >> thank you. we will now turn to a topic on many vermonters minds following the summer floods of 2023 and 2024. given that extreme weather would likely continue to threaten flood prone towns and cities, does it make sense to continue rebuilding them year after year or should we begin something different? ms. charlestin, you have 90 seconds. ms. charlestin: one of my top priorities is climate resilient communities because climate change is real, the floods that happen over the last two years i believe are coming again. so being ready is important. the way what -- my administration would work to do so is increasing resilience by restoring wetlands. that is a way to make sure that

our communities are safe. how are we moving folks who are in water planes, making sure they are safe? it is impacting the low to middle income and usually they are the ones who don't have the money to move or have options, so making that a priority is important. >> thank you. governor scott, do you think it makes sense to keep rebuilding flood prone towns and cities? what would you do differently? gov. scott: i don't think there was one single answer on this. climate change is real and we are seeing the impacts of more severe weather right now as we speak, especially in the southern part of our country. i believe that it is going to be a mix of many different things. there are some situations where people should be living where they are living. they should do the buyout programs in those areas, we should use flood mitigation money to buy up some land on the

banks of rivers and reservoirs at capacity, where we have these high-volume rainstorms. but we should also invest in resiliency and some of those homes as well. but it depends on the situation, it depends on the city. building more housing is probably the answer as well because people don't have choices right now, even if they want to move or sell their home or take part in the buyout program, they have no place to go. if this is the crisis we all say it is, we need action now, treat it like a crisis. >> a quick follow-up for both of you, can you identify the most important thing vermont towns can do to become more flood resilient? ms. charlestin, you have 30

seconds. ms. charlestin: after the flood, we knocked on doors, we saw vermonters come together, regardless of party lines. i saw as being vermont-strong. i would say making sure you are getting the help you need to being connected to your community. >> governor scott? gov. scott: once again, it goes back to the same thing to determine whether you are going to advocate for a buyout and move out of your home and put that back into green space or are you going to be able to harden that with resources from programs and so forth? we might be able to do that in some cases. there is no one single answer to any of this. >> thank you. we will shift from climate induced whether to vermont's efforts to address climate change.

this day's independent public utility commission suggested the clean heat standard does not make sense for vermont. instead they recommended a thermal energy benefit charge or a tax on heating fuels. do you support the clean heat standard as a way to reduce greenhouse gas omissions? do you have an alternative? ms. charlestin: i support any effort that gives vermonters the option to not only if they want to use oil they can, but they can use heat pumps, they cannot. options is what i support. >> so you don't have a specific alternative proposal? ms. charlestin: whatever gives vermonters options.

thank you. >> governor scott? you have been very clear you do not support the clean heat standard. what proposals would you pursue to meet the targets? gov. scott: again, the global warming solutions act i didn't support either. i thought it put us at a disadvantage by adopting that and we are being sued right now because of that action. they overrode the veto. we should attack this like we did clean water. you might remember there was fis ago. all kinds of different strategies. knee-jerk reaction to just institute another tax and we finally convinced them after a couple of years that there was another way to do it and i below

that to be the case now. we have to be creative in doing that but i want to be clear, the p.u.c. looks like their secondary recommendation will be a carbon tax. they call it something different but it's a carbon tax and i won't support that. that's regressive. that will hurt the very people they're trying to help. we just need to get creative. move forward. heat pumps and some of the things we've putt forward to help move us in the right direction is the move to due go but it's not going to happen joint. >> another quick follow-up for boast of you. miss charlestin, how much responsibility does vice president have to act in this climate crisis? ms. charlestin: we are stewards

of this earth and i believe it's important for us to take charge. we need to make charge that our planet is ready for the future so that means taking the initiative, being proactive. working with different orbs to make that happen. we don't have to do it alone, we can partner with other folks but it is a priority. thank you. >> thank you. governor scott, how much responsibility to do you think vermont has to play in this? gov. scott: obviously we have a role to play, as people do across the globe but we emmitt the lowest number of carbon emissions probability of almost any state. we can't do this alone and we can't punish vermonters along the wail. there has to be a better way. we have to, again, get creative and reduce our reliance on carbon emissions and we can do

that while working with electric vehicles and heat pumps and so forth. 88. >> thank you, governor. sarah? >> thank you. now to another reader-submitted question. in april the vice president senate voted 19-9 against confirming your nominee for secretary of education, governor. a month later you appointed her interim secretary, a role she has filled sense. jim would like you to explain why you "ignored the vermont senate's decision not to hire saunders, a move he called not very democratic. governor? gov. scott: again, i i thought it was a political hit job on myself. but let's go back just a little bit on this. there were 17 or 19 applications

for this position. secretary of education. and it was up tonight state board of education to whittle those down to three. they sent those three for us to interview, which we did. zoe was the logical choice. she's happened so much experience. i think the more people get to know her and i think there are a number of people who have now changed their minds about her instead of just reading some of the diatribe, they actually got to know her and she is energetic, she's smart. she's made changes already and she can -- she would do that great job in that position. as you know, there was a lawsuit brought against us. the other side lost and it was within our right to do what we

did. she is interim secretary of education at this point and we will then make a decision as to whether to forward her name again to the senate. >> mrs. charlestin, what do you make of the governor's decision to ignore the senate's decision and do you agree with the two who the governor alluded to who sued saying it was against the constitutional north to confirm apoints. 90 seconds. ms. charlestin: i do not agree with the governor's approach, with the way he appointed zoe saunders. the senate had a lot of letters come to them from the community with folks who were worried about her representing public schools with limited public school experience. it was a hard hit and did not

build camaraderie amongst leaders. so instead it brought a lot more division. do i agree with the senators who took that stand? i think it's within their right and they went about the law and as governor scott said, their didn't win and i think they did the right thing. >> governor, you already alluded to this but interim saunders' point does expire in february of 2025. so what are your plans to renominate her or not to an interim capacity, to a permit capacity? what's your plan right now? 30 seconds. gov. scott: i want to go back to something that esther had said about zoe nod of not having any public education experience. and that's false. she has 10 years of experience in public education and, again,

they acted wouldn't doing their homework. the chair of the senate education committee, a democrat, advocated for her and called it politics at its worst. so, gwen, i just -- discount that she doesn't have the experience. it's just that people didn't wants to give her the chance. i don't know if zoe would want to move forward. we'll posit her about that and make a decision in the coming here if i'm re-elected and make a decision at that point. >> mrs. charlestin would you re-elect her to her position? ms. charlestin: no, i'm an educator myself and i would not.

>> thank you, both. governor scott, you have -- a record 52 bills in your time in office. that is more that have a quarter of vetos issued in state history. some have criticized you for not working more collaborative li before bills reach your desk. what could you personally do differently going forward to find consensus? gov. scott: well, first of all, there are probably should have been more conveniented than that number. this legislature, the legislature has passed a record number of bad bills over the last six or seven years. so i think we need to work together but when you have a pseudo majority and they flaunt they don't need to work with the executive branch and they have

remarked such as that it really doesn't matter and they can do it without the executive -- without the governor, without the and he can active branch. i'm not asking them to cross over, just meet me in the middle. we can work together but a super majority with the power and numbers they have has made that impossible because they have no interest in working together. they just want to score political points. >> mrs. charlestin of the bills that governor scott vetoed this year, which would you have signed? ms. charlestin: i would say i would sign most of them but i struggle with a head of state blaming part time because legislatures make $15,000 a year and don't even get health care.

blaming them from where we were when you've been in office for eight years. i struggle with that so i believe in working with legislators from the beginning, showing up, being at the table. having those hard discussions and not leading through veto. gov. scott: it would be a happen day for me when i don't have to issue another veto. when we willfully come to the table and solve problems. 100 bills were passed in 2024. 75 of them passed in the last week of 2024's session. and about 30, 40 passed on the last day alone. tell me, tell me those legislators were reading those bills and really knew what they were doing at this point. that's what's frustrating here. it's like forced through and

it's something they need to work on. >> all right. thank you both and we'll be returning to that subjective legislator play pay so hang on. back to you, neil. >> thank you, sarah. we had an opportunity for candidates to ask each other questions. each candidate may ask their opponent one question at this point and these please should be questions and not speeches. you'll have 90 seconds to answer and we may ask or allow follow-up questions. mrs. charlestin, you may ask the first one. narrator: through thank you. as a proud haitian american i am deeply concerned by the hurtful and false statements made by trump and j.d. vance about immigrants, particularly haitian immigrants. how do you plan to support and protect immigrant communities, especially in the light of such dangerous rhetoric?

gov. scott: i agree with you, esther. those remarks were callous, uncalled for, un-american and i hope and i've said this publicly before. i hope donald trump isn't successful in november. we're welcoming -- i think part of our answer here in involvement because of our demographics. we're aging out. a stagnant population, our workforce is declining. we need more immigration and diversity here in our state and we advocated for that. we asked first the trump administration to send us more refugees so we could keep the best part of what's beautiful about vice president and we've been successful in that area so i want more immigration. i want machine refugees and we want to do our part so i think we're on the same page there,

esther. >> mrs. charlestin, any follow-up? ms. charlestin: i'm happy to hear that you don't agree with trump and j.d. vance and i'm wondering what specific programs you've heard since you've been in office. gov. scott: we're worked with the afghans being in limbo after the withdrawal from the middle east. we instate a program -- it's in -- at this point in time. through the translation services, refugee housing, refugee settlement has gone very well and, again, we hope to do more in the future.

with training programs and some of these skills that we need and, again, i think this is something we've been involved in refugees in the -- county area, in the afghan refugee resetment program. it's all moving us in the right direction but we need morehouseing. gwen, bottom line is we don't have the housing to support more and we need more. >> thank you, governor. it is now your turn to ask ms. charlestin a question. gov. scott: i think i heard that you might have had a business at one time but what's your experience in managing people, being governor means you're heading up an enterprise of about 8,000 employees. i'm wondering can you give us

your perspective on that? ms. charlestin: absolutely. i am a small business owner in vice president and i've been able to identify people who are experts to help bring me along. i've been able to see how folks work and that's what makes me a great leader. i'm willing to show up, collaborate. talk through -- the work that i do, i help folks have hard conversations and sit with what's uncomfortable for them and as a result we're able to get to the other side together so my work includes identifying experts and leaders and to bring us along so i know the work of governing, as you know, is really bringing people along. having a team of advisors, experts in their field to help make vermont better and that is what i am really good at.

>> any follow-up, governor? gov. scott: how many employees do you have, esther? ms. charlestin: well, it depends. right now i am a consultant all by myself and i also run another company with four employees. gov. scott: i wasn't sure what the business was. ms. charlestin: i'm a speaker and educational consultant. >> thank you, both. we'll turn it back to sarah. >> thanks. neil. we'll have another round of candidate-to-candidate questions in a bit but we'll turn to questions we'll pose to each of you. leader chris leslie wants to know what you will do to address the rising cost of education and the corresponding impact on property taxes. "what is vermont state doing to ensure it doesn't continue to

push more residents or potential residents to another state due to increasingly high cost of taxes" governor scott, you have 90 seconds. gov. scott: this is the question and something we do have to address and we tried to at the end of the session but that was all for thought. since i came into office -- when i first came in we were spending $1.4 billion for education and now we're spending about $2.4 billion so it's gone up almost a billion familiars in 80's to 10 years. we put forward dozens of proposals. all rejected by the legislature. but never put their own ideas forwards and partnered with me. and it's part of our affordabilities crisis that we face. we spend more per pupil than any

other state i believe in the country. so we need more consolidation, we need more structural form and we need to work together with school boards with, simms, with the legislature and figure which out, because we can't continue down this path. as you know. in was about a 14% increase this year alone and it was quite a bit the year previous to that and it doesn't look like, because we didn't do anything in terms of structural reform, it's going to be another big increase next year so we have to address it now. we can't study it for two years and then do something. we need to do something about it right now. >> a quick follow-up for you, governor. throughout this legislative system, you've frequently sent

many proposals to rein in spending which the legislature hasn't taken you up on. do you have new ideas that you think the legislature would actually support to address this is issue? gov. scott: i think this study coming outs is going to identify some of the same opportunities as the suggests we've made and some of the suggestions that were made in previous, dozens of other studies that have been done over the years. i think we need a five-year plan to freeze rates so we can reinvest from kids because the money is not getting to the kids. it's getting suckeds up in the system. we need to use natural attrition to bring down that statue to students ratio. we needs health care reform. the formulas need to be changed as well. there are a lot of things we can do but none of it is easy.

consolidation is a big part of this and it's note easy to consolidate schools. >> thanks, governor. miss charlestin, how would you answer chris leslie's question about containing education spending and slowing the rise of property taxes? ms. charlestin: so when i think about our education system and as i work in the school systems as a consultant and when i worked in the school system as an employee, for a lot of cracks and teachers are needing support, students are needing support. to hear the amount of money we're spending, yes, it's high and i question where the money that we do have, where does it go? and using property taxes to funds education, that's not sustainable. we can't. homeowners are feeling that burdensen and our schools are not getting what they need. they're not getting everything that they need so it's important

that we come up with a plan to funds education a different way and to support teachers and students. >> i want to drill down a little bit on what you just mentioned on property taxes not being the best way to fund education. if not property taxes, how would you profession that you fund it? miss charlestin? ms. charlestin: all right. i think about fair share in vermont. making sure that people are paying their fair share. we have wealthy vermonters who are interested or in participating legislators to tax them more so they can be a part of this community in a new way. that is an avenue we haven't explored to the fullest.

>> miss charlestin. people who have served as governor of vermont have had previous experience at the high levels of states government. how can you assure voter you have the experience to run an enterprise with more than 8,000 employees. ms. charlestin: i am an expert at finding experts. i would bring on board experts and folks who represent all of vermont, who can help us make decisions so that we can be in the best place, work with legislators, work alongside to make our state great so i would use my power to do that. yes, i've been on the select board. i ran two successful campaigns and yes, that doesn't seem like a lot and the way i got here was by finding experts and that's

what i'm really good at. identifying those good people to help us get from. >> thank you. governor scott, only one other governor of vermont, dean, has won five terms. many other states barred governors from serving more than 80's consecutive years. why do you feel that the same person, you, should remain governor for so long? gov. scott: there's just too much work left to do. i struggled with this decision to run another term but when i got into thissics i want to leave vice president in better shape than what i found it and i can't say this at this point after the last six years. the first few years, things weren't going exactly as i wanted but at least we're reducing some of the burdensen on vermonters and the last two

years has gone in the opposite direction. it's helped hurt the low and middle-income vermonters. so i just feel as though somebody has to step up and i wasn't seeing a whole lot of -- i didn't have a lot of faith in who was going to run next at this point in time so i just thought we need some consistency, continuity and we need more balance in the legislature in order to get what we need. i want to go back to one more thing in terms of the education funding and i don't mind changing the formula at all but if programs continue to spend $22.4 billion or more, what difference does does it make what pocket it comes out of? and as far as the people with wealth in vermont, we have 3,500

people with incomes over 300,000. and 1,000 with incomes over a million. so just keep that in minds when we talk about taxing the rich at this point because we don't have that many rich. >> a quick follow-up for you, governor. if you do win re-election this fall, would that be it or would you will consider running for another term? gov. scott: one step at a time, sarah. is i haven't been successful yet. so one election at a time. >> thank you, back to you, neil. you're muted. >> thank you. sorry about that. -- at least 24,000 new housing

units over the next two to four years. in 2022 just 2,300 new homes were permitted. that's less that be half of what is needed annually to reach the target. how would up -- as governor, miss charlestin? you have 90 seconds. ms. charlestin: my administration would work with municipalities to revise zoning laws. a lot of it is, yes, we needs to invest with money but there are regulatory barriers that that won't allow new folks to come in and really build new construction so my administration would focus on that. not only in the urban areas but also in rural areas as well. >> thank you. governor scott, how would you secure at least 24,000 new housing units over the next five years? gov. scott: i wish esther had

done legislature last year because we needs new regulatory reform. passed by the legislature, the conservation bill and they put the title as a housing bill and it just didn't go anywhere near far enough and as you said, we're going to needs a number of $24,000 to 36,000 new homes by 2029 and we need more incentives for developers. reneed regulatory reform, both on the state and local level. and it can't be for just two years. that's not long enough. we need more consistent city than that and we can invest in more of our involvement housing improvement program that we developed. it's been incredibly successful and we can do more with

manufactured homes and so forth and we're doing a lot of that right now but there's more opportunity there. some of our money that goes to the e.c.b., housing cons ration corps, they're spending $450,000 to $650,000 per unit and that's not affordable housing so we needs to look in another direction. the mobile homes, as i said. we have a program now where we can get people into ownership positions for less than $100,000. >> thank you, governor. vermont legislators make about $15,000 a year even though their work five days a week for at least four months of the year. governor scott, you introduced a

bill that would have raiseeds legislature pay. if not passed, how do you plan to improve that? gov. scott: it wasn't just more pay. it was paying them over the summer, working on mondays, health care, all kinds of things. they want to turn it into a situation where it's a full-time legislature like massachusetts and that's the last thing we needs here in this state. i agree with more pay but i've said repeatedly -- in fact, i went and testified on this when i was a senator. we said what we need is a shorter session and we need a contract. work on a contract that gives you more money. figure out the length of the session. 90 calendar days, that's it,

you're done. there are some states that meet every other year. some have 90, 120 tays, whatever it is. we could do this and pay more money and save money by doing so. >> does that mean you would support a clean bill with a pay raise? >> a pay raise with a shorter session. shortened session, a contract amount for that. once you hit the cap, the ends of that session, you don't.net paid anymore so it's an insent active to get done. if you get done early, in >> thank you, governor. ms. charlestin, would you have signed to raise lawmaker pay? ms. charlestin: i would have definitely signed it. the fact that they get paid $50,000 and have no health care,

i think about equity. who gets to be a legislator? folks who are either wrist direct -- retired or who can make their sacrifice. it limits to can participate in our democracy and that is unacceptable to me. >> would you support a shortened legislative session along with higher pay? ms. charlestin: no, in the time that they have i feel like they have so much going on and they are so busy, they don't feel like they have enough time. i have done emerge, i have a lot of sisters in the legislature who worked through the summer to get ready for the year every at no, i would not go for shorter time. >> thank you. according to the council on state governments, vermont pays its governor moore than all but four other states despite being among the smallest. would you support a given at oriole pay cut? gov. scott: i'm not in it for the money. and i'm not the one who set the

rate, so if they wanted to do something with that, that is fine. but again, i just go back, they are so busy, they don't always work as hard as they do in the first part of the session as they did in the last. there were about 100 bills passed and the last week or so. they can get the work done if they set their mind to it. >> thank you, governor. ms. charlestin, would you support a gubernatorial pay cut? ms. charlestin: yes. so legislators get paid more, i would support it absolutely. and governor, i know you don't have to worry about it because i believe you have $1.4 million which is comfortable, but not a lot of people are in that place. gov. scott: if you could pointed out to me, i would appreciate it. ms. charlestin: we should have coffee, let's talk after.

>> thank you both. >> thanks, neal. health insurance premiums in vermont have increased significantly the last eight years, up 10% to 20% over each of the last three years. a small percentage of vermonters are uninsured. around 40% are underinsured. meaning we cannot afford to use the insurance we do have thanks to high co-pays and deductibles. there have been no significant attempts at reforming our health care system over that period of time. do you intend to do anything in the next two years to address this problem and are you willing to consider universal primary care? ms. charlestin, i will post this to you first, you have 90 seconds. ms. charlestin: yes, i do support universal primary care.

that is the dream and that is something my administration would work toward. i know people are feeling the burden. families, businesses, schools, everybody is. getting a solution would be really important. >> governor scott, what would you do to solve this problem and would you consider universal primary care? gov. scott: universal primary care is not going to solve this fiscal crisis we have. it is not free. it is still a bill that has to be paid. the problem we face in vermont are demographics. and when you look at the statistics, we have lost 14,000 of our youth 18 and under since 2010 through 2022. we have lost 28,000 in the age

group. we have gained almost 50,000 over the age of 55 and i'm one of them. we tend to as we age, we tend to use more services when we need more health care. the problem is what we typically have a say younger, healthier population that pays the premiums in order to help out and don't use the services and pay the premiums. we have lost that, so we need to attract more people to vermont to make it more affordable in other ways as well. the problem we face is similar for our education system that we have. we are in a bad position in terms of the demographics. we need to work on this.

>> a quick follow-up for the both of you. many of the states rural hospitals must undergo major structural changes to continue to be sustainable. you have 30 seconds, ms. charlestin. ms. charlestin: i just wanted to say youth does not equal health, there are a lot of young people that still need services as well. those who have invisible disabilities that you can't see. youth does not equal health. i wanted to name that. can you repeat the question? >> absolutely. does vermont need 14 community hospitals and should they be offering fewer services? ms. charlestin: i believe we do

need those hospitals. driving an hour driving an hour to get basic services doesn't serve everybody. we need to consider those who have and have not we need to think about first. >> does vermont need 14 community hospitals. gov. scott: yes, the study they did was myopic in some respects. those hospitals can they do the same thing for everyone, some are critical for different regions.

it is key to solving those problems that they can't attract to people. housing is an area they recommended that be focused on. i hope the legislature will finally act on this. >> the city of burlington is planning to open an overdose prevention center open to a safe injection site. what role if any will your administration play in this process and what will you do to keep vermonters safe from overdoses? gov. scott: again, the good news is we are seeing a decline at this point in overdose deaths. i know one death is still too many, but we are seeing a decline.

i think prevention is key, that is why i oppose safe injection sites. if there was an unlimited amount of money, that would be one thing, but we have to be careful about the monte -- money we spends within fiscal constraints. i would much rather put that money into prevention and treatment and recovery than to set up a safe injection site, just to experiment with that. the bottom line is we follow the health department and they will do its due diligence to assist in doing what ever the law says we have to do. >> ms. charlestin, do you support overdose prevention centers and do you think there should be more of them around the state? ms. charlestin: i do believe we should have more around the state. i believe yes prevention is key and that is not where we are. have you walked the streets of burlington? or even middle barry? i love middlebury.

but we have folks who are suffering right now and what are we doing about it? how do we support them now is the question? to do it with people first harm reduction approach would be the way i would move forward. >> thank you, back to you, neal. >> thank you both. rural vermonters seem to be rotting from the inside out with no future for youth or young families. for mott is only a nice place for rich out of stators. what will you do to create more jobs for young people and more affordable housing? ms. charlestin, we start with you. ms. charlestin: i believe in trade schools, so not everybody can afford college, so making sure young people have options to have successful careers outside of college.

so making sure that is strong, making sure our state schools have the financial aid they need so students do want to go to college. student loans are still calling my name, but we will let the president do that. making sure they have options so they can stay in vermont because we need our people to stay. people who have been here for generations and people who moved here yesterday. all vermonters working hard. but it breaks my heart to hear about the rural communities, yes. >> thank you. governor scott, what would you do to support young people in rural vermont? gov. scott: it is what we have been doing. focusing on the erosion of the rural communities is something that has been front and center for us. unfortunately the way our legislature is made up, it is by

population base. with rural representation, it is not as vibrant as it should be. we do have opportunities. trade school is part of the answer. we need more balance in the legislature. working for their constituents their political party. this is something that is critical to our state. you look at some of the communities, the highest per capita income in the state. the highest per capita income.

we can't forget them. there was a lot of opportunity. they want to grow and reinvent themselves, but we have to focus on areas that will work for them as well. >> thank you, governor. back to you. >> thank you. we will now return to candidate to candidate questions, same rules as before. ask a question, avoid speeches, 92nd responses. governor scott, you mask the first question this time around. gov. scott: i think you will agree there is too much polarization across america and seeing the other side is the enemy. my political mentor who we lost was a democrat. it is important to have relationships with those on the other side of the aisle.

i have a lot of friends on the other side of the aisle over the years who are still my friends. are there vermont republicans so you looked up to our respect that you stay in contact with and glean information from to try to make decisions? ms. charlestin: i do. and they are part of my community. so i'm not only in politics, but i also attend a church that has different folks from different walks of life. i have a range of people who support and to help me. i won't name them and put them on the spot, but i will say yes i have a village if that is what you are asking. >> governor, do you have any follow-up questions?

now it is your turn to pose a question to governor scott. ms. charlestin: so, your administration has failed to maintain the i.t. system at dcf, which is harming children, workers, and leaving vermont in eligible for federal funds, this has foot foster children at risk, hindered dcf, impaired services for justice involved youth. and blocked access to additional federal resources. what will you do differently if elected again? so this won't be a problem. gov. scott: are you talking about integrated eligibility? is that when you are talking about? ms. charlestin: this system that is outdated.

gov. scott: income eligibility program that was put into place long before me, it has been struggling. one of the proudest moments has been to establish an agency of digital services. we didn't have one before, it was like the wild west out there, programs being developed by not interacting with each other, every agency doing their own thing. nobody was working together. we establish that my first year in office and we named a secretary of digital services as a result. denise is top-notch. working on that issue. among many others.

we have been able to get the legislature. the labor department and growing that and rebuilding that ancient program. the evolution has been dramatic. we are going to have to try to finish it somehow, someway, or pull the plug on it. >> ms. charlestin, do you have a follow-up question for the governor? ms. charlestin: yes, with technology changing so fast, i think about eight years ago when you started and where technology is today, it seems that this is urgent. i just want to say i hope it is a top priority. gov. scott: again, you have probably heard that the motor vehicle system was a 50-year-old program. the labor employment department was a 50-year-old legacy system

as well. they were as high a priority or maybe more than these services. they are all priorities and cybersecurity is so important these days and protecting ourselves is something we have to work on increasing every single day. we are attacked every single day by some country. >> thank you both. >> final segment tonight before the closing statements will be a lightning round. each of you will have to answer these questions, but we ask that you do so in as few words as possible. the first question, is vermont better off now than it was eight years ago? we will start with you, governor scott. gov. scott: as i said, the

answer is no, we are moving in the wrong direction. we need to reverse course and start replicating some of the things we did in the first six years. >> thank you. ms. charlestin, is vermont better off now than eight years ago? ms. charlestin: no, property taxes are high. doubling. health care, housing, folks can find rentals, can't even find housing. so no we are not. >> what have you done personally within your household to improve the environment? ms. charlestin, we will start with you. ms. charlestin: composting! i'm going to give a shout out to middlebury college that taught me that when i moved to the state of vermont and i learned you are supposed to compost. but it wasn't a habit of mine. so grateful for that introduction. >> governor scott?

gov. scott: preservation, efficient heating system, solar panels, turning the heat down to 58 degrees. i believe mime the first and i don't know if i'm the only governor to ride around an electric vehicle everyday. >> thank you. a little tighter answers could be helpful. keep that in mind. do you support a higher marginal income tax rate on vermonters who earn more than five hundred thousand dollars a year? governor scott. gov. scott: again, i don't mind looking at it, but i'm not ready to commit to raising those taxes. >> and you, ms. charlestin? ms. charlestin: yes. >> the most concise answer we've got so far, thanks. should vermont requires state

employees to work from the office most of the week? ms. charlestin: no, covid taught us that we are in a time of working from home and people get just as much done, so giving them that flexibility, knowing you have options is helpful. >> governor scott. gov. scott: we are finding it doesn't work for everyone, it works for some. the cohesiveness of the teams that need to work together. >> thank you. have you personally utilized vermont's legal cannabis market? gov. scott: no. >> ms. charlestin? ms. charlestin: no. >> should those who are not hunters or trappers have more representation on the state fish and wildlife board? ms. charlestin: yes. >> governor scott?

gov. scott: i don't think that should be a litmus test, whether you hunt or not, i think it be finding good people who serve. >> should for mont build a women's prison? gov. scott: yes. >> ms. charlestin? ms. charlestin: yes, with the way our current one is, it is unacceptable. >> two is your political role model? ms. charlestin: stacey abrams! she was here in vermont earlier this weekend and i got the opportunity earlier this weekend. >> governor scott? gov. scott: i've had many, but i would have to say dickman as a. >> thank you. who are you voting for as president? gov. scott: not donald trump. i haven't made up my mind who i'm voting for. i voted for biden. i haven't made up my mind to them voting for this time but it won't be donald trump. >> thank you.

ms. charlestin? ms. charlestin: kamala harris! it is her year. [laughter] >> all right. what is your favorite spot in vermont? ms. charlestin: hm, i think it is called cookies and cream. thank you. you got me. cookie love. >> governor scott? gov. scott: sounds like you have been there. >> once or twice. gov. scott: i would say the bragg farm. >> all right, thank you both so much, i will turn it back to sarah. >> we should have asked you for your favorite swimming holes. we could have gotten some secret tips. we will now offer each of you an opportunity to make brief closing statements, you will have 60 seconds. ms. charlestin, you are up first. ms. charlestin: the question

that was asked earlier, is vermont in a better place than it was eight years ago? when i think of property taxes, health care, housing, affordability, the answer is clear and it is no. after eight years it is clear that vermont needs a new direction. and one that truly works for all of us, not just those at the top, but also the middle and low income, everybody. and i believe in the candidate for you. so check me out. estherforvermont.com. >> governor scott? gov. scott: since i have been governor i have been working to make vermont more affordable. we are also making investments in housing, public safety, mental health, crime mitigation and more. the approach over the last three years as i've stated many times, the super majority in the legislature has had other ideas. passing property tax increase,

payroll tax, 20% dmv hike, plans to raise your home heating costs and more. it seems to be insatiable. if you want to make vermont more affordable, then i need your help. i need you to send more common sense candidates to the legislature who will actually work with me, meeting me in the middle to make vermont even a better place for all of us and for you especially. so thanks very much for having us on tonight. >> thank you. neal will wrap things up. >> thank you. that will conclude vtdigger's 2024 gubernatorial debate. we hope you will join us for the next edition of the debate series monday, october 21 at 6:00 p.m. hosting vermont's leading candidates for the u.s. house. find our full debate schedule at vtdigger.org. while you are there, make sure to check out our election guide

to learn more about how to vote and who is running for office. all of this is made possible with the support of our contributors. please consider making a donation tonight by visiting vtdigger.org/donate. and finally, i would like to thank the two candidates who joined us tonight, esther charlestin and phil scott, and those who made this possible, including sarah moorhouse, charles robinson, natalie williams, taylor haynes, and sky bars. thank you all for tuning in. have a good night. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more. >> the world has changed. a fast, reliable internet connection is something no one

can live without. we are there for customers with speed, reliability and choice. it all starts with great internet now more than ever. >> wow supports c-span as a public svice along with these other television providers. giving you a front row seat to democracy. ♪ >> as the 2024 presidential campaign continues, american history tv presents a serious, historic residential elections, learn about the pivot issues of different eras, uncover what made these elections historic and explore their lasting impact on the nation. this saturday, the election of 1960. >> as for those americans who are still denied equality of rights and opportunities, i say there shall be the greatest progressive human rights since the days of lincoln 100 years ago.

>> we stand today on the edge of a new frontier, the front tier of the 1960's. the frontier of unknown positivity. the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled stress. >> and a close and controversial election, democratic senator john kennedy defeated richard nixon. watch historic presidential elections saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span2. >> up next, remarks by presidential nominee and vice president kamala harris at a campaign event in wilkes county, pennsylvania. in the 2020 election, president biden won the county by 4%. the last time i republican presidential candidate won the party was in 1988. ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ v.p. harris: good afternoon. good afternoon, pennsylvania. good afternoon, everyone. [cheering] good afternoon. thank you so very much for that introduction and for your friendship.

as i've said to all my friends and leaders on the stage with me, we had a chance to speak ahead of time, i think you all for everything that you are doing and the courage you are showing. this is an extraordinary climate right now. and i think we all recognize the courage that you are each showing to speak out so publicly and to put, as we are saying because we truly believe in country over party, so please applaud. [applause] bob and christina and all the folks on the stage. please, thank you. thank you. [applause] truly, truly. thank you. [applause] so please do set. we meet in a place that holds very special meaning for our country. here on christmas night, 1776,

general george washington and over 2000 troops crossed the icy delaware river and darkness. then marched to trenton, where they surprised an outpost of enemy soldiers and achieved a major victory in the american revolution. after we won the war and achieved our independence, delegates from across the nation gathered not far from here in philadelphia to write and sign the constitution of the united states. [applause]

that work to write the constitution was not easy because the founders often disagreed, but in the end the constitution laid out the foundation of our democracy, including the rule of law. that there would be checks and balances. that we would have free and fair elections. and a peaceful transfer of power. [applause] and these principles and traditions have sustained our nation for over two centuries. sustained because generations of

americans from all backgrounds, from all beliefs, have cherished them, upheld them, and defended them. and now the baton is in our hands. so i am joined today by over 100 republican leaders from across pennsylvania and across our country. [applause] who are supporting my candidacy for president of the united states. and i am deeply honored to have their support. some served in statehouses, some in the united states congress, some worked for other republican presidents and presidential nominees, including mitt romney, john mccain, george w. bush, george h w bush, and ronald reagan.

[applause] aunt -- and some today served in donald trump's own administration. we also have republican voters from here in pennsylvania and beyond who have been active in their republican party years. who have supported republican candidates up and down the ticket. now, i say all that to make an obvious point. in a typical election year, you all being here with me -- [laughter] it might be surprising and dare i say it, unusual. but not in this election. not in this election. at stake in this race are the democratic ideals our founders and generations of americans before us have fought for. at stake in this election is the

constitution of the united states itself. we are here today because we share a core belief. that we must put country before party. [applause] [crowd chanting "usa"] indeed, and we chance that with such great pride because we all know we have so much more in common than what separates us. [applause] at some point in the career of the folks who join me on stage, one of the other things we have in common is in our careers we have each sworn an oath to

uphold the constitution of the united states. [applause] so we know that sacred oath must always be honored and never violated. and that we should expect anyone who seeks the highest office in our land would meet that standard. we hear no the constitution is not a relic from our past, but determines whether we are a country where the people can speak freely and even criticize the president without fear of being thrown in jail or targeted by the military. [applause] where the people can worship as they choose without the government interfering.

[applause] where you can vote without fear your vote will be thrown away. [applause] all of this and more depends on whether or not our leaders honor their oath to the constitution. i have sworn an oath to uphold the constitution six times, including as vice president, as a united states senator and as the top law enforcement officer of the largest state in our country. [applause] i have never wavered from upholding that oath. this is a profound difference between donald trump and me. he, who violated the oath to uphold the constitution of the

united states, and make no mistake, he who, if given the chance, will violate it again. donald trump lost the 2020 election. [applause] and he refused to accept the will of the people and the result of a free and fair election. he sent an armed mob to the united states capital, where they violently assaulted police officers, law-enforcement officials, and threatened the life of his own vice president. and he refused to engage in the peaceful transfer of power. were it not for the courage and patriotism of vice president

pence that day, donald trump might have actually succeeded in overturning the will of the american people. let's reflect on that. and now, donald trump is telling us how he intends to use power if he is elected again. he has stated one of the biggest threats america faces is "the enemy from within." [ crowdbooing] the enemy from within. know where that language harkens back to. understand and let's be clear what he is saying.

he considers any american who doesn't support him or bend to his will to be an enemy to our country. and further, he says as commander-in-chief he would use our military to go after them. honestly, let that sink in. use of the american military? to go after american citizens? we know who he would target first because he has targeted and attacked them before, journalists. nonpartisan election officials who refused to cheat by finding extra votes for him. judges who insist on following the law instead of following him .

it is clear donald trump is increasingly unstable and unhinged. [applause] and he is seeking unchecked power. consider what his closest advisors have said. his national security advisor, two defense secretaries, his former chief of staff, his own vice president. all have warned america donald trump is unfit to serve. or listen to general milley, donald trump's top general. he has called trump, and i quote "fascist to the core."

and said, "no one has ever been as dangerous to this country." think about that. general milley, served in uniform for more than 40 years. commanding american forces around the world. he has confronted some of america's worst enemies. and he is saying no one has ever been as dangerous to our country as donald trump. america must heed this warning because anyone who tramples on our mechanic values as donald trump has, anyone who has called for the "termination" of the

constitution of the united states as donald trump has, must never again stand behind the seal of the president of the united states! [cheering and applause] never again! never again! [applause] and to those who are watching, if you share that view, no matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign.

[whistles and applause] the coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of donald trump. i pledge to you to be a president for all americans. [cheering and applause] and i take that pledge seriously. i take that pledge quite seriously. as i've mentioned and many of you know, i spent a career as a prosecutor, in law enforcement, and i will tell you, i never asked a victim or witness, are you a republican or are you a democrat? i never asked of anyone who needed help, of anyone who deserved attention, where were

they registered and who did they vote for? the only question i ever asked was are you ok? that is the kind of president i pledge to you i will be. [cheering and applause] that is my pledge to you. we have too much to do and too much good work to do to be relegated, to requiring each of us to be in some silo disconnected from each other. there is too much good to be done. and the challenges we face as a nation require us, if we truly want to create solutions and strengthen our nation, the approach truly requires that we understand we are all in this together.

this is so much more than rhetoric or a campaign. [cheering and applause] it's really about tapping into the spirit of who we are as americans. because we are all in this together. we are all in this together. so i pledge to be a president who actively works to unite us around our highest aspirations. i pledge to you to be a president who is realistic and practical and has common sense. and to always fight for the american people. [cheering and applause] unlike donald trump, who frankly as we have seen, cares more about running on problems than fixing problems. i want to fix problems.

which means working across the aisle. it requires working across the aisle. it requires embracing good ideas from wherever they come. that's why i have pledged to appoint a republican in my cabinet. [cheering and applause] that is why i have pledged to establish a counsel on bipartisan solutions to recommend to me common sense solutions to some of the most pressing issues facing our country. [cheering and applause] nobody has a corner on good ideas. they actually come from many places. [laughter] one should welcome those ideas if they want to be a leader. [applause]

those ideas in particular about strengthening the middle-class, securing our border, defending our freedoms and maintaining our leadership in the world. [applause] all of this is to also say i believe for america to be the world's strongest democracy, we must have a healthy two-party system. [applause] because it is when we have a healthy two-party system that leaders are required to debate the merits of policy and to work across the aisle regularly and routinely to get things done. i have experienced firsthand how important and rewarding that kind of bipartisan cooperation can be.

i will tell you, when i was a united states senator, i served on the senate intelligence committee. it was my favorite committee for a number of reasons but specifically this -- we dealt with some of the most pressing issues affecting national security. we would talk about hotspots around the world and what we needed to do to focus on keeping america safe and secure. to do that, we would review classified information which required us to meet in a secure room. a lot of you know it is called a skiff. [laughter] when we would go in that room, with all due respect, no cameras were allowed. [laughter] no press. and we would roll up our sleeves and get to work. i'm telling you, senators of both parties would walk in the

room, take off their suit jackets, roll up their sleeves might have a cup of coffee on the table, and we would have real conversations. real conversations as americans. because we understood that what happened in that room, the stakes were so high. therefore we could not afford to let it be about whether one was a democrat or republican. the stakes were too high. we were in that room and it was all about us as americans. about doing what is in the best interest of the safety and security of our nation. i loved that work. and the theme of today, it was country over party in action. in action. [applause] so i know it can be done. that is the standard of

leadership and the aspiration i have in terms of how we will work when with your help i am elected president of the united states. [cheering and applause] [crowd chanting "kamala"] thank you, we got to get to work. there is a very fundamental choice in this election. a choice between the leadership i pledge to offer to america, leadership that brings folks together, that builds consensus and focuses on making life better for you, with the knowledge we have so much more in common than what separates us. and on the other hand, the choice of someone who i think we

can guarantee will sit in the oval office talking retribution, stu in his own grievances and think only about himself and not you. as i have said, our campaign is not a fight against something, it's a fight for something. [cheering and applause] it's a fight for the fundamental principles upon which we were founded. it is a fight for a new generation of leadership that is optimistic about what we can achieve together. republicans, democrats and independents who want to get past the politics of division and blame and get things done on behalf of the american people. when it all comes down to it, i

know we are all here together. this beautiful afternoon. because we love our country. [cheering and applause] we love our country. and we are here because we know the deep privilege and pride that comes with being an american, and the duty that comes along with it. and the duty that comes along with it. [applause] imperfect we may be, but america is still the shining city upon a hill that inspires people around the world. [applause] i do believe it is one of the highest forms of patriotism to

fight for the ideals of our country. [applause] two people from across pennsylvania and our nation, let's together stand up for the rule of law, for our democratic ideals and for the constitution of the united states. and in 20 days, we have the power to chart a new way forward , one that is worthy of this magnificent country that we are all blessed to call home. thank you all, may god bless you and may god bless the united states of america. [cheering and applause] ♪

♪ ♪ >> we take you live now to wilmington, north carolina, where republican vice presidential nominee and senator jd vance is speaking to voters at a campaign rally. you are watching live coverage on c-span. ♪

♪ ♪ sen. vance: thank you, thank you

all. [cheering] [crowd chanting] wow. it is great my friends to be in wilmington, north carolina. and it is great that we are going to win wilmington in the state of north carolina and make donald trump the next president of the united states. i'm going to tell you something, i bet very few, maybe no one knows this, i was an extra in a tv show filmed in wilmington, north carolina. did you ever see "one tree hill" ? that was filmed here.

when i was in the marine corps, semper fi to the marines here. they showed up one day and said we will feed you and pay you $300 to be an extra in one tree hill. that was my exposure to wilmington. it's good to be back and it's good to be back as your vice presidential candidate and we are going to win this race, i'm telling you. i've got to say, i love you, proud of middletown. i was singing about this. i saw tim walz's plane this morning. [crowd booing] no, i got to tell you honestly i feel bad for tim walz. think about it, he's got to defend the record of, harris and i've got to defend the record of

donald trump and that is a helluva record to run on and we are proud of him. we are proud of him because he did a good job for the american people. you don't have to agree with everything i say, you don't have to agree with every policy or everything donald trump says, but who can dispute that when he was the president of the united states we had rising take-home pay, low inflation and a secure southern border? let's get back to it. let's get back to those commonsense policies. tim walz has to defend kamala harris. he has the toughest job in america, he's got to defend the record of kamala harris. i don't know if you know but when, harris is running for president, she pretends that she has never met joe biden, she runs as far away from joe as she possibly can. you would think she had never even seen the president of the united states and yet she is the sitting vice president who is

not just the sitting vice president but bribed for years she was the last person in the room before joe biden made so many disastrous decisions that increased the cost of groceries, increase the cost of housing, opened the southern border. joe biden is kamala harris and we are going to fire kamala harris, not center to the white house and give her a promotion. [cheering] i will say, she is making it a little easier for us. i think she's the only candidate who's ever run for president where every time she opens her mouth we gain about 100,000 votes on the other side. i am going to be try to be reasonably quick here because i believe that in about 10 minutes she is going to do the first non-softball interview she has ever done. on fox news. now, of course president trump and i we do non-softball

interviews every single day because we think that's what you ought to do if you want to run for president you want to get out there and answer the people's questions and actually do the job of running for president. you will hear people say well, kamala harris is given more softball interviews lately. and i say well, the problem with the softball interview if you still have to be able to hit a softball. and i see the great attorney general candidate dan bishop in the audience. stand up and say hello to folks. you know, i was thinking this, kamala harris, she can't hit a softball, she cannot even hit a t-ball. that's the problem here. the reason she does so bad in these interviews is because her record is so bad for the american people. let's just think about this. in the state of north carolina,

we've got people who are paying $1000 more a month thanks to her policies then when donald trump was president. thanks to kamala harris's policies, this country, this state, and this community have been flooded with millions upon millions of illegal aliens. not just flooded but kamala harris has welcomed them with open arms and then said if you make it into this country illegally she wants to give you free medicare and free housing. and you know our message in the trump campaign is just a little bit different. our message to illegal aliens is if you came to this country illegally, pack your bags because in four months you're going home. [crowd chanting: usa]

now, now, thanks to kamala harris casting the deciding vote on trillions of dollars in new spending and going to war on american energy, north carolina families are paying more for gas, about 25% more than they were when donald trump was president. they are paying 20 5% more for groceries than when donald trump . they are paying 53% more for housing then when donald trump was president. now here is the simple donald trump plan to restore a golden age of prosperity in this country. we are going to cut taxes for american workers. we are going to cut down on the terrible regulations that make it harder to hire and create a business in the united states of america. we are going to unleash american energy and lower the cost of fuel and electricity for american families. and we are going to make it

harder for companies to ship american jobs overseas. we are going to create prosperity right here in north carolina and all across the united states of america. because for too long we've had leaders like kamala harris, and again, she has been in office for 1400 days. we have leaders like kamala harris who would like to reward companies for shipping jobs overseas instead of creating good american jobs right here at home. perhaps the worst of all of kamala harris's policies is she wants to tax you and tax year friends and families and pay people to buy electric vehicles made in china. and you know what donald trump and i think? we think you ought to be able to drive whatever the hell you want to because this is america and we want to support american automakers. now, one of the things the media doesn't like to talk about even though it is as clean as day is

that we have a housing crisis in this country because we've got millions upon millions of people shouldn't be here in the first place. this is just common sense. think about this, if you let ian 25 million people into the country illegally, people who have no right to be here, you have to put them somewhere. they have to have housing somewhere. if you take away housing that ought to go to american citizens what are you going to do? you are going to have what we have in this country today is that young people can't afford to buy a home. i'm a big believer in the american dream of homeownership. and to all the young people, especially those watching at home or watching some of the clips, we are going to fight for american citizens to be able to afford american homes. and it is really that simple. you just have to get illegal immigrants out of our country. you've got to put the interest of our citizens first and then you've got to lower the mortgage

interest rates because thanks to kamala harris's policies the interest rates are just too dam high and donald trump is going to lower them. and this is how we are going to lower them. we are going to lower them because we are going to stop spending money we don't have. we are going to lower them by unleashing american energy. lower the price of everything. and we are going to lower interest rates by making sure that american homes don't go to illegal aliens. it is very simple. it's going to work and it's going to make the american dream of homeownership more affordable. i want to talk -- look, there are all these disagreements we have with kamala harris. there all these issues were be could say well, donald trump supports lower taxes on american families and kamala harris supports raising them. donald trump supports closing the border and building a wall and kamala harris wants to open the border. donald trump wants to build a world of peace and stability and kamala harris seems to encourage

chaos and war to break out everywhere. set aside all these policy disagreements we have with kamala harris. the most important thing about kamala harris is that she is incompetent. she does not have the competence to be president. think about this. we of course in the state of north carolina but all across the southeast in appalachia, a lot of folks were hit very hard by hurricane helene and i know a lot of us are praying people, we ought to say a prayer for those folks every single day they are fighting to rebuild their lives. they are fighting to grieve loved ones and rebuild out of a terrible situation. and look, that storm was a terrible act of nature. but the bureaucratic incompetence that delayed resources getting to people, that was an act of kamala harris and failed leadership and we can't let people forget about it. now, think about this.

probably shocked to hear me praise -- i am going to do something that is going to really surprise you, i am going to see something really nice about barack obama. in 2010 -- lady back here said yeah, i am shocked by this. surprised everyone here. 2010 there was a caramel -- a terrible earthquake in haiti. two days later the air force was in haiti. god bless the 82nd airborne. we had a terrible natural disaster one hour away from the 82nd airborne and it took six days for them to get to north carolina. that is kamala harris and joe biden's fault. it is a disgraceful failure of leadership. when donald trump and i are in the lighthouse is not can happen. we are going to have fema helping our people and the american government is going to fight for american citizens once again.

[crowd chanting: usa] here's the thing. there's a lot of crazy stuff out there on the internet. i actually don't think that it was some malicious intent that made fema as unresponsive and delayed the critical deployment of the 82nd airborne. i think it is just because people are incompetent. joe biden was on the beach, probably didn't know where he was. kamala harris was at a san francisco fundraiser when the critical test of leadership comes in a moment of crisis. at that moment of crisis for the people of north carolina, kamala harris wasn't doing her job. i promise you that donald j. trump will and he will fight to do his job for you every single day.

i want to say just a couple more things here before we take some question. the main thing i want you to take away from this event today is that yes, donald trump is going to be the president of the united states and i really do believe that, my friends. i think we are going to win this state. trust me. those of us in the trump campaign, the staff, the people at the top of the ticket and certainly our man donald trump, we are feeling good about this race and it's because y'all are working hard and we are grateful for it. but the only way we are going to get president trump and me across the finish line is if we get out there and vote. i'm going to make a few requests of you. the first is that i want every single person here to get out there and vote 10 times. some of y'all are shifting uncomfortably and saying well,

we only vote once. that's what republicans do. we follow the law. here is the legal way to go and vote 10 times. take yourself and take nine friends and family to the polls. that is what i want all of yes -- all of you to do. this is true of every single person out here including me. we've got people in our lives who are smart. they are competent people but they don't pay that close attention to politics. we have got to motivate them. we have to encourage them to say even if they don't care that much about politics, politics cares about them. and if we don't get donald trump back in the white house this terrible affordability crisis and a terrible crisis at the southern border is going to continue so let's get our people out there. even the ones who don't care about politics, maybe especially the ones who don't care about politics, we've got to make sure they get out there and vote. number two, again, i'm going to talk for a little longer and then take questions from the press.

but whether it is now or five minutes from now or 10 minutes from now, i want each of you to take out your phones, take a photo of this event, take a photo of that you to full airplane -- i gotta tell your growing up in a working-class family raised by my grandmother it is wild to be flying around in a plane with your name on. that is pretty cool. great testament to the american dream and the possibilities of this country. take out your phone, take a photo. texting a lot of people, emailing a lot of people, social media, x.com, facebook, whenever you use, post-it and talk about why you are voting for donald trump for president. i don't know exactly how many people we have here. looks probably around 1000 people. if every single one of us reaches 100 people, that's 100,000 people that would not have heard the pro-trump message. trust me, they are not hearing

it from the corporate media so they've got to hear from us. we have power. we have an ability to reach people. we just have to use the tools god has given us. luckily in this era of great communication we have a lot of tools to get the message out about why we need to support donald trump. here is the third and final thing. i want you to go to this website and i want to make sure i get it right. it is swap the vote usa.com. swamp the vote usa.com. that is a website that we built so the people can check their registration, check where their polling location is, maybe they can request an absentee ballot, maybe they are going to vote early. just get out there and vote before november 5. that's the deadline. look, i'm one of these people, i don't like election season. i like election day. but as donald trump would say, it is what it is. if we are going to have a long

election season the republicans have got to take advantage of that stuff as much as democrats are and that is exactly what we have to do. get out there and make your voice heard and that is how we are going to make donald j. trump the next president of the united states. i know apparently kamala is doing this interview soon with fox news. i want to point out an interview she did 10 days ago because frankly my friends it blew up the entire narrative of her campaign. most of us here hopefully know she is running a dishonest campaign but a lot of folks are watching this who may not realize that kamala harris bears the responsibility for the failures of the biden administration. she gave this interview to the view, and they said what would you do differently than joe biden? and her answer was nothing comes

to mind. i think by the way that should be the slogan of the kamala harris campaign. nothing comes to mind. i think that is unfortunately true. but think about this. after running on the idea that she would lower prices for american citizens, nothing comes to mind that she would've done differently. after talking about how she is going to restore peace and stability in a world that has been ripped apart by war and chaos, nothing comes to mind that she would have done differently. after 94 executive orders that opened up the border and flooded our communities with fentanyl, nothing comes to mind she would have done differently. if nothing comes to mind that she would have done differently over the last 3.5 years than we need to get the real candidate of change donald j. trump back in the white house to restore peace, restore prosperity, and

restore common sense to the united states of america. so here's what we are going to do and i will take some questions. here is what we are going to do. when we make donald trump the next president we are going to make groceries and housing more affordable. when we make donald trump the next president we are going to secure the southern border and stop the mexican drug cartels from waging war on our country. when we make donald trump the next president we are going to make the american dream affordable for american citizens again. and when we make donald trump the next president we are going to usher in a golden age of american prosperity for the state of north carolina and the people all across this incredible land. let's go get it done my friends. get out there and vote. make donald trump the next president. the country needed and we are going to fight for every single day. 19 days to go. let's make it count and let's get our man across the finish line. god bless y'all.

thank you. [crowd chanting: jd] again, i want to take some questions from reporters and i'm going to start with the local reporters. but it is getting a little chilly out here. this is north carolina, it is supposed to be a little warmer in mid-october. maybe it has just been too long since i have been here. there is a cold front apparently. thank you, sir. i need to get better weather reporting from my staff. for all the gratitude i have for folks for being out here i just want to say of course that the person i am most thrilled to have with me, the two people are my beautiful wife and my son. i love you guys.

he is sitting over there with a blanket over him saying why the hell did i agree to come with dad on the plane today. he is not a child built for cold weather. but we love you guys. as you all know this is so much fun for me but it is a lot of sacrifice for the family and we are thrilled honey that you could come with me and bring our beautiful boy. we love you and i know the crowd loves you. so, what i'd like to do is start with a local reporters and because it is pretty chilly we might only get through three or four but we will try and do as many as we possibly can. let's start with the first question. >> my first question for you, dockworkers recently went on strike asking for higher wages and protection against automation. what would your administration do to make sure these workers

are confident in making this temporary agreement a permanent and accessible one? sen. vance: look, we love our dockworkers. i would not be surprised if we have dockworkers in his audience right now. look, the very simple reason the dockworkers went on strike is because a dollar just doesn't go as far as it did 3.5 years ago. this is why donald trump calls inflation a country buster because if you think about it, if the dockworkers aren't making enough to survive and then they go on strike, then we can't get the goods we need, this just becomes a vicious spiral. we have to get back to common sense economic policies so our dockworkers can thrive and so that everybody can thrive depends on their very important work. here is what i would say about this. look, we believe in technological innovation in the republican party. we believe in technological innovation in our country. but we can have technological innovation while protecting the wages of our workers.

whether at our ports, our manufacturing facilities. when you have an innovative economy, that leads to higher wages and higher take-home pay for all workers. the problem with the kamala harris economy is we don't have nearly as much innovation. we have to get that to the dollar being worth something again. that will happen when donald trump is back as president and we have to get back to innovation in our economy. thank you. >> thanks for the opportunity. i notice mark robinson has not been at an event in some time. he is not here today. frankly he is falling behind in the polls. can you clarify if your campaign still endorses mark robinson for governor and why? sen. vance: look, first of all, i think mark robinson did a helluva job with the hurricanes getting out and helping people. i thought that was very admirable. i really appreciate that. but my view on this issue is who

the north carolina voters make their next governor is up to the people of north carolina. what i am here to do is to persuade them that they need to make donald trump their next president and i think that's what they are going to do and we are going to keep on fighting for that every single day. >> welcome to wilmington. law enforcement recently arrested an armed man for threats made against fema workers in rutherford county. i am just wondering if you have a comment on the threats made against the men and women who are working to help victims in counties recover from hurricane helene. sen. vance: look, we have course condemn threats of violence. it is disgraceful to threaten violence against anybody, especially relief workers. and we ought to remind people that are criticism here is not for the fema workers on the ground, it is the broken political leadership in washington. think about it.

fema is the federal emergency management agency. that is what fema stands for. why is the agency that is set up to help american citizens in the face of disaster spending billions of taxpayer dollars resettling illegal immigrants? it ought to focus on its core mission. why is the leadership of fema focused on resettling migrants instead of preparing and presenting resources for the next storm? that's a failure of leadership. it is not a failure of people on the ground trying to help people. but i will tell you, if you know someone in western north carolina, i imagine pretty much everyone in this crowd does, a lot of them will say 1.5 weeks into the storm they didn't see anybody. they weren't getting any help. they weren't getting any relief. so the scandal here is not that a crazy person, as much as we condemn them, that's always a bad thing. b scandal here is people in

western north carolina went days and weeks without the help of their own government. and that's what we have to fix and we will when donald trump is president. next question. >> thank you. i'd love to hear more about the one tree hill moment, but for another day. i wanted to ask you about what you had said earlier in pennsylvania about the 2020 election results. you have been asked that on the debate stage and then again in the new york times interview, five times, and by other reporters. [booing] sen. vance: ma'am, my answer on this, and i answered this question a million times when i ran for the senate. i have answered this in the 2022 general election. i have answered this 10 times recently. i think big tech rigged the election in 2020.

if you disagree with me, that's fine. >> answer it now. why did you enter the question now? why did you answer the question now? sen. vance: i have given that exact question for years. this is such a preposterous thing that the american media does. i have given this answer to this question for literally years. and the american media once to focus on what happened four years ago and the fact that north carolinians can't afford groceries, i think that's a disgrace. do your job and focus on the problems the american people care about rather than ballshit from four -- rather than bullshit from four years ago. [crowd chanting: jd] look, i honestly -- my friends,

i'm sure there are as many opinions about what happened four years ago as there are people in this audience. if you disagree with me on an issue, or if you disagree with me about what i just said, for you disagree about a particular policy view of the trump administration, that's fine. because i believe in the united states of america. it's ok to disagree. what i think we are all united on is that we need to get kamala harris out of the oval office that americans can afford to live a good life again. >> i wanted to ask you -- ok [booing] sen. vance: no, it's all right. i always joke, she's actually one of the good cnn reporters. they do exist. but i always wonder if i say that if you are welcomed back at the newsroom in cnn. >> i spend more time in the

field. anyway, friday at your event, you said the attorney general job would be the most important role, after president of course. houthi you want to see in that role, and what do you make of trump's former appointments? sen. vance: i am not going to make any news about who we are looking at for attorney general. obviously the president makes the final decision but we are looking at a lot of good people. the reason i said that is very simple and this is a little bit of a hit for my ego. i would like to say the person who's most important after the president would be me. i appreciate that. but what we have seen out of the department of justice in the last four years of this country i think is such a disgrace and we have to do better. we really have to. one of the fundamental principles of our country is equal justice under law. you've got catholic pro-life

fathers of seven arrested like a common criminal for exercising their first amendment rights peacefully. you've got government bureaucrats encompassing big tech companies to censor their fellow americans. you've got people who are protesting peacefully at their children's school board meetings and then in investigation is launched into them. everybody focuses on corruption at the doj and focuses on how that is affected. president trump and some of his close advisors, that obviously matters. but the federal government weaponizing law enforcement to go after him and citizens is a disgrace and we have to stop it. that is why i think it is so important that we get a good attorney general. >> i have one more question. of course our hearts and prayers go out to those in western north carolina. here in our area, we go through

a lot of flooding as well, especially heavy flooding. what can the federal government do to assist state and local governments and preparing and recovering from flood events that happened from an unnamed storm? sen. vance: a really good question. we have to have competence back in government. when these things happen you need someone who is paying attention and focusing and making sure resources go to the people who need it. you can't have a government where nobody is actually in charge and unfortunately that is what we have way too much thanks to kamala harris's leadership. two things in particular. when you have a crisis like what happened in western north carolina, obviously this part of the state has been affected by a number of storms too. you have so many different bureaucratic agencies. one of the things you've got to do is just have a leader who is saying all of you are empowered

to save lives to rescue people. go get to work and cut out worrying about the redtape. that is a big part of what you need, that empowerment of some local responses. this is a big issue in north carolina, probably a bigger issue in florida and georgia. but it is an issue all across the southeast. insurance is getting way too expensive for a lot of our homeowners. this is a big problem. not just homeowners but folks who are getting car insurance. i think we can do a better job of lowering car and home insurance rates. and again, making that american dream of owning a home and owning a car more affordable for more of our citizens. of course one of the ways that people really struggle in the wake of these disasters is if they don't have the right home insurance policy. we've got to make smarter policy choices so people get the insurance they need. and i'll do one more question here and then will hit the road. >> thank you.

you noted yesterday in pennsylvania what we have seen in public polling, which is there seems to be a pretty stark gender gap between your campaign and vice president harris's. i was curious if you could speak to what you think is behind that. why do you think there is such a discrepancy between men and women in this election? sen. vance: well, you know, first of all, i will say, look, there is clearly a gender gap. but i think it is not nearly as big as the polls say it is. i think that is important to point out. i think we are going to get a lot of women supporting the trump/vance ticket. and of course a lot of men too, because we are united for common sense. one of the arguments i think we can make better, especially to women voters -- it matters to all voters but particularly women voters, moms of small

children, we see that moms care a lot about public safety. they want to be able to take their kid walking in the neighborhood at 9:00 at night without the fear that they are going to be involved or without the fear that an illegal alien is going to commit some violent assault. we have to get back to public safety. the fbi it looks like just released some updated crime numbers which suggested crime was higher than the previously led on in 2022. i am shocked by that. just kidding. look, what is so interesting about violent crime is it is a very small number of people who commit the gross majority of violent crimes in our country. what president trump and i want to do is empower law enforcement, lock up the violent criminals and make our streets safer. that is a message that works with a lot of women voters and that's what we're going to keep on talking about. all right. so, one more time, the third time i have set it, i am sick of it.

swamp the vote usa.com. i see some folks have my book, i am sorry i can't sign them because i have to hit the road but it is available wherever bookstores are sold. here is what i want to say. i know it is easy to get frustrated with the policies of kamala harris, i certainly do. it is easy to get frustrated with the fact that she apparently doesn't even care about public policy and governance. that's why she gives these word salad answers to all these questions. i just want somebody competent who cares about this country to be is less leader and that is clearly not kamala harris. what i would ask'ya is to not let our frustration at kamala harris blind us to the fact that this is still the greatest country in the history of the world and we ought to be proud of it. [crowd chanting: usa]

and i see my beautiful son over there. i am sure he's annoyed that his daddy is embarrassing him right now. but one of the coolest things about running for vice president is that i've gotten to see the country from the perspective of my seven-year-old, my four-year-old and my two-year-old. we go around, we talk to a ton of people. we were and a small business earlier today buying some dog treats for our dog in rural pennsylvania and now we are here in beautiful north carolina watching a pink and purple sunset. i mean, this is an incredible country we have. it's the most beautiful country in the world. but it is also a country where we have incredible natural resources. resources the chinese and the russians would literally kill for and in some cases have. and of course the best natural resource of all is that we have the best people anywhere in the world.

the only thing that is broken about the united states of america is the failed leadership of a generation of politicians like kamala harris. so i ask you, we've got 19 days to go. let's span every single one of those days fixing the broken leadership and giving the american people at president who is fit to lead this great nation. that's donald j. trump. let's work our tale ends off and get it done. god bless you all. thank you for having me and we will see you soon, north carolina. ♪ announcer: republican vice presidential nominee senator j.d. vance wrapping up remarks in wilmington, north carolina.

early voting begins in the state tomorrow. senator vance will be back on the campaign trail scheduled to speak in pittsburgh. meanwhile former president trump will speak at a benefit gala for the roman catholic archdiocese of new york. governor tim walz will be joined by former president bill clinton as he campaigns in durham, north carolina. and vice president kamala harris will start a multicity stop in wisconsin. you can find all of our planned tv coverage by looking up the program schedule at c-span.org, or use the free c-span now video app to stream these events live. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

announcer:hiweek the democratic presidential nominee, vice president kamala harris, sat down for an interview with the show host -- they discussed foreign policy, heplan to provide forgivable loans to black entrepreneurs, and her support of legalizing marijuana at the feder lel among other topics. watch the full intvi courtesy of i heart media tonight at 9:00 eastern on c-anc-span now, or online at c-span.org.

announcer: friday nights, watching c-span's 2024 campaign trail, a weekly discussion on how the presidential -- two reporters join each week. watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail friday nights at 7:30 p.m. eastern on c-span, online at c-span.org, or download as a podcast on c-span now, our free mobile app, or wherever you get your podcasts. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics. announcer: with one of the tightest races for control of congress in modern political history, stay ahead with c-span's comprehensive coverage of key state debates. this fall, c-span brings you access to the nation's top house, senate, and governor debates from across the country.

debates from races shaping your state's future and the balance of power in washington. follow our campaign 2024 coverage anytime online at c-span.org/campaign. and be sure to watch tuesday, november 5 for live real-time election night results. c-span, your unfiltered view of politics, powered by cable. announcer: next, a discussion on humanitarian efforts in sudan with the u.s. special envoy. he talks about protecting civilians, peace operations, and combating crime. the panel was made up of advocates for refugees and human rights. hosted by the simpson center. -- hosted by the stimson center.

>> good afternoon. it is my pleasure to welcome you to the stimson center for today's event, assessing opportunities for the protection of civilians in sudan. my name is rachel i am senior vice president here and i am really pleased to welcome you here to talk about a conflict that has often been overshadowed by current and political events but that now constitutes the world's largest hunger and displacement crisis. over the past 18 months the civil war in sudan has had a horrendous impact on civilians. the conflict between the sudanese armed forces and rapid support forces has led to well over 20,000 deaths, with the actual number is likely much higher, and forcibly displaced

more than 11 million inside and outside the country. more than half of the population is facing acute food insecurity with famine officially declared in north darfur. this conflict has seen heinous acts and atrocities including the targeting of civilians based on gender and ethnicity, recruitment and use of children by forces, extensive sensual violence, and widespread destruction of infrastructure. just last monthly human rights council confirmed assessments at the warring parties and allied militias have committed war crimes with the rapid support forces and its allied militias also responsible for crimes against humanity. over the past one point five years multilateral engagement on sudan has largely been aimed at halting the conflict through a cessation of hostilities. the u.s. has remained at the forefront of these efforts most recently as the lead convener of

group talks. as an organization the stimson center dives deep into complex challenges and situations that require independent research and analysis, global engagement, and policy integration. the policy in sudan is no exception. we know it is important to listen to the voices on the ground of those affected and listen to experts on what more can be done. we are grateful to partner with global affairs canada, who have been supporting some of the work protecting civilians and human security program has been doing and have been engaged down in sudan. stimson also recognizes how critical strong partnerships are to advancing the promotion and respect for human rights around the world. we are thus delighted that today's event has been organized in collaboration with the partnership for effective peacekeeping. for those of you who don't know what it is it is a washington,

d.c. based wand -- nonpartisan group led by a bunch of groups. for over 20 years this partnership has brought together research, partner -- that is all you are going to hear from you today because you are really here today to hear from our experts. it is my pleasure to introduce u.s. special envoy for sudan. tom previously served as special envoy for the great lakes and democratic republic of congo. among his many credentials he also worked on the ground in darfur with the international center for transitional justice. if that is not enough to qualify him, he was also elected to congress when he represented the virginias fifth congressional

district where he served as a founding member of the house veterans affairs committee. he also led the center for american progress action and open society's foundations. stimson is grateful for the support under his tenure. his support focused on bolstering democracy, advancing human rights and addressing climate change. on a personal note i was very pleased to have the opportunity to connect with tom during a flight back from geneva this august as he and his team were returning from the most recent talks with sudan actors and i saw firsthand how engaged even on a very long flight after a very long week that he and his team worked to identify next steps. thank you for joining us and for your ongoing leadership in pushing for a much-needed peace in sudan. i am now going to turn over to lease up.

they will engage in a conversation about the u.s. is ongoing efforts to achieve a cease fire in sudan and then we will turn to a panel discussion. >> wonderful. thank you so much. thank you to everyone who has come along to get to join us in person and to those who are joining us online and virtually. thank you so much for joining us. i don't need to go into depth because -- . the civil war has been waging for 18 months. the impact on civilians have been devastating. we have a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding and yet it has been a struggle to garner

global attention on this crisis. compounding this is we see a really sophisticated conflict taking place with a range of different actors. despite the fact we have u.n. security council sanctions and an arms embargo. these are many of the issues you are grappling with in your extensive portfolio as u.s. special envoy for sudan. it is fair to say most of us don't envy the challenges you are trying to adjust. i want to get to a couple of these issues. i thought it might be helpful to hear from you directly about the ongoing efforts to broker a cease fire. we had the talks that took place in geneva that faced several challenges. we had the work through the alps group in terms of consultations taking place. i thought maybe to start can you provide an update on where these discussions are currently up to and perhaps provide some context on how efforts to protect civilians are going? >> first of all, thank you for

any effort to draw attention to this crisis and thank you to stimson for all of the great work you all do. and to everyone in the room who is part of the small but mighty band of folks who are trying to end this conflict and and this famine. i have been trying to focus on the positive edges difficult in this role. i will say there is something of a blessing not only in knowing every day that you wake up -- as i said to someone earlier, i know where my family is and i know where my next meal is coming from. also something positive about being in a position to try to do something about it, even if we fail more often than we succeed. i think everyone in this room regardless of your background has some power to affect this.

the only thing worse in life than seeing this level of injustice and not being able to do something about it is to look at it and not. that being said we are in a situation where the scale of human suffering is impossible to wrap one's head around. whether that is at scale of over 20 million people displaced facing acute hunger. we are talking about trying to imagine if every single resident of virginia, maryland, and d.c. were forced out of their home, every single person. it is difficult to think on that scale. then you think on a personal scale and you hear stories about people who have been forced into sexual slavery for months as the only way to either have food for their family. if we think about hunger we have to think about what hunger does to people. physically, biologically, also what it does to people in terms of the decisions they are making every day.

the way that children's brains are developing. you take one individual case and you can't wrap your head around it. and so it is all the more frustrating when we know that the world is paying so little attention to this relative to the scale of the crisis. while we can talk about the fact that there are the elections, gaza, and ukraine, for the first six or seven months of this conflict, it was pre-october 7, not in the immediate election cycle, and we were still seeing no coverage of this. it has also been true that we have had a hard time getting the african rest to cover this. we have had a hard time getting african civil society to engage on this for reasons we can perhaps delve into more. that being said, of course there is one group of people incredibly focused on this with great courage and that is the sudanese people. they continue to not only remind us why we were all inspired back

in 2019 about the aspiration to inclusive democracy, but we see groups like the emergency response rooms getting nominated for a nobel prize, finding ways to get food and medicine into the hardest to reach areas, doing so with pennies on the dollar in terms of aid. we are seeing some of that scale up. the phrase i have been hearing more and more from the sudanese in the last few weeks is let's make this the last war sudan ever fights. rather than a period where we have been looking at the lowest common denominator, let's just get a pause and we will continue to push for those things. but we are not even getting those things. that has been driving people back to saying we can't be here a generation from now or a decade from now. we need to address some root causes that got us to this. i am seeing this resurgence of some of that energy and coalition building and invasion by the sudanese people of the future that they want and

calling us into it rather than rights for set. -- rather than vice versa. we will get into more details at the ring through's in the alps. while the visible breakthrough with humanitarian access, we got three arteries open, we have gotten tens of millions of pounds in. it is small compared to what is needed. the bigger issue in some ways was trying to break up the diplomatic paralysis that had kicked in people would just like, sudan, what are you going to do? here is something you can do. we have no excuses to not put wins on the board. and internally i think he would see in various places including inside the government coalition, the more hardline and extremist elements, those he wanted to get peace, losing power, and in ways probably not as public. that effort and the way it played out was the way it played out.

in the meantime we have seen not only a failure of cease fires but a significant escalation and spread of the conflict and that is the reality we are facing. >> you paint a very challenging picture but also i think looking a little bit at some areas where there has been progress. i want to go to the humanitarian access point. we know in parts of the country, developments we are seeing in recent days, they put something about their challenges to the miller -- to deliver a in darfur. could you elaborate about what are the priorities around humanitarian access and trying to facilitate the ability for organizations to address the famine and food insecurity and basic needs not being met? >> at the biggest level obviously the priority is to get food, medicine, to all 18 states

and particularly to those people and groups of people were in the most acute need. i think the seven jet -- the subtext is to eliminate the use of starvation as a weapon of war. sexual exploitation a weapon of war. unfortunately while we have made some significant tactical gains with both sides on access routes, there has not yet in a fundamental switch in the thinking that says even when the war is going on, there is certain stuff you just don't do. you don't block food and aid going in. people have been doing for centuries across every continent, the idea of finding a way to make sure innocent people can get food and medicine during these times. we are trying -- where does that play out?

the three combinations of access from the west, the road coming in from the east, the route which is mostly open from circumvention, gets the humanitarian community access to a lot of places. we continue to have days where rain gets in the way but far too many days where we see delays particularly from -- they will probably not have access from the south in some time. that means getting some of the air routes open. it is about the ability to have international hubs on the ground with evacuation routes. as the rains recede we need to be 5x, 10x. i think usaid has been created about this we need to supercharge it, which is what we might call localization efforts. it is the bucket of everything

from cash and vouchers to business and bakeries. we know this is good policy even in a different environment. but an environment like this we need to be thinking creatively about how to unleash the innovation of the sudanese people. and i think by humanitarian standards it has been super edgy but by the standards of what is needed in the conflict we are still way too conservative on this and i think what we need to be seeing in the coming months is a greater emphasis on that as well. >> if we can pivot for a moment, you mentioned at the outset the role of civil society and how fundamental this has been in engaging in efforts to address the conflict. everything from the emergency response room to the innovations we are seeing. next week in new york we will have the u.n. security council meeting. women are pivotal to these efforts taking place. they also have a fundamental role in contributing to peace

processes that take place. one of the criticism of some of the talks that have taken place is women perhaps are being sidelined tibbett from the process or perhaps not actively engaged in negotiations. i wanted to ask you how women are being engaged in the processes taking place. >> first on the underlying premise i think it is unquestionable. not only are you more likely to get a peace deal, it is more likely to be sustained and just and equitable when women are not only at the table but playing a central role. i think we have been making progress from a very low bar on that. there was a group of women technical experts initially across town and then in the town and then in the room helping to shape and edit the command directive the rsf eventually did sign on to, although there is a lot more work to do to change

that. part of what the shift we are looking at right now though is if you go back to before my time, the theory, which i think was a good theory, is you would have cease fire here and political discussion here. the cease fire was made for external and armed actors to end the war, but not decide the political future of sudan which was meant to be here. in this space not only was it meant to be civilian led and centered by the sudanese with heavy participation by women and youth. that is a good theory, but in practice the cease fire piece had a name, it had the u.s. involved in it, it had dates, etc. and the political process has not taken the same kind of form. so the end result has been even if the theory was to always have women at the center, in practice, the focus has been to put too much of the attention and focus on the armed actors.

the tendency has been to say how do we bring women more into this table and that is certainly important. but what we are looking at now is how do we reimagine the table if this split is not working even if i think it was good in theory. how do we re-center the political questions and the civilian process as being the thing driving this rather than where we have been in those dynamics? it will not be easy to do but certainly it has a better chance of succeeding and producing a good outcome and we need to make it something not where women are invited to that table, but women fit in the table and drive it. >> that is something i am sure we are going to get into the panel discussion that will follow. i wanted to turn to some external actors engaged in the conflict taking place. u.s. president biden recently met with the president of the uae and there was some criticism

around the fact there was no condemnation of some of the activities to support the rsf in sudan. i wanted to ask you a little bit about how is the u.s. government approaching efforts to stem the flow of arms into sudan, which is obviously driving a lot of the conflict and atrocity against civilians, but what tools are you using to apply pressure at the moment? >> the u.s. really led the fight to extend the darfur arms embargo that has been on for some time. but more importantly not just to extend it but to try and enforce it. we put two names forward of people violating that arms embargo. so far the russians have had that on hold. we want to see that kind of enforcement expanded. we have signaled in every multilateral forum that now is the time to be sending in guns and fueling the conflict, but rather to be partners in

humanitarian efforts and peace efforts. you have seen increasing discussion in various forms of a potential national arms embargo in this situation. so i think there is no question about that. we recently sanctioned someone who has been running procurements for the rsf. we previously sanctioned some businesses involved in fueling this conflict including through that procurement. we are working with a large number of external partners on doing so. that question of raising the costs both of internal and external actors supporting the war is important. looking at greater not just multilateral statements on paper but enforcement of those will be important for this. it is a classic case where if we can get people from maximalist interest to neutral interest, everybody benefits pretty much from this being stabilized and getting back on that inclusive

track and almost everybody loses from continuation of the status quo. it is a very important part. >> i appreciate that. one final question from >> one final question from me before we turn to the audience. we had the u.n. human rights council fact-finding mission with a call for an independent and impartial force with a mandate to protect civilians. this was rejected by the sudanese authorities. we also had a request from the security council to come back with recommendations on protection of civilians in sudan. that is expected to be shared at the end of october. with that in mind, what international mechanisms do you think should be under consideration when it comes to production of civilians, notwithstanding there are urgent protection needs and these mechanisms can take a while to stand up, and at the same time taking into account the local mechanisms in place and making

sure we are investing in those resources and not just deferring to some international intervention. mr. perriello: one of the things i love about coming to stimson is it always comes with a homework assignment. [laughter] protection of civilian lessons in sudan, which i think is important. there are many things that are depressing contrasts about when i was engaged on dart for 20 plus years ago -- on darfur 20 plus years ago versus now. one of the most stark contrasts is the geopolitical appetite for civilian protection mechanisms, responsibility to protect, et.c, back in that time -- etc., back in that time versus now. president biden, secretary blinken have spoken about this need in sudan. we spent a lot of time in the talks in switzerland, talking

about both a monitoring mechanism for existing agreements, but also potentially enforcing an additional agreement. got an agreement with the african union. got buy in across different actors. then frankly in the buildup to the general assembly, unga, when we thought we would get more support from that, some of the air came out of it. we do think the african union will be well situated to pursue this, whether it is an accountability mechanism or something more. at the moment we have to be realistic that there is not of geopolitical or financial support for that. -- there is not a lot of geopolitical or financial support for that. we should not be putting all the eggs in that basket. it is a good moment to think back on what some of the tools

of that time were, more agile mechanisms that can get there. sanctions can do a bit of accountability but we need more people to come along with it. as you noted, the best assistance is always from within. we want to build off of more indigenous mechanisms of both accountability and monitoring, but also recognize the risks are extremely high. the telecom is still down in significant parts of the country. it is a place where we are similar failing the people. but documentation of abuses is important, continuing to deter when we can and continuing to fight for something more comprehensive as soon as we can, certainly something that the women's stakeholder group which i spoke to this morning, and overlapped heavily with the group in switzerland, has pushed for. when we got the command

directive from the rsf, it was good in that we had not had that before. it is a tool, it is not an end. how do we turn that into results? how do we change the behavior? on that we have a long way to go. host: i think we might have five minutes, if that is possible, in terms of tracking your time. we might go to the audience. i see a few hands. i will take a couple questions here. we have the ability to take questions online. i ask people to introduce themselves by name and organization when asking your question. i think we might start here. wait for the microphone, sorry. >> okay, i work with al jazeera. my question is about the

accusation from the rsf side to the ejection army that it is -- to the egyptian army. what is the u.s. position from that, if proven true? that is a. and b, help us understand how uae is allegedly supporting the rsf incident while egypt is supporting the sudanese army while at the same time, right before these accusations, he was in egypt to extend the economic bilateral relationship spirit is there any relationships -- bilateral relationships. i have more questions, but i guess that is it. host: we will take them together. >> [inaudible]

first of all, thanks for doing this. my question, if you could say something about spillover effects, especially concerning the humanitarian aspect into other countries in the region. host: i think the last question here from this gentleman. >> hi, i'm with "no business with genocide." we do a lot of work lobbying congress on a range of issues, including sudan. there are a lot of bills in congress right now, sudan, looking at the role of the uae, suggesting other sanctions, looking at a gemini -- at a genocide determination across the rsf. where do you think the attention of congress is best focused at

this time to get the best results? mr. perriello: let me take those in reverse order. as someone who served in both the executive and legislative, i learned a lesson not telling the legislative branch what to do. what i will say without getting into the specifics about which bills are best is to note that the bipartisan consensus about sudan on the hill has been consistent for many years across and ministrations and is a very crucial part of the u.s. engagement with sudan. it is one reason why camps speak to future administrations. there is less reason to believe that sudan policy will be interrupted in other areas. that has been true of both the house and senate, both republicans and democrats. you have an odd mix of constituencies there, and leaders on it. i think the general tenor of

congress is probably for greater accountability, greater use of negative incentives to both internal and external actors. i think that is a consensus i can say without letting the cat out of the bag in terms of that engagement. the most important thing is we continue to see us contribute more on the humanitarian side than the rest of the world combined, even at a time that is very tight in many of those budgets. that goes back again well into the danforth era and before, as you probably know. without getting prescriptive to congress, i will say it is a very clear and consistent message that the u.s. congress cares, stands with the sudanese people, and that is not going to change anytime soon. on the brussels offer, i will let you know about getting together. it would be good to do something with the ambassadors here. i used to go through brussels

constantly in the great lakes days, and have done less so here, but certainly that and others have been super engaged and great partners. the spillover effect is disastrous. if there is any silver lining, it's part of why i think we have seen growing diplomatic intensity around trying to solve the conflict. you have millions and millions of refugees that have spilled over into neighboring countries. just to take one of the more prominent examples, at one point -- 1.3 million sudanese refugees in egypt. that is new refugees on top of the 5 million refugees, or they would call them guests, already in egypt. this is a tremendous act of hospitality by the neighboring countries across the board, all of them taking them in, some two countries over. it is a genuine economic strength. i and in many cases, one of the

great things -- and in many cases, one of the great things about sudan is diversity, but you have ethnic populations that overlap with other countries. it has been constrained by neighboring countries that have -- constraint by neighboring countries that they have not done the domino effect that could make this a regional war, much like the drc was in the ' 90s. while some neighboring countries have been more constructive than others in terms of how to not engage kinetically, we have seen constraint be the more dominant form of escalation on a conflict that could quickly become regional. that said, every month we go without a cease fire, every month we go without a peace deal makes those sorts of negative domino effects even more likely. we also of course have, in addition to the hunger crisis in sudan, we have cholera spreading

quickly. and you have very different refugee experiences. in chad, you have camps that are completely overflowing with people who are coming over severely malnourished. you have populations that are 5x or 10x what the local population would be, which has inflationary effects. that is different than, say, nairobi or compile a where most people -- or kampala where most people are urban refugees, and we talked about egypt. when you get to the second half of the second year of a conflict, then you are talking about not just the polarization internally and online, you are talking about issues with the refugee population, jobs, childhood development. while those may not be as urgent as people facing starvation, it is a very real thing when you are taking on millions of people.

so the spillover effect already exists, and it is already getting more pronounced. we are seeing more countries starting to constrain their level of hospitality for sudanese that are there. all of this is yet another reason to understand the sooner we get this done, the better. we do work a lot with the neighboring countries and other african counterparts on how to de-escalate some of the things, particularly on the ethnic and tribal side, that could take this conflict to a different space. it does feel often you are squeezing here and there and it could go over at this point. the african union has a role to play in continuing, even if it can't solve the conflict, to at least play a significant role in deterring the conflict from becoming more complex. this goes a bit to the first question, which is that well beyond the neighboring countries we see a growing number of actors, and increasingly nefarious actors, are playing.

in addition to the questions of the role of the uae, egypt, saudi, all those actors arguably have some interest in stability in the region. when you talk about countries further out, or nonstate actors there engaged, whether -- actors that are engaged, whether it is foreign actors, then you have people for whom the stability argument is not one we can come back to. each passing month we see more actors going there. one of the things that everyone rightly fears in this case is petition. -- is partition. partition of the country by all analysis would not stabilize the situation. there is almost no scenario where it is a two part division because you have a staff that is rsf dominated.

you will see a much more significant chattering in addition to areas that would be -- shattering in addition to areas that would be failed states. on the question of the roles that some of these countries have played, it has been our clear message that this is not a time for any countries, whether they are allies of ours or not, to be funding or fueling or arming actors within. it is a time to be pushing those parties to the peace table. what i do think we have, which we saw somewhat in the alps talks, is even countries that see this conflict through a different lens and perspective should be able to agree on two areas of things. one is, even as the war continues, humanitarian law has to be respected. we need to restore those basic norms. second, we have to end the war. everyone is losing from this war careening off the edge.

everyone should seem to benefit. even if that does not mean you get your maximalist interest, we should get mutual interest. for us, if there is one positive part of this understory, it is the only path forward that everyone can agree on is a unity civilian government, which is what the sooner these people wanted for -- what the sudanese people wanted for a long time anyway. it is not to be a war that ends in power-sharing between the groups. that led to the war in the first place. how do we get back to the process the sudanese people put in place in 2019? there is no shortage of talent. there is no shortage of people who can help drive this country into inclusive democracy and prosperity. the exact path of that is what all these negotiations will be about. to the extent that we continue to see strong leadership from both secretary blinken and president biden, it's the idea of sagan, guys -- of saying,

guys, there has to be a path forward led by the sudanese people, and backing off of anything that seems to be fueling the conflict. i think we will continue to look at how the u.s. can raise the cost of doing the wrong thing, increase the attention on doing the right thing. i do think, as pitiful as the overall global attention has been, we have seen it growing steadily over the last few months. we have seen sudanese voices breaking through more often. i think the results coming out of switzerland, again while modest in terms of direct impact, the real issue is a turning point from hopelessness to progress, and once we are starting to question how much more progress we can get, that is a different diplomatic energy. we will continue to work 24/7 to see, to explore every chance. thank you for out loaning -- for

outlining what the u.s. government is doing in this space and the advocacy in this space. it has been in aboard an opportunity to highlight that as part of the discussion today. thank you for joining us. we look forward to continuing in these discussions as we look at efforts to support the ongoing conflict in sudan. mr. perriello: thank you very much. [applause] we might ask folks to stay seated. stay with us for a few minutes.

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>> it is a real honor today to be here to help moderate this panel on one of the last topics

that tom and lisa touched on, the protections of civilians in sudan. it is no secret to anyone in this room the scale and ferocity of the atrocities that have been committed in the war to date, and the way that interlink's with what has become -- interlinks with what has become the largest humanitarian crisis at this stage. i am super pleased to be joined by a very distinguished panel to discuss this. the founder and president of darfur women's action group. she has been active in working on these issues in darfur and leading the charge against gender-based violence for over 20 years. dan sullivan is the director for the middle east, africa, and asia at refugees international, a fellow colleague of mine. in addition to being at ri for a number of years, he previously worked for save darfur for five or six years, and has just

returned from a trip to the mountains. we are excited to hear about that. then the regional director for africa at freedom house. he has a decade of experience in the horn of africa in democracy and human rights. and a regional analyst at the stimson center and a true expert on the intersection of peacekeeping, protection of civilians, and human security. i know she has an upcoming report that will touch on a number of these issues. in the interest of time, i will eschew further remarks and dive into the conversations. you have been watching the situation in sudan, but particularly in darfur closely. you hear regularly from family and friends there. fighting has grown quite ferocious in recent weeks, but there are new waves of fighting in other parts of sudan as well. could you bring us up to speed about what is happening in terms of the nature of the conflict

and the intersection with atrocities in darfur, but then spread out across parts of the country, and what you are seeing is the biggest opportunities to make progress on the protection of civilians? >> thank you so much and thanks everyone for coming today. thanks to the stimson center for hosting us. we will talk about civilian protection. to get back to your question on what happens, but also how that tells the tragic tale of the conflict in the coming months, basically that is more conflict that is personal. the wave of attacks was rsf. it was mostly between the formal arms and their military. the conflict absolutely changes when the recent attack happened.

bombing, particularly that happens every rsf attack, but also intentional destruction of public property, the schools, university, hospitals, everywhere there are survivable means. i think this is a similar trend in the different part of sudan as well. it is more serious when it comes to darfur because of its historical factors that really increase the likelihood of mass atrocities. what this is telling us for the coming months, to connect to the question of civilian protection, is -- [indiscernible] that is the north darfur because

that is more sahara like and easier to move, less seasonal river. the rsf was not successful in taking over the city, but it also hindered the need to create new narratives. the main source of mobilization and equipment is loots. the less loot to take, the less mobilization. that impacted its ability to mobilize more military. however, as the dry season coming now, starting from december, that is always the season of war. what happened is this is more time the rsf will be able to get more -- easy to get arms from central africa, because it was absolutely impossible at this time. that is why they tried to repair the airport. darfur, it is easy to use an

open border to bring more guns but also more equipment. however, on the other side, th e armored groups, they spent all of this nine months in the east of sudan, training a large amount of military forces. all of these are coming. it is a time when the land cruiser hits the ground running and moving. what this tells us, the trajectory or the trends of the conflict is going to be very tough in the december up to marc h. that is what kind of picture we will be looking for. we have a large amount of forces in the mountain. those forces are involved in

some of the conflict, which is very difficult, meaning that if this happens, you have forces in the east that are coming to take over. so you will be looking -- so we will be looking at al fashir in an absolutely different angle. there is a high likelihood that atrocities will occur. it is not too late to have a conversation about a mechanism for civilian protection and atrocity prevention. even within the u.s., there is so much policy framework for civilian protection. in the u.n., beyond the peacekeeping forces, there is a global responsibility to protect. as an african union, there are different it mechanisms -- are different mechanisms, different forces. it's not too late to have a conversation about civilian

protection in sudan if we have to do something in the end of december. the ability of even the renewed army embargo to really hold any water with this open border. sudan is a country bordering this. i will say the name, and you imagine libya, south sudan, etc. all of these countries has a conflict. it is difficult to say, okay. this is a huge border, and there is so much global illicit businesses that are very active there. trans regional organized crimes in the mineral sector, or you

know, drugs and other organized crimes, including violent extremists. it is very hard to imagine that without having serious forces to protect civilians, this can help. this does not have to be something big. we have to start with something. i remember in 2003 in sudan when we were calling for international force to protect civilians in darfur in 2004. that was a crime. you cannot even say that. but after a few months, less than a year, the sudan government accepted for the eu forces to come with conditions. after that, they became un, and then becomes the largest un mission ever with 21,000 military forces, that ever happened. that was in darfur. currently with the guards to sudan, whatever the caretaker

government in sudan is saying, whatever the actors are saying, i think this is a time to put on the table on some sort of mechanism for civilians. [indiscernible] that can be a starting point. access to food and other services. that is where i will end it. it is very important and timely to have a conversation about civilian protection in sudan. >> thank you. quscondy a lot on the table. as bad as the fighting is right now, what we can expect to see as the next fighting system -- fighting season comes into bloom. the secretary general's report

to the security council on civilian protection options in sudan is due shortly. the council is due to meet i believe at the end of october on this issue. could you tell us what might be in this report? a bunch of organizations have been involved in trying to feed into it. what are the lessons we can learn from previous peacekeeping endeavors, both the large and small interventions on civilian protection? what lesson can we draw from that for what we might be facing over the next year or two? >> i met go in reverse order, starting from the past up to the present. sudan has had a significant history of peace operations. over the last 20 years, there have been eight peace operations in sudan. that includes the current un peacekeeping mission in the disputed area, that continues to protect civilians there. as was pointed out, the most notable piece operation was -- peace operation was the un

african union hybrid operation in darfur deployed from 2007 to 2020. it was successful in physically protecting tens of thousands of civilians despite significant challenges. and it served as an effective deterrent to violence. we are talking about a region, darfur, the size of spain. it's significant. so when you are considering that there were 23,000 troops on the ground, that is not sufficient to cover the entire region. so the mission significantly struggled to provide more proactive protection, especially in the earlier years it was deployed. there is something to be learned there from a more static approach to protection, which was taken in the earlier days of diplomat. internally displaced persons reacted well to that. they saw refuge near the un

peacekeeping missing bases -- mission basis, knowing that having physical proximity would give them better protection. i think that is something important to point out, while military boots on the ground as we are considering the current situation will not be sufficient to cover the entire region, let alone the entire country to protect civilians, static protection is something we should strongly consider going forward. and then more recently, the u.n. integrated a transition assistance mission in sudan, was mandated to assist government led protection efforts. and had a countrywide mandate, although it was supposed to be focused on darfur and blue nile states. stimson has put out a publication this past week on emerging lessons from it. i will only speak briefly to

these emerging lessons but encourage you to take the publication or go online to the stimson center website. unitams is still very small, especially in comparison to other programs, and was deployed from late 2020 to february 2024 when it was closed down following a request from the sudanese authorities. it only had 250 civilian staff in total. it was supposed to support civilian protection efforts across the country. that is an enormous task. i will highlight three key takeaways from untiam's experience -- from unitam's experience. one is we need to have genuine clarity on what we mean when we talk about protection. are we talking about physical production? are we talking about protection of human rights? are we talking about the

protection of civilians as understood in un peacekeeping missions? lack of clarity of what we mean can really hinder a united approach and create unnecessary confusion. also there is a clear need for protection of civilian strategy. it's not enough to just talk about protecting civilians, we need to have a clear vision of what an end state should look like and then a plan of how to execute that, including possible mechanisms and how those mechanisms could contribute to protection outcomes. and then additionally protection needs to be mainstreamed. we need to be sure that advancing the protection of civilians in sudan is prioritized in mainstream everything, not only from the political talks that remain ongoing, but also the possible kinetic protection mechanisms that are under discussion. going from the first part of your question about current

options on the table, i think it is really important that we don't think about one or two options, we need to think about the short, medium and long-term. those will need different responses to the protection of civilians. as has been mentioned, green zone's, or safe zones, are a viable, immediate, or shorter-term protection option. so we are on the same page, green zone is a military term that refers to a safe haven within a zone of combat. in contrast to red zones, which is the zone of combat itself. green zones could provide internally displaced persons safe refuge within a very specific, highly limited area. this could be around airports, transit hubs, or where internally displaced persons are already congregated. in the medium-term, when we do

have some sort of full or partial cease-fire agreement, we will need monitoring and verification mechanisms. as has been seen with the jetta declaration, it's not enough to have the parties come to an agreement. we need to make sure they are held accountable and that there is an independent and partial mechanism that makes sure they are implementing these commitments. here i would turn to the experience of the international joint military commission in the mountains that was deployed in the early 2000 as well as unita m's permanent -- as unitams' permanent cease-fire committee. they both had a and equal representation of the parties and they had a convening -- had a joint and equal representation of the parties and they had a convening party, localized, small efforts. you could have a small effort that has a big impact.

in the longer term, medium to longer term, we need to be talking about peace operations and deploying either african union peace operations or a hybrid mission to protect civilians that is ideally connected to a political process. >> thank you very much. i was in un headquarters during peacekeeping operations and i remember in the run-up to that, it was seen as a political possibility with china. much of the conversation around these issues is how impossible it is to get anything for the council. the pushback to that is you have to try and begin to set the table and build a pathway politically, knowing it will take some time. thank you for that. i will turn to you to talk about the situation of gender-based violence in the conflict, particularly in darfur.

you have been working on these issues for decades. we are hearing and possibly gross stories about what is happening in terms of gender-based violence as a weapon of war. what are you seeing and hearing from the ground, and what does the darfur women's action network see as potential options for support on the international community side to lessen the severity of these crimes against women? >> thank you. i would like to thank stimson for putting this event together. it is really timely to have these kind of conversations. speaking to you today after a year and a half from the most vicious war of destruction and demonization of the people of sudan, and darfur being a region that is impacted by the war's atrocities for more than 20

years, you can imagine what women have to tolerate, but also what everybody else has to tolerate, and to face in the face of this campaign of destruction. both sides have committed the most heinous crimes, and all types of gross human violations. the crisis in sudan, gender-based, in this war, gender-based violence has been the most defining feature of the crisis. the first gender-based violence incident, or rape incident, it was reported at 12:00 p.m. in khartoum. in sudan there is the

international community -- in sudan, the international community does not learn. darfur has been used systematic and a very vicious way against women and girls, particularly its ethnically targeted and motivated attack from women on -- on women from indigenous tribes. it was repeated against many african tribes in darfur. while the crisis in khartoum is horrifying enough, similarly the cases that we have seen and witnessed in darfur against women has been perpetrated, women have been abducted and taken away. today, many families do not know

their whereabouts. they have not returned. we don't know what is their situation. there are cases of rape reported even this morning, yesterday, in the area of al fashir. whenever that attack escalated in al fashir, there is an increased report of gender-based violence. the younger victims were seven years old. this is obvious because of lack of accountability, but also lack of protection. i don't see the protection of women can be done in a vacuum from civilian protection in sudan or in darfur in particular. both sides have been committing gross violations of civilians, but the support forces are targeting a specific group of

people. the insistence of attacks in al fashir consistently, mostly attacking the most vulnerable internally displaced people. the casualties are women and children. at the same time, attacking women precisely and purposely to destroy the fabric of the community, to weaken. they do know the culture very well, because women are at the center of our society, and in order to break the dignity of the family and communities you are attacking, you have to attack the women, make them feel they are unable to protect the women. i saw the number and the context and the magnitude of attacks on women in sudan should shock the world's conscience and prompt them to act a long time ago. immediately after the start of war in sudan, we started calling

for civilian protection, because we do know that without civilian protection, there will not be any way to end this war. both sides are very adamant about continuing this crisis, but also the widespread forces, they are using this deadly tactic of fighting inside the cities, sometimes holding families hostage. forced marriages has been reported. forcing people to marry them. multiple men marrying one woman. these are cases reported in khartoum. in darfur, many families were cut off. they don't even know the extent of how their family members have suffered because of the systematic cutting of the communication means from the beginning. what happened in many other places in darfur, and then the

level of militarization right now. we have learned that forces are coming into the cities and forcing people to recruit. in my hometown, a report confirmed they come to the traditional leaders and say it is now time for youth and men to recruit and defend. i am sitting here talking to you, expect my family to face the worst. the leaders in the city refuse. they have to refuse, because they have nothing to fight for. they are already leaving -- already living in stone age slavery. nobody felt safe or able to flee or even to anything within the city. there is a report of disappearance of young people who leave their home right now. most of the young people from 1 6 to 25 are confined to staying

home. women, young girls cannot leave their homes to go anywhere to do anything. all women of all ages are so terrified. that is simply the current state of the situation. the danger and regional aspect of this crisis and this war, the forces have recruited fighters from neighboring countries, cha d, libya. some women were taken across the border, but also the fear is if there is no civilian protection. tensions were already high in chad between citizens. the results are leaning towards sympathetic with the rsf and t hose who are against them. the next place to see this crisis is chad, central africa,

libya. these are all fragile states. both sides, when they kill, the danger of this -- and i want to emphasize on this, they say allahu akbar and kill. there is potential for extremists to recruit and join income into this -- join and come into this. sudan has its own history. the international community is really behind. when we were talking about al fashir is a ticking bomb, we surpassed that moment. the atrocities we are fearing is already happening right now. people are dying in masses. hospitals are all completely destroyed. today, as i was coming here, one of our team members who insisted in staying there to help people

because she's one of the only few people who have a bank account, and many of you who are humanitarian's know how that works. she lost her daughter. she was counting and very interest about the deaths of children and today her daughter has become -- she was crushed. this is not only her, but multiple people who remain there insisted that they would be there to help the people survive, are leaving, or even getting killed. it is high time for civilian protection. what we called for is of course -- sudan is bigger than you can imagine, but we know where the problem is. the support forces getting weapons applies through the border, getting recruits coming from different countries through the border.

if somewhere they can start with places with a number of intelligence people, al fashir, two of the largest camps, this is like 2 million people residing in this city. it is urban. they are blocking the borders of these countries. the special envoys talk about the humanitarian aid and that there is progress. unfortunately the humanitarian aid came through and it feels like they did something. the stronghold of the rapid support forces are where atrocities are being committed. they are opening this on purpose to feed their fighters and also taking advantage of the humanitarian aid. they said we received credible

information in chad that every convoy is followed by trucks carrying weapons into this area. two bridges are broken, so they know that humanitarian aid is not going out. protection is really needed right now. i hope the security council makes the right decision. if we wait until december, many people will be -- will not be there to be protected. protecting people from dying in asylums. bringing humanitarian aid will help people survive, will help those who are there to help others survive, like my team member whose daughter died because there is not enough food and nutrition for children. accountability will serve as a protection and determined factor

if bashir was held accountable. they would be hesitant to start this work. unfortunately that is a huge failure. and financial accountability. this is not a civilian war the way they call it. it is systemic atrocities by those who are powerful, have many guns, and the ability to kill more people and rape more women. when the negotiations happened, the international committee only talked to a few small handful of leaders who have guns, have power, and who started the war in the first place. people like women, youth leaders who are right on the ground as of today, asking us front-line workers, are not invited. we end up with failure. we have to change those dynamics

in order to have many lessons we have to learn from sudan. i will stop here. it is really needed right now. we have to start somewhere. i also want to emphasize it is not peacekeeping, because that was a mistake. the mandate was crafted, but it was made to be peacekeeping. there was no peace on the ground to keep. today there is no visibility for peace anytime soon, so there is a need for peacemaking forces on the ground. that will create an enabling environment for more investigation to take place and then for accountability, delivery of human terry and eight -- of humanitarian aid. then we can have peace on the ground. >> thank you. we have about 10 minutes left, so in the interest of time, you

have spent time visiting countries around sudan and the nuba mountains quite recently, and have been doing a ton of work with emergency response rooms, and in the nuba mountains where you saw the local organizations. they have really been the only instrument for delivering humanitarian aid over the last year and a half and will continue to be incredibly important, if not massively under resourced. they are also on the front lines of this protection crisis. what are you hearing from them about the steps the international community needs to take? >> thank you. i want to start by re-highlighting that something -- highlighting something the special envoy said earlier. i think that is pretty significant. amidst everything you have heard today and what you followed, the atrocities happening, the famine, the emergency response rooms and other mutual aid

groups have been a bright spot in this and are pushing things not only in sudan, but globally when we talk about a new way of doing aid. i think there is a lot of lessons we have seen that are coming up. in terms of the protection of civilians, the emergency response rooms and local groups have been doing protection of civilians from the beginning. they came together organically in their neighborhoods to take care of each other, did a lot of work to evacuate the most vulnerable, have set up kitchens, women friendly spaces, trying to share information on what is safe, what is not safe. they are already doing protection of civilians. there is opportunities there to support them more. as i have spoken to different local representatives, whether in sudan or based in kampala or

nairobi, one of the consistent things i have heard them say is one of the best ways they can get protection is by being recognized as legitimate humanitarian actors who should be protected under international humanitarian law. they are clear died -- are clear -eyed that they are outside of the immediate protection, but there is power in that recognition. there is power in having the international community speak out when the types of things that happened to international human terry and workers when they get detained or harassed -- humanitarian workers when they get detained or harassed,r when that happens -- that when that happens to local groups, there is as much of an outrage. that is something i heard that is important. i also heard the local groups are not monolithic.

some groups have started to get more aid and have become targets. we have to be very conscience -- very conscious of what the locals say. they are the ones who know their communities best. finding ways to support them. a couple ways of doing that, ideas i've heard from people working closely with err's on the ground and err's themselves, number one, making sure there is the communications ability across the country so that people can coordinate and warn each other when there are risks. another is to create maybe a protection fund so when people are at immediate risk and need to be evacuated, that that is available. that is something that can support. just doing things the un does in other areas.

keeping close tabs of instances where humanitarian aid is blocked or workers are harassed. making it a big issue for the warring parties to know that these people are recognized and there is protection, there is limits. the broader things we talked about will be needed, but on the most immediate local level there is a lot more room. we've already seen these local groups networking more. we've seen international -- them learning to interact with the international infrastructure. there has been notable progress in the context of how large this -- has been notable progress. in the context of how large this crisis is, there is more work to be done. in terms of aid and protection, the message from these local groups is trust us and support

us. >> great, thank you very much. i do wonder if there has been a dialogue between some of these groups and the sick attorney general's team preparing this report -- and the secretary-general's team preparing this report. we only have about five or six minutes left. can we go to audience questions? put your hand up. we will bring a mic to you. identify yourself, and a short quick question to go with it. question in the front? we will take three questions and go to answers. >> my short question is about the peacekeeping mission. we have noted in the past that the peacekeeping mission in mali failed. there is already a question as to whether the un peacekeeping

missions as a whole is a good thing for the sudan conflict. and as to whether the african union or east african standby forces would be better placed in proximity. my question is, would you have the un peacekeeping mission or the east african forces to carry out this peacekeeping mission in sudan? >> great, thank you. >> thank you. brian johnson with department of state. rabbit support forces agreement through -- it was mentioned rapid support forces recruitment through multiple countries. it is a multi-dimensional

conflict. i wonder if you can speak to what is incentivizing people to come across the border and join this conflict. is it purely material? are there ideological discernments driving that? >> let's take one more. >> my question is tailored more to daniel. you mentioned you were recently in the nuba mountains. can you speak more about what you were doing there? we are hearing there is a famine specifically in the nuba mountains. i am hearing that the rsf presents is not much so in that area. can you speak about what you seen in terms of the border issue there and why there isn't any aid being brought into the nuba mountains and how that is correlating to the famine in that area? >> >>, good question.

we got a question on the original drivers of the conflict, and in on the nuba mountains. who was to take the question on peacekeeping? >> if you would like to start, i am happy to follow-up. [laughter] it's particularly interesting now because we have the resolution in the past year that creates a mechanism for getting assessed contributions from the united nations to the african union in a way of actually. -- so it can be an african union-lad effort, but using -- african union-led effort but easing funding that comes from the u.s. exciting options here. >> if we are talking about physical protection in therefore,, we are talking about protection in a condition where there is no departure. it is hard for us to talk about -- it has never happened

comparatively. in the civil wars in africa, it always happens in the bush and civilians come to the city. this is opposite, it is happening in the city and people went to the idp camps. that is where the high likelihood of any small group with a very few arms, children of 12 years old can kill at 150 people in two hours. because there is nothing to deter them. what we are talking about in this situation is more about preventive forces. that can create safe zones where those addresses can be reduced, the likelihood of those to happen. who brings this, the african union, or an individual country that says i want my -- to contribute my force? it works for us, at least in sudan's scenario, it would reduce those atrocities. so i think the conversation is

more about what is the scope and the mandate for this force, how can it help? i think there are different localized mechanisms. in sudan, the war is not only between the rss, it is different armed actors that have the ability to do similar or even more damage if they engage in the conflict. right now they are standing by and watching. it is hard to predict where the dynamics go. but at least having some sort of mechanism that can protect civilians, but also monitor, health monitor the dynamics, you have technology, helicopters, drugs, tracking where the best drones -- the rooms tracking where the movement is going to happen, attacks and going to happen. it can work with the local

services, tribal leaders. this can be more, not like a mission, a u.n. peacekeeping force or a u.n. security council, but at least some sort of mechanism. we are trying to think about something more suitable and i agree, more peacekeeping forces. >> if i can just add to that, i think a lot of the reason that the discussion around a u.n. peacekeeping mission is not currently on the table for immediate protection of civilians efforts, is multifold. one, the current environment is not appropriate for you an peacekeeping mission. we have the peacekeeping principles. one of those is consent of the parties. there is a clear lack of consent to the deployment of a peacekeeping mission by the current conflict parties. this is a large obstacle for moving forward and one that we

need to navigate cleverly and creatively going forward. that includes putting pressure on the parties to accept an international intervention going forward. there are other options on the table that hardin mentioned. we have african new new piece support operations, as well as other regionally-led interventions which have been referenced. the exciting option that hardin mentioned earlier is the fact that the security council adopted resolution 2719 which allows for the partial funding african you-led piece support operations on a case-by-case basis and sedan could be a potential option in terms of utilizing those calculations to enable a peace support operation in the future. we keep coming back to the issue of consent of the parties. we could be talking about a

peace enforcement mission, but there is generally a lack of political will by african in your member states to deploy the kind of operation in the current environment. that is why when i was talking earlier, i would situated the discussion of a peacekeeping mission or another type of piece operation in the medium to long-term, because of those obstacles. ideally we would lend a peacekeeping mission to be deployed in connection to the political process. that's going to give it the best chance of contributing to long-term peace and ensuring that the production of said -- protection of civilians remains ongoing. i think the last point i will end on, just on the purpose of time, we need to recognize that the deployment of peace operations takes significant time, and set of discussions, political will and consent of the parties. these mechanisms to take a bit of time and again, that is another reason why it is not under immediate discussion for

deployment. but it should be in terms of our , medium to long term trajectory. >> great, thank you. niemat, your thoughts on peace operations? >> i will say a little bit about that peace operations then we will dive into that. in terms of what types of peace forces are needed, i think looking at the situation and the danger of the continuation and expansion of this and also the regional aspect of it, i think international intervention is really important to consider. the security council has done its best. i remember advocating for years. in 2003, 2 thousand four, nobody thought the creation of the international commission of inquiry was possible. that was the deployment of the african union.

nobody saw it. but as an advocate, we tell the truth and we ask for what is appropriate. what is appropriate right now is that there is a need for civilian protection mechanisms, looking at all mechanisms. at some point in comma-for-comma if the security council is paralyzed, would we can do, we have to consider different strategies, a coalition of the willing. there is the responsibility to protect them. if the security council can't do, is our country is willing, we want to see u.s. leadership. of course. we had this conversation with others, european actors, european union members of parliament that said if there's any sort of civilian production, we will contribute the funding. within the african unions, there is a willingness and appetite for this. i remember in june when the

massacre happened in el geneina, we had a briefing with african union groups. they took it really seriously and they were talking about it being at the discretion of african standby forces. we have to push and insist in demanding that. because looking at the situation on the ground, what else will you recommend? by december we will not be in this situation. many of us sitting here would have their families being killed en masse, let alone those confined into the internal displacement camps for years. until the international community can have the ability to protect civilians or prevent atrocities, or do something to end it at some point, to have a story of success, that is what i want to say. not just me.

i want you all to want to see that. we want more from our international community. they obligated themselves to this instrument. they have to meet their obligations instrument and unless we tell them they will not do it. we have to consistently tell them. in regards to the regional recruitment and the people, it is ideology, number one, because they have all of these -- like rss fighters have the idea of having an arab state, arab islamic state in sudan, mostly. darfur. that is the premise being given by the bashir regime. combined with economic interest, there is a huge amount of money. we have seen that the payment for a recess is nothing in comparison with the sudanese army and because of that, people

were recruited. in the tribal aspect exacerbated that. today in door for, " darfur, there are only two clans are not involved. smoke lands, very well aligned with the indigenous africans more than the arabs -- small clans. every single tribe is involved. there is no way out of this and less there is a neutral body there. and will stop there, thank for listening to us. thank you for the questions. >> dan, a quick answer on the nuba. >> i have a report that came out of this on the refugees international website. it moved quickly would say, one of the reasons to go there was because, of the title of the report says, it is a window into the broader crisis incident. very quickly, it is controlled

by a separate group that has been roughly neutral. it is an area that has been safe, compared to other parts of the country. that means lots of people from all different parts of the country have come there. so i went there and interviewed people from all different parts of sudan who arrived. we were talking about the famine, the atrocities they faced, and also the local groups and what they are doing. the report goes more into that. we will just say it is a window into what is going on and an opportunity to kind of raise some attention. also, there is opportunity to get more aid in from south sudan into there. that is an important point, especially after the rainy season. let me just end by saying i think when we have these conversations, people are looking for what can be done. one thing that refugees international and several other groups are doing is trying to bring more attention into the role of the uae and arming the rsf. they have been other external actors, but nobody as egregious as the uae and arming the rss.

the nba recently had two preseason games in the uae, and the emirates will be hosting an in-season tournament for the nba. we will be trying to push more so that the nba and its players speak out about the role of the uae. and you can go to speakoutonsudan.org to learn more about that. thank you. >> thank you so much for your time and your insight and wisdom's on this. thank you to stimson center for hosting us. for the good fireside chat. thank you so much for your patience. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024 ] [captioning performed by the national ctioning institute, which is responsible for its caption contenanaccuracy, visit ncicap.org] [chatter] announcer: this week the

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the next u.s. watching live coverage on c-span. >> i'm fred kemp, today we are delighted to welcome senator mark warner to discuss the array of global risk and opportunities facing whomever is elected you're vice president in november. i'm sorry i can't be there in person. i'm in istanbul but hope to see you upon my return. this event is part of the atlantic council's bipartisan election year event series titled elections 2024. america's role in the world. >> through this series we examine the challenging local context for 2023 -- 24 u.s. elections. and the state of wars in the middle east and europe, the contests for commanding heights of technological change and so much more. writing recently in the

financial times the cia director and the uk's mi six director set the stage this way. there is no question that the international world order the balanced system does lead to relative peace and stability and delivered rising living standards and opportunities and prosperity is under threat in a way we have not seen since the cold war. we were delighted to host senator chris murphy of connecticut earlier this fall and we invite you to stay tuned for future events including one on october 30 with congressman michael turner, chairman of the house select committee on intelligence. since 1961 the lintel council nonpartisan values driven commission has been to shape the vole -- the commercial -- the future through construction and collaborative u.s. leadership. in the aftermath of the second world war the united states has upheld that order throughout the cold war and to the present day

working alongside allies and partners to create a more secure and prosperous future for all. as the american feet -- people consider who to elect as the next u.s. president and who to elect to congress, among other factors they must discuss who can best manage global challenges that are historic in nature. we are delighted to be joined today by senator warner. we are grateful for his longtime engagement with the atlantic council including in his role as cochair of the bio partisan commission on the geopolitical impacts of new technologies and data. before we turn to the conversation senator warner i'm delighted to invite the atlantic council board director and nana -- managing director at global head of commodity strategy. to introduce the senator and offer these welcoming remarks. thank you again for joining us. over to you. >> thank you so much fred for

those kind words. rbc capital markets is delighted to support this election series, events like this one are essential for engaging democratic citizens and shedding light on the implications of potential presidential administrations. they look forward to a vibrant conversation here today. senator mark warner joins share his thoughts on the global risks and opportunities and ex-president must confront and how potential harris administration may impact u.s. foreign policy. senator warner has served in the united states senate for over 15 years and serves as chairman of the senate select committee on intelligence where he is worked across the aisle to serve virginians and the including by crafting and negotiating key legislation on infrastructure, cybersecurity and national security.

senator warner believes strongly in democracy and election integrity and has underlined that both democrats and republicans must come together to respond to election security threats especially the pervasive efforts by russia, china and iran. stating a whole of society effort is needed to ensure our democratic processes -- we very much look forward to sharing your thoughts on how the next u.s. president should respond to emerging transform the technologies and great power competition. we are also very honored to have my very dear friend brian sullivan monitoring the conversation -- moderating the conversation. he previously hosted as anchor of cnbc's last call worldwide exchange and power lunch and has been nominated. before i turn it over to you, a

couple of housekeeping points. this event is public and on the record. towards the end of the moderated conversation we will take some questions from the audience. for those joining us virtually and in person, please submit your questions displayed on the screen now and do not forget to include your name and affiliation. thank you for joining us. over to you. brian: i must thank you for mentioning me because fred left me out. [laughter] it was like senator thank you. it's an honor to be here. fantastic person, thank you so much. let's talk right in. president biden was supposed to be i believe in angola but he did not rightly so because hurricane milton and disaster relief. what's so fascinating, vice president biden going to angola.

but what would be the urgency of that trip. if you know what angola has from a critical mineral perspective that all the advanced weapon systems we are going to do build the magnets that control rays are -- radar, all the things you know about that i don't know about senator. but this i feel like from an energy security perspective, looking at china's almost ironclad grasp and hold on all of these elements that we forgot about from high school, is that the next battleground. sen. warner: first of all thank you and thank you for those comments. but it's great to be back. i wanted to make two comments

upfront. first we will talk about all the challenges, but i just came back from two days touring southwest virginia where we were hard-hit by helene. not as bad as north carolina or other states free and what i came away with as we think about florida recovery, the incredible amount of folks, neighbors helping neighbors in the aftermath of this horrible storm. an incredible generosity the american people. it starts with committees helping, churches helping. but there is in norma's resilience and it's one of the reasons it drives me crazy some of the disinformation being spread in the aftermath of the storms but a lot of good in this country that needs to be celebrated. at the top, i will do this in a

non-senatorial way. i want to hit five spots that i think frankly even biden could see some progress on. that aren't getting the kind of attention that i think would warrant. one, and i'll move from north to south and then west. the circumstances in venezuela ought to be receiving more intention -- more attention. they voted in record numbers, it was an overwhelming defeat for maduro. we have not been able to rally states in the region and prospects for that country i think are very dim at this point and when maduro was sworn in again if we don't make some changes we could see another mass of venezuelans leaving which would put an additional strain on the border. it goes to what you mentioned about china in terms of energy

is the increasing role that australia and oceania will play. this dozens of island nations in the region, many of which we don't have -- yet. but each of these nation-states has coverage in terms of the amount of ocean they control, that are staggering and for a little bit of attention we can go a long way. brian: you've got three more to get to. you talk about a myanmar. sen. warner: on talking about papa new guinea, the solomon islands. i'm talking about nation-states that most americans frankly couldn't identify couple years back. brian: is it because of the waterway? >> it's more the fact that small

nation-state they have based upon what they claim is there ocean mineral rights. an area mass that may be larger than alaska and texas combined. undersea and we have ignored these nations. we are starting to put a little bit of time bringing them frankly broadband, partnering with our tech companies. a huge opportunity. in china the normal stuff we will talk about but i think in energy china is making huge gains on the big advocate for reintroduction of advanced nuclear. there will be a competition with china that we are engaged in. we need to move quicker. with that is what china has been doing with life-sciences and bio. as nobly heard of huawei may be eight years ago groups going forward is beijing genomics

institute. huge challenges there. in the middle east we have wars going on there's also geopolitical move that i think could be one of the most transformative of the next 25 years and the saudi's, the, roddy's, the other gulf states based upon their own decisions transform their economies to more technology-based and race for data centers and ai, they i believe will make the decision to stop playing off against china and russia and go with us because they want our technology. how we navigate that, the microsoft deal is the tip of the spear on that is something that needs more attention. a place we are spending a lot of money and time is the crisis in sudan. more people dying in sudan then gaza, lebanon and ukraine combined and if america could show we actually care about

africans killing africans. you don't have to pick a moral choice, a little bit of effort here and does come back to our angola question. show they care about africa which based on 2040 almost half the rare earth minerals, population increase. i've got a 25 minute version of that but that was my three minute version up talk. -- up top. i think this competition with china on energy is one of the next realms of development. it's not just extraction of minerals it's the process where china has really dominated in the process of rare earth minerals. we can go head-to-head on extraction. we are getting better with our allies. we also have to do the process. brian: it was on most a tv

segment. i think you blamed the media three times in that brief statement. sen. warner: not yet. brian: i want to work invert it. i was trying to explain what was going on to my 10-year-old son and how it doesn't get any attention. there's limited capacity i think -- sometimes i think there's limited capacity for human suffering from my end of the camera which is hard. it just physically takes a toll. anybody here from california or las vegas? you may have driven from las vegas to l.a. or the other way. next time you do it when you cross to california leaving las vegas, you are going to l.a.. the first or second exit you will see a sign that says baker and then there is this weird looking line up on the hill. it's probably most important mine in the united states. they produce neodymium.

that goes into every phone, every laser sight on these drones, advanced weapons. until recently senator that mine , which came 36 hours away from closing permanently would ship it starts to china from the desert of california by truck to a ship to the center of china to be washed and then they would ship it back to i think oregon to be processed. i think it shows where the supply chains are really screwed up. how do we fix this? sen. warner: couple that and i'm going to -- there's a mine in western north carolina that produces another key component, a quartz. but that, frankly i wasn't fully

aware about all the aspects. i think what we are going to have to do. i'm a democrat and proud to be democrat. even democrats have to realize we have to build stuff again in this country. we can have a regulatory regime that adds two to three years of added costs to try and be able to, whether it build a new -- orest supply chain on rare minerals and the fact is even if were not to do all the processing here we need to do it with her friends and allies around the world. i think this is a huge opportunity and i think there is a growing recognition of that across both sides of the aisle. >> world war ii effectively ended because in many ways germany ran out of oil. they couldn't move their tanks. they were really out of gas. walking by tanks that were just there.

i feel like lithium, neodymium, cobalt, quartz, those of the new oil. and so it's going to change strategic. i don't think and 25 years of doing this senator i have heard anybody mention the solomon islands. sen. warner: until a year ago. i wouldn't have. you've got to learn, -- brian: does that change -- how do we adjust our lines. sen. warner: recognizing there a series of nation-states of most americans couldn't identify in that wide space between hawaii and australia and a tiny bit there. frankly making sure some of them big tech companies bringing across actually weaken either go through those islands so they can get the broadband capabilities.

this is literally pennies on the dollar in terms of american investment. but it is where part of this next frontier it's also one of the reasons why i think this competition around -- i'm all for solar and wind but we are never in a power ai data centers on solar and wind entirely because you need consistent when he 47 power. while not the complete solution, is that power source, it is safe and carbon free and we saw back into the oil analogy just as nation-states became a pet -- dependent on middle east oil for literally decades on land. you a 30 year contract with a provider whether it's america or china. that means that country is locked into that system and many nation-states want to biotechnology. the question is if this is so good why aren't you building more of these already. and what we've got in america is lots of interest, nobody wants

to go first. can we make a group purchase here and frankly the hyper scalars, the big tech firms will need this power there ai data centers need that and we are getting very close to i think some major announcements which is both good for american energy independence. american energy leadership. challenges against china and frankly since this is carbon free power 80's a winner across the board. >> three mile island many of you of certain age. >> do you want to ask, people remember fremont -- three mile island. >> put your hands down. >> sow three mile island is a new -- a plant. in 1979 they thought it was can have a meltdown like radiation huge disaster, averted disaster. they're not turning it -- the folks of the federal energy

regulatory commission agreed to turn her back on but they will use that power not to power homes, but to give microsoft more data center access. oracle wants to build a data center, energy is weird and confusing. let me put it in a tv news anchor way. one gigawatt of power is about 750,000 average size homes worth of electricity to run one computer center. the country then controls the power and has the power, china is building nuclear reactors. in one fourth the time it takes us to build the one that we built in 30 years. why are they so much better at it. >> they are willing i think to cut corners in terms of safety protocols. >> and we've obviously seen we think about with china's belton road initiative many nation-states saying please stop. in many nation-states are

unsatisfied customers because they thought there were to get a lot of jobs. in the quality of the workforce this morning and still there deep in debt. these other nation-states. europe and elsewhere, we are this close to signing up. we need our own regulatory process to move quicker and i think there's been a seachange on nuclear energy. the overwhelming majority of democrats no that has to be part of the mix and i think there were even some changes on the nrc. i thought it was hypocritical when we walked away from nuclear for a number of years that we never said we will walk away from nuclear powered subs or aircraft carriers. the power on or aircraft carriers almost the equivalent of small modular reactors which are 200 to 300 megawatts,

smaller, cheaper and safer. a half-dozen in process, we need many more and go ahead and get over this process. we need to kind of breakthrough that concern about that. brian: i've been privileging my crew to go to many countries there he did one country i will not go to because i'm a journalist i am literally afraid i will be kidnapped is the congo. i learned most of what i say reading the notes. so because to your point you didn't mention it by name. in the china comments. importing the workforce.

make a couple people really rich. and then they brought in their own people. how do we prevent how do we prevent more countries from being taken over in a way with chinese dollars. sen. warner: angola was example of a nation-state focus more russian china. there's been a complete switch over. but also to show the interest. and i've been guilty of this at times. sometimes even we talk about the challenge and we always say america and the west. every time we take off two thirds of the world because we are leaving out countries that

what i think rather be aligned. i think of the moment when china has the belton road, my view is they are dissatisfied customers a little bit of attention making sure some of the tools we have like export import bank developing finance corporations. they need a little bit more equity, they need to take a few more risks and we can do this in concert with european friends and there is a seachange coming on. if you ask five years ago if folks knew what the greatest export was from drc you would get stares from 90% of the members. now the vast majority realize three major mines in the congo into our controlled by china. that is a g applicable and strategic risk not only for america but for non-authoritarian regimes everywhere. brian: this belgian company, a

lot of belgian references lately. is all these little minerals. we all know what quartz is. but this one mine in north carolina got flooded produces 95% of the super quality quartz that going to semiconductors. so all these things the senators talking about are these minerals , but every device you own, every car you drive has probably 100 of them in some fashion in them and a lot of them are mined in really weird hard places. lithium in a desert. the middle of australia, those are friendly nations but how much focus is there in the senate on to your point educating newer members, younger members. here's why angola, a country we don't talk about geopolitically is so relevant. is it hard to breakthrough? sen. warner: it is hard to breakthrough when they're not on

foreign relations. 51 overriding effort is to redefine national security. who has the most tanks and planes and guns but really the technology. it's a technology race which we've never faced that kind of adversary that was a military threat, ideological threat. china is an economic near peer in certain areas. and who wins the battle, 5g was a wake-up call for a lot of us. it is around energy, it is around some of the rare earth minerals. it's around a whole host of other domains that initially quantum computing was not viewed as a national security issue. >> cheap plug at 1:30 and 4:50 today i will be on talking about these issues and how they differed. but i always remind people no matter who is president, we have

this thing called congress. and we have the senate and we have foreign relations. you, especially you senator warner and many others are sort of running the show behind the scenes. under either outcome. how much does that change your work? is it more relevant as to the ultimate composition of this? sen. warner: news flash, the vast majority of us in the senate actually like each other and work together. brian: that does not rate. sen. warner: i make a joke i work in the play place in america were being a gang member is a good thing. every time you have a group of bipartisan senators called a gang of this or that. and so if you look at every major piece of legislation the last covid package under trump, birthed the bill at least -- you

look at the chips bill. you look at the offshore account act. these are all bipartisan. i believe regardless of who is president, that gang. and it gets hard. it's been harder for my republican colleagues. it's a great loss when we lose rob portman and mitt romney's of the world. but there is one thing about the senate is there kind of like a high school you never graduate from. so summing kisses you off freshman year you can't stay mad forever because that person will find another place. sometimes this will be my first crack at the media and you guys are actually not as guilty as most. a fact-based new station. but if you are msnbc or fox, you give the -- a lot more attention to the loudest voices on the

extreme. >> i appreciate the dig at the media paid it's not the first and won't be the last time. you are right and it is so critical to remind people of this and hopefully as people watching at home, there's 535 of you in a full house. 100 senators, 435 congressmen. the rest are just quietly doing the rest of their jobs and part of many people as well. so thank you for that. i think we forget that as well. ask me later on today, under either administration we've got a huge japanese delegation in right now. i've been in europe many times. on lng ships talking about the marshall pan marshall plan synergy. most of europe but particularly germany after somebody blew up the nord stream. if you know who that was could you let us know.

so how much would energy policy differ under trump or harris administration? sen. warner: i'm not sure how many of mr. trump's slapping on 100% or 200% tariffs on every nation-state, how much of that is bluster or reality. i think that would have an effect because even on energy, i think more generally, i was a big advocate of moving to lng to allow this to be exported. i think that has allowed many european nations to move off of russian gas, it's geopolitically to our and non-. brian: should we end deposit on certain new project. sen. warner: i would take a fresh look at a lot of those projects. the threats to climate change are real. we see that in these once in a

generation storms that happen every year now. but we are not going to flip a switch and make that transition overnight. and how we have and all of the above to make that while we push the greener. the nuclear area seems to be a place where both the republicans and democrats could actually find some agreement. brian: the change in nuclear has been nothing short of remarkable. we are going to shut down. here's something for it is any one here from the massachusetts area. boston in the winter because you can build a pipeline there will important natural gas from trinidad and they have to do that from houston because of the jones act and the shipping rule means you can ship inside the united states. >> you actually know this energy stuff really well. brian: there are days to literally keep the heat and

light on in boston they are burning trash. burning trash, polluting gross stuff. i was asked people tonight ask them what year did the world use the most coal ever. no question, a 1933, 1872. 2024. the world has never used more coal than today. you talk about liquefied natural gas and carbon emissions. absolutely but if they don't have that that's what germany's burning instead. cold. far far worse. at least we do it as responsible as a nation. >> and what you see in nation-states i china and india who are building nuclear but they're all building many more coal fire plants. the west end for 150 years. and ultimately for anyone. >> we have about 10 minutes a couple question here. thank you. smart crowd usually get the --

one more before we go into this. you mentioned in your first answer you mentioned i've never heard of it so i don't know anything -- everything. who are they and why are they on the radar. >> i think the place where ai could have the most effect is in bio life sciences. a guy from a public company, jason kelly out of ginkgo works. he basically said you think about ai models when were trying to duplicate large language. he says ai can unlock dna. there is -- they can do that at speed and scale. to have that happen you need a lot of dna and they are basically scooping up dna

samples had an unprecedented level. they are doing the things we managed to stop and sometimes where they have investments in companies be hidden and getting access to some of our information and you combine ai and dna mapping and some of this is spooky in terms of super soldiers. and i think this is, the whole question around ai and bio is hugely important and a piece of that you think about synthetic biology you think about growing their energy or growing material sciences. through kind of a more lifecycle basis rather than manufacturing. and china is doing what they did in other domains. we talk about where they are building up a bio manufacturing capability. we have a little of that. europeans are further ahead in

this domain and frankly some of those bio manufacturing are shutting down. basically a couple of them around the chemical process. where you kind of grow chemicals rather than produce them. >> and bgi. bgi is the -- two bio what huawei is to telcom. >> we are talking about the internal, not internal terms. >> literally our dna and the race for the biologics. a couple quick questions. how do you think either candidate ai regulation. >> don't hold your breath no matter which person wins. i still think one of the great mistakes we made in this country was not putting guardrails on social media.

in terms of mental health, we trace the mental health issues simultaneously smart phones 2014 going up, so when schumer had all the ai big heads in and they all said of course we want to have regulation. they'll say they want regulation to the put words on the page. and i'm deeply engaged with a lot of these companies and think i've got a b for something. the europeans of overdone we've done nothing there is somewhere in the middle. where i think smart regulation i do think the california approach and i'm usually knee-jerk against the california approach but some level of liability regime on a nationwide basis for extraordinary harm i think there was something there. i think some of the areas, a number of states have already passed ai regulation in terms of deepfakes and politics.

alabama's and florida's and texas as well as some blue states. i think we'll find out major market manipulation. i wouldn't focus on a fortune 100 company. but i think fortune 100 to 500. how can you use ai tools. manipulate stock prices. i thought that would be a spotlight. capitalist and democrats -- emocrats, but so far we have done that. >> we kind of know the trump doctrine. harris assuming she wins what would be her one or two top foreign policy priorities day one. sen. warner: i hope it would be to continue to recognize we live in a dangerous world. she served on my committee. i think she understands the seriousness of the challenges and understand we live in a

dangerous world and our adversaries are not playing for second place. continuing to realize the challenge with china is the issue of our time but i also think making sure averaging like putin is not successful in ukraine. i'm flabbergasted that donald trump in the debate wouldn't say who he thought should win that war. and i think ukraine, its long-term challenge be a negotiation but the fact that ukrainians, and this is about six months worth of information. taking out 87% of russia's pre-existing ground forces, 63% of their tanks, 32% of their air -- without losing a single american soldier. the soviets were our ultimate -- ukrainians have done that job in an enormously powerful way and if we have not stood there,

putin would have been -- the baltics would be under assault. poland and elsewhere. we along with our allies have to draw the line. it gets into a little bit of this question of realigning from playing both sides to actually saying there to make that not because of our values but because of our technology. that would be a geopolitical switch. >> i'm always careful not to characterize nation by leaders versus people. china is not xi jinping. russians are not putin. sen. warner: i think it's american policymakers are needing to make that point because every time. it's not what the chinese people. making that point the chinese comet's party uses to great advantage on we chat in the chinese -- you see this is all racist anti-chinese. >> when putin is gone and there

will be a day when he is gone. and the reason i brought up the point about the russian people, what is the u.s. long-term strategic plan. i don't want to say for russia, that implies power or ownership but with russia. what's russia's ultimate role in a post putin russia's role do they come back into the fold? to your earlier point they can't stay mad forever. >> after the wall fell, after the prime minister -- as a business guy in the 90's, i went to russia a lot. looks like us, sees like -- seems like us. i made investments. i thought russia had turned the corner. maybe it was a little bit crooked, they want rule of law. the same thing that brought them into the world trade organization. i was a big advocate as governor

of saying the more we bring china in the more it will be a stable world order. deciding the primacy of the comet's party was more important than the chinese people. i was wrong again there. so can we prevent post-russia putin? i would love to see a flowering of a more open russia but i think we have to prepare for both circumstances. you could see russia move further to the right or further authoritarian. brian: i will very quickly you mentioned venezuela at the top. humanitarian tragedy. majuro's good to be there for life it appears. listen to opec meetings and one thing that the pistol me off was the human tragedy. he would show up with his wife and she had like $3000 shoes on. i'm thinking -- i'm a ds w shoe

warehouse man myself. it was like people are eating trash in your nation and here you are showing up not only with your wife in the shoes and shopping bags. >> how do we solve the maduro. >> we basically ask the venezuelan people to get out and vote. they voted in overwhelming numbers even in the hardest barrios. the fact that we asked brazil, mexico and colombia to step back and frankly they didn't i think there should be another contact group. i think we should not take our eyes off of venezuela. it is a humanitarian issue and potentially border issue. and if we are not willing to stand by democratic results in our own hemisphere, what does that signal. brian: anything you want to say

in close that i might've missed? sen. warner: another senate filibuster. think the atlantic council. about those five regions. i hope we get a chance to continue this. >> i went to thank you for being here today at the atlantic council front page. i'm not being paid to be here. i wanted to see you again, senator. all my friends and new friends at the atlantic council. an amazing conversation. it could have gone on for hours but you have to run the country. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy, visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024]

announcer: weeknights this montptioning performed by the national captioning institute, whiresponsible showing encore presentations of the 10 part se "congress investigates," exploring the impact and legacy of some most significant house is deadly condition. tonight an investigation into the reagan administration's sa of missiles to iran with the proceeds going to the cont rebels in nicaragua. tune in at 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, also on c-span now, our free mobile video at, and online at c-span.org. ♪ announcer: as the 2024 presidential campaign continues, american history tv presents this series, "historic elections." learn about the pivotal issues of different errors, learn about what make the selections historic and explore their impact on the nation. they stand the election of 1960. >> and for those millions of americans who are still denied

equality of rights and opportunity, i say there shall be the greatest progress in human rights since the days of lincoln 100 years ago. >> we stand today on the edge of a new frontier. the frontier of the 1960's. the frontier of unknown opportunities. the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled --. annocer: in a close and controversial election, democraticor jn kennedy defeated incumbent republican vice president richard nixon. watch "historic residential elections," saturday at 7 p.m. eastern on arican history tv on c-span2. ♪ announcer: this is a margin of error rates. i am going twi but it is state. democratic presidential nominee and vice president kamala hris made those remarks in a detroit interviewed by radio host charlamagne tha god. part of the show that was a

number of interviews the vi president has given in the closing weeks before the election in an attet reach voters through popular podcasts, radio and television hosts. among the topics discussed were foreign policy, a plan to provide forgivable loans to black entrepreneurs, and legalizing marijuana at >> we the people in an audio town hall with vice president kamala harris, in conversation with charlamagne tha god, we will tackle tough questions impacting the future of our nation. now here is our host charlemagne , tha god. charlemagne: yes peace to the planet. charlemagne tha god with madam vice president kamala harris. how are you. vice pres. harris: very well. how are you doing? only 21 days.

i try to be on time. apparently i'm 40 seconds late. charlemagne: well, you are black. [laughter] a lot of your press gets criticized, folk you come off as very scripted. they say you like to stick your talking points. somebody says you had speed that -- would be called discipline. that would be called discipline. charlemagne: i know that's not true but what do you say to that criticism and his favorite to say? -- fair to say? vice pres. harris: i have nothing but admiration for the comedy and a think it's important to be able to laugh at yourself and each other. obviously comedy and not belittling people. charlemagne: what you say to people who say you stay on talking points? vice pres. harris: i would say you are welcome. here's the thing. i love having conversations so i'm happy to be with you this

afternoon. the reality is there are certain things that must be repeated to ensure that i have everyone know what i stand for and the issues i think are at stake in this election. so it requires repetition. some people say until someone has heard the same thing at least three times, it just doesn't stay with you, so repetition is important. that reason yes, at my rallies, i say the same thing when i go to detroit as i do in philly or wherever i am to make sure people hear and receive what i think are some of the most critical issues at stake in this election. charlemagne: there has to be a high-level anxiety when you have these conversations because you are running for president. vice pres. harris: i mean, i feel the weight of the moment and my role. i feel an extraordinary weight of responsibility right now to do everything i can.

i'm telling you, when i go to bed at night, almost every night in addition to my prayers will ask have done everything i could do today? this is a margin of error race. it's tight. i'm going to win. i'm going to win. but it's tight. you know, what is at stake is truly profound and historic many would say. and it's about some people would say it's lofty notion of supporting and preserving our democracy, but it is about real issues that affect people every day, like whether we maintain the $35 cap on insulin for seniors, whether we continue to allow medicare to negotiate drug prices to bring them down, whether we will have as my opponent will have, a formalized stop and frisk policy for which he has said if a police department does not do it, they should be defunded, or not.

there is so much at stake, whether america will stand on its principles on the enforcement of sovereignty and territorial integrity and stand with our allies around the world, or whether we will admire dictators, and sending during the height of the covid pandemic covid tests that nobody could get to the president of russia for his personal use when black people were dying every day by the hundreds during that time i . charlemagne: i feel like that has gone over people's heads, the fact that he was sending covid tests to putin. vice pres. harris: the fact that he was doing that, people who are listening, remember for your parents and get grandparents, remember what that was like? a lot of people scrambling for resources needed. and donald trump during that time secretly sent covid tests to the president of russia, who by the way, do not forget in the 2016 election -- i was a member

of the senate intelligence committee when we investigated it, targeted black voters with misinformation to discourage black people from voting in that election. this is just another of the very many examples of who donald trump really is and the danger he presents. charlemagne: and that doesn't sound very america first at all. one of the biggest pieces of misinformation, the biggest allegations against you is that you targeted and locked up thousands of black men in san francisco for weed. some say that you did it to boost your career or hatred for black men. please tell us the facts. vice pres. harris: it is just not true. public defenders will tell you i will -- was the most progressive prosecutor in california on marijuana cases and would not

send people to jail for simple possession of weed. and as vice president, have been a champion for bringing marijuana down on the schedule so instead of it being ranked up there with heroin, we bring it down. my pledge is as president i will work on decriminalizing it because i know exactly how those laws have been used to disproportionately impact certain populations and specifically black men. charlemagne: before we get into the talkback feature and get questions from the audience, i do want to talk about the legalization of weed. what is the bided administration take to get closer to that reality? vice pres. harris: we had to work with the dea and there is a certain level of bureaucracy that exists in the federal government that slows things down, but essentially to bring down how weed is classified and how marijuana is classified, to make it classified as a lesser harm. so that took some time as a

whole process. but that is the work we have done, in addition to work we have done writ large on criminal justice reform. charlemagne: ok. let's take some calls. well, let's go to the talkback feature. >> my question is why are we, and i say we because my tax dollars are sending the money, why are we sending money to other countries when we desperately need it in our own country for homeless, housing, resources, for whatever? that is my determining factor if i vote for kamala or not. charlemagne: that is one of the reasons for the america first rhetoric. so what do you say to that? vice pres. harris: we can do it all and we do. first of all, i maintain very strongly, america should never pull ourselves away from our responsibility as a world

leader. that is in the best interests of our national security and each one of us as americans and are standing in the world. that being said, we also have an obligation to american citizens obviously, and people who are here to meet their everyday needs and challenges, which is why for example we have done the work in the last four years of bringing down the cost of prescription medication, whether it be $35 a month for seniors for insulin or $2000 a year cap on prescription medication. what we have done that has been about putting $17 billion in hbcus. i'm proud to be the first hbcu vice president of the united states and i intend to be the first hbcu president. those resources are about sending them to centers of academic excellence i know them to be. the work i continue to do is about increasing access to capital for small businesses.

it is about increasing the opportunities for homeownership knowing that black people are 40% less likely to be homeowners in america. we have legal and procedural obstacles starting with the fact that nokia got 40 acres and a mule, to redlining, to the issues that this detroit area people know to be real. part of my plan is we will give people a $25,000 down payment assistance to get their foot in the door to buy a home for first-time homebuyers. the work i will do to increase housing in america to know that's one of the reason why rent and housing prices have jacked up, and work with the private sector to cut through the red tape and build more houses before the end of my first term. i give these examples and there are many more i will offer. for example, the work i will do to extend the child tax credit to $6,000 for young families during the first year of their child's life. as you and i both know, our

families have a natural desire to parent their children well but not always the resources. by extending the child tax credit to $6,000, that gives the young family the ability to buy a car seat, a crib, clothing, the things that are important in that critical stage of that child's development so they can get on the road and have a chance at succeeding. charlemagne: you said we can do it all, but can we? like tupac said, we have money for war but cannot feed the poor. president obama said you really shouldn't expect a president to rid the world of all of its problems. is it fair to tell people we can do it all? that's when people get disappointed. vice pres. harris: i think president obama is absolutely correct, but it doesn't mean we can't do anything. when i talk about extending the child tax credit, when i was vice president, i pushed we would do it in a first year.

we reduced black child poverty in america by 50%. we did that. we can do that. my plan about building up homeownership in the black community, we can do that. my work that has been about increasing access to capital and bringing billions more dollars into our banks through cooperation with big banks and tech companies to get more access to capital for entrepreneurs and businesses, we've done that. so we should never sit back and say ok, i'm not going to vote because everything hasn't been solved. i share a desire that everything should be resolved by the way. i think it is what we should all want, but that should not stand in the way of us knowing we can participate in a process about improving things. by voting in this election, you have two choices. or you don't vote. but you have two choices if you do.

it is two very different visions for the nation. one mind that is about taking us forward in progress and investing in the american people and ambitions, dealing with challenges and the other, donald trump, is about taking us backwards. charlemagne: it sounds like it's about fascism. why can't we just say it? vice pres. harris: yes, we can say it. charlemagne: reverend solomon junior is the senior pastor of triumph church. vice pres. harris: he's here. hey reverend. >> madame vice president, charlemagne, thank you for being in detroit tonight. recently, madam vice president, by one of trump's surrogates from the black faith-based community, you have been criticized by him at others for your lack of engagement to the black church. knowing that the black church is an unrivaled place in the heart of black people, what could you

speak to as it relates to a future harris administration how you would partner with the black church to address some of the urgent needs of the black community? dr. king talked about the fierce urgency about the church. first vice pres. harris: of all, that allegation of course is coming from the trump team because they are full of disinformation because they are trying to disconnect me from the people i have worked with and that i am from so they can try to have an advantage, because otherwise they have nothing to run on. i grew up in a black church. i grew up attending 20 3rd avenue church of oakland, california. my pastor is a mis-c brown, of third baptist church in san francisco, california. i have throughout my career as vice president and recently been

actively engaged in the church and church leaders, not only so we can share and fellowship but what we can do about supporting the community, the strength of the community and cohesion. it is my long-standing work and my pledge going forward, i will always work closely with the church because i understand who the church leaders are and who the congregation is. we are talking about people who are driven by faith and the ability to see what is possible. by faith, i was raised and i know many of us were, understanding that our god is a loving god, that our faith propels us to act in a way that is about kindness and justice and mercy, that is about lifting one another up. let's talk about the contrast here. donald trump and his followers spend full time trying to

suggest a measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down, which is contrary to the church i know. charlemagne: he sells bibles though. vice pres. harris: our church and my church is about true leadership, the measure of that is who you lift up. right, and then he is selling $60 bibles or 10 issues. [laughter] -- tennis shoes. or trying to play people as if that makes him more understanding of the black community. >> thank you. and god is good. vice pres. harris: thank you, reverend. every day all the time. charlemagne: have you seen the clip madame vice president from the grio? it's kind of out of context and it says that you won't do anything specifically for black people. vice pres. harris: i have not seen that. charlemagne: it is a clip saying you will not do anything specifically for black people. vice pres. harris: that is just

not true. you said at the beginning of. this visit. one of the biggest challenges i face is mis-and disinformation. it is purposeful. it is meant to convince people that they somehow should not believe that the work that i have done has occurred and has meaning. my work from the beginning of my career through today has been about for example, we talked about it, whether it be on hbcus, health care, black maternal mortality, many would say i am one of the highest level leaders in the country to bring the issue of black maternal mortality to the stage at the white house to address it. the work i've done to be about focusing on my knowledge and my experience, my life experience knowing the entrepreneurship about the community, the

aspirations, the dreams, and tapping into that. so not only is my work about ensuring we have the lowest black unemployment ever in our country but that also knowing that should be a baseline that everybody has a job and what we should be invested in is also building wealth in the community and intergenerational wealth. i have many examples of the. part of the challenge that i face is that they are trying to scare people away, because they know they otherwise have nothing to run on. ask donald trump what his plan is for black america. ask him. i will tell you what it is. look at project 2025. project 2025 tells you, the plan includes making police departments have stop and frisk policies. the plan includes making it more difficult for workers to receive overtime pay. the plan includes ending the

ability of medicare to negotiate drug prices. you know what we have done that he said we would, that means that that's how we brought down the cost of prescription medication. his plan includes making it more difficult for working people to get by and to destroy our democracy. he said he will terminate the constitution of the united states. let me remind folks. you know what is in the constitution? the fourth amendment which protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures. the fifth amendment, sixth amendment and 14th amendment. and he's going to terminate the constitution of the united states? in most of those a merit -- amendments one thing or another was about a movement for black people to ensure we would be equally protected under the law. charlemagne: let's take a question. >> my name is joshua fisher, age

30 years old. i would like to ask madame vice president what laws does she have plan to make sure there is a stop the police and murders that have been going on viciously. vice pres. harris: so again, the work that i have done throughout my career and most recently even in the united states senate to help bring forth the george floyd justice in policing act. charlemagne: can you tell people what i did not pass? vice pres. harris: we could not get the votes in congress. there's a clip somewhere of me fighting with a republican senator. to actually get it passed. we could not get it passed. but when we came in office and during the time i have been vice president's we passed an executive order. whereas we were trying and i have been trying to make these things national so everyone would have to do it, an executive order by the president says that for federal law for,

the following things have to happen. no-knock warrants, barring chokehold, a national database for us to collect information and track police officers who have broken the law. this is no small issue. as we know, we have seen plenty of examples of a police officer who committed misconduct in one jurisdiction, and goes to another jurisdiction and gets hired because there's no place that is tracking misconduct. these are some of the things we've done. i will still always work on getting the george floyd justice in policing act passed. part of the work i'm doing as candidate for president includes lifting up those candidates who are running either for reelection or for the first time to congress who are supportive of what we need to do on all of the issues we have been discussing. whether it be freedom to vote and passing the john lewis

voting rights advancement act, freedom to make decisions about your own body, whether it be the freedom to free and be free from any brutality including police brutality when and where it occurs. charlemagne: i think the frustration comes from people who will say sometimes politicians volunteer lies. it is great to try and pass the act but you probably know you can't get the votes, so why push that? vice pres. harris: i don't subscribe to that approach. i'm going to tell you why. it took a long time for the voting rights act to get done. it took the brutality of what happened when john lewis and all those who were trying to cross the edmund pettus bridge. it took a lot of work over our history to do what we have accomplished this far. we have to remain committed. charlemagne: how do you convince republican senators?

vice pres. harris: part of it is that their constituents are part of this. we have plenty of folks who want this who live in districts where they serve. this gets back to the earlier point, you cannot let anybody take you out of the game by not voting. the solutions, and maybe this is the point you're making about what president obama said. the solutions will not happen just overnight and the solutions that we all want are not going to happen in totality because of one election. but here's the thing. the things we want and are prepared to fight for will not happen if we are not active and if we don't participate. we cannot allow circumstances to take us out the game. then basically what we are saying is all those people who are obstructionist and standing in the way of change, they are winning. they are convincing people that it can't be done, so take yourself out.

don't participate. look at that circle. look at that vicious circle. let's not fall for it. charlemagne: this is my man zeek, the president and ceo of new air in detroit. he wants to talk to you about your black male agenda, or for the black community. >> madame vice president, charlemagne tha god, welcome to detroit. i like to say the real detroit because i'm here. [laughter] my name is zeek. founder and ceo, i work on the ground. in detroit and the black community all over the country, celebrating our 10th year this past august. in my 10 years of organizing, we played a major role in the resurgence of pride and the change of mindset in detroit neighborhoods across the city.

we are not only known for the work we do here in detroit, but across the country in black communities, having worked in over 35 cities and black cities in america. i'm saying all that to say i'm extremely qualified to sit in front of the current vice president and which can be the next president of the united states of america. as i pose my question to you, i would first like to make it known that i don't have any emotional connections to politicians. i believe this is one of our biggest flaws in the current political process. i view politics as a business and america is one of the biggest corporations in the world. that being said, i'm here on behalf of the business of the black community. with all that black americans have been through and contribute to the success of america, i feel that there should be an investigation or evaluation of the lack of resources and current living conditions in black communities nationwide. my question to you is, what is

your stance on reparations? we all know that america became great, you know, off the backs of free black labor. how progressive are you on making that a priority, in writing america's wrongs -- and righting america's wrongs. asking for specifics on the black community as it's not mean don't do for others, but black americans have heavily voted for democrats over the last half-century with little in return. what are your plans to address these issues and change that narrative? charlemagne: thank you, zeek. vice pres. harris: i appreciate that. thank you. and thank you for your work. to your point, yes, i am running to be a president for all americans. that being said, i do have clear eyes about the disparities that

exist in the context in which they exist, to your point. on the point of reparations, it has to be studied, there is no question about that. i have been clear about that position. in terms of my immediate plan, i will tell you a few of the following. as it relates to the economy which is a lot of what you have addressed, i grew up in the middle class. my mother worked hard, raised me and my sister. by the time i was in high school, she was able to afford our first home. i know what it means for an individual and a family to have homeownership. i also know in the context of history, nobody got 40 acres and a mule. we have a history of a number of things including redlining, detroit knows it well. history on things i have work to address which is racial bias in home appraisal.

and we know homeownership, black families are 40% less likely to be homeowners. and that this is one of the surest ways to build intergenerational wealth. when you own a home, that's when if your child says i want to go to college, you can say, don't have to take out alone, i will take equity out of the house. if your child wants to start a small business, same point. my plan includes making sure that for first-time homebuyers, they have a 25,000 dollar debt -- down payment assistance to get their foot in the door. we know folks will work hard, they will save and pay the monthly mortgage. second point is to bring down the cost of housing generally because one of the issuances we have a housing supply shortage. that is about working with the private sector. in terms of our small businesses which are part of the backbone of the economy of the black community and the backbone of america's economy writ large. my second mother, the woman who

helped raise us, was a small business owner. i have convened black small business owners way before i was running for president. in my official office at the white house, to talk with young entrepreneurs, mostly young, about the work they are doing that is about clean energy work, technology, as well as the traditional, whether it be a barbershop or a restaurant. one of the big issues facing black small businesses is access to capital. unlike my opponent who got handed 400 million dollars on a silver platter and then filed in group c six times, don't forget that, not everybody has access to the capital, but we know in the community we do not lack for ambition, aspirations, dreams, hard work ethic. my work has been as vice president to increase billions of dollars into community banks. as vice president, part of that

work will also be to change the tax deduction for start up small businesses from $5,000 to $50,000. nobody can start a small business on $5,000. if you don't otherwise have intergenerational wealth, how will you be able to do it? second point on small businesses is this. basically it is a program that is about a $20,000 nonrefundable loan to basically businesses that don't have access to wealth and don't have those relationships which will directly impact a lot of black owned small businesses. that $20,000 nonrefundable loan is what would help somebody if they need to buy equipment. if they need to buy an extra truck depending. which we know that is a big pet hurt your foot holds back small businesses. having enough capital to pay for things that allow you to put your hard work into play and

grow your business. the other piece which is critically important, is to see black folks, particularly black men, as a whole human being. and understand we are talking about sons, fathers, grandsons, grandparents, uncles. and so i say that as a preface to say to other things and i will keep going. charlemagne: keep going? [laughter] vice pres. harris: the context. to deal with health care for black people and black man in particular. we know that we still have a lot of work to do to increase, for example, the high risk we have for colon cancer, for prostate cancer, right? and increased screenings and to make sure people actually going to get the screenings. not to mention the high risk for sickle-cell. part of my agenda is about what

we will do to deal with and highlight what we've got to do to focus on black men's health. and then a similar point is this. caregivers are men. and we know culturally we take care of our elders, and we have a lot of meaning community who are in no time to take care of the young kids in the care of an ill-prepared or relative. it's overwhelming for people to be able to do both and a lot of people have in in the think t leaving the job to just do it. my plan is this. one, in order for people to afford assistance for hiring health care, home health care, they basically have two go broke to be eligible for medicaid. my plan is this. let's have medicare, this is i have to do we can make it work. medicare cover the cost of home

healthcare, which means you are looking at individual in the context of their whole family. because what we know is again understanding the culture can understand the reality come lots of people having to leave work and order to do that. these are some examples of my agenda. and overall it is an agenda that understands either way because we have talked about criminal justice, that the needs of the black community are not just about criminal justice. >> we need that money. >> yeah, because years of the thing. we have brought down lack an employment one of the lowest levels in history but a very clear. the community is likely to stand up and applaud just because everybody has a chapter that should be a baseline. my agent is about tapping into the ambitions and the aspirations knowing that folks want to have an opportunity if they want, they should have a meaningful opportunity to build wealth, including intergenerational wealth. that's my agenda.

>> there was a couple things you said that people would say were talking points but it's just your stricker even though the are becoming your greatest hits you talk about the middle class and your godmother and small business owner but that's just your story. >> it's my story. look, i've been in this race 70 days. some people just getting to know me. a lot of people have no need. listen, i feel strongly, i need to earn every vote which is why we're having this candid conversation with you and your listeners. i have to earn peoples support, and i'm working to do that. >> before go to another talkback call a way to say there was a time i had a was it running for national election it's bad electoral strength to say you're going to do things specifically for black people which is what a lot of politicians don't speak directly to the plans for black people. is that a thing? >> i don't, i don't know that that's true. i think what is true is that i

am running to be a president for everybody but i am clear eyed about the history and the disparities that exist for specific communities and mac when a shy away from that. it doesn't mean my points is not prevented anybody because they are. everything i just talked about will benefit anybody, small business owners, whatever their race, age, gender, geographic locations are going to benefit from the fact i'm going to extend tax deductions to $50,000 for every first-time homeowner wherever they are whatever the race will benefit if there first-time homebuyer with a $25,000 down payment assistance. everyone is going to benefit from i plan to extend the child tax credit to $6000 for the first year of their child's life. that's quite a life. that's quite a bit of it everybody but i realize again that on the issue of home ownership for example, black people are 40% less likely to own a home. >> do you feel like president obama stepped on your rollout? i do you beware of this black

male agenda for for a long d you been doing outreach with the opportunity, and things like that. he made the statement he made last week to everybody to get a reaction to that. >> no, no, no. i mean you just have to come no, i was enough. i been doing this for quite some time including before i was running for president for let's go to talkback. >> i'm bobby from george and i to question for kamala harris. could you please respond to trump claim he's going to use the alien enemies act of 1798 to bound immigrants if he wins the election? this law was last used to put asian-americans in internment camps during world war ii, and i have a sneaking suspicion that if trump wins he's got use of to put anyone that doesn't look quite in camps, and i'm scared. >> yeah, so you've hit on a really important point and expressed it i think so well,

which is he is achieving his intended effect, to make you scared. he is running full-time on a campaign that is about instilling fear, not about hope, not about optimism, not about the future, but about fear. and so this is yet another example. look what he did in saying that those legal immigrants in springfield ohio were eating their pets. and by the way the hypocrisy of it abounds because on issue of immigration let's be clear. some of the most conservative members of the united states congress working with others came up with a border security bill which was the strongest toughest border security built in a long, long time. it would've put 15 had more border agents at the border. it would have reduced the flow of fentanyl into our country which is killing people all over

our country of every race in background. it would've allowed us to do more work on prosecuting transnational criminal organizations which i have done in my career. trump got word that that bill was afoot, knew it would fix the problem, and told his buddies in congress to kill the bill. and you know why? because he would refer to run on a problem is that six apart. he's running his campaign the way he does these the shoe people walk out and does these rallies to try and instill fear around an issue where he actually could be part of a solution but he chose not to because he prefers to run on a problem instead of fix the problem. we've got to come out and say what a disparate doesn't the biden administration have to take some of life for the border? for the first three years you all did a lot of things wrong. >> charlemagne, within hours of being inaugurated, the first bill we passed before did inflation reduction act before we did the bipartisan infrastructure act, before we

did this safer communities act to do with gun violence, first thing we dropped was a bill to fix the broken immigration system which by the way trump did not fix when he was president. and you can look at every step along the way, we've been tightened up the asylum application process. we then worked with what we needed to do to secure ports of entry. we did a number of things including what we did to try and get that border security bill passed, and then also an executive order that actually reduced significantly the number of illegal crossings and tightened up what needs to happen in between ports of entry. but no, we've been working on it ever since. but -- >> so what went wrong? >> here's what has to happen. congress has to act to fix the immigration system and it has been broken for a long time. congress has to act but it does

that help when finally a bipartisan group got together to fix it, and donald trump told in hold on, don't do that, because it won't help me politically. >> why do you allow him to call you the borders are? that wasn't even -- >> not getting information for that. >> you're right. i mean you don't push back on because that wasn't your role. >> fact checkers have made that clear. if i respond everything he called me i wouldn't be focused on the things that actually help the american people and that's my focus. that is true. ..

charlemagne: he is going to lock you all up if he gets back and off vice pres. harris: you should look at his words. i don't think you as a journalist should feel so safe. judges, others. you know who does that? dictators. other countries do that, which is as he has, the military, to

suppress peaceful protesters, that happens in other countries, that is not supposed to happen in america. so do understand, that man will do what he says and how that will play out in real time. charlemagne: why is it ok for him to see that he will lock up his political opponents but it is not ok for you all to say it? you should be in prison when he has actually committed crimes. vice pres. harris: i've been very clear, i think the court should handle that. and i will handle it in november. charlemagne: the courts will handle it, let's go to talk back. >> [indiscernible] sending foreign countries to fight for their freedom. donald trump has promised to seek revenge. my question is, will our military people to fight for our freedom after the election should trump start insurrection?

vice pres. harris: you raise a profound point. january 6, donald trump incited a violent mob to try and undo the will of the people and undo the results of a free and fair election. over 140 long, some killed. auntie has said since then that there will be a bloodbath after the election. he referred to members of our military as suckers and losers. and you see the number of military leaders who worked under his administration are supporting me, and i will point out what everybody knows, which

is people who work the closest with donald trump when he was president, in the oval office, the situation room, his chief of staff, national security advisor and former vice president have all said he is dangerous and unfit to serve. the former chairman of the joint chief of staff most recently articulated exactly that point. and, again, here's one of the things that i think is really ironic but at play. donald trump drew his way of trying to demean and divide. tries to project as if those things are a sign of strength, when, in fact, the man is quite weak. it is a sign of weakness that you would like to please dictators and see their flattery

and favor. it is a sign of weakness that you would demean america military and america's service members. it is a sign of weakness that you do not have the courage to stand up for the constitution of the united states and the principles on which it stands. this man is weak and unsafe. charlemagne: why is everybody sitting around acting like you will not steal the election? we know it is donald trump's supreme court, why are people acting like this will be a free and fair election? vice pres. harris: those are two different points. it will be a free and fair election if we, the american people stand up to that. i think that their democracy is like two points of nature. one, there is a fact about a democracy that when it is intact , the strength that it possesses in terms of the protection of

people's individual rights and liberties, when a democracy is intact, we protect your rights and liberties, strengthen them. democracy is also very fragile. it will only be as strong as our willingness, we, the people, to fight for it. that, as much as anything is what is at play in the selection. fight for our democracy. small though it is, imperfect though it may be. because there are very two real paths right now. the man has told you he would like to terminate the constitution and has told you about his disregard and disrespect for your freedom and liberty, including the right for a woman to make decisions about her own body. any hand selected three members of the supreme court with the intentions they would do exactly as he did. every state except virginia and the south has an abortion ban.

you know where the majority of black women live? the south. the same states that have some of the highest rates of mortality, and they would like to strut around that this is in the interest of women and children, and they have been silent on an issue like black maternal mortality? i know people are aware and clear about it, and i do believe that on election day, and early voting in michigan starts in four days, people are going to go to the polls, and they are going to vote to stand up for these principles, and to stand up for their rights to freedom and liberty and to live, and to be free. i believe that. charlemagne: i would like to bring in my guy to ask you a question. there is a rumor that janet jackson is mad at you because you prosecuted her brother,

michael jackson. that's on the internet. clear that up for people. vice pres. harris: that is not true on either count. charlemagne: she's not mad at you? vice pres. harris: i don't know, i haven't talked to her, but it certainly is not true about her brother. >> how are you doing today? yesterday, i read that there is a new opportunity, a plan for black men which includes a proposal of forgivable loans to $20,000 for one billion black entrepreneurs. what would you say to the people who would consider the timing of this proposal as clinical timing, and how would you speak to the sentiment that support for black men is only sought out during the election cycle? and feel that building trust requires consistent engagement and genuine investment into the community outside of election periods and political benefits for politicians, and may view that some people in the democrat

party use black americans to play identity politics. vice pres. harris: first of all, thank you for your question and being here. i've been in this race about 70 days. you can look at all of my work those 70 days, and this, what i'm talking about now, is not new or for the sake of winning the election. this is about a long-standing commitment, including the work i did before vice president. a lot of what i'm doing is about my economic agenda, and was born out of the work i did as vice president and before that most recently as senator, to get access to capital for entrepreneurs. the work i did in the senate was about getting a couple billion more dollars into community banks and then building on that when i became vice president. i created the economic opportunity council, bringing in the biggest names in technology companies to put more into the community banks.

i will tell you a reason why. i've been aware for years, black entrepreneurs only get 1% of venture capital funding, of all the venture capital funding, only 1% goes to them. we do not have the same rate of access to capital, be it through family or connections, which is like i've done the work of putting billions of more dollars into the community banks, which goes directly to the community. at my -- my work around $20,000 is building on that and understanding that i convened on a group of black entrepreneurs way before i was running for president in my official office at the white house. here are some of the obstacles they faced, and one of them was what we need to do around getting folks to help to just be able to buy the equipment they need to run their business, and

often times, we find that when black entrepreneurs and black people apply for credit, they are denied at a higher rate than others, and we have also seen, and data proves this, that beyond these, it tends to dissuade black entrepreneurs, particularly from even applying for credit. so my point is to work on every way that we can approach the issue to encourage people and to invest in their ambition because i know the ambition is there. i know the talent is there. i know the innovation is there. and the hard work ethic. so this is not new work for me, -- >> and the american rescue plan, too. i know small businesses in north carolina, small black businesses got millions from that.

vice pres. harris: and that was from when we first came in, the american rescue plan, the infrastructure built, i mean, part of that is we have made a decision that we were going to increase the number of settled contracts that go to historically underrepresented businesses. this was years ago, so this is not new. >> on several occasions recently, don lemon has stated that there is a large group of lack men who believe donald trump sent them a personal check during covid because his name was on it versus it coming from the government as a stimulus check can you provide some . clarification? vice pres. harris: i'm so glad you raised that. so here's what a majority democratic congress bought to fall to get those stimulus checks out, fought if against

resistance by the trump administration and won because we had a majority of democrats in congress. and that's why those checks went out. as we all know and grew up learning, congress holds the purse strings. donald trump, never being one to the pass up an opportunity to give himself credit when no credit is due, put his name on those checks and, sadly, it resulted in people thinking donald trump was responsible for and directly responsible for putting money in their pocket when, in fact, it was a democratic majority congress that was responsible for those checks going out. charlemagne: why is it hard for democrats to message their wins on the economy? since world war ii the, the economy has done better under a democratic president. this is just a historical fact, and for some reason the narrative is that the economy does better under republicans. why don't democrats push back on that narrative more? vice pres. harris: well, i, you know, we -- i think that part of the issue is that democrats probably talk about it more in

terms of what we are doing for people rather than the economy when, in fact, when you do for people, the economy grows. and you are absolutely right, charlemagne, you will look at the growth of the economy and compare it, democratic and republican administrations, democrats have been, are accelerating economic growth. my plan, for example, okay, so some of the smartest economists in the country have reviewed and compared my plan to donald trump's plans for the economy from goldman sachs to moody's to nobel laureates and even most 16 most recently "the wall street journal." and in comparing our two plans, the net result is my plans strengthen the economy, his plan will weaken the economy. there are reports that include the fact that donald trump's plans for the economy would accelerate inflation and invite a recession by the middle of next year. my plans would strengthen the

economy as a whole. you look at under what we've been doing, you look at the stock market as one of the strongest it has ever been. inflation is going down to, i think it's now the most recent number is 2.4%. nobody wants to hear an econ 1011 lecture, but the reality of it, the your point, is that under democratic rule the economy gets strengthened, and, certainly, when you look at my plan for my presidency, it will strengthen the economy and it will help people. and as per the conversation we've been having today, perhaps the issue is that i'm going to always think about it in the context of how am i helping working people, how am i helping families, how am i helping people in the middle class? how am i helping people who have been without access having access? that is how i talk about it, but my plan is about strengthening

the economy, and i know when you strengthen the economy, that's how you do it. you do it by investing in the middle class. let me tell you the contrast. donald trump think abouts about the economy based on what he has done and will do. cutting taxes for billionaires and big corporations. that's how he thinks about the economy. he thinks about the economy not about middle class people trying to not just get by, but get ahead, no. he wants to stop medicare from being able to negotiate drug prices down from the big pharmaceutical companies. charlemagne: we've got a couple more questions. i want to yet my man eric thomas in. president obama was out there last week, waiting his finger at black men. when are hillary clinton and liz cheney going to wave their finger at white women? 52 percent of white women voted for trump in 2016. 55% in 2020. they all voted in their own interest. when are the white people going

to start wavering the finger at them? vice pres. harris: well, thank you for highlighting that i do have the support of over 2000 republicans who -- 200 republicans who worked for various administrationses including everyone going back to ronald reagan, to the bushes, to john mccain and mitt romney and including liz cheney. and i'm very proud to have her support. and i believe that they who -- many of them who may have voted for trump are supporting me because they know the stakes are so high. in terms of our very democracy and rule of law. charlemagne: the finger wagging should start today or tomorrow. vice pres. harris: (202)-748-8000 -- vice pres. harris: well, what i think is happening is that we are all working on reminding people of what is at stake, and that is very important. charlemagne: eric, real quick, we only got a few minutes. only got a few minutes. thank you, madam vice president for having me. thank you, charlamagne tha god. as an employee of a mission-driven, nonprofit bank, i appreciate the

efforts in that bank. but as chief storyteller of the city, i spend a lot of time telling stories about the trade. if donald trump doesn't like the train so much, he's not welcome back. [laughter] vice pres. harris: ok. i don't want to interrupt you. i don't know if anybody knows what you are talking about. okay, go on, go on. >> you can get into it. there's been a lot of conversation about the middle class, but black men have been taken out of the work force more many reasons of we know that black men are not criminals, they are criminalized. and that has taken black men out of the home, wealth out of the home. and so because -- especially in a city with high poverty, i have heard a lot about middle class, but i would love to hear more about stair stepping from poverty into middle-class to take advantage of what you are talking about. vice pres. harris: no, that is right. that is real. so, for example, the child tax credit. when we did it, when i first became vice president, we cut black child poverty by half.

and you know when you deal with poverty for a child, that's about the whole family, right? when you look at the work that we have done that has been about a dealing with prescription medication, for our seniors black people are 60% more likely to to get diagnosed with diabetes and have -- and when you look at what people are in terms of on the verge of brings -- verge of bankruptcy because of medical bills and medical debt, that is very real. so us capping the cost of something like insulin and prescription medication, not to mention the work that i've been doing to ensure medical debt does not get included on your credit score, because medical debt comes about because of an emergency. nobody invites it upon themselves, and that is the point about history and the reality of life, we also know the real disparities around access to meaningful health care which are more likely to result in people facing chronic illness and in medical emergency. so my work has been and included

working to get medical debt not be on your credit score so that that thing you did not invite upon yourself would not be the reason you can't get a lease on an apartment if or anything else. we have to deal with child poverty, we have to dole with -- deal with poverty, period. and there are many specific ways to do it including dealing with getting resources into the community that alleviate the burdens that hold people down. but back to detroit, so can you imagine, you go to a city and you say you want the votes of those people, and then you disparage the city? that is what he did in detroit. and he has a tendency to mention cities that black majority population or a black mayor. charlemagne: that is right. and that is what he did. he did that to detroit because detroit is 78% black, and he doesn't want america to look

like that. madam vice president, thank you. vice pres. harris: we are done? charlemagne: according to i heart. we've gdo this again. >> this has been iheartradio's we the people, and audio townhall inviting vice president kamala harris. remember, your voice matters. stay informed, engaged, and most importantly, make sure to vote. thank you for joining us. >> friday night, watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail, a week discussion on how the campaigns have progressed in the as we read two reporters join each week to talk about issues, messages and events driving the political news and to look at the week ahead. watch c-span's 2024 campaign trail friday night at 7:00 eastern, online at c-span.org, or download as a podcast on c-span now our free mobile app or wherever you get your