host: for sunday, december 8. the food and dr ainistration proposes putting labels on food highlight nutritious concent -- content. proponents argue changing labels will not change shopper habits and question the fda's authority to require health warnings. we are asking you what is the federal role in food safety and nutrition labeling? here are the lines, broken down regionally. in the east or central time zone, (202) 748-8000. mountain or pacific, (202) 748-8001. you can text your comments to (202) 748-8003. be sure to include your name and city. you can also post a question or comment on facebook at facebook.com/cspan war on x at

@cspanwj. food safety and nutrition labeling was the topic as a senate health education committee last week from the washington post. here's an article talking about it. a bipartisan group of senators grilled food and drug ministration officials thursday on the agency having not more tightly regulated ultra processed foods, highlighting a key part of the health agenda promoted by robert f. kennedy, jr.. kennedy, the pick to lead the health and human services, has blamed decline life expectancy. the article says fda officials have repeatedly delayed a proposed rule to place labels on

the front of food and drink packages to help americans make healthier choices amid exploding obesity rates years after other countries have taken such actions or last month, the white house began reviewing the proposal, a critical step before releasing it to the public. last week, one of those testifying before the senate committee was in fda commissioner. here he is -- here are some of his opening remarks at the committee hearing. >> [video clip] >> specific actions by the fda can have sweeping effects. when we require trans fat to be labeled on the nutrition facts label in 2006, we saw a nearly 80% drop in consumption because consumers pick different foods and industry reform leader products. establishing a label can be another landmark policy.

displaying certain nutrition information on the front of the package would allow americans to quickly and easily identify how foods can fit into a healthy dietary pattern. the health impact of ultra processed foods is at the forefront of current policy considerations and the clear association between ultra processed foods and negative health outcomes is a major concern. while there is still much we need to understand, processed foods are usually high in saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars and there already evidence of harm when these nutrients are consumed in excess. the fda is working to reduce sodium across the food supply to update the health claims on food packages and strengthen chemical safety review programs. there is good reason to be concerned about chemicals routinely included in much of our food.

the fda has limited resources to deal with this issue, despite repeated requests for funding to do the evaluations. there are years of work under each of these initiatives performed by qualified and dedicated staff and the existing science and direct opposition from powerful industry forces. we have just completed the largest reorganization in fda history, in no small part so we could take on the issues of nutrition and chemicals in food supply. i will be leaving fda at the change of an ministrations, but our people fda want to do more and we need your partnership. as a cardiologist, i spent most of my career dealing with the tragedy of premature death and disability, but my time in washington has made me aware of how hard it is to address these policy issues. our nation's complex interests,

combined with national favoring individual freedom to choose, even if the choice is one that impairs health, make it difficult to take actions that have been successfully employed by other countries. i believe these lead to better health in every other high income country compared with ours. in my opinion, finding a better consensus on these issues in america is not just an opportunity but a necessity for the future of our country. host: that was before the senate health committee earlier, around thursday last week. this first hour, we are asking you, what is the federal role in food safety and nutrition labeling? if you are in the eastern or central time zone, (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zone, (202) 748-8001.

-- we will start with chris in florida. >> good morning. i love to eat. food is my passion. when i read the labels, i cannot stand when i see high fructose corn syrup, cloning, zero sugar, sugar substitutes, steroids, pesticides, hormones, natural flavors. what is in these natural flavors? they never list it. so eat more plants and we much feel -- and we all >> feel much better. >>what you do when you see an ingredient like that on a nutrition label? do you still buy it? >> absolutely not. if i cannot pronounce it, i do not buy it. i always check expiration dates. so many times a look at the date and it is expired. i am always turning stuff into the counter and sometimes they

put it back on the shelf. you are going to get somebody sick. stop doing that. host: what do you think the government should do? caller: they should hire a person whose job is to go around in the grocery store and check the dates and throw it out. because there is no accountability if you do not hire a person to do that. they all point fingers at each other. whose responsibility is it to go around and check labels to make sure things are expired or not? there's really nobody that does that. i'm the one who does it at my grocery store where i live at. host: what about the issue of the type of ingredients used in products? caller: they should be illegal. it is not healthy. this is why may be children are confused about their gender, because they are eating foods that who knows what is in them and what is in the formula when a woman does not breast-feed. what is in the formula?

does that have anything to do with why children are confused about whether they are male or female? think about that. host: steve in california, good morning. caller: we have to recognize several things. first, the fda role is to protect the american public. but we have to recognize a couple things. there is an unholy alliance between the fda, the food industry, and drug companies. the food industry makes a sick so that the pharmaceutical industry can sell us drugs. to make us better. i do not agree with everything that kennedy is professing.

but we must be given information . i would like to see kennedy make an effort to release the studies that are done around the world in canada and europe, giving us information as to why these ingredients, these dies and all of these ingredients that the europeans and canadians found to be harmful as far as vaccines are concerned, it is a choice. but kennedy, i am relying on to release the information. and that is basically all i have to say, but -- host: that was steve in

california. echoing his comments, this facebook comment from jenny. she says while there is a role, the fda is corrupt. they are bought off by chemical manufacturers and currently do more harm than good. during the senate hearing last week, it was senator bernie sanders, chair of that committee, who asked about the impact on the ability to make changes. [video clip] >> have you had the courage to take on a powerful food and beverage industry? there are 15 teaspoons of sugar in this product. how any parents in america know this when they give it to their kids? have you done your job and your predecessors? have you done your job in alerting the american people to the danger and rallying members of congress to stand up to the special interests causing these problems?

>> i have been working on this problem for all of my career. this is what i have done. i think i have talked about this specifically. we all wish we had gotten to the goals sooner that you describe. i am not contesting that, but i do believe in an appropriate discourse with this committee. we need to carefully reflect on the issues in play now that would allow this to happen and i'm heartened to hear the bipartisan support for this. much of what we try to do gets blocked. >> let's be honest here. the food and beverage industry spend hundreds of millions of dollars on lobbying and on campaign contributions. you tell me the role they are playing into destroying the health of america's children. >> i am not going to contest your comment about the mount of money spent on lobbying. i think it is probably accurate. but a lot of the changes that

those of us who are interested in better health would like to make our blocked at the level of legislation. >> what is the reason our kids are unhealthy? what role does the industry play? are you prepared to tell us that this congress needs to take on the food and beverage industry? >> i'm not going to castigate people who work in the food and beverage industry. it is not to castigate. it is to point out how to make progress. we have an industry that if you try to change it overnight there are farmers all over the united states that would not be able to grow the crops they are currently growing, so there needs to be a plan in a mature, thoughtful way across the country. >> in 2010 -- how any years does it take to do?

is 14 years enough time? how many kids have gotten sick and died during those 14 years? >> it is not just kids. it is adults of course. i want to see a change as much as anyone, but we have to do it in a way that considers all the factors. >> protecting the interests of the food and beverage industries. host: senator sanders asking about the food lobbies. this data from open secrets looking at food and beverage lobbying. the total for 2024 was almost $22 million. back to her calls, patrick in florida. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. you would think a lot of these pro-life groups would like to get in on this, but here in florida, the state, not some radical liberal extremist -- do

not eat the fish out of the everglades. it a risk. farmers cannot even find freshwater they drove her wells because there are so many pesticides and insecticides. if you look on the label of these pesticides and insecticides as you are exposed to them, they say the antidote slows down the process of a nerve agent. we are putting nerve agent on our crops, which the wall street journal has done three articles ignored by you and pro-lifers about exposure to pesticides causing autism. i am 65 years old. i never even heard the word autism until about 10 years ago for how much it has ballooned in the usa. i was stationed in germany. you could not buy american

chocolate in germany because by german law chocolate bars can only have three ingredients. same with beer. i do not know if you remember when pence was in england trying to get them to buy more chicken. the pm of england said, we do not like our chicken soaked in chlorine. process it better. host: that was patrick in florida. he might be interested in this article in the new york times. epa seeks lemons again on harmful pesticides. the article says almost 25 years after federal regulators curbed use of pesticide link to learning disorders in children and three years after a total ban on its use in food crops, the chemical again is being applied everything from bananas to turnips in most states. article says the saga of this pesticide is a stark reminder of

why americans are alarmed about industrial farming and food supply, concerns that helped propel robert f. kennedy, jr.'s candidacy. the issue is also an illustration of the obstacles regulators will face they try to make good on campaign promises to remove harmful chemicals from the food supply. it is the latest twist on monday when the environmental protection agency proposed outlawing the use of the pesticide on farmed foods except on 11 crops, including fruits children tend to eat in large quantities such as apples and cherries. in an interview, the assistant administrator of the office of chemical safety and pollution prevention at the epa said the proposed rule would provide the

greatest benefit to children's health while still inviting -- abiding by a federal court decision last year that overturned the agency's original band. it says the public has 60 days to comment on the rule. we will hear next from john in ohio. >> it is me. i have never had this happen before. i watch the show every day, but i agree with everybody that called in. ivory with bernie on this too. i hope and kennedy gets in -- thank god for him. i hope he fires that guy and everybody else in there. all the things they have been saying, these other countries do not allow this junk we allow in our stuff. and i have been reading about all this stuff lately. nobody else seems to realize what is going on. i hope kennedy gets in there and

fires all those people. host: other than rfk firing people, if you were to be confirmed, what specific actions do you think should be done? caller: they should lower the amount of sugar in food. there is too much sugar. and fat and salt and pesticides. and the gmo corn, they did a test on rats and after three months the rats were fine. they did the same study, somebody else, and after seven months they had huge tumors on them and another doctor to the same study with the rats. i think it was probably the government looking out for us. the things i have been reading and seeing and stuff -- i know they are not. big pharma and big food and the

medical industry -- big pharma's training these doctors and telling them what to say and they are hiring the nutritionists and telling them what to say. they are all together and the politicians too. they paid them off. if they try to stand up and fight it, they put big money into defeating them. they need to have the courage to stand up and give people a choice, like in the schools. they should give them an option instead of just milk. give them a chance of they want out milk or almond milk or something because even the milk i do not think is good for you. milk in general. there is too much cholesterol and fat and stuff. give people a choice. people will not eat a healthy diet -- give them a choice. let them decide. host: lisa in maryland, good morning. caller: i was listening to

everyone speaking about kennedy and i'm wondering -- this is the united states of america. what is the best we have to offer? have you guys listened and gone through each of these picks for cabinet? this is the richest and worst cabinet in history. and you are talking about health . in 2012, one of the programs that michelle obama put in place for children during the obama administration. if i remember clearly, they went off unwashed we tell our children want to eat or drink? another thing cut last week a gentleman called in regarding

the calls you get on c-span and i appreciate that call because some of the people that you put on, you need to at least fact-check what they say. apparently in america today we have a problem of what facts are and documentation of fact. let's go through each on c-span. i think we are entitled to that as the mac in public. every single thing they have accomplished that they will do for us in office when they become the cabinet pick of the united states of america around the world. thank you. host: patrick in pittsburgh, pennsylvania, good morning. >> when you have people like bill gates buying up farmland, when you look at statistics, they do not live. 90% -- the difference between the united states and countries

like france, they have 90% less children with autism. not only are they using big agro and pharmacological companies with all these weight loss drugs , these drugs that are successfully managing your blood sugar, they are designed to harm you. you're losing weight for a time in the next thing you know you're having pancreatitis and you are having our limbs removed. our children are being poisoned. it is not just that. it is a thousand times worse than the american people could imagine. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, our government is spraying chemicals in the atmosphere. they are spraying these gigantic cloud formations and it is backed up by legislation and the media groups are telling the american people. you cannot allow this to

continue. you need to contact your representatives. tell them these actions they are taking are no longer acceptable. thank god for kennedy. thank god for president trump and elon musk. host: a couple people have brought up the issues of food dyes and foods. that was one of the topics brought up during last week's hearing. here is senate -- senator tommy tuberville asking about the use of food die. >> i want to ask you about read three and read 40 and get your comment on this. it is not a conservative or liberal standpoint. we all need to understand as a group about how we have gotten to this point. the fda has a position that food colorings like 40 are safe for kids' ingestion. do you stand behind that? >> i'm going to refer that to

mr. jones. we have not evaluated read 40 and over a decade. at fda, we have not evaluated the safety of read 40 in over a decade, so over a decade that was the conclusion. >> we are in the process of evaluating read three and you may want to comment. >> read three has been known to cause cancer in cosmetics. we still allow it to be put in our food. i do not understand that. >> red three, we have a petition in front of us to revoke authorization for it. we are hopeful in the next few weeks we will be acting on that petition. it should be forthcoming. >> the process, how does that work? if we know something is deadly for anybody that ingests it, how do we continue to just study that and not say enough is enough? >> red three is an interesting

example. it is actually known to be cancer in laboratory animals and rats come up with scientific consensus is that the mechanism in rats is not applicable in humans. however, under the law any chemical shown to be carcinogenic in animals were humans or humans or animals, cannot be authorized by fda. it is called the delaney clause. even though we do not believe there is risk to humans, under the delaney clause red dye, because it is known to cause cancer in laboratory animals, should not be authorized. that is what has been a challenge to the fda for many years, how to manage we have a scenario where although there may be cancer evidence in animals there is also evidence that it is not harmful to humans. host: and a couple messages

coming in on text this morning. if they take the herbicide and pesticide away, we will need a lot people in the fields pulling wes with bug nets. and kristen says let term member michelle obama try to take on nuitional guidelines and was chastised by the republicans for being too controlling and threatening to take away your cheeseburgers. now republica seem to be fine with the same issue being brought up by r junior. i suppose having them on the democrat side now regarding chemicals and food is a good thing. back to her calls. mike in montgomery, alabama is next up. caller: it was interesting that you had tommy tuberville on on that clip. he ndso look in his own backyard. it is cultural, especially in the southeast. the insurance companies, when they rate companies and so forth

, they call the southeast of the fried chicken belt. you look at a cafeteria within a business. when you try to change the menu to healthy, instead of fried chicken and grits smothered with cheese, if you try to go counter to that and add fruits and salads, it does not sell. so we are being brainwashed. in the morning when you put the television on a 5:30 in the morning you get these fast food advertisements like biscuits smothered in gravy and double cheeseburgers with bacon. it is an uphill battle and there is something that has to be said for discipline. these drugs are not even -- the jury is still out on those and it is just a crutch.

you have to go to discipline. good diet. exercise. stress management. >> where does the federal government come in with what you are saying? caller: i think they can control -- you had sanders on with the fda. i think sanders is going in the right direction, but it is all about the benjamin's. it is who controls lobbyists in this country. fast food outlets are gigantic profit center and culturally you have to change the way that you live your life and it is easier said than done. but it is discipline. even the doctors, there's a disconnect with doctors. what is the next pill? what is the next surgery that i can buy my next boat on?

in lieu of a registered dietitian. so i think government has a role to play because public government could influence private industry and it boils down to people and how they live their lives. host: frank in new york, good morning. caller: i am really glad that rfk junior has shed light on this. in september, i took my grandson to europe and we were in eight different countries. we came back. he lost 12 pounds. i lost nine. also, my brother was in two other countries got not the ones we were in, and he lost 10

pounds. and if you are thinking we were touring a lot, there was floods going on in europe where we were, so we were not very active, but i was not so cognizant of what was happening to food and i'm glad there is a lot of light being shown on it. that is all. host: that is frank in new york. terry, also in new york. caller: i remember when i was a young kid and we had a lot of apple farms. there was the sweet smell in the air. they told me they were spraying for the apples. it was not an unpleasant smell. they got rid of that so you do not have that anymore. if something causes a disease in lab animals. -- lab animals, get rid of it.

if a dye or food coloring is bad, get rid of it. you have to take responsibility. if you want to apply the stuff on your face, that is your decision. i am curious. i have been told we import a lot of our beef from other countries. how safe do you know they are? i remember a couple families used to get together and buy a cow that was grass fed and raised in our neighborhoods and we used to have a butcher and we knew where it came from. we know what it was eating. so i am curious. and also about the labeling. you can make it much clearer. somebody said put it in the front of the packaging, but how much do you know? what is a millimeter? how much is that? they are not clear. they need to put it in plain english where people know

exactly what is in there. thank you. host: that was terry in new york, talking about the food labeling. this opinion piece from the washington post, these countries are doing nutrition labels the right way. the author, a associate professor of health policy at the university pennsylvania, and part her opinion piece notes more than 40 countries have adopted easy to understand front of package nutrition information showing at a glance which foods are more or less helpful. thus far, the united states has not required front of package labeling, relying instead on the food industry's voluntary efforts, with confusing numbers and percentages compared with excess sugar. the nutrition system used in france or the health star rating used in new zealand.

this was one of the topics at thursday's hearing. it was brought up by senator tim kaine of virginia. [video clip] >> i am in your verbal presentations beginning of the hearing. you concluded by saying there are challenges if the u.s. were able to do things that other nations do in the area of ultra-processed foods, either because you have a different legal climate or different views about individual freedoms than we might have more success in battling this. i was intrigued by that. that was not the question i was going to ask you, but since you were referring to things other nations do i thought i would ask you strategies being pursued by other nations that are successful. >> i think this is, for so much of the things that have frustrated me at the fda, this is the core issue. we have a stubbornness of

individualism in the u.s., which is great in many ways, but when it comes to public health it is a problem because other countries know that we are interdependent when it comes to public health. that is, if you present, and i will use my experience at google -- >> i want to get to specifics. >> if you want to influence someone to eat healthy food, you do not present them with a chart with a bunch of numbers on it. you show them a picture of a graphic image that has an emotional impact. that is what advertising on the other cited doing. froot loops does not show commercials of one froot loops with all the constituents of the fruit loop. it shows beautiful pictures of froot loops and nice people eating them with emotional impact. we are not allowed to do that. even in some of our more recent dealings, we have been instructed that at the -- at the fda we just provide information.

the one case that is an exception was tobacco, where we were instructed to do it and still lost in court the first time and it set us back five years. much of this has to do with the environment people are living in. i mentioned i am colorado prone because of my family. people in colorado are not as obese as the rest of the country. if you are in that environment, you are more likely to behave that way. >> have other nations embraced front of package labeling? >> not just labeling but warning signs. host: just under 25 minutes left in this first hour asking what is the federal role in food safety and nutrition labeling. wanted to share some messages coming in from facebook. he says none whatsoever. if they want a role, they need a

constitutional amendment. the necessary and proper clause being used as an elastic clause is too heavily abused. chris says whatever it is, it is not what it should be. testing is conducted on foreign or domestic products to ensure labeling is correct. labeling is confusing and misleading. for instance, serving sizes, fluctuating weight and sizes. the whole system needs reconfiguring. and one more says it all needs a rework. a lot of people have no clue what is and what they eat or the true nutritional value of it. we have a lot of junk put in our food, all done as fillers for profit. back to your calls. mary in florida, good morning. caller: i am so happy robert kennedy junior will be taking

this role on because this country is so obese it is obscene. the foods that we are given at the supermarket, it is our choice what we buy, but with watching your shows the federal government just does not do its part in taking care of the people of the country. the food labels are deceiving. i see so many children that are so obese at such a young age. it is a shame. it is really a shame. i see people that are buying these already made foods that you just pop in microwave ovens because it is easy and they do not even look at the labels.

this country has to be more aware of what we are eating and what is going into our system. host: if robert f. kennedy, jr. is confirmed, what would you like to see him do to address some of the issues you are talking about? caller: i want to see what you are talking about, the food labels on all of these packaged foods. i hope all of these ready-made foods are done away with. i cannot say anything about the book -- big food chains, but things have to change. there are some any people that don't even cook anymore because they work, whatever, because they are too lazy to just go to these fast food places.

and buy tons of junk because that is all it is. i want him to make the people aware because too many people are just not aware. they are too lazy. host: that was mary in florida. teresa in missouri. caller: i think this program today, i have been thing about this for over 20 years. gmo's cut corn syrup in every sauce. i do not understand how you have corn syrup in beans. pesticides, honey has corn syrup in it. all these things have yellow dye. ice cream has over 10 ingredients. if i want to eat ice cream, i do not need to have 10 different gradients in the ice cream. all of the vegetables are

sprayed with pesticides and insecticides. the meat can't you do not know where it is coming from pure the fish is polluted by the water. this is a wonderful episode of washington journal and i thank god for you today. you're a beautiful person. that is all i have to say. i hope it gets better. host: those teresa in st. louis. the washington post shows the two potential labeling's the fda could make that they say they are considering. the article says one on the left would signal high levels of added sugar, saturated fat, or sodium, which the agency defined as having 20% or more of the recommended daily amount per serving. the other features callers signaling how much saturated fat, sodium come and added

sugars per serving the food contains. if an item contains 5% or less of the daily value of those nutrients, the green label is placed next to it. if the food is at or over 20% of that nutrient, it gets the red label. everything between gets a yellow medium label. back to your calls, carmen in south florida. caller: i'm calling in because of a couple things. i do not feel like rfk is going to be able to do half of what he might want to. it is not that i do not trust him. i do not trust the process. it is about lobbyists in our government and it is being controlled by money. so it is an issue and has been for many years and i do not know if they will be able to stop it.

i go into a store now and i read every angry there is. i take the time out. i eat oatmeal. i do not buy anything with added sugar. if a product does not say no sugar added, i walk out. when i walk out, i feel depressed, like what is going on? i cannot eat most of the foods i want to eat and sometimes i pick up my grandchildren. i do not know if you are allowed to say on the station, but we will go into the store and they want a bag ofp -- a bag of pocky. i say, this is poison. why do you want to eat this? if i try to give them a piece of fruit or something like that, they are like, no. they want that bag of taki. the addictive ingredients they are putting in these foods is crazy.

i think that is where our issue is. host: other than sugar, what are ingredients you try to steer clear of and how difficult is it to find items that do not have them? caller: it is very difficult. it is the fructose corn syrup and chemicals. i also do not trust natural flavoring. what is the natural flavoring? i use the word poison because i think that is within you to do on labels. they need to make it more graphic. i try my best. it is hard to eat good. let's just take a box of bran flakes. plain bran flakes, not raisin bran, just regular bran flakes, ingredients is corn syrup and barley syrup. host: are you still there? caller: i am still here.

there are all types of chemicals even in our plane food and i think that is unfair to the american public. when i go into a store and i see something like bran flakes -- i like oatmeal because when i read oatmeal, guess what is in oatmeal? whole-grain rolled oats. that is it. i go to mix spaghetti sauce sometimes for the family and an older woman said, what are you doing? i said, i'm reading the ingredients. i do not want this in my food. she said, try that box of tomatoes. i am not buy a box of tomatoes. i read it. guess what is in it? tomatoes. that is it. host: that was carmen in south florida. john in connecticut, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. i tried to get in on the call early this week, but i could not get through. i think we should take

government out of our food. just eat healthy. teach our children how to eat. i understand with rfk and what obama said -- let's leave politics out of our food. 60 years ago when i was growing up, we all eat healthy. we never had this stuff going on with our kids being sick and obesity in our country. why can't we go back to that or back to what europe is doing or follow what europe is doing in their food system? it sounds like they are ahead of us, so maybe we should look into that. thank you. host: sherry in minnesota, good morning. caller: good morning. i ended up getting diabetes in 2018 and started learning about what is in our food and was

alarmed. all this started after world war ii. somebody at the fda, usda, these are federal agencies. they have done nothing for the american public. except hide stuff. i think this was planned to make the american people sick after world war ii. the high fructose corn syrup is in everything and that is a bad sugar. there sugar in everything. and for diabetics you cannot have sugar. so i am glad that bobby kennedy is going to be leading us. i think this is what america has

needed for a long time, but we need complete transparency. these people as far as the federal government and what we are -- and overseeing the fda, the fda has sold americans out and that is a sad state of affairs. host: that was sherry in minnesota. last week, it was senator mike braun of indiana who asked dr. robert kalus about the focus being on health -- about the focus of health on the fact that we are not treating these diseases instead of trying to prevent them. here is that exchange. [video clip] >> why are we still>> in a system that has nothing to do with prevention being worth a pound of cure and you happen to be in the agency that has to deal with it all the time in terms of what the new modality is, it is going to keep treating

expensive remediation, where do we turn the tide to where we make your agency less relevant because you do not have to do as much of it because we are preventing it rather than trying to remediate it? >> i want to say how much i appreciate the way you framed that. you said we are at the forefront. my favorite article of all time in the medical literature amounts to kick the fda, hazardous to public health. it relates to -- i urge all to read it. it is a 14-year-old article relating to what you said. you have missed a lot of this discussion, but this is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed and it would be great. i am on record on this. i have had this nightmare that i was the head of this agency and migrate grandkids read about the

fda can't wear society people gain essentially a pound of weight every year and to fix it they invented a drug that is $20,000 a year to deal with it. that would be a bad legacy to leave behind, so i hope this will be fixed. i want to point out you are about to become governor of the state, as i know it. it does not look good in this regard, so a lot of people are going to be watching whether you can change this. if you are running a health system today, you make your money by doing expensive procedures. >> i am glad you brought up this point. host: we have been showing you clips from last week's senate hearing with the fda officials testifying. if you would like to watch the

entire event, you can find it on our website. more comments coming in from social media. jersey girl says they should have the same graphic labeling on garbage food that they do on cigarettes and psa's about the horrible ramification of diabetes and other metabolic syndrome elements. this says, so many issues relad to big food but we have to tackle this from both directions. we need a robust fda to take on industry lobbyists and educational campaigns directed at consumers like the psa campaigns related to exercise and fitness we had back in the 1970's and 1980's. and this one. the government role is to provide safe food supply for consumers. this is set to change with the incoming administration. there is no profit in safety. just under 10 minutes we will

hear next from ryan in massachusetts. caller: i like everything that is being talked about on this program. will they have not mentioned is the work and stress that contributes to the need to have processed food in the first place and the fact that technologically kids today in schools and people in workplaces are in front of screens 24/7. there is no encouragement to exercise. there is no incentive for children to exercise in an elementary setting or high school setting or college setting because they keep cutting funding from gym and physical programs. we did get -- we need to get our kids off the screens and off processed foods. the way to do that is to let kennedy do his job. he has done an excellent job bringing this issue to the forefront. they should be talking about

chemicals on food and big corporations that lobby to prevent it. it is long overdue and needs to be taken care of. host: ron in illinois, good morning. caller: there is an app you can put on your phone calls -- called yuka and it will tell you the ingredients in every food. it will tell you the hazardous stuff and it rates all the food from zero to 100 and you will not -- we'll be putting a lot of food back on the shelf. i just want to mention the program if people might be interested in it. it should be at the epp store. -- at the app store. >> how about qr codes on the label?

that would be a quick way to figure out what is on the food. i think one thing people are not talking about, the population is so big there's not enough healthy food to go around and they have to give us processed food just to feed everyone. that is a big problem. i am optimistic about bobby kennedy coming in, but i think the population is so big. one thing you need to stay on top of is to eat one apple a day. host: diane in new york. caller: how has it played the after world war two with all the women going back to work -- life is very stressful. we have all these tv commercials and naturally the children are watching tv used as babysitters

and that is part of this whole problem. so that is what i wanted to say. thank you. host: candace in nashvle tennessee. good morning. caller: i agree with the last caller. it should be noted during the last pandemic they did not try to warn anyone of any better effects of the shot. people like me already had blood clots before. doctors telling them not to get the experiment a shot and they are still giving people the shots and notarning about all the bad effects. they are planning on doing more pandemics. if you look at the mad scientists, you n see they plan on doing more experimental things. they are not putting any kind of warning onhe experiments they are dng.

they are having us under illegal surveillancehile they are doing these experiments and not telling anyone abo t bad effects of any of the experimentation because their social engineering society into social pathing where they do not care if other people are harmed. they think the harm and injury may be for the greater good. my immune system is what gives herd immunity, not the pharmaceuticals being promoted by fox news or cnn or msnbc without warnings while they are terrorizing us with the police state surveillance while they are doing pandemics and making us homeless, brainwashing our families, brainwashing our communities and terrorizing us with our own tax money.

host: wanted to share this article. our first caller this morning brought up her efforts to get expired food off the shelves. it says the fda and usda placed a joint request for information about food state labeling, including usage of terms such as cell by an best buy. food processors and the public consummate comments. it says they seek information on industry practices and preferences for date labeling and research on consumer perception date labeling and any impact date labeling may have on food waste and grocery cost. for example, questions include which products contain data labels and what criteria are used to decide what phrase is used and what date it should include. it goes on to say the usda estimates the average family of

four spends at least $1500 a year on food that ends up uneaten and the epa estimates in 2019 66 million tons of wasted food was generated in the food retail food service and residential sectors and about 60% was sent to landfills. the three agencies have a goal of reducing food loss and waste by 50% by 2030, hoping to reduce environmental impacts of food waste and lowering costs for american families. we will hear from diane in south carolina. good morning. caller: good morning. hi. host: go ahead. you are on. caller: ok. host: are you there? go ahead.

you are on air. caller: i have a person here that can't when he goes to the doctor, the doctor tells him what he should not eat and what he should eat and we go by that and then the next time he goes to the doctor they tell him what he cannot eat again and it winds up to be what can he eat. caller: because i have different ailments. i have a tumor right now in my kidney. and they cannot do surgery because i was in a fit -- af ib. the neurologist wanted to fatten me up. i am prediabetic and i know that because their sugar in it. i take that and now i am prediabetic again. when you go to doctors, one is a

cardiologist can one is a neurologist. one tells you what to eat and what not to eat but the other one says you have to eat -- you know, i'm about to give up on this. i have been frustrated about this problem for the last three and a half years. i do not know. i do not have nothing else to say. host: that was diane and somebody that she knows in south carolina. that is it for this first hour of washington journal. next, we will be joined by author and law professor kim wehle. she is going to discuss her book "pardon power: how the pardon system works and why." later, historian and author jon grinspan will discuss his book, "the age of acrimony: how americans fought to fix their democracy, 1865-1915."

♪ 25 years ago author malcolm gladwell publishes international bestseller about how ideas and behaviors spread in a society to create cognitive change. tonight on c-span q&a, mr. gladwell looks at the downside of social epidemics and clues rise of opioid abuse and medicare fraud. >> these guys in the fraud task force go into an office building in miami which had been divided up into hundreds of tiny condo- sized offices, each of which basically was a mailing address for a different fraudulent medicare provider. this office which was the size of a broom closet, there would

be one person behind a desk and their computer wouldn't be plugged in and on the door there would be some placard which said greater miami health care research center or rehabilitation center, and it would just be a front as a collection or fraudulent medicare payments, and there would be hundreds of fronts in one building. you don't find that in minneapolis, you find that in miami. >> malcolm gladwell with his book "revenge of the tipping point" on c-span q&a. you can listen on their free c-span new app. this week on the c-span network, the house and senate are in session. the house will vote on the final version of legislation authorizing infrastructure

projects and to add new federal judgeships to u.s. district courts. the senate will continue voting on president biden's u.s. district court nomination. united states postmaster general testified before the house oversight and accountability committee on the finances, performance and ongoing efforts to modernize operation for the u.s. postal service. and on wednesday, antony blinken testifies reviewing the biden withdrawal of admin -- troops from afghanistan. also, head over to c-span.org for scheduling information or to watch a live or on time. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. washington journal continues. host: joining us now to discuss presidents and pardon powers is a former u.s. assistant attorney and legal contributor for abc news kimberly whaley. good morning.

thanks for being with us. you also have a new but the came out over the summer called pardon power, how the system works and why. it is your first book, tell us why you chose to focus on pardon powers for this one. guest: because it is sort of the next logical step in the series in that the first book is how to read the constitution and why, basics of constitutional law. and when i finished that i realized actually, all of the constitution leads to voting. voting has so much power democratically and we don't have an affirmative right to vote anywhere in the constitution, and then we sort of got into a national conversation around polarization, political party divisiveness. my third book said well, let's take the tools of lawyering where you have to understand your opponent, you have to think

about broader societal implications, you have to understand you're never going to win everything you think you deserve, and i wrote a book called how to think like a lawyer and why with a step-by-step process for communicating with someone that you might be on the others of. in this fourth book, the pardon power stands at this intersection between these competing concepts we are talking about over and over again. the power of the people vs. some kind of unlimited, king-like power. the idea of mercy which is the theory behind the pardon power, but also the idea of corruption which is right there. and even historically, between the pardon power part of the legal authority, but also there is a religious connotation to it. it goes all the way back to the

new testament where pontius pilate come at the romans request, denied a pardon to jesus of nazareth, gave it to a murderer, jesus was crucified and it actually gave birth to the entire christian religion was around the pardon. so i think it is kind of the centerpoint that gives an opportunity to talk about all these other important issues that i think are so alive in our nation right now. host: and we often hear a lot about pardons at the end of the presidential term when someone is getting ready to leave office. when you hear pardon, but does that mean, and explain the different types. guest: pardon means forgiveness. it is different from an exoneration for a crime. if you want your record completely wiped out like it didn't exist, you've got to go to a judge. a pardon is in hindsight, you are forgiven. it does have practical implications. if you are pardoned while still in prison, you wouldn't be able to leave early, but it also can

in certain states lift some of the negative connotations. maybe in a certain state with a felony conviction you can't vote, or you can't apply for certain certifications for jobs. the other kinds of pardons are a commutation, which isn't forgiveness, but it just shortens her sentence. so those are for folks who are in prison. it wouldn't be a full pardon that you are forgiven for the crime, but the idea is that you are in there for too long and we will let you out early under certain circumstances. amnesty pardons, that just means a lot of pardons at once. and a president who does that usually has something else in mind besides the need for mercy on an individual basis. jimmy carter pardoned the draft

dodgers in the vietnam war. the idea being we don't want to continue to debate the war. we want to continue the conflict around whether these people were acting justly or not, we will pardon them so we can move on to the future as a country. host: and who can grant pardons to whom, and for what? guest: article two of the constitution says the president shall have the power to grant a reprieve and pardons for offenses against the united states except in cases of impeachment. very short, doesn't give us a definition, it does say offenses against the united states, so that means presidents cannot pardon offenses against states. so if you commit a crime under state law, cannot be helped by a presidential pardon. then it specifically says presidents can't pardon

impeachment. so if a president is convicted on articles of impeachment, he can't turn around and pardon himself for that. beyond that, but language is pretty narrow -- pretty broad, really. there's just not a lot of exceptions in the constitution and there haven't been a lot of opportunities for the supreme court to explain what all of this means. there has been some tweaking of it. i would say probably the most prominent expansion of that power -- you think of traditionally someone committed a crime, convicted of a crime, you are pardon of the crime when the gerald ford's pardon of richard nixon after watergate because in that instance, there was an indictment of richard nixon ready to go, and apparently from speaking to those prosecutors my understanding is there were crimes that weren't included even in that indictment. there were additional crimes that mr. nixon had committed.

they chose a certain smaller batch of them for the indictment before deciding to broaden the pardon did not just what was listed in the indictment, but any possible crimes that were committed within a particular time. so with that historical standard and also what jimmy carter did, as a matter of history, not necessarily as a matter of constitutional law or supreme court case law, we all understand the pardon to mean a can apply to basically immunize people from indictments over certain periods of time that already happened. the court has indicated you can't give someone a pardon to go out and commit crimes in the future. you can't just create an immunized criminal to run around and do whatever they want the rest of their life. it has to be for past actions but in this moment it doesn't look like there's any authority to say they have to actually have an indictment and a charge that is specific. host: and your book looks at the

historical pardons that many presidents have made and of course, another one that has been in the headlines this past week, that is that president biden issued a full and unconditional pardon to his son. what is your reaction to that? guest: my reaction to that was it was to be expected for a number of reasons. i know people tended to be upset about the fact that he said multiple times that he would not pardon his son. and then either knew that he was still going to pardon his son, or changed his mind. but in terms of the hunter biden question itself, to me, it wasn't out of line or corrupt for a number of reasons. one is that presidents twice before half pardon family members. bill clinton pardon his brother, and donald trump pardon his

son-in-law's father, jerrod kushner's father charles and has tapped him to be ambassador to france. so the idea that you pardon a family member is already out there. joe biden doing the same thing is getting more pushback but it is not out of line historically. the second question i think around pardons, is the pardon done to cover up your own wrongdoing? for self dealings or for corrupt reasons? here, i think it seems like the pardon is to protect his son for potential additional criminal scrutiny under the trump administration, when the trump administration has promised many times that the justice department in the next phase will be used for political retribution and vengeance, prosecution.

and the supreme court essentially last summer gave donald trump the authority to do that. that is a pardon that is necessary because of the moment. we've never seen anyone have to think this through given what is going forward. biden had to do something that i think was created by virtue of what donald trump is promising in the second term. the other thing are crimes or which hunter biden either pled guilty or was convicted of are fairly low-level offenses that even lindsey graham with a gun charge has said he wouldn't have been prosecuted, and was he was -- when he was in serious relapse after the death of his brother. he paid back on the liability with interest, and the other one was lying about his addiction on a gun application and then

owning a gun for 10 days. i would assume there are gun advocates that would see a problem with that kind of thing. we didn't really hear much pushback for that, but i would say that if biden weren't a biden, if this were one of the 10,000 applications that comes to a president, maybe that is one that would seem like it doesn't make sense for a long incarceration for that kind of offense when we are not concerned that they would be any injury to the public on the other side. host: we are talking with kim whaley about presidents and pardon powers for the next 30 minutes or so. if you have a question or comment, you can start calling in now. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independents, (202) 748-8002. kimberly, something that you mentioned just now that president biden's decision to

pardon his son is preemptive, and considering what president elect trump may do once he is in office. how could this decision to pardon his son impact how trump exercises his pardon powers? guest: so there is an argument that the use of the pardon in a way to react to or address what has happened with the next president or the prior president could create this sort of meringue effect, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. we could see the use of pardon escalating for political gain and to cover up crimes. that the concern that the supreme court in the immunity case, i think, created is that now that the president has authority to use the justice department to commit crimes,

because it is official power and the supreme court specifically singled out the use of the justice department as above the law, if a president wants to commit crimes and wants to get people that will help them commit crimes, the pardon gives that ability to immunize everyone around him. so the immunity decision is just for the president. the president is just going to use his official power, use the military, the fbi, surveillance technology, prosecutors. those folks don't automatically get immunity under that decision, but the president could pardon them all or promise to pardon them all and then essentially you have a federal government where the norm becomes criminals abusing power because the system has immunized them from any accountability under the supreme court immunity decision and the scope of the pardon. i'm not so sure that biden's

pardon would have an impact on that either way. it seems that given what donald trump has said and how he has, for example, considered replacing his fbi director, he's got three years left, with someone like kash patel who has an enemies list, that to me suggests a turn in how the fbi is going to be managed, the priorities of the fbi. so i'm not so sure that it is going to be what biden does that will dictate what trump does or does not. it seems to me if trump is going to use the pardon power broadly, it is not going to be because joe biden gave him the green light, although joe biden does these kinds of things should it will probably confuse the public. but at the end of the day i think we are heading toward an weaponized justice department. i take the president elect at his word, and more use of the

pardon power to cover up crimes. host: your first caller is marion, georgia line for democrats. caller: good morning. i have several points on this. i absolutely think the pardon power should be done away with for several reasons. one that you said is because it seems like the powerful and the rich at the top will just keep pardoning each other, it doesn't matter what party you are in. just pardon each other, say to all of the crimes you want and we will pardon you. and that seems ridiculous to me. and another one is that under the law we are supposed to all be equal. so i think if they are going to be able to be pardoned, i think every family in this country should also every four years be able to pardon a family member or relative. that would only be fair.

it just seems to me either we get rid of the pardon power because that is only helping the elites and the rich and the powerful, or we give it to every family every four years in this country. thank you. guest: interesting. at the time of jesus, the romans said the community could choose to pardon, so there is some precedent for that. but i do agree and i write in my book, i come to the same conclusion that the pardon powers are endocrine this tick and we shouldn't needed. -- an anachronistic. there is a case where it involved a prisoner who wanted to -- had new evidence showing he was innocent, exonerating evidence. and tried to use what is known as habeas corpus, another way of challenging your incarceration,

tried to use that to get out of prison and say listen, i have this evidence that shows i am free, i'm innocent. i am being held basically against my constitutional rights. and the supreme court said well, you always have the pardon so we are not going to let you use that habeas corpus process to get out of prison. if, as the case, if this dangling pardon is out there that is relatively rarely used for deserving people and people with access and money are more likely to get it, why do we even have it? it almost has a counterintuitive objective, and i would just say look at the last donald trump pardon, paul manafort. roger stone. mike kelly. his father-in-law. steve bannon. he pardon folks who could have incriminated him. that sort of pardon to silence

people who could give the american people information about how their president used or abused their powers. that, to me, is a problem. to change the pardon power, however, would require a constitutional amendment. that would be both houses of congress super majority, and super majorities in all the state legislatures. and when i say that people say that could never happen but it has happened 27 times in history, most recently in the 70's. so we could do these things if people could come together and not be so divided and invested in being divided. we could come together as a group and really make changes to our government that would help everyone, but we have to get on the same page and not sort of be so invested in being mad at each other. host: steve in anaheim, california, line for republicans. caller: good morning. you're one of my favorite

guests, i always enjoy when you are on. i've got a legal question for you. rudy giuliani was trump's lawyer and he paid to be trump's lawyer. so how did the client-lawyer privilege result to him as far as he was committing crimes but you couldn't charge him because he was trump's lawyer? thank you. guest: the attorney-client privilege applies. i'm glad you raised this because there is a lot of mythology around this. the attorney client privilege requires a couple things. first, that there is an agreement that you are going to be acting as an attorney for someone. so if and millie is an attorney you are chatting with her over thanksgiving about something, that is not protected just because she happens to be an attorney. it has to be a conversation for the purpose of giving or receiving legal advice. it can't be about your bank statements, and it has to be

confidential. so if somebody else is sitting in the room, then there is no privilege. in the last thing is you can go to your attorney for advice on how to commit a crime. you can't go to your attorney and say i killed someone, where should i bury the body? that would be asking them to participate in a crime. if you go to your attorney and say i killed someone, what do i do next, that would be completely privileged. as far as rudy giuliani and trump, kind of like michael co hen and trump, there is some confusion about what part of that relationship were covered and not covered. all those questions you're wondering about you could go through whether the privilege would apply or not. host: dennis, ohio, independent. good morning. caller: good morning. it is sad that the whole system

has been corrupted and turned upside down and inside out. the presidency of donald trump showed americans that anything can be corrupted when it is not fair, balanced and equal across the board for everyone. i just wanted to leave this question with those who are listening. if barack obama had committed the same acts and crimes that donald trump committed, and we all know he committed, with democrats, independents and republicans feel the same way about the system? would we overlook this? i truly believe that he would have been dealt with fairly for breaking the law, which he should have if he did it. something is wrong with the whole system. if we don't stand up and be decent, law-abiding, moral, be

what a christian is supposed to be, we will self-destruct from within. thank you for listening. guest: there is a sense that there is accountability for thee but not for me. it is hard to convey how crucial it is that these kinds of things , accountability for people in power has to be consistent. i like to use an image of a bridge over a very, very rough river. people are on the bridge, redcoats coats and blue coats, and they are fighting over who gets to control the bridge and they start doing may be some shady stuff to ensure their power on the bridge and everyone starts being angry with each other and wants to win and throw people over the side of the bridge.

meanwhile, the bridge grouting is being completely ignored. the water is washing it away and it is crumbling and no one is paying attention because they are so interested in blue versus red. one data bridge collapses and i think the question for everyone is who survives when the bridge collapses? who survives? that is exactly what i think the caller is talking about. it is protecting the system that ultimately protects you, your enemy, your friends. our children cannot vote. they have no agency right now. so whatever we do, if we climb onto a system that is corrupt because we just happen to like the strength or whatever of that , we have to understand that corrupt system is what we are handing off to our children, and they didn't have a choice.

that is why i do my work and that is why i think understanding how the constitution functions is really important for every american. host: kathleen, ohio, line for democrats. caller: thank you for washington journal. kimberly, i can't wait to read your book because this is such a fascinating topic. i think for decades i've just been amazed by how many of our officials, our presidents, our military officials, department of justice officials say no one is above the law, no one is above the law. no one in the real world believes that. we can watch what is happening, we can watch the pardons. i'm going to the list right here , is over 1000.

how do you think that affects the public? nobody is above the law. i want to ask c-span, people with one felony each this past year, i want trump to do a master class on how to get a job with 34 felonies. so i hope c-span does a program on all these people who may have one felony and it is not like stealing catalytic converters or something like that. however, these people can't keep jobs with one felony and then we've got someone like trump, 34 felonies and he got the presidency. talk about how can anyone believe that no one is above the law and a program on felonies and people who can't get jobs because of them. thank you. guest: i agree with the caller that the idea that no one is above the law is not really true

anymore. and it really did change. i cannot emphasize enough how huge the immunity decision is in terms of changing the course of our government. and the justices did it without, i think, the authority to do it. they basically changed the constitution. the constitution can only be amended by the people and they went ahead and did it and basically, we now can only see what will happen when you tell people with the most power pretty much on the planet that they can do whatever they want with that power. if you get the ticket for speeding you will slow down the next time you drive down that street. justice in america works better if you have money and access and power.

big corporations that can hire washington lawyers at $1000 an hour are going to do much better than a single mom with her mom-and-pop shop that needs some money for food or retirement. same way with the criminal context. the constitution doesn't recognize poverty as somehow a protected class. so if you are arrested and you can't make bail, you don't have the money to get yourself out of jail until the trial starts, you will stay in jail because of your poverty. before the government puts one piece of evidence against them. innocent until proven guilty unless you are poor. then you have to face the consequences of a crime for which nothing has been proven against you. on the message of the pardon, i will put one anecdote which really surprised me. i was doing a talk in austin and there was a high school teacher

who said that he's having problems conveying to his students now that donald trump pardoned a number of artists, kodak black, and they perceive that as meaning i can now commit crimes and just get a pardon. and he has to debunk that idea and convey that no, you are not the kind of person that is going to get a pardon. this whole conversation we are having, the concern is we might shift to an environment where lawlessness is more accepted across the country on many levels. it is starting at the top and will trickle down. at the same time, people want to see more toughness on crime. we will just have to see where that kind of chaos lands. host: before president trump left office at the end or the beginning of 2021, there was reporting that he was possibly looking at pardoning himself.

what is our current understanding of somebody's ability to do that, and then to kathleen's point about the felony convictions he has, would he be able to pardoned himself in those cases or other cases like these georgia election interference or his impeachment? guest: so on the self pardon, there is no law on whether a president can self parted. there is an argument that theoretically you can't be the judge, jury everything of yourself. that doesn't make logical sense. and a lot of the stuff when it comes to presidents, from and everyone else, if somebody does it, what is to stop them? if you were to self-pardon, who is going to say anything about it? it would just stand because there is no way to appeal a pardon. however, with the immunity decision saying if you use

official power as president you can't commit a crime, we will never need to worry about a self pardon anymore. there is nothing pardon because your crime is basically immunized from the get-go. remind me of the other question. >> 34 felony convictions. guest: the president cannot pardon state crimes. that 34 felony convictions that stand against him in manhattan, he cannot pardon. and also the pending indictment in georgia he cannot pardon. so if he is sentenced in either of these cases, he would have to be at the mercy of the new york pardon system and the georgia pardon system. in new york it is at the oppression -- at the discretion of the governor, kathy hochul at this moment. in georgia it is actually a commission but you are not eligible for a pardon until five years after you've completed

your sentence. so trump would not be eligible for a pardon under georgia law until the trial, the appeal, and he served his sentence. whereas a federal pardon as we saw it hunter biden, as we saw with paul manafort and other folks, a president can just skip the line and pardon them early in the process under potential threat of a crime. host: richard in north carolina, line for republicans. caller: first thing, i do believe most everybody that trump pardon had already served their time before he pardoned them. and i keep hearing all this about trump, you are a law professor but you don't call nobody out. president obama did decide on trump's campaign. there was a state dossier that

they did. these people have committed treason and you are teaching our people law? this is a joke. thank you. guest: just for the record, definitely five years have not passed since the last round of pardons. i can't remember off the top of my head with paul manafort and roger stone, the pardons definitely did not happen five years after the conviction which is the standard under the department of justice. but again, donald trump didn't have to adhere to that because his pardon power is absolute. host: chicago, illinois, line for independents. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. i have one question. was hunter biden convicted of a felony? guest: honestly, i should know that off the top of my head. i'm not sure if these are felonies or misdemeanors of the

top of my head. he was convicted of lying on a gun application, and lying on his tax returns for a certain number of years. caller: joe biden was being a parent. i don't know a parent in this country that would not have done the same thing for their child. my issue now is where do we go from here? if joe biden wants to do something, he should issue a national pardon for every citizen of this country except felons. maybe that would star unification in this country. secondly, these things that they consider themselves to have could now be exonerated. i believe that it is one of the

best things they could do for this country. guest: that is almost an inspiring concept. people are talking about pardoning, anticipatory pardons or protected pardons for folks that were involved in the january 6 commission, and the criminal indictments and processes of donald trump because he promised retribution, but you put a really important point on the table which is that the whole idea behind pardon power which stretches back to babylonian times, it is in every country in the world except for china. it is in the bible, it is in kamala england, is mercy. and unfortunately, it has been hijacked by corrupting an problematic pardons and there really isn't any fairness in who does and does not get pardons.

but in theory you indicated could be used for tremendous justice and kindness. a president could say all right, and a minimum, i don't want the federal government executing innocent people. that the criminal justice system doesn't get that right, we are not going to take peoples lives unless we are 100% sure that they committed the crime alleged. so use dna evidence to everybody on death row and commute the sentences of those that dna evidence proves are completely innocent. but it is an opportunity for corruption and an opportunity to bypass the sort of red tape of the jury system and the appeals and congress and do some good things that i think people will really appreciate. but since reagan, there has been this talking point about being tough on crime, that voters tend

to like. so presidents have shied away from the mercy possibility of pardons because voters like this idea of being tough on crime. we spend $80 billion a year on the criminal justice system and the penal system. that is a lot of taxpayer dollars. and we know in this moment we are putting people in jail who don't need to be in jail as long as their sentences are who could contribute to society, who maybe were put in there without sufficient evidence or 100% innocence. so the pardon gives us this opportunity of a conversation that maybe we don't want our taxpayer dollars going there. maybe we want the money put into clean that up, to make sure that just the ones that should be in jail are in jail and the rest of them can come out where they belong and contribute to society. host: wanted to let you know

that the new york times and article notes that hunter biden was convicted on three federal felony counts for illegally buying a gun. just a few minutes left, tony in connecticut, line for democrats. caller: good morning, kimberly. listening to this, it's interesting because i watch c-span every day and the other day we had a discussion about pardoning. correct me if i'm wrong, but i think obama has over 1900 pardons, is that correct? that is what you guys showed. and the other question i have, i can understand him pardoning his son for the crimes he committed, are they trying to cover up something? are they trying to cover up the biden family or stopping

anything, justice from being executed that needs to be done? it doesn't make sense to me. what is going on with this pardoning stuff? please help me understand. thank you. guest: that's a really interest in question. hunter biden not only was investigated by congress, but by the u.s. attorney of delaware under president trump. the investigation started there. and then president biden's attorney general appointed a special counsel. so hunter biden has been investigated at nausea. meaning there is been a lot of federal law enforcement resources gone to seeing what crimes he could be prosecuted for and reach a conviction. so i feel that given that that happened and there aren't additional crimes that were

charged within those 10 years, the sense could be that they just didn't have enough evidence to actually bring a crime. and again, besides the low ones that were charged. at any point, his dad had the authority to call off the investigation. it would have been messy politically, but the president is in charge of the justice department. the supreme court made that really clear last summer. so joe biden has full authority to say we are not going to use resources but i'm going to protect my son, and he didn't. and i think that demonstrates his adherence to the rule of law. the reason i believe they have that broad pardon is donald trump's promise through cash patel and others and pam bondi to use the power of the office to find crime, to go after political rivals. and now you could say well, if there is nothing there, then what the courts throw them out, won't grand jury's refused to

actually indict? there are things in place to stop what is a vindictive prosecution or a selective prosecution or ideological prosecution, but it is actually very hard to demonstrate. you can get pretty far along in really destroying someone's life and racking up a lot of defense attorneys fees just to make their life miserable even though there's actually not a crime there. so i think that is the concern. hunter has gone through the gauntlet, they found what they found. and to let this administration put a bull's-eye on his back when we know that it is hunter, he is the son of a famous guy who is president, that seems probably cruel and the father wanted to protect them from that where is just pardoning the crimes he was convicted of doesn't immunize them from being in the center of the next investigation and prosecution. host: james in mississippi, line for independents.

caller: good morning. i wanted to ask you, first i wanted to make a statement. president biden doing his time as president said that he was going to make a statement making sure people understand what average americans are going through. that he was going to look into restitution for black, african-american people and he was going to look into it for four long years. he didn't do anything about that. now he is going over to a dark continent. what about the african-americans in this country that have been denied their opportunities to live a decent life? he did not do it. i want to find out is president trump also going to look into that?

i feel like all the people that gave testimony should be pardoned. and why are we not talking about those people that testified against president trump? why are republicans not going after them? hello? host: go ahead. caller: i don't even think that they would be any talk about none of those people that testified. i mean, they are going after the politicians, but it with the people in his own cabinet that had the testimony against him but they did not say anything about it. why, what is the difference between going after a democrat, but all the rest of them, they never said anything about it. as far as going after them and the pardon. thank you. guest: two points.

the criminal justice system is racist. there is a lot of racial bias, deep racial bias in the criminal justice system including row level. so i think the commentator makes an excellent point that biden could use the pardon power to address some of those injustices. barack obama in 2013 commuted over 1300 sentences, i believe, for low-level drug offenses because the sentencing guidelines had changed and those folks would have had much shorter sentences, but that is just an example of one thing one president did. but with the pardon power, tremendous justice could be achieved, and that is not a conversation that we really had because people think you can't let criminals out, that is going to raise crime. it is not a black-and-white situation. on the other point, as far as the scope of a protective

pardon, if biden is going that they get at protecting these folks, great point that there are lots of lower-level people, law clerks, judges, helpers, witnesses, fbi agents. people in the media. police officers who have come out publicly and said that they thought that was a bad situation, they don't support donald trump. it's impossible to do one of these pardons and cover everyone and i think that is one of the questions. should he do it at all if he can't protect everyone? should he do it at all if it is going to now somehow create a green light for the pardonpal ooza every time a president comes into or leaves office and so much of law goes out the window because we have no restraint on the pardon power. if that were to happen, would it be joe biden that triggers it or donald trump by creating the threat, the need for a pardon

because he is signaling he is going to abuse the justice department, not to assess facts in law and make sure justice is what counts, but to go after his political enemies? i haven't heard anything pulling back from that. i think it is really important that we as americans take him at his word, so we can think about if that is ok with us. and if it is not ok with us, what needs to be done about it? if it is ok with us, we are making it ok for any president. we are making it ok for a democrat to use the department of justice to go after republicans, to go after maga supporters. once the guardrails come down, once the bridge is broken underneath the constitution, once the system isn't there as james madison said, if men were angels, we would need government. we need ambition to counteract ambition.

if anything goes it is going to be anything goes for any president. that is why i think this conversation about the pardon isn't so much about joe biden, but what kind of government do we americans want republicans and democrats together to protect our children from retribution from politicians who have power that you and i don't have. host: airgas, author of her newest book pardon power: how the pardon system works and why, and wanted to note there is a lot we didn't get it today, but kim was also one book tv at the end of august talking about her newest book and you can find that online at c-span.org. thank you for being with us today. still ahead, historian and author john grimm span will discuss his book "the age of action money: how americans fought to fix the democracy from 18 65 to 1915 and political

divisiveness." but next is open for them. you can start calling in now. any public policy issues you want to talk about, the numbers are on your screen. republicans, (202) 748-8001. democrats, (202) 748-8000. independent, (202) 748-8002. and while you are calling in, we will show you a portion from last night in paris where president emmanuel macron was making remarks at the reopening of notre dame cathedral for the first time since the 2019 fire. here are those remarks. >> the news of the fire, the images of the flames devouring, the spire which fell and those

allies. the minutes of despair when the stained glass could have disappeared. there were students who came down to come and help. everyone who came together. camel trains to stop to pay homage that evening. happiness and unhappiness came together.

what some would call chance or destiny. there was bravery. and of the firefighters and their leaders, the last attempt even more dangerous than those before, those who went to stop -- from falling and to safety cathedral. and at 22:47 there was a message. we had mastered the fire. our firefighters took the advantage and host: host: they worked through the night. washington journal continues. we are an open forum, we will get straight to your calls.

good morning, stan. line for independents. caller: the january 6 people. he shouldn't -- he should pardon them all because he says he has been picked on. not true. and the kennedy guy, i hope he goes through an fbi background check because he is not qualified for that job they didn't get vaccines because of him, a lot of them died. he is not qualified. host: that was stan in florida. vince, line for republicans. good morning. caller: i have to say one of the

things on my mind, i watched all the media, so i have quite a bit of content in my phone when i go to post. we know that the mainstream media and the washington journal for the past 10 years have basically given -- been negative against donald trump and by all means you should have lost. but people don't realize that social media and podcasts. and my point is, your last segment was trump, bash trump regardless. i believe that comes from the government somehow. but they are going to be shaking up the white house press room and i think it is time to move forward in new ways. we have to do this with media. and most people don't stop to think. we have freedom of press, it is

one of our first amendment rights as a people. so i look forward to that. thank you for getting the time. host: diane in ohio, line for democrats. good morning. caller: good morning. first of all, i wanted to thank president biden. he's been one of the best presidents we've had. he should be in the top 10, and he also has done a great deal of what i feel as though was the conviction of his son only because trump wants to get back at him. number two, i want to say that trump has lied about almost everything. fentanyl is coming in by americans, not migrants. we have seen it on 60 minutes, we have seen in on all the inflation, and several times on the show.

migrants are helping the economy. why does -- why did they want to get rid of them? there is only one person with illegal acts made by the migrants compared to the 99% of what americans have done. i want to also feel as though trump has manipulated this moment in time. it is not what we are supposed to be about. he used us, and i want people to understand mostly he is going to put us in a recession next year at this time and i will be reminding everybody that it is his fault and your fault for voting for this person. thank you. host: larry in mesa, arizona. caller: good morning.

yes, i would just like to comment on the previous guest you had on who is so anti-trump. i can't believe she is actually teaching law. she ignored all the justice department going after trump for the last eight years. i am an independent, i will vote either way for the best for our country, but this divisiveness we have on the democrat side is off the charts. they cannot admit anything. they are just lost. they are basically brainwashed into thinking that the old system was so great that it is against the people totally. and they really need to wake up. once again, i am independent, i will vote either way, but i just can't see the democrat side. the dod when after everybody. went after churchgoers, went

after anybody that disagreed. look at the pandemic issue. how much did they get wrong? everything they did was wrong. you have a great day. host: wanted to share this from cbs news, syria's government appears to have fallen after opposition fighters said they had entered damascus following a syrian opposition. more monitor reported that the president had left the country. opposition fighters said early that they had entered damascus and reported the sounds of gunfire and explosions from the white house. they said that president biden and his team are closely monitoring the extraordinary events in syria and staying in constant touch with the partners. it goes on to say that the syrian army notified officers that the rule had ended

according to a reuters report, and the syrian prime minister earlier said that the government was ready to "extend a hand to the opposition and handover to a transitional government." back to your calls. portsmouth, new hampshire, line for republicans. caller: good morning. i didn't vote for biden or trump , or harris, i mean. two very bad candidates. i think biden was a very bad president. he spent trillions of dollars that shouldn't have been spent, that was the cause of the inflation. he didn't understand the american people and how they wanted to control the border. he didn't understand the american people on our social issues. i think he's been a very bad

president. and in terms of the pardon, there is so much evidence that biden knew that there was a pay for play scheme that his son was behind. millions of dollars went into the accounts at this children and grandchildren's brother and i think this pardon is designed to protect him after he gets out of office. thanks for listening. host: joan in ohio, a line for democrats. caller: yes. i just want to know to americans think trump won fair and square? nothing he's ever done has been fair and square. i'm calling on republicans, democrats, libertarians, independents, to check their votes. after all he could have been in

them -- in charge of the male and i'm just curious if anything has happened to people's votes. i implore anybody that wants to know that their vote has been counted to check their vote, go to your state and check your vote. that's all i have to say. host: gordon in wisconsin, good morning. caller: good morning. the last segment you had on where your guest stated if trumps --, judicial system starts going after his political opponents it will open the floodgates for the democrats to do the same thing. she didn't go ahead and mention that the democrats have been doing it for the last four years

and some of your other callers mentioned that they are going after parents at conferences, they are going after antiabortion protesters. look at what they did to all the people that went to the capitol on january 6. they locked up all kinds of people without anything, without a hearing, without any bail. it's kept them locked up. now the democrats already opened that door. they opened that door with the last four years of everybody they want after and so the department of justice was already, already opened the door to go after his political appointments because that's exactly what happened the last four years. so she wants to talk about trump -- no, the democrats already opened it.

so, she better get herself right because i didn't take anything of value out of anything she had to say because she is a trump basher. some of your other callers looked at the popular vote, look at who won all of the states and you will start calling people that voted for trump crazy, you know, that is not going to bring any peace to this country and start going against over half the population in this country by calling them stupid and crazy and don't know what they are doing. this is going to keep on going. >> that was gordon in wisconsin. mark in philadelphia, pennsylvania. good morning. caller: thanks for taking my call. finally got through. first some of ever talked to you and just would like to say there is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. that is for me as a democrat,

what happened to the 7 million democrats that came out for biden that did not come out this november. harris got what 74 million votes. bite -- biden got 81 million plus. i keep hearing all kinds of responses for the reason. harris did not message that well. democrats and never trumper's we have been messaging for the last four years. if you have not gotten the message about trump, what cave are you living in? but the thing i want to say is what gets me is after this fiasco of an election where we did not get the house back, we lost the senate. the supreme court is in trumps pocket, the same leaders of the democratic party, chuck schumer got reelected senate leader, akeem jeffries got elected house leader. nancy pelosi is still there in

the background pulling the strings. i don't know why she doesn't go back to san francisco and play with her great grandkids. democratic party reminds me of a failing corporation. it's losing market share which means it is losing voters and customers and they keep putting in the same management team that's then responsible for this disaster. i tell you what,, the new year i'm going to switch to independent. i think i'm going to join the crowd exiting the democrat party. if we cannot win elections anymore then we have a real problem. thank you. host: that was mark in pennsylvania. wanted to share some additional news from outside the u.s., this in the new york times says that south korean lawmakers attempts to impeach president yoon ended in failure on saturday night prolonging the political upheaval and uncertainty that

had embroiled the country since his short-lived imposition of martial law this week. saturday's move by the opposition to impeach president yoon was foiled by his conservative people power party which boycotted votes and prevented the necessary quorum. all but one member of the party walked out of the room for the impeachment motion was put to a vote making the effort moved even before the first ballot was cast. back to your calls here in maryland on the line for independence up next. caller: yes, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. i am speaking to you as an african and politically african. the program -- the previous program referred to africa as the dark continent. in 2024, in 2024 any person

conducting the program to correct them. how can we be the dark continent. the person that i went to visit in -- was a replica from the king in africa. and in 2024 summary referring to africa as dark continent. is that the exact use of ignorance in your minds. medicine came from africa. everything, even the design of the plane. i went to the pyramid sprayed -- pyramids.

sometimes you hear people saying judeo-christian heritage, the book i am writing now is going to correct a lot of those things. the title is who we really are. it sees me for using the word caucasian because i've never come across any white person. it's why you don't see it in any of my writings. they have fair skin and pink skin but not white. english was imposed on me, the fourth language imposed on me. none of those people who are claiming that they are white -- host: walter in massachusetts, line for republicans per good morning. caller: yes, thank you for

taking my call. i would like to say that tough love has always been a process of a happy and healthy family and joe biden is not showing love pardoning his son, he's only postponing what the inevitable is probably going to be, that's all i wanted to say. host: rick in florida, a line for democrats. good morning. >> good morning. i would just like to kind of show my support for president biden, what a great president read a business owner, had 11 employees paid him in the transportation business. i had 11 employees when he took office. i'm sitting at 21 right now. all you trump lovers just remember yes he did win all of

the swing states, but only by about 100,000 votes. it's a very divided country and i'm very nervous about what trump is going to do. the types of policies that he is going to utilize but i'm most concerned about the idea that he will go after political opponents if that starts happening, the democrats are not going to allow it. thank you for your time. >> just a few minutes left. mike in illinois good morning mike. caller: hello, i find it so disingenuous that some of these people alike if trump goes after his political enemies or whatever that's exactly with the democrats have been doing. and real quick, i don't think president biden can issue a blanket pardon for all of the -- members of the, like the faucher

and those guys. those guys, they are doing it to cover their tracks and they are not talking about a specific crime and they have to be held accountable if they have a public office, they have to be accountable for what they've done. you cannot just blanket give them a pardon and say well all of your official duties you are forgiven for. it is not going to work. the supreme court is going to say you cannot issue a pardon for a government employee, especially one like the director of the fbi or any of those that says i'm sorry you get a free pass for all of the legal things you did while you were in office. you have to be held accountable and yes they will say trump wasn't held accountable. he is the executive of the executive branch. that's a whole different ballgame in the constitution with powers than like the

director of the fbi or faucher or any of those others and if they think it is the same they are sadly mistaken and they are only wanting to make sure that they do not get held accountable for all of the things that they did while biden was in office paid thanks. host: that was mike in illinois. headline in today's washington post, we showed you the clip earlier of the event at notre dame and not only was president-elect trump there but so was the lenski and french president emmanuel macron brokered the meeting on the sidelines of the reopening of the notre dame cathedral were world leaders gathered to celebrate the cultural icon. he had set up a meeting between president-elect trump and zelenskyy it says zelenskyy tweeted that the meeting, which was about 30 minutes long was "good and productive. he said the leaders agreed to continue to work together and

stay in contact. it says three men when they were exiting together from the palace, macron stood between trump and zelenskyy putting his arm around the two men, tensions over the future role of the united states in the ukraine war , ukraine needed billions of dollars in economic and military support every month to continue to fend off russia and the biden administration has been lifting restrictions on use of missiles and aid in the recent week. one more note from politico that defense archery lloyd austin in the military aid package for ukraine on saturday. it was during his last major speech before leaving office. saying the packet won't arrive in ukraine immediately but will consist and air defense munitions.

the announcement will leave about one billion more in authority from or contracted over 6 billion in authorities to pull other equipment from u.s. military stocks and deliver immediately to kyiv. let's hear from laura in albany, new york. >> good morning. i was calling because i've been following the election and everybody still talks about the democrats, the republicans. everybody has to work together and get things done. nothing is getting done. the politics of change so much. and i just think that everybody that came along is talking about this president or that president. it just needs to stop. because the bottom line we just need to work together and both parties and make some changes.

that's what everybody wanted. they said they were tired of everybody politicians talking about each other and now they are doing it. thank you. >> that was laura and our last call for the segment is eddy in massachusetts, line for republicans. good morning. caller: good morning, yes i'm very worried about democracy in general when the president and the -- is the don sends out his son as a bagman collecting billions of dollars. i'm worried about hillary clinton getting this report to the fbi to wiretap donald trump's headquarters. i'm worried about jury nullification where there was evidence of a man -- with bloody gloves, a bloody socks which jury nullification.

i've heard now of just this not adjudicating where they things, hello where there were thousands of signed applications of fraud for voting and it was never adjudicated. jury nullification, non-adjudicating, this is a problem. thank you. host: that was eddie and our last call in this segment. up next, historian and author john will join us to discuss his book the age of acrimony: how americans fought to fix their democracy. we will be right back. ♪ >> a book called the wisemen was first published in 1986. cover copy says "it was about

six friends and the world they made." the names, herriman, lovett, atchison, mccloy, cannon and bolin are only to be found in the history books today. co-authors evan thomas and walter isaacson were in their mid-30's and in the updated 2012 introduction to the paperback they wrote in their time, of the scenes, little known by the public. but they achieved great things according to thomas and isaacson, those great things included the shipping of the work order today. the creation of international institutions, of the forging of lasting peace and a perilous time. we asked evan thomas now in his

70's who are the wisemen of today. >> evan thomas with his book the wisemen, six friends in the world they made on this episode of book notes plus with our host brian lamb. book notes plus is available on the c-span now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. >> attention middle and high school students across america. it's time to make your voice heard. c-span studentcam documentary contest 2025 is here. this is your chance to create a documentary that can inspire change, raise awareness and make an impact. your documentary should answer this year's questions, your message to the president, what issue is most important to you for your community. whether you are passionate about politics, the environment or community stories, students can give you a platform to share your message. $100,000 in prizes including a new prize of $5,000.

this is your opportunity not only to make an impact also be rewarded for your creativity and hard work, enter your submissions today. scan the code or visit studentcam.org for all the details on how to enter. the deadline is january 20, 2025. >> washington journal continues. >> joining us now is john greenspan -- he is the political history chair curator

the preface in your book. it says americans claim we are more divided than we have been since the civil war but forget the lifetime after the civil war so the loudest roughest political campaigns in our history from the 1860's through the early 1900s. residential elections drew the highest turnouts ever reached. they were decided by the closest margins and witnessed most political violence. racist terrorism during reconstruction, political machines that often operated as organized crime syndicates and the brutal suppression of labor movements made this the deadliest era of american political history the nation experienced one impeachment to presidential elections.

40 years through the wilderness with america's political politics threatened america's promise. if you were to take out the data from that there were a lot of similarities to what we are seeing today and when we talk about where we go from here, how did they move past that, what happened after this period? guest: it's trickier to show how they fixed it then got that message -- got -- and got through that mess. it's harder to explain how people stopped doing those things. what you see is a buildup that's honestly based on the concept of restraint. if there are key values it's partisan, public and passion. you are in a tribe, you are doing this in the public square really built into american politics whether you're a voter

or not you cannot avoid american elections in the late 19th century. visitors to america complained if you sit down on a streetcar someone will come by and quiz you on how you would vote doing a kind of straw poll of how the next election would go. and it is passionate. these are really heated elections. political violence, aggression, both good and bad. there is the violence but also the high levels of engagement and participation. in the 20th century they rebuild the culture that values independence, you are really not supposed to be a partisan, privacy, you don't discuss politics of the dinner table. the main goal is to control your political emotions, to maintain this veneer of calm and restrain and civility and those of the norms we talk about when we say the norms of democracy are under threat, these were norms built in 1890. a lot of them were not built by the thought -- by the founding fathers. they were created to stop the last periods of democratic crisis.

they did before and it took some legal reforms, some changes to make a difference but a lot of it was building. how we talk to each other and it is not dramatic but it made a huge change in how americans engaged, numerically you can quantitatively show the changes based on the change in the culture. >> our guest is john grinspan, if you have a question or comment from them you can start calling in now, the lines republicans, 202-748-8000. democrats --republicans, 202-748-8001. democrats 202-748-8000. independents 202-748-8002. your book came out in 2021 is hoping it would be kind of happy or optimistic, but you were really trying to show more that

our political system has never really been fully functional. do you think that that dose of reality can help put in perspective how we view our current political system. guest: i don't want to sound rude but we have this naive sense of our past where we think everything was going along just fine, normal politics until 2016 and then something went off the rails but now it's inevitable the democracy will crumble. if you really look at american democracy you can see these rises and falls. it's not good or bad or even normal or abnormal it is that we keep breaking our democracy in different ways and the 19 century model was really high engagement, really high participation for voters and nonvoters. people still really passionate, arguing the issues. in the 20th century they rebuild this model that's more civil and calm and more peaceful. turn out especially by poor people, less educated people,

younger people, in this good old days normal 20th century democracy. we haven't ever gotten it right yet and i think it is naive and unrealistic to expect we will get it right. we will probably reformed from the era we are in into a new model that has a strength compared to now and its weaknesses. that is human history, we should accept these trade-offs and not expect it to be perfect. it doesn't mean we should be happy when things get demonstrably worse but it doesn't mean if we look at our history we can see how things swing back and forth. host: something else you talk about is this idea the next election which is coming up next will decide the future. but in reality we are in a loop and there is yet to be a resolution. explain more what you mean. >> we can see before the last election before the 2024 election we said we are so divided we are so split, 48-40

seven or whatever the polling was. we have a win that's under two percentage points of the popular vote and we act as if a gigantic game changing mandate. the election before was the same way. it was like 4%, but not significant. these are not landslides, these are not game changers. we keep seeing this. and then afterwards people say this will change everything but then a year we see how stuck in the same loop we are. there's a quote from the 1890's i like where someone said thing about congressional elections every two years one party is obliterated and then two years later the other party is obliterated. think about how many times in the last decade we have declared democrats or republicans a dying party that can get it together. they are both in the same loop together. we are kind of trapped in this narrative and until we can step back and take a breath and have some perspective and look at our past we are not going to be able to see what is significant. >> we have callers waiting to

talk with you. in west plains, line for republicans. caller: i've got two or three things. first of all i do not care that the country is divided, it is fine with me. second, i do not believe that joe biden got 81 million votes legitimately. he got more votes than the popular obama? he got more votes than hillary clinton? no. electronic nonsense from google or some high-tech company added votes and third, california just got done counting their votes a couple days ago? a month after the election, that is baloney. we should kick california out of the union, put a fence and wall around them and get rid of them because a month later they are still counting votes? that does not seem right to me. thank you. guest: i can try to respond to the historians.

they weren't really questions anyway. looking back at our history that's how elections work, it took weeks or months to figure out the results of elections. it was off and you would read these diaries of people who vote in or out in the field two weeks later and they find out the results. we have a big dispersed complicated democratic system and over the last 200 years it often takes quite some time and often surprises us. it is not surprising to me at all that it takes a long time to count votes. i will also say compared to the 19th century when we see rampant fraud, when it is really obvious how many elections are stolen, we do not see it in our era. it is not in the courts, it is not out there. it is just wishful thinking. that's the best i can say to that. host: our caller brought up the fact that he does not care that america is divided, it's fine with him. i wanted to share this quote from your book which says bill kelly hoped to be done with

partisanship, he left the democrats over slavery and now imagine a future where to express their views americans would dig deeper than simply naming a party, political machine had empowered leaders whose views were simply -- were as meaty as a hot pepper and a mouth his intellectual vision came from the back of their heads in a time it was time to reimagine politics, kelly told congress in his speech calling for black voters rights. ours is a new age, we are unfolding a new page in national life, america's unleashed democracy was rich with destructive possibilities. the invention of the steam

guest: he raises a daughter to be an activist as well and she in a new era finds new tools for engagement. one thing about us being divided there is an argument we can make that we are very doom and gloom about our politics today but our turnout is higher, our engagement is higher, far higher than a previous era. in the 90's half of americans did not vote. most couldn't distinguish. i don't think most people would agree but we should be able to make -- >> next, keith in athens, alabama. >> yes how are you. happy holidays.

basically what i was wanting to say was the country is divided and you can pretty much do a bell curve on when it started to happen and i think it started during the obama administration. and it was driven by social media like -- not x, but twitter. and it's divided the people to the point it's driven back and forth back and forth and i think the only thing that's going to be a really good the cure is going to be a really good war or catastrophe to bring everybody together. because i don't think people are really that divided. i think if you get the basics people are a lot closer and think a lot more like than what they are given credit for if you

get down to it. thank you very much and have a great day. host: your response. guest: one, the last point, i do think, you say don't think we are divided, i kind of agree with that. i think there is rhetoric and talk about how divided we are and how hostile we are and honestly it is to the benefit of extremes in both parties and people in the news media who get attention and eyeballs, based on outrage. that's the whole thing is getting us worked up. over the last decade we spent so much time telling ourselves how angry we are. of course we are angry if you keep saying you're angry. i think if you bear down on a lot of these fights they are to have a fight more than they are fundamental to the american people. we collect, we went to the rnc, dnc, we go to rallies and primaries. if you look and say what was that fight over, what is this reference to on this poster

because some of the stuff feels like ginned up by people who want to have an argument. not that we don't have fundamental issues but it is in the interest of many actors to keep us divided. you talk about when this started. people point to social media or the iphone. the early 2000 when i feel like our pop culture got more cruel in a way, kind of a meanness with reality tv and everything. but i think the fundamental force in our era and the gilded age is the social disruption. the reason it looks similar to the way they did in 1880's and 90's is because americans feel shaken and if you think about life in the gilded age, if you think back to high school or college history classes there is high levels of immigration, a lot of urbanization, immobilization, people moving into industries. you think of the life of someone who grew up in a small town or village and ends up in a factory on the others of the world they feel shaken.

they left behind their communities, their churches and synagogues. they left behind their old culture and they are in a new world at a lot of these people lean in and say i don't live in the small town in germany anymore but i am a democrat and i drink at the democratic saloon. or i'm republican and i march in the republican marches. something happened in our era may be in the 80's with income inequality starting to rise in the breakdown of a lot of elements of 20th century culture. a lot of people are shaken and isolated and lonely and the parties and partisanship gives them a home. you don't really feel like you have a community or a membership so you watch fox news or msnbc all the time or you tweet nonstop. i think both in the gilded age and today we are gravitating towards using politics because they need something else in their life and it is a similar response to a similar social situation that to me is at the core more than smartphones or social media.

host: john in new york. caller: good morning. can you hear me? host: yes we can. caller: ok, i'm sorry. i just got your book, i have not read it yet i am looking forward to it. i just wanted to get comments on another period of maybe acrimony, the 1960's and the divide in america with vietnam, civil rights, women's rights. many of these movements were from that time and they still added up to some of the acrimony in today's politics. i am a history teacher, i did my masters on that period so i'm

curious as to what you might comment on that. thank you. guest: a few things. it's good to hear from queens. i really think the 60's are an interesting parallel and an interesting evidence of how we can agitate and calm down so quickly and have so much amnesia about the past. i was born in 1984. i was not alive for the 60's and when i read about 1968, i am shocked by the level of aggression. many people knew about the assassination, but just the level of on the ground animosity, even political violence prude there are thousands of bombings over those years by splinter groups at that time. the level of hostility is surprising considering how calm the world i was born into 20 years later looks and it is a

really good example, a case study of how the population figure really agitated over politics, feel these intense levels of the most doom about the future and then over the next couple of decades smooth out and change their emotions a lot. talking about public life in the 1980's and 90's was a really different from how they talked in the 60's, these are the same people living through the generation who behave firmly in 1960 and 1984. to me that helps the case study explain how things could be so ugly in the gilded age and yet it does not look anything like what we expect politics to look like. our democracy and public life has a lot of flexibility. it is not the same old you can see people turning up the dials on passion and intensity and turning it back down. it is a good way to understand how varied their lives can be. host: dave in goose creek, south carolina, line for independence. caller: good morning.

do please tell me in your opinion is the electoral an anachronism? >> i am a federal employee of this missoni and so i try not to make strong political stances. it does exist i would say based on a model of our government that is not how most people think our government works anymore. it's based on the model the founding fathers came up with that is a much more mediated political system, a republic in which there are many institutions along the way designed to calm a popular further, fervor, democracy was an ugly word for the founders. it does not appear in the constitution it's usually used as an insult into the 1820's or 30's and eventually means a political party. the fact that they set up the electoral college, the fact that they set up the senate the way that they did and the supreme court the way they did indicates it was not their goal.

they were working 250 years ago with a completely different conception of how people should interact with each other in so many ways. the real amazing thing is we are still using the same constitution they were back then. it is kind of shocking. the u.s. constitution was the oldest continuously operating governing document in the world. the democratic party is the oldest party in the world. the republican party is a little younger but it is one of the oldest. we have a very old structure behind it. older than most nations. so sometimes that is creaky and is up to the people to decide when to reform it. host: a headline from politico last month. everyone in congress obsessed with your book and the article talks about several lawmakers who reached out to you wanting to discuss the book. who reached out and what were they looking for? guest: headlines are very generous.

i was able to get in contact with a number of people, senators and representatives like senator britt -- mitt romney of utah. people have been reading this book and thinking about the parallels, people many of whom had been in politics for decades and were i think perplexed by watching the change and the thesis of the book is our politics can change and we have seen these dramatic changes in the past. it was fascinating to talk to them it honestly inspiring to see how engaged in history and how thoughtful our leaders could be. you mostly hear negative things about politicians. people who have talked about this topic have been well read and humane and i know everybody can just go meet their senator but it does often make you feel better about people who are in this position. and i think history has a lot to tell people. we spend so much time trapped in

the present fighting over the media fight the way we've interpreted this last election. completely rewriting our script every few years based on events, i think it is really important for people almost on an emotional level, psychological level to take some perspective and time to say what was history like, how did this work 100 years ago, how has it changed. psychologically helpful. it is all most meditative in a way to take a step back and these people who are trapped in positions of power especially need that. 19th-century political bosses were seen as thieving like they're trapped at the top of this crowd that's pushing them forwards and they can't really take a break. so i think it is important, even for people in leadership positions to take a breather and get some perspective from history. next is jeff from nebraska. line for republicans. good morning, jeff.

morning. 99% of our problems in america is the press. if we had an honest press, 99% of the stuff that happened the last four years would not have occurred. i hope that they do send representatives from the social press in joe rogan's and those type of shows that they send their representatives and fill up the first three rows and then we'll have the people from out of the country and put the people from nbc, abc, cbs, fox and everybody else in the back rows, because this was the primary example of what happened this morning watching this show. they had a bias individual on their when they could have had another person who could have

blown her out of the water with what she was saying. i mean, watching the journalists getting no more, i mean, they're almost just as bad as npr. but if you go to abc, cbs and all the rest of them, you might if you're talking to the democratic arm. any response? well, i'll say again, is looking for historical parallels. one of the interesting things about what made people so agitated in the late 19th century about politics was a model of political news right there. back then, the newspapers, there's thousands of them around the country. they're kind of all these pretty small presses that steal each other's articles and print up what somebody else had just written. there's no, like, real copyright protections. and 95% of them are openly partizan. they're paid for by the parties. there are openly democratic or republican newspapers, and they spread a lot of misinformation,

disinformation, political hostility. and you read them. it's it's really amazing. people. newspapers called for presidents to be assassinated. newspaper you know, one of the hearst newspapers calls for mckinley to be assassinated. and then mckinley is assassinated. joseph pulitzer, the famous guy who, you know, the pulitzer prize, is named after he shot somebody and his executive editor shot somebody else as open, aggressive, violent political partizanship. in our news. and part of it is inspired by the readers, the consumers, right. this is an era when the way the news model works is subscribers, people write, people buy your newspaper, subscribe to your newspaper. so you write what they want to hear. and because you're only writing for republicans or democrats, you have an incentive to make it all the more aggressive. in the 20th century, when they switch in newspapers being paid for by advertisers, they calm things down because advertisers want to sell to everybody. and you're no longer writing just for republicans. you're writing just for democrats. you're writing for anybody who wants to buy boots or soap or whatever the advertisers are trying to sell. and that actually brings a lot

of effort to reduce the bias. so, well, let's say for that era and for our own era is we all complain about the media just like we all complain about politicians. but we're the ones supporting this culture. we're the ones buying these, you know, paying with our eyeballs and our clicks, giving attention to what we may consider bad actors. so often in american history, people love to complain about the press or complain about politicians and then they read the same papers and vote for the same politicians. so i guess the question is what? what are we all doing to change an environment that we are sustaining? sandra in kentucky, line for democrats. good morning, sandra. good morning. i was live in a really red state and i was just flipping through the channels and i ran across an old show from the seventies. it was called all in the family and i watched it and i just was

laughing so hard. it's so funny. and then it doesn't seem like a lot changed. you still can't reason with archie bunker and people who know the least tend to know the loudest. that's all i had to say. thank. i couldn't agree more. they have archie bunker's chair in the smithsonian american history museum. it's it's a testament to how powerful the show can be. the one show from 1970s, it's still really reads through and it's still funny today, which is amazing. i've studied sometimes political comedy from the 19th century, and usually it really doesn't land because it's so distant and the areas are so different. but somebody who's really funny and really poking at society can still make you laugh 50 years later, or 150 years later. byron in north carolina, line for independence. good morning, byron. good morning. thank you for taking my call back. when i was in the military back in the seventies, in professional military education, we were studying the in there. it's a cruise ship, cruise ship

from russia said that we were very you without firing a shot at first. i feel he's a crazy old man. and the more i was in the military, the more i started looking into the system, the more i see the way that he would eventually do that. i was hoping i was wrong, but it seemed to all have came true. but if you look at our system, the constitution, and the most important part is we the people are in order to form a more perfect union, meaning that we didn't have a good union. they had to compromise. we just fell from the beginning. and we should have been moving toward a united states. you know, we shouldn't be voting every state these days. get their own laws or ways of voting all these different laws, because we're such a big country and we fail to come together and then when you look at 2016, i think that was the final straw that broke the camel's back. trump knew that, and he came in

and he manipulated the system because it could be manipulated. but people just didn't do it. i guess because of the generosity. but it was very, very manipulative. for example, the electric college are these what you call it in the states where they redistrict. oh, this --. voting rights for people the way they take and voting rights from from so many people and everything like that. we should have started correct in that or trying to correct that and bring it to the attention of the people. we feel special to the democratic party. they failed to do it and then they let it fester. and now this is what we get. and we get exactly what we deserve because we we live in a constitution that was is what, 207 years old and barely changed. and now, if you look in the

modern age and how we have changed, you look at the senate, a little bit of state with the million people can have the same amount of representation as a state of six, 6 million people. this is ridiculous. and byron, well, we'll get a response from our guest. yeah, well, there's a lot there. i guess i'll focus on the voting rights, which you mentioned i think the most, because that's one of the most interesting things from this historical era, how voting used to work. i mean, there are constant fights over voting throughout history. i think we started paying attention again, really closely in the last couple of years, but this is ongoing throughout our history. we have this really diffuse basically not so well monitored political system based on these voting that happens not just on the state level, but the local and the municipal level and the county and the district level. it used to be that there were no registrations at all. and if you had the right to vote when you went to vote in the 1800s, you went to the town square. somebody gave you a ballot, a paper ballot that's printed by a newspaper, not by the

government, but by a newspaper. and you tried to put it in the box to vote. but there were challengers there who, if they didn't want you to vote, if they thought you're going to vote republican and they wanted democrats, a win would intimidate you, would try to suss out how you were going to vote based on your background, your race, your accent, all these things, and would use open violence every election. a lot of newspapers the day after have a column called outrages at the polls, which is just political violence that happened when people tried to vote. and then there's after the after the vote is cast, the count can be totally crooked to ballot boxes can go missing. there are ways people would cast ten votes that looked like one. we have a really long standing history of political fighting over voting in our country over voter fraud. and one of the things they try to do that really helps calm things down around 1900 is reform that voting is instituted. government printed ballots, secret ballots. one of the really small things that actually makes a big difference is they introduce the voting curtain. so you're not voting surrounded by this throng of people who are

pushing and shouting and intimidating you. you're voting in isolation alone with your conscience, they would say. and they managed to make these reforms in an era where it seemed impossible to make any reforms. and they really have a huge impact. you can show over time these small reforms, like government ballots, secret ballot, really change how people vote and push them away from partizanship push them towards independent voting. it doesn't take all that much of a minor change in voting law to really change how people behave for good and for bad. and again, i'm not saying that's just going to happen tomorrow. it takes a political will, but it's not inevitable that we're in some spiral that we really have seen in the past incredibly ugly periods of political behavior. and people devising fairly simple solutions to them. so i, i don't like to sound like a pollyanna, but i feel confident that we will be reforming our voting in many different ways, and it will probably look differently in 50 years than it does right now. maybe it'll be worse, maybe it'll be better. but change is the one constant in history. and i think we we shouldn't feel as if the loop we're trapped in,

as you said, tammy, we're in a loop. we shouldn't feel as if this is perpetual. and this is the rest of history or whatever. debra in everett, washington line for democrats. good morning, deborah. hi. yes, good morning, mr. greenspan. i have just one quick question for you. has there been in our history from 1865 to kind? has there ever been a president that has been granted to be above the law. no. one of the things that is really different about, you know, i like to say not everything is unprecedented in their precedence for a lot of what we're talking about. but some things are unprecedented. and one of the things that is on precedent is the role the presidency has today that when you look back at the politics in the 1800s, you have, as we've discussed, incredible partizanship, tribalism, even political violence up to the level of the president. and then the president supposed

to be a nice guy. it's expected that the president will be virtuous, will be calm, will not campaign for themselves, will not really show too much bias if they're sitting in the white house, they won't campaign at all. you know, teddy roosevelt in 1904 is president and he's looking at his rival and he's saying, you know, i could wipe the floor with this guy, but it's inappropriate for a president to campaign. there's an entirely different sense that the president should be some kind of virtuous national grandfather who should be well liked. and then below him, it's wild. you have political violence, you have political bosses, you have things that we would be shocked by today. but the president remains above it. in our own era, in the 20th century, we created this kind of imperial presidency. this really powerful president who way more powerful than 19th century presidents. when you knocked on the door of the white house in the 1880s, grover cleveland, the president would open it and see who knocked on the door. we have an entirely different presidency, and we're combining that much more powerful, much more active president with this

partizan system from the 19th century that is much more aggressive. so the president acts in ways that previous presidents never would have. i mean, that doesn't mean all our presidents were nice guys. andrew johnson, who was president after the civil war, called for the execution of his political rivals in congress. so it's not all like they were polite, but we have a really different model of president presidential behavior today than we did in the past. and that that is one thing that it does fundamentally look different than what went on in the 1870s or eighties or whatever. lewis and buffalo, new york line for independence. good morning, lewis good morning. just a quick question or to get your thoughts on what you think of when it comes down, we can bring up all these other subjects. but what about the individuals? you know, i believe this is an age now where it is it's no longer the pursuit of happiness. right. but more so the pursuit of pleasure. and we've traded character for personality. i remember a man once said, ask

not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. at what point do we need to look at ourselves and say, you know, this is where it starts with with the individual, but not being an individual, realizing you're part of something and being not as selfish as. yeah, it's a great question. and again, you can see this arc you quoted from jfk from from 1960s. that's the end of this era of kind of peak putting the community before the individual right. if you look back at the gilded age, it's really driven by individuality and you have these robber barons who are making unbelievable fortunes off the labor of of, you know, people in factories and in tenements. you have a real sense that the old bonds that held communities together before 1860 or so have fallen apart. and it's take what you can grab whoever can kind of, you know, get away with something. there's a lot of fraud, there's

a lot of corruption, both in politics and in business life. there's a lot of sense of public immorality in this era. we think of the the victorians as kind of buttoned up. but that whole victorian culture is trying to respond to what they see in the streets, which is a wild are more public, more more violent, more aggressive, more body culture. right. they they feel like morals are falling away. people are just doing what they want and they're trying to build up this reform culture. then in the 20th century, you really get this sense that people will put something before themselves. they will fight in. wars and be drafted to fight in wars they don't support. they will let the police, you know, enforce prohibition or whatever, cause it may be. we have the new deal. we have world war two. we have a kind of growing social convergence where people will put something larger than themselves for good and for bad. i mean, in the 1950s, you also call this conformity. and it's not a great world to live in if you're not being benefited by that community. if you are the population being

left out or being suppressed and then since the 1960s, we've seen a growing rise of put the individual first, kind of seeing this social control, conformity as negative, not as positive. you know, in the new deal, it seemed like the way you can achieve great things by the 1960s, 1970s, it seemed like really the opposite, something that was a threat to individual happiness. and i think we've this hour goes over a lifetime. so it's maybe 80 years and we're at a peak. i mean, you see it, the behavior of our top leaders today, they often seem as if they're putting the individual above, above something larger. and you can see that honestly in both political parties. so i think this again, is this narrative. and it's not like you can set your watch by it. it's not like it always happens every 80 years or something like that. but we've gone from really high individualism in the late 19th century to much more social control and conformity in the first half of the 20th century. and then for the last lifetime it's just been more and more individualism. so maybe the clock will take back the other way, and in 50 years we'll see more kind of

sense of community and less of the individual. so i think it's unpredictable, but change will be a constant. our guest is john greenspan. he's the author of the age of acrimony how americans fought to fix their democracy. he's also author of the new book that just came out earlier this year, wide awake the forgotten force that elected lincoln and spurred the civil war. john, thank you so much for being with us today. oh, thank you, terry. that does it for today's washington journal. we'll be back tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. eastern for a m pacific with another edition of washington journal. enjoy the rest of your day. joining us now to discuss

presidents and pardon power is a former u.s. assistant assistant u.s. attorney and legal contributor for abc news, kimberly whaley. good morning. good morning. thanks for being with us. this is you. you also have a new book came out over the summer and it is called pardon power how the pardon system works and why it's your fourth book, that is, and why. tell us why you chose to focus on pardon powers for this one, because it's sort of the next logical step in the series and that the first book is how to read the constitution and why basics are unconstitutional. law. and then when i finish that, i realized, wow, actually, all of the constitution leads to voting. the voting has so much power. democratic and we don't have an affirmative right to vote anywhere in the constitution. so i wrote that book to understand voting. and then we sort of got into a national conversation around polarization and political parties, divisiveness.

my third book then said, well, let's take this tools of lawyers, where you have to understand your opponent's best case. you have to think about broader societal implications. you have to understand you're never going to win everything you think you deserve. and i wrote a book called how to think like a lawyer and why with us step by step process for communicating with someone that you might be on the other side. and then we're getting into this election. and this fourth book, the pardon power stands at this intersection between these competing concepts. we're talking about over and over again, the power of the people versus some kind of unlimited king like power, which is the pardon power, the idea of mercy, which is the theory behind the pardon power. but also the idea of corruption, which is right there smack dab with the pardon power. and even historically, there's a conflict between law, the pardon power being part of the president's legal authority, but

also there has a religious connotation to it. it it's it goes all the way back to the new testament, where punctures pilot at the romans request, denied a pardon to jesus of nazareth, gave it to a murderer named barabbas. jesus was crucified. and it actually gave birth to the entire christian religion was around a pardon. so i think it it's kind of a this center point that gives an opportunity to talk about all these other important issues that i think are so live in our nation right now. and we often hear a lot about pardons at the end of a presidential term when someone is getting ready to leave office. when we hear pardon, what does that mean? and explain the different types of pardons. pardon. means forgiveness. so it's different from an exoneration for a crime. if you want your record completely wiped out like it didn't exist, you've got to go to a judge and go through that process. a pardon is in hindsight, you're