♪ host: good morning, friday, december 27, 2024. a three hour washington journal is ahead of we begin with the

topic of the death penalty. presented by the converted 37 peoples punishment to life in prison. we begin by getting your view on the use of the death penalty in america. we are doing so on phone lines exclude this way. if you support the death penalty, (202)-748-8000. if you oppose the use of the death penalty, (202)-748-8001. if you are unsure, (202)-748-8002. you can also send a text, (202)-748-8003. if you do, include your name and where you are from. otherwise, catch up on social media, on x at @cspanwj, on facebook, facebook.com/c-span. good friday morning. go ahead and start calling in. this was the headline for monday by the associated press,

president biden gives life in prison to 37 death row inmates before trump can resume execution. this was the statement president biden took out. he says, make no mistake, i condemn these murderers and acre all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss, but guided by my conscience and experience of a public defender, chairman of the judiciary committee, i know vice president, we are re convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the dth penalty at the federal level. in good conscience, i cannot let the new administration resume executions that i halted. this is what president-elect said on truth social, i will direct the justice department to regularly pursuit the death penalty to protect american families and children from

violent rapists, murderers and monsters. we will be a nation of law and order again, promised the president-elect. that moved by president joe biden led to this special on the washington journal asking for your view of the death penalty. phone lines if you supported, if you are not sure, that is ok, too. we would like to hear from you. mark is first out of oklahoma on the line for those who support the use of the death penalty. good morning. caller: yes or. -- yes sir. i believe in the death penalty to those people who have committed horrible crimes, that you are going to be held accountable for what you did. and if we keep putting people on death row, hey [indiscernible]

i have run into people where that is their attitude. host: you think this will lead to more violent crime? caller: i think we are already seeing it. a lady burned on the subway in new york city. the guy who shot the ceo of the insurance company. host: mark, thank you for the call from oklahoma. did you want to keep going? caller: i will add one more thing. when i was in school, they let them know, and there was a woman executed in texas, that worked everybody up, lady justice is blind. host: currently, some 2200

people on death row in the country right now. most of them in the state on state federal death row, three left on death row when it comes to federal debt through. the decision by president joe biden left out of the clemency, the commuting of the sentences. three people carried out the slayings of nine black members in charleston, south carolina. the 2013 boston marathon bomber, and robert bowers who fatally shot 11 at the tree of life synagogue back in 2018, the deadliest attack in u.s. history -- antisemitic attack in u.s. history. that happening monday.

to figure out the size of america's debt through, united states debtor has declined every year since 2001. it is 2200 right, including men and women, but mostly men. that number is down for more than a coder -- a quarter with a 17% decrease over the course of the decade from april 1, 2008, to march 31, 2018, the number of prisoners facing active death sentences whos sentencese have not been overturned in the courts have dropped sharply for the first time in more than a quarter of a century. that is penalty info.org where we will show you that website several times. as we hear from you, asking your view of the death penalty in the u.s., steve, indiana, good morning. caller: good morning.

i would like to call in and give my opinion on opposing the death penalty because all life is precious, and if we are killing a person for their crimes, aren't we becoming what they tell us not to be, judge, jury, and executioner? you should never murder somebody, and capital punishment is a form of murder because you are purposely taking someone's life. i just think that it needs to end. there is something to be learned from everybody, even criminals. if we have psychologists look at them, maybe we can find figures that would help seeing it and recognizing in younger people that triggers these people that are on death row, things they

went through when they were younger that led them to be criminal they became. host: what did you think of joe biden commuting the sentences of 37 but leaving three people still on death row? caller: well, with the dillon roof -- dylan roof, the guy with the boston marathon and the other one, i don't think the should be executed. i do, though, think they should never see the light of day as far as outside of a penal system. i think they should be locked away for their crimes. however, i believe there is something to be learned from them.

dylan roof was 19 euros old when he committed the crime, how did you get so lost? why didn't someone in his society as a teenager see the triggers and get that young men help and maybe that would not have happened. guest: -- host: go ahead, finish up. caller: yeah, i just don't see that taking someone's life is productive. i think they would like to call people who are viable, living human beings. and a woman who is having serious complications, life complications, like pregnancy, cannot even get health care and almost half the united states. it is ludicrous that they will not help a woman who is dying

but to murder someone who was in prison at the drop of a hat. host: eddie, louisiana, you are next. caller: good morning. host: what are your thoughts on the death penalty, eddie? caller: the only way to stop these murderers is to start hanging again, like they have done many years ago. hung six outlaws who were at risk, and they still had the hanging enforcement in arkansas. i think myself very well deserve to be hung. they should have a lamppost and have six posts, and everyone who

commits a crime, they should be hung to the post and leave them up there for the birds to eat them. that is what i believe. host: from the national park service website, the national historic site, judge isaac steve parker remembered in novels as the hanging judge. his real career accomplishments are far more fascinating and complicated. some fictional cases and executions overshadow parker's contributions and rehabilitating defenders and reforming the criminal justice system and advocating for the right of indian nations. judge isaac parker in the late 19th century. this is chris, wisconsin. good morning. caller: good morning. thank you. quick statement. they need to make sure mistakes

are not made. the death penalty is not a sentence that can be reversed. thank you. host: sylvia, virginia, good morning. caller: good morning. that is exactly how i felt. there were mistakes that were made, anything a lot of it is political. it seems like when the governor or someone is up for election and they decide to put somebody on death row, and i think we have to be very careful on the reasons and not to make stakes, which they do make mistakes. and i worry about the boston bomber. he seems so young to be on death row, but then when the prisons are so full, i'm thinking, well, is that why they have the death penalty sometimes? i think we

have to bring to the lord that we are not making mistakes and these are life that can be turned around. host: on the boston bomber, so clubs are nayak, one of the three inmates left on death row after the move by president joe biden, on monday, this is what the washington times writes, the op-ed writer, cal, saying, mr. biden issued a ludicrous statement to explain inexcusable. he said his only -- he said he is engaging in selective morality. why should motive played a role when it comes to murder? by his illogic, apart it be given to luigi mangione, who was accused of shooting and murdering brian thompson. this is what is called the

humanitarian view of punishment, depriving a murderer of liberty, not a penalty equal to taking an innocent life writes that mr. biden is engaging is in -- engaging in cafeteria christianity. cal thomas writing in the washington times about this move. ed, west virginia, good morning. caller: i think they ought to keep the death penalty but only in certain things, like if it is not an eyeball murder, and if it is circumstantial, i don't believe in the death penalty, but i do believe one sentence to life in prison, they should serve life in prison and i would like to say one other thing and this is for c-span, there is nothing in this world as

terrible to me as rudeness, and for you people to hang up on people and not let them know they are no longer talking to you is about as rude as you get. thank you for your time. host: thank you for the call. jim, virginia, good morning. caller: good morning, america. how are you all doing? host: doing well, what are your thoughts on the death penalty? caller: i'm a man of god, but i support the laws on the book, and we have been too nice here. i think we need to bring back the hanging, the firing squad, and the gas chamber. if the laws are on the book, use it. i disagree with president biden,

letting those guys off the hook, that is too much crime. there is a price you have to pay. i don't believe in killing, but if the laws there, use it. we need to bring back lee's own jet actions? no. we need hangings, firing squad, a deterrent. host: we have showed you the website, the death penalty information center, a lot of info about the death row inmate population in the country, what it looks like and where they are located. earlier this month, we had the death penalty information center on this program to discuss calls for president biden to commute sentences. this was before the move by president joe biden on monday. they explained why they supported the calls. [video clip] >> there are lots of good reasons. first of all, this is an

enormous coalition of people attempting to persuade president biden. organizations, racial justice organizations, civil rights organizations, religious organizations and faith leaders like pope francis, who has been vocally trying to persuade president biden, but we also have unusual voices like corrections officials, people who presided over executions. we have elected members of congress, elected prosecutors, state officials, and most importantly, we have family members, people who have lost loved ones to violence. all of these people are calling on president biden to commute sentences. very that it has been here. talk about some of those problems. >> probably the most important is it has been used in an

arbitrary and racially discriminatory way. this is an issue that has been studied repeatedly. it is well-documented and doj officials of acknowledged serious concerns over the years. we see dominantly the federal death penalty has been used against people of color, and it has been used against people of color who are still white people, so we know there is a pronounced racism and bias, as well. and you can see that in all of the statistics and data we have seen throughout the history of the death penalty. for example, three out of four people who have been charged with a federal death penalty are people of color and that has been true since 1989, so these are powerful statistics. we also know the federal death penalty has many of the same problems that state death penalty systems have, which is to say we have misconduct, we have had unreliable science,

terrible lawyering, all which leads to unjust results, and people who are sometimes innocent, wrongfully convicted, but people who do not deserve death sentences, as will, ending up on death row. [end video clip] host: that interview from earlier this month. president biden commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates and this was the reaction in the wake of the move on monday from members of congress on capitol hill. peter welch, the democrats same federal executions don't lead to safer communities, and it is impossible to ignore the exoneration of people from death row. it ensures these people will never pose a threat to public safety. joe biden is using his last days in office to spread the word sponsors in america. has a lengthy and burdensome

appeals process, the republican from texas that it is unconscionable. he is carrying out a miscarriage of justice. joe biden is not the only person destroying the rule of law, and dick durbin said i have long advocated for the abolition of the federal death penalty and commend the president for this active justice and mercy and for his leadership. taking your phone calls i would like to hear your thoughts. nelson, california, good morning caller: caller:. -- good morning. caller: good morning. c-span, you are doing a good job. i know everybody would like to talk forever, but you are not rude. you are doing your job. this is one of the things, i never try to put religious views on someone, but in the public

domain, people -- [indiscernible] that was before the natural law of things, but without a doubt, the system, especially with trump, the federal judges trump supported, they definitely will go after black people more. dylan roof was not even charged with terrorism like the ceo killer was. that shows you something right there. someone goes into a black church and kills nine people and has no charge of terror. he did get the death penalty because he killed people but anyway, you know, and if i had turned around in the subway and killed home most person after getting hit on the head, i probably would've gone the death penalty.

that is a different story. i think that cal thomas is wrong. these evangelicals choose to be proven for they would like to, like when trayvon martin got killed, huckabee was on fox news every day cheering on when a black person gets killed, right-wingers just salivate like vampires and wolves. one last thing, in missouri, the governor you -- the governor knew a black i was innocent, and the prosecutor said they still executed the blackeye, where are all the pro-life people then? that's all it got to say. host: missouri is one of those states with the death penalty still exists. and this is that map from the death penalty information center.

two seats in red on that map are states where the death penalty exists, and the states in yellow are states that do not have the death penalty. and execution has been paused by executive action. the vast majority of death row inmates are in the states right now, some 2200 people in the country on death row. this shows where they are. that is the majority or significance, 2200 are in california, one of those states where the death penalty has been parked by executive action. and texas, 100 80 people on death row, 138 in north carolina , you can see the numbers in

those states across the country. again, the federal death row population is down to three at this point after the action by president joe biden on monday. in ohio, you are next. caller: unbelievable that biden would come up with this humanitarian message concerning the death penalty when he is the main sponsor of all the slaughter in the middle east. i cannot understand that. that is my message. judy -- host: judy, pennsylvania, good morning. you are next. judy, you with us? caller: yes. host: go ahead, ma'am. caller: thank you. i'm opposed to the death penalty. i don't think it is divided the state to kill other people.

secondly, i don't think it is a deterrent. people have been killing forever and ever, and we have had the death penalty forever and ever. furthermore, i heard that it costs more to execute because of all the little ramifications than it does to keep someone in prison for life. prison and life is no wonderful thing, and day after day after day as punishment, so i'm very much opposed to the death penalty. host: mike, detroit. go ahead. caller: yes. i have a little different spin on why i support the death penalty. first of all, you have these privately owned prisons that make for a tremendous amount of money on people who have

evidence because of the new technology and it is easier to find out if someone actually committed a crime. and in the middle east, they let the families determine if someone has been convicted of murder, to have them killed. second of all, i also think that when you are involved in mass murders, when presidents and congress votes to go into wars, that is unjustifiable. for instance, in iraq, where there were no weapons of mass destruction, and yet hundreds of thousands of people were killed. where is the responsibility for that? where is the responsibility for

the genocide were calls are committed in america, from canada to south america. it is a documentary call with extermination, were they said it was extermination. at least 200 million indigenous peoples in this country, and they committed mass murder. they are talking about gaza. they committed mass murder to get in this country, so let's start looking at the wars, unjustifiable. who should be held accountable, the president, the congress voted to go to war and it is not a good war? should these people be held accountable? and i asked what you wanted to

make in regards to the death penalty. it is a deterrent because when people recognize that if they take a life, that their life is going to be taken, that will make them think about committing murder, because, when you have people in jail over extended periods of time, the kind of crimes that are committed in the prison system, for people who stay there over long periods of time, they should be some kind of investigation for that. thank you. host: we will stay in michigan, this is robert. good morning. caller: yes, good morning. this is robert calling from caspian michigan. i think the death penalty is less of a deterrent the life in prison.

life in prison is more dangerous to the person than a death penalty. you put someone to death, and it is over. and one more thing, i wish you would stop putting the picture of president trump on the lower right-hand corner because it is showing prop -- biased toward the republican party, who was already complaining about how biased you guys are. i've never seen you grasp it another picture of a president on the corner like that. i think it is wrong, and a lot of people don't like to see his face. they're trying to avoid seeing his face and that's all i have to say. host: in jackson heights, new york, good morning. you are next. caller: these 37 who are guilty of murder, they will not be with

god, but if we cut their life short prematurely, that is what will happen. they will spend the rest of their life in prison, and god hopes, and i hope, they will come to an understanding of what they did and redeem themselves and then their souls can be with god, but that can only happen if we allow them to have their natural lifespan. if we cut their natural lifespan off early, there souls will not be with god. if we let them live in prison forever, no chance of parole, then they redeem themselves truly in a way that god says there souls can be with me when they die. and we should not stop people from having a chance of redemption and their souls taken away from god forever. host: that was ken in new york.

today, the board saying president biden's action abuses his pardon power and what he did on monday, and they talk about what happened sometimes if these people are allowed to remain in prison and move off death row. this is an editorial board, mr. biden says his underlying motive says this maneuver will save lives. among the beneficiary, one was arrested in 1980 for distributing marijuana before being arrested again for cocaine trafficking. also meantime in 2003, he was referred to using a naughty word, and then he was attacked with an improvised knife and then transferred to a more secure prison, and then he strangled his cellmate with a towel. he said he disrespected me, so

to come down at the time, and it reveals the folly by extending mercy to those who do not deserve it. taking murderers often throws gives them an opportunity to kill again. that was the washington times editorial. this is macy, california, good morning. you are with us. caller: can you hear me? host: try again. i think you have to put the phone to your mouth. caller: i'm going outside, can you hear me now? host: we will work on that line. this is rodney, brooklyn, new york. in the meantime, go ahead. two heads are. -- go ahead sir. caller: good morning. [indiscernible] there are innocent people and if you kill somebody, you cannot

take back their life. there innocent, you can. that is why i oppose it. i remember when those five young men were accused in central park and they were innocent. i mr. trump came out and said to bring back the death penalty because these gentlemen deserve the death penalty. so that is the reason why i oppose the death penalty. we all make mistakes. host: toledo, ohio, good morning. you are next. caller: yes. i'm a strong supporter of capital punishment. now, there are those cases where

there is not just reasonable doubt, but some inference of doubt, some slight doubt, and in those cases, i would oppose the death penalty, but in the vast majority of cases. -- cases, for example, if it turns out luigi mangione has been convicted of murder and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty of murder, if that happens to be the case, then i would strongly be in favor of his execution. i do not want my tax dollars supporting people who are definitely beyond the shadow of a doubt guilty of murder. i do not want my tax dollars supporting them for life in prison. waste of time. thank you. very much that was david in ohio. 25 minutes left in the segment,

asking host: for your view on the death penalty host: in the wake of president biden's actions earlier this week, in the wake of that announcement that he would commute 37 of 40 death through sentences. mike quigley was on cnn and spoke out about his view about it and here's what he had to say. [video clip] >> i have real concerns overall with the death penalty, but i also had concerns with the executive branch overturning cases that have been decided by courts across the country. you have to have some autonomy there, and i understand the concerns with the trump administration going forward on these, but i think the baseline is i think you commute sentences or pardon people when you think justice was not done in those cases. it sets a precedent here and goes well beyond pardoning his own son, which i think was a mistake because no one is above the law.

>> what i think you're getting at is an interesting point, using it as a policy, to stop the next administration putting in policies you believe, which seems to be different from what you are looking at with hunter biden. >> absolutely, but it is concerning without presidents handle pardons and commutations for their own personal reasons, and back to the pardoning of his own son, i hear people say, well, it is the love of a father. i get that, but there are a lot of parents who children our in harm's way and the justice system and they don't have the ability to do it president biden did. [end video clip] host: taking your phone calls this first hour of the washington journal read this is bill in pennsylvania, good morning. you are next -- journal. this is bill in pennsylvania, good morning. you are next. caller: i don't really know what

i think about the death penalty. i know the state kills people. the presidents decide that they are going to kill foreign military leaders and they hit them with missiles, so they are executing people. assassination is now a part of the american way of life, the president and the military complex can decide who they would like to kill. i know that we kill a lot of young babies and abortions, no big deal about that anymore. if you say anything about it, they look at you like you are crazy. now, you can thank god trump-ocrat the supreme court turned around so we could throw that to the states, but as far as biden and his community the sentences of his death row inmates, you know, he has shown

his colors. he's not calling the shots here. this whole description of why he is doing it, which is it is not fair to kill people, but then you leave three people on the list, it doesn't hold water. he has a daughter. maybe we should put him out of his misery like you're killing all the brown people in gaza. like they said, it is always to brown people or the black people that have to be killed by our government. host: i really hope you are not calling for the president to be killed, that is not what you are saying? caller: i'm not calling for the president to be killed, i'm saying, look at how many people are being killed in gaza with our bombs that he is standing there with his signature. we don't even vote for that, but we armed the israeli military while they are killing tens of thousands of people. host: got you. more stats on death row in the

united states, earlier this fall, for one week in the united states for the first time in years, 1500 executions since 1976 since the supreme court reinstated the death penalty. this year alone, nine u.s. states carried out 25 executions are more read we are talking about the death penalty in the u.s., asking for your view, d supported or are you not sure? this is bonnie, massachusetts, good morning. caller: good morning. i'm opposed to the death penalty because i believe they suffer longer being life in prison, and also, the other thing is that i understand president biden would like to pardon certain prisoners

, but why is he for abortion? i'm not for abortion. that is all i wanted to say. thank you. host: in new jersey, good morning. you are next. caller: how are you doing, good morning, john. i support the death penalty because i watch a lot of the shows online, these murder shows, and the true facts that you see that these murderers shows little kids raped and adults, they get a second chance if they get away with it the first time, and they do the crimes all over again, killing all the innocent people, raping and killing. i believe it is simple. they are not going to change, no matter how long they stay in prison. that is the way they are. they don't care about anything

about human life. they just keep taking lives, so there is no sense in my mind to keep them in jail. execute them. host: an earlier caller was giving the opposite view of what you said. as long as there is a chance for redemption, that people should have that chance of redemption. maybe people would change over the course of life imprisonment rather than being sent to death row. caller: i hear you, i just feel bad for the victims. i understand where the person is coming from, but i see that when they take a life or if they take a child, they rape them or kill them, and they don't get caught, they do the same thing again. i don't care how many years the state in prison, i don't believe in a second chance because then the victims and the family will never be the same. host: some of your comments from

social media, and on our text message line, rob in west virginia, i don't support the death penalty, when, there is no data to show it deters crime, two, it costs more to execute someone than it does to imprison them. three, it is murder, which is wrong. i would personally be executed than live in a high security prison for life. from facebook, i don't trust the government to execute only the guilty. facebook saying i'm in favor of the death penalty as long as you are certain of who committed the crime. jane, i've never been a fan of the death penalty. it is inhumane and many of those put to death or possibly innocent. like in prison without parole is the solution. larry said, i always thought life without parole is a worse punishment. they have to spend more money on longer term care. this is keith, wisconsin, good morning. thank you for waiting. caller: good morning.

i'm opposed to the death penalty. i think it is an instrument to terrorize. as someone pointed out earlier, the ruling class can bomb and destroy and kill and murder with impunity and they are never punished or held accountable. there are all those weapons we shipped over to israel and have gaza murdered. no accountability. but our side, yet, they get a lot of accountability. if anybody watched the series on netflix "i'm a killer," it will put it in perspective and make you think about your own self. and the conditions that people are put in and how they turn into killers, so, yeah, when i watched that show, i think, if i

were, you know, abused as a child, and many of those who were murdered later, it may be i would have turned out to be the same way. so, yeah, yeah, i have a little introspection when you talk about the subject because this type of system will turn you insane. there's already a girl who shot six, actually, seven people here at a school in madison. it turned her nuts. she came from a broken family, and she must've had a lot of anger in her, and then she turned it on her fellow students and teachers. so i feel sorry for her and how she turned out. of course, the victims. but people should think about themselves and the society they live in. host: this is thomas in

portland, indiana. good morning. caller: good morning. host: go ahead. caller: i'm totally for the death penalty. i believe if anything could be done to deter someone from committing crimes, and they see someone getting killed, maybe that would stop them. people on all of death row, they have been through probably every bit of the system that they could. you listen to some details of the murders, there is one that they keep ringing up where the guy killed an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old and four years later, he killed the woman in the national guard, he stabbed that woman's eyes out. come on. the stuff people do it so

horrible, you can even talk about it. stabbed a woman 30 something times after killing those two little kids. i mean, there is no saving that. that is it. that is all i've got to say. i'm sorry. host: in camden, ohio, good morning. caller: i will keep it short, ok. i supported because -- i support it because with all the technology we have nowadays with the dna, the cameras with that young man who shot the ceo in the back, if it is like 100% there is no doubt, these people need to be executed. that is my thought on it because there are choices in life, we all have them, and these people make choices to kill, rape, whatever they do. have a great day. host: you mentioned luigi

mangione, the washington times story noting that the federal charges that were filed against him could make him eligible for the death penalty. the federal complaint filed against him with two counts, one count, each of murder with the use of firearm and firearm defense. murder by firearm carries the possibility of death penalty but federal prosecutors will determine whether to secure that path during the prosecution of the case. this is, in michigan. good morning. -- this is tom. inmichigan, good morning . caller: i think someone else said what i had to say pretty much. i don't support it, mainly because the government could be wrong. i don't understand why conservatives don't get this because they are denial lists and the other ones who believe that everyone is corrupt, every level of government, so now

they're willing to let the corrupt government decide who is going to get executed or not. i just don't support it. thank you. host: barbara, new hampshire. good morning. you are next. caller: good morning. i think there are gray areas, dna, everything that they have now, you can lean toward it, but i don't think they should. i think people that feel that they should have the death penalty but it is ok to have an abortion with a little baby that is eight months old that might live, i think there are gray areas on both sides. thank you. host: we mentioned some 6000 executions in the u.s. in modern death penalty era since 1973. that is the death penalty information center. the death penalty carries the

inherent risk of executing an innocent person. at least 200 people who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the united states have been exonerated and, currently, the death row population includes federal and the vast majority now in states is about 2200 people. this is russell, lake city, florida, good morning. caller: good morning. the whole situation is you have democrats killing babies [indiscernible] host: this is christine, michigan. good morning, you are next. caller: good morning.

i wanted to call a while back when you had the same question. because i'm a follower of the lord jesus, and it says in the new testament that even if you kidnap a person, you should have the death penalty. it is not just murder, but, and, i really believe in it, even though a person may have a mental illness problem. host: the expanded use of the death penalty is what you are saying? caller: well, no, not expanded use, but just using it if a person is found guilty, and the system knows they are guilty, then they should be, you know, not have life in prison because that only takes another person's

life, and that is the ones who have to watch them all the time, and it is too expensive. and we are all under the death penalty and need to answer to god and try to live a life that will show other people away so that they will not hate. and we just need to show love to people. and, sometimes, i think that would be the loving thing to do. host: death sentence prisoners in the united states spends more than a decade on death row prior to either exoneration or execution. there have been people will over 20 years on the death row. this is chris, florida. good morning. caller: hi. there are two sides to the issue, like on the one hand, you have like the manson family that

were convicted of brutal murders , and they were sentenced to death, and then commuted to life in prison, and then obama released squeaky brought in 2009 -- released some wanted 2009. in the beyond go -- and the bianco murders, they were released. so there is someone who has been released after being sentenced to life in prison. the other side of the coin is when you look back at the lindbergh baby and see the person who was convicted and sentenced to death and put to death from there, there are all kinds of questions on whether the person that they convicted actually did the crime or if they were just looking for someone to hang because it was such a spectacular case at the

time, so it can really go both ways. i cannot believe that obama would pardon one of the manson families and murder sharon tate, but on the other side, you have a bloodthirsty population that would like to make sure that somebody pays, so that is my two cents. host: that was chris in florida. the story back in 2009, three decades after being in the national spotlight, squeaky, the disciple who tried to assassinate gerald ford, and she left -- she left fort worth medical center and polluted the media, and she previously refused interview requests, and

officials would not say what she planned to do after more than 30 years behind bars. squeaky fromme was the member of the manson family who tried to assassinate gerald ford. this is ivory, illinois. good morning. caller: good morning. as historically black college student in georgia who primarily works around criminal justice reform, it is a two party situation. i know in the case of marsalis williams, there was conversation amongst the black community and the surrounding community in regards to why this black man was being still killed, even though it was proven that he did not murder the victim, and it was a slap in the face within our community because we saw first handedly that there is not any type of criminal justice reform or any motive to try to

exonerate this black man, although he spent most of his time in this jail and then ultimately being killed. as a person, a student, as one who is going into the legal force, i think it is important to be able to realize how people are being killed and held in jail and things like that, and there really isn't any information that is going towards having them released, and there is not even enough evidence that is now being produced to exonerate them. they are also being killed, so i think my views are skewed because some people, they don't feel remorse for the things they have done and what do you do in those cases? but in the criminal justice reform, you are looking at how can we better the system and how can we try to figure out if

these people are actually being convicted of the crime or is this a false imprisonment? that is my opinion. host: that was ivory in illinois. going back to the squeaky fromme story, it i do not remember, it was paroled when it came to squeaky. convicted i got a life term, the first person sentence under a special federal law after her attempt on gerald ford. she was sentenced to 15 years in, which was tacked onto her life term. she was granted parole in july 2008 for good conduct and was released in 2009. this is macy, california, good morning. caller: good morning. i got a landline so you can hear me. host: thank you for trying to get. caller: can you hear me?

host: yes. caller: i was like, oh no. i would like to compliment you on the job that you do. like others, anyway, in terms of the death sentence, i would like to mention leonard peltier, who was on the reservation when the fbi came, and he has been in prison for 50 years, and the native people say he did not do it. i don't know. so everybody is supposed to call joe biden because 50 years on the line or whatever they call it, china cash i guess that is, i don't think he did it. i believe the native people on that. host: the story from npr, just so people know what you are talking about, it is indigenous

activist leonard peltier spent most of his life in prison since his conviction in 1975 for the killing of two fbi agents in south dakota and was denied parole earlier this year. the parole commission announced that he will not be eligible for another hearing until 2026 and is serving life in prison for the killing of the agents during a standoff of the pine ridge reservation in 1977. he is 79 years old now. caller: what was the fbi doing there, do you know that part? if i can call you john? host: i can go through most of the story but i'm not an expert on what happened that day, but i know there is the push to get him out of prison. caller: 50 years, and like you all are saying about squeaky fromme, letting her out, but i would like to say, several

callers, i like that they said, all i remember is mike. i would like to complement a couple of people who were talking about actually the indigenous people. i think it was mike who is saying that hundreds of thousands of people were killed here. it sounds so trite to rehearse it, but it is a fact. they gave them blanket slates, they broke their tools so they cannot live. it is just disgusting, just stuff like that -- that sounds lame, but, anyway, thank you for your good job because i like the way you go back and forth with the customers, the callers. host: customers is fine, too. sure. more on mr. peltier, agents came to the pine ridge reservation to serve arrest warrants where they battled over native rights and self determination after being

injured in a shootout, the two agents were shot in the head at close range and a standoff ensued, and you can read the story from npr. this is christine, iowa. caller: good morning. nobody is above god. i find it concerning in our country that we are all sitting here calling in and giving out opinion on who we think should be killed and shouldn't. that is a big moral problem for me. did the problem i think you need to go to the core. when we are dealing with people who kill other people, the

system isn't set up to where some people have more difficult lives and they end up living a life that violence is not as heinous as it would be when the person never has violence around them. we really have to get to where we can fix all of this stuff. i truly believe and i know this has nothing to do with murder, but it does. our government, we really need to start at the foundation and fixed it where we can actually help people. and that is accountability. every person be accountable. we are killing each other. the system hasn't divided us so much that we are not even thinking clearly.

we are sitting here calling in on who we think should be killed and who should not. host: that is christina in iowa. we will continue this discussion at 9:00 and we'll do another half hour on this in the last segment of the "washington journal." please call back at 9:00 and we will continue this session. comingp next, continue this week's holiday author series, eight days of conversations with america's top writers from across the political spectrum, a variety of public policy issues. after the break will be joined by veteran political journalist ken walsh to discuss his book, "the architects of toxic politics in america: venom & vitriol." we will be right back. ♪

>> american history tv, saturdays on c-span two, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. this weekend at 3:15 p.m. eastern, an author with his book the great abolitionist, discussing the career and life of abolitionist and politician charles sumner who represented massachusetts in the u.s. senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. then at 4:45 p.m. eastern, author elizabeth reese with her book, recounting five trip to lafayette during the young united states when he returned after the revolutionary war. at 7:00 p.m. eastern, the lead up to inauguration day, american

history tv looks back at famous inaugural speeches. speeches by franklin roosevelt in 1930 three, harry truman's 1949 address, and dwight eisenhower's address exploring the american story. watch american history tv saturdays on c-span two and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org/history. sunday on c-span's q&a, donald scott, the newly elected democratic speaker of the house of delegates in the first black speaker and 405 years talks about his life including spending almost a years in prison. i had never been in trouble

before and had served my country and was hoping i would get more grace and getting the judge to go lower and he probably could have given me more time than he did. i remember hearing my mother that she couldn't believe it and the yelp of pain. it always stays with me and has always motivated me. and now listening about how fragile and perilous our freedom is and if you make one wrong move sometimes it could literally be the end of your life as you know it. >> sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. you can listen to q and a and our podcasts on our free c-span now app. >> next week, c-span digs into its archives to present president elect donald trump's nominees in their own words

discussing policy, politics and the relationship of the president elect. the marathon continues with tulsi gabbard and then on tuesday we hear from dr. oz, and kash patel. watch at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two. >> "washington journal" continues. host: the holiday author's week continues, eight days of conversations from top writers across the political spectrum with policy, political topics and this morning we future political journalist ken walsh and his book "the architects of toxic politics in america: venom & vitriol." you argue that we have gone through cycles of toxic politics in america before and they come and go. how do they come and go and how

have we broken out of past cycles of toxic politics? guest: people tended to think it is so unusual and it is in some ways, largely because president elect trump has been a real advocate of this kind of negative politics, frankly and also amplified by social media. those of the two big differences than what we had before. you can trace this way back to the beginning of the country. george washington was elected unanimously by the electoral college for the first election after that and the second one in 1796 and 1800, john adams versus thomas jefferson both times were two of the most toxic elections we have ever had, right from the beginning. some of the things that were said and what supporters said were so negative and personal.

but it just shows that it happened right from the beginning. in that same timeframe you have the first character assassin in american politics, a man named jt calendar, he endorsed jefferson and then jefferson was elected and didn't give him a job he elected as postmaster of richmond, virginia so he turned against jefferson and he was the one who broke the story about jefferson having an affair with sally hemmings, one of his enslaved people on this plantation, it was considered very salacious at the time and jefferson was still reelected and became a popular president. the thing is, as often happens with these starting of rumors, dna evidence has shown that jefferson did have an affair with sally hemmings. so given the for many years this

was considered an excessive negative charge, it turns out he was right. we have had waves of this in our history. the worst example of our toxic politics where we cannot resolve our differences and find common ground was the civil war, which was a terrible calamity for the united states. it ended slavery and saved the union but at an enormous cost to the country. our lives and respect for each other and so on. what happens is, after having researched at this quite extensively, the country goes through a period where people are afraid, unsettled, resentful, full of grievance and the toxic politics comes back and that is where we are now. host: you write on page 206 in your book that the politics of resentment and anger and grievance often runs its course until one of the sides become

exhausted and the country tires of the struggle and believes it has gone too far. at this point the negative messaging goes out of style and people settle into a more specific period. do you see it happening any time soon? guest: i think a lot of americans hope it will happen. i just saw a poll before coming into the show that 65% of americans are now saying that they are so distressed by politics and so exhausted by it that they have tuned out the political news. it doesn't make me happy as someone who has made his career on reporting political news but that is part of what happens, people get exhausted by the negativity in the toxic nature of things and don't pay attention to it and then it has less effect. but we still have a very deeply divided and polarized country

and people who do not believe good things about the other side and i don't think that is going to change. i think we are in for this toxic environment for a long time. host: you right in the book and this came up before the election, that you think that there could be a moment to end the toxic politics or make america less toxic. guest: that would be the 250th anniversary of our founding as a country. that is two years from now. there are signs that some of this is happening particularly on the level of governors. a lot of governors have to get along with people more than the national politicians do in many cases. there is something of a movement among some governors and there is something of a movement in the media as well that we have played this toxic game too long ourselves and maybe we should pull back from that and try to take another approach. there are signs of it but i was

just exploring what could possibly be a triggering event or making us respect each other more as americans and respect our institutions and may that kind of an event will be celebrated all over the country it was sort of a renaissance of finding common ground and reduce the toxic nature of things. that is what i hope for. host: another book was titled donald trump, the most negative president of all time. i want to find out why you cite him as such and he will be president in 2026. can this renewal happened with him as president in your mind? guest: that is one of the open questions. i wrote that carefully and i am not a partisan journalist or person. i have covered seven presidents.

the other thing i wanted to say before i go back to trump is the democrats have done the same thing over time. they have been very toxic in their politics, so it is not just republicans who do it, although i do think donald trump has exceeded and have gone beyond the guardrails of too much toxic politics. he has built a base of support and in the recent election the country was basically divided in half. trump cording to the most recent numbers i have seen did not get 50's -- 50%, but just under. his toxic politics is constant pillorying, negative ways to portray many issues and so on. he uses bullying and personal

attacks and negativity to advance. this has worked for him politically. a lot of his supporters like what he is doing. one way i have heard it described that i think is very insightful is that people who voted for donald trump for hiring him not as a role model, not as a character at paragon looked like an attorney or ceo who would get the job done for them and the other stuff, the character issue and that sort of thing is much less important. he is sort of an advocate and advocates will take extreme positions and that is what he is doing. the idea of looking for a renaissance, he will have to suffer some setbacks in his approach for that to happen. it could happen but i don't see it happening now. host: you write that they set the tone for public discourse

and many played a key role in intensifying the toxic environment. also instrumental in the toxic culture are a range of influencers who have become combatants in the culture wars. who are some of those influencers? guest: that is an interesting story itself. i described influencers who over the years have pushed us more and more to where the toxic environment we are in. today we have people like rush limbaugh, the late rush limbaugh was in this category, the famous radio commentator and i have people like tucker carlson, sean hannity, people with ties to fox news news in many ways and have made the reputation on the conservative network commentators come up with history of this includes

democrats and republicans and others. if you look at the influencers on the outside, very famous people that people don't remember today, father charles cockrum was a catholic priest from canada who moved to michigan and established a small parish and he became, he was a great speaker and they gave him a radio show and it became enormously popular around the country and he became a toxic politician. he actually became a fascist because his argument was that we are fighting the wrong people in world war two and we should be fighting godless communism, the germans and japanese and he had an enormous following and he was a forerunner of what we see today, the influencers in the media who are all over the place now and there are many examples of this over the years.

you also have political influencers who play toxic politics, senator joe mccarthy, the famous communist hunter who was in the category of a toxic politician, huey long was the air and senator from louisiana. part of the time he was so obsessed with being a strongman he was the governor and the senator at the same time and was able to vote -- pull that off. he was so popular that franklin roosevelt felt he could be a threat to his reelection. he was assassinated before he could run against franklin roosevelt in the 1930's. that is the other thing i wanted to bring up. that is one of the real problems with toxic politics, does it lead to violence. you had the civil war as i mentioned before which was probably the worst domestic cataclysm we had were we

couldn't resolve inches. the question is today, we have such a toxic environment, is it leading to violence? the cases of people attacked in politics, donald trump had two assassination attempts against him in the last year, one of which the famous case where he was shot in the air during a public event in pennsylvania. we all know enough about that case to know exactly what motivated that shooter for the second time. but is it part of the whole toxic brew that people feel in the end they are entitled to take violent action against politicians or against each other and we have so many shootings in the country it is hard to sort all of this out. that is one thing a lot of americans are concerned by, how far does this go. having written this book, that is one concern i have, heavily extended toxic politics to each other so much that we have come

to distrust and hate each other as americans. that would be a very dangerous thing for us and i think in the some ways we are on the cusp of that. host: the architect of toxic politics is ken walsh, our guest in this hour of the "washington journal, taking your phone calls in our holiday authors week. it is (202) 748-8000 four democrats to call in, republicans (202) 748-8001, independents (202) 748-8002. phone lines are lit up. this is an independent in colorado. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. and i happen to be affiliated with the libertarian party. you mentioned the toxic politics, i was wondering if any

names come to mind when it comes to reasoned opposition as opposed to toxic opposition and also wondering how much the kind of medium, radio, tv, internet, how much of it really has played a role. i think of the famous quote the medium is the message. guest: i covered politics in colorado for a long time. i always look back on that is a very positive time in my own career. i work for the denver post and the associated press in colorado. and as i remember very vividly, colorado has a history of quite positive politics. people there when i covered politics were very proud of that in the sense was that we don't stoop to conquer and we don't do

mean each other. politicians don't go too far. maybe that has changed but i remember it was a very important matter of pride among voters in colorado that they didn't wallow in toxic politics. as i said before, finding people who don't do toxic politics at all is increasingly difficult to do. i can't really point to many people who avoid it completely because when push comes to shove, people will go into toxic politics and they think it is what to do to win an election. joe biden who try to come into office trying to be a healer and who would not be a toxic politician, but he got into it to because he felt that he was being roughed up too much to his enemies. the other point i would make is

the toxic violence has been amplified greatly by social media in particular. you can find on social media anything you want to find it to support your views. academia would called confirmation bias where people will look for information only supports what they think and nothing to challenge it and will pay attention to people on the others. this is spreading to the country where people are getting to the point, i don't want to be in the neighborhood with people who disagree with me on politics. there is a lot of talk about during the holidays out people dealt with their families where you had people around the dinner table for thanksgiving or the christmas holidays or whatever and how do you deal with people who disagree with you. some people felt, i don't invite those people anymore.

the mainstream media, we accelerate this too. that is how politicians have learned they can get attention. it is social media that is doing more damage than the mainstream media. it is growing in importance among young people and there is no filter there so whatever you see on social media is not filtered by an editor or reporter and you have no idea what is true and some of it with artificial intelligence and what we used to call photo shopping, the images are made up and created and they look very real. so i have to question people to be careful in assessing what you see on social media because it looks real but many times it is not. but it goes to the idea of confirmation bias. social media today. host: remind viewers what the

lazy girl ad was. guest: this also relates to the idea that democrats have been guilty of the toxic politics as well. the daisy girl ad was the most famous political ad in our history, negative add and the most effective. this was by lyndon johnson who succeeded john f. kennedy after kennedy was assassinated and he took on the mantle. he was very popular initially but he went against senator barry goldwater who was very conservative and there was a subtext. and a lot of times the negative ads work best when there is a subtext where people think there is something going on that i don't like and the people who make the ads can latch onto that. there was concern that goldwater was going to get us into the war with the old soviet union. so johnson came up with an ad

that showed a little girl in the field, a one minute ad, showing her picking daisies. she pulls the petals off like she loves me, she loves me not kind of thing. she counts, 10, 6, 4, 5 and then you hear a narrator take the count down and it becomes a nuclear blast and she looks up and you see the nuclear mushroom cloud in her eyes as if she is looking at the glass and it will be the last sight she is looking at. so a nuclear war was illustrated in this very vivid add in at the end, you hear lyndon johnson say, today is important that we get along. we must learn to love each other or we will surely die. goldwater is not mentioned in

the at at all, and there narrator says, be sure to vote and then gives the date. the stakes are too high for you to stay home. that at rant once and was so powerful all the networks picked it up as a news story and the newspapers did and it only had to run once and made the point. it really just put the end to goldwater's campaign. he knew how devastating it was. but that is the most historic negative political ad in our history. host: to john in new york, also independent. caller: yesterday you had an author from newsweek and the entire time was condemning trump and how horrible he is.

and you have the author today and goes directly to chapter five and how toxic he is. and then you go on to say rush limbaugh and the media and how terrible he was and tucker carlson and fox news. a lot of people voted this year and more than 50% of the country voted for donald trump. they don't care about what you say anymore because after the russian collusion hoax, the fake story about hunter biden's laptop was from disinformation and the lies about biden's cognitive abilities, and the issues with hillary clinton and hurt emails on the phones and having something in her basement that shouldn't have been there. they can see it with their own eyes and we listen to you and we

listen to your condemnation of the republicans and you don't say a darn thing about president biden and the comments he made about fascism, hitler's and the people that support donald trump are dangerous and a danger to our country. and then hillary clinton called people who support trump deplorable's. can you say something bad about biden and something good about trump. show me you are not bias. guest: maybe you weren't listening, but i did talk about how biden had descended into toxic politics in his presidency and part of it is the criticism of trump supporters. and i think that is part of the problem he had. i have been very critical of biden in a number of ways. one is i think that he and his

white house did not fully explain that cognitive decline that everyone saw in that debate lost to donald trump. it took a couple weeks after that but he did drop out. and to me that is a huge story that the mainstream media, my own business and career, that we didn't focus on in the half. the basket of deplorable's -- focus on enough. the basket of deplorables went too far. one reason the republicans get so much attention for negative politics is as i say in the book is they have had of its in the republican politics. lee atwater defined -- attacked politics in the united states in the 1980's. he worked for ronald reagan and george bush, the father and it

has nothing to do with donald trump at all. i knew lee atwater well in his philosophy was you don't win elections by building up our own candidates we win elections by tearing the other side down. he said that many times. this is long before donald trump. there is a long history here. the only thing is, a couple of points, one is that trump, according to the latest numbers he did not win a majority of the vote, just below 50. he won the election and there is no doubt about that and when the electoral college. but the democrats didn't do as bad as we thought initially. she lost in percentage by a point and a half behind donald trump. that is another thing to keep in

mind. the other thing i wanted to mention and i know the color was very agitated about this, but one reason that the republicans get a lot of attention for toxic politics now is because they are so much better at it and they are so much more entertaining at it. people in the united states have a short attention span, so to get their attention you have to in the media, you have to entertain them and it is part of our celebrity culture now. the republicans do it better than the democrats do. i am not saying that as a criticism. they know how the media work and understand the country better than the democrats do and that is partly why donald trump got as many votes as he did because the content drumbeat of attack criticism was picked up and

amplified by social media and by the influencers. in a way, it is a complement to them in the sense of being public figures because they know how to handle images and impressions better and by this i mean the conservative or republican influencers, and some of them are not really republicans but they are conservatives. but they do it very well. so that is another thing to keep in mind. host: the associated press named the number of votes, 49.9% of the votes. that was for trump. william in ohio, a democrat. good morning. caller: good morning, john.

this is your favorite 80 nine-year-old hillbilly. mr. walsh, eight commend you for writing a book like that because we have nothing but clicks with her politicians and the government. it is a shame that we pay taxes to support those perks. that is from federal, state and local. i feel so sorry for my grandkids and now look -- now great grandchildren. it is just a shame. did you ever read the book broke usa? i am the number one guy in that. as far as trump, every time i see his lips i get diarrhea. it is just a shame. host: is ted in washington, new

jersey, republican. caller: i just wanted to say a couple of things about the negativity. the democrats are also very big on negativity. you go back to nancy pelosi, she ripped up the state of the union speech on national tv and there was no repercussion. all the late-night television shows, pbs, 60 minutes, nec, they all went along. oh yeah, let's attack trump. these people on the late-night shows of the biggest offenders. i can't even watch them. all they do is attack and it is out of balance. during the election time, we had a guy who i thought was a fair guy doing the interviewing and have a woman who was friendly and had some kind of relationship with harris and it was all softball questions. it is not one side or the other. what i do and your highlighting the one side and i understand

but if you look objectively, there is an army. take the view, have you ever watch that? they totally attack anyone who doesn't agree with them and they are very toxic as well. i just hope in your reporting that you are inclusive of about this because the reason why people voted for trump is because they are tired of the so-called swamp where all of the united people in washington and hollywood and the networks are all together, like one group and they are very powerful and they don't have the money but they have the media and they control the media and the education and the universities. i go to the big university in the debates and they are all on the left side. i can understand that is there side. i am in the middle and i go with the issue but it is so strongly on the left-hand side. i wish you would allow more of that into the conversation. guest: i don't really disagree

with what you are saying at all. in fact, my body of work i think if you looked at it you could see that i have been very critical of both sides on this. you mentioned the pelosi tearing up the speech but basically there is a parallel universe for both sides that for every case like the view there are the five on fox and they make a living of denigrating the democrats and biden. do you watch the fight at all? but you have the view, you have the five and you have a parallel approach that both of them are taking. i have been very critical also of the democrats of not understanding the level of resentment and grievance that

the working class has in the united states. understand that trump did understand that better than the democrats did than kamala harris did. she started off talking about the politics of joy. this very important segment, the working class were not feeling joy. that was the wrong approach to appeal to them. trump did enormously well with those people. they used to be the core of the democratic party and i come from a working class background myself and i saw it in my own family. the democrats have -- are not the party of the working class anymore. they are still searching on how to fix it but it is a terrible problem. it is a problem we have in the media. we don't really understand the working class as we might have in the past. one reason is we don't live like working-class people good when i

first started covering politics, i felt like i was living the same life as the people i was writing for as a newspaper reporter. when the property taxes went up, i would not like it. when grocery prices went up, when something happened in crime or something, i was worried about my neighborhood. but as time has gone by, i think people in the media and the media centers, new york and washington and california and chicago, we don't live the same life as working-class people. i think we did at one time. so this is a disconnect in what democrats are feeling for the other point i make and i think your point was very well taken talking about the celebrity endorsements. i was always critical of the effect of celebrity endorsements . every since i have covered politics, 45 years now, all the

election, the democrats always get the endorsements from the famous stars. the republicans do well with country music entertainers and some hollywood people but basically that is a democratic constituency. that is always the way it has been but it doesn't confer votes. i am sure it annoys and angers people on the other side, conservatives who feel like there are too many social activists in hollywood who are liberals and there are many who are liberals, but i don't think they swing elections. i think americans don't pay attention to that very much, even taylor swift, who had a brief moment in the sun in the last campaign. host: if you had to list the most three toxic elections in history, wood 2020 for cracked the top three? guest: the first two would be 17

86 and 1800. they were very toxic. john adams criticized and his supporters criticized jefferson as a heading for bringing the guillotine and bring the french revolution to the united states, killing people, bringing atheism as the governing philosophy of the country. and jefferson's people said adams was a loyalist and wanted to bring nobility, the nobles of europe and he was mocked and criticized by the jefferson people of being a hermaphrodite. that was not the best thing to call somebody then or now that is how negative it was. issues were at stake. a lot of people were worried about the future and can we

survive as a country. that is the point i made initially. that kind of resentment and anger and that rises and negative politics rise. that was a very negative period. andrew jackson had a very negative campaign a few years later. that was the year of duals and he killed people in those. when he ran for president, he ran and lost and ran again. his opponents raise the issue that his wife was an adulterous because she had been married before and she thought her marriage -- the divorce had gone through but it had not so she was still legally married when she married andrew jackson and his opponents raised this as an issue against him that he had married an adulterous and she was scorned by a lot of people

in washington including the spouses of a lot of people in congress. her name was rachel. she never made it to his inauguration. she died and a lot of people thought she died of a nervous breakdown because she realized how her reputation had been sullied by all of this criticism . jackson always held the death of his wife against his critics. you talk about a negative environment, this is a man who was devoted to his wife and felt his opponents had actually killed his wife by causing her health to be shattered. that set the tone. he became a negative politician. host: you write that she wants from him crying in his office and she asked him what is wrong, he said myself i can defend and you i can defend and now they have sullied the memory of my mother. guest: she felt his mother was

being attacked and she was. we have had this history in the country and that is part of what i was trying to show in the. but the republicans take a lot of criticism from me and others for negative politicians but a lot of people think that is the way they had to go to shake up washington and take on the swamp . i am saying there are a lot of causing a lot of grief to a lot of other people. host: virginia, robert, independent line. caller: i am 76 years old and my younger kids and some of the people in 40's and 50's, they never watch programs on television. they never watch the news and box and stuff like that.

what they do is it seems like on their telephones and facebook they talk between their friends and a lot of the opinions, they went with trump not knowing much about what was going on at all. that was interesting to me. going back to donald trump. the best part of the politics, i just don't understand why people can't see this is going to break down the other countries, china and russia and they will put things in their country to protect them from us. guest: what the caller is

referring to and keeping up in the news is that donald trump is very good at this is partly why we talk about him so much in the media. he is a terrific showman and understands the media and how to get attention and understands how to divert attention from things he doesn't want to talk about and create other things could what has happened in the last week or so, trump has talked about the united states taking over canada and taking over greenland and taking over the panama canal. maybe this is just his showman instinct because he knows everybody will talk about this. if you look at how that will happen, it is very hard to see how that would happen except the panama canal which i think that could happen, the united states

could take that back because they did build it. he raised the idea of taking over greenland in his first term and denmark, as i recall actually controls greenland and they said, you are never going to get greenland. now he is back on that again. maybe it is just he feels like it is an issue he knows people will talk about. maybe he is serious about it, there is no detail about it except that the panama canal and he has apparently looked into this because he knew enough about it to know how many people died building the canal 100 years ago and he says about 38,000 americans died building the canal so he is looking at it as saying not only the expense of the lives we spent building that. he is focused on this right now. host: we will hear from tom in

illinois, republican line. thanks for calling in. you are on with ken walsh ken walsh -- ken walsh. caller: you are nice man and everyone likes to think they are in the middle-of-the-road but just your saying that for every one of these shows there are five of those, everyone knows the media is 90% liberal. joe biden, when he used npr to come up with the scandal and he was lying and trying to embarrass politicians way before trump. his negativity is tenfold. when trump goes against the 90% attack, he kind of has to do that and we want him going to bat for us against these people with crazy ideas that a boy is a girl and all of this wild and wacky stuff. not to mention, that is where we

are at and i appreciate your niceness and that you think you are in the middle, but you are a liberal. guest: well, i have never expose my political leanings and don't attend to -- intend to. i don't think i could have covered seven president and won awards if i was biased and i don't believe i am. i have tried to call them as i see them. i come from a working-class family. my father was a longshoreman in new york and then became working for the city of new york and my mother was a waitress and raised five sons. i do try to call them as i see them and i think the caller and

the other color in particular was very revved up about the bias against trump and so on and i understand that. but at this moment, i don't think you could look at what trump is doing and saying as he is saying as he just won the election and see that he is looking for common ground he is not. he feels that the polarization benefits him and he has felt way for a long time and felt that is the way he would win reelection. he almost hit 50% but didn't quite hit 50%. but he won, there is no doubt about that. just look at the results we have shown in the math a little while ago and how divided we are as a country. it is really remarkable. it is unfortunate that i think

the president-elect has not tried to step away from this a little bit. some of the pulling would be interesting. -- polling would be interesting. one says that there are many in favor of a divorce politically. that sounds like a civil war. 60 million people feel that way or that is a lot of people, only 20% of the people, but we have very deep divisions as a country and i think at some point somebody who stands aside the system needs to step back and serve as an example. in the bible it is called turning of the cheek. this is what we used to think in our daily lives and in our

politics and public life. i think civility is in danger here and you can see this in the idea of the national divorce. host: my first questions about how the cycle of the toxic politics and what was the previous cycle before the one we are in now and how did that end? guest: i think after world war ii, we had a huge fear about communism taking over. in that period, we had a very toxic period, senator mccarthy, the comet's hunter, who was very popular for a long time. you had a lot of commentators who supported him for a while and he had a lot of people in congress afraid of him so they went along with them. you had two presidents, truman and eisenhower, who took action to find these alleged communists, which he never could

really identify them but made accusations. that became a very difficult time for a lot of people who were wrongly accused. but eisenhower did when this goes back to the point i am making today. he felt that he didn't want to take mccarthy head on which a lot of people fought with him and mccarthy would sort of overreach and he would automatically at some point people would turn against him and that is exactly what happened. he had the credibility as a president to feel like he wasn't going to embrace mccarthy. he felt he could stand up to him. that is the kind of thing i think we need today, somebody to stand up to the extremes and to speak for the common ground. i think eisenhower managed to do that. and by the time that mccarthy

was at his most popular, eisenhower made the distinction, a criticism of mccarthy in a typical eisenhower way that it, it is not mccarthyism, which is the name given to making unsubstantiated charges, it is mccarthy "wasism." he handled it delicately but tried to get him off of the stage in a delicate way. host: was at him saying have you no sense of decency? and you left no sense of decency. guest: that was the famous hearing in which mccarthy started to go too far in which she was making accusations against the young fellow who had no communistic connections that we know of and he was ruining this guy's life. so this lawyer that you talk about had a dramatic moment

where he said exactly those words, criticizing mccarthy for going too far in ruining this young man's life for his own political gain read that stuck with a lot of people. host: margo in indiana, line for democrats. caller: good morning. happy new year. i have a question for you. do you think donald would be gracious and dignified as vice president harris went back that she conceded to him with the landslide? guest: will as civil as she is being? is that what you are asking?

i don't at the last time. he had been saying all along in the campaign was talking about widespread fraud and things that were going to happen and when he won, that all went away. i am hearing and you probably are too that there is an effort by some democrats to even challenge the results. i don't know if it is going to go very far but the democrats are doing some soul-searching and if they challenge the results, that is probably a bad thing for the democrats to do because it will look like sour grapes during what they -- doing what they accused trump of doing . maybe that is just like a two-day sorry but the democrats are worried about their future now and how they -- story, but

the democrats are worried about their futures now and how they handle things. host: how did you get into writing? guest: came from a family who were always interested in politics. that was the era when there were 12 newspapers in the city and my parents were avid readers of newspapers and political news. i was the oldest son and so i was assigned to go to the newsstand and by seven newspapers every day. i could tell you what they were because that is when new york had a lot of newspapers. my parents would devour it and that transmitted itself involve me and all of my brothers. i have always been interested in it and fortunately have been able in my career to do what i set out to do which is to cover national politics and the white house. host: you covered ronald reagan, george h w bush, and barack

obama. and you released your facebook. guest: my 10th -- your eighth book. guest: my 10th. host: next caller. caller: i politely disagree with ken. has there ever been a person president or pass that have caused people to at least get killed because of what they are pushing? and knowing that it is a lie. i can't get my head wrapped around the whole january 6 thing. even to this day he doesn't say, that wasn't the best idea in the world. i sat in my living room and

watched it on tv and he was urging it. whipped up the crowd up. he sent them on their way. if it would have been a race situation, those people would have been arrested. that is all i have to say. host: last couple minutes of the segment. guest: we haven't had a chance to go in the january riot at the capitol. a lot of people call it an insurrection. that was thoroughly investigated and people are still very divided about that. the trump people are feeling that in other fulminant the riot

-- start the riot. they are not going to change and as well as change against the charges against him. the other caller said, there is too much attention to trump as a divider. he has had many lawsuits against him. he is -- has attacked the whole. -- the whole system. we are divided about this as a country. i am sure you have done about this and it has been well argued about january 6 and what the pros and cons and trump's relationship with the justice system in courts and so on.

that is not going to change here that is one of the areas that divide us. he has been very divisive and this fits in with his politics and still does today. that is why i talk about him in the book and so many people talk about it. he is brilliant at getting attention but he has not veered away from the idea of keeping the base that we have talked about here and many other times and not expanding the base. he has not gotten over a majority. it is close but not a majority. harris did not do as bad have dn election night. she came within 1.5 points of donald trump. at some point, somebody has got to, in authority, a respected figure has to pick another direction. it is very unhealthy the direction that we are going in.

it is affecting us in so many ways. the one thing that bothers me the most is that it is turning us against each other as americans. we are not finding the common values that we thought we had all along. and people are so hostile that they do not want to associate with the other side. they do not want to try to make a case. and that is very unfortunate and a real danger for the country. host: "the architects of toxic politics in america: venom & vitriol" is a book that came out this year. ken walsh is the author. kennethwalsh.com if you want his website. coming up, we will return to the question that we began with today, your view on the death penalty in the united states. for those who support, oppose, and not sure phone line numbers are on your screen. we will get back to your calls after the break. ♪

>> american history tv, saturdays on c-span2, exploring the people and events that tell the american story. this weekend at 3:15 p.m. eastern, stephen puelo with his book "the great abolitionist" who discusses the career and life of charles sumner who represented massachusetts in the u.s. senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. at 4:45 p.m. eastern, elizabeth reese with her book "marquis de lafayette returns" recounting his trip through the young united states after he returned after the revolutionary war.

and at 7:00 p.m. eastern, in the lead up to inauguration day, we look back to famous beaches. this weekend speeches by franklin roosevelt in 1933. harry truman's 1949 to dress and dwight eisenhower's 1953 address. exploring the american story, watch american history tv. saturdays on c-span2. find a full schedule on your program guide, or anytime online at c-span.org/history. >> in his latest book "lbj and mcnamara" osnos' dedication reads this way, "to those on the vietnam wall on the mall and their countless vietnamese

counterparts it did not have to happen this way." he spent numerous hours working with robert mcnamara for his 1995 book "in retrospect: the tragedy in lessons of vietnam." this describes what happens in the years between 1963 and mcnamara's last day as secretary of defense in 1968. he died in 19 -- in 2003. >> this book on this episode of booknotes+. it is available on the c-span now free mobile app or wherever you get your podcasts. for over 45 years, c-span has been your window into the workings of our democracy, offering live coverage of congress and unfiltered access

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giving life imprisonment to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates earlier this week we are simply asking for your opinion about the use of capital punishment. if you support the death penalty, 202-748-8000. if you oppose it, 202-748-8001. if you are unsure, 202-748-8002. taking these calls until about 9:30 eastern time. gino in california. go ahead. caller: yes. i support the death penalty by default. we cannot continue to spend money and throw away money on supporting these perpetrators of crimes for decades of years. i do understand that some death penalty people are executed and they are innocent. when we know that they did it, i.e. the new york subway and

boston bomber, we cannot continue to give resources for these people to live for years. they give the least amount and they are costing the most. i believe thou shalt not kill that the certain point it becomes economic and i do not want to pay for it. host: john in glenside, pennsylvania. you are next. caller: good morning. i am opposed because i found that there are way too many people that have been found innocent in the long term and i think life without the possibility of parole gives us the opportunity to make sure that we have not made a mistake. and life without the possibility of parole is a pretty harsh way to spend your life and that is adequate. thank you. host: on the point of the cost of keeping somebody on death row and housing somebody for life in prison.

we have been showing you as we ask the question the death penalty information center has a lot of information and stats on the use of the death penalty. where are people housed and what state still have the death penalty. they have a section of the costs, and how much it actually costs compared to a system in which a life sentence is the maximum punishment. "it can only be determined by studies on the state level. many such studies have been deducted and their conclusions are consistent: the death penalty imposes a net cost on the taxpayers compared to life without parole. the question is whether the assumed benefits of the death penalty are worth its costs and whether other systems might proves a similar cost." why is it so expensive, legal, pretrial costs, jury selection, trial, incarceration and many appeals.

deathpenaltyuntil.org is where you can go to take a look at those studies. pete in new haven, connecticut. good morning. caller: i am opposed because i do not want to be a part of the system illuminating them because of the courts. having said that, i would like to bring up one point. i wanted to get on when mr. walsh was talking. the question i had for him while the insurrection was going on, i do not know network it was, cnn, cbs or nbc, they opened up the doors and i do not know where it is showing the members of the trump family, one is the daughter and i believe her husband and somewhere other people. i did not see trump there because -- but they were all

cheering. host: we will get to those comments. but i do not want to sidetrack away from the death penalty. we had a lot of people who did not want to -- you cannot get in when we first talked about the death penalty so we are doing that now. pleasantville, new york. good morning. caller: i have a little different approach. i am on the opposed side of it. i think it might be too easy to execute people. in other words, you think about that god can forgive that well. in other words, how do we know that the people that are executed are not forgiven and for a little time in purgatory and make their way up to heaven? so i think that perhaps for these most heinous and terrible crimes that we make prison a --

in a place like death valley and make it unusual. but make it cruel as hell. make it so terrible that they would not be interested and that that would deter them. host: you do not believe in the existence of some sort of punishment that is too cruel or unusual? caller: no. i wanted to be unusual, ok. but the horrible ones you are hearing about with little children being mutilated and people like that. their punishment should be worse than it is now in prison. in other words, make them suffer. if they are going to go to executions, make them public, hang them in the public square if you are going to that route. have a nice day, everyone. host: this is craig in tulsa,

oklahoma. good morning. caller: i appreciate c-span and its excellent topics. i want to lay down some facts, very simple. because a lot of people use the bible to say -- they misuse the bible to say that god does not want the death penalty in the bible does not want it. that is totally and absolutely incorrect. in the 10 commandments it is you shall not murder. it is not kill. in the king gay -- in the king james it is you shall not kill but in the original it is murder. it goes on in deuteronomy 19 on what to do when someone takes innocent blood. it says you take them out and put them to death. and it warns if the society does not put them to death the blood of the people that that person slaughtered is on the hands of the society. what we have to do is make it

balanced and right. god loves life, but god loves life so much that he does not want it to do -- to be the chief . if you do not have the death penalty you are saying basically no big deal. you will get three meals and you will live, fine. that was not the way it meant to be and it had to be stopped. that is the logic behind the scriptures that stay -- that say the death penalty is absolutely condoned by deuteronomy and the 10 commandments. i know it is ugly and i do not like any form of death. nobody does. but, you do not cheapen life. you do not tell people in a society if you do this it is not a big deal. host: that is craig in tulsa, oklahoma. coming back to cruel and unusual punishment, it is the eighth amendment where it is addressed in "excessive bail should not be

inquired -- required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted." joe in rhode island. you are next. caller: hello. i am going with a completely secular point of view. i spent 20 or 30 years in law enforcement. and there are some people who are so dangerous and they commit such terrible crimes that you cannot change them. and there is no reason to keep them alive. we have perfectly good people getting killed for specious reasons. good people were getting killed for nothing in vietnam. and because of some politician like mcnamara wanted to make money. you get people who kill children and you have a guy in our community who killed two little

girls and then a woman in the navy which is why he got the death penalty. but, how could you commute people like that? i had a guy that i arrested who had murdered somebody. he made a deal for a charge. he tried to kill me and another officer when we arrested him. he got manslaughter and drug possession. ok? he was out in seven years. and a few months in, he killed again. he got his ex-wife to come to his apartment and he murdered her and then he killed himself, which was a good thing. many people might think i am heartless. because some people who have no so, they have no ambition -- no soul or ambition. you know who they are, they look

right through you. they kill somebody like you would step on ants. host: how many years were you a police officer? caller: 25. host: did any of your arrests ever end up on death row? caller: no. not yet. no. i cannot say so. i had a relative who was a police officer in chicago who was shot and survived. the guy who shot him wound up on death row. he got a drug overdose on death row. figure that out. that was in illinois. i was 4.5 years with the state agency and then 21 years with the federal agency. and, i ran into all kinds of people. there were people who killed and they were not retractable, but

they made a mistake. they still had humanity. but there were people who had none. absolutely none. host: how do you know who are the ones who still have humanity left and some who do not? you mentioned the stair through you. but how do you determine that if , in the legal system? how do you determine that if the idea is death row versus life in prison? caller: you have a good point. i guess it is experiential. i had a guy who had about 20 murders on him. he killed a bunch of people in venezuela. we deported him back even though he was a peruvian. and this guy was as calm as a cucumber. he killed all of these people and escape from prison. there was no emotion. the people who act crazy and angry and stuff, they are the ones who are less dangerous than

the ones who are calm. there is no science to it. after you have killed enough people you get a feel for it. host: thank you for sharing that experience. we have a couple of other callers. this is michael in utah. good morning. caller: hello. this is not my first time calling, -- this is my first time calling and i am a little nervous. i have a sort of different view about the death penalty. about mental illness. when i was younger, i got mental illness. i took my medicine. and it carried it. or, it keeps it away for a long time. many people in prison have

mental illness. and we need to fix our prisons so that they can help people with mental illness. because, when you are in a psychotic state, you do not know what is going on. and you believe whatever. i am sorry if i am taking too long. host: not at all. thank you for bringing that aspect of this. we appreciate it. that is michael in utah. cole across the pond in england calling in. go ahead. caller: i think of vast amounts of the country is stuck in 1955. i disagree with it, but it should be for people who did evil crimes. and they should get the death penalty, i think.

but it should be fair. but if need be, especially in different subjects as such. host: i do not know how much of the news it was over there in england, but joe biden commuting the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates but not three people. the shooter at the charleston mother emanuel church, the boston marathon bomber and the pits bog synagogue shooter back in 28 -- pittsburgh synagogue shooter back in 2018? caller: as far as i'm concerned they should get the death penalty for those heinous crimes. host: mary in ohio. good morning. caller: good morning. i guess my take is that we have the innocence project that proves that people who are on

death row were innocent. so two wrongs do not make a right. putting people to death for a crime they did not commit is not going to be the right thing to do. so, i guess you cannot correct a death sentence. if you are dead and they -- and you find out they were innocent. and we have a lot of the states who find dna evidence being brought to these previous crimes. so, i do not know how you can put or even say that all of these convicted people deserve to die because they might be innocent. host: the numbers in the modern era of using the death penalty since the early 1970's, some 1600 people have been put to death. since 1973, at least 200 people who were on death row and

wrongly convicted and sentenced to die have been exonerated and gotten off of death row. right now today, there are 2200 people or so around the country on death row. just three on federal death row and the rest are in states. caller: yes. and the numbers are small. i guess on both sides. i do not think we do send people to death frequently anymore. in terms of cost, you know spending life in prison is cheaper than a death row inmate. i guess i do not know -- i know that there are some people who want an eye for an eye. but at the end of the day, you do not know if you've caught the right person. there are crimes where they just want to lock somebody up. and it does not necessarily have to be the right person. and there are plenty of people

who can -- i just think at the end of the day the death penalty does not make sense. they cost more money and we make mistakes. that is my point. host: this is new york. good morning. you are next. caller: yes. how are you doing. host: doing well. caller: so, i am saying this, right? it says thou shalt not kill. the people in the past were talking about the bible. think about that. it says thou shalt not kill, that was one of the 10 commandments. so, if you are saying that, we should not kill nobody. but nobody should be killing nobody. i feel like there were so many people wrong in the court system. the court system needs to be fixed no matter what. something is wrong with the court system.

but, that is what my belief is. thou shalt not kill, at all. host: gary in minnesota. good morning. you are next. caller: yes. i kind of support it in a way. if somebody goes out and kills a cop or somebody or anything at the schools our stuff, i think -- or stuff. i think they should show it on tv. you should not go out and kill people. but i was thinking that everybody who went in the service were paid to fight and kill like that one woman are -- was saying. but what if there are wars and you have to kill. that is what i am thinking about too. there are a lot of people who are innocent who should not be put to death. they did not do it. but make sure that the ones that do it, the cops see them do it. and the people should be

punished for that. thank you very much for everybody and all the veterans. host: illinois is next. tim. good morning. caller: the death penalty should be right away because it costs about $1 million a year to keep somebody in prison. so we put 100 people in prison for life without parole. and $1 million per year, that is about what it costs. why not execute them and take the money and use it for the living who are hurting or disabled or whatever? host: could you pause that 200 people have gotten off death row over the years and had their convictions overturned? caller: in that case, i think about five mega millions and give it to the family of the people who were killed and that were innocent. but as far as mass shooters,

illegal aliens that cause u.s. citizens to die, they should have the immediate death penalty and i would volunteer to throw the switch. host: henry in tampa, florida. good morning. caller: i am a bit undecided about the situation. seriously, what kind of death penalty are we talking about? are we talking about mass shooters or an individual? the death penalty should be enforced with people that takedown schools, ok? and you have to have all of the information and all of the evidence, i get it. but to just go ahead and take one person down just because they were found with whatever has been found and i get it. at the same time you have to have all the evidence. that the same time death penalty

should be about closure. and people need closure, ok? at the same time if you are going to go ahead and get the death penalty and take that person down, the people involved in that crime need actual closure. that is where i get undecided because the evidence has to be there. and if the evidence is not there then how can anyone take any human being down with the death penalty? host: one more call, larry, new york. thanks you for waiting. caller: how are you doing, this is larry. i would like to say, as far as the death penalty, i oppose it. i have family members that say i think too much like a vigilante. i was in prison for two years and i do not know why people

think it is a holiday in or what, but the thing is that is a miserable life. and my so-called vigilante thinking makes me feel like let them spend life in hell, because that is what prison is really like, it is hell, other than the point made about the cost of caring for them for a few years or having -- however many number of years it will be, it is hell. some lady was upset because her daughter was killed and the guy did not get the death penalty. i have three daughters. to me, give them life and let them be miserable. the death penalty is a quick way out for them. that is why people kill and hang themselves when they go to prison. they want a quick way out. to me, let them suffer. host: people who do not know what that experience is like,

what would you tell them more than it is hell? what can you share from your experience? caller: just that. it is hell. it is a miserable life. and i was only there for two years. host: what made it so miserable for the people who are saying that life in prison is the easier way out for these people who commit horrible crimes? what made it hell? caller: for one thing, you have no rights. they tell you everything to do, where to eat and where to go. on top of that you are in the midst of a lot of people who were criminals, criminal minds doing stuff to each other. rapes, stabbed, killed. it is not a holiday inn, it is not close. when they get life, the first thing they do is they take away anything that you can kill

yourself with, because they want the quick and easy outs. i am just saying that people need to keep it in mind that prison is not the holiday inn. if they do something to me or my granddaughter, i would prefer them to get life in one of the hardest prisons that we have. we have a few. trenton. it is not what people think. i think the average person does not know what is like and i do not know what they assume. they want people killed for doing something to them or their family member. but if they knew what prison was like, again, my wife says that i am too much of a vigilante. i would want them to suffer and not have it over to greg. host: that is larry, our last call her on this segment of washington journal. half an hour left, and this time we will let you take the reins

with the open forum. any public policy issue or political issue. the phone lines for republicans, democrats and independents on your screen. call in. and as you do we will show you c-span looking back on the historic year that was 2024 with some key moments from congress and the campaign trail. here is that look. [video clip] >> 2024 was a momentous year for c-span from continuing our tradition of providing gavel-to-gavel coverage of the house and senate to key committee hearings and press conferences to landmark supreme court cases and historic presidential elections including the republican and democratic national conventions. here is a look back as we prepare for an action-packed 2025. >> my name is jason but to most i am known as jellyroll. >> i appreciate the opportunity

to be here. >> my name is michael phelps. >> i am the ceo of tiktok. >> have you apologize to the victims? would you like to do so now? you are on national television. would you like now to apologize to the victims. >> tonight all eyes on iowa. >> i am suspending my campaign. >> the time has come to suspend my campaign. >> the events were shameful and criminal violent that it did not qualify as insurrection. >> this will be my last term as republican leader of the senate. [applause] >> it is not how old we are about how old the ideas. >> list is bring people together. >> without presidential immunity there could be no presidency as we know it. >> the republican-led house will not be jammed or forced to pass a foreign aid bill. >> i think providing legal leg -- aid is important.

>> the bill is passed. >> declaring the office of speaker of the house representative to be vacant. [booing] >> 359-40 three with seven answering present. >> hopefully this is the end of personality politics. >> this is being televised live on c-span. >> for the next 90 minutes we are live from a brand-new exhibition. >> welcome to the national book festival. >> what is so great is that you hit every side. >> this was a rigged, disgraceful trial. the real verdict is going to be november 5. >> we will be well served to remember the long insurance tradition that we have in this country in settling our political differences at the ballot box. >> today's decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do. >> look.

if we finally beat medicare. >> it was a bad night. >> they are trying to push me out of the race. i am staying in the race. >> take a look at what happened. >> duck. [gunfire] [chairing -- cheering] >> the most significant operational failure of the secret service in decades. ♪ >> say fight. fight. >> i proudly accept your nomination for president of the united states. >> i've decided the best way forward is to patch the -- pass the torch to a new generation. ♪ >> just over 100 days before an election, democrat party bosses forced joe biden off the ballot.

>> the right to protest but not the right to cause carriages -- chaos. >> give us the tools faster and we will finish the job faster. >> we are here today to officially nominate kamala harris. >> i accept your nomination to be president of the united states. >> do you know what that means? >> wait a minute, i am talking now if you do not mind, please. does that sound familiar? she went out -- >> never touched by a human hand. >> it certainly falls into the general definition of fascist. >> that is one good looking group. >> it is a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. i think it is called puerto rico. ♪ >> thank you for being with us

on election night. >> looked what happened -- look what happened. this will truly be the golden age of america. >> the outcome of this election is not what we wanted. >> house democrats have fallen a few seats short. >> we will raise an american first banner. >> the american people have spoken. >> politics is tough. and it is not a very nice world. but it is a nice world today and i appreciate a transition that is so smooth, it will be as smooth as it can get. >> i much appreciate it. thank you. thank you all. [end video clip] host: a look at the year that was 2024. it is open forum, taking your phone calls on any political topic that you want to talk about. this is when we let you lead the discussion. i will let you know of the few events going on in washington. there is a quick pro forma

session in the house at noon today. you can watch that here on c-span. also on c-span2, all day today a marathon of trump nominees in their own words. c-span dug into our archives to show you events featuring nominees of the incoming trump administration including education secretary mcmahon, treasury secretary scott percent and -- bessent and lee ze ldin. on c-span2, or c-span.org or the c-span now video app c-span is airing a series of interviews with departing members of congress on the hou and senate floor. tonight it is senator carper of laware, senator sinema of arizona as well as representative mooney of west virginia representative volatile no of--napolitano of

pennsylvania and cartwright of pennsylvania. that begins at 9:00 on c-span. and now your phone calls for the rest of the program. roy in texas. democrat. go ahead. caller: actually i called in on the support line for the death penalty. and they just patched me over to the open forum. so merry christmas and happy new year. i do support the death penalty and i will give you the reason why. when that person takes another person's life, he does not just affect the person's life he took. he affects everybody else's life around the person to the point of society as a whole. so when he violates those people's rights, why should that person have any? his family can still see him in prison without the death penalty. the people who lost a family member will never see that

person again. so, you need to think about these things. and in the second thing i would like to see is that i would like to ask the democratic party to do their best to work with donald trump and the republican party to grow up and quit the infighting. everyone have a great year. host: oakdale, pennsylvania. republican. go ahead. caller: hello. i am a first time caller and i listens to your previous program. i just had to call in. i read a book on questions and answers for the bible. and that was one of them. and the old testament says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. the new testament says that if anyone should take a person's life in cold-blooded murder, so shall their life be taken. and i read that and i had to call in.

thank you for taking my call. host: anne, georgia. good morning. caller: good morning. i just wanted to touch on the base of the illegal immigrants that have been coming over. and so many millions that we do not know how many. that has affected our grocery prices and taxes. and i believe it is going to be -- if we do not do something about it very soon, and get them out of here, we are going to go broke. the big fish eat the little fish. and there will not be any little fish to feed the big fish later on. host: how are illegal immigrants impacting your grocery prices? caller: i mean, it is taking

more food. the farmers even do not get treated right. they are under so many restrictions. and i mean, how much food -- i mean we are going out of food. you cannot feed the whole world. the united states cannot feed the world. a lot of us who do not even come from this country. host: is that a good thing or a bad thing that we import food? caller: a bad thing. host: this is cynthia in youngstown, ohio. democrat. good morning. caller: hello. happy holidays to you and thanks for your service. i think that one thing that we are looking at, historically, as we are kind of in the battle for the truth right now. because the effect of social

media and of podcasts, which i think play the critical role in this past election. they have blurred the lines between reality and virtual reality. we have also been you know, we have been affected by content in video games, which is hugely affected this young generation coming up. and i urge parents out there as someone who works with kids to please take breaks, get your kids off of the games for period s of time. pay attention to who they are talking to and what they are doing. that is the effect on the kids. the effects on adults is more alarming. adults should have a better filter. and adults like the woman who was just on, nothing she said was true.

immigrants do not hurt the economy. there is research to support this. they help the economy. they are brought in by corporations as a cheap group of workers. they always have been throughout our history, since the start of industrialization. even before that because they are a cheap labor force and motivated by wanting their freedom and working towards freedom. they are a great workforce and help the economy. our economy was affected by problems with the supply chain, and trying to catch up from that all caused by the pandemic. which i feel like has faded into history. nobody has talked about the ongoing effects. we wanted to move on. in the democrats have to bear -- and the democrats have to bear the responsibility. host: you said you work with children.

what line of work are you in? caller: i have been in education, ok? and then also a counselor with kids. host: you mentioned podcasts greatly influenced this election. was there specific podcasts? if so which ones? caller: kamala harris went on a show called call her daddy, which is women talking about women things but not necessarily important women's issues. it is a lot of personal issues. and it kind of toes the line between something that you would see in "cosmetology and, -- cosmopolitan" and serious issues. you are not going to get any -- many men or women who take themselves seriously to really listen to that. so she has like 3 million listeners? joe rogan has 15 million.

joe rogan -- people who listen to him looked back into his past. he has from new jersey, 5'8" and weighs 115 pounds. look at him on tv or his podcast. he looks like a big wrestler type guy. he is a completely made up formula, and that is what the republicans -- and they are not republicans anymore, they are zealots. that is what they are. and you know, he has a formula. it is about arousing people, and it is about empowerment for men. it is full of testosterone. the guys a tae kwon do champion. he -- read his history, it is very interesting.

he is an interesting person. he was in comedy and tried a lot of different things before he found this niche. host: that is cynthia in ohio. anthony, florida. independent. good morning. caller: good morning. happy holidays to you and welcome back. we did not have a treat all week. we didn't have you, pedro, gretchen, the queen of awesomeness or mimi. thank you all for the great show. the death penalty and the other issue. those who have proven to be serial murders, it is hard not to look at the death penalty for them. and then also the last thing, ken walsh is a jolly guy. it seems like his writing is one

of a great fight. i would say he has a jolly st. nick. happy holidays. host: this is danny in arkansas. democrat. good morning. caller: i was curious about if there any updates about the madison school shooting? host: i am not providing news updates as we are sitting here having a conversation but i can check or you could google? caller: ok. the one issue that i have seen that we are not divided on is school security. the question keeps popping into my head, if they cannot afford a magnetometer how much a school resource officer costs, and they all seem to dump a fortune into athletics. right there, there is a huge chunk of change. but they will not touch high school sports.

and i just cannot wrap my mind around it. if parents are listening, you go to a school board meeting and back them into a corner and be like look, the ball team costs how much? you are saying a cop or metal detector costs so much? that is where you can start to work on the problem. host: cops and metal detectors in high schools i'm assuming, yes? caller: say again? host: cops and metal detectors in every high school? caller: there should be. host: what about middle and elementary schools? caller: i am for that also. i mean it is a general school budget, my understanding. host: preschools? caller: i think all public schools, yes. i think they should all do that. i mean as a homeowner, the

majority of your property taxes go to the school district. so homeowners should have a say in this. it is like my taxes are so high because so much goes to the school. this is where i think you appropriate money, not for a football or basketball team. school security. back in my day, it was a joke of some fool phoned in a bomb threat. i had one kid -- they are talking about mental health and we should work on this and do that. start at the beginning. look where you are spending your budgetary money and put it toward something useful. host: allen also in the natural state. independent. go ahead. caller: i noticed that, two arkansas callers in a row. happy to hear that everyone and

especially to you, john. i know you have recognized my call, it has come in before. that has surprised me. but i have a compliment and a criticism if you will allow me. host: sure. caller: first, on your hosting, truly, you are i think the word is grace. that you extended to the caller in that previous half hour who had an issue that he described and you went to the extra effort to welcome him and it was really impressive. and you have done that several times to callers. so, my compliments to you on that. and so i wanted to get to george washington for a different issue. i am talking about ukraine as you have called in before. host: i know you have.

caller: thank you. about george washington, since you guys -- i am a retired history teacher as i mentioned before and i love george washington and all of the examples that he set. and so, i would assign students one assignment to read the abuses listed in the declaration of independence. there are about 29 by my count. and i would ask them to select the worst abuse of those 29. and the other was to assign george washington's list of his rules of civility that he lived by. he memorized them all and live by them. and my suggestion is that i wish you guys would list one of those abuses each day and one of those rules of civility that he lived by, just list one each day and give him credit since you use

his name, rightly so. and the capital behind you, which he laid the first foundation stone on. and he set the example. my criticism is the division of republican and democrat calling. that is so against his -- he said no, stop the party divisions. and that is why he instituted the rule which we went by early on that the most votes elects the president and the next most votes elects the vice president. i would just ask everyone to imagine right now donald trump president and the democratic candidate would be the vice president. and think about the other elections having the most votes elects the president and the next most elect the vice president. and people would be satisfied with that. you would not have this party

division. and of course the parties took over, which are profit and -- profit oriented organizations. and we have allowed these political parties to divide our country. george washington said do not do that. so i ask you, please stop the party selection, republican, democrat staff. and just make it regional. there is age, marital status. host: we do do that on occasion. sometimes with the big political issues on capitol hill, it helps people get some information about the background or what they identify with. i appreciate the thought. i am running short on time. you talked about the abuses and usurpations listed in the declaration of independence.

you asked of the worst one was, what was the worst one? caller: thank you for staying on to ask that because i completely forgot that was the point i was wanting to make. host: which of the 27 would you pick. caller: it is so stunning and it is absolutely stunning. it says i pulled it. it says, referring to the king of england, get this. "he has excited domestic insurrections among us, causing riots among us in other words," and he has endeavored to bring on the same insurrection from foreigners to come in against us. and that he has incited our

native citizens to war against us. and list those on board ships he had taken captive on the high seas, he says "were forced to become the executioners of their own citizens," in other words shooting other ships leaving sure "or did i by their own hands." that phrase right there. otherwise they jumped overboard rather than to shoot fellow americans, the citizens at the english took captive jumped overboard. rather than fire upon their own fellow americans. that one abuse right there tells the history of our revolution. and george washington was reminding us all to remember that. and to keep our unity in the

country. so, please, just stop the party division. which he said do not do party division. host: we appreciate it. thank you and we enjoyed talking to you from arkansas and we will talk again in 2025. sterling, illinois. republican. good morning. caller: good morning and how are you? host: doing well. caller: i wish you well in all of the good work. i just had a comments. i recently caught they were talking about some of the cuts that they wanted to make to save all of this money. they wanted to cut the grant system completely, not partially. and yet they speak about recruiting engineers and others from other countries because we do not have the people. and trump was on a news program speaking that anyone who had to

come here to get even a two year college degree or further educational degree in the country should get an automatic green card. they are talking about how we are depleted, and i guess it is in the higher learning people, and yet at the same time, they want to cut any facilitation that is going to help them complete that endeavor that we all need. as this country does lack in its higher education graduates. also, if you are saying that we are going to open the door to have an immigrant, and take these higher educational jobs or come here and get educated for these jobs, why not give our students the same chance? one of my sons is in computer science and the other one is in -- wants to be a teacher. i am a retired electrician by

trade, and yet i am barely able to afford with the help of pell grants and the scholarships and they are both 4.0 students to put them through college. it is very difficult. they do not use housing. they drive an hour away. but i do not understand it. and why they are talking through and i mean no insults by this, but both sides of their mouth. if we are going to be lacking in higher education, let's facilitated and make it easier. especially for the students who have worked hard. they come out of high school with straight a's. these boys are my sons, but i do have some bias. host: with all of those efforts to cut the cost of college, how much do you estimate your boys will be graduating college. how much debt do you think they will have? caller: because i believe we

approached this in a very systematic way and sticking to the plan, we may have what is considered a very low relative for both of them around 25,000. you know it is probably one of the lowest student debts that you will come out with. host: $25,000 for each one or total? caller: for each one. that is if everything goes well and they do not caught -- cut pell funding. caller: and -- host: and if the funding goes that you use, what does the cost become? have you calculated that out? caller: at about 7500 per year. so it would be about 7500 times six years, staying in curriculum getting their degree within the i guess what would be six years. host: so more than double the debt if the pell grant system goes. caller: absolutely.

and there are a lot of students like them that are starving for that education to be a productive member of this society, contributing to the higher learning areas that we need. i commend them and respect them very much. today it is very difficult. i heard one of your callers talking about the division. first of all, a book published in barnes & noble and it is about treating each other right and getting rid of the division and not paying attention to party affiliations. treating the other like the brother. it is not doing that well because as far as books go, it seems like we are the last surviving bastion of people who read, who might be interested in such knowledge. host: if you write a book, you always have to mention the book's title. what is it? caller: it is called "jesus saves."

my writer's name is st. nee. it is on barnes & noble, amazon, walmart, target, paperback, hardback. like i said, it is not even about religion even though the name says that, but it's about faith, faith in each other, treating each other right. i thank god for people such as yourself because we have a mutual endeavor, to get the word out there, see what people really think. the mind of america. i bless you for doing your job, and you do it well. host: santos in sterling, illinois. i will call her in the washington journal this morning. we will be back tomorrow morning, 7:00 eastern, 4:00 a.m. pacific. in the meantime, have a great friday. [captioning performed by the

national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more including sparklight. >> what is great internet? is it strong, is it fast? is it reliable? at sparklight, we know connection goes way beyond technology. from monday morning meetings to friday nights with friends and everything in between. because the best connections are always there right when you need them. so how do you know it is great internet? because it works. we are sparklight, and we are

always working for you. >> sparklight supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> the decision really came when he came and called the special prosecutor. he asked him, how long can mix and this out in the courts? he told him, 3d, maybe five years. at that point, dad just said enough is enough. we cannot drag this country down for the next three or four or five years. we have to move on. america has to rise up. we have to leave nixon behind. legally he was the only person that could do it. >> all this week, we've been shown to encore presentations of our weekly interview program q&a. tonight, we conclude the marathon with behind-the-scenes look at gerald ford's presidency from the perspective of his son, stephen ford.

mr. ford details what it was like when president nixon resigned from office in 1970 four when gerald ford was subsequently sworn in as the 38th president of the united states, and his father's decision to pardon richard nixon. watch at 7:00 eastern on c-span, c-span now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. host: good morning, friday, december 27, 2024. a three hour washington journal is ahead of we begin with the topic of the death penalty. presented by the converted 37 peoples punishment to life in prison. we begin by getting your view on the use of the death penalty in america. we are doing so on phone lines exclude this way. if you support the death penalty, (202)-748-8000. if you oppose the use of the

death penalty, (202)-748-8001. if you are unsure, (202)-748-8002. you can also send a text, (202)-748-8003. if you do, include your name and where you are from. otherwise, catch up on social media, on x at @cspanwj, on facebook, facebook.com/c-span. good friday morning. go ahead and start calling in. this was the headline for monday by the associated press, president biden gives life in prison to 37 death row inmates before trump can resume execution. this was the statement president biden took out. he says, make no mistake, i condemn ese murderers and acre all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss, but guided by my consciencend experience of

a public defender, chairman of e judiciary committee, i know vice president, we are more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. in good conscience, i cannot let the new administration resume executions that i halted. this is what president-elect said on truth social, i will direct the justice department to regularly pursuit the death penalty to protect american families and children from violent rapists, murderers and monsters. we will be a nation of law and order again, promised the president-elect. that moved by president joe biden led to this special on the washington journal asking for your view of the death penalty. phone lines if you supported, if you are not sure, that is ok, too. we would like to hear from you.

mark is first out of oklahoma on the line for those who support the use of the death penalty. good morning. caller: yes or. -- yes sir. i believe in the death penalty to those people who have committed horrible crimes, that you are going to be held accountable for what you did. and if we keep putting people on death row, hey [indiscernible] i have run into people where that is their attitude. host: you think this will lead to more violent crime? caller: i think we are already seeing it. a lady burned on the subway in new york city. the guy who shot the ceo of the insurance