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host: this is "washington journal" for sunday, march american trust and the mass media is at its lowest point in more than five decades with a number of recent polling respondents saying they have no trust at all in the media outnumbering those who said they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust. to start this program we want to hear your view of the news media. here are the (202) 748-8000 lines. democrats (202) 748-8000,. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. you can text your comments to (202) 748-8003. be sure to include your name and city. you can also post a question or comment on facebook at facebook.com/c-span or on x @ c-spanwj. good morning and thank you for being with us today. we will get to your calls and comments in just a few moments of first we wanted to give you

more information about that gallop polling from the gallup. americans continue to register at record low trust in the mass media with 30 1% expressing a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the media to report the news fully, fairly and accurately. that is similar to last year 32%. american trust and the media such as newspapers, television and radio first fell to 32% in 2016 and did so again last year. for the third consecutive year more u.s. adults have no trust at all in the media, 36%, and another 33% of americans say not very much confidence. and in addition to that mainly looking at national news polling doing some data as well and something that they found is that a majority of both parties,

democrats and republicans say that local media in the area is doing their job well, while republicans and gop-leaning independents are slightly less positive than democrats and democratic leaders of their opinion of local media. views of local news don't have the same start political the five that exist within american opinion about national media. it was this week during an event hosted by a summit discussing public trust in the news. it was jim brady, the journalism vice president talking about why the trust in local news is higher than national news. >> why do you think the local news trust is significantly higher, double or even triple some of the numbers on the national level? >> i think because you are reporting about things people

know about and care about. one of the things we didn't do very well for a long time from the newspaper world, i think even when the business of local journalism is really good, the newspaper business specifically, i don't think that resonates deeply with our audiences. i think the margins are so good that we could cover whatever we wanted and what the audience wanted is not necessarily something top of mind. i think that's changed a lot in the digital era with the business model has gone from advertising to a much more subscription model. and good luck building a viable membership or subscription number at the audience doesn't get asked what it is they want directly, a way to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction. i think there's much more of a sense that local news organizations, especially the ones in the last 15, 20 years star but the idea that we need to give consumers what they want. which i don't think we did very

well for a long time. there's an interesting newspaper publisher last year that made a point that said you know when you get 100 high school football scores right every day in the paper, people tend to believe the stuff you put in there about government and transportation and other things immediately. i thought that was an interesting way of looking at it. if people can verify you are getting things right because they are about the people being covered. host: for this first hour we are asking your view of the news media. democrats, (202) 748-8000. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independents, (202) 748-8002. we will start with kurt in anaheim, california, republican. kurt, are you there? caller: morning. host: hi kurt.

caller: how are you? host: doing well, you are on the air, go ahead. caller: so what would you like to talk about? host: we will go on to marvin. marvin is in philadelphia, line for democrats. caller: i think local news is better. the national news started becoming -- i can't pronounce it. that means it is about money. they make money off of news. i think ever since obama, obama being the first black president, it just seemed like every day the national news, they try to make money off of news. i don't trust what they say. i trust c-span because people call about their point of view and i can come up with my point of view.

fox news is for republicans and trump supporters, and nbc this more for democrats and people against trump. i think it is all about the money. it has all become market-ized and i don't the trust national news. i'm an older gentleman and i don't trust the national news. you can get the information that is necessary and come up with a better conclusion. that's why i think that the election went the way that it did, because people don't know the truth. hello? host: yes, go ahead. caller: yeah, that's what i came up with. if they would have known the truth or had a better understanding of what trump was pretending to do with the government and everything like that, people might have voted differently.

people are not educated in the news is supposed to get them educated. and i wish the national news would start doing their job. start telling them to make money off of the news. host: should eat -- philipe, independents. caller: it's actually phillipe. host: sorry about that. caller: it happens a million times, no big deal. here's the situation. our journalism is privately held by advertisers, always has been and always will be. if anyone wants a lesson on that, go back to citizen kane. excellent examination journalism.

journalism has its standards but they are beholden. where we are at today, we are so divided it is unlike any other time before. look and see who advertises on fox. snake oil and stuff like that, it is nonsense. then you have cnn which has always been the open for left-wing type of stuff, and they have to filter what is going on and that is unfortunate. they are very reliable sources of information that do not have a spin to it. we lived in a society that is not able to accept the answer "i don't know." they look at saying that as a position of weakness. i think it is a position of honesty to say i don't know something, let me get back to you.

i don't want your truth, i want facts and facts alone. it is ridiculous. i will say this again, i've never been so embarrassed in my life to be where we are at. the way the president of ukraine was treated in our home is just unacceptable. and we should have a countdown to when this is over. when these people are gone. that is what i hope for. thank you for your time, have a lovely day. host: mary, fort washington, maryland, line for democrats. caller: good morning, how are you doing, washington journal folks? the news media has never told the truth for the last 30 years. they will not tell the truth to the people about foreign policy this country.

if they did, the answer so everybody would be totally different. cnn, they spin headlines. msnbc, oh my god, terrible. spin headlines. and they just get their panels on there and all you get is their opinion. all we want is the truth which comes from facts. they are not telling the truth about the proxy war. if they did, we wouldn't be so upset about how -- is stealing. why would anybody support anymore wars? we want young generations to continue to live. there's nobody else in ukraine to fight. they are dragging people out of their homes. they are using pregnant women. the war was lost three years ago but the media didn't tell us that. so i don't have any faith in this media ever, especially as a black person. i get my media news 89.3 fm jazz and justice.

i used to listen to sputnik coast before it was terminated because of the people who on the network. all of the networks are owned by oligarchs, and every news channel is owned by the corporations. so do you expect us to get the truth from these corporations who stepped forward to take over this country right now? i don't know about this country. i don't even want to be here, especially with the person that is supposed to be the president. this is a joke. host: philadelphia, line for republicans. go ahead. caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. context for what we are discussing today with the news media, i would say my general emotions are negative. i think that we watched in

real-time a great deal of our country fall victim to disinformation, feedback loops, what happened in the oval office the other day. this so-called left-leaning legacy media has largely failed to make mention of the fact that president trump was successfully impeached, albeit not removed from office for his behavior with president zelenskyy in the past. and almost certainly what happened was prearranged. it's almost impossible to feel like it was not. a great deal of the despair that we are experiencing right now and the paranoia is by design. for example, a reporter from the russian state media that was present during the meeting and was later escorted out, the amount of screening that members of the press are subject to

makes that impossible. and i would argue that people are in a very vulnerable place right now. the knee-jerk reaction is that they need to feel trust for something. as a republican, many of my colleagues, countrymen, whatever you would say here have fallen victim starting with fox news and persisting to increasingly splintered and manic channels that mostly peddle disinformation talking points. that includes the vice president himself who if you saw the escalation of that argument, it's because he was unable to give a good answer to the president of ukraine when he was asked a very direct question which he should have been able to answer. and i think that it is fair for people to be frustrated and confused by what is going on. you're expected to keep up constantly with their frantic internal logic that doesn't --

only makes sense to people who have taken the red pill, so to speak. i think that there is an opportunity here as we move forward for people to remember that we do not live in xi' chinas or castro's cuba. we still live in the united states. our elected officials and the people up there are still not going to be killed or jailed for standing up and speaking truth to power. they still have the opportunity to do the right thing, and i pray that they do so. i think there is an opportunity for people to get together and actually force the issue of leaning things back towards a fact-based reality. we live in a very dire situation where the conditions are such that rupert murdoch's wall street journal is at odds with the president of the united states of america, that they are less conservative than the leader of the free world.

currently live in a totally insulated bubble where he is largely fed disinformation by people who are compromised i foreign power. host: that was ed in philadelphia. a partisan breakdown of the recent polling looking at confidence in the mass media, the blue line that ucf atop, that is democrats. it is a 54%. the gray dotted line is independents, that is 27%. the bottom number, the red, 12%. just 12% of republicans and a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the media. it was during last week's event looking at restoring trust in news that npr's ceo was asked about accusations of the outlet being too liberal. here is her response. >> one corporate teak, one i

think you're probably pretty familiar with is that npr is too liberal. kind of a cliche. what would you point to right now in your programming that disproves that? >> our newscast, our morning show. the 10 million people who listen every single week, the fact that we are in every part of the country and have millions of listeners in every state, red, blue or otherwise. in terms of the programming, our broadcast programming i would say is very much downline and focuses on bringing folks on who are making the news every single day and asking them the questions that matter. we don't do opinion programming unlike other parts of folks that we had on so far today, and i think that is a pretty big difference. >> so why do you think that view? i listen to morning edition, all things considered. i know plenty of the people who

work on them. these are often quite rigorously , very, very objective in the traditional journalistic sense. why do you think the people that have that viewpoint? >> i was a couple different things. public radio is public radio. not everything you hear on public radio is npr. you may hear things are appropriate to the local community. you are going to hear something very different than you are going to here in san francisco which has a totally different audience that is trying to serve. public radio has a different tone and that is part of what makes it really special. the local communities determine what they program, they choose was the program. not even all public radio programs npr. that is often summing that we here and something we really have to advocate for what it is that we do and explain what we do. i think we have to show what we do. it is a really important piece of how we think about trust and part of that is also articulating you actually listen

to our coverage, tell me what it is you are hearing that you think is a problem. host: taking your call for getting your comment on what you think about the news media. this tweet, or sorry, this text from harry in pennsylvania, "i'm a registered professional engineer. if i needed thorough, timely accurate information or data i would never use the american midi industry or its cohorts. awful doesn't describe it. it's 2025 and it is still tabloid usa." let's hear from rob in new y orik, independents. caller: here is why i don't trust the media. here's some stories that you've not heard in the media. since elon musk got into this thing and he got into usaid, it turns out usaid is paying for 6200 journalists, 770 news outlets. jamie raskin's company took $160

million of usaid money just in 2023 alone. sheldon whitehouse's wife got $12 million from usaid money because she has some kind of ocean research company that is just a fraud. they gave $2 billion from climate money to that woman in georgia who ran for governor, stacey abrams. $2 billion. and here's another crazy thing you are not going to hear on the news. our government said fema had no money for those people in hawaii when they were burned out. they didn't have any money for the people in ohio. they didn't have any money for hurricane victims in florida or north carolina but in the time that those things were going on they handed out one $1 billion to illegal aliens, including the roosevelt hotel which is owned by the pakistani government. i have no faith in the media. alec soros and his father just

bought hundreds of radio stations, and c-span, you guys are about ready to put a traitor on the air at 9:00, alexander vindman. he leaked trump's phone call to zelenskyy when trump was trying to find out why all those millions flowed in to the biden family pockets. host: you said you don't trust the news media, but you work talking about people who are getting paid. where did you get that information from? caller: i do my own research and i'm not going to tell you where because i don't want those sites to be knocked off-line as soon as i get off the phone and our government has the opportunity to do that, and they've done it before. our government is not working for us. there working against us. and the other thing the media has been lying about lately is how russia invaded ukraine. well, russia did not invade ukraine for eight years. the u.n. state department was

recorded in a phone call where she said we want the guy, f the e.u. and by the way, zelenskyy only received 72 billion dollars. so there's 105 billion dollars of equipment running around here, where is it? and why won't the media talk about that? host: you were talking about stacey abrams. i wanted to share something with political fact. they looked into this and they are saying that there is no evidence that abrams was a senior counsel one of the five member organizations of the clean energy coalition that received $2 billion in funding from bidens epa. abrams was not paid by communities and did not receive any federal funds, its ceo said. the epa said it is awarded a grant for a competitor view process. there is no funding that evidence the fun was fraudulent or that abrams personally

benefited from it. power forward communities recently announced the first face of projects granted by the grant. they rate that's three false. caller: political fact? they are garbage. politifact, you guys have got to quit using these for your source, good god. they are lying to you every day and you keep -- forget it, i'm done. have a good day. host: that was robbed in new york. gary in new york, line for democrats. caller: hello? how you doing? host: doing well. caller: i just thought i'd call. definitely a democrat. my honest opinion, all those felonies trump has had, he should definitely be put in jail. republicans are all afraid of him. they should impeach him, i think. i don't think you should even be a garbage person. honestly, even my son voted for

trump and i couldn't believe he did. honestly he should have been put in jail. the president of ukraine when they were talking on the news, that was ridiculous. what they did to him and what it made the united states look like compared to other countries, and he is supposedly the president. honestly should be president. host: this headline from the outlet "the conversation." white house spat ignites fears for press freedom in second trump era. a federal judge will shortly decide if the u.s. president is allowed to dictate the terms of service of the associated press, the u.s. wire agency that proudly proclaims it is read by 4 billion people every day.

it was last week during the event about trusted media that bret baier of fox news was asked about the white house blocking access to the associated press. >> what do you make of the big controversy of the white house decision to block the ap access specifically, because they won't say gulf of america and also to sort of make the plate to take control of the pool? what do you make of that? >> you support the white house correspondents association, we always have. not just the organizing of the pool, big scholarships, all kinds of things. this is a reordering. we will see how it shakes out for the tv side. the five tv networks are going to still do the same job. i worry about setting precedent

that changes things down the road and maybe they don't realize the implications. i think that they are talking about more transparency. you can't argue that this white house isn't answering questions and opening up. i think he sent 1100 questions in the first month. >> i saw you report that, a power struggle. do you think the media ought to have control openly over who gets sent to follow him around? >> we stood by the ap, we stood by not blocking somebody for editorial decisions. i've stood up for cnn. people have stood up for fox. >> i guess the concern is to make it explicit. >> it would have been different times. it would set precedent.

i think it is something that you have to be concerned about. >> i've always admired fox's stance. there have been a bunch of these controversies and fox has some degree in ways the audience might not love fought for these kind of micro-prerogatives any white house that you have consequences. >> telling the story about that is not something people care about in middle america. >> i watch the show, this is not a thing you talk about. >> it's very processed, it is very washington. >> it's very boring. are you worried that your audience with the upset? >> it was a bigger story. if somebody cared about how the white house press pool is going to operate. russ, it is very processed. it is big here in washington and i did it on social media. but it is very processy for anybody watching. host: on the same topic, this is

the headline in the opinion section of the new york times. trump loves free speech only when it is his. the opinion by the editorial board says over the past month, mr. trump and his allies have embarked on an expansive crackdown on free expression and disfavored speakers they should be decried not just as hypocritical, but also as un-american and unconstitutional. in the distorted view of the trump administration, protecting free speech requires controlling free speech. banning words, phrases and ideas that challenge or complicate government-favorite speech, officials in washington have spent the past month stripping federal websites of any hint of unfavorable words and thoughts, disciplining news organizations that refuse to parent the president's language and threatening to punish those who have voiced criticism of the investigations or prosecutions. the orwellian nature of this approach is deliberate and dangerous.

this posture is not an app protecting free speech, it is about prioritizing far-right ideology and at times celebrating lies and hate speech under the guise of preventing the criminalization of language while trying to silence independent thought, inconvenient truths, and voices of distance. it goes on to say the current administration may argue that the steps are simply setbacks for an american payback for an american political left that can be rightly criticized for policing speech in recent years, from trying to shut or shout down conservative speakers, trying to enforce it is adhering to its own list of acceptable words and phrases like pregnant people, the un-housed, incarcerated individuals and latinx. the trump administrations early and furious reaction to criticisms of pungent beach isn't just guilty of the same sends, expands on them, worryingly with the powers of the state. if the movement were really

confident about the american public stood firmly behind the new intolerance, then why not welcome serious reporting or even the jeers of critics and let the best ideas win? we will talk with sue in michigan, line for republicans, good morning. caller: good morning. so you have two things going on here. you have an issue with propaganda. in 2012, obama signed the national defense authorization act, which allowed propaganda to be spoken by all of our news media. they all do it. they can live to the american people. this was a political act that allowed it. you certainly remember it,

c-span. fair and balanced, that idea. equal time. that does not exist anymore. they can lie, lie, lie. and then you have the ownership thanks to the tele-communications act. you should be able to talk about that at c-span because we go back that far. that was bill clinton, and bill clinton made sure that the public airwaves were given over to private interests, and now we have six big corporate entities and they are not owned by the irish. yes you owned them and guess what kind of propaganda we are getting behind the scenes? say you want to do the history here. these people are all from vested interest right now, and it is an antitrust issue because we cannot get the facts. all we are getting his opinions and propaganda. you should becoming truth of the people. c-span, totally corporatized.

did not used to be. you are not honest, thank you. host: sue in michigan, boston, massachusetts. life are independents. caller: national news and local news, i am a news junkie. president zelenskyy in ukraine and donald and vice president jd vance had about what is going on. the news media is letting people know what is happening in the world. how we could lead to world war iii. i appreciate that. i grew up on cnn. i joke with my friends, i say i watch cnn, i watch fox news just to get the truth.

but i watch fox news because they are more honest. we need a change in america. donald trump's job was to make america great. i mean, the news media is covering that because they want cheap labor. what about the economy? people won't work for that kind of a job no more. donald trump is going to change america forever, change the world for the better. you can't provoke russia. the news media is on ukraine's side. that is what is wrong, they aren't giving the truth. i voted for president donald trump, i think he is a great man.

i don't care if i'm right or wrong. sudan is fighting a civil war since i was a boy in high school in 1981. host: homer in kansas city, missouri, line for democrats. caller: good morning, c-span. thank you very much for what you do. i wish i had a dollar for every independent caller who called in as a trump supporter. anyway, let's get back to the fairness doctrine under the reagan administration which is where it's basically advertising for pharmaceutical companies. star speak -- all the am radio stations, rush limbaugh, nobody was held accountable. and fox news, which should be faux news, paid $700 billion for

their lives. but when you have a president who just in front of everybody says that we've given $360 billion to ukraine when it is only 178 the most, they continually spout lies and we know this. you can't trust your president, but they do. and it is just amazing. we are going from eisenhower to reagan, all of these guys have got to be spinning in their graves. it was a complete embarrassment. it's an embarrassment the way this man puts himself in front of the world every day. and i still can't believe people supported this man and put him

in office. it's a disgrace, he's a disgrace on our country. and hopefully people rise up and we do get some leadership. klobuchar should have been the vice presidential pick, and biden should have stepped down in 2023. this is just ridiculous. host: wisconsin, line for republicans, good morning. caller: good morning. there was a guy earlier on the republican line giving you a bunch of stories. that was awesome because he's right. you guys don't even talk about that stuff. i will put on cnn, i will put on msnbc, and any time when i get home from work and trump's answering questions from the media in the oval office or something, msnbc is the only one

not airing it. so how is that giving their viewers a true insight on what is actually being talked about? so these people on the left that all they want to do is bash trump and you guys are included in this. earlier this week a call tried to tell you that you guys are spreading a left-wing narrative, and you are. because i don't hear you ever, rarely does washington journal actually use newsmax or fox as a reference. every paper in front of the is a left-leaning paper. and nobody trusts those people. so until you guys kind of get back to what you should be and the fair and balanced, we are not going to get the answers that we want out of you. host: that was chaz in wisconsin.

john in ohio, line for independents. caller: i agree the media is corrupt and controlled by the six biggest corporations syndicated and controlled in this country and they are right wing. and there's the 1500 radio stations, am radio stations that are right wing. and they constantly call the democrats falsely liberal, leftist, martius -- marxist, socialist or communist. a return back to the mccarthy experienc. that is all that we get is the right wing, pro-republican ideas and the right wing pro-democrat on the most important issues, foreign policy and war, subversion of countries around the world. they are both the same. and people have been completely deluded into thinking that they

are smart by choosing one or the other. fox or cnn, cnn or msnbc or fox. but i think you've got to go beyond that. it is exactly the elements that are centered totally by the media that have equated people in all fields who are censored, and such as global research, and the gray zone. these are completely censored and blacklisted and lied about. but i think if you look at the tendency to justify that war in ukraine, and earlier caller

talked about how the united states government spent $5 billion overthrowing the democratically elected, pro-russian government in 2014 under biden and obama, and they are still having the same kind of lies at this point. the attempt by all of the media to demonize any country that disobeys what the crooks and liars in washington say, and i'm going to put together an article , a search phrase of my own. cia controls the media to demonize countries for u.s. attacks against them. host: that was john. he was talking about media regulations, that was a topic that was discussed during last week's summit.

it was discussed by sec chair brandon carr. here is that clip. >> for people who care about free expression, just the typical long-standing american views that are vastly the biggest threat is the government, is you. and you wrote in 2021 decision about what stories to cover, freedom should be beyond the reach of any government official. has your view on that changed now that you are in power? >> what i said is that the greatest threat that we've seen over the last several years really has come from large social media companies that have amassed incredible amounts of power. social media companies got more power over more speech than any institution in history. we saw them discriminating against viewpoints, and the government was involved. particularly the biden initiations pressuring social media companies to shut down political speech, and mark zuckerberg put out a letter sort of saying we felt pressured to

do that. my position is we want more speech, not less. >> but you're not a cable news commentator, you are a government official. you can threaten companies, you can impact their businesses. seems like you no longer think the government is the center of speech now that you're in the government. >> president trump issued an executive order to stop government officials from calling into social media companies and asking them to take down posts. >> like you do on twitter. >> give got social media companies on the one hand and again, licensed broadcasters on the other. if people don't want to have the public interest obligations, my job is to enforce it. if you're going to have a license to be a broadcaster it comes with something called you have to serve others. if you don't want to do that, that's ok. i will give you the address of the fcc. you are free to turn your license in and go podcast and go over the top. but as long as congress says you

have unique access to valuable spectrum, we can find something to do with that spectrum. >> it's terrifying. i live on the internet. host: asking your views of the news media, let's hear from tom in arizona, line for democrats. good morning. caller: hello? hi, how are you doing? host: doing well, go ahead. caller: i've been listening to some of these people about fox news. if they are such a good organization why were they fined 800-some million dollars for the lies that they spread about the voting machines in the 2020 election? the problem i have with the news media right now is they are not asking the hard questions of the republicans in power in the house and senate.

and more of these people seem to think they can get by and follow donald trump and all his lies. is there anybody in the republican party was got the guts to stand up to him? i mean, if they don't, they need to get a new job, because they don't deserve to be in the house and the senate. where is there courage? they are like a bunch of sheep, and they make me sick. i mean trump couldn't have done the stuff he did if he didn't have the backing of the house and the senate, and they got rid of the other ones who did stand up to him. this is a sad state of affairs. host: that is, in arizona. brian in salt lake city, utah. republican. caller: good morning.

let me start this off. the truth has no agenda. the truth is the truth. cnn, msnbc, that is all they do is lie down there. everybody says trump is a liar, that is just all bullcrap. usaid, samantha power's room and back. all americans are mostly like homer simpson. that is what they think of us. and here they are spewing all these lies. samantha powers needs to be arrested. that usaid, that is all kinds of waste money. abrams, that guy was talking about, he was point on. the truth has no agenda. speak the truth. it will save our country because we are going down. zelenskyy, that was barack obama.

socialism. that is barack obama, brought up in socialism. his whole family was that. and then you've got to get everybody on welfare, you've got to get everybody getting money. that is exactly what o-biden has done. i call him uh o-biden because obama was running the country. host: joseph, line for independents. caller: thank you for taking my call. i'm an independent and let me just explain how i got there. it's you can't believe the left and you can't believe the right, particularly on television or social media. and what i did was i would listen and i bet everyone listening would try to do this because it's very difficult to change people's views, is watch

a right-wing television or social media and then turn around and watch the left. and somewhere, there is the truth. i became independent because you see different views. and both of them are extreme to the left or extreme to the right, nowhere in the middle. the only one i could find closest to the middle is your station. the older people watch television. so we had a tale of two cities here. we had the older generations watching the legacy stations, and now we have the younger people who pick up their news on social media, which is even worse. it's very difficult to filter it. it's my mother was a widow with five children at the age of 34.

we were on the welfare system, ok. we all had cleaned -- clean clothes, we all and the college because we had a strong mother. there was a lot of abuse in the welfare system, i agree. you look at the republicans, they are lining their pockets. so somewhere i just ask everybody to watch both stations. don't just keep your views because the only way america is going to get better is if the independents take control of this. and the only way to be independent is to be educated. host: mary adelphia, good morning. caller: good morning, c-span. people need to realize we cannot rely solely on the media. i'm a retired government worker. all this information is supposed

to be listed in every city and state. basically what they have been doing with our tax dollars. we should not be $37 trillion in debt. we have been funding the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror for almost 60 years now. and we have no idea that we have been funding these organizations, these nonprofits, and it's very difficult to find out exactly what they've been doing with our money. the cities and the states are required by law to post a semiannual report and annual report, exactly what happened to our tax dollars. host: we will go on to tom in

indiana, line for republicans. caller: good morning. most republicans: and they want to badmouth you and stuff but i just wanted to congratulate you because you went from 20% support of the democratic agenda to now you're up to like 50%. 50 callers to one. wow. you are horrible and you don't even see it yourself. so there you go, that's all i've got to say. host: that was tom in indiana. let's go to juliet in rockport, massachusetts, line for independents. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call. so i was fortunate enough to watch the conference last evening as c-span aired it and i was fascinated, it was such a

gathering of media titans. not all, but some. interesting enough, megyn kelly was a guest and she said that her show -- she's a former fox news host, as you know, and her show has more viewers at any given time than any of the top brass in the network news on cable tv. what she said is that when she worked for fox news, she never would have been able to join trump at madison square garden. she was a guest speaker. she never would have been able to do that had she still been on fox. in addition, the ceo of global cnn. now, global cnn sort of caught my eye because you think cnn is just out of new york and south carolina. i think there is another satellite office.

she was saying that it's all about the branding because cnn has been hemorrhaging viewership. look what happened to jim acosta. he was told to go until midnight and he said forget you, now he has his own podcast and i'm not really sure, i think he's with one of the titans on the internet. and he has more viewers there they he did on cnn. so talk about branding. the cnn brand has been decimated because of the lies that they've spewed during the 2016 election. look at jake tapper's book. he's just come out with a book stating that he knew biden was mentally unfit to run for president even early on in his presidency. and then there's another person,

the ceo of cnn. i'm sorry, npr. i love npr in the morning and i'm a foxed person at night, and i read sputnik international, which sputnik international is a russian-based media company, but they have broadband licensing out of washington, d.c. there's some really interesting news reporting. mostly they report on military awards, etc. and one more quick thing about npr, they are being investigated right now by the federal communications commission. they are funded by the taxpayer, but their news reporting sounds more like advertising, which is kind of interesting. i listen to npr a lot, there is

another one, a financial one in the evening. in any event, it is quite interesting. and one more fact, thank you for giving me so much time, that 22% approval rating in the media is not written in stone. one of the guests last night said it is 8% that people believe that the media is honest. so that is 92% of our citizens. host: juliet in massachusetts. she was talking about semaphore summit, the trust in media summit that we thin showing you clips from this morning. if you'd like to watch the event in its entirety or a back and look at specific clips, you can find it on our website. just about five minutes left. jerry in new jersey, line for republicans. good morning. caller: good morning. i was just wondering, i'm a

critical care registered nurse, and for four years the media said biden was sharp as a tack, biden could do rings around you. he could do all sorts of things. but i got blocked from youtube and facebook because i said he showed signs of dementia. now, didn't the left cover everything for four years and they all said biden had no dementia until we all saw it. and then i was just wondering also, we watched biden when he would talk to the press. he had five people, he had their names, he had their questions and he had their answers. it was just five people. i don't know how you can say that the right is lying and

restricting. zuckerberg even said the fbi controlled the narrative for four years and blocked me, they blocked me and hundreds of republicans. now, they loved mosque -- musk until he bought twitter and now he's getting death threats. so why don't you ever have the new york post or the epic news or anything that is more balanced than the far left newspapers? because you are part of the problem, are you? host: let's hear from tony in iowa, line for democrats. good morning. caller: i think i've got a real simple solution to the ukraine russia war. host: we are talking about your view of the news media. caller: oh.

well, i think that it has been four long years of censorship other than that i think it is corrupt. the last four years set been the most pronounced. the last caller just kind of emphasize that, and hopefully the conservative media won't jump on board and start doing it. appreciate c-span, thank you, have a great day. host: tony in iowa. looking at the polling again of trust in local news, it is showing that a share of americans prefer to get their local news online as opposed to those getting it from tv or print. newspapers are no longer primarily consumed as a print product. the majority of readers of local daily newspapers now access them digitally. a share of u.s. adults say they are paying close attention to local news having drops in their last major survey.

that is mirroring a decline and attention to national news. let's hear from alan in minnesota, line for democrats. caller: good morning. just a couple points. a lot of the experience porters are retired, and right now we have an experienced journalist reporting news. but the big problem that i see is social media because they can say what they want, conspiracy theories, disinformation. you had callers today that if you don't play what they want to hear, they get mad at you, and i feel bad for most people.

that's all it got to say. host: and our last call is cal in georgia, line for republicans. good morning. caller: good morning, how are you today? i'd like to comment on the views of a gas the u.s. in regards to the media population. i think that the u.s. news has dropped or resulted in bias based on the fact that due to their attention and publicity stunts. somehow become less circular and is more than argumentation. so therefore, when the views are made, most callers were most viewers of today's news, they

are really confused about the modern-day views, which is actually stated much at the president is lying when he is not and then another instance of bias. a lot of information presented to the viewers is leaning towards a type of precedent and getting away from the management of news. you highlighted the majority of americans who view television news are less wear more of the population is going to online news reporting. that online news reporting seems to be more like it can be compromised by hackers, which is

also becoming a problem. i think the greatest interest of news is to remain as standard news and news reporting and don't digress into a type of fascism. that is my opinion. host: our last caller in this portion of "washington journal." next, we will be joined by syndicated columnist cal thomas. we will talk about president trump's second administration so far as well as news of the day. later, former national security counsel 4-9 fair director alexander vindman will -- foreign affairs director alexander vindman will join us to discuss his book, "the folly of realism."

♪ >> this week on the c-span networks, the house and senate are in session, the house will vote on legislation to repeal biden administration energy and environmental rules. the senate continues voting on president trump's cabinet nominations. both chambers are facing a march 14 government funding deadline. the house could begin voting on legislation to extend funding to september to avert a shutdown. tuesday, they considered the nomination of the former acting attorney general jerry president trump's first administration -- during president trump's first adnistration. wednesday, theayors of boston, chicago, denver, and new york city testify before the house oversight committee on the policies of sanctuary cities. c-span continues our coverage of

confirmation hearings for president trump's leadership nominees. on wednesday, the stanford university professor as director of the national institutes of health. on thursday, the surgical oncologist as commissioner of the fda. watch live this week on c-span now, our free mobile video app. head over to c-span.org further scheduling information or to watch live and on-demand anytime. c-span, democracy unfiltered. >> weekends bring you booktv featuring leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. here is a look at what is coming up this weekend. ross and jonathan examined the decline of religiosity and what it means for the health of american democracy.

and then, kevin fagan with a true story of homelessness and second chances reports on the underlying experiences of homelessness. he is interviewed by shaun donovan. pagan rick helps the development of a tool to collect evidence in crimes of sexual assault now known as the rape kit. find a full schedule or watch online anytime at booktv.org. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now to discuss president trump's second term and news of the day is syndicated columnist and the author of "watchman in the night," thank you so much for

being with us. guest: thank you, tammy. tell me i do not look that old. host: you do not look anywhere near that old. let's get started with the news on friday that was the oval office meeting with presidents trump and zelenskyy. give me your thoughts on that. guest: there has been a lot of speculation about it. some people think it was a set up to embarrass zelenskyy, to weaken his position, and to strengthen president trump's position in his negotiations and dealings with president putin of russia. i thought vice president vance, when he said zelenskyy had not offered a proper thanks to the united states, meaning trump, was way off base. zelenskyy has done that numerous times before congress, in numerous interviews in the united states and ukraine, and has expressed gratitude during

the biden administration and the current administration. so, i do not know what he was talking about unless he was trying to foment an argument. this whole thing about making a deal, you cannot deal with evil people on the same plane. i met with the group of ukrainian christian ministers this week in town at the same time of the dustup in the oval office. they were telling me about the russian troops and what they were doing even to children. they were kidnapping children, taking them to so-called orphanages, indoctrinating. they closed down over 700 churches in the occupied territories of ukraine except for the russian orthodox church. one of the pasto told me he knewr of a group of 140 who trieds to escape, only 12 survived. many were shot, others disappeared. it is fine to get a deal but in war you have two options, victory or defeat. stalemate is not a good one. host: president trump is only a

little over a month into his second term. what are the difference between his first term and now? guest: he has a republican congress now and a cabinet that he likes. i think the best thing for any person in power of any kind whether political or any other sort of power is to have people around you who love and support you but tell you when you are doing something wrong. i like what maureen dowd is writing this morning in the new york times, imagine me quoting the new york times. she said even though we should be used to it by now, it was still shocking to see trump parent the view of vladimir putin, a murderous tyrant who wants to swallow ukraine in a fit of nostalgia for the soviet union. trump insisted they were fellow victims. this is a kind of immoral equivalency that is not defensible. putin has said openly he wants to recover what he regards as the golden days of the soviet union. he wants to recapture estonia,

latvia, these former soviet republics. why should we not believe him? if he is allowed to claim victory in ukraine, who or what will stop him from achieving his goals? these are the big questions yet to be answered. host: you mentioned president trump's cabinet. this past week, he had his first cabinet meeting with them. what are your thoughts on his, the people he has in those positions? every one has made it through the confirmation process so far. your thoughts on who is leading the major departments? guest: i think are some very good ones. i think marco rubio is a very good pick for secretary of state. there are others where we have to see how it turns out. the proof is in the pudding, to resurrect a cliché. some of them are experienced. some of them we do not know. kash patel at the fbi, we do not

know how that will turn out. kelce gabbard, note experience in it -- tulsi gabbard, no experience in intelligence, we will see how that turns out. the big difference is now he things he has people around him who truly support his agenda pretty has said the problem with his first term in office is there were a lot of people in government trying to undermine his policies. that is another reason he has brought in elon musk and doge to get rid of these people who are not supportive and trying to jam up the system. host: our guest, cal thomas, syndicated columnist and author. he will be with us for the next 30 minutes or so. if you have a question or comment for him, you can start calling in now. wanted to talk more about president trump's actions.

he had a few weeks ago threatened tariffs on china, mexico, and canada. it was just a few days ago he announced they are going into effect despite the agreements he had come to with leaders of those countries. this is what he said on truth social. drugs are still pouring into our country from mexico and canada at very high and unacceptable levels. they are made and then supplied by china. more than 100,000 people died last year due to the distribution of these dangerous and highly addictive poisons. millions of people have died. the families are devastated and in many instances virtually destroyed, we cannot allow the scourge to continue to harm the u.s. until it stops or is seriously limited, tariffs are scheduled to go into effect on march 4.

they will indeed go into effect as scheduled. china will be charged an additional 10% on that date. the april 2 reciprocal date will remain in full force and effective. thank you for your attention on this matter, god bless america. do you think this is an effective strategy to deal with the issue of fentanyl and other illegal drugs? guest: i think the president is right that there is a lack of equality when it comes to tariffs. other nations have been ripping us off for years and we have a trade imbalance because we do not charge the kinds of tariffs they charge on our products. i read a piece in the wall street journal yesterday dealing with the volvo company that if tariffs were in place would jack the price up to $90,000 for a volvo. nice car but i do not know it is worth $90,000 which is more than you paid for a house when i was growing up.

tariffs are really a tax on people. i think prices will go up. the president said during his campaign he was going to lower prices. i understand bird flu has jacked up the prices on eggs. you cannot do this overnight. policies cannot be reversed overnight. you cannot have trickle down egg prices from washington. this is an untested area in modern times. he quotes former presidents were big on tariffs or even some of our founders, that was a different age. i think we are anymore complex economic environment. we are interdependent on other nations. if not one world government, it is in the west a one-world economy. i am a little disbelieving of whether tariffs will have a positive impact on the u.s. economy. as you say, only a little more than a month in office for this

administration. we are about to find out. host: the phone lines have lit up for you, people wanting to ask questions. frank, independent, good morning. caller: good morning, america. mr. thomas, i have a question and statement to make. i have a question for you. i believe what putin is really after is odessa, the warm weather port. tell me if i am wrong or not. i spent, five month ago, i took my grandson to eastern europe and wait come -- we went into finland, estonia, latvia, and we saw many demonstrations in public squares. my grandfather came from croatia and i have been there, not last year.

but i have seen what the russians have done firsthand. i wanted your thoughts on odessa and the ports and moldova. guest: thank you for calling. i think that is all part of putin's packet for the greater soviet union. he has spoken openly about it. this amazes me dealing with russia and the middle east dealing with hamas who openly say their goals to wipe out the jewish state, to kill jewish people, and yet there are still people like the u.k. prime minister who came to washington this past week who said the 2-state solution is the only answer. where has he been? you cannot deal with evil. evil must be destroyed. there are old testament versus that say you have to purge evil. you have to stand up against it or it will spread. if there is not a positive outcome in the war with ukraine which was started by putin with the invasion of a sovereign state, you will get more of it. it is just a fact.

you do not have to look far back in history to see this, 1938 munich, just give hitler what he wants and he will leave us alone ? he just encouraged him to go through. host: let's hear from kelly on the line for republicans. caller: good morning. mr. thomas, i have been reading you for your spread i love your stuff. i appreciate you. when you first came on, you talked about russia and ukraine, about america being involved. it scares me because i am worried about world war iii because, how did vietnam turn out, how about korea? we lost vietnam. how about korea, 50/50? how about iraq and afghanistan? we do not need to be over there pit this is between ukraine and russia. this has nothing to do with us. we do not need world war iii.

what do you think? guest: thanks for the call. you are right to some extent. the thing about war, if you are going to war, and others have talked about this, colin powell, the former secretary of state and head of the national security council in the bush 41 administration, if your are going to go to war, the only objective is victory. if you cannot guarantee victory, you should not be involved. the late jordan a governor, the former senator from south carolina -- george mcgovern, the former senator from south carolina, said we cannot be the policeman of the world. we need an articulate foreign policy. what is the role of the united states in the world? when do we get involved and when do we not? now we have meetings in london with european leaders saying, what can we do to defend ukraine? that is a great moment. it is primarily europe's problem and need to defend not only

ukraine but the rest of the continent. host: let's go to keith in denver, colorado, line for democrats. caller: good morning. i agree with you fully on russia , ukraine. one question i have and i would like for you to give it some thought is why republicans cannot connect dots. last week or this past week, prior to the meeting in the white house, trump was siding with putin and calling zelenskyy a dictator and accusing him of starting the war. you go back to the first impeachment, mr. vindman is going to be on later, american hero, and you know it stems from that impeachment when he was looking for fodder

against his political opponent holding money and weapons approved by congress. that was clearly illegal. it was a quid pro quo for political gain. if you look at the pattern of behavior of voting against with north korea and russia against our allies in condemning russia for the invasion, it is an alternate reality. how come republicans continue saying russia hoax, hoax, hoax? all we have to do is not look at these as one-off situations but a pattern of behavior. will not criticize russia.

guest: the president said this week, what good would it do if i call putin evil and all of these other words? it would not help us make a deal. there is a point to be made about that. the other part is you cannot deny what he has done. you do not have to call him names to acknowledging he ordered the invasion of a sovereign nation, ukraine. that is just a fact. you can do that without name-calling. if the deal is the ultimate objective, i think that is the wrong objective. going back to 1938 and neville chamberlain, he made a deal but it was a bad deal. you can make a good deal or a bad deal. unless you acknowledge truthfully what putin has done and what his objectives are and make him pay a price for this, it is not a good deal at all for ukraine or the united states or europe. host: let's talk about some of your recent columns. this is a headline in the washington times. democrats try constitutional crisis, but they created it.

first to blame the opposition party while enabling government overreach founders warned against. it shows a picture of chuck schumer other democrats at a rally against elon musk. you mentioned elon earlier. your thoughts on his approach to tightening government spending and reducing the size of the federal government. guest: i compare it to people who are overweight and want to lose weight. you can go on a diet or you can go for liposuction. the liposuction is more radical and can be painful in some instances but it will achieve your objective a lot faster. even democrats acknowledge now there is waste, fraud, and abuse in government. inspector general for the social security administration recently said between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, there was $72 billion in improper payments. $72 billion. some went to dead people.

some went to people 150 years old. the oldest person in the world just died at 113. i do not know if she was getting social security or not. it is clear we are overspending. this is how we got to a $36 trillion debt. the question is, should we be taking a scalpel or a chainsaw to the federal government? something has to be done? -- something has to be done. i think showing these examples of overspending and misspending are good ways to get the public attention. the polls show the public is largely behind this. not 100%, nothing is 100% anymore, but largely behind it. they realize they cannot live like the federal government. they have to live within their means and within a budget. i think they are on the right track. we will see how it turns out. host: last week from the

brookings institution, she led the effort to cut waste during the clinton administration, she was asked about doge's efforts compared to previous administrations. [video clip] >> the reagan administration had the grace commission with people coming and spinning a year looking at the government saying do this, do this. we decided a thing happened with the grace commission and we decided what we had to do is we had to get inside the belly of the beast, just like any good consultant does when they come to a company. they get in there to figure out how this works and what is working and what is not working. we did that. that is not what elon musk is doing. they are not trying to understand what the mission is. otherwise, they would not have fired people working on avian bird flu just as avian bird flu seems to be peaking. host: they have got a lot of

pushback for wanting access to the agency sentence sums -- agency systems of doge staffers going in. is that part of what they are trying to do, go into these agencies and learn about them? guest: they are going into the agencies, they are not trying to learn about them. that is the difference. the other difference is we are looking for fat. they are actually cutting muscle and that will boomerang. it has already come back in a bad way. host: your view on cutting muscle versus fat? guest: i'm glad she picked up on my weight loss analogy. we also had something called base realignment closing. there was lots of screaming and yelling particularly from members of congress whose districts would be affected by the shutdown of bases and barracks left over from world war ii.

ronald reagan used to have a great line, the only proof of eternal life in washington is a government program. it is easier to kill a vampire than a government program. it is a good analogy because both suck the lifeblood out of their host. we cannot go on like this. no nation has been able to survive with this kind of debt. i wrote a book earlier called "america's expiration date." i referenced an essay by the late diplomat sir john glover. he said three things contribute to the decline of nations. one is massive national debt. the second is uncontrolled immigration without assimilation. fortunately, that is now being addressed by the trump administration. the third is the loss of a shared moral value system. he said any one of those has contributed to the decline of other nations. we have all three going at the same time. what makes us think we can escape the judgment of history or her-story depending? host: miami is in baltimore,

maryland, on the line for independent -- naomi is in baltimore, maryland, on the line for independents. caller: i have a number of questions. guest: let me do one at a time. caller: number one, why does the trump administration, i won't say why do they seem to, why are they realigning in terms of international policy and alliances? guest: let me deal with that one first. as i said earlier, i would like to know what our foreign policy is. we have not had someone articulate a foreign policy for the last several administrations, republicans and democrats. what should be america's role in the world post-cold war? where should we go? john kennedy's wonderful line in 1961 in his inaugural address,

go anywhere, pay any price, bear any burden, we cannot do that now. what is our foreign policy? i have not heard that articulated. question number two? caller: our foreign policy over the last 82 has been that we have been allied -- 82 years has been that we have been aligned with your come our typical allies and russia has been considered -- with europe, our typical allies, and russia has been considered an enemy. trump is flipping the script and abandoning our allies, attacking them verbally, blaming the victim of russia's abuses, horrors. guest: i understand that. there is a flipside to what the president said. he said you cannot call putin

names and expect to make a deal. the flipside is you cannot indulge in nice words and saying things like put went through the same thing i did, i being the president, on russia, russia, and all the phony allegations with the 51 intelligence officers. it is not about the words you use. it is about the policy that you stand for and what your objectives are out of the policy. do you want to go for a third one? host: do you have one more question for cal? caller: i do not feel that one was fully addressed. guest: exactly. caller: we are flipping the script completely pretty we are aligning ourselves with russia. -- we are flipping the script completely. we are aligning ourselves with russia. guest: what is the goal? is the goal to get putin to withdraw from ukraine? he said he would not withdraw an inch.

i think you have to take him seriously when he says he will not withdraw from occupied territories of ukraine and wants to restore the greater russia meaning grabbing back these now other independent nations. i think we have to take him at his word. thanks for the call. host: trish in virginia on the line for republicans. caller: good morning. how are you doing? guest: better than i deserve, thanks. caller: when i watched the last bit before it all blew up on that little meeting going on with the ukraine president and the president, it sounded like the ukraine president was trying to point out the treaty that was signed with europe and russia,

that treaty dated back to the 1990's, is that what he was trying to point out? guest: i'm not familiar with that. i don't know. one of these christian ministers from ukraine i interviewed this week said, i asked him if he believed president trump when he said he thought putin's word could be trusted, and he responded you cannot even believe what putin says when he is talking about the weather. i thought that was profound. host: another one of your recent headlines, pride before the fall, nixon-era warning for trump. tell us about this. guest: i went back to reread a book written by the late charles colson who was president nixon's top aide. he had been exposed to this book

by c.s. lewis, the great english writer. there was a chapter on pride and how that was the first of all of the sentence, it goes before the fall, it goes before everything else. he realized, he said, that is what he was really guilty of and that led him into all these other shenanigans of the watergate affair. i wrote this column to say a warning to president trump that pride is a very dangerous thing. when you are surrounded by people who only feed your ego and pride, you put yourself in danger. what you really need is people surrounding you who support you and believe in you and your policies but will tell you, warn you, when you are heading in the wrong direction. that is the best friend anybody could ever have. i reread this book called "born-again." it is a wonderful book. it is a great confessional by a man who not only turned his life

around but started something called prison fellowship which has helped thousands of inmates and their families over many years. host: let's talk with rick in boston on the line for democrats. good morning, rick. caller: good morning, america. people better open their eyes and listen when people talk. donald trump is nothing but a criminal. they are criminals too. 45 presidents before trump. the supreme court says he can do anything he wants. what these fools on the supreme court, realized if he can get rid of you on the supreme court too. that is how stupid they are talking about how he can do anything he want. he is a negotiator? [indiscernible] no art of no deal.

these people listening to this guy. he talked about bringing down lower prices. let me tell stupid people something every time you see this guy on tv, he is always behind rich people, not middle-class or poor people. these dummies are listening to this stupid monster. host: we will get a response. guest: i'm glad we have a criminal justice system so that your accusation of the president being a criminal, and republicans have said this about democrats as well, does not lead anyone to conviction. i'm always amazed at people who attacked the rich as if they have somehow acquired their wealth other than through hard work, investment, risk taking. poor people did not hire people for jobs. rich people and corporations do, and they pay taxes to the federal government and state and local governments in some cases. i never envied a rich person.

i am not demanding you give me $.50 to make it fair. i may want to come for you and say, how did you make your $2? i might want to be like you someday. the whole idea of envy and entitlement has caused problems when we use to admire people who have made it. i do not understand why this has been flipped. host: kevin, new york, line for republicans. caller: good morning. how are you this morning? guest: good morning. caller: two-fold question. the individuals today attacking the president administration just took office did not really even give them a chance. guest: you may want to turn down the audio on your tv set. caller: i am sorry. guest: that is all right. hope you have a remote. caller: that is ok.

they did not give the administration a chance to even get set was their main objectives. what i'm trying to say is we need to look at the individual zelenskyy saying he never received the billions of dollars they said he got. and since he is attacking russia in a lot of ways verbally, and i really see mr. vance as a military person, thank god, he was there, and gave his input. why is the public even addressing the issue of, i hate to sound rhetorical, but what do you think about saying this and that? that is not really what i believe donald trump was trying to do. he was trying to put his own

christian values, which we are a christian nation. host: kevin, we will get a response. guest: i'm not sure i understand the question. it was kind of all over. you were a little confused because you had the audio on your television and the delay of the audio trying to formulate a question preyed i am not sure what the question was. if i knew, i would answer. i am sorry. host: we will go to kurt in new jersey. caller: thank you. i am impressed with your 50 years of staying alive. guest: [laughter] caller: i have got a tough one for you. we hear so much about elon musk as he is the evildoer on the republican side. i am an independent. i would not be surprised if the bullet that went by trump's ear have republican fingerprints on

it. why don't we know more about george soros? he is the dark guy on the other side. atheist raised by the nazis. he just got the medal of freedom from joe biden. if you could go with that, there is so much to talk about that i do not trust. why don't democrats talk about george soros? guest: this goes back to the previous segment when tammy had people on talking about the american media. as a friend of mine says, the talkshow host in washington, the greatest power the media have is the power to ignore. it is not just with your covering, it is what you choose not to cover. this is what has exorcised a lot of people about the state of the modern media. you see demonstrations.

no reporter i have ever seen asks demonstrators, where did you get your signs? are you from out of town? if so, who is paying for your hotel transportation, and food? who is behind all of this? they never ask those questions. it always appears that all of these things are spontaneous when clearly they are not. i think this is a dereliction of duty of our media to not ask these questions. i think you are onto something. host: a couple of other headlines recently from pieces you have written. talking about doge, democrats protest. trump and musk are spring cleaning the government. we are barely into president trump's second term. doge just got started. we are hearing a lot of outcry about the work they are doing. what needs to be accomplished? what do they need to show at the end of it to claim or make

people think it was a success? guest: great question. first of allyou have show the debt is being lowered. $36 trillion cannot be sustained grid the interest is greater than the department of defense budget. you cannot go on like this logically. the democrats are protesting without giving an alternative themselves. i read recently they have even run out of bad ideas. the dirty little secret in washington is if you solve a problem, you no longer have the issue. everybody knows what needs to be solved. social security, medicare need to be performed. they will run out of money proved that is just a fact, but they do not want to touch it. i remember when paul ryan was speaker of the house some years ago and proposed a serious idea for reforming social security and medicare keeping current retirees getting their checks and making some kind of

accommodation for middle-aged people but then helping young people to invest in the stock market and other assets that would produce real returns. he west announced by the democrats who -- he was denounced by the democrats who showed him pushing an old lady over the cliff. it was funny but not a serious response to a serious issue. if you solve the problem, you do not have the issue. foresight, too many politicians would rather have the issue to run on and sustain themselves in office than they would to solve the problem. host: brent in washington on the line for democrats. caller: thank you for taking my call. as far as george soros, i never saw him running around the white house. my real question was, maybe i misunderstood, but a little while ago, i thought you were talking about hamas, basically

they are evil and need to be purged from the planet. were you saying all those palestinian children murdered by the israeli government were -- that is somehow ok because somehow god sees them as evil? as far as the israeli government itself, every time someone talks about the israeli government, it becomes you are antisemitic. i do not hear anybody being anti-semitic. i know there are a lot of people and high israeli government. what do you think about the west bank? with them taking and taking and purging more people off the land of the west bank? are you ok with that? do you see it as an event like god's will? thank you for taking my call. guest: thank you for putting so many words into my mouth, i appreciate that. a correction, george source has

not been to the white house but his son has and got the medal from joe biden just before he left office. there is no difference. george soros has turned his operation over to his son. he is in his 90's now, george soros is. the middle east is a very complicated thing. i highly recommend a couple of books written by bibi netanyahu who you probably do not like. a place among the nations and his autobiography that he wrote during covid. the jewish people and the state of israel are the only nation and only people who have been targeted for elimination. there are no other people have been under that. what you have is a need for them to defend themselves. as far as palestinian children are concerned, hamas and the other terror groups, and i have been to these areas, hide out in

hospitals amongst civilian areas and others hoping after they fire their rockets into civilian areas in israel and israel responds that children will be killed and women will be killed and men will be maimed so they can call in the cameras and say look what the evil israelis did. this is part of a political and media operation going on for decades. i think you have to understand who the real evil people are and who the good guys are who are trying to keep themselves from being exterminated, as hitler tried to do during the holocaust. host: karen, alabaster, alabama, line for republicans. caller: good morning. i just want to say on mr. soros, he is not in the white house but he is backing a lot of political candidates throughout our country so he is causing havoc. i want to talk about the ukraine war. when the war first started, turkey negotiated a peace treaty

between the two countries. the biden administration came in behind the scenes i believe, they kept pushing for ukraine to join nato. russia said that is the line in the sand. if you insist, we are going to invade. that is pretty much what happened. kamala harris is over there talking about how we want ukraine to join nato. anyway, dealing with ukraine now, here we are three years later dealing with ukraine now, can trump stop all aid to ukraine legally? and let russia keep the southeast region because those people want to be part of russia anyway. it is not like he is land grabbing. he is taking back part of the territory these people want to be part of russia anyway. i think zelenskyy is pushing him

to continue this war. that is my opinion. if we withdraw our aid, he can go to europe. i don't know how much they can help. the best thing to do is and the war right now. -- the best thing to do is to end the war right now. i think he is a dictator because he is refusing to hold elections. guest: you have martial law there right now as well. this is a complicated situation for just saying you want to end the war is a noble goal, but on what terms? you do not end a war by saying it, you end it by winning or losing it. what about crimea? putin gobbled up crimea. nobody is talking about crimea now and getting rush out of that area -- russia out of that area. stalemate cannot continue. this is one of the problems for the biden administration that supplied only enough weapons,

reluctantly in many cases and especially with aircraft. a stalemate is not good. as president trump said rightly, thousands upon thousands on both sides young soldiers are dying with no ending insight. putin has the benefit of being a dictator and former kgb agent and having a very low regard for the value of human life, so he is just throwing these young soldiers into the meat grinder and apparently does not really care. on the other side, zelenskyy and the ukrainian leadership seem to care very deeply. i just cannot say the war is over, let's all go back to what we were doing before. it does not work that way. host: judy in virginia on the line for independents.

caller: i have a question. should we believe trump when he says he is not against using the military to invade canada or mexico, maybe even greenland? guest: no, i don't think so. he speaks in hyperbolic words sometimes like making canada the 51st state, going to take over greenland, and that sort of thing. i do not put a lot of stock in that. host: a headline, white house strikes back at a.p., takes press pool coverage from reporter group. the article says for the first time in a century, the white house, not the independent white house correspondents association, will determine which news outlet are part of the press tour. as someone in media who has reported over 50 years, your thoughts? guest: the white house correspondents association is kind of an old organization

around a long time. they hold dinners every year and usually have a left-wing comedian who comes in and attacks whatever republican president happens to be in office or support any democrat president in office. this is an old model. they get to pick the people in the pool, the press pool. i do not know why things should not change. i think the white house press secretary is doing a good thing by opening it up to alternative media as they call it because social media other ways of communicating have reduced the power and reach of the legacy media. i do not like the reason trump is doing it, because the a.p. will not call it the gulf of america. what is next? we are going to change the name of the united states to trump-land?

host: explain what the press pool is, who is part of it, and what they are responsible for. guest: these are a small group of correspondents and photographers who come into small situations in the white house. it is not like a press conference the east room where there are 100 reporters and photographers for this is a small group in the oval office or on a presidential flight between washington and somewhere else, a small group of reporters and they report what the president says and does to other reporters not in the room or on the trip. that is basically what it is. host: let's go to julian. caller: you got it. guest: it could be gillian these days. caller: i am a ronald reagan-donald trump maga.

the last time i voted for a democrat was jimmy carter in 1976. that is my perspective. with respect to the ukraine situation on friday, what zelenskyy was pressing for was security guarantees from the united states. i think that was totally reasonable. the agreement circa 1994, the u.s., great britain, and russia promised territorial sovereignty guarantees for ukraine if they gave up their nuclear weapons. they gave up the weapons. so, i think that is totally reasonable to press for security agreements.

jd vance when he was a senator last year was quoted, and you have to take that with a grain of salt from the news media sometimes, but his quotation was, "i have got to be honest with you, i don't care one way or the other what happens to ukraine." he followed that comment with a refusal to meet with the ukrainian delegation last year in munich, which i thought was totally irresponsible since he is voting as a senator on whether or not to provide military assistance. guest: let me respond to some of that before i forget what your predicate is. i do not think the united states has an obligation to put boots on the ground or planes in the air to guarantee security for ukraine. this is primarily a ukrainian and european issue. i think you might achieve some kind of partial security if a

minerals deal was made. that was supposed to be signed off on the other day at the white house. but because of this uproar, it was not. zelenskyy was basically thrown out of the white house. to have a mineral deal, you would have presumably americans on the ground mining minerals. that would serve as something of a deterrent, goes the thinking, to anymore put in aggressiveness. at least, that is what the thinking is. until we get a mineral deal signed between the united states and ukraine, we are not going to be able to test that theory. host: let's talk with trey in boston, massachusetts, on the line for independents. are you there? one more try for trey. if you walk away, give us a call back. we will go to bob in minnesota on the line for democrats. caller: good day.

before, your guest was talking about the hospitals and what have you. the war is underground. netanyahu's people have never been underground. that is where it was. weird talking about killing everybody above ground. now they are starving to death. they don't need to do any shooting. there told to starve them -- they are told to starve them. they need medicine. they need drugs. how can netanyahu get away with starving people? it looked like he is trying to do to the palestinian people the same thing hitler did to him. identical only using a different tactic. guest: i'm not sure i fully understood that, partially because of the distortion in the phoneline.

the last war i saw underground was "lord of the rings." i'm not sure what you are talking about in that regard. sorry. host: a question from text from william and lake charles, louisiana. he says, how would you get us out from under all this debt? guest: what you have to do when you have debt, whether it is your credit card and you realize you spent too much last month and have to come back some on nonessentials, you do the same thing. that is what i have long argued for. i think we are getting close to that now. that every government agency and cabinet office has either a piece of legislation or charter establishing its existence and purpose. if the agency or cabinet level department is living up to its charter, this legislation, cannot be done better by the private sector and more

economically, we keep it. if not, we get rid of it. that is what businesses do. that is what audits are for. we have all of this waste. i mentioned earlier the inspector general at the social security administration found in a seven-year period $72 billion worth of waste. that is serious money. if the inspector general can find that in the social security administration and it is found in other departments, i think every government agency ought to come before congress every couple of years and justify its existence. what would be wrong with that? things keep going on. the federal government employs more people than any other agency or industry in the country. for what purpose? let's find out. it is our money they are spending or borrowing money in the interest we are paying on it. we deserve answers to these questions. host: we have about five minutes left or so with cal.

we will go next to wes on the line for democrats. caller: thank you very much. i think going on about debt and deficits is such an age old fight. i don't think it really matters. the bush administration gave tax cuts to the wealthiest. at the same time -- guest: they paid most of the money. caller: they lost the war. if you cut all the jobs come you can do all you want to, you can wipe out the federal service. guest: nobody is talking about that. caller: hold up. you can cut out the largest employer. i promise you my tax bill is not going to go down one cent, and you know it. guest: no, i don't. it wit down in the previous trump administration. the tax are there -- still there. the top rate is now 37%.

it was 39% before trump cut it. he wants to cut more, so of course it can go down. caller: it was 90% during eisenhower. i called in the last time you were on the air. i said all politicians lie. you are right. they all do shade the truth. i used to read your articles in our paper. i enjoyed those articles in our paper. with the media, we have all this information but we are much less informed. the daily paper is something we are missing in this country to bring us together so we can get some basic idea. i did enjoy reading your articles although i did not always agree with them. guest: thank you. caller: i want you to talk about what we have missed by not having a standard paper with

standard information and facts. every time i hear conservatives and liberals complain about the media, it is always about they are lying. guest: here is what you have to do. if you want to get in shape, you do not do it by watching an exercise video. you have to go to the gym and press the weights and do the treadmill. that is what i do which is why i look so good. you cannot just expect to get it from the outside. you have to work on it yourself. it is the same with information. you cannot just look at things. if you are conservative, watch only fox news. if you are liberal, watch only msnbc or cnn. you have to entertain different opinions and look for something objectively true. democracy is not the normal state of humanity. otherwise, we would have more of it around the world. it has to be pervert -- it has to be preserved. reagan said we are only one generation from losing it all. host: one last call for you.

david on the line for republicans. caller: i love your work. i am just a farmboy in kansas. i know if you look at what $1 trillion is, that is stacking $100 bills 670 miles high. that is $1 trillion. the other thing was, when we get behind, we have to sell a little land. the government owns millions and millions of acres of land. by don't they start selling some of that land off, putting it back on the tax rolls, in getting the debt paid down? guest: we also have a lot of empty federal buildings even though federal employees have been ordered back to work. that could be leased. the government takes in record amounts of revenue every year. it is the spending. and fast at the money goes into washington, goes out the door for various projects, many of which are not fulfilling the

objective for which they were established. we need to get off the business of the rich not paying their fair share, which is a line used since the franklin roosevelt administration. it is not about how much we pay. it is about how much our government spends. that is why we have this massive 's most recent book, "watchmen in the night." s most recent book, "watchmen in the night." author, 's most recent book, "watchmen in the night." you can find his book online at calthomas.com. next, we will be joined by former european affairs director alexander vindman. he will discuss his new book, "the folly of realism." we will be right back. ♪

>> tonight on c-span's q&a, we will talk with a national geographic explorer who troubles the world and sees some of the 12,000 slave ships in the slave trade. in her memoir, she discusses the training and preparation required to undertake the diving missions in the work by the nonprofit organization diving with a purpose, which is primarily composed of african-american divers. >> when i saw this picture in the museum of women, it turned out that they were part of this group called diving with a purpose and they spent their time searching for and documenting slave ship wrecks the world. i was like, oh my god, the people who look like me are living a life of adventure. maybe this could be for me too.

>> tara roberts with her book tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's q&a. you can listen to all of our podcasts on our free c-span now app. >> tuesday night, watch c-span's live coverage of president trump's address to congress, the first address of his second term , and less than two months since taking office. c-span's live coverage begins 8:00 p.m. eastern with a preview of the evening from capitol hill followed by the president's speech 9:00 eastern, and then watch the democratic response after the president's speech. we will take your calls and get your reaction on social media you can watch a simulcast of the coverage of the evening followed by lawmakers live from capitol hill. what president trump's address to congress live tuesday beginning 8:00 p.m. eastern on

c-span, c-span2, c-span now, also online at c-span.org. c-span, bringing you your democracy unfiltered. >> "washington journal" continues. host: joining us now is retired lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. he is the author of the new book "the folly of realism, how the west deceived it south russia and betrayed ukraine." thank you so much for being with us. guest: very much looking forward to this conversation. thank you for having me. host: you are also a former national european security council foreign affairs director under president trump. remind our audience or tell our audience about your background and work in the area of u.s. foreign policy. guest: my family arrived to the u.s. as refugees in 1979 from the soviet union, fleeing communism and soviet oppression. we got here at the age of four,

arrived in new york city, when off to university in the military and served for 22 years. served in combat and i was in iraq and then posted in kyiv, ukraine, moscow, russia, obviously all the news, and then in the pentagon, i looked at the russian strategy and was invited to join the white house where i was responsible for russia, ukraine, a bunch of countries, and gained notoriety or infamy pending on how you look at it when i reported a scheme to extort the investigation of vice president biden at the time going into the 2020 elections, perceiving the dangers of the impact of russian aggression towards ukraine and the potential for an even larger war that started in 2014 as well as the impacts on our own free and fair elections.

this was an effort to tip the scales in president trump's favor back then. i reported it in official channels. that ended up working its way through the government to result in a congressional investigation and donald trump's impeachment. host: his first impeachment. guest: first impeachment. host: we will talk more about your background when we get to your book, but you worked in the white house and it was at the oval office friday that ukrainian president volodymyr zelenskyy met with president trump. your reaction to that meeting? guest: it was visceral. there was a deja vu moment in there, putting myself in the shoes of the policy stuff on the council and how they were heading into that meeting with probably a strong sense of foreboding, maybe a flint of optimism that somehow this deal could be signed.

president zelenskyy wanted to sign this deal to tether the u.s. to ukraine on the basis of national interests. ukraine has the rare earth that the u.s. wants and needs, and trump wanted this deal really desperately to demonstrate a win, to move the needle what he has been punching with regards to achieving a peace. this deal would not have gotten us very far. it is more a way for the u.s. to set a very basic condition for subsequent conversations without even the russians on board, but it was a start. that all was blown up because of the erratic nature of the trump administration. jd vance, the vice president, both the president and the vice president decided to take a very provocative approach sitting across the table from a wartime leader defending his country with countless thousands of victims from russia's war of

aggression, cast the u.s. enemy, not just ukraine's enemy, vladimir putin, as a benign actor, maybe not the culprit behind the question, and russia after zelinski just showed pictures of troops, pows being abused, spoke about 20,000 children that were stolen away from ukraine, and now are going through reeducation. trump and vance, vance in particular, attempted to say russia is not a bad guy. that is a most obscene and disgusting way to deal with an ally and to flatter an opponent. the intent i guess was to somehow normalize the relationship with russia to set conditions. but this is exactly what my book is about. it is the idea we constantly accommodate russia. we have done it throughout the 30 plus years under six different administrations.

republicans and democrats, all the way through. now we are doing it without any lessons of the past and in the most horrific way possible, burning all the bridges with our allies. and this devolved into zelinski is one of the very few world leaders that has come in there and stood his ground. donald trump is used to the flattering, the ego stroking, the pandering he gets from his cabinet. that is why they were there and why they were selected. he is used to that kind of flattery from the republican party that does not hold him to account, no matter how excessive his behaviors are, and zelinski, good or bad, because both sides wanted the deal, just was not going to have it. he was not going to have this adversary be recast as a benign actor. host: our guest up until 10:00

is retired lt. col. alexander vindman, author of the new book "the folly of realism, how the west deceived itself about russia and betrayed ukraine. " if you have " a question or comment from him, call in now. the lines are (202) 748-8001 for republicans. for democrats, (202) 748-8000. for independents, (202) 748-8002 . your book just came out last week on tuesday. explain the title and how it ties to what you were just talking about. guest: so this book came out, was explicitly timed for the three year anniversary of the war. that was the 24th, which was last monday. it was the date we had this you and vote where we started the week by siding with our adversaries, north korea, belarus, russia, and casting aside our friends, so it was

really a strange start to the week on the third year anniversary of the full-scale war. the war itself has been going on since 2014 when russia first attacked and invaded and seized territory from ukraine. the title refers to what we see trump has adopted as a kind of core component of his foreign policy. highly transactional. everything has to be maximizing benefits to him. not even necessarily to the united states, but to him. this evolves out of something called realism. realism is all countries in the world pursue their interests and pursue them maximally, so each side is looking to extract as much as they can out of each and every one of these engagements. and when you have that, you have a slide towards this lunacy of forgetting the lessons of the

past, everything is immediately in front of you, and you are looking to get the best deal possible. and you are enticed by these false promises from the russians that there are deals to be made, that you need to squeeze as much as you can out of even your closest allies. not necessarily even pricing in the other kinds of benefits. it is not just about trade with canada and mexico. we want fair trade deals, but it is the fact that they are extremely reliable partners. canada will be there for us no matter what or was going to be there for us no matter what until we started talking to them as if they were the 51st state. that is the folly. the folly is we have gone down this road to maximum shortsightedness when we just grasped at bright shiny objects, hopes of things that will never materialize, or succumb to fears and look to mitigate risks when putin looks to sabre radel, he will eventually, he will say i have nuclear weapons, you guys

are pissing me off. i will fire my nuclear weapons at you if you don't knock it off. the reaction will be to cower in fear. that does not account for the fact that if you continuously bend to those types of nuclear extortion, you might reduce the risk immediately, but he will keep grabbing more territory like he has. he graduated from simple basic mischiefmaking and hybrid warfare and interfering in elections to military aggression because we continue to bend at every one of these terms. we put russia first. that is the first part of the story. i refer to this current stage as the poison kool-aid stage of the cult of realism. that is where we are. we are really hurting ourselves. the subtitle frankly could not be more accurate. if i could come i would go back and revise it a bit. the d's should be changed to s's. how the usdc was itself about

russia and betrays ukraine does have the u.s. deceives -- how is the u.s. deceives itself and betrays ukraine. people paid attention to my testimony. i always look at things at things that how this affects u.s. security. europe is the u.s.'s most important partner, security partner, economic partner. if there is not stability and predictability in europe, we suffer. this is a massive amount of instability that keeps creeping in because we keep deceiving ourselves about russia and betrayed ukraine, betraying our own interests in the region. host: a quote from your book, it is something you said earlier, a word that you used, realism. the quote says, the post-soviet history and u.s. relationships th russia and with ukraine presentehis book as a test case for the prevailing u.s. approach to international relations in general,akes overwhelmingly clear that realism isn't in its own too

simplistic terms, realist in t pcess of selling out our values, we h failed to deter an aggressive yet deter rebel opponent, russia, and lost a chance to form a strong relationship with a strategically critical more likely western allied partner ukraine. the alternative approach, fundamentally different, is neo-idealism. this is something you talk about in your book a lot and advocate for it. explain what that is. guest: sure. when you start to think about where we are and this cult of realism and how it put us in this jeopardy, automatically as a military guy trying to problem solve, i start thinking about alternatives. i think about the absence of values, that everything is transactional, everything's seemingly interest driven. i start to think about, how do we bring balance to that equation?

one of the ways we bring balance to that equation and become more shortsighted, not just prone to minimize risk in every occasion is to start to think about values, that you need both values and interests in the way we look at relationships around the world. in this case, because of the slide towards the folly of realism, we need to rebalance where values come first. we are going to see this eventually anyway because trump is breaking everything. it is such an extreme transactional behavior that on the back end of this, there will have to be a correction, a pendulum swing that will start to think about how does the u.s. recapture more leadership? how does the u.s. act more consistently long-term on this idea of values? what are those values? this is not pie-in-the-sky neoliberalism where you sacrifice your values and you

discount the fact that sometimes you have to have unsavory relationships for your security. there is a partner out there in the world that may have something the u.s. needs, is vital, is essential. the fundamental idea is you focus on the things that matter. you focus on hardening democracies around the world. why? because of the security and economic relationships and the stability they offer. you start focusing on the erosion of democratic states. these are supports we provide countries around the world that experienced democratic backsliding. you're experiencing that now and will need that ourselves. democratic institutions again because as they evolve, they provide stability and predictability. neo-idealism is really frankly a pragmatic approach to rebalance a way from the folly from this colt of realism to something

that balances values and interests recognizing values are important to our interests. host: if we take that approach, what impact would it have on not only russia and ukraine, but other u.s.-foreign relations -- u.s. foreign relations? guest: the first thing is you start to realize we have deceived ourselves about russia and that at points along the way, inflection points, we could have had a fair assessment of what we could accomplish with russia and what we can accomplish with ukraine. practically speaking, if the 1990's was a moment of maybe excessive hope, somewhat warranted exiting 40 years of cold war, this threat of armageddon, nuclear armageddon, on the backend into the 1990's, you start to think about, ok, very worth the effort to try to invest in russia and ukraine in

pretty significant ways to help usher them into the democratic world, into capitalism. we did not invest initially, but that kind of approach makes sense. one i spoke to both president clinton and vice president gore, the interviews were with principal decision-makers across ukraine and the u.s. i talked to condoleezza rice about the 2000's. i talked to president clinton, vice president gore. they had this notion of trying to bring both russia and ukraine into the fold. but by the time you start to get into the to thousands, you have this kgb case officer as president of russia. you see it is evident there is democratic backsliding. they were trying to experiment but as soon this individual went in, he started to destroy

freedom of the press. he subordinated all the independent press under either the government or state owned enterprises. attacks on opponents, and then ukrainians in the same kind of moment, yes, they are imperfect, but they are striving for a democratic future. they have this moment in 2004 where there is an orange revolution. it is a rejection of these pro-russian forces interfering, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy an election in ukraine. putin is very heavy-handed, going in there, advocating for his preferred candidate, and the ukrainians reject that. they elect a pro-western candidate, an individual that was actually poisoned and scarred as a result of that, victor, and he attempts to take a western light. still lots of problems to resolve, but that should have

been a moment of some clarity. the russians are not going to be good actors when you start hedging. ukraine has a publisher approaching 50 million, a really important player in that part of the world, and we also need to make sure russia with the increasing rhetoric -- ukraine is the most important aspect of the soviet union's former empire. now outside as an independent state. but what russia has been eyeing and attempting to secure, centuries had under control, dominated, but then broke free. this vital territory was not an easy target, not an easy mark. and we just did not do that. we did not make any investments. we did not try to rebalance our policies. it was all about russia first. what do we do to keep pressure on signs? is there something we can accomplish on important or less

important policy agenda to keep russia engaged? and what do we do to not anger russia, not piss russia off? that means avoiding having these robust relationships with countries that really mattered in that region including ukraine. we also suppressed good policy with the guts to ukraine because we did not want to trigger russia. there were opportunities along the way. this was around independence in 1991 when the u.s. under george h w bush said, calm down, ukraine, no need to rush to independence. yeah, you have been struggling for your own national identity for centuries. a brief moment in the 20th century where i talk about some of the deep history, but don't rush. that might not be as bad under this reformed russia that is unfolding or during the discussions around nuclear disarmament where we wanted ukraine to denuclearize.

they had 4000 nuclear weapons. they wanted some security assurances. you don't need guarantees. we will give you assurances. we may or not be there. or around the orange revolution what they broke to the west decisively and they were like, thanks, that is nice of you to lean so heavily to the west, kind of burned your bridges with the kremlin, but we are not ready for that yet. we are still concerned about russia. all the way through the different moments of russian aggression. 2014, we attempted resets. try as attempting the same kind of resets he criticized throughout multiple different administrations. he is doing that now by trying to normalize with russia without any evidence whatsoever that the russians are willing to come on board. actually, all the evidence is to the contrary. the russians still want complete gelation from the ukrainians, and they have made no indications that they are

willing to end this war. host: we will bring our audience into the discussion. we will start with bruce in chicago on the line for republicans. caller: hello. how are you doing? host: we are doing well, bruce. go ahead. caller: lieutenant colonel, i also deal in the realm of realism, and i just wondered what your take is on when a family takes a bunch of money from overseas, from russia, from ukraine, from china? i wonder, in my little world, if any of the money that came from ukraine and went into the biden caucus if that has anything to do with the situation we are in now. and also i wonder if any of the money that flowed from china has anything to do with the way china is treated by us, given certain things that probably the rest of the people don't come

and also the money from russia from the president or whatever he is of moscow. 3.5 million dollars went into the biden family conference. the strange thing is, why would it have to be washed through companies? thank you for your answer. guest: thanks, bruce. i can swear that as you are setting up that question you were talking about trump. all of the data points are consistent that it is the trump family that has been prospering from all of these deals, whether it is trademarks in china that amount to millions and millions of dollars or the saudis giving sweetheart deals to trump's son-in-law, a $2 billion investment fund. just look at what the kgb officer, the head of the fsb, said about trump just this past week. he may be throwing hand bearnaise looking to sow discord in the u.s., but he said trump

owes his elections to us and now he has obligations, now he has to pay us back. that is the -- the overwhelming evidence is this is not a biden problem. i am not aware of any credible evidence that suggests biden himself or his family has really profited in any significant way. that does not account for hunter biden and the fact that he sat on the board of burisma and was getting a monthly retainer for x amount of dollars just because he had the name biden and was the son of the president or vice president at the time. that is a different story. the children of the elites with their names tend to profit that way. but in terms of corruption or funds flowing into a family, all the evidence points to trump, and even then frankly, this is

not my core area of expertise. where there is smoke, there is fire, but i leave it to other folks that are more professional on understanding these kinds of connections. i am more interested in not families but the geopolitics of countries and how the u.s. can be saved. host: president zelenskyy was in washington, d.c., this week or on friday. supposed to be working towards a peace deal this question coming on x. does alexander vindman think zelenskyy should have signed the minerals deal? did he support the deal? guest: i think zelenskyy did support the deal and was ready to sign it but was not ready to be assaulted by the president and vice president of the united states. i am not sure what kind of hospitality that is, bringing in an ally, somebody you are supporting for years, and then

attempting to beat up on them, attempting to get them to flattery. there are crude ways of putting this. they wanted him to just the butt. sometimes you have to call things as they are. he was there, the leader of his nation, projecting strength to his people fighting a war, projecting strength to the european allies that want to know that if they are investing in ukraine if they have some buddy that is going to be there and fight and projecting strength to this enemy, to putin, that he is not a pushover. yes, zelenskyy wanted the deal. i think he came they are prepared to sign the deal. i think trump wanted the deal. the problem is i think vance really just through some hand grenades -- threw some hand grenades in there as russia, good, ukraine, bad, ukraine unwilling to compromise for its

peace. nobody wants peace more than ukraine, and that devolved into a hot situation in which zelenskyy found it impossible to sign that deal at that time. is it salvageable? potentially, but maybe somebody else gets that deal. the europeans are in the same neighborhood. europeans are actually willing to show support for ukraine. the u.s. under trump is abusing that relationship and abusing zelenskyy. so we will see what ends up shaking down. i guess the deal could easily have been added if it was properly managed and there was a modicum of diplomacy decorum shown in that room. host: after friday's oval office meeting, president zelenskyy spoke with fox news about it and also what it means for the future of u.s.-ukraine relations. we are going to show you a clip and get your response. [video clip] >> do you think the public spat

in the oval office in front of the media served ukrainians well today? >> i think this kind of spat, this is not good for both sides, and it was open, but i cannot change our ukrainian attitude to russia, and i don't want. they are killers for us. this is very, very clear that americans are the best of our friends, european are the best of our friends, and putin with russia, they are enemies. it does not mean we don't want peace. we just want to recognize the reality, the real situation. host: your book looks at not just the past few administrations, but multiple presidents who have not done enough to address

ukraine and our relationship with them. how will that oval office meeting with trump impact the future of u.s.-ukraine relations? guest: i think it was an unmasking of the -- if there was any ambiguity of where the u.s. proclivities under the trump administration lie, they were unmasked that week between the un security council votes and the oval office meeting. it is clear that the u.s. has really an inclination to normalize with russia. and seemingly, it becomes clear that u.s. can care less what happens about ukraine. it is willing to sacrifice ukraine, willing for ukraine to give up its people, to give up its territory in the effort to run allies relations with russia. that is the height of self-deception about what the

russians will do. the russians will bank everything the trump administration has offered, will take this break, this massive rupture not just with ukraine but actually the west. think about the response for the european allies. all of them were on one side, all of them on board demonstrating the support for ukraine, embracing ukraine. from that meeting and that failed effort to sign a deal, zelenskyy went to meet with his counterpart in the u.k., p.m. starmer. he is making the rounds in europe. they are all showing they will be there for ukraine. how much they follow through on that is not yet clear, but i think it will be a big turn that will be doubling down on support for ukraine, and the consequences for the u.s. are that the u.s. will be isolated. that is the most important

thing, that we are breaking relationships with our most important security and economic partners. we are already heading down that road with these absurd tariff deals that tax the u.s. consumer for no reason. we are attacking our allies for what reason is not entirely clear because there is not a deal to be had here so much. these are countries we have had relationships with for decades. so to me, this is just a clear rupture. you can see it from all corners of the world with regards to democracies. australia, our asian allies in korea and japan siding with support for ukraine and recognizing they may have to go it alone, that the u.s. has become an unreliable partner. that is the consequent of the meeting.

completely unnecessary. most of the meeting went fine. each side had a series of remarks. they had a q&a. literally the last question, jd vance chimes in with this self-deception about the fact that the russians want peace, that the russians are not the bad actors, and that ukraine is the one that needs to -- it is exactly the opposite. it is a bizarro world where russia in fact shows no sign of compromise and ukrainians are not going to say publicly, they will not say it out of the context of the negotiation, but they are willing to trade a lot for a cease-fire but a lasting peace. host: the meeting between president trump and zelenskyy, that was on friday. the full event was just under 50 minutes. if you would like to watch it in its entirety, you can watch it on our website, c-span.org. let's talk with lucille in los

angeles, california, line for democrats. good morning, lucille. caller: good morning to everyone. first, i want to express my deep gratitude for the former lt. col. vindman. i appreciate your courage, your strength, and thank you for continuing to serve our country. next, i have suspicions about trump. we all know he was a convicted felon. he had more indictments against him that never came to fruition. he is a real estate guy. he has done a lot. i have heard reports where he has done a lot of real estate dealings between various russian oligarchs. what would make him ask a depressed country, ukraine, to hand over 340, 300 $50 million

-- $340 million, $350 million of mineral rights? he is asking for double. i feel that if zelenskyy was to sign that deal, there would be nothing to stop trump from selling part of his mineral rights over to putin. that would give putin a chance to have some claim to ukraine. i apologize for the way the administration handled their conversations with zelenskyy. and i find no fault in zelenskyy trying to fight for democracy. this is bigger than trump. trump deals with everything about his personal gain. he wants power.

he is around a lot of oligarchs. i see him so differently. tell me what is wrong with that. thank you. guest: thank you, lucille. i think you had said a lot of powerful and accurate things. this is much, much bigger than just really the largest war in the world. we are talking about russia, the largest country in the world, and ukraine, duking it out over the course of three years. it has every potential to draw in european powers now especially with the u.s. taking a step back. the europeans understand that russia with ukraine subordinated, a famous line from a former national security advisor that astutely pointed out russia with ukraine becomes an empire. russia without ukraine ceases to become an empire, but with ukraine subordinated, it becomes an empire, becomes a power.

that is what this is about, that russia is empire building and russia has every intention to assert its authority in the region and globally as one of the critical poles in the world. it is not just the russians, the asians come asian powers, china in particular -- china singularly is also thinking about what this means and whether it can do some empire building, recapture taiwan. getting back to some of the numbers here, there are plenty of efforts by trump to engage with russia for business dealings. one of the biggest banks in russia had enormous deposits from russian oligarchs, and deutsche bank was sanctioned for various corrupt scheming, was one of the biggest loaders of funds to trump and trump inc.

trump has been undertaking efforts to build a trump tower in moscow for years unsuccessfully. he has looked to engage both russian oligarchs and the russian state repeatedly with his first trip to the region in 1987 roughly coinciding with his political awakenings and his damming of nato not pulling their fair share. i am not sure why those two data points seem to coincide. the fact is moving onto this deal, it started out entirely lopsided. it started out with a $350 billion demand. actually, it was a $500 billion demand to recover what trump believes was u.s. resources that went to ukraine at a rate of five to one, i guess a loan shark level of extortion, but what it evolved into actually

was a much, much more fair deal between the u.s. and ukraine, establishing a joint fund. no dollar signs associated with that. no $350 billion. it was more of a framework for the u.s. and ukraine to work together. the ukrainians were going to seed it with resources coming out of the earth and the u.s. was going to be part of this fund and was supposed to help rebuild ukraine. it was very, very loosey-goosey. it did not amount to much, but it was a start. it was a way to get the u.s. to see there was an interest in continuing to invest in ukraine, not just from this big picture democracy perspective, from a u.s. national security perspective. but in terms that trump likes. very, very transactional. this for that. quid pro quo type of deal where

there are minerals that trump wants. he has been talking about them in the context of greenland. there is a chance to get the u.s. hoped on that one. it devolved from a pure shakedown into something manageable. both sides were willing to sign it, but again, it is almost like , why would you allow jd vance into future meetings if he is just going to blow them up? he is blowing up our relationships in europe when he goes to the munich security conference. he is blowing up these deals for trump. maybe he needs to take a timeout and trump can put him in the corner until he learns how to behave better so that deals don't get blown up and our relationships don't get blown up around the world. host: let's hear from bill in kentucky, the line for independents. good morning, bill. caller: morning. i wanted to ask the lt. col., does he think he has more

qualifications than pete hegseth? and talking about the money from russian staff and china, he just played it off on trump. everyone knows the american people are not stupid. the biden family is dirty. he can just take up for the democrat party all he wants, but it is the truth. he can get red in the face like he is getting right now. have a great day. guest: thanks, bill. appreciate that. it is a perspective. for sure it is a perspective. not sure how informed it is, frankly. the fact is if you do the digging on this one, it is more than just accusations from trump

and his political coterie when they are charged with an election. there is not much evidence to suggest. i guess we will see soon enough, right? if there is actually anything of this nature, you would expect to see some indictments from the trump administration on criminal activity. we will see if that unfolds and frankly if it is substantive or completely fabricated. we know that trump for his record was indicted four times for mishandling documents, for the insurrection, for payoffs to a prostitute, all sorts of different interference charges to interfere in georgia and elections. those things were indictments. that means your fellow citizens when paneled found enough evidence to indict him. we will see if there is anything on the other side of the scales. like i said, there are some

awful things that go on when the children and the families of the wealthy and the powerful attempt to enrich themselves with regards to their names. that is pretty clear if you heard my testimony or read the transcript. i actually may be did not make the funniest joke when i testified in front of congress and behind closed doors. certainly neither the republicans or democrats found it funny, this exact point, the people trained on their names and attempt to enrich themselves. that happens, but this idea of rampant corruption, i have not seen any credible evidence of that. with regards to i am not sure if there was more to that question, but it is pretty clear to me that this is generally lopsided, and i think it is one of those things you see in propaganda and

information wars. i am accused to basically deflect from your own behavior type of trademark. host: let's talk with wayne in douglasville, georgia, line for republicans. hi. caller: good morning. for all that you just said, trump is president and you are not. the title of your book, i find it very interesting. i take a totally different view though. i believe that zelenskyy deceived himself and betrayed the ukrainian people. how did he do this? well, first, if ukraine could not defeat russia by themselves, they should not have invited other more powerful people into their country to assist them. the result is most likely going to be that now ukraine will be

divided between russia, europe, and america. and the ukrainian people will suffer for that. and i totally empathize with the struggle that they are going through right now with the constant bombardment of their country and the destruction of their people. the second mistake that zelenskyy made is that he actually believed his own propaganda. it seems to be everyone there is finding for the riches of ukraine. russia, russia's propaganda is they are fighting nazis. they are stealing your resources. and europe and america unfortunately, you know, we have to get paid. so we are going to take your minerals as well.

i will take your answer offline. guest: i mean, i appreciate this perspective frankly and really look forward to responding because i think from my perspective, i wrote this book to explain how we got to this war. that was the fundamental question. when i left office and was forced out of the military, i wanted to continue to dive into my area of expertise. at that point in time, i left in 2020, we were five years into this war. four of those years were under the trump administration. minimal efforts were made, but no success evolved out of that effort from trump to bring a pe in hisace -- peace in his four years. he is in his second term now and claimed he was going to have peace on day one, actually that

it was going to occur before the inauguration, and now it seems as far out of sight as possible, not because of the ukrainians. the ukrainians know the russians better than anybody else. they have been struggling for their own independence and freedom for a long time. they understand that russia has no interest right now. the russians feel like they have the upper hand. they don't, on the military landscape by the way, the russians are making the tiniest of gains and trading lots of personnel and lots of equipment for them. the question is, do they have the staying power to continue to do this indefinitely? the answer is, no. before the inauguration, they were not in the best spot but they could hold their own with the europeans and the u.s. there. now it looks precarious. the skills may be shifting a little bit in russia's favor but not in a way that allows the russians to achieve a decisive

outcome, to gain that much more territory, so it is still a test of who has more staying power. the europeans are almost certainly going to step up down in a bigger way with the absence of the u.s. they have an industrial base. they have the economic base to support this war for sure. have an industrial base that needs to grow to more effectively support ukraine. it will be impacts. the u.s. is the most -- there will be impacts from the u.s. withdrawal. it is going to be a significant challenge and a boon to russia. the fundamentals here are to be quite clear. the russians have been looking to rebuild the empire. whether the u.s. was going to be there or the europeans were going to be there, they were going to try to snap up territory and keep creeping up, rebuilding the empire.

it has expanded since the middle of the 1500s and all -- in all cardinal directions. to achieve the height at the end of the empire. at the collapse of the soviet union, it receipted in weakness. and once those territories back one way or another, either to dominate them outright and absorb them or just dominate them and dictate terms. it also after world war ii during the cold war snapped up large portions of eastern and central europe. those territories are from the time being safe because they are part of nato, a collective defense. russia will continue to expand, absorb these populations, militarize, employ these different peoples to continue to grow. because it is at an aggressive -- because it is an aggressive imperial power. that is the way it sees the world.

putin's view as there are only three real powers in the world. there is russia, china, and the u.s. in those states are entitled to do what they want. it is the rules of the jungle. they prey on the weak. as they infringe on europe in particular, that has a direct impact on the united states. on u.s. security as long as u.s. as part of nato, and frankly economic prosperity. one of the reasons we are the most powerful country in the world is because of our trade, our economic relationships around the world, notably with the europeans. they do not want the russians to continue to be aggressive. they do not want the russians to sow discord and break either nato or the european union. that would be disastrous for the u.s. we would be isolated. we would be in a much more dangerous multipolar world. we want to preserve these relationships, strengthen them, and make sure these aggressive

nations understand there are consequences for their actions. host: alexander, your book looks at how we got to where we are. i wanted to talk a little bit about the future. bideninistration's deeplye flawed ukraine policy of increment a support always a day late and a dollar short, dominated by misplaced caution and fears of escalation, lef ukraine vulnerable and emboldened russian aggression, ru's doctrine takes the ssteps to an entirelyew level, actively undermining u.s. alliances. this is not a recalibration. it is a repudiation of america's ro in the world and a clear signal that determines of aggression is no longer a goal, perhaps not even a consideration. the consequences of this our desire -- approach are desire. you talked about the u.s. could become isolationist.

talk about the long-term impact president trump's actions could have. guest: sure. i will do this in a hypothetical scenario. we extrapolate the forward either fully withdrawing from nato or just abrogating its response ability. we don't have to withdraw from nato to make it toothless. we just signal we will be there at our allies are attacked. russia tests that theory and starts with hybrid warfare in the baltics. one of the things it is looking for is to make sure this place between lithuania surrounded by nato, lithuania, and poland, has ready access to it. there is territory that splits it. the theory is russia tests the resolve of nato and then maybe looks to capture this territory, demonstrate countries will only support their own interests and

act in collective defense. russia then feels emboldened to do this on strong versus weak play all around its region, continues to build this empire. meanwhile, the chinese in the pacific take the signals that the u.s. will not be there for taiwan, they conduct a war against taiwan, they subdue taiwan, which has an immediate massive impact on the u.s. because the taiwanese produced an enormous percentage of the chips around the world that we need for our tech industry, for the growing ai sector. these aggressive actions have immediate economic impact and we go into a recession. as our allies get picked off and as the europeans potentially broil themselves in a more localized conflict with russia,

we are further isolated, and eventually the u.s. finds itself in a situation in which our own interests in the united states start to get attacked, whether it is through hybrid warfare or frankly the fact is we have territories in the pacific that the chinese do not like there as a means of force projection. we have samoa. we have guam. these are now vulnerable because we don't have an alliance structure. they are in the chinese sphere of influence, and it becomes a far more dangerous world. a massive nuclear arsenal and a powerful military, but we are to finish without our allies, we are diminished without our friends. one of the important things about our alliance structure is the fact that we have all of these different posts either like posts to watch out for danger or posts to project and secure interests.

various kinds. we start to lose those around the world. we are no longer deterring north korean aggression in the korean peninsula. we are no longer in japan defending our interests in the pacific and those very vital trade routes. the chinese pickup that role. we are no longer in the middle east because various aggressive powers including iran that looks weak at the moment years down the road might not look so weak, especially when there are sharks to the system and commodities and world prices increase. we are isolated and do not have that he with us when we are facing the various challenges that emerge in our world. that is a nightmare scenario for the u.s. host: about five or six minutes left with our guest, alexander vindman. we will hear next from bradley in michigan, line for democrats. hi, bradley. caller: hi, and thank you

alexander for doing what you are supposed to do, follow the constitution. i guess it is not a common thing in today's world, which is set itself. also, i would like to rebuke our governors for not leaving directly after trump threatened them, insulted them, and they just sat there. gretchen whitmer is my governor, and i let her know i did not appreciate that. and also, not to be bitter, but i hope the layoffs that trump and musk do only affect the people that voted for him. lastly, i deeply apologize to my dad and other veterans living or deceased. they fought to rid the world of dictators but their ancestors installed one here. guest: i think there is a comment and response to that. i appreciate that, bradley. we are in dark days. they are going to get darker.

the most vulnerable of our population are the ones that will suffer this proportionately, but because of trump overreach, because of this destruction of the institutions that provide services to people, that keep us safe overseas, there is going to be a correction. i think the fact is that people are not necessarily awake to the dangers of authoritarianism, not awake to the dangers of serving the interests of the billionaire class, cutting taxes on the billionaires and taking away from the folks that need those resources, and i think that neo-idealism, it is definitely a foreign policy approach, but it is also frankly a domestic approach. i think we are going to need a vision going forward that allows us to correct and understand the values, our core values in the united states that we are

inherently good people, even if we are in slumber or in the direction this country is taking. there is an opportunity to correct or maybe even do both things after 2028 when the american public -- 90 million of us did not vote and show up and reject this turn towards liberalism and the turn towards serving the very few. we can clawback some things that provide opportunities to more americans. it does not begin difference to me if folks call in from red states or blue states. frankly, i want us all to do better. and i don't see that happening in the direction we are taking. host: we have one last call for you. it is kyle in honolulu, hawaii, on the line for independents. caller: thank you for taking my call. i think you answered my question a while back, so i will ask it.

if there is so much worry by europe about ukraine, why don't they absorb them into nato? they refused them the last time. my second question is, as an advisor and as a service person, let me ask you this. why hasn't a nuclear attack happened yet in so many years? i will listen off the air. guest: excellent question and i will try to enter those pretty quickly. the answer is europeans made a mistake in 2008. george bush pushed for ukraine's admittance into nato and it was the europeans also deceiving themselves about russia. they were the ones that rejected any type of firm timeline. that is a mistake that resulted in the georgia war of 2008, resulted in the war in ukraine starting in 2014, resulted in the full-scale war of 2022.

now they are actually looking at security guarantees on the back and when we get to peace, but i think the u.s. should be part of that because we are really the most important player in the international system. we are the ultimate security guarantor. we provide the conventional and military umbrella to ward off aggression. with regards to the second part of the question, i'm sorry, do you remember what it was? host: why there has not been a nuclear attack yet. guest: why, because the doctrine is simple. nobody wants a nuclear war. the consequences are cataclysmic, world ending. the russians are not suicidal. trump should recognize that the reflection of him with certain regards with putin, may be a more sophisticated actor, but putin is legacy building, empire building. he is not going to go in the other direction and blow up his

world because he is not interested in provoking a direct confrontation with the u.s. sometimes we need to understand this is bluster to get the u.s. to back down. it is nuclear extortion. there is no interest in anybody employing the nuclear tool because of mutually assured destruction. we need to warn off this idea. we need to hold our ground. we don't need to dismiss it because the consequent as are so low but the probabilities are self small that sometimes holding our ground and calling that bluff reduces the risk, not accelerates it like we have done repeatedly by bending. host: our guest, retired lieutenant colonel alexander vindman. he is the author of a new book "the folly of realism, how the west deceived itself about russia and betrayed ukraine." also author of the sub start newsletter "what matters -- st ubstack newsletter "why it matters."

thank you for joining us. guest: thank you very much. host: that does it for today's "washington journal." we will be back tomorrow with another edition at 7:00 a.m. eastern. until then, have a good day. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2025] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]