protests in colombia leave 26 dead amid a government crackdown meanwhile washington is uncharacteristically muffled in its criticism. over the killing called up. to jerusalem cameraman is hit by israeli police while filming clashes with palestinian worshippers the protests are being driven by a limited access to parts of the old city during the muslim holy month of ramadan. israel is deporting around $100.00 black people who have lived in the country for

decades and say it is their ancestral home they fear their children who were born there as well will also be uprooted. and the world powers are backing the global waiver vaccine patents to ease shortages although big pharma are pushing back over the move which could massively. more news coming up in about an hour's time but straight ahead. joe biden measure up past democrats who have occupied the white house in years past that is up for debate on prospects they were . following

a welcome to. we're all things are considered peter lavelle every president is obsessed with the issue of legacy the historical benchmarks are f.d.r. and l.b.j. joe biden is no different he is being encouraged to go big and fast and that he is there's just one problem f.d.r. and l.b.j. had massive majorities in congress and public opinion joe can think big but does he have the votes. cross sucking presidential legacy i'm joined by my guess because driscoll is in washington he is an adjunct professor of legislative politics at the george washington university and federal lobbyists for a medical professional association in atlanta we have dee dawkins she is a political strategist and a former georgia state representative and in dallas we cross to george c. he is a doll a space businessman and

a conservative political leader all right cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate well let's go to george in dallas here's what he said in my introduction george you know presidential legacy is everything once you get into the oval office here but the comparisons to f f.d.r. and l.b.j. are pretty hard for me to comprehend because let's look at f.d.r. the country was in a massive economic turndown that's we call it the great depression for a reason and when he came president in march of 1933 he had massive majorities when l.b.j. ran on his own in 964 in jan in january of 165 he had a big majority for his big programs go up to 2020 and now as we speak joe biden just doesn't have it why are they then are people making so many comparisons to l.b.j. and f.d.r. go ahead. well thanks for having me on it's great to be here and i would just say that i don't think it's happening in

a backyard there is no more arrogant group of people than an incoming president staff not necessarily the present themselves but the people around the president and i think they have delusions of grandeur and cow live in a partisan echo chamber when they come in and i'm sure that there's a lot of whispering in the ears of press about how much like the circumstances of f.d.r. biden's 1st 100 days are and let's remember only 100 days into his presidency and there's all these plans are all saying he's a lot like f.d.r. that's that's just absolutely ridiculous and i don't want to get too overly biblical on the program but i would say that the bible very clearly says pride come up before a fall and thus saith the lord i hate pride so i would warn his he is very very tough staffers to tone it down a little bit and maybe if the president biden ins a world war peacefully ends solves cancer and wins the nobel peace prize maybe then

they can start making some comparisons but not in the 1st 100 days when he's passed one major piece of legislation and that's it ok dave let's go to you in an atlanta there's nothing wrong with thinking big here but you know the country is so terribly divided and it's very difficult to get big projects through even something like infrastructure which is speaking as a conservative i've been saying for years that infrastructure is necessary i truly lament that under the trumpet ministration there was infrastructure month every month but it never ever happened but people are talking about it now but doesn't seem like there's much infrastructure so what is joe's vision to be f.d.r. and l.b.j. go ahead. thank you for that thank you for having me so i don't totally agree with them trying to be because the american people need be how to be dreams right now we have seen over 500000000 people die from the night scene and we've looked out how to be almost taking for a little while with jobs being on the decline why we haven't seen since the great

depression and so i i personally agreed when president trump did is up for treason down for the big spending and i think that by me as well the spending is going to do well because we need roads in bridges and we need to be clean and i wait so i don't see what the problem if this really should not be a partisan issue although americans care about jobs and care about not that he can be a lot down from quote 19 you know quecreek us here in washington know it or what do you think the biden astray she is trying to attempt here by going so big when the odds are so much against the middle east electorally go ahead in washington. i think we are i think the this is by the administration is trying to reorganize the role of government. americans we are not a people place all of their faith in government but certainly we also understand that government is not. all our problems and so there's another way to reimagine

along the way the highly productive job creating economy expanding investments really needed i think the problem for some americans that we were trapped in this reagan mindset that government is broken and that we have to find money and so i think that this administration is trying to gain reimagine government saying that yes it is not the source of all our problems but i have to say time the government can solve some of our problems and when you look at a recent poll by n.b.c. we see that obviously a high percentage 82 percent of democrats government's involvement is this the government can do roughly 60 percent of independents and 23 percent of republicans say the government or more so there is some low level of consensus among americans that the role of government big government if you could be doing slightly more than

what it has well let me stay with you i mean i'm a conservative and everybody knows that and i don't have a problem with government programs it's how they're directed how they're paid for and what their objectives are they ideological are they just for the betterment of the public and i think that's when you get into the minutia here of what's going to let me go back to george in dallas i'll be really straightforward with you i'm i am for infrastructure and i'm for going big but i don't want this woke ideology to do to infiltrate and i i don't want everything to be about equity i want to have roads that work ports that service ships ok i don't want it to have you know an ideological tinge to it at night and and from what we've seen in the 1st 100 days i don't like that and it really makes me has it in go ahead george in dallas. well i want to be respectful and and diplomatic but i heard some things on your other guests that just weren't accurate i think i heard them are 500000000 people have

died from the pandemic it's a little over 500000 and you know. i think globally it's a very big number but i'm not sure you know we're there that much and then i heard from your other yes there's a there's a consensus on all this federal spending in a bigger role for government 120 percent of republicans are in favor of that so that's hardly a consensus so and if you look at the infrastructure bill the bottom ministration is championing a fraction of it goes to actual roads and bridges and infrastructure most of it goes to democratic support groups and people that that favor the democratic agenda it's not going to build the roads and bridges and the republicans put forth a competing program as that's about a 3rd the size we're almost everything goes to roads and bridges so i think all americans are for the happen they're not for spending on favored constituencies and running up the deficit ones are about what's wrong with bigger government more spending will eventually we go back we just don't have enough money to do all this kind of stuff sure and be nice if we could just throw money at everybody forever and of course americans like it when the government throws money at them but it

doesn't mean it's wise policy and it doesn't mean it's good for the country and this excessive spending when the economies are in warring back is not wise it's bad policy you know george you know as a fellow conservative here i'm going to stick with my position i don't have a problem with government spending i just have a problem how it's spent day if i can go to you in atlanta i mean there's always money for the defense department is there i mean this budget hawk or it doesn't i mean it doesn't wash i mean on one day you know on the 19th of january there's plenty of money that on january 20th ordinarily we can we can spend i mean that you can't pull the wool over my eyes here i mean budget hockey is it when you're out of power ok because donald trump spent like a donald like a drunken sailor like everyone else before him ok so it doesn't work that way for me that that what i'm interested to see is what. you know how can joe biden be a leader to bring the people together because f.d.r. did that my father my father was a dyed in the wool republican and he actually voted for f.d.r.

because he was a leader how can debate joe biden be a leader because there's a now we show a lot of leadership if you know what i mean and i'm trying to be polite here go ahead. ok the 1st law and the 1st case he was right i did misspell it is 500 passable let's be very clear ah the american people have been hearing this country middle class workers working class for ever we need to really look at how we are tax corporations in america i mean when trouble came into office 35 percent. tax rate started from since he dropped it when we want to say for corporate tax rates and so i really believe that by increasing the rate on corporate taxes we could eliminate a lot of this and so military they do do a lot of. the same time i'm going to make sure that the military gets everything that the congress will give you a lot because you know i have been. 9 states army but i digress let me just very clear merican he will need jobs and the bible also says that the server is worthy

of the hive and you cannot expect the economy to work people operate. and the bible also says we want to. whatever we do to the least and then we do want to go and see him so let's not just throw that in when it's convenient whoever you think. we need to have american people all the time i love it when people quote scripture on my program maybe i have a corner on the market i like it i'm really happy about that it's go back to our guest in washington i mean. again this playing with the tax rates and all that rich people just don't pay taxes i don't care what the rate is they just don't pay it ok because they have so much money to avoid it ok. i get my question to you is why do we make people pay the taxes that they owe ok that is billions and billions and billions of dollars every year in direct doesn't go after the rich you know i because it's too expensive but they'll go after you and i because they have the

resources and we don't hear see this is a kind of no nonsense that i think we need to approach the laws on the books just inforced them go ahead in washington. oh you know i think i'm the only actually already heard here on the program but i'm not i guess i'm ok oh ok there you go to you but they're going to say this you know they republicans as a fill ins are republicans that straw tax cuts were going to take care of themselves they did not write by for every. and when you came into office the deficit was $439000000000.00 once i left it was well over $984000000000.00 so all of a sudden now we're serving the deficit so that we can spare that argument yes absolutely we all want investments in of course our infrastructure people need to pay their fair share and fight frankly i think when you look at eldo polling data most wealthy americans do not mind paying their fair share of their taxes

particularly when it comes to the common good post office highways roads bridges high speed broadband water pipes all of this is infrastructure finals aside so i don't think it's an issue of people want to own the rich wanting to pay i think it's more an issue this is the narrative that sir members of the republican party to spin with regard to all of this. well i think it also which is political they don't want to give the other side a win it's as simple as that and that's part of our dreadful politics not denying the other side a win because if you can it it'll be you'll pay a political division for that later ok i think that's really sad i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on presidential legacy stay with arkie.

while give easy evolve from this as. we are. forming at once like yeah yeah. the rational. designer of the thief. but the new. place now which. i put on the zimmer. systems that i'm sure looks to be safe.

for. fortune for the outnumbered lot about this morning. welcome back to crossfire we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing presidential legacy. ok let's go back to george in dallas one of the things that i think that needs to be given more consideration is as we come out of this pandemic and lockdowns i look at states like yours which i think did

a good job on the whole and i just think you know instead of thinking about space spending so much money 6 trillion and more why don't we let the states like texas show the way because we see you know we see growth in the. i mean we see a labor shortage in many places here and let the economy roar because then we can take the right signs from that because you know instead of looking always to washington that so far away and distant and quite arrogant i have to say you know look at the what some of the governors have done in red states and i think they have. a remarkable job and they should be seen as an example we don't need washington to solve all of our problems go ahead george. well peter texas and florida are for the future of the country whether whether the rest of country wants or not that's that's what's working and that's the model that's been effective and i want to come back to i think we're really having a philosophical debate on whether government should solve our problems or whether the private sector should solve our problems and i really liked what the had to say

about the least of these as a faith based person a christian myself i really think that that's where the focus of society's mercy and grace to people who are behind the curve so to speak in life should be i think the only debate is whether the government should be the one to handle that or the private sector and i'd much rather have the salvation army and other private sector charities working on that and the government if you look back at the great society and the war on poverty you mention lyndon johnson several times they were abject failures and wasted trillions of dollars of taxpayer money and i just don't think the government spends money well at all and your other guest comment about this canard of coming up with with reckless spender of deficits and spending i haven't started talking about that again i've been talking about that for 40 years and terrible it's the end grain problem and the problem is not just regular federal spending it's entitle months and no one has the courage to go after entitlements the entitlements are going to swallow up the country in debt eventually we're going

to go bankrupt and somebody's got to reform it and to be fair the president trump said he didn't want to touch it either so you get democratic party holding to touch it and you don't have a brave enough republican to touch it and tell we do we're in serious trouble financially and it's easy to spend money now and leave the future to our children and grandchildren but it's going to be a bleak future indeed unless someone steps up and is responsible for how we're handling federal budgets ok. you know if there is saber speaking philosophically yes but you know at the same time if we can keep with that vein here is it in oh i in principle i'm against these huge bloated deficits but i'm very much for the working middle class. now we need to start thinking about them ok you know giving all of these tax breaks to people the super rich that will never pay always avoid and then but the middle class gets politic all of the time here so one of the problems i have and correct me if i'm wrong is that you know when i look at the

people around biden it seems to me that you know this whole approach to his expenditures is just it's a green new deal in different clothing and that may be nice and fine but we didn't vote on that we didn't vote for it is not a fact most people don't know what they voted for they just know what they voted against and that was donald trump and not for joe biden because he didn't really campaign so i mean is this is his agenda the green new deal and different clothes go ahead. well i think it is i mean let's look back at when f.d.r. was president one of the things that we in that particular be able to tennessee valley authority any of the dams we may not think about that is being green energy but it was during that time so we have to really reimagine how we see this country as a green economy and we need to do better and. energy resources here in america i really i love joe biden not because i'm

a democrat i was wishing we could all grew up with not part of the nation and then we will see the french will be more about the business of everyday american people trying to heal to our political bases it's right now it is proving to be worth it in my opinion because we're doing more friday into what we need to do for all of us who are here who are american citizens in this we can hear that being. f.d.r. now people scream bloody murder if they can get this security so let's just be honest and asks what's going on in america and how do. you know whether because let me go back here in washington me a lot of people particularly people on the right don't like to say this but i do because i've studied the f.d.r.'s presidency very carefully and i think it's really fascinating is that he saved capitalism ok that's what he did he was a class traitor for his his class of. patricians but he saved capitalism in

america and he saved the economy as well he did and the new deal was a failure by 938 it was a failure he tried to pack the courts i hope joe doesn't really want to do it because it's a bad way to go even f.d.r.'s own party was against it but see what a lot of people are really worried about is that we're not addressing any of the issues the d. mentioned which i think she is right is that when i when people are talking about this presidency on both sides it's all through the prism of culture. wars and that really. moving forward i'm a conservative i can easily sit down with progressives and talk about ideas and solving things ok for me we have similar goals it's how we get there and that's just talking it's negotiating it's trying to work things out and i think that's possible because that is the art of politics but i see both sides using culture wars as an impediment how do you see it go ahead. i agree with you i think the culture wars it really is that the violence is one of the vice. but i

would say the culture wars the one party got the other and i prefer to use them or i mean. what's going on. in the us the general assembly's across the country are introducing bills related to treasure interest they're introducing bills going into voter suppression they're introducing bills relating to gun control or allowing more force in our society which you know i don't for the 2nd amendment but that's not the crux of the problem in this country so when you're talking about. their tends to be one forward that is fixated on solving problems that don't exist well oh my god i need to push back on that ok because all the issues if i disagree with you that i'm just a racist that's how people stop the conversation because i've never heard them let me say i want to agree with d.

i'm kerry i care about working class people i've seen their lives destroyed over the last 30 years ok i would rather talk about those issues about get good schools good health even for me single payer i'm on board how do we get there ok i believe in these things but when you bring down that let me of things you're just shutting people off you're saying you have to agree with me on everything or we're going to go nowhere and that's the problem with our politics here george in dallas what do you think. well i want to come back to the inequality problem it really is a problem it's ironic though that state with the largest inequality has the most progressive politics in the country california they've got the largest number of poor and the largest number it's incredibly rich people and i want to push back as well a little bit here on this narrative that the rich are getting away with murder and they don't pay their fair share and all that 20 the top 25 percent of our hours in

the country pay 87 percent of the taxes and the reality is is that if you're an american and you are less than $50000.00 a year you're not paying any income taxes so the narrative of that is really not true and i would say though that we want to know georgiadis sorry i'm not going to work that out but one more comment is is that one thing where we got policy wrong is we've been cutting income taxes and corporate taxes and i would agree with d. on this point there's better ways to get money into the middle class and the lower class and that would be some kind of medicaid medicare social security reform where taxes we pay on those in tama programs going down a little bit because everybody's working place those taxes but then there are some reform on the back into where you don't qualify for these benefits with with life expectancies having grown 20 plus years since f.d.r. was president and so you don't get them until you're a little bit older long and you've got to have some kind of reform like that to be fair to everybody yeah i mean george my point on tax evasion is very very real and

when i say evasion is finding ways around it here i mean if you make you know hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars i die i think every reasonable person say you could chip in a little bit more under the law under current law that's all i'm saying i'm not saying much well there i'm paying my share or here is a lot of people i said the the i.r.s. doesn't go after them because it's too expensive they got but these people have very good lawyers and they'll be dragged out of the courts i mean this is not just the character of a. i think when you start calling the rich evil on the poor or developing wonderful i think that's a bad thing i think we need to unify the country not be trying yeah well one american against another yeah but the system that we have here is creating a new serfdom that's what i'm terrified of here you know what i mean there is a lot of people who have power with impunity and and it's the weakest of us that are losing left and right ok the good thing that i'm happy about is with the end of

these lockdowns you're seeing a lot of dynamic economic growth that is very good and we need to encourage it here de go ahead and jump in before we run out of time and i'm just going to disagree when he said when you have 5 percent of the population controlling 90 percent of the wealth i mean what do you expect they have the money they need to play i don't understand what the issue with this issue a shit i mean but i really that there should be you know who are the demons when this you become greedy and selfish so we will move on from that and craft the in giving you rocky the exact but i love this way job i mean it's hurting us to do that and i wasn't talking about controversial or previously when i think you know i'm talking about how the. everyday rate of butter how to think ok i'm going to jump in here quite draco's and in washington last 30 seconds go to you my friend go ahead. to this review of the wall culture is destroying politics that were the

result or not the solution but when you talk about these cultural wars you look at states like arkansas that passed interest you're a republican governor vetoed you got 55 georgia that. were suppression was certainly is one part of your other forcing these culture wars ok well i think we highlighted the differences we didn't solve anything i want to thank my guests in washington land and in dallas i want to thank my viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time. remember rostock rules. we started with the corps or at least so you but that's going to give you other than a human plus one. but on the better side going to the booker

lists the song that does this for me just. do some of. the emotion running to the months to go if you'll still be stuck or your muscles in the course of your knee mrs jim above should just walk away from it all to go chill the fuck should. use compassion that. we think she minds be so good soldier to kiss off the boot she's wearing. a huge wedge so sold out so can move the apostle the poor more than we will be the new i'm going to be sure stuck with some russian police force to bust hold of. by the pandemic no certainly no borders i'm just buying 2 nationalities.

has a much richer and the we don't look like she. needs to take. a judge and. commentary crisis at least the sentence in modern times we do better we should. everyone is contributing your own way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenge is great for the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that clear in it together.