continue the conversation with alex volo previously served as chief counsel senate majority leader bill frist and former general counsel for the national republican senatorial committee and a very happy birthday to you alex oh thank you larry pre-shared. let's get into it over the weekend donald trump commuted the sentence of roger stone has caused an uproar in some circles what do you make of that mo. so a couple of things a lot spend made about this and other commutations or pardons your potential pardons from president trump. any time a president commutes or pardons the sentence of someone that he knows or has a relationship with politically or otherwise he gets attention i did a little digging just to see from a scale perspective i think the president has commuted or pardoned $36.00 people dust far that's pretty low by any modern standard. i think obama was 1500 or so bill clinton was close to 2000 people and remember and i don't mean to pick on them because i actually my own constitutional view of presidential power in this regard is quite broad but i don't recall quite this level of upr

he has served as national security advisor to senator bill frist. he served as foreign policy advisers for members of the senate and house including only foreign relations committee -- including on the foreign relations committee. here to joinof you the conversation with #atpride. if you are on the zuma platform, you can also submit questions &a function. ater, we will have discussion. before all that, i will turn to you, mr. deputy secretary. greetings to all of you today. let me start by thanking you for your warm introduction and many years of friendship. thank you, jeff, for all of our colleagues here today. years, it has been instrumental in advancing the for department of state employees. american values of equal treatment for every person with respect, decency, and equality under the law. i welcome the opportunity to join you all here today for an engaged discussion on advancing persons.r lgbti i served on the board of freedom house years ago and it is my privilege to continue these efforts in the united states government, working to protect

governor leavitt has said that before a pandemic, those who do what he and senator frist did, which is to say we need to do all these things, are called alarmists, and then after a pandemic or in the middle of it, they are called inadequate to the task. then there is the last point i'd like to make. it's about politics. the covid-19 virus, this sneaky, dangerous enemy is a science matter, not a political matter, but it has become too much of a political matter. take the issue of masks. we got into a situation -- have gotten into a situation where whether you wear a mask depends on your attitude toward president trump. for many americans, it seems if you're pro-trump, you don't wear a mask, and if you don't like trump, you do wear a mask. i suggested that the president might occasionally wear a mask just to signal to the -- his followers that it's a good idea, recommended by every single health expert to wear a mask, certainly for the protection of everybody else. another way to say it is our athletic director at the university of tennessee said if you really, really want to watch some

crime on social media as well the bill has some positive sides but especially on the possibilities of frist rick ting personal freedom of speech and restricting journalism suppressing journalism many international organizations whom rights groups and also even the united nations have reacted against the social media bill saying that it would harm. this freedom of speech in turkey in turkey even the mainstream media is currently under government control so the media it's not wrong to say that media is monarchic and that's why many fear that this could cause more marginal marginalization in media but on the other hand it turkey has been fighting with our old kurdistan workers party and the callender scrips who the government accuses of trying to overthrow the government in 2016 a so and they are all using fake accounts and brute accounts that might be helpful for the security institutions to find out what kind of people are trying to manipulate or this inform the public now everybody's curious whether the government is going to apply this bill in an appropriate way or whether the government i

i remembered that in 2005 i sat in the office of senator frist with about six black preachers and he announced to us that he was going to make apologies to the nation for the people that died from lynching. at that time the senate and estimated that there were somewhere on the order of 4000 720 some odd individuals who had been which no one had been arrested. there was a lack of justice but he stood up on behalf of the nation and said our nation apologizes for their debts, for their children's children . it takes a big person and indignation to say we've done something wrong and we're going to make it right. [applause] so you got to understand that today, the lynching phenomenon which in this declaration they talk about racism and it being the ultimate act of racism, many were left right in the state. my father was raised in the southern part of georgia but i want you to understand that we're not here to declare that you are are at fault, whites are at fault, mister trump isat fault . we're here to say on our watch we have anopportunity to bring healing . we have been set in a place

senator frist, former majority leader, testified before us and said he made 50 speeches as majority leader, die identifying what needed to be done, tried to do them but between pandemics we get our eye off the ball. we have other things to do. we don't do the hard things. so it seems to me that what i -- i'm going to work hard with senator blunt, senator murray, anyone else, senator shelby, others to try to make sure that we don't make that mistake this time. and that while we've got our eye on the ball, while we're paying attention, while we have these lessons in front of us, that we do them. for example, manufacturing. building up capacity. building up on shore capacity. barda says. are we going to sustain that? or are we just going to let happen to it what governor levitt testified happened with the last plan? stockpile. we know what happened with stockpile they diminished. hospital and states sold them off. they didn't have the money to keep them up. data. we're not all happy with the way data is being aggregated by c.d.c. and need to take a look at that. are we going to wait until nex

frist. and, therefore, this means we're going to have to have some sort of public funding that will guarantee a market over that 10, sasse-year period when that certain event, that certain pandemic will occur. now, there's precedent for what i'm proposing today. in 2003 senator judd greg of new hampshire -- in fact, he used to stand at this-esque did and make excite and well-informed speeches. one of our best united states senators. senator gregg was chairman of the same health committee that i am chairman of today. he then recognized -- 2003 -- the need for clear, long-term commitment from the federal government to prepare for public health emergencies like covid-19. that year congress passed what we called project bioshield with the leadership of senator gregg, congressman hal rogers, senator cochran of mississippi and others. the legislation provided $5 billion in advanced appropriations to be used over the next ten years to buy treatments and vaccines for threats like anthrax and smallpo