host: francesca chambers. guest: with the exception of donald trump who want to be on the debate stage tomorrow, we have learned more about the positions and issues from other republicans who are running in the race. donald trump again, we know he won't be debating. the rnc announced the lineup, there will be eight candidates on the stage, including mike pence, the former vice president, nikki haley, as well as ron desantis. they will all be on the stage but donald trump will not be. host: justin chambers, usa today's white house correspondent -- francesca chambers, usa today's white house

host: francesca chambers.with the exception of donald trump who want to be on the debate stage tomorrow, we have learned more about the positions and issues from other republicans who are running in the race. donald trump again, we know he won't be debating. the rnc announced the lineup, there will be eight candidates on the stage, including mike pence, the former vice president, nikki haley, as well as ron desantis. they will all be on the stage but donald trump will not be. host: justin chambers, usa today's white house correspondent -- francesca chambers, usa today's white house correspondent. thank you for the reporting this morning. guest: thank you so much. this was fun. host: that does it for us today on "washington journal." we will be back again tomorrow. we hope you join us then. ♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2023] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] announcer: c-span is your un

joining me to discuss all this, this unprecedented turn an, francesca chambers, carrie johnson, npr's justice correspondent, a guardian reporter and jeff mason. this has been a remarkable week. you have been around washington covering politics for a while. what do you make of this? we have a man who has been impeached twice, three times indicted, has a bunch of civil cases against him, too. he's facing possible more indictments. but at the same time he is dominating the republican nomination race, and he's tied with the incumbent president. >> it is historic on multiple levels. historic number one because of everything you said. he has been indicted and was arraigned and the fact that the former president of the united states had to come to washington to appearing corporate and east facing consequences in a way that his supporters have also faced. we know he is innocent until proven guilty. we do not know what the outcome of these proceedings will be. but it was historic for all of those levels. it is clearly historic politically because of what's going on next, which is another elect

but mark penn, meanwhile, former clinton adviser with us, francesca chambers of "usa today" with us. one of the things you think about especially if it looks like donald trump does not make the fox debate is who becomes the piÑata that, the target? you could argue that, you know, the florida governor, desantis does, but that's not such a gimme, if it could be ramaswamy. where do you see it going? >> well, it depends on who on the debate stage you're talking about regardless of whether donald trump is there, chris christie is likely to go after donald trump as he has throughout much of the race are. if you're some of the other candidates on stage such as mr. desantis, then you want to go after ramaswamy to who has tried to position himself as an alternative to donald trump in lieu of the governor of florida. so i think it depends. the other thing though, neil, is that for anyone who's in the spotlight in this debate, it has a downside too for you. your record that your views will be urn more scrutiny than they have in the past, and that can be hurtful as a candidate as well. neil: if

francesca chambers and "the washington post" columnist marc thiessen.kind of backed up and there's a lot of questions surrounding all three of them. it was a mess. >> it was a mess. and then you hear all the left wondering around trying to blame this on climate change. in fact, the area of land that has been burned under -- in the last 20 years has gone down by a third in 20 years. it's record lows last year. so this is not climate change. this is government incompetence. this was a failure of land management. a failure of response. and a hawaiian government that didn't trust its own people. they literally said that they didn't set up the alarms they thought the hawaiian people were -- that they would run into the fire instead of away from it. now they want to tell them that they can't sell their land if they are sick and tired of living under this incompetent government and want to move off of hawaii back to the mainland, they are trying to limit their options there. so, i wouldn't be surprised, considering how badly the hawaiian government has handled

today" white house correspondent francesca chambers and hugh hewitt. hugh, let me start with you.inistration that it wasn't chaotic that, it was a success but, boy, you listen today to those families and it does -- it just gives you a totally different perspective. >> thanks, bret, for playing the audio. the stonewalling by the biden administration about abby gate is the worst episode in this administration's many bad episodes and the gold star families that they had finally their chance to say in very direct terms they have received not one apology, not one acknowledgment. of the president of the united states, when he had spoke to mrs. rex was just completely obtuse in his comments to her and not one member of the administration has resigned for the fiasco that took 13 american lives. by the way seven more servicemen at abby gate have taken their own lives since that tragedy. what was the worst moment of the biden administration is being stonewalled not just between -- before mike mcfaul's oversight committee as well. there is a new book "kabul" by jerry dunleavy and james hanse

. >> with us now "usa today" white house correspondent francesca chambers and cnn's senior politicalesantis notable, because that was the most forceful he has been on this front, but also nuanced and i do wonder if desantis as far as he's concerned if he's not 100% right in the sense that he may be right in the general election if it's about 2020 instead of 2024 a republican candidate is in trouble, but 70% of republican voters say that joe biden didn't legitimately win the election. so is donald trump lost a viable argument for republican primary candidate? >> you're kind of does a lot of work there, correct work there, john. i mean, look, the trajectory of desantis' comments is unmistakeable, losing by now 30 points in the national polling and still a substantial deficit in iowa where he's putting a lot of chips. inevitably and inexorably he's moving toward more criticism of donald trump across multiple fronts, but it is always, at least so far, nuanced and qualified and offset by other comments like him saying that the indictment last week was, of course, politically motivated and

it is time now for our sunday group, "usa today" white house correspondent francesca chambers, juan williamsitch mcconnell, josh holmes, and penny if nance -- penny nance, welcome to all of you. i want to look at some pew center research. they were looking at the effect of dr. martin luther king's legacy, and they say this: 52% of americans say there's been a great deal or a fair amount of progress on racial equality in the last 60 years. a third say there's been some progress, but 15% say there's not been much or no progress at all. 60 years out from that speech, juan, where do you think we are? >> i think we've made progress, i don't think there's any question. now, remember e, dr. king made that speech in 1963, that's before passage of the '64 civil rights act, so we still had segregated movie theater seating and water fountains and the like. so i don't think there's any question we've made progress. but you can't use that as an excuse to look away from the division, the disparities on race that continue to exist. gallup had a poll out earlier this year said 60% of americans are dissatisf