Transcripts For CSPAN Washington Journal 12152019 20240713

We will share some of the details. Is itr in afghanistan, still worth it . Our phone lines are open at 202 7488000 free democrats, 202 7488001 for republicans. If youre an independent, 202 7488002. Join us on social media. We will read your tweet at cspanwj. Also taking your Text Messages. Tell us your first name and where your texting from. Here is that number, 202 7488003. If youre driving, dont text and drive. Front page of the Washington Post, the latest installment in a multi part series on afghanistan and reporting of craig with law focusing on opioids. The headline is unguarded nation question ma we also unguarded nation. From the website and news. Com, the Trump Administration intending to announce the drawdown of about 4000 troops from afghanistan as early as next week. The withdrawal will leave between 8000 and 9000 troops in afghanistan. The u. S. Has between 12000 and 13,000 troops in afghanistan today. Officials would not say when the drawdown would begin. A combination of troops redeploying early and others not being replaced when they rotated out. President trump promised since campaigning in 2016 to end wars like the one of like the one in afghanistan and reduce the number of troops deployed overseas. His advisors have convinced him not to pull the plug on the mission but the president willing to take such a step when he abruptly pulled troops out of syria. The president has made clear to his advisors that he wanted to withdraw all troops from afghanistan by the november 2020 election. Story that was part of the three year investigation by Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post on the afghanistan papers. A confidential trove of ferment documents obtained by the Washington Post reveals that senior u. S. Officials failed to tell the truth about the war in making rosy pronouncements that they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. More than 400 insiders offering unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in afghanistan and how the u. S. Became mired in nearly two decades of warfare. With a bluntness rarely expressed in public, the interviews lay bare the pent up complaints, frustrations and confessions along with secondguessing and backbiting, that from the Washington Post and the full Series Available online at Washington Post. Com. Craig whitlock is the reporter who looked into that in on cspans washington today, our Radio Program at 5 00 p. M. Eastern monday through friday, asked why three administrations failed to tell the truth about whats happening in afghanistan. Heres part of that conversation. Too. Ve asked myself that how could people have misled the public for so long and i think many journalists knew that things werent going best new things were going wrong. Thaturnalists knew things were going on. Maybe if you are not personally responsible nobody wants to admit that cant succeed at a mission. The military mindset and culture is that no mission is too difficult. If youre given a mission you will, bush it no matter what and they just have to get more people and money and time and effort and lead and sweat and tears to accomplish the mission. This was kind of fuzzy. What were we trying to accomplish . What was the strategic objective . I think its a cultural problem they dont want to admit it was. Ailing one of the very few commanders in the war in 18 years, whoever said we were losing, was a guy named general david mckiernan. Were going well. He said i think were losing. He got fired. You can argue whether he got. Ired for that or other reasons theres a long record if you tell the truth in the u. S. Military it doesnt always end well with your career. Host that from Craig Whitlock, who will join us later on the washington journal this month to talk about investigative reporting. His peace, available at Washington Post. Com. If youre an afghan war veteran or a Family Member who served in. Fghanistan, 202 7488000 if youre active or retired military, 202 7488001. For all others, 202 7488002. Lets go to kathy in dear be healed in deerfield beach, florida. Guest guest i am livid caller every single one of the senators and Commerce People took an oath to swear to support the constitution of america and they have not done it and they are cowards. I dont understand how they can get away with it. I dont know what the Bar Association is thinking that this is disgusting. Host kathy from florida. A look at the numbers the 18 year war in afghanistan. More than 775 thousand troops serving in afghanistan over the last 18 years. 2300 deaths, more than 20,000 wounded and the price tag estimating nearly 1 trillion. Jay from Arlington Virginia, good morning. Caller good morning. Longtime listener. These kinds of conversations fromyour show different others that are out there. Its mostly propaganda. Misplaceding to say patriotism but patriotism of putting a context where you need to go out for blood and things like that. I lived in Arlington Virginia when the 9 11 attacks occurred. I remember the hysteria around a moment totaking figure out whats going on. Why these things happening. What these people have against us and things like that. Biggest hardest thing you can and smash them. A lot of people who work hasnt lost their lives. You take that, 18 or 19 years il now and youve got larger spot the population for the people in that region. Many any innocent people have lost their lives. Filteringhow many those days. Number of military men and women , the proudest, the best trained you have. Men and women with ptsd, all kinds of injuries. The untold fortune we lost, continued that we continue to incur, really for what . , thextension of that situation in iraq host thank you for the call. I will leave it there. This response from the department of defense with regard to the reporting by the Washington Post. Thee has been no content by department of defense to Mislead Congress or the public. Officials have briefed the press in our efforts in afghanistan and dod provides regular reports to congress that highlight these challenges. Information was provided to the forial Inspector General the express purpose for the inclusion in public reports. Most of the individuals interviewed spoke with the benefit of hindsight. Back to your phone calls. The war in afghanistan, based on what we are learning from the Washington Post, is it still worth fighting . Mark from the schenectady, new york. Caller i think that the war in afghanistan is worth fighting criminalhe islamic outfits like al qaeda and taliban are sowing corruption and disturbing commercial interests. Tons of opiumrol fields in afghanistan and it is so we should be in there to destroy the criminal isis,ates like taliban, corrupting the entire region. That should be our objective. Host thanks from the thanks for the call from schenectady, new york. To 202 messages 7488003. Secretary Donald Rumsfeld telling Washington Post the following, i may be impatient, i know im a bit inpatient. We are never going to get the u. S. Military out of afghanistan unless we take care and see there is something going on that will provide the stability that will be necessary for us to help. Anding by saying kenneth is joining us in buffalo, new york. The question should be not still worth fighting but is at war that can be won. Host what do you think . Take compare Northern Ireland for instance afghanistan. Northern ireland, the ira against the british army. The ira is never more than 300 or 400 guys. Everybody spoke the same language. It was in a small place. The british army could not beat the ira. Here you have afghanistan, heres country. Terrible. N is. Ountains and deserts hundreds of different ethnicities and languages. Not whether we should be fighting, but whether we can win. I will say the answer to that is no. We will never be able to pacify the country. Thats got to come from within and we are just wasting our treasure. Lives and treasure. Maybe we are justified in fighting that war but the question was whether it was a good idea and i say it was never a good idea. Host the counter argument is that if we dont fight them there we will fight them here in the u. S. And our involvement in afghanistan began after 9 11 and the attacks by saudi pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the pentagon and in pennsylvania. How do you respond to that . Caller people crashed the planes into the World Trade Center were mostly savvy arabians. Their main beef was our occupation of their country. American troops in saudi arabia. The question is not answerable as to what will happen. I believe if we leave those people alone, maybe they believe us alone. You know what i mean . We are not going to win. That is for sure and the longer , were just going to. Ose more and more i guess thats the only answer i have. Host thanks of a call from buffalo new york. The afghanistan papers, a secret history of the war and more from the reporting of Craig Whitlock. We are devoid of a fundamental afghanistan understanding of afghanistan. ,hat from douglas lute threestar army general who served as the wars are during the bush and Obama Administrations. He told that to government. He added, we did not have the fogs notion of what we were undertaking. If the American People knew the magnitude of this dysfunction of 2400 lives lost he said blaming the deaths of the u. S. Military personnel on what he called your credit breakdowns among congress, the pentagon and state department, who will say this was in vain . The afghanistan papers, secret history of the war is the investigative piece by Craig Whitlock in the Washington Post. That is our focus. The Afghanistan War still worth fighting based on mobile enough from this. Next to joe in gibson, nebraska. Caller good morning. Done twouggest, having tours in vietnam, and vietnam we did not have an understanding of the culture or the country or its history was like. We seemed not to learn anything from history. Afghanistan has never been kind to outsiders. The russians did not have much truthnd they put 100,000 there and they were more ruthless than we are willing to be. If i recall correctly, the mongols did not have much look. When youre in a country in a country and the average age of death of the male is 39 and usual cause is gunshot wound, tribes fight among each other until outsider comes in and then they like to fight against the outsider. I dont think you are going to get very far. The argument if we dont fight them there we will have to fight them here is perhaps worth mentioning, but at least if were fighting them here or on screening,ar using travel limitations and if necessary some form of quarantine of the country, we would be on better ground than in afghanistan. In afghanistan for a long time. Its my belief that the last war we really won was the second world war. If memory serves correctly, that was the last war in accordance with the constitution of the United States, declaration of war by congress occurred. Host thank you for the call from frasca. Heres a topic that most agree on, since trumpet is for ending in endless war that started the deficit in the first place. This from david, i never considered afghanistan to be a war, seemed more like a conflict. All the time the treasure invested will yield a solid result, time to wage peace. This from a viewer with a text message. Sonia saying she lives in maryland. The war on terror is a forever war. There should be no afghan war. I favor reducing troops. And jan saying cheney, bush and the rest will never be held accountable. Talking about the war in afghanistan 18 years, nearly two decades and an indepth story by the Washington Post. The latest installment is in thele this morning newspaper and online. I think there are a lot of lessons not learned. I think that is what comes out so clearly in these documents. One pretty basic lesson, if you go to war, who is the enemy . Who are we fighting . We thought we were fighting al qaeda in the beginning but quickly changed into a different war. We have not been fighting al qaeda in afghanistan in 17 years probably. You cant even identify the enemy. In these documents of could not. Donald rumsfeld said ive note beer no idea who the bad guys are. The troops kept asking who are the bad guys and i could not tell them. If you dont know who the enemy is or what your objective is, its hard to win a war. Host that from Craig Whitlock from the washington today program. Theael ohanlon, from perkins institution, critical of the Washington Post for writing. He said, it is a serious charge to a huge to accuse u. S. Fficials of duplicity the Washington Post did a disservice with this report at a time when trust in american institutions is already weak and officials at accusing each other of line all the time being wrongly demeaned and diminished. Next up is james from norfolk, virginia. Caller hows it going . My view on this is, it is a war of attrition as we can see. We had to take a broader view and see what we have actually done in this region. In afghanistan the taliban or major stronghold player in that region. Once we moved in a lot of the people there started to look better. What i mean by that is, your females that can go to school past the age of seven. A lot of other things. Human rights, a lot better around that region and iraq as well. I feel from a standpoint of a civilian you can see the tide of the war and the sentiment is going last. Inre are people struggling that region. It smells going to help them america has to stand up and do the right thing. Host this from edward who says on our twitter page, was the war ever worth fighting . Bring our troops home and all of congress voted for that, how may representatives except for barbara lee . The next call was from cary, North Carolina. Well go to joseph in boston. Good morning, joe. Caller i served in the marine corps reserves. Infantry school, i came to the conclusion i dont want to go to war. War is hell. I think america has been successful as a country that we became isolationist and we look power sincean took 1996 in afghanistan. , the russiansll lost 20,000 troops. Why does america why doesnt america think it over . Up afterd be a big set 9 11. I was in manhattan i see what happened after 9 11. Do you think we should really go to war . The most powerful military in the history of mankind. The most economic country in the history of mankind. Country thinking they have a plan b . Exactly what happened. Chinas financing are war in afghanistan. Of course it was a waste of time. Troughrt donald 100 . Donald trump 100 . Bring the troops home. We are wakingline up to this morning, but Trump Administration intending to announce the withdrawal of about 4000 troops from afghanistan. Available online on nbc news. Com. William, good morning from tennessee. Caller good morning. You for cspan. Been watching since i was a teenager. Host glad to hear from you. Caller the last bastion of true freespeech. As far as the wars and the middle east from carter through today, we are not fighting the middle east. Thats not a certain region we are against. It is islam and that is the danger. , hehindis like gandhi loved the muslims, the muslims did not like him, thats why they get pakistan. Jesus taught everyone to love everyone. Thats why a lot of the world is christian. Mohammed, of islam, taught people to hate rob and steal and pillage. That is the real war we are against. I wish more americans and worldwide fresh worldwide christians and handys and everyone would realize and indis host why do our forces protect the poppy fields . We are not there to stabilize the country or the poppy fields who would been destroyed. Afghanistan is where empires poked a die. From todays installment in the againn post, almost from todays Washington Post. Part of a multi part Series Available online. This text message from julius North Carolina. The narrative from the empire is about misdirection. Anyone who believes America White into afghanistan on some moral principle is a fool. Its always about oil and real estate. Since 2001, more than 775,002 been a ploy to afghanistan. Many repeatedly. Died, the2300 interviews through extensive array of voices ring into sharp relief the core failings of the war that persists to this day. They underscore how three president s and their military commanders have been unable to deliver on their promise to prevail in afghanistan. With most speaking on the assumption that the remarks would not be made public, officials acknowledging there were their strategies were flawed and that washington wasted a normas sums of money trying to remake afghanistan into a modern nation. Back to phone calls from susan in appomattox, virginia. Caller good morning. Not right to people, the 18yearolds who get drafted or the military, the young people that get sent to a country that has no semblance so what they are used to, sent just to fight and kill casual way we do it. Ts ok if these people die it goes on generation after generation. Youngs in the military or , i would say, why dont you go over there and fight . Thank you. Promisessident trump to get us out of afghanistan. This is the 1058 day of his presidency, what is the hold up . I frequent critic of the war in afghanistan is senator rand paul and this week he had these comments on fox news. [video clip] i think our young men and women we send to war, they deserve more. I dope and airing of what is the mission. Ive been saying i cant meet a general anywhere who can tell me what is the mission we are trying to accomplish in afghanistan. This is an argument for more transparency but also an argument for why congress after 19 years we need to have a full open debate of whether or not we should still be at war. We should debate what is the Current National interest. We should debate whether we should be at war, what is the mission and that is not happening. You are interested in reopening this whole question and holding new hearings on what we are doing. Soldiers to war. We should review and ask those who spoke to the Inspector General about this what is the Current Mission. We should also debate if were going to be at war what is the current congressional authorization for that war because this is not the war that was voted on in 2001. I was for that war to punish those were attacked us on 9 11. This is a different mission and ive yet to meet a general who can tell mesa saintly what the Current Mission in afghanistan is. Mark milley,from former Army Lieutenant saying this army and police force have been effective in the ability to combat and surgeons every day and i think thats an important story to be told across the board. That from september of 2013. The chairman of joint chiefs of staff. Back to your calls. The question still worth fighting. The maritime janitorial, this is what it looks like in the newspaper calling for President Trump to be impeached. We will have live coverage of the florida debate from the house floor. The House Rules Committee scheduled to meet on tuesday at 11 00 eastern time expected to be a lengthy session. Live on cspan three also cspan radio or you can listen to it on the cspan radio app. Ray is joining us from clinton, pennsylvania. Good morning. Caller good morning. I think you asked the question about if we dont fight them there whoever them are host that is the argument we have been hearing. If we dont fight them there, we will fight them here. Caller caller the same argument went on in vietnam. I was drafted in 1967 in the army. During basic training we were taken to an auditorium. Speech, i gave us a call it propaganda about why we are fighting there, fighting these communists in north vietnam. They said they would go into villages and torture people. Dont wanthe people to fight us but the communist there forced them to fight. They did not they would make examples of them, put people in prison. You justp and said explained what the commonest do. If myself what the communists do. If i myself dont want to go you will stick me in leavenworth. Hauser is your thing different from what they are doing . The question was never answered. Mytill have a bad taste in mouth from serving in the army because of that. I got every dirty detail. I was 19 years old. I have my own mind. I still to this day, how are we different . And now, if you look on youtube and see the videos, vietnam is a vibrant country. Called the republic of vietnam. Cities. Rebuilding theres commerce. We are trading with them. Those people should be brought up on charges, bush and his henchmen, so should johnson be dug up and put on trial of the lies they told. You will find out there were lies. There is no bombing in the ships. You talk to the men on the ships they say nothing ever happened. Tens of thousands of people we lost and guys i still need guys today, i met a guy who went of Hamburger Hill and he sat there and he could not understand why when it got to the top and he lost all those guys, all those buddies, he said they took us off by helicopter and we gave it right back to them. , some general has there. Er to hold you up what are generals good for . The only thing theyre good for his fighting wars. Host some have compared what we are learning from washington dot to the pentagon papers you see a parallel . Thing, lies. E same us of the warned military. The industrial military complex. These generals go off and get jobs in these big corporations after they are done. Its about spending money and getting us involved. Youll see the chinese going beyond their borders and intruding in everybodys business. Now we call them the enemy. Host we are going to move on but thanks for sharing your story with us we appreciate and. To october 2001, just about a month after the 9 11 terror attacks. This address by then president george w. Bush. [video clip] commanderinchief sends americas sons and daughters into battle in a foreign land only after the greatest care and a lot of prayer. We ask a lot of those who wear our uniform. We ask them to leave loved ones, to travel great distances to risk injury even to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives. They are dedicated, honorable. They represent the best of our country and we are grateful. To the men and women in our military, every sailor, every coast guardsmen, every airman, every marine, your mission is defined, objectives are clear, your goal is just. President , aom the couple of Text Messages from dave in ohio with the following. We need to get out of afghanistan. Russia had enough sense as well. Another text message from rose in West Virginia. They are just being shuffled. Our focus seems to be solely on our interest. That is what is going on now while we are sleeping. Afghanistan papers a sacred history of the war. Reporting of Craig Whitlock. John is joining us from houston, texas. Sayer i just would like to ray woods from pennsylvania, 100 correct when need to cut billion,ary from 750 and be just like sweetened, we never should have that like sweden. D just like had a balanced budget, no when we had some debt clinton left but we had a balanced budget concreting surplus and junior bush comes along. I will never vote for another republican. Draft dodger in the white house. I cant believe anybody in the military would vote for a draft dodger because that is what he did. Three or four times he dodged the draft. He has no business being in the white house and hopefully he will be removed soon. Host john, thanks for the call. President barack obama trying to assess the war in afghanistan and examining how to measure success based on the military involvement in the u. S. Treasure. [video clip] Going Forward we will not blindly stay the course. We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable. We will assess our efforts to Train Afghan Security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing goals. None of the steps i have outlined will be easy. None should be taken by america alone. The world cannot afford the price that will come do have afghanistan slides back into chaos or al qaeda operates unchecked. We have a responsibility to act. Because our own peace and security depends on it. Host that from president obama. The Washington Post outlook section has an indepth piece called the infinity war. At Washington Post. Com. Morning to you. Say i would like to ussr could not handle afghanistan because of the terrain, all that. Innocent civilians they had killed. This is the one time i agree with President Trump on getting out of there. Thats all i got to say. Carol ins is from panama city. President obama was paraded he would called week and out trumpet supposed to be bringing troops home and he is wonderful. They progress he is stunning coming from the republicans. President trump was in afghanistan. We will share with you what he told the troops in a moment. First is mike from wellington, kansas. Caller most people that you have calling in here seem to forget the facts. 16 Saudi Arabians on those planes. It was saudi arabia that attacked us and bush went in and attacked afghanistan. Host the argument was afghanistan was the Training Ground for the terrorist. Caller but who attacked us . Host they were saudi pilots. Correct. Caller was there anybody on the plane from afghanistan . Host you are right. Im just trying to explain to you why president george w. Bush say we are fighting the war in afghanistan because of it being a breeding ground for terrorists. Caller you are misrepresenting this completely. Host im just giving you the facts. They were saudi pilots. You feel the war in afghanistan is not worth fighting, correct . Caller we should have been fighting saudi arabia. Most of the ones who attacked us and blamed it on afghanistan. Because saudi arabia was our ally. Those are the facts. Host im glad you are joining us in the conversation. War, we dontove pay for it. Trillionsl the good for the pentagon did for us on 9 11. What a joke . Heres what the president told the troops. Theremendous success in last 50 months with our military. Isis has been badly ahead, severely hit. Albaghdadi down a different part of the world, the founder of isis trying to rebuild it and that did not work out too well for him. Be a tremendous success with isis over the last three or four months. Qaeda. E with al down to a very small number. The taliban wants to make a deal, we will see if they make a deal. Period of time, we have been wanting to make a deal and so i the taliban and we pulled back. We did not want to do it because of what they did. Not a good thing they did with killing the soldier. He was an american soldier from puerto rico. Killed him. They killed the United Nations soldier. They killed a total of 12 people. I said that is bad negotiating power. Since then we have hit them so hard. Hit this never been hard and they want to make a deal. If they dont make it, thats fine. At the same time we are bringing down the number substantially. Because of all the things we have in place, we can do more damage with even fewer troops. We are bringing it down substantially and we will be down at a number that is a good number and we will stay until such time as we have a deal. Total victory. Host that with the president as he met with the president of afghanistan also the u. S. Troops on thanks giving day. Your calls, your comments on the war the war in afghanistan. Still worth fighting . A nonreporting by the Washington Post this tweet from alex calling afghanistan the graveyard of empires. This note from nbc news and others reporting that the president and tending to announce the withdrawals of about 4000 troops from afghanistan. Mike from chillicothe, ohio, welcome to the program. Caller how are you . Host caller caller im fine. I figure those 4000 troops will be sent somewhere else on the planet. Hard to tell where it could be. Of eviler the axis speech. That mustve been a 20 year military contract. About to run out in some areas. 23 trillion in the whole. Could you bring up the table and when theh mentioned statues got blown up there that she wanted local schoolchildren to send a dollar into the white house that they were going to rebuild those buddhist statues there . But was a trick question then its been about 100 years now since that marine general decided the war was a racket. 100 years ago when they went into china, boxer rebellion and stationed them at the standard oil compound. He says thats when i realized war was a racket. He was the guy that spilled the beans with the overthrow of fdr. International weasels that did not agree with the social programs. Right now, with this impeachment , the federalist society, the go these lawyers and judges to be appointed. I think its quite a disney production wrapped around the Twilight Zone at this time. Host thank you for the call. Talking about the war in afghanistan and whether it is still worth fighting. Our guest on newsmakers is republican Mac Thornberry, the armedg member on the services committee. This piece by the Washington Post came up in the conversation. [video clip] to go back to basics. The reason we are there. The only reason to keep them there is to protect americans here at home. While its not in the news a lot these days, i believe based on good information, that there is a significant terrorist threat in afghanistan that threatens our homeland. Before we pull the plug and say nevermind we are done, we better figure out a way as terrorist threat against our homeland is going to be addressed. Inave tremendous confidence the commander in afghanistan, general miller. He has an incredible history that includes the black hawk down incident. Hes been in afghanistan as well as iraq a of times over the years. I trust his judgment completely. I also worry if you get into big a rush to reach a negotiated agreement the other side knows theyand all they believe have to do is reach out and youll give concessions. In amy appropriate to reduce our footprint. It will need to be consistent with our mission to protect the u. S. Homeland and our view is and my view is there a need to be reciprocity on the part of the taliban if we are going to have fewer folks in the country. Host that from congressman Mac Thornberry, the Ranking Member of the House Armed Services committee. Newsmakers follows the washington journal at 10 00 a. M. Eastern. Listen anytime on the free cspan radio app are on the web on cspan. Org. Donna is joining us from st. Louis. Good morning. Caller good morning. First, be aware of the industrial military complex. They want to make money and keep working. Realize, we need to 20 trillion in debt, we cant afford 20 trillion tax cuts for the rich or trillion dollar wars no more. Weve got to budget our money so that Social Security and medicare, things we paid into for years, and they always use them for other things, we want to make sure they are always there for the citizens of this country. These president s and all the military leaders who lied because of their careers, they should be ashamed of themselves. Vote for bernie. Thank you. Tweetjames hard with this. The line general should be keel hauled. Frank, good morning. Is really my first time watching this show. Im going to to a lot of people they need to start watching it. I have a couple things. Ur president is a coward he lies to us more than any president ever has. You could take all of our past president s and add up all of their lives and they were not come close to his. His sons want to kill something. They want to kill so bad, send them to afghanistan for a couple years and let them learn something there. , theyese deregulations were regulated for reason. Theres some stuff going on behind that and its got to be about money. And thehow America World we are number one. You thats all i wanted to say. Host this is from another viewer. Another documents showing u. S. Leaders misled the public on progress in the Afghanistan War. Based on the reporting of Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post and one of my questions, Lessons Learned from his investigation. [video clip] ive covered the military for several years. What was remarkable to me, we finally got our hands on these interviews that hundreds of people would participate in the obscure given to an federal agency were they just gave these blistering criticisms and descriptions of what happened in the war and why things went wrong and the mistakes that were made. To read and hear these people we also got audio recordings, it was remarkable because it contrasted so much with what government officials are saying in public for 18 years. Host Craig Whitlock joins us on washington today on cspan radio. Dave is joining us from goose creek south carolina. Caller good morning. Its been a while. Everybody. Ay to i just got up. Kind of coffee starved. As far as afghanistan goes, as everybody will go online and google the project for the new american century. Look who is on that organization. Ead what it was about its no mistake, no blunders it was deliberately done. They wanted to guarantee resources by the use of American Force of arms and they are doing it. The people that started all this dont even have any affiliation with obligation to be responsible to the public whatsoever. Thatsomeone does something causes this kind of damage to the society and you dont punish them for doing it, all you are doing is encouraging them to do worse. Its time we all stop acting like little kids and look at the world as it is and how we are and what we are leaving to our children. Having said all that, please enjoy your holidays. I hope everyone has a safe one. Host thanks for phoning in. Another viewer saying russia was there for over 10 years before us. Jihadis are religious fanatics who want to die to go to heavens lets get our troops out and let the leftwing the the leftwing jihadists destroy the whole place once and for all. The special Inspector General for the afghan reconstruction as part of the investigative piece by the Washington Post there is at washingtondeo post. Com. Heres a potion that heres a portion. [video clip] essentially saying it was a disaster and they knew it that i dont see any of these comments in your Lessons Learned reports. That is the limitation of where we go. As an Inspector General i dont do policy. What all you quoted were people talking about that policy. Why just that you all these people i just floated i just quoted . Used. Y may well be how could you let that drop . We did not let it drop. We are Still Producing these reports. We ask you twice to get our hands on it. Generalt know quoting putting the general would be any more useful than the other reports we have which makes the same point. Host that video, part of the investigative piece by the Washington Post and Craig Whitlock writing the following. A confidential trove of government documents obtained by the Washington Post reveals senior u. S. Officials failed to tell the truth about the war in afghanistan throughout the 18 Year Campaign making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable. More than 400 insiders offering unrestrained criticism of what went wrong in afghanistan and how the United States became mired in nearly two decades of warfare with a bluntness rarely expressed in public the interviews laid bare frustrations and confessions along with secondhand guessing and backbiting. Joe from san antonio, texas, what do you think . Caller good morning the subject i dont know how many times we tried it. I suppose it worked after world war ii. Defamation tal decimation. Somebodys got to bring it out that trump is winning these wars using capitalism against a caste system. And looks like its changing the face of our planet to me. Hes not using bullets. Taking money out of their wallet. Rom iran andt of their Oil Customers oilfields in south texas. We are stepping up to the plate opening more pipelines. The china deal is not far away. North korea wants to work with us. Western europe is paying more of their share of nato. They should make people happy that want to spend all of our money on ssi and medicare. Its amazing to watch. Im an older man. Im just a spectator here now. No winners yesterday or navy wins 317 in philadelphia. The headline from the Washington Post, maids go to ground in a big way. We want to share with you this from our facebook page. Bush and obama were incompetent. They did not know what they were doing. President trump is earning our troops home stepping up these endless wars. He is getting pushback. Coming up in a moment jason miller will be joining us to talk about campaign 2020 and later selena zito out with book on the great retreat. How President Trump was able to win in 2016 and lessons for 2020. We will go next to jeff. Good morning morning from crofton, nebraska. Curiosity,t out of are you guys ever going to have anything about the horwitz investigation . Id like to have somebody whos very knowledgeable about it and can sit there and answer questions about how crooked the fbi and Justice Department was. Obviously the other networks are not going to tell the people the truth. Would be nice if you guys i know you cover walltowall host hearings. Caller whatever. If you could, we would appreciate it. I want it all put out on the table. I want them to know everything. How the dossier was fake. How they did spy on papadopoulos. How they did spy on the other guy and never even charged him with one crime but he was in all four dossiers. It is criminal what these people done and they will get away with it because they had three groups of 12 fbi agent. All three were handpicked and all three are going to get away with it. They still work at the fbi and they are the ones that set up papadopoulos. They are the ones that set up the other people. A general of 32 years in . Are you kidding me . And we dont even have it on the networks. The only people playing it was fox. Itwe should point out is available on our website at cspan. Org. This is from eric. We must continue the war to ensure that her when poppy fields continue to thrive and the pharmaceutical corporations opioidbased stocks. That from eric. This is a headline from Time Magazine person of the year gala erg, that greta thunb power of youth. Jason miller will be here to take your calls as we look at the president s campaign for reelection and Randy Weingartner joining us from new york. Youre watching and listening to cspans washington journal on this sunday morning. We are back in a tonight on q a, professor of medicine that Columbia University talks about her book and pursuing cancer. We have gone from a sickly having a universal death sense to carry 68 of cancer today. Only 32 of people die. , i asked a very fundamental question, the people , why are weg, 68 paleolithicthese approaches . Where has 200 billion of research gone . Why are not finding better ways of treating cancer . Monday night on the communicators, mike doyle, chair of the subcommittee on telecommunications. Our concern is to make sure we close this Digital Divide that exists in our country. We have an opportunity to do that. Literally, 50 of their homework requires Internet Access and they cant get it where they live. They go to mcdonalds or a library to find a hotspot to do their homework. These young people are being greatly disadvantaged when they dont have access to broadband. Thats what we will be focusing on, how do we close the homework gap, had a we close the Digital Divide. Had we get this out to these underserved areas. Washington journal continues. We want to welcome back jason miller, Communications Director to the top transition team. Trump transition team. Good morning. Host let me begin with you. This is from the front page of the New York Times and political. A moderate democrat is strongly opposed to impeaching President Trump is expected to switch hearties and become a republican. He is one of two democrats who voted against the impeachment inquiry. Were touting the news on saturday, describing it as a huge blow to the democrats efforts to impeach the president. Guest this is nothing short of remarkable. We are having articles of impeachment being dropped on the president and a member of the other party is switching the party. He is changing his entire political career. Its important to point out there were two democrats who voted against these hearings. Collin peterson is the chairman of the agriculture committee. Weve seen a lot of speculation around these 31 democratic freshmen. Thethey might vote in actual articles of impeachment. Toy have to whip these votes make sure they have all of these people on board shows a lot of fractures in the caucus. That he is switching parties and will be against impeachment speaks volumes. Host is there any chance any republicans would vote to impeach or convict the president . Guest i dont believe so. The last best chance to make any ground without died when will at the intelligence hearing that he did not see any reason to push forward with impeachment. It the will we call heard test. If they cant flip a more who is disagreed with the president , they are not going to get anybody else. Host will Mitch Mcconnell proceed with a trial . Guest this is the big debate that is coming up. President trump wants to have witnesses, specifically he wants to see the whistleblower. Biden, heo see hunter wants to see adam schiff. Both leader mcconnell and Lindsey Graham what to have it over with quickly. President trump wants to be fully exonerated. This is not just voting down these two articles of impeachment. He wants to be fully exonerated. We havent heard the last of this. We will hear more about. Host will we then see Rudy Giuliani on the senate floor . Mick mulvaney . Mike pompeo . Democrats get who they want . Host there are several different things. Mayor giuliani who i used to 2008, he is the personal attorney. Part of his effort in this proving the mueller witchhunt, he started to get to the bottom of this junk came from. He stumbled into corruption in ukraine. Ukraine receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States every year. Its been ranked the third most corrupt country in the world. There is question about where the money is being spent. Said his report is forthcoming. Some of the findings he has from investigating the shenanigans in ukraine and a host of other things. They are getting back into where these allegations came from. The second part with host should he be forced to testify . Guest he shouldnt be forced to. Host he is a key player in the investigation. Even the president said talk to rudy. Guest if you go back to the call transcript, with ukrainian president and President Trump, president zelensky first brings up Rudy Giuliani. The mayor is the president s personal attorney. To put an attorney on the stand would be quite something. The mayor is going to aggressively defend his client. With the other gentleman you mentioned, Mick Mulvaney and mike pompeo, those are both people who the administration wants executive privilege, which defends their private conversations. Trumpters of president dont believe they did anything wrong. Thats where these articles are going. Host you have to understand the rabbit hole. If you say joe biden has to testify, other individuals who are part of the investigation should testify as well. Is the president hiding behind executive privilege . Guest lets unpack for anyone who hasnt followed the details. Joe biden was the Obama Administrations point person on all things ukraine. There are concerns that billions of dollars were wasted or bungled. Thats a concern the mayor has raised. There was a quid pro quo with regard to him. He said unless ukraine would fire the former prosecutor, the u. S. Was withholding 1. 5 billion in money going to ukraine. His son was on the board of a company that is investigated in ukraine. This isnt something fox news or people on the right are saying. Ukraine is currently investigating this company. The International Monetary fund is withholding money to ukraine because of the corruption. The crux here, we are talking about corruption and money missing and funds being misappropriated. Being paidn was 50,000 a month to be on the board of this company even though he had no experience. These are questions people want to get to. I want to get into the whistleblower for a moment. , you canleblower google his name, this is someone who was not on the call. I think its unconscionable that we can launch an entire and not actually have the person who was on the call host you dont buy the argument that there was a quid pro quo based on their conversations . Guest especially if you look through the memos that have come out. The efforts by the Trump Administration to crack down on the corruption that could be misappropriated, that was well underway before this call. President trump has said two things. This has kept his message on track. Unity. He kept republicans together. There is no quid pro quo. Host its not a transcript. A transcript would be verbatim. Its a summary of the phone call. Someone who was on the colts said it was a true and accurate description. Call said are on the it is completely accurate. We have gone through this entire process. Witnesses being deposed in adam schiffs speakeasy. Not one person has come forward with any evidence of a quid pro quo. Never heard the word presumption so many times in my life. No one has come forward with any evidence of a quid pro quo. Dont seeearsay, i how we can move to impeach a president who was elected by 63 million americans. Advising the Trump Campaign and now a podcast is available. Apple itunes. Lets go to jason in illinois. Veryr i am looking forward to reading john boltons book and see what information he comes forward with. Im calling on the independent line. I pay very close attention. Im of the opinion that both of our mainstream parties are filled with selfserving corrupt when it all cost criminals. Its disgusting. Filled withre criminals. Donald trump is a proven ability, a proven liar, a proven criminal. He is a man of very low character who should be impeached. This boot licking is sickening. Its just disgusting. I am at a loss for words. Host this is from a fact checker at the Washington Post. More than half of the lies are from trump. Guest i disagree strongly with the Washington Post fact checker. A lot of them are his opinion. A lot of them are the way he views things. Whatwant to dive into brian said a moment ago. Obviously, there are people who are not supporters of President Trump. Drama, this week , you could make the argument this is been the single most successful week of the Trump Presidency. Two articles of impeachment were dropped on his head. Some other measures will be very important. The National Defense authorization that funds a lot of things in the federal government, they created a space force. We also saw the parental leave legislation goes into effect. Forget, last friday the job growth numbers. Fore he didnt vote President Trump. If you look at the results, especially during the impeachment chaos, its nothing short of remarkable. Host sharon is joining us from minnesota. Caller good morning from a very cold minnesota morning. Host do you have snow out there . Caller it is 24 degrees below zero right now. That is the actual aperture, not the windchill. My question is, you mentioned about the transcript. Scripture he transcript many times. Everybody does this. Host we are listening. We are already cold. Caller when i read the transcript the first time, the call lasted about 30 minutes. , ittranscript that we get did not last that long. The first time took me 15 minutes. Then i thought somethings got to be wrong. There is 15 minutes missing. Lets try an experiment. Lets do this together. Lets read the transcript together and acted out as if we were doing the call. It only comes out to less than 16 minutes. There is still 15 minutes missing of that phone call. Thats what i want to know. One more thing. All of these republicans that cry like this man here, saying the people voted this man in. We did not. In,illion people voted him more people did not. Stay warm. Host thank you. Colors and itthe sounds cold in minnesota. Think President Trump is going to flip minnesota in 2020. He has made multiple visits there. There are a lot of things going on with the trump economy. I think we will see a turnaround there. Going back to the issue of the transcript, the facts have been the president s friends. There is no quid pro quo. There is no Single Person who has come forth with any evidence. Unfortunately, with this exercise, it is further divided the country. Will pass the house. I think we will see additional defections. I think we could possibly see eight or 10 democrats who vote no on impeachment looking at their political futures. Host these are some of the issues that jason miller mentioned. Thats coming up after washington journal. One of the criticism the president gets is on the town and rhetoric. The first lady has the be best campaign about courtesy on social media. Greta todent tells berg to chill. They photoshop a picture of President Trump as the persevere instead of her. Is that appropriate for the president to go after a 16yearold like that . His wife is very critical of democrats going after barron trump. So. T i dont think she is a political activist. She has been very vocal with her criticisms. Host she is only 16. Guest she has criticized a number of people. Photoshopk at the issue, its pretty humorous. There is nothing meanspirited about that. Youre either going to like his sense of humor or not. People can make their own decision. I personally think he is funny. I think he is a very kind and gracious person. I think you hear people who used to work for him feel the same way. Campaign first ladies about social media, then you have these tweets. Guest the first lady said she viewed that as him criticizing somebody and having some fun with it. Hes been very vocal with political positions. The president wants to have some fun with it. Are going to new jersey on the republican line. Good morning. Caller good morning. Completely onou what you are talking about. I admire your courage. Callin,e democrats they are so full of hate. Saidkrainian president exactly what was on the call. Is evenon im calling if the trial goes on and ,verything comes out, the media they are all in the democrats pockets. Thats not going to change a thing. Trump is going to win every state he won before plus minnesota. Thats all ive got to say. Host thank you. There is a poll from the university that the battleground states are i can now. That and act. Neck. Ndc guest i want to go back to something kevin said a moment ago. Its at the crux of this impeachment witchhunt. This started from eight Foreign Policy disagreement. Hes trying to wring the america. Irst platform that doesnt mean america alone. It means we need to put our interests first, whether thats investigating where aid is going. Last 24he story in the hours, we will withdraw from afghanistan. In were talking about this i think its criminally underreported, the expose about how much money in afghanistan for the last 18 years. President trump is going to start bringing some of those troops home. When you look at what started the impeachment, there was disagreement with what he was trying to do toward ukraine. And whole thing blew up expanded because President Trump and his administration had too many people surrounding him who were not on board and didnt agree. When the historians go back and write this, this is the most unusual impeachment in history. I do think the key take away will say what drove the impeachment was a disagreement over Foreign Policy. Host the president in your mind did not want to get dirt on the lines to use in the campaign . Guest i think he was trying to get to the bottom of the corruption of what was going on. President atg vice that time was in the middle of he was the point person on ukraine. He is on tape bragging that he had a quid pro quo. The u. S. Wasnt going to release aney to ukraine unless prosecutor was fired. Somebody who was at the center of that should be looked into. Host was the president withholding aid on other countries to look into corruption . Guest its not at all unusual. The u. S. Is withheld money to lebanon. When you look back at the Obama Administration, nigeria. This is something thats been going on. We use political pressure on other countries all the time. This isnt something unique to President Trump. Host we gave the aid to ukraine. You can understand why people say the president want to get something on biden. Guest i think hes trying to get to the bottom of rampant corruption. Reason why ernst young said ukraine is the third most corrupt country in the world. ,ost i want to share with you he was a staunch defender of the president in 2016. He served for 10 or 11 days. He has completely flipped on the president. I think if mayor bloomberg were to get the nomination, he would beat the president. He would have the capital behind him. He is a moderate. Of the electorate decides the election. Those are the moderate republicans and democrats. President trump has a base that will stay with him. People, i think they are exhausted. Hes a very Good Business manager. Hes been a very capable politician. Host two points. Thinking that Michael Bloomberg can win a general election. Guest no. Hes not going to be able to win the primary. If you take a look at the Harvard Harris poll, the Hillary Clinton is leading the democratic field. Anthony scaramucci, why is he so critical of the president . Guest ive gotten to know him very well, i worked with him on the campaign. I considered him a good friend. Yes a strong disagreement on the president. There were some tweets over the summer that he is frustrated by. I am bummed out that he is decided to become strongly opposed to the president. Day,en now and election anthony is a good communicator. I disagree with him on this. We are in West Virginia next. Caller good morning. To praise your guest for one of the most concise presentations of baloney i have heard in a long time. Caller touched on several things. I would like to mention three quick things. That whenremember barack obama took over as president of the United States, he inherited the worst economy this country had ever had since the great depression. Trumpe left, donald inherited one of the best economies we ever had in this country since the great depression. I know this has been mischaracterized. Just look at the facts. Job growth in the last three years of the Obama Administration was higher than the first three years of the Trump Administration. You can just look at the bureau of labor statistics. Mischaracterized by mr. Miller and donald trump. The second thing, these are quick issues here, mr. Miller made a brief reference to getting more money from our nato partners. I appreciate him mentioning that. The thing he does not mention is the fact that the program of raising defense spending up to 2 of gdp for these countries was initiated in 2013 by barack obama. Host thanks for phoning in. Guest a couple of things. I will take this in order. Onhave been driving impeachment with steve bannon. These are explosive jobs numbers. This is a 50 year low for unemployment. We have seen wage growth over 3 . Everthe lowest unemployment for africanamericans, hispanics. There have done a positive growth trend under president obama. It wasnt growing at the pace that it should have. With President Trump coming in, weve seen look at your 401 k . The way the stock market has its pretty darn remarkable. Host we are short on time. Who is the greater president . Abraham lincoln or donald trump . Guest President Trump is my favorite resident. Aside, whenesident aesident obama was office, majority of democrats said president obama was better than george washington. Thats the great thing about america. I want to say one of the thing in regard to nato. Trumply is president pushing these countries, is starting to get results. Instead of just giving lip , its really been with some strongarm tactics. Hasve to add the campaign hes no easter nice guy. Mr. Nice guy. It is a silly comparison. It is a fun political exercise. Host we are talking with jason miller. Thank you for waiting. Caller good morning. Ive got a few things on my plate. If you could give the president a message, say thank you for doing what you are doing. Money, is doing with the ive called in to this program for 10 years complaining about the same thing on how our government spends our money. Virginia,om west barack obama did not inherit a mess. He created the great recession. This is where it comes to you. Man, her 30 a million. After nancy losey, george w. Bush bailed out the big banks. This is why we need donald trump in office. What joe biden did is the opinion meet of what wrong, to give a foreign enemy millions of dollars at the same time they are getting millions of dollars to his son. One more thing. A 16yearold girl, that is a low blow. The kid is suing these people. The democrats dont want to be this. Right to speak. We are going to be shouted down. In, ist time i called said its our turn to be the resistance. Host you always have a right to speak here on cspan network. Guest i think there is an important point. We have heard this a couple of times. The frustration with washington. Its part of the reason why President Trump one. Members from both parties do it. They come in, they go out. They lobby or get other things. Much backscratching and selfdealing. Thats why somebody from western pennsylvania who was elected in a trump district. There are questions about how he would vote. We talked about this on our impeachment show. He is on board. There is a lot of political calculation going on. There is a good chance to get bounced out of office. I want to make sure that nancy pelosi will still take my calls. His own futureor as opposed to doing the right thing. Is single guest construct for President Trump to be successful, he must retain the outsider. Bidens why i think joe would be the best candidate he could hope for. Joe biden makes everyone think of the past. Host who do you think the democrats will nominate . Guest Hillary Clinton. I think she is going to get in. The field is very unimpressive. Happyats are not that with who they havent the top. Host a quick question or comment . Caller good morning. Restate thed to truth. A man like this is trying to constantly muddy the water of what trump did, which was to cook up a scheme to have the president come out and announce an investigation, not even really investigate. That is exactly what was going on. Trump got busted. Im going to people like fiona hill, who have done the hard work. Constantly. Strongly disagree. At the story at the Washington Post. Ukrainianooking into funding. It was the first increase to headache pause button before the phone call. Thats in the Washington Post. Thats not a right of center site. Ukraine has a lot of issues. Its good for President Trump to crack down on it. Guest thanks for stopping by. She is the president of the American Federation of teachers. Later, the book is called the great revolt. To our listeners on cspan radio and those watching on the Bbc Parliament channel, washington journal continues. There are 23 eyes and 17 knows. The resolution is agreed to. Impeachmentles of are agreed to against President Trump. The House Rules Committee will meet to determine the guidelines of how the debate will unfold. Watch live coverage of house rules tuesday at 11 00 on cspan3. Watch online at cspan. Org. Listen on the free cspan radio app. Monday night on the communicators, mike doyle overseeing technology and telecommunications. Surer concern is to make we close this Digital Divide that exists in our country. We have an opportunity to do that now. Its important that we do that. There are kids, 50 of their homework requirement is homework. They cant get it where they live. They go to mcdonalds or the library to find a hotspot. People are being greatly disadvantaged. They dont have access to broadband. Thats what we will be focusing on. Had we close the homework gap, the Digital Divide. Had we get broadband deployment to these underserved areas. Watch the communicators on cspan two. Washington journal continues. Host joining me is the president of the American Federation of teachers. We appreciate it. Lets begin cspan andppreciate the fact that you are one of the few entities that still has eight republican line, a democrat line, you have a on your shows. Thank you very much. Weve beens what doing for the last 40 years. Lets begin with impeaching the president. You support it. Why . Back let me take a step before the republican line lights up. I am a civics teacher. That is how i started. We teach our kids about the constitution and how in america we had a revolution against england and the king because we did not want to be taxed without representation. We did not want the king. Hadanted a government that checks and balances between the president , the congress, and the judiciary. What has happened here is the president has abused his authority. Believe in if you any of the institutions of america, you see that the election,urt our interfered with our election last time. This time, the day after the , the president tried to basically shakedown if you and say investigate or say you will investigate my opponent, i will give you the arms the congress has already said they will give you. That is improper and abuse of authority. That is why he is being impeached. We as the ft, we were leery about impeachment. We dont believe you use it about policy issue. Thats about elections. When a president or a judge abuses their authority and their power and defies the rule of law, you have to have a check and balance. Thats with the congress is doing right now. I think its a very important moment. Up inhment did not come the Education Forum we had yesterday. I would ask everybody to listen to the testimony of fiona hill and the other ambassadors and weriots that basically said have to make sure we have those checks and balances. Do everything in our power to keep our democracy and our voice and make sure the president is not a king. I want to point out it was msnbc website, focusing on education issues. About thetalk to education secretary. Sheesentative wilson said is out to destroy public education. Betsye evidence devos two weeks ago went to a rightwing think tank that has tried to eliminate Voting Rights , eliminate labor rights, defund public education. She said thank you for trying to privatize schools. Allhas fought to eliminate sorts of programs in public education, such as summer school, afterschool. Help lenderst to and forprofit colleges make money off kids who have been fleeced by these colleges. Her performance this week was abysmal. The federal government, the department of education has the obligation to enforce and implement all sorts of rules and laws that enable students to go to college and have loan forgiveness or grants to go to college. Said could she do these things . Of course. Is it smart to give loan forgiveness . She said thats not smart. Thats not her job. Her job is to do what the , whatisan g. I. Bill america has done. To say we want you to have a pathway to opportunity. If you cant afford it, we will help you afford it, whether its trade school or whether its college. She doesnt have the right to in forprofit institutions that fleeced these kids. Kidsot going to give these there redress. That is not her right. Forsubstitutes her judgment the laws of the United States of america. I think you are seeing a pattern. Neither the president nor the secretary of education has the right to say i want to do whatever i want to do rather than what the will of the people is. She was ridiculed on thursday. Ive represent some of these kids who have gone to these schools. Young adults or middleaged , they tried to get a diploma from the art institute. They were told after the fact, six months after the fact, the institute has lost its accreditation. She has thousands of dollars in student debt and no diploma. Betsy devos will not implement the law that says she should get a refund of that student debt. Thats what we are talking about. Host our guest is the president of the American Federation of teachers. Before we get to calls, i want to ask you about something you mentioned. That is civics education. Often, question we get we are not doing enough to teach students the basics of american government. Would you agree with that . Guest i completely agree. This is part of the reason we have fought so hard against an Education System that was completely fixated on standardized tests. Subject area be diminished because of standardized tests. You have to spend time with kids. This is what the president s job is. Its not just memorizing facts about the constitution. They are feeling like they can draw their own conclusion. Its not my conclusion that i want them to drop. I want them to have enough information and context so they can arrive at their own conclusion. That takes time. It requires debate. Kids feel the agency that they need, not just a regurgitation of the president ial powers under article two. You need the time. When the time was spent on test tests,r standardized subjects like stem, like our, music, science, technology, social studies was squeezed out for this testing. We want a different accountability system. We are focused on education and needs. Lucille is joining us from georgia. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you doing . Good morning. People willgod says believe a lie before they believe the truth. I know that trump is guilty. I want you to hear me out. I dont hate no one. I know he is guilty. Look at what he is doing to people on food stamps. They need to impeach him because he is guilty. They believe anything they see on tv. Anybody god. In my heart, i know that trump is guilty. God knows he did that. He is wrong. Thats all ive got to say. God bless all of you. Host lets get a response. Tost i happen to be married a rabbi. To observe my jewish faith. Im very glad in the United States we have separation of church and state and we have the free exercise of religion. By not having a state dominated religion, we have more people of faith who practice their faith in america than in other countries of have state established religion. What i am trying to say is whatever our personal views are about donald trump, we should not be haters, as a schoolteacher, we try to focus on how we embrace and how we respect as opposed to how we divide. I think we have to look at the facts. It would have been good if the president didnt divide Congress People like mulvaney and pompeo to actually testifying congress. Those longterm civil servants, kernel, people like the like fiona hill. I think they presented enough facts about how the president andd to Abuse Authority tried to cover it up. We will see what the congress says. The people of america will make that decision. Again whato back to happened this weekend. We had seven president ial candidates who talked to over 1000 educators and parents and students about the importance of education and how you actually distill fact from fiction and how you teach kids to be problem solvers, to be the future. Host lets go to nick from florida. Good morning. Is one of mytion great public issues. I am a 20 two year military disabled veteran. One thing i will agree with your guests, i think betsy devos should be fired. She wants to treat the symptom instead of the disease. She is trying to get privatized schools. We need to clean up the public Education System and get the socialist teachers out of it. Grandkids, one of the professors said what should Hillary Clinton do upon being elected . Civics, history about the positive things in our country, Critical Thinking skills. Coping skills. All these kids have to have crying towels and all of this other nonsense. They go out into the world and they have adult theme classes. We should have a national curriculum. Host thank you for the call. With at disagree lot of what you said. Ive never considered myself a socialist. I believe in public education. I believe in coping skills. I believe in civics and i believe kids should learn these problemsolving skills. Just going to talk for myself. A lot of us try not to wear our own ideology in the classroom. We try to figure out how to present both sides. It is different in college. Colleges have a lot more latitude. I have had a lot of conservative professors and a lot of liberal professors. I think that teacher you were talking about should have said if donald trump or Hillary Clinton were elected, what should they do. Skills, let me tell you what is really happening. Half the kids in america come to school with some level of trauma. We have 1. 3 million kids who are homeless. There are millions of kids that come to school needing school lunch as their only meal. We have toe to strengthen public schools. We need to meet kids where they are and help create those Critical Thinking skills. If a person like you and i could agree to these things without a tripping by us to others, that could be a huge step in making things better. Host i want to ask you the same question i asked our previous guests about the activist on climate change. She was Time Magazines person of the year. Melania trump said barron trump are different. Thats in response to criticism because she has the be best campaign that encourages civility on social media. The president goes after a 16yearold. Is there a difference . Look, i will actually say this. It is wrong, i dont care who it of political figures should be off limits. Barron trump should be off limits. I think Melania Trump is right in that. I dont care who they are. Trumpuld not barron didnt make the decision for his parents to go into public life. Beforeld be careful anybody says anything about a kid of a president. Having said that, i think both is beingrump incredibly hypocritical with the be best program. Her husband is one of the biggest abusers. And make au go after mockery of a reporter who had a disability as the president did. What youyou go after as a disability issue of this amazing 16yearold. It just shows the level of cruelty that the president has. There is no different than when he was in new york, this level of cruelty toward people. When a president does that, you are signaling that its ok. Host we are showing this to the audience. This is a photoshop. That is from the truck campaign. Trump campaign. He is who he is. Being thisart is cruel to others. Putting kids in cages at the border. Saying these kinds of negative things about children. No one should go after baron. That is wrong. How do you go after other children. I think what probably happened here is he wanted to be person of the year and he is mad about. Does, hehat he undermines and throws shade. Atmosphere, this divisiveness and bullying and disrespect. Im a schoolteacher. Maybe i am oldfashioned. I think its just wrong. We need to have better standards. People who disagree with us, we need to respect them. We can disagree without being disagreeable. He shows a completely different side. If the lonnie at trump wants to do this be best campaign, she should start with her husband. Host our guest is joining us from new york, the president of the American Federation of teachers. Good morning. Caller good morning. Sir. A couple of quick questions for you. Articles of impeachment, the Supreme Court one it wasthat unconstitutional to use it. When did the Supreme Court to do that, sir . I do not remember that case. Hiser just recently that confidentiality between his people and his office do not have to be subpoenaed to congress. I do not actually remember that case. I think there is a big case that is coming up on the issue of whether his tax returns have to come out. Caller no, no, no. Thursday it came out that he did not have to allow people that are close to him to testify to congress. Anyway, lets move on to education. Host we should point out that he has told reporters that he would welcome them to testify before congress. He has said that to the press. Isst and i think that there all of these cases are going up to the Supreme Court, but i think what is happening is the Supreme Court is allowing both sides to really brief these cases because just like in the nixon area era with whether or not the tapes had to be public, the Supreme Court is trying on these very important beues these are going to very president ial issues over time. Theyre saying they want to hear a Briefing Schedule from both parties. I think that may be what happened this week. Host i know you had another point, so go ahead. Citizen in was a governmental areas why was government history taken out of schools . Sir, why donty you continue . Host we lost him. But to his point, why was a city wast its not that it taken out of school. If you are in elementary and Junior High School and the test became so important that schools would, kids would be left back based upon those tests, teachers would be fired based upon those closedchools could be based upon those tests. Those test results became the beall and endall. Schools across america followed suit. There were double periods of english, double periods of math and classes like government or civics were squeezed out. There was no time for it. Even though, i taught in new york state, there was always u. S. History. Class, but there was not the kind of time that we needed. There were 40 minutes a day. That is not the kind of time of day to have afterschool activities like debate. I was lucky, we raised money for our kids to be involved in debate and see both sides of the issue, but that was extracurricular work that we had to figure out how to get paid for. The investment in that is important. That makend debate kids want to come to school. Host mike joining us from houston, texas, republican line. Go ahead, mike. Caller hi. Guest call me randy. I would argue that in terms of being a bully, i think it is bullyish for president obama to have used the walko slow down and slow the applications for the tea party back before the 2012 election. To intent was a selfserving earn reelection. Zing the apparatus of government to his own benefit. Re was a study done by cited by National Review that during the 30 year. 1983, theand 18 headcount of employees in k12 schools during that time went up by 55 . Host mike, we will get a response. Thank you for the call. Guest i do not think two wrongs make a right. Part of the reason you have the what youd balances and are saying about president obama whether you like president obama or you didnt, there has been no scandal connected with that president. He lived his life in a virtuous way. He tried to be the kind of president of all the people in the United States, whether you agreed with him or not. Frankly, we did not agree with him on a lot of stuff when it cames when it came to education, but i remember respectful discussions with him on these issues. That is the comportment one would like with their a president. This part of what happened in the 1980s is the implementation something called the i dea for the first time ever, we basically said kids with special needs, kids with disabilities should have the right to have an education. Ultimately we see a bunch of people and frankly the federal government said they would spend 40 of what was needed to find that ended has only spent about 14 , but what you are seeing is a bunch of people hired to actually help kids with disabilities instead of those kids never having a chance. I think that is a bit of what happened. The second thing that has happened is there have been huge increases in oversight and in accountability. We do not think there should be either. We should be listening to parents and two students and to teachers about what is needed in schools and frankly we need more nurses, we need more guidance counselors. Schools should be centers of community. Look at what is happening in houston you see a big increasing graduation rates, you see a big increase in houston schools doing pretty well, and yet the state is still thinking about taking over those schools and resting them away from local them away wresting from local control. Enough classwering counts and doing the things we need to do to help kids after help kids. On to after the recession, we saw. Chools cut resources as they were cutting taxes or doing other things. Education is if really important, we need to invest in our young people, both in career Tech Education and in things that will provide alternate paths to getting jobs and in how we address the instructional and emotional needs of all of our kids. They are our future and we need to make sure we invest in them. That is the best way of a country having a future. Host our present our talk with the president of the American Federation of teachers how many members . Guest 1. 7 million. Host we thank you for being with us on this sunday. The book is called the book is called the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping american politics. Joining us from pittsburgh is reporterthor and salena zito to talk about her work within the populist coalition. The washington journal continues in a moment. Followed follow the house impeachment process and the administrations response live. A stream anytime online at cspan. Org impeachment or lesson from wherever you are with the freeseas been radio app. Q a, professor of medicine at Columbia University talks about her book, the first cell. Surface, i should be proclaiming victory on the rooftops right now. We have gone from basically having a universal death sentence to curing 68 of cancers today. 22 of people die. But both groups, the treatable and untreatable, i ask a very fundamental question the 68 . E we are curing, my frustration is why are we still using these neolithic , poison, and burn . We have 200 billion of research billion ofs 200 research gone . Q a. Night on cspans washington journal continues. Host we want to welcome back salena zito. The book is called the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping american politics. Good sunday morning. Thank you for being with us. Guest thank you for having me. Host overall the message is what . Is whatmessage brad and i wanted to understand is the 2016 election. It a fluke . Republicanew coalition that is the Republican Party . He decided that 2016 was not a fluke. This is the new Republican Party. Establishmentoth parties, democrat and republican, into larger institutions, including my profession, still have a hard time wrestling with understanding who this coalition is, how it is formed, and that donald trump did not cause it, he is the result of it. Host lets take a deep dive into your reporting. You write the following the concrete notion of a donald Trump Presidency did not uniformly crystallize until the wee hours of november 9, 2016. In many ways, there has been no other sunrise in american politics since as the American Public remains stuck in the moment that they served surprise notice that guest that sums it up. If you voted for donald trump, didnt about for him, most people recognize that that is where we are today. Not much has moved from that moment. I tell people all the time when they say what has changed . What is going to happen . Do people still like him . I say it is sort of like groundhog day. Nothing much has changed since november 9, 2016. You woke up that morning, you found that he won, and if you voted for him, youre still optimistic. If you did not vote for him, your hair is is still on fire and nothing is going to extinguish it unless he is taken out of office in handcuffs. Host you were born and raised in pittsburgh. Lets take a look at the breakdown of voters. The democrats maintain an edge of 4. 1 million registered voters. Republicans three point 2 million, and the remainder of independent registered voters, one point 2 million. The results from 2016 just how close this race was. 48. 2 trump winning at Hillary Clinton at 47. 5 . Statemove into 2020, the of politics in pennsylvania is what . Guest lets take a step backward for a moment what people missed about pennsylvania going into 2016, they always look at pennsylvania as the stage that went blue since 1988. Nobody thinks about it, they just think ed is blue. What they missed is that since 1992, pennsylvania has become more republican than it was when bill clinton was elected. Wonclinton was elected, he 28 of our 67 counties, but when barack obama will ran and won, he only won 13 of those 67 counties. That democratic support has eroded. Ands important to remember understand that. Where is pennsylvania today . I think it could go either way. It all depends. It is going to be close. It all depends on who the democrats pick. If they pick a democrat who bands supports banning fracking on day one, that is going to present a problem for democrats and western pennsylvania as well as the scranton area. As ain democrat democrat in pennsylvania if you catty win those two corner areas. If the democrat does not win pennsylvania, they do not win the election. Host the president in hershey, pennsylvania this past week, he has made more Campaign Stops in pennsylvania then just about any other state in 2020. Guest there is a reason for that. Do you remember the song allentown by billy joel . Live in aou manufacturing era area, that was sort of a symbol of what was happening to all manufacturing areas. Indoes the same thing pennsylvania that he did in youngstown, ohio. These areas are symbolic of wheregreat lakes states where Voter Sentiment and experiences and economic decline and economic resurgence are very similar. That is why he chooses pennsylvania as a sort of this stage to tell his story. Even your book takes an broader Historical Context in terms of our National Politics. Following along with brad todd for 20 consecutive elections, two parties put forward the same to basic kind of nominees democrats running as a reincarnation of franklin roosevelt, republicans running in the shape of barry goldwater. No longerhe two sides resembles their modern templates. Guest the two parties completely realigned during the 2012 election. Barack obama won with the new Deal Coalition in 2008. He wisely understood that it was time to reshape the alignment of the party. He focused on women and minorities and young people. With the caveats that he needed class. Ough white working Hillary Clinton sort of dropped the notion that you needed just enough white workingclass or she just assumed that percentage would carry over from obama to herself. It did not. She lacks the ability to connect with those voters. Calculatedde the mistake of not going to those areas like ohio, lake erie, kenosha,nia, like wisconsin and tell those communities that she had their back. Book with few exceptions, these locales are most opinion leaders have never been you made reference to them just a moment ago trump only carried three of americas mega counties. Gopp crawled out of that mathematical hole in the forgotten communities, thousands of them. That to sort of illustrates the divide in this country. The cultural decisionmakers, whether it is the news organizations, government, politics, culture, or inertainment, they live those super zip codes, if you will. Impacting our politics, but it is also impacting our culture. Was making vacuum cleaners 100 years ago, he lived within four blocks of his factory. Who is connected not only to the people who worked for him, but he was also connected to the people who purchased his products. Not have that same sort of connection with our larger institutions. Inc. Of where the nfl is located. T is park avenue, new york that is a far cry on the people in pittsburgh core painted in black in pittsburgh who save all year to buy their tickets and are routed to their communities. That is part of the problem within our culture and within our politics. My coauthor wrote a great piece about this the dnc and the the dnc and rnc political headquarters should move out of d. C. And moved to ohio. They would be more connected to the voters they need to win elections. Host your piece in the New York Post this headline got a lot of attention these voters saying, i would vote for him in a heartbeat, referring to President Trump. What are you hearing . Guest nothing has changed. Here is another point that i think people inside washington and new york and the more highly concentrated wealthier areas need to understand this vote first ofrump all, this coalition is not going away. They will be there long after donald trump is gone from office. These voters are very rooted and very connected to their communities. They are unlike their counterparts in these wealthier. Reas are very transient they look at donald trump as the only thing that is sort of protecting them from these larger institutions they believe do not have their back and believe that they do not understand their way of life. With president wn trump back in july and one of the questions we asked him was had he been in contact with his predecessors. He said no, they did not support him. That breaks a sum of the president we have seen in the presidency. Guest are you surprised . Was is part of why he elected. Nationwide, the of trumper voted 9 voters voted obamatrump, but in the great lakes states, ohio, wisconsin, michigan, and iowa, it was 23 . Unhappinessot of with both parties, both democrats and republicans. You have to remember that donald trump did not just rattle the Democratic Party. He also rattled the Republican Party. There were 17 great candidates standing on the stage with him in 2015 and 2016 and he annihilated them because he was not part of the establishment. Host that is what you write in the book the question of whether trumps unconventional bid nearly picked the lock of another era of republican politics are whether his new fusion of populism with ism is a remaking of the axis completely. Guest whether you like it or not and i think we are pretty much split down half, this is the new Republican Party. That also means there is a new Democratic Party because these voters have to shift and go in different places. We are pretty much split down the middle in this country. The election in 2020 is going to reflect that. Our guest is salena zito. She is a guest reporter and columnist for a number of publications, including the New York Times and the New York Post. Her new book the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping american politics. Lets get to your phone calls. Robert is joining us in atlanta, democrats line, good morning. Good morning. I have not read your book, and maybe i misunderstand its premise, but it seems to me that what has occurred is particularly through the fluke of the Electoral College, a vocal minority has taken over the levers of government. Going on ishat is contrary to demographic trends. I do not think this is something that is going to last. Would like your observations on that. I am hoping that this is the last gasp of a very conservative 1950s view of the world that has unfortunately latched onto donald trump as their standardbearer. Thanks, robert. I love atlanta, i do not love its traffic though. They have been saying that the its lastn party is on gasp since john mccain lost to barack obama. Political parties change all the time. Movement intos change. To your point about how conservative it is, i would stylethat Donald Trumps is not a conservative republican. His policies are. You might benefit from reading the book. This new party is not as conservative as the coalition that tried to put mitt romney and tried to put john mccain in the presidency. There are a lot of people with outlooks on government where they do not mind a bit of government in their lives who are a part of this coalition and do influence it. Alan in thousand palms, california. Republican line. Caller that last caller thinks it is a minority of people. I would say it is a lot more than a minority. The silent majority was quiet. Election be a landslide for trump. Thank you. Salena zito, could it be a landslide . Guest yes. This is in the Democratic Partys court. It was a close election in 20 16. It could be a close election in 2020. It could be a landslide in 2020. It all depends on how far left of the Democratic Party decides to go. That is their big challenge. I think that they understand that. Where they one in 2018 were with candidates for the house that were pretty moderate on health care, on military, and on infrastructure. Very bread and butter Democratic Candidates. It was a very healthy margin. You would think that they would take a lesson from that and run with it, but i have not seen evidence of that to date. Host you can follow her on twitter at salena zito. Contributor also a to cspan cnn. Host bill joins us from death caller selena, youre like a breath of fresh air. Democrats just do not believe that this is real. Why . Because they are staying in their little cook couldnt kind described. Washington, new york, west coast. Guess they are trying to get one together in austin. I voted foris obama the first term. As a republican, the reason i voted for obama was i was hopeful. I did not like john mccain because i knew he was a rhino republicans toe know that if you put a candidate like mccain up, i would vote for the democrats. I could not vote for obama after the second term because of what he did to my health care system, which is basically destroy it. Decent, cheap insurance anymore. Health care has been destroyed by obama. What trump offered, and i saw it early, is he came out, and he willing to step out on stepped on the political hot rails and not get electrocuted. He has done some crazy stuff, but he has done so much good i have to say he has a seriously good chance of getting reelected. What i would say that im going to do is because i am in pennsylvania i cannot vote in the primary across parties. Im going to to switch my registration and make sure i vote against joe biden. I do not to see biden. To beate only potential trump and that is a longshot so i am going to vote against biden and switch back and vote for trump this year. He is not a perfect president. I compare him to abe lincoln. Anyone who is a student of history will know that abe lincoln was treated by the establishment the way trump has been treated by the establishment. I think trouble go down in history as one of the best president s that we have had. Where isthe way, boyertown, pennsylvania . Caller i am not in pencil yltuckyimnns close. Madeleine dean is my new representative. I got gerrymandered in with a bunch of democrats, so unfortunately my representative in the house is a democrat who just voted to impeach the president on the judiciary committee. Host we will get a response to your comments. Thank you for phoning in. Guest bill is a perfect example of those voters who went hidden in plain sight. Voter pollsters did not understand this vote for obama and then this vote for trump because they seemed so polar opposite. I always see them as the other side of the coin of each other in that both of them ran on hope and change. Its just that my profession tends to not understand what make America Great means. They think it is nostalgic or they think it is big it bigoted. Evokes this thing within the american electorate that you want to be part of something bigger than yourself. When i report, i do not fly, and i do not even take interstates. I only take back roads. That helps me understand what is happening in communities and towns, how they are changing between each county and town, because you can see how things are doing better, you can see how things are declining. That helps me understand voters werel who are willing to make change because they were so unhappy with the establishment of both parties. Host those counties including michigan. Y me our guest is salena zito and she chronicles all of it in her book , looking at the 2016 reelection. Quick tweet from john in North Carolina who says it could be an Electoral College landslide, but the popular vote will always be massive in failing blue cities. The color mentioned former Vice President joe biden who came out with then add following the president s trip to the nato anniversary in london. World leaders caught on camera talking about trump. Several World Leaders mocking donald trump. They are laughing at him. [laughter] leaders mocking him for being completely off ballot. Worried. Are the world sees trump up for what he is insincere, illinformed, corrupt, dangerously incompetent and incapable in my view of World Leadership. If we give donald trump four more years, we will have difficulty to recuperate americas image. Salena zito, that ad, is it effective . Guest no. This is the thing that i struggle to watch the Democratic Candidates do in that that ad is great. It appeals to the democratic voter that you already have. What you need to win new voters over is very little effort in ofces like erie and kenosha these candidates trying to win these voters back. What they watch bidens team did not understand with that ad is and you can see the results of Voter Sentiment in the back of the great revolt, there is amazing pulling in the back of the book. But voters were tired of multinational deals. They were tired of america always the paying the most paying the most and holding the larger burden entreaties and any kind of deal that happens overseas. Out the leaders in leadersuntries that in other countries dont like him, that is like bonus points for trump voters. That is not something that h, ire going to be like o am so ashamed, now i need to vote for joe biden. Host this is from mike who says salena zito has the a good analysis. The rust belt and great lakes have long suffered job wise. She should include new york state in that category as well. I lived in buffalo, new york and lived near lake ontario, but i guess the difference is that new york is not a battleground state. Guest right. I am looking forward to that buffalosteelers game this evening. 12 one feeling go ahead, our next caller is from West Virginia go ahead, our next caller is from West Virginia. Caller i have a lot of president s with the problems with the Republican Party. I believe that they want america to be a plutocracy. I really do believe that. Hannity and i listen to him and i think why in the world woodworking people would working people support the rich. It started with reagan with his tax cut. Then it continued with bush with his tax cut in 2001. It continues now with this president. , nixon and ford were different. I cannot understand. His doing away with the Environmental Policies that were put in place to protect the environment that is another thing. Thank you very much. Host thank you for the call. Guest in 2016, workingclass voters stillon voted for Hillary Clinton over donald trump. People do not realize this, because they think they all voted for donald trump. She just one a much narrower portion of them then previous Democratic Candidates. Always hadclass is a challenge with both Political Parties from supporting union to theto minimum wage environment and on tax cuts. It depends on where you are located as a workingclass voter as to how you see either party. We talked onme cspan radio, you were getting ready for your thanksgiving dinner with your italian scots irish family. What was the political conversation like at thanksgiving and what was it like over a thanksgiving meal with your family . Guest my entire family voted for trump, which is interesting. There are a variety of different they come from a variety of places, whether they have masters degrees are phds or live in the suburbs are live in the city. There is really no disagreement between our family. I use my family as an early barometer to understand what is going on. I remember when he came down thoughtalator and i this is not going to happen. Parents, one is a republican and one is a democrat. They both liked his message about community and the dignity of work. They kept me grounded and kept me from dismissing his candidacy along with my brothers and my sisters, my children, my grandchildren. It is really interesting. I also think and i talk to a lot of people in the country. I did almost 40,000 miles on the road this year back and forth, back and forth, up and down. People outside of twitter are really different. Most people do not have angry political discussions at the dinner table. They have much more important thens to talk about then candidate to beat donald trump pete buttigieg, mike bloomberg, andrew yang, not joe biden, too much baggage. Democrats need to drop him like a hot rock. And yet the Vice President remains the front runner . Guest absolutely. Late people who dropped into the race, i think the only candidate, democratic candidate that could drop into this race and really be a game changer would be sherrod brown, ohio. S. Senator from he has the right tone and understanding of the bluecollar worker as well as the suburban voter to be able to form a coalition nationwide that could challenge the president. I was really excited to cover him in 20 2020. I thought he would rise up before the first debate started. Maybe if there is a convention and he walks in as the guy who didnt have to run at all in 2019 and becomes the nominee host as you look at the polling, hypothetical election matchup between biden, sanders, buttigieg, klobuchar, and warren , with donald trump hovering in the mid to low 40s in that survey that has a margin of error plus or 2 . We go to gary. Caller good morning. Myself to be a libertarian. I have been registered democrat for about 15 years. I really dislike both of the parties. Democrat,generation surrounded by white, catholic democrats. Guns ind onto their their religion. It will be interesting to see which way the catholics vote this upcoming. That is about all i have to say. I believe there are some changes coming to this country. Thank you very much. Have a nice day. To your earlier point , aboutu discussed, steve the polling, one of the other nerdy, interesting things at the back of the book is 34 of selfprofessed trump voters in the great lakes west, we focused on that in our polling, did not tell a Family Member or a friend that they were going to vote for donald trump. Anxious to see what that number is in 2020, no matter what direction that the election goes. Host this is a followup on your family did a salena zitos family agreed with trumps assessment of trumps views of mexicans as rapists . Guest we never talked about that. I will go back to that quote that i said when i interviewed donald trump when i said that voters take them seriously, but not literally. My profession take some literally, but they did not take his candidacy altogether seriously. That goes for a lot of things that donald trump says. There is a willingness to suspend some of your normal becauses to a candidate you are so frustrated with both Political Parties. I think the thing that has really stuck out to me in the aftermath of this election is that both Political Parties, both Establishment Republicans and establishment democrats, to me and to voters have shown very little reflection on what they did, why they lost to that guy. In everyday life, if you lose something, lets just say football you lose to a terrible team. What most coaches and teammates dear god, weay lost to that i have not seen either party go that. Od, we lost to what they see a lot of is that they are made fun of by the press or the establishment. That is not going to win those voters back. Im not saying that means that donald trump wins, im saying that there is still a lack of trying to reach out or reflect on why they lost to that guy. A formeron miller, trump advisor indicating in our conversation earlier today that he still thinks Hillary Clinton will get into this race. When you hear that, your reaction is what . Guest i think i will laugh. But it is not impossible. Anything is possible because you have not yet doesnt mean it doesnt happen, we are still in the contested primary part, but you have not seen a big groundswell toward one specific candidates. There is a reason for that. The Democratic Party is trying to figure out what it is right now. It is a variety of different things. You need a very charismatic candidate to be able to pull all of those factions together. To date, have not seen that yet. That does not mean it will not happen. Following te the political analysts across the spectrum have given trump credit for being a category killer, reshaping republican politics in his image. The coalition he fused in the rust belt should be viewed as a category builder, the first success of a coalition that is not likely to soon separate. Lets go to margie in philadelphia. Book isito, her new out, the great revolt. Good morning. I wanted to contradict what youre saying about how hillary is off the election in 2016. Media, and fbi, the russia all pulling against her to bring her down. You had Kevin Mccarthy going on fox news and saying that when herary got into the race, poll numbers were 63. Look at her poll numbers now. Hillary clinton did not lose the election she had 66 million popular votes. Trump had 62, 63. Host salena zito . Guest based on the voters i thatd to in the states hand the election to whoever the candidate is, whether it is florida, michigan, pennsylvania, wisconsin, or ohio, when i heard from voters that were democrats that either voted for her or set it out was that she did not show up and she did not connect with that they believed would have made a difference. That has been my observation having reported from there. Michigan anding in feeling like i was all by myself because there was no influx of happening, not in the way that you should as a president ial candidate. Michigan matters, and i did not see that from the hillary campaign. I Heard Campaign volunteers frustration about not having the attention they believed was needed to win that state. They turned out to be right. Aim at thelso take 2018 midterm elections, a lot of references as to whether that is a bellwether. Also looking at what happened in Great Britain this week and the landslide victory by Boris Johnson in the conservatives. In the book you write the diminished role of policy issues in the 2018 campaigns was notable. Had urgentlytfolio been brought, but in the most closely fought races, republicans prevailed and narrowly, running on the tribalism of National Politics rather than specific agendas for their projected state administrations. Guest and i think we are going to see that in 2020. I do not know. Something could change, but that is the trajectory we are on right now. It is about culture and it is about tribalism. I would run on, the economy and nothing else. He runs onow that that. I suspect he runs on culture. I suspect he runs again against them and i suspect the democrats, even if they want to run on policy, are going to be forced to run on the same thing. Host marion, indiana is next. Chris, our line for democrats. Thankting period you for waiting. Caller the democrats dropped election inthe 2016. How much do you think the russians really were involved . We are only talking about three or 4 million votes as far as the popular vote. That russianible three or 4 million votes is not really that far off. Host chris, thank you. To a larger point, a difference of 77 thousand votes in michigan and pennsylvania which kept the scales in the Electoral College in thepped the scales Electoral College to the president. Vote voters showed up to for the u. S. Senate or house, their local elections, but they do not vote for president. I do not like either one of them. Who madelked to voters that dramatic choice of either voting for obama twice to voting for trump or being a republican, not liking trumps compartment, and being say a george bush guy a jeb bush guy or a marco rubio guy and finding themselves eventually voting for trump, they are insulted when you say that russia had something to do with their vote. Independentery about how they get to their decision. That russian that russia influenced them, they find insulting. Host our next colors from illinois, independent line. Caller is from illinois, independent line. Caller democrats do nothing but taxes, closeraise factories. They have not done anything by way of legislation to help anyone like the handicapped. Patact passed by democrats changed life for the handicapped around the world. When the republicans are in, they do not care about anyone but them and to the very very wealthy. The democrats are the party of the people and always will be. I am hoping the Democratic Party goes down in flames. Host i think she meant republican at the end. Confused by i was that. I do not think anything would change janets mind. Host you put this in perspective in those key states, including ohio. Premiere nations 2016 er from 2021 to 2012 to 2016, 23 counties in wisconsin, 32 counties in iowa, and 12 counties in michigan switched from obama to trump in the space of four years. Guest absolutely. Were voters that voted for change. It is as simple as that. What i find is really interesting among the obama obamatrump voter is that they liked president obama personally. Aspirationals speeches and his family and how can he conducted himself, but they did not like his policies. You just need to look at what happened in those counties in the midterms. It is a flip with donald trump. They do not like him so much. He is not someone they would invite to dinner because they find his personality on twitter is his personality in real life, but they do like his policies and they do like how it impacts their communities. A lot of people thought this andtion was about anger individualism. It was not. It was about localism and communities and place and rootedness. Would be wise to understand because that nuance because that kind of nuance would help them do better and maybe win some of those voters back. Host roger, you get the last word from hurley, virginia. Quick question or comment . Systemic does a when russia attacked our nation, what does systemic fashion mean to you . Host do you mean systemic fascism . Caller no, systemic fashion. Does it bother people that trump is the problem with this nation . He has no brought any businesses back. Host salena zito, your response . Guest that was interesting. Im not sure i really understand the context of what he was saying. I think the economic numbers different result in terms of jobs being created. What surprised you the most in researching this book . Guest how aspirational people i did nottter who just interview trump voters because i wanted to get a broader understanding of the community that i was in, but that people love their country and they wanted their country to do well and that they are not driven by politics and the way that you see in my profession or on social media. That hopefulness keeps me incredibly grounded. Host the great revolt inside the populist coalition reshaping , itsan politics coauthor salena zito. She is joining us from pittsburgh. Inc. You very much for being with us. Thank you very much for being with us. Nbcs snl, this spoof on what it might be like for families across the country. [video clip] [applause] well, well, well, it is almost christmas and people across america seem more divided than ever, but if we listen in on some dinner conversations tonight, i bet we find out we have more in common than we realize. I hacked into three nest home cams to take a look. I am so happy everyone is here for the holidays and i am even more happy that they are impeaching trump. Mom come on we said no politics tonight. I do not know what took them so long, trump is a criminal. Here we go. They did it. They are impeaching trump. Dad, stop. Im sorry, it is a disgrace. What crime did he commit . The crime of being and now for mail. The democrats kaman. On are going to rile come , youre going to rile everybody up. Do you think is Martin Lawrence estill Martin Lawrence . Lawrence still Martin Lawrence . I hate to say this, but can we talk about politics instead . I do not understand how anyone can vote for trump after this . How can anyone not vote for trump after this . Who do you think is going to get voted off the masked singer next week . Host may be a precursor of what to expect in your family over the holidays. It is a busy week on capitol. Ill, with a series of votes you can watch it live here on cspan. We will begin the week with the washington journal at 7 00. Mike debonis of the Washington Post will be with us to talk about the week ahead. And alan dershowitz, the case for impeaching trump. Newsmakers is next with republican congressman Mac Thornberry. Inc. You for being with us thank you for being with us. Coming up today on cspan, newsmakers is. We will hear from Ranking Member Mac Thornberry on the space force that is part of the Defense Authorization bill that passed the house last week. After that, a look back at the impeachment of president bill clinton, including house floor debate from 1998. Then, impeachment inquiry highlights from last weeks House Judiciary Committee hearings. Mr. Chairman, there are 23