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The Ford is a big deal event. Visit your Ontario Ford store or Ford Cash. Hello there. I'm Kristen Welker.
I just wrapped up this week's broadcast of Meet the Press where I interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, and Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. Gaza's main hospital is surrounded by tanks and struggling to keep its patients alive as the war between Israel and Hamas continues. Israel has now agreed to daily several hour pauses from the fighting, though President Biden is petitioning Prime Minister Netanyahu accept a three day pause. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron became the latest high profile world leader to ask for a ceasefire.
And back at home, off your elections showed again the power of abortion rights messaging for Democratic turnout across the US And Washington is once more tearing on a potential government shutdown. House Republicans unveiling a plan Saturday they hope will fund the government before Congress breaks for Thanksgiving to break it all down. I am joined now with Jay Johnson, former US Secretary of Homeland Security. Jay, welcome to Post Game.
Thanks for being here. Thank you, Kristen. And though it's been two months now, congratulations on your new role as moderator host of Meet the Press. Thank you.
In 1978, I was a college intern for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I used to sit in this little teeny tiny office clipping newspapers with a 28 year old assistant named Tim Russert. Oh my goodness. And so your job has special meaning to me.
That means so much to hear that story and to prepare for this role. I've spent a lot of time looking back at Tim Russert's past show. So thank you for sharing that with us. That's a wonderful detail to know about your past.
I didn't realize that. Well, I want to start off by talking about Israel. What we heard from Prime Minister Netanyahu, and one of the things that you said struck you was the conversation about civilians. I really pressed him on the fact that Secretary of State has said the civilian death toll is too high.
He didn't have an exact accounting of the civilian death toll. He said one civilian death is too many. At the same time, he said Israel has to win the war. What did you make of what you heard from him?
Well, he's right. Israel has to destroy and degrade Hamas. Absolutely. And before I was Secretary of Homeland Security, I was General Counsel of the Department of Defense.
And when the war fighters would bring to us at the Pentagon specific proposals for specific military operations, counterterrorism operations, there would always be an assessment of the likely civilian casualties that may come with that. And if it was too high, we'd say, no. Go back and reframe how you plan this operation. The Prime Minister said that the Israeli government does not target civilians.
I believe that plainly they're not targeting civilians. Why would anyone want to target civilians? But as I said on the air, it is possible to target the bad guys while also having a callous disregard for civilian casualties. It is possible to target command and control centers of Hamas while having a callous disregard for civilian casualties.
And so Israel walks a tightrope. And I also believe that Hamas is counting on Israeli Defense Forces to go too far. They're counting on the Israeli government to go too far in this to reshape world opinion. Frankly, that may well happen as we continue to see these images of death desperation in Gaza right now.
And so I can't. I can't tell Israel how to conduct this war. But they have to be sensitive to world opinion. They have to be sensitive to civilian deaths, civilian casualties as they conduct this thing.
Hamas is plainly not helping that regard. Hamas is counting on civilian casualties. Civilian deaths. Well.
And you say Israel has to walk a tightrope. Today we heard, frankly, a defiant Prime Minister Netanyahu. He's carrying a message to the American audience. Yeah, but the Biden administration has to walk a tightrope as well.
And we're seeing them shift a little bit of their public messaging I talked about on the show. But the fact that Secretary Blinken has said the Palestinian civilian death toll is too high. Yes, and that's a pretty blunt message to deliver to our closest, closest ally in the Middle East. As I said on the air, I think the Biden administration, the President, the Secretary of State have done a good job of walking that fine line.
Right after October 7th, we stood firmly behind Israel and firmly behind the objective of destroying Hamas. Now that we're into this conflict, we are privately and publicly warning the Israeli government, be careful, the civilian death toll is too high, while also standing by them is their closest ally outside of the Middle East. That's a fine line to work, but I think that they're doing a good job at it. One of the.
You talk about the protests that we are seeing all around the globe, quite frankly, and the images were so stark on Saturday. More than 300, 000 people protesting in London alone. But here in the United States, we are seeing these flares of violence, tension, protests on college campuses. I know you are a trustee at Columbia.
How are you watching this play out and what has it been like? Well, I'm a trustee of Columbia University. I don't speak for the university today, but to me, the line is clear. In this country, in a free society, we can.
We can protest, we can demonstrate, we can participate in rallies, we can grab a bullhorn, we can be loud, we can be emotional, we can even be annoying to those who don't agree with us. What we can't do, and this is the line, what we can't do is incite hatred and violence toward other groups with whom we disagree. I'm a child of the 60s, and I went to Morehouse College before I went to Columbia Law School, Dr. King's alma mater.
And to me, the civil rights movement of the 60s is the benchmark. You know, Dr. King preached peaceful, nonviolent action, proactive movements without demonizing an entire race of people. On the other side of this debate, the other thing that bears mentioning is universities.
Cities are allowed to restrict time, place and manner for rallies, demonstrations, for the sake of public safety. And people have to live within those rules, even those who have First Amendment rights. If you can flesh that out a little bit more, because it is an important comparison, I think. What are you seeing now versus what Dr.
King was preaching during the civil rights movement? How does it compare? It's not in every instance, but in terms of some of the more troubling. I see.
I see, frankly, people going too far. I see people. People should not feel as though the only way to highlight the plight of an oppressed people or terrorize people is to. Is to incite hate.
On the other side of that debate, you can, for example, highlight the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza without demonizing all Jewish people without demonizing Israelis and make a case for what's happening in Gaza right now. We get carried away with our anger. Too much social media doesn't help either in this regard, but we do get carried away. And that's a setback for everyone, in my view.
You know, one of the questions I wanted to talk to the Prime Minister about was anti Semitism. Exactly what you were saying. We have seen a 400 rise in anti Semitism since this time last year. Right.
Two point. Jews in this country occupy 2.4% of the population, yet untold they are the victims of 60% of religious hate crimes in this country. What do you make of that? And what is the message to Jews around the world who are scared in this moment?
The attack on October 7th has really peeled the lid off a lot of scars. Pain for the Jewish people worldwide. For American Jews. I see it in friends of mine, in professional, in my professional life, in my personal life.
And October 7th for the Jewish people was a stark, vivid, horrifying reminder of much of their history. And I grew up in an era where Jews and blacks stood shoulder to shoulder in the civil rights movement. I moved when my family moved into an all white community in upstate New York. The only families that would invite me to their home to play with their kids, usually the Jewish families.
And at least among African Americans, we should remind ourselves of the historic ties between Jews and blacks in this country. I don't think that's been said enough, frankly. And so you can, you can disagree, you can demonstrate, you can, you can highlight the plight of oppressed people without hurling hate and anger at another group of people who are also oppressed people. There's, there's a way to do that.
There's a way to thread that needle. And it's actually a pretty big needle, not a small needle. I'm so glad you raised that history because it is a rich history of a shared understanding of having been oppressed. Speaking of two of the three civil rights workers who died in Mississippi in The summer of 1964 trying to register black voters were Jewish.
Two out of the three. Sworner, Cheney, Goodman, two of those Jewish. Which makes the point so clearly and so powerfully. You talk about standing shoulder to shoulder.
Congress right now says they want to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel. The White House has requested an aid package which would combine funding for Israel aid, Ukraine aid, border security aid for Taiwan as well. Right now we're in a moment where they're just struggling to avoid a shutdown. The newly installed House Speaker, Mike Johnson, unveiled this new bill that would effectively keep the government open in two tranches, but it doesn't touch aid for Israel or aid for Ukraine.
Are you concerned about that? What do you make of that? Yes. The new speaker is getting no honeymoon whatsoever.
You know, no opportunity to shine and look good. Whenever I hear the word shutdown, I think that here in the Beltway and beyond, we are becoming numb to the impact of a shutdown or a potential shutdown. A shutdown. Potential shutdown has real harsh impacts on real people.
February 2015, when I was secretary of DHS, Congress was threatening to shut DHS down. And I'll never forget, I met a woman who was a TSA employee in West Orange, New Jersey, who was in stage four cancer. And she said to me, I'm really worried that if the government shuts down and I lose my salary, I won't be able to make my co pays for my cancer treatments and she's not dead. And I used to cite her example over and over again to the effect that a government shutdown has on real people.
The threat of a government shutdown creates stress and anxiety among real people, among members of the Coast Guard, members of tsa, Secret Service, their families. You know, even if you're essential government personnel, you're not getting paid. You're just being told you have to go work without pay. And the whole thing has a tremendous demoralizing effect on our federal workforce.
And we're now to a point where we go through this every single budget cycle, and I wish we could break this fever. We can disagree in Congress without harming the federal workforce. Does it speak to the fact that. And as I listen to you talk, is part of what you're saying that there is something that has broken in the way that the United States governs, that Congress governs in our politics?
Right. Well, this goes to a deeper issue. The political incentives now in Congress are all wrong, in my opinion, because as you know, Kristen, there are so many safe seats. And the only real threat an incumbent has, if you're a Democrat, is from your extreme left.
If you're a Republican, from your extreme right. And so there are disincentives, therefore, to compromise, to come together, reach across the aisle, and reach agreement on something bipartisan. Every political incentive to disagree, stand back and accuse the other side of being weak or evil and what have you. Which means, therefore, that saying, I will not vote for this bill, I'm willing to shut down the government works to the political advantage of so many.
And that's a problem, because governing, the essence of governing is politics. The essence of politics is compromise. And we elected people to come to this town to govern and compromise, not simply throw bombs at the other side. Nothing gets done in that environment, in our politics.
This week we got new results, new data points, if you will, about some of the contours of our politics. On Tuesday night, we learned that abortion is still an incredibly motivating factor for the Democratic base. We learned that President Biden, if you look at the poll numbers, as you said on the show, it's a snapshot. We still have a year, but, you know, maybe a little bit of a warning there.
And then, of course, Senator Manchin announcing that he's not going to run for reelection. What stands out to you from this week? Of all the headlines, what's the one that tells you kind of where we are in our politics? Ironically, it was the conservative Supreme Court that made abortion a political issue for 50 years after Roe vs Wade, there was a federal constitutional right to an abortion.
Justice Alito, in his opinion, his majority opinion in Dobbs overruling Roe, said this is a matter for the states. That means, therefore, that abortion becomes a political matter because if you return the issue to the states, you leave it to state legislatures, you leave it to ballot initiatives, which are political matters. So no one should be surprised that abortion is now a political issue, part of the Democratic Party's platform, because Americans have gotten used to the right to have an abortion for half a century, which is now all of a sudden taken away. And a majority of Americans don't like that.
Plainly. One of the things that struck me about the conversations we had today was you had Ronnie McDaniel, RNC chairman. You had Mark Short, who's a former advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence, saying, acknowledging that Republicans haven't quite found their messaging when it comes to this issue. And I moderated the debate on Wednesday, and that was evident that there's still a real diversity of, of perspective, messaging and policy.
I guess the question is, as you think about 2024, is there time for Republicans to shift the narrative in a way that they aren't, that they are energizing their voters in the same way they were in the post the free world. I should say the likely Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, doesn't have a coherent position on abortion. I've seen him kind of all over the place. He's very proud of taking credit for Dobbs and appointing three judges to the Supreme Court and takes credit for overturning Roe versus Wade.
But if you ask him, his own views on abortion. He's kind of all over the place. And so if the leading candidate for president from your party doesn't have a coherent message, it's hard to know how the party itself can have a coherent message. Yeah.
Yeah. Any other final thoughts on this week in politics? As I said on the air, I think. I think we have a long way to go in the polling.
I was very involved in the Obama campaign in 2007, 2008. I remember October 2007, there was a poll that said he was 30 points behind Hillary Clinton and everyone was despondent. And poll numbers have a way of trending and turning. As I said before, I think I agree with David Brooks that polls are where people vent.
It's not where they vote. Inevitably, an election is a choice between two people, and a year from now, we will make that choice. And it's hard to know exactly what our political climate is going to look like a year from now. It's just because the stock is trading in the 50s today doesn't mean it's going to be trading the 50s a year from now.
So we'll just have to see. And you'll keep covering the American political landscape as closely as you have, and we'll have this discussion about poll numbers, you know, the weekend before the Tuesday election. That might tell us something. Yes, it's a great final point.
But before I let you, I do want to ask you, you started off by talking about working with a young Tim Russer. What was he like back then when he was in his 20s? He was Daniel Patrick Moynihan's press secretary, 28 years old. I remember he had big, bushy sideburns and he loved politics.
The one thing I remember most about him, one day I was sitting in the office and he had gone to hear Ted Kennedy speak. This is the summer of 1978, Jimmy Carter was president. And there was all this rumor, speculation about Ted Kennedy's want to challenge him in the Democratic primary. And I remember he came back from hearing Ted Kennedy speak.
He's running. I can tell he's running. I know he's going to run. And he was right.
Of course. He had the instinct. He just had it in his blood. Yes.
And he was just excited to be around him. I learned a tremendous amount just watching and listening to Tim Russert. All summer I sat in this little room. You know, we talk about press clippings.
Yes. 1978, you literally clipped articles out of a newspaper with a pair of scissors. And that was my job for much of that summer. And I sat in the same in the press room with him.
And he just loved politics. He was from Buffalo. And I just, it's one of the. I got motivated.
I got drawn to Washington watching Tim Russert all summer. Oh, that's so fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. Really appreciate it.
Thank you for being here. My pleasure. It's here. The Ford It's a big.
Not yet. The Ford It's a big deal. No, guys, just wait. The Ford It's a big deal Event is on.
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