saturday 10:00 a.m.'s -- 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. south bend from .ndiana mayor this is an hour. [applause] >> thanks for being here. >> good morning, welcome to washington post live, i appreciate you coming here today. we are kicking off our candidate series. appreciate your time. great to have you here. let's start with the news. is it town for -- time for house in kratz to start in teach went for savings? >> i have learned to think cautiously before offering advice to nancy pelosi. it is will say is that clear the president deserves

impeachment and the case for impeachment is being built each passing day by the white house. what we have now is a steady of taking apart any semblance of respect for the rule of law and you see it, we saw it early on, of taking apary semblance of respect for the rule of trying to block a private citizen from testifying. you see it in refusing legitimate investigative reports, you see it if you look at the preface to the decision that came down recently saying james buchanan. the first time since james buchanan the president has tried to assert that congress does not have any investigative authority at all. and all of this is contributing to that case. as to when and how the house thosebout watching procedural steps to get the inquiry up and running, i will leave that to the house.

i know that regardless of how that process unfolds, we have a political job to do. >> to you support an impeachment proceeding at some point? your only concern about the timing. >> the there is a sequence to be .ollowed house democrats are not going to allow them to say that this was a knee-jerk action. they're exercising unbelievable discipline given that we're well past the point of what would ordinarily be tolerated in this republic and still being very methodical. we should hear from mueller, we should hear from barr, there's a lot of procedural things that should be going on in the various investigations happening. my part of the puzzle is the political part. and at the end of the day, especially when you recognize that impeachment is a fundamentally political, not legal, process, it come downs to the votes of politicians, what real illinois -- what really will matter most is the conscience of republican senators. even that phrase, conscience of republican senators, i think is

a concept that's come under a certain amount of question lately. but if anything is going to reunite them with their conscience in the long run, in my view, it is a decisive electoral defeat for republicans in 2020 which is what i'm, of course, trying to deliver by running against this president. bob: to be clear you'd support an impeachment process being lunched -- launched at some point to get witnesses and documents to capitol hill? pete: yes. bob: do you see cracks in the republicans, with amash speaking out against the president? pete: he seems to be the exception to the rule. the rest of the republicans close to ranks. it's not inconceivable that there will be others. i'm not sure, absence an electoral consequence to put the fear of god into some republicans who know better and are clearly acting in bad faith which means they won't respond to a moral call they will only respond to a political result.

i'm not sure much changes until there's an election to remind them what the political results of continuing to be on board with something that is inimical not only to our value bus toer -- but to their own will be. bob: you said you don't want to give advice to leader pelosi but is she being too cautious? pete: i'll leave that to the house. this is something that gets a new twist every day, if nothing else in terms of a new outrage which is why i say the white house is the main actor building the case almost methodically for impeachment. but i trust the house caucus to find the right sequencing. especially because there's so many overlapping and adjacent -- bob: you're a leader in the democratic party, what's the breaking point? if you're waiting for the right sequence, what's the breaking point to get to that moment? pete: we've got a lot of

outstanding requests for information, for testimony, and either they come in and deliver still more information that helps prosecute the case, or they don't come in and the fact that they're being illegally or wrongfully with held becomes one more thing to prosecute the case. i'm a 2020 candidate. the best thing i can do about this is not a procedural issue in the house of representatives. it is getting the nomination and beating the president. bob: speaker pelosi said the president is engaged in a coverup. do you agree? pete: yes, i'm not sure you can call it a coverup if it's in plain sight. bob: speaker pelosi said the a coverup is supposed to keep stuff hidden. this is extremely important but this is also extremely washington. these are not the questions that i get in iowa or south carolina most of the time. the only reason any of this matters, including the whole reason that presidential malfeasance matters, is these

thicks cash out in our everyday lives. one of the many areas which most americans agree with this on is our agenda to get more people a raise, to protect people's health care, to get somewhere on paid family leave. i hope we're able to chew gum and walk at the same time as we do this. because our agenda is a winning one. the more we're talking about him, the less i feel like we're talking about voters. bob: mayor, you served this country in uniform. there are reports that president trump is considering pardons for former soldiers who committed war crimes. u.s. soldiers. what's your view on that? do they deserve them? pete: my view is it's disgusting. a coverup is supposed to keep look, when you serve, when you take that oath, the oath is to the constitution. and if you're convicted by a jury of your military peers, of having committed a war crime, the idea that the president is

going to overrule that is an affront to the basic idea of good order and discipline and to the idea of law. the very thing that we believe we're putting our lives on the line to defend. remember, we're talking about people who would be convicted by an american military justice system. the whole idea of the uniform code of military justice is that it is applied to everyone in uniform. and by the way, to contractors under certain circumstances. and you know, another thing that makes this so dangerous and so insulting to people who served is, we finally live in a time when americans have figured out how to separate the way they feel about a policy from the way they treat troops. this was not the case for everybody who came back from vietnam. you talk -- even now we do a welcome home day for vietnam veterans in south bend.

you talk to veterans, many of whom were just drafted. they did what they were legally required to do. and they got tears in their eyes talking about the way it felt because people could not distinguish how they felt about the war and the about the troops. , someone whoion have served in the afghanistan war, i'm thankful that we live in a moment where we can honor the troops separate from policy. even then, there are some people is think anybody who served a war criminal. that's a radical fringe but sometimes they talk about veterans and troops that way. and our firewall against that is the fact that american law,

american military law, is abundantly clear on what you do and do not do in uniform. if you do something wrong in yube form, you'll be prosecuted, you'll be held accountable. if the president blows a hole in that, he is blowing a hole in the integrity of the military and he is putting troop's lives at risk. bob: how so? pete: because there's a lot -- [applause] pete: when i was deployed, i could feel a full spectrum of american power keeping me safe. and yes, that was the armor on my vehicle. yes it was the armor on my body. but it was also the armor of some level of american moral authority. as complex as it is, as much as it's had its ups and downs, the basic idea that most people believed that -- including our

enemies, believed that the flag on my shoulder represented a country that kept its word. if we lose that, then we lose the fact that as i was driving my vehicle through the city of kabul, looking through the windshield trying to spot the people who might present a threat to my life and that of he people in my vehicle, knowing that for every person i could see through the windshield, who really would kill us if he had the chance, there were a lot more people who had respect for our country. if we lose that, nothing will keep us safe. bob: you come here from the campaign trail, i was on the trail in south carolina, many voters, older democrats, some younger democrat, they say vice president biden, who is leading in the polls, has earned the nomination.

because of his experience, his work with president obama. has he earned the nomination? pete: i think you earn the nomination by winning it. nobody has earned the nomination in 2019. the way you earn the nomination is to present a vision, where the party needs to go, where the country needs to go. for the democratic party today the other way you earn the nomination is demonstrating that you're the one who can beat this president and win. i worry that even now sometimes, because there are some parts of the country where the concept of a trump voter is treated as exotic, i think that the likelihood or at least chance that this president wins a second term is being underestimated in our party. we need to make sure that we nominate somebody who has the right vision, the right ideas, the right direction for this country and can win. bob: what about the right experience? pete: absolutely. experience is one of the best things i've got going for me. i know i'm the youngest person in the race but the experience of guiding a city, of any size, the experience you get as a mayor, handling everything from an economic development puzzle to a racially sensitive officer-involved shoot, literally getting the 3:00 a.m.

call to deal with natural disasters, understanding that the job is not just implementing policy, not just managing an administration but a moral element where you have to find a way to call people to their highest values and bring them together, especially at moments of strain. the exact function of the president we are most grievously missing even though the management and policy have been terrible, too. that's -- to the extent anything can prepare you for the oval office, not to mention i think the kinds of experiences you get when you realize what the presidency means because it ordered you into a combat zone. i think those are experiences are as good as any experience you can accumulate here in washington to get you ready for the presidency. bob: some voters may look at your experience and his, he has appeals in the midwest. what differentiate your appeal for voters looking for one so win over trump voters and win over those states? pete: part of it is the willingness to talk about, not just nibbling around the edge,

but fixing our system. a presidency like the one we've got isn't even possible under ordinary circumstances. i know a lot of focus on the various thing os the margins that tipped the election into this president's hands. but a person like the person in the white house today doesn't get within cheating distance of the oval office unless people, especially people in the industrial midwest where i'm from, are completely fed up with the system. to the point that they will vote for somebody they dislike just to send a message that they want to burn the house down. and if we are perceived as replicating the system that let people down, economically and politically, then we could very well lose again. bob: do you think vice president biden is a replication -- pete: i'm not talking about any one of my competitors.

when it comes to the other 23 competitors or however many it is this week, i'm not sure any of -- i am sure that none of them have quite the same account i do of where the country is headed and how we're going to change it. so the bottom line is we've got to demonstrate -- the core falsehood of the trump message is the word again. the idea that we can fish greatness out of the american past. when actually the one thing we most want to emulate from those who came before us is the fact that they were focused on the future. if we want to respond to that, it can't be an equal and opposite response. it has to be something completely different. and more than anyone else in this field, i would argue, i represent something completely different. bob: you say you have the experience. you detailed some of your experience. you did not mention your time at mckenzie. how did that experience prepare you for the presidency? pete: i learned a lot about how the private sector work, learned

a lot object data, that was a big part of my job. i think it's useful at a moment like this to understand the productive power of capitalism but also the abuses that can happen in the business world. so having swum in those waters for some amount of time, i think does give you a certain perspective that you don't have if you've never been in the business community. bob: you released tax returns for 10 years. will you be willing to release your returns from 2007, 2008 when you were at mckenzie? pete: i think what we released covers at least some of my time there. bob: it stopped in 2009 when you left. pete: i'd be open to that. you don't have to go back too far to find me being a graduate student, there's not much there that -- there's not much there that -- there's not much there --

bob: but in 2007, 2008 you were at mckenzie. pete: i think you can catch at least one year of my mckenzie. i am open to it. i don't usually make decisions like that on stages. but i don't see why not. i believe in being as transparent or more as any of my competitors. bob: you've run an agreeable campaign about going after your competitors, you don't want to directly target any of them in an explicit way. you're going to be on a debate stage next month, how will you set yourself apart? pete: i think the way you cut through and set yourself apart is not waving your arms and trying to be loudest. i think some will be in the idea space. i think i talk more about structural reforms than most, perhaps any, of my competitors. then again i think most of us actually agree to the tune of

probably about 80% on what the big issues are and how to handle them. i think what people will be looking for as they scan the debate page is who can i see as president, but also who can i see really changing the channel from the show that we have right now in washington? there has to be a sense that we can generate something that will speak to people who have either completely tuned out or who are so disgusted with everything they see that even though they're under no illusions that this president is a good guy, they would rather have that just to disrupt the system and see what happens, see if it might be by some chance make them better off. bob: people's records will be under scrutiny at the debate. when you look at vice president biden's record, his 1994 crime bill, do you think that was a mistake? pete: i wasn't there for the crime bill debate. i mean, i was there, but i was 12 and it wasn't a priority for me.

overall i think -- overall at least from a south bend perspective, the bad outweighs the good. i say that because this is a bill that i think in a broad sense, maybe not a total consensus but there's a consensus that that bill contributed to mass incarcerated in a country that is the most grievously incarcerated in the world. what we're seeing now is i'm dealing with the things that happened. if somebody gets shot in a neighborhood in south bend today, statistically, it is almost always a young man of color. so statistically often is the shooter. who was born after the year 2000. or somewhere between 1994 and 2000. and when you look at the circumstances that lead to violence and other harms, you look at the kinds of adverse childhood experiences that can set somebody back in life. exposure to violence is one. exposure to drug abuse is one. incarceration of a parent is one. so the mass incarceration that may have been felt in a knee jerk way to have been tough on crime in the 1990's is now, one generation later be visited on

communities in the absence of parents. some of the very same people e breakdown of thekdown of thei family were breaking up families by incarcerating people for nonviolent drug offenses to the extent that a lot of money out of the crime bill went toward building prisons. i think that has made us worse off. there are certain things in that package, the gun reform, sending money to communities to enhance their access to certain law enforcement resources that we are happy to have but on balance, i think the incarceration did so much harm that i would think that even those who were behind the 1994 crime bill, at least many of them, would do it differently if they could do it again. bob: should they be held to account? pete: that's what elections are for. if nothing else, we have begun to realize how we can be smarter about things like nonviolent drug offenses. now that's playing out in a way that's uneven right now. you take opioids. really tough issue in new

hampshire, certainly claremont where i was a few days ago, tough issue at home in south bend, people i know and care about have been lost to this epidemic. america has finally realized that this is a medical, not moral issue. that we need to treat addiction not as something to be criminalized but as something to be treated. now as we have this conversation about how to deal with opioids, there's a lot of people, especially people in the black community back home, who say to me, mayor, it's great that you're enlightened and forward thinking now about drugs. where were you during the crack epidemic? bob: it was not just opioids affecting the communities. post-recession in 2008, credit card companies, should they be reformed? pete: absolutely. these arbitration clauses that say you can't sue them even if they get caught ripping you off, that's something to that -- that to me is a great example of how democrats ought to get back

in the business of talking about freedom. philosophically, ever since reagan became president we've been living with this unargued and incorrect assumption that the only thing that can make you unfree is government. because you're not free if some kind of arbitration clause prevents you holding a bank or credit card company accountable when they're caught ripping you off. so a richer, thicker, truer sense of freedom is one where consumers are empowered and that used to be part of our legal framework. bob: one last thing on this. many credit card companies are based in delaware. senator elizabeth warren, one of your rivals, said vice president biden was, quote, on the wrong side of the credit card companies. is she right?

pete: i have a difference of opinion with anybody who favored credit card companies over consumers. [laughter] bob: when i ask a lot of voters about you, they say you're going to be on stage with president trump, in a general election, he's going to be tough, he's going to take punches at you, rhetorically. are you ready for that? pete: yeah. i mean, look. what he's going to do, and i got a fair amount of familiarity with bullies. i'm gay, i'm from indiana, i get it. [laughter] he's going to try to get your attention, he's going to try to get under your skin, he's going to try to distract us. the challenge in confronting trump is that there are certain things he does that you have to respond to. just morally. when he lies, you've got to correct his lie. which will keep you busy because he does it so often. when he does something wrong you have to point to it. but it can't be about him. any energy that goes his way, including energy that goes his is way in the form of criticism,

turns into a kind of food, he devours it and gets bigger. what we have to learn is how to stiff arm him. it's almost like a sort of crazy uncle management. like, he's there. you're not going to disrespect his humanity. but he's just -- he thinks what he thinks. there's not much you can do about it. you can correct the outrages. and then return the focus there, we're the ones trying to get you a wage, they're block the increase in wage. we're trying to get you health care, they're trying to take it away. we're trying to make sure you get family leave, a woman's right to choose. it's getting harder and harder to find a policy of this administration that most americans don't disagree with. which is exactly, of course, why they need it not to be about policy. that's where a lot of strategy is. look, i don't have a problem standing up to somebody who was, you know, working on season 7 of "celebrity apprentice" when i was packing my bags for afghanistan.

but at the end of the day, it's not about him. bob: do you think he should have served in vietnam? pete: i have a dim view of his decision to use his privileged status to fake a disability to avoid serving. bob. you believe he faked a disability. pete: do you believe he has a disability? [laughter] pete: at least not that one. [applause] pete: this is really important. i don't mean to trivialize disability. that's exactly what he did. i mean, when you think about the way somebody can exploit the system and needless to say, the way he has treated and mocked disabled people is just one more example of the many affronts to

just basic decency that this president has inflicted on this country. but manipulating the ability to get a diagnosis, i mean, if you're a conscientious objector, i'd admire that. but this is somebody who i think it's fairly obvious to most of us took advantage of the fact that he was a child of a multimillionaire in order to pretend to be disabled so that somebody could go to war in his place. and i know that that dredges up old wounds from a complicated time during a complicated war. but i'm also old enough to remember when conservatives talked about character as something that mattered in the presidency. [applause] pete: so i think it deserves to be talked about. bob: many rising democrats are self-described democratic socialists. you're not one, correct? pete: i think of myself as a democratic capitalist though i think the word socialism loses its meaning every time that it

is used to describe literally any policy left of far right by the current republicans. think about the a.c.a. a.c.a. was the most conservative thing you can do to health care other than leave it alone. invented by conservatives. piloted by a republican governor. the moment a democratic president tried to do it it was characterized as socialism. there's a vocabulary game going on here we shouldn't get sucked into. i believe in american capitalism as being an incredibly productive force in this country. but it has to be democrat ex. i think for previous generation, democratic and capitalism, mesh viewed itself as being democratic and capitalist. and socialist and communist meant the same thing. but i think today what we are seeing is there's a lot of tension between democracy and capitalism. when capitalism without

democracy emerges, and you have in many countries russia, as many pointed out, being probably the biggest example, it turns into a kind of crony capitalism which turns into a kind of oligarchy. bob: let's pause there. what should president putin expect from you if you were elected president of the united states? pete: he should, first of all, expect a very serious response if there's an attack on our democracy. and -- bob: what would that entail? pete: we have a lot of tools. we have economic, diplomatic and cyber tools at our disposal. i think some combination of diplomatic, economic and cyber, some combination of overt and covert, probably, would create the right kind of deterrence framework so someone like putin would not be motivated to do that again. he can also expect a credible counterpart in the u.s. that would be willing to the extent

that russia is prepared to be a constructive partner global affairs or even just prepared to take constructive steps in a european security framework, like a renegotiated i.n.f. when it comes to intermediate range nuclear forces. that we would have confidence in their compliance an they'd have confidence in our stability. you can expect that too. bottom line is we need every country to be able to expect america to keep its word. allies and adversaries. or our entire position in the global scene collapses. bob: we solicited a couple of questions from twitter. one from mia, from queens, new york. as a veteran, how did you feel when nfl players knelt in the national anthem about police brutality? pete: i felt americans were exercising a right i put my life on the line to defend. [applause]

pete: the point of defending free speech is not that you expect to be perfectly aligned with every speech act that is protected. it's that that's a fundamental american freedom. it's a huge part of what makes america, america. and when that flag, that same flag was on my shoulder, i didn't think of the flag as something that itself as an image was sacred. i thought of it as something that was sacred because of what it represented. one of the very things it represented is freedom of of speech and that's one reason i served. bob: staying with the race issues for a second. you're speaking at the democrat dinner in virginia next month. do you believe governor norths can am should resign over the blackface scandal? pete: i've called on him to do that. i'm extremely concerned about the way these kinds of moments that reach out from our past reverberate into the present. i think one of the reasons it's so urgent is the way that people are being treated today. there's still talk about racism sometimes like it's some sort of historical artifact when right

now, two people with identical resumes could put them in and if your resume says your name is dayquan, you're less likely to get a call back than if your name is brendan or megan. there's a connection between everything that happened in the past and where we are going in the future. i don't know the ins and outs of virginia politics but from where i'm sitting it seems extremely problematic that our party has someone in that position who has taken those actions. bob: if it's extremely problematic, why help the state party in virginia while he's in office? pete: i believe in democratic values. i mean -- bob: he runs the party in

virginia. you want him to resign, but you're supporting the virginia democratic party. pete: you don't support the state party as a favor to one politician. maybe sometimes you feel like that's what you're supposed to be doing. we're democrats because of what we believe. in we're democrats because we know what happens when democrats take power versus when republicans take power, especially now. and i'm not going to take it out on the democratic activists and voters and candidates all up and down the ballot in virginia because of the way i feel about one elected official in that state. and you know, it's also a really important thing, i think, for democratic 2020 candidates to do because we've got to support -- we've got to stop treating the presidency like it's the only office that matters. you know, i think that got a hold of a lot of democrat's imagination in the last decade.

and we were so excited about the presidency that we didn't understand how much it was going to hurt that hundreds and hundreds of state legislative seats were lost. and there's so much power in the states. bob: does president obama hold any responsibility for that? pete: i think it was a larger party issue and i think the party needed to mobilize in a way that really would endure through various presidencies. robert: who is responsible? you say the democratic party was eroded at the state and local level at the obama era. who is responsible? pete: i think i'm responsible for helping fix it. conservatives did this patiently and cleverly over 30 or 40 years. they started by trying to take over school boards in the 1970's and 1980's and worked their way through building various majorities and what i see now is an opportunity, precisely because there's so much

attention on the presidency, because of what's going on in the white house, that those of us running for president and since there's so many of us, there are lots of opportunities to model this, can use the visibility we have to lift up state parties trying to get people elected to those local and state efforts and of course because of the timing of virginia and because of what they have in 2019, it's one of the best examples we'll have to walk the walk of supporting others. robert: is president trump a racist? pete: i think so. i mean, if you do racist things and say racist things, the question of whether that makes you a racist is almost academic. the problem with the president is that he does and says racist things and gives cover to other racists. it's not an accident that hate crimes rose disproportionately in places that his campaign visited.

which by the way is another reminder of why it is the conduct of our campaigns, not just their outcome, that can affect what happens in this country. there's no ques-- without having to examine his heart, there's no question that we have to respond to the racism that is emanating from this white house. robert: you visited a historically black church in south carolina, they barely know you down there in south carolina. how are you going to fix that with african-american voters? pete: we have to get known. part of it is the groundwork that you have to do. robert: is there a policy you can offer them and say, this is my way in? pete: that's the other part. but i think the substance again is an area where i would hope most democrats are aligned. the way i talk about an agenda for black america is to look at all of the different ways in which we have inequity and to be ready to tackle them head-on. that is home ownership, that is entrepreneurship. that is health. that is education. and of course that is criminal justice reform.

and for all of those to get better, we also need to be paying attention to democracy because when i talk about tuning up and even structurally reforming our democracy, part what have i'm talking about is systemic things that are happening like voter suppression, that of course are targeted mostly at black and brown communities. until we have a more equal voice, we're going to have more problems getting these outcomes. so we have an agenda for black america that i think is going to be compelling for voters. but tactically, we have a lot of work to do just to get known. in south bend, the black voters who know me best contributed to a very big re-election number for me. but we've had years to build that relationship. the challenge for a candidate in 2020 is we have to do in a matter of months and that's why you'll be seeing a lot of me in south carolina. robert: you've detailed policy, politics at times, personnel can be policy. senator booker, senator harris,

stacey abrams. the former minority leader in georgia. could you commit to having a person of color on the ticket if you were the democratic nominee? pete: i believe it's inappropriate to say something that would rule someone in or rule somebody out. robert: why? why is that inappropriate? pete: because it's the first presidential decision you make, even though you're not president yet. so i don't think you make it in a political process a year in advance. you're making a decision that in the event that you get elected, is a decision about american history and the main criterion is who would be best to lead the country if you die. -- if you are killed or become incapacitated. personnel is policy. it is important, especially in these times, that the next administration be the most gender balanced and racially diverse ever. and that you would see that reflected in all of my decisions, including the selection of a runningmate. robert: some voters may wonder whether it's a person of color, a woman, they're looking for that if you're the nominee.

can you give them any kind of clue if you would lean in that direction? maybe you can offer them that. pete: i'll certainly lean in that direction. i'm just not going to make a declaration in may of 2019. robert: one more question here. you've talked a lot about the firing of the first african-american police chief in south bend. there are a lot of complicated details about this case. as a reporter, the one thing i keep coming back to is this question. you come in in early 2012 to be mayor of south bend. federal investigators come to you and they say, mayor, we have an investigation of the police chief. a couple months later, you ask for his resignation. what i don't understand is why didn't you just let the investigation play out? why did you feel as a mayor you had to ask for his resignation? it wasn't your responsibility, was it, to step in at that time?

couldn't you have let the u.s. attorneys deal with it? pete: without getting too much into the guts of the case that's being litigated even now, we got a pretty strong signal from federal law enforcement authorities that either we could take care of it or they would take care of it. robert: why not let them take care of it? pete: i thought it would tear our community apart. even then, early, with a lot to learn, green, new in that office, i knew that my most important responsibility was to keep the community together. and what i saw was it was going to be divided one way or it was going to be divided another way. but if i owned the decision and having ave a faceless law said that, there are moments hrough that sequence i learned

a lot of things about how much pain there is and how much is behind it. in the relationship between and as a young mayer, they quietly say you have to deal with this. realm of ide of your duty as air. mayor is managing control.ou don't gs you don'town thin have official power over. the management stuff, you can hire someone to do. where you earn your paycheck is no answer that

isn't damaging in some way. you're choosing between one package of right and wrongs and another. there is no hand book and no consensus, that hits your desk and to the best of yuck judgment have you to figure out what to do. did i recent being in that situation? i didn't appreciate being in situation. why we have human beings. >> saying it was slanderus to homophobic. what is your stance on calling the vice president fanatical? -- any u believe that number of continuings the vice president believes it's fan newscastical. and i think we covered that ground a lot. i'm not interested in -- out of is most alarming that list?

>> latest is that sex couples different t a nationality from their children ere is an adoption policy. it's a step backward in had country. i'd like to see what the secretary of state has to say about that. "think it's shocking equality act isn't sailing through the desk of the president who claims to be forward looking on these issues." i'd like to know whether the vice president changed his mind connect 1200.g

to send money ht having ann accused of after kwar with. them with holding president trump in many respects. what is your argument to them if that is their issue? and that is why they're sticking with him. join the d him to majority of american who's believe that believe that had decision needs ne who is by the o concerned. someone who as ademocrat so people don't do this issue the way i do. have a strong view bout some of these almost s. owable question

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>> we're talk. about life and death this, is not a show. this is not a game. should facebook be federally regulated? re making ear they' decisions as a company and the eason they are is that the policy world has failed. we have had a spectacle of clear they making it don't understand what they're regulating. and we can't expect anything different as long as we don't reate the poundries this the policy statement for how these tech companies are supposed to go. >> manage like a utility? >> i'm not sure i understand

s. t that mean . we do have toea regulate it but in a smart way. to regulate mean how much of your retention is -- i like the symbol that is someplace. empowered to be or.

at should prime minister netanyahu expect? hould america to be a he appeared to be patriotic and pro american. doesn't have to mean you're pro trump. being supportive of israel does on p have to mean you're board of the agenda of the wing.li political right i am not. i believe this will harm israeli

and is any friend able to guide them somewhere else. global you think about human rights, would you need a pull scenario? would you make gay rights at the front of your foreign policy? mean, is this a kill switch? no. these things are complex but lgbtq rights is important, as are womens rights and racial justice and economic and political speech,

we're convincingly advancing those rights. havein it woenl works if we our own house in order. nd so, human rights to democracy to climate we had better be walking the walk before going into the world stage and push other countries to do the same. >> final question. e election in 2020, still be trump will around. he'll be trying to move the country into a different direction. direction. don t's one thing to par someone who had a harsh and long sentence for a nonviolent drug offense in order to send a

message about sentencing and equality in this country. it's another to look the other way on an assault on the rule of law. and highest levels now. e're talking about with a situation where the american justice system rendered a decision. overruling that decision. >> or if they haven't. in new york. >> that is easier. no. no. no. look. law orders. ate again rational harm to the integrity of the military, pardoning a public fficial who is corrupt will

have. you treat everybody no better and no worse. because of their political profile. nobody should be targeted. because of their political profile and excused because of their political profile. to the law and to the constitution thachl is what you can expect from my presidency. >> thank you for your time. thank you very much.

>> remarks from nancy pelosi and ing examines hear dangers pacing drivers during up coming summer vacation and how new technology can reduce accidents, and deaths. three, looking at funding for puerto rico and u.s. territories. >> washington journal, live every day with issues that .mpact you coming up saturday morning auto discusses layoffs at

ford and talk growing tensions between u.s. nd iran in the risk of a and join the ict discussion. >> what does it mean to be americans? watch the winning videos, eastern at 10:00 a.m., on c-span. d weekend, c-span white ermont overage fin was v shor and candidate bernie rally in a campaign vermont. we'll speak with voters on ska saturday, watch it on c-span. and sunday, rolling thunder

rcycle pro al moto session are the pentagon to the lincoln memorial. following the ride, a raly by wilke.rks by robert our coverage begins at noon, on c-span.

>> before we begin we're on open ss sion and will discu unclassified matters only. without objection the chair may declare a recess at any time. i welcome witnesses to today's hearing and grateful you jo