MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Supreme Court

Interview

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HAYES: The President's own nominee can end up being the decisive vote in determining among many other questions whether the President himself has to testify in the Mueller probe. I ask Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren if that possibility concerns her.

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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Yes, it concerns me deeply. And you know, I know how often we say never before in history but never before in history have we been in a position where a president who can hear the hoof beats of an investigation that is bearing down on him gets to name the person who is likely to be the swing vote in the court that will ultimately determine a big part of how any investigation goes forward.

HAYES: Given what we know about how the President operates and what James Comey has said, are you confident that he is not personally or using his powers in these interviews to essentially get pledges of loyalty, to ask inappropriate questions about what these people will do if asked to rule on it.

WARREN: You know, the President has already made his history clear that he wants to screen nominees for personal loyalty to him. That's his established track record. That's not anything that's a surprise. And so no we also look at what he's done before and watch what he's doing right now as he's talking with potential Supreme Court nominees. But let me say on this. This is all the more reason that the United States Senate cannot simply be a rubber stamp. Donald Trump is not king. He does not get to wave his scepter and then someone magically appears on the United States Supreme Court. It's not how this thing works. Every single Senator gets a vote and unless Donald Trump's nominee can get a majority of those votes, they don't get to go to the United States Supreme Court. And as you know, we are closely divided Senate right now. I think there's going to be a very serious investigation into whomever Donald Trump names.

HAYES: Last question on this sort of line of reasoning which is do you think it would be appropriate for the Justice to recuse him or herself were they to be confirmed or to tell you in the hearings that they recuse themselves from issues that directly bear on the President vis-…-vis the investigation?

WARREN: It's a -- it's a very interesting question. I'm going to leave it there because I think it's one -- we've got all kinds of uncharted territory here that we're going to have to keep sorting through. As I said, this is just something we've never faced before in history. And I think there are going to be some really tough questions put to whoever the nominee is. But let's talk about what we know for sure is at stake and some of the questions that the nominee is going to face. Donald Trump has already said that he's going to pick somebody who has been pre-screened off a list that was put together by a group whose number one job an extremist group is to make sure that Roe vs. Wade gets overturned. This means that he's looking for a nominee who will criminalize abortion and try to punish women. That's what's at stake in this one.

And then from there, it's so much more. This is about health care cases that are percolating up through the courts including the one we know about right now about pre-existing conditions. This is about the swing vote in
our environmental protections whether or not giant corporations are going to have the right to poison the water and foul the air. This is about workers' rights and whether or not the Supreme Court is going to stay on
the path of trying to bust unions. This is about voting rights, whether or not democracy fundamentally works in this country. This is one of those moments where Justice Kennedy has been the swing vote, look and I'll be blunt, he swung a lot of times in a direction I don't like but he's been a swing vote. He was the one who helps stand up for equal marriage. All of that is now at risk when Donald Trump gets to replace the swing vote with
somebody off a pre-approved extremists list.

HAYES: Another area that they will have some say over is immigration. There's a federal ruling that he has to reunite the families. It's unclear how they will proceed. There was -- there was a protest this morning in the heart senate office building about 600 women and now in aluminum blankets. What did you -- what did you make of that protest?

WARREN: So I was there. I saw them. I had just come out of Democratic caucus. This is how I see it. Look, we don't have the votes on the Democratic side by ourselves to stop anything. But I remember the day that Donald Trump was sworn in. I remember going home that night and thinking they're going to roll back the Affordable Care Act for tens of millions of people. They're going to do it next week because they've got all the -- they've got the House, they got the Senate, they've got the White House. They're going to do this. And then the next day I went to the Women's March, the biggest protest rally in the history of the world. What we still had on our side was the capacity to raise our voices. And all that spring and into the summer as millions of people across this country Democrats, Republicans, Independents said my government will hear my voice.

Do not take away health care from tens of millions of Americans. Do not permit insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. We had our voices. And look, as I stand here right now, I just got back from the border on Monday, but as I stand here right now, I remind myself two weeks ago that was the official policy of the United States government to take babies at the arms of mothers who came here to ask for asylum. And now that policy has changed. We've got a lot of problems still at the border, that's what the women were there in the lobby of our building to protest but that's the point. We still have the power of people. We have the power of our voices. I'm in this fight all the way and I'm telling on the fact that there are millions of other Americans who are in it too.

HAYES: Senator Elizabeth Warren, it's great to have you.

WARREN: It's good to be here.

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