MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Interview
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MADDOW: Very please to say that joining us now for the interview here live in person in studio is Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She serves on the Banking Committee. She serves on the Armed Services Committee. And she will not like to hear me say this, she`s also on the list of Democrats, who a lot of Democrats around the country are hoping will run for president in 2020.
Senator Warren, I`m sorry for that.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETT: I`m running for Senate, Massachusetts, 2018.
MADDOW: OK. That`s before 2020.
WARREN: Less than five months, less than five months.
MADDOW: I`m not going to ask you about that because I feel like I know the answer to your questions about that.
WARREN: Good.
MADDOW: But I want to ask you about some of the stuff that`s broken today that I`m still having a hard time getting my head around.
Let me ask you first about this remarkable and I think unexpected lawsuit that was filed by the New York attorney general today concerning the president`s charitable foundation.
Now, the attorney general is asking for a number of remedies. She wants the foundation dissolved. She wants Donald Trump and his children to not be allowed to serve on any charitable board again. She wants Donald Trump to pay back double the money that she says was mishandled. She wants criminal referrals to federal agencies in terms of the mishandling of those funds.
Have you seen that lawsuit and what`s your take on it?
WARREN: So, look, the laws around charities are pretty clear about what you can and can`t do. This is not -- this is not deeply obscure law. It`s the money comes, in the money is supposed to go for the charitable purpose.
And there are quite reasonably penalties put in place if you don`t do that.What gets me about this is not that he was fooled by this. It`s the shamelessness of it. It`s turning around and saying I know, let`s take a trust and, boy, if that`s helpful to Donald Trump personally, Donald Trump`s family, let`s do it.
To use veterans like that -- you know, all three of my brothers are veterans. My oldest brother was career military. He served 288 combat missions in Vietnam. My other two brothers served.
There`s just something to me about the notion -- I get that we`re talking about a grifter, someone who`s always watching out for himself. But doing this with veterans, pushing veterans out front and claiming I`m doing this just for the veterans, and then turning it around just to break the law and take care of himself.
And then on top of that, I get there`s been this kind of strutting, you know, shameless about everything, but shameless about illegality, about things that are clearly wrong? It`s a reminder that we have somebody leading our government right now who -- it truly is. It`s only all about him. It`s not about our country. It`s not about our veterans.
It`s not about rule of law. It`s not about anything else except him, him, him. And that`s costly to all of us.
MADDOW: So this -- with the charity issue it remains to be seen exactly what`s going to happen here. The attorney general saying this violates a whole bunch of laws about charities in New York state. But in terms of pursuing criminal penalties here, one of the things the A.G. has done is written a formal detailed well footnoted letter to the IRS saying these are the federal tax laws that were broken here and writing to the FEC saying this is the way the president used this foundation, essentially to illegally finance his campaign.
Do you believe that federal agencies are fairly and robustly assessing allegations of criminal conduct against the president or has he infected that with his public pressure on law enforcement?
WARREN: Well, let`s start with the baseline, and that is that no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States. Everyone is subject to the law. And now the question you`re really asking is just how corrupt has this government become? How much will people back off, how much will agencies back off from carrying out their duties?
And that`s part of what we`re going to see over the next several weeks and several months. But it`s what we`re seeing all the way through government right now. An Environmental Protection Agency that not only won`t do its job on behalf of the American people but in fact is out there helping the polluters saying, hey, listen, if it`s cheaper for you to dump your crud in the river go ahead and do it. Because they don`t see it as their job to make sure that we can breathe the air and drink the water.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, someone in charge right now who wants to change the whole mission statement to say oh, but we`re also here to help the creditors, right? Wait a minute. This is the agency that`s supposed to make sure people don`t get cheated on their mortgages, on their student loans, on their credit cards. That`s the whole reason that agency`s there. And just trying to hollow that out from the inside and turn it around.
A Department of Education where the head of the department of education, what`s your job at the Department of Education? It`s to promote public schools, to try to be helpful to public schools. To protect our students who are being cheated on student loans and make sure that doesn`t happen. Put good regulations in place and monitor it.
And what`s happening? We`ve got someone, Betsy DeVos, heading up the Department of Education who`s hiring, bringing on board people who work for those for-profit colleges that have cheated students and just recently announced, hey, we`re going to put somebody in charge who is going to get the right again to be able to sign off on which schools are eligible to get federal loans after having been decertified because they signed off for a bunch of for-profit colleges that were caught cheating students, costing the taxpayer and taxpayer and costing those students both time and in some cases an enormous amount of money.
And you can just keep watching this all the way through the government. It`s the corruption of not just the Trump administration. It`s the twisting government. Not to work anymore for the people but to work for the powerful, to work for the rich, to work for a narrower and narrower --
MADDOW: But they`re doing that on purpose. It`s a feature of what they`re trying to do. It`s not a bug.
The thing that I find more shocking, more surprising, I guess, is that when they`re getting caught, they`re not getting in trouble. You mentioned Scott Pruitt, Scott Pruitt now has been documented to use staff to try to get his wife a couple of different jobs, in one case successfully. That`s blatantly illegal but as far as I know, he`s still going to work every day and doesn`t seem to be afraid he`s going to jail for it.
WARREN: But look, he`s delivering for big oil. He`s delivering for the energy companies that want him there. He`s in bed with his buddies. And no, they`re not going to get rid of him over personal corruption. Are you kidding?
MADDOW: But when it`s violating the law, isn`t that something that`s supposed to have a corrective in law enforcement -- even if you`ve got the reins of power in terms of the White House and Congress?
WARREN: But every part of this, what you`re asking me if we`re a country that still adheres to the rule of law?
MADDOW: Basically, yes.
WARREN: Yes, exactly, and the answer is: I hope so. But the problem we`ve got is the people who have to enforce that law, they`re the ones on the front line and we`re going to see a measure of how deep the corruption goes. But it raises the question about what we`re going to expect in 2018 in the election.
MADDOW: I want to ask you about that when we come back.
WARREN: OK.
MADDOW: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, is our guest. We`ll be right back. Stay with us.
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MADDOW: Joining us once again is Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senior senator from Massachusetts.
Senator Warren, thank you for sticking around.
WARREN: I`m delighted to be here.
MADDOW: You`re up for reelection in 2018.
WARREN: I am.
MADDOW: Do you believe that the Democrat party is going to win control of either House of Congress in the midterms? And how do you make that assessment?
WARREN: So, look, you probably need a pundit for this one. I really, really want us to do that, I`m going to work really, really hard to make that happen and I run every day filled with terror that it won`t, because if Donald Trump remains in control of the House and the Senate and the Republicans won`t stop him, I don`t know what happens in the next two years.
But I think the Democrats have got a really terrific chance. And the reason for that is because I feel democracy changing out there. I think that we`re honing this down to the core things that matter.
What`s the difference between a Democrat and Republican? Look, the Republicans went behind closed and locked doors and said we`re going to give a trillion and a half dollars away to billionaires and giant corporations. That`s what it is. Who did they let in the room? Only Republicans and lobbyists and Republican donors and they delivered that package.
They said it`ll trickle down on the rest of you and it will all be fine. Democrats say, wait a minute, if you`ve got a trillion and a half dollars to spend, there are a lot of things that we value and care about, like let`s keep down the cost of health insurance, let`s make it so people can actually afford their health insurance. Let`s take care of the opioid problem in America.
Republicans say, hey, listen, I`d really like to do that, but we just don`t have any money for that. Let`s take care of the student loan debt crisis. There`s $1.5 trillion that young people owe right now and it keeps them from getting their lives started. They`re being crushed from this debt.
Or how about we really do an infrastructure plan? How about we put the money in to repair our crumbling infrastructure and build an infrastructure for a 21st century economy and an infrastructure that is hardening us, getting us ready for what`s coming from our oceans from the fires out west. That`s good jobs now and it`s investing in good jobs in the future.
In other words, the Republicans think you give the money to the billionaires, somehow it`s going to trickle down for everybody else. Democrats think that what government should do is work for the people and help us make investments in the future. Rachel, we could be the first generation whose kids don`t do better than we did.
The first generation that says it`s more important to invest in a billionaire than it is to invest in our kids and our grand kids. And we have a chance to keep driving that home, to say your healthcare matters more than a billionaire getting richer.
MADDOW: Even if Democrats get both houses in Congress in 2018, Donald Trump is still going to be in the White House, and he`s not going to sign practical that Democrats sign, at least he`s not inclined toward that now, maybe you could change him if you won both houses of Congress.
WARREN: Maybe he would see that as winning to sign off on bills that come to his desk.
MADDOW: I can`t get inside the man`s head, and I`m uncomfortable trying.
You gave a speech last week where you talk about corruption. You talked about corruption in the United States. You were just talking about it. Moments ago, we were talking about it, we were talking about the rule of law, the threat to the rule of law and whether or not the powerful are above the rule of law.
Let`s say the Democrats are able to get the Senate or Democrats are more likely to get the House. With control of one part of Washington, can Democrats make a significant difference on that core issue while Trump is still in the White House?
WARREN: Yes.
MADDOW: How?
WARREN: They can do it partly by stopping some of the bleed, right? They can do it partly by saying, no, we want to hold the investigatory hearings. We want to make this public.
Because -- where Democrats` power really lies is in the truth, is getting more people engaged, getting more people looking at it. Getting more people understanding what`s going on. But it was the women`s march, the
largest protest rally in the history of the world.
It was the fact that when Donald Trump said no more Muslims coming to America that people rushed out to the airports. It was the scientists who marched to protect our earth. It was -- it`s now the kids who`ve come off the sidelines and said, gun violence has to stop. We want our voices heard.
It`s the teachers in Oklahoma and West Virginia and Colorado and Arizona who have said, I want my voice heard in this government. We get Democrats back in control of the House and the Senate, we can amplify. We can help direct. We can energize the voice of the people, as democracy itself takes this government over again. I believe that.
MADDOW: Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, thank you very much.
WARREN: Always good to see you.
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