Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Ron DeSantis

Interview

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CHAFFETZ: Joining me now for reaction is Republican Congressman Ron Desantis who is running for the governor of Florida. I had the pleasure of serving with Ron on the congress and on the oversight committee and also on the judiciary committee so congressman thank you for joining us. What's your reaction to what director Coats was saying and have you started the countdown clock on how long he might have his job?

REP. RON DESANTIS, R--FLA.: Well good to see you Jason. You know I have a lot of respect for Dan Coats. I think he served the country honorably, I have confidence in him in term of his capabilities. I just wonder whether that Aspen festival is the right place to be talking about that. If you had concerns then just bring it to the president but to do it in front of that crowd you know I don't think that was necessarily the right way to go.

CHAFFETZ: You know congressman, you and Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, John Radcliffe, Trey Gowdy, I mean the list is long, you've been trying to extract documents from these people and yet you see them all in Aspen. My guess is they didn't take a Delta flight or Southwest to get there. How does that make you feel when you see all these people hanging out in Aspen but you can't get them to come to Capitol Hill?

DESANTIS: Well it's frustrating but Jason I mean you know why this is happening and you and I tried to bring accountability to the IRS commissioner when he was pulling a lot of the same stuff. We tried to actually impeach him. We didn't get the support that we needed throughout the entire House of Representatives and I think the same thing here is we've not yet imposed the sanction on Rosenstein. So if you say you want these documents which we definitely are entitled to, set a date and hold them in contempt if he doesn't produce it. But instead it's kind of back and forth and I think he's just running out the clock on this stuff. I don't think he wants to comply with what we're asking for.

CHAFFETZ: Well I'm no longer in Congress, you are so why haven't dropped that? I mean the clock is ticking, you literally have days before the next election. You're in a handful of days, is there anything that's actually going to happen?

DESANTIS: Well we should do it and I've been arguing for months. Let's just set that contempt date. If we don't have the documents we proceed to do it. If we do have the documents then we cancel the hearing so that's what we should do, will we do it? I don't know, I just don't the answer to that because as you know you need to get a certain amount of members who get on board for doing it. But if we could get that information I think that would shed a lot of light on a lot of the problems we've seen and really just scratch the surface of identifying what people like Peter Stzrok and his ant-Trump bias as really the mover and shaker behind this whole collusion and narrative.

CHAFFETZ: Noe before the president showed up in Helsinki for the summit with Mr. Putin, there were some indictments that were dropped. A, do you think that those will actually do anything and what did you think of the timing of those indictments?

DESANTIS: I don't think they'll end up doing anything because I don't think that anyone's actually going to ever be there to stand trial for them. And first of all, we've responded to Russia's cyber activity, you and I supported sanctions at the beginning of the congress. I'd be willing to do more but I think the political response is probably effective. I mean to just do an indictment and never try the case I think it was more for show and I don't think it was going to amount to very much. And most of the information in that indictment was exactly what Devin Nunes and his committee had identified several months ago so we didn't really learn very much new in the indictment.

CHAFFETZ: You know one of the things that the media doesn't seem to be talking about is upon the return President Trump really walked out of there with tens of billions of dollars in commitment from our NATO partners to beef up the forces on those who are pro USA and maybe not so pro Russia and that doesn't get talked about. But is there anything that you and congress is going to be able to do to fortify the president and continue to push NATO?

DESANTIS: Well I'm a supporter of NATO but at the same time, NATOS's status quo, there's problems with NATO. Trump obviously has been very forceful in identifying the failure of some of our European allies to maintain appropriate defense levels. Look, I have concerns about Turkey's role in NATO. If you at what IRTA One is doing with just being an Islamist and then recently with the controversy so I think it's healthy to be trying to push this in a different direction. But we all are all committed to NATO and I think the president's committed to NATO as well.

CHAFFETZ: Congressman thank you, Ron DeDantis in Florida tonight, thank you very much.

DESANTIS: Thank you.

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