MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Ruben Gallego

Interview

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O'DONNELL: Joining our discussion now, congressman Ruben Gallego, Democrat  of Arizona.

And congressman, I want to get your reaction to this breaking news tonight  that Michael Cohen is willing to tell the special prosecutor that Donald  Trump knew about the meeting with Russians during the Presidential campaign  in Trump tower before the meeting happened.

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D), ARIZONA: Look, it all makes sense, you know. How  this President has been acting towards Russia, the cover up that he has  been gauging in, the way that the Republican Congress and Senate has  avoided, coincidentally, not subpoena, not giving subpoenas to Donald  Trump's junior cell phone to figure out whether he did call his father  before or after the meeting. You know, it all adds up what we know and  what we are being told at least by Michael Cohen I think Mueller is going  to find out is that this President did know ahead of time, did give a green  light whether it was official or unofficial green light for Russian to get  involve in this election and then proceeded to cover up the fact that he  gave the green light to Russia to get involved in this election.

There's one thing I know about politics. There are no coincidences in  politics, but there certainly is collusion. And now we are seeing it on  the mass level with Paul Ryan leading the effort to stop investigation. 
McConnell to basically stop an investigation and stack the courts with  someone who is going to be preferential treatment towards this President  should it come down to needing to indict this President. And the President  himself trying to basically, you know, effect this investigation.

O'DONNELL: Congressman, we are just about an hour away from very important  deadline that this this administration has been facing and that is the  reunification of the children who are separated from their parents at the  border. What do we know now about the government's ability to actually  meet that deadline?

GALLEGO: Well, what we know now is what I knew yesterday when I meet with  secretary Nielsen and I asked here if they were going to be able to tell  the mandate from the judge to actually reunify these families. And she  said that they were on their way and on track to do it. And myself and  many of the members of Congress, you know, just called her out and said  that's impossible. It's not true and you are not being truthful.

And now we know that this administration is an incompetent as it seems.  They are more incompetent considering that this is their plan. And they  really have no way to get out this plan. Right now, all they really care  about is getting out of political problem. And the political problem is  that Americans don't trust this immigration when it comes to immigration  issues. Because their one effort, their one major effort, they have not,  you know, really truly screwed up but they have created orphans. We have  now created orphans in this country because of this administration's  incompetence and lack of leadership at, you know, homeland security and in  the White House.

O'DONNELL: And as of this morning, the government was reporting to the  court that there were 711 children who they considered ineligible for  reunification without necessarily defining how they defined ineligible.

GALLEGO: Yes. This is like, you know, how (INAUDIBLE) used to say that the trains are running on time in Italy. And the way they did that is they just stop running trains. And I think that is the same thing that this 
administration is going to do. They are going to say that, yes, they reunified as many as many as we could. And you know, the feel they cannot reunify are just saying they were not eligible to do that.

The reason that they are not eligible to that because this administration  has really lost its way. And they just do not know how to actually get out  of this problem and that's because the President himself is quite  incompetent.

O'DONNELL: Congressman Ruben Gallego gets tonight's last word. Thank you  very for joining us tonight, congressman. Really appreciate it.

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