MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Maxine Waters

Interview

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HAYES: Donald Trump has decided that a good strategy to help Republicans  keep control of  congress is to focus on my next guest, Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Trump  has repeatedly called Waters the leader of the Democratic Party. He was at  it again last night in West Virginia, and last week on her 80th birthday,  he even sarcastically tweeted happy birthday to the leader the Democrat  Party,  Maxine Waters.

It`s Democratic Party.

Maxine Waters is not the leader of the Democratic Party, but she has been  one of the fiercest critics of the president from the beginning, and she is  joining me once again tonight. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Democrat of  California. Welcome back to the show.

REP. MAXINE WATERS, (D) CALIFORNIA: Thank you.

HAYES: You have been, I would say, out front and outspoken about your  belief that the president is worthy of impeachment, is a criminal, has  surrounded himself with criminals. So, I wonder how your thinking after  what happened yesterday.

WATERS: Well, I`m thinking that this is just the tip of the iceberg, that,  yes, Manafort was convicted on eight counts and Cohen came in and pleaded  guilty to eight counts. And I have felt this, I`ve basically taken a look  at this whole crowd, these allies of the president, their relationship to  Putin, their relationship to the Kremlin and to oligarchs and how they  handled themselves and information that I think will come out about money  laundering through the Cyprus bank with Manafort.

So, I expect this. I expect it to unfold. And I think it will keep  unfolding. And we will find that there`s more criminality among this  group. There will be more convictions, and, yes, the president is  involved.

HAYES: I want to ask you a political question. There`s a certain line of  thinking that says that people don`t care about the Mueller probe. They  don`t care about the Russia stuff or even Manafort and stuff. And I  thought this was interesting, two polls from Fox today that Mueller`s  approval rating is now quite good, 59 percent approve and 37 percent  disapprove.

And the congressional ballot gap is 49 percent to 38 percent. Do you think  Democrats should  talk about these issues on the campaign trail in the mid-terms?

WATERS: Well, I`ve always felt that we could walk and chew gum at the same  time. I know some of the Democrats are saying, please don`t mention the  word impeachment. Don`t worry about the investigation. Let Mueller take  care of that. We have got to talk about our issues. We can do both.

We can talk about healthcare. We can talk about Obamacare. We can talk  about Medicaid and Medicare. We can talk about the infrastructure and how  it needs to be built up. We can talk about all of these things at the same  time. We can`t turn a blind eye to this president who is destroying this  country.

This president, the leader of this country, comes to us with a reputation.  This is a man who comes with a reputation of not paying his contractors, cheating subcontractors with a fake university, where he cheated students who thought they were going to learn how to become developers. This is a man who has come with the kind of reputation, racism, of coding applications for apartments that -- so they would not have to rent them to African-Americans and people of color. This is a man who has demonstrated, in more than several ways, who he is.

He is a flawed character. And I think for us to sit blindly by and pretend  that we don`t have to  deal with it, somebody else is going to sit it in our laps, really does not  speak to what we`re thinking about our responsibility in the congress of  the United States of America.

And so I think we can do both. And that`s what I`ve been doing.

HAYES: There are two members of congress, Republicans who have been  indicted now, Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter, both early supporters of the  president. Obviously the president has people around him who have been  indicted or pleaded. As Democrats take a message about corruption to  voters in the mid-terms, I want to ask about Robert Menendez, a sitting  senator from New Jersey. He was essentially unanimously backed by the  Democratic Party. He had a hung jury in federal trial that revolved around  corruption charges that he basically traded influence to a donor. Was it a  mistake for Democrats to anonymously back Robert Menendez given the kind of  -- what you`re seeing develop and the message on corruption that`s  developing?

WATERS: Well, let me just say this, both on the Democratic side and the  Republican side, these are individuals who have decided to take certain  actions that are criminal. And so I don`t say that Trump was somehow, you  know, in collusion with Hunter, I say that he was in collusion with Putin.  I say that he was in collusion with the Kremlin and with the oligarches.

And so these individual problems that pop up on either side of the aisle  are basically that, individuals who decided to make bad decisions about how  they handle themselves.

And in the case of Menendez, he was exonerated.

HAYES: Well, he wasn`t exonerated, it was a mistrial.

WATERS: Mistrial, all right.

HAYES: OK. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, many thanks for your time  tonight. I appreciate it.

WATERS: Oh, well, you`re certainly welcome. Thank you.

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