CNN "Wolf" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Mike Rounds

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

BLITZER: Joining us from Capitol Hill, Senator Mike Rounds, Republican from South Dakota.

Senator, thanks so much for joining us.

The president made that declaration and he issued a strong statement of support for his Supreme Court nominee. What do you think about what the president said about lying to Congress?

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS, (R), SOUTH DAKOTA: Lying to Congress is just not acceptable. That's just all there is to it.

BLITZER: I know you support the nomination of Brett Confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court. Is there any concerns now, especially as the FBI is concluding a secondary investigation?

ROUNDS: Not at this time, Wolf. At this point, we're doing the extra due diligence. Some of our members specifically asked for it. That's fair. Let's move our way through it and then we're going to vote. At this time, this is now the seventh time that the FBI has made a review and investigation. His files are available for any Senate member to come in and to look at. Once this new one is complete, and it's being made available to the United States Senate, it will be time for us to once again take up the process and move forward. Up or down, but to move forward.

BLITZER: What do you make of Senator Lindsey Graham's proposal today that the president should re-nominate Judge Kavanaugh for the United States Supreme Court if, for some reason, his confirmation fails this week?

ROUNDS: I haven't heard of that yet. For me, I'd rather move forward with the existing nomination in front of us. With the Supreme Court in session now, it would be good to expedite, to move forward. This has gone on longer than the average for most of the recent Supreme Court nominees. One again, we have to do our due diligence. We'll work out way through it. This has been tough on Mr. Kavanaugh and his family. At the same time, we wanted to offer the respect, and give an opportunity for those who have made the accusations to come forward and to be heard. We tried to do that in a very respectful manner. But now it's time to move forward. These are hard votes to take for some of our members. We want to give them the time but we still want to move forward with the process.

BLITZER: The Democrats see a lot of hypocrisy here that Merrick Garland, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee, waited months and months and months and didn't even get a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and they're saying you guys are being hypocritical.

ROUNDS: I had a chance to have him in my office and I spoke with him. I thanked him for allowing his name to be placed in nomination, even after the majority leader, who sets the agenda, say we would not be taking it up. What it did for President Obama was allow him to fulfill his constitutional responsibility to actually nominate someone to the court. So I had a very good discussion with him. He was a gentleman. We had a visit. But nonetheless, the processes in place in the Senate were followed, the same way they should be now.

BLITZER: A couple of other questions. I know you're concerned about what's going on in China. There was another very close call in this South China Sea, a Chinese warship coming just 45 yards from the "USS Decatur," a naval destroyer. You're a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. This looks increasingly tenuous and potentially very dangerous.

ROUNDS: This occurred in the Spratly Islands. That's an area in which the Chinese are making claims. They are saying these are their islands. There are other countries that dispute that. They want to be able to move us out farther away from their homeland. They want to get us farther away. They think if they do that, they can control that area, number one, they can control the shipping lanes. For that purpose, we do freedom-of-navigation activity on a regular basis throughout the world. Our Navy makes sure that navigation continues through those areas. Where we think there are excessive claims for sovereignty in and around islands, we go in and we let them know we disagree and we send a message that we're not going to allow them to do that. This is one of those cases where China is saying we're going to expand it out, we're going to go to this area. We think we have a claim. The United States is saying, you do not. There have actually been world courts that have come back in and identified some of these islands as not being theirs. At this point, we have a case of where it's we think we should have freedom of navigation, they don't. The U.S. Navy will continue to do its work. Hopefully, diplomacy will work. We'll be able to get back in. We'll have some relations cooling off a little bit with China as opposed to heating up, but we'll continue to allow those freedom-of-navigation passages to continue forward.

BLITZER: It's a tenuous, very tenuous situation.

Senator Rounds, thank you so much for joining us.

ROUNDS: Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source