MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Edward Markey
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
O`DONNELL: Today, in the Senate, Chuck Schumer asked for a vote on the resolution that passed the House of Representatives 420 to nothing which calls on the attorney general to release the full Mueller report to Congress. But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked that vote.
Joining our discussion now is a member of the United States Senate, Democratic Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts. He`s on the Foreign Relations Committee and he`s the co-sponsor of the Green New Deal.
Senator Markey, thank you very much for joining us tonight. And I`m hoping we can squeeze in a word about the Green New Deal at the end of our discussion.
SEN. EDWARD MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Thank you, Lawrence.
O`DONNELL: But let me begin with your reaction to the attorney general`s letter?
MARKEY: Well, of course, it`s absurd because, you know, it took two years to put the whole report together. And then in two days, William Barr decided that there was no obstruction of justice. But he had already preceded that last June when he wrote a 19-page letter to the Justice Department saying that it would be grossly irresponsible for Robert Mueller to make a finding that there was obstruction of justice, even though we now know that Mueller believes there`s evidence on both sides of that question.
And so William Barr was clearly compromised once he wrote that 19-page letter saying that it would be wrong to make that decision. So this whole report has to be made public. The Congress has to have it.
The American people should be able to read it. And they should know everything that Robert Mueller was able to find and then the American people can make up their own mind as to whether or not there was obstruction of justice. But the last person who could make that decision objectively was William Barr, the attorney general of the United States.
O`DONNELL: We just heard from Congressman Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Judiciary Committee that he expects the committee to hear from both the attorney general and Robert Mueller.
We just heard from the chairman of your Senate Judiciary Committee that he doesn`t want to hear from Robert Mueller. He actually used the word circus to describe hearing from the special prosecutor. Let`s listen for a moment what former Attorney General Eric Holder said about the possibility of Robert Mueller testifying.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
O`DONNELL: Senator, that seems like the most obvious case for the Mueller testimony. Here`s William Barr`s interpretation of Robert Mueller`s findings. What does Robert Mueller say about that?
MARKEY: Well, look, where we are on this case is that the reason Mueller got the job was to keep partisanship out of the investigation. And where we are right now is that William Barr is the hand-picked attorney general of the United States by Donald Trump, knowing that he believed, Barr believed that it was grossly irresponsible to find obstruction of justice.
So the circus is this side show that has been created by William Barr by making this decision. And now the Republicans pretending that they want to have a full explication of this case in public are now saying no, we won`t have William -- we won`t have Robert Mueller up and maybe we won`t have the full document made public. And as a result, we`re left with a four-page summary by William Barr who clearly had compromised himself with that letter to the Justice Department last year.
O`DONNELL: Chris Hayes is going to have an hour on the Green New Deal at the end of this week on Friday night at 8:00 on this network. I want to just give a preview of that on one point that I`ve heard you speak about because the Green New Deal takes at least an hour to cover the tip of the iceberg of it.
But one of the things that`s a component part of it is a jobs program in effect in the new technologies, in the new energy technologies, solar, for example. And there`s a chart that I know you`ve used many times, we`re going to put it up on the screen now, that shows the coal mining jobs versus the wind power jobs, solar power jobs.
And the solar just dwarves. It just dwarves the coal mining jobs in this country. And that is a case that I have not heard effectively publicly made for the Green New Deal and for these kinds of policies.
MARKEY: And you`re putting your finger right on it. There are now 350,000 of wind and solar jobs in the United States of America. They`re mostly blue-collar jobs.
They`re electricians. They`re roofers. There are 50,000 coal miners in our country. There were 50,000 solar jobs created just in 2016 alone. The equal of all coal jobs in our country.
So what we have here is a job creation, blue-collar job creation engine which has been created. And the objective of the Green New Deal is to supercharge that job creation, to create millions of jobs so that we can save all of creation by engaging in massive job creation.
And we want to do this in a way that creates jobs across the board for people all across this country and what Donald Trump and what the Republicans in Congress are doing right now is siding with the Koch Brothers, siding the oil industry because they believe that it`s an existential threat to their business model.
At the same time that the United Nations scientists have said that climate change is an existential threat to our planet. So those are the stakes. And the line in the sand has been drawn.
And we`re ready to have this fight over the Green New Deal. That`s why I introduced it with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It`s going to be intergenerational. It`s going to be something that has sharp political edges to it and we`re welcoming this fight, Lawrence.
We think in 2020 this is going to be one of the top three issues, along with health care, and job creation in our economy. And we`re ready to take it on.
O`DONNELL: Senator Ed Markey, I know no one in the Senate has been working harder on these issues than you have. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We hope to have you back.
MARKEY: Thank you so much.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source