Fox News "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Seth Moulton

Interview

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REP. SETH MOULTON, D-MASS., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's great to be here, Chris.

And I'm not going to start but wishing you a happy Mother's Day, but I am going to wish my mother a happy Mother's Day and my wife, Liz. It's her first Mother's Day ever. So, to my mom, to Liz, and to my daughter Emmy, I love you.

WALLACE: Do you want to do a SethMoulton.com to fundraising for -- no, I'm teasing. That's very lovely.

MOULTON: It's Mother's Day. This is important.

WALLACE: No, I agree. I agree.

And, Lorraine, I wish you a very happy Mother's Day because -- thanks for showing me up, congressman.

All right, before we get to all the questions about the House on the White House. After President Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods on Friday morning, you tweeted this, I want to put it on the screen. Whether it's farmers or federal workers, Americans and their paycheck should never be used as pawns in a negotiation.

But, congressman, don't we need to get tough with China? They've been taking advantage of us with unfair trading practices for decades.

MOULTON: We absolutely need to get tough with China. And it's not just on trade. It's the rising threat that China is to our national security. I mean they are steeling American ideas and American military secrets through the Internet every single day.

But we need a strategy. And, I mean, I listened to Mr. Kudlow's interview. I don't think this administration has a strategy. They don't have any sense of urgency and they clearly don't know what this means to American families. Two thousand seven hundred -- you put the number on the board -- dollars a year. That matters to American families. I mean ask how much that matters to American soybean farmers when they can't sell their soybeans.

WALLACE: So how do you -- how do you get tough with them if you're not going to use tariffs?

MOULTON: You have to have a comprehensive strategy. And I'm not saying that tariffs shouldn't be an option on the table. But that means that we actually build our alliances in the Pacific. I'm calling for using the NATO model in the Pacific to help contain China and North Korea.

The president's been doing the exact opposite. He's been undermining our allies across the globe. It means using institutions like the World Trade Organization. Now, that's not perfect, it's not going to solve every problem, but every case that the Obama administration has brought before the WTO against China, every single one that's been decided has been in our favor. So the president's simply lying when he says that WTO doesn't work.

We need to have a comprehensive strategy for China because they are a massive threat. But just wielding tariffs like a cajole because it makes the president look tough, that only hurts American families.

WALLACE: All right, let's turn to the -- to the battle now, the escalating battle, between the House and the White House over the Russian investigation and where it goes from -- from here. The president is fighting all subpoenas for documents and current and former advisors to testify before Congress. And the House Democrats are fighting back either in one case voting in a community for contempt of Congress, and others threatening to vote. Here was the president's reaction to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: With all of this transparency, we finish, no collusion, no obstruction, right? Then I get out, the first day, they're saying, let's do it again. And I said, that's enough. We've got to -- we have to run a country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Does President Trump have a point? I mean the Mueller investigation went on for 22 months. It cast a cloud over his presidency and this country for almost two years.

It's -- you know -- look, nobody on the -- on your side is ever going to be satisfied with the Mueller investigation, but why not go on and deal with pocketbook issues that really affect people's lives? Voters are going to decide in a little over a year, in the 2020 election, whether they want to keep President Trump or not.

MOULTON: Well, first of all, don't think that we can't do both. I mean the House -- the Democratic House has been passing a lot of legislation that's important to American families. But it's also our constitutional responsibility to hold the administrations accountable. That's written into the Constitution.

And the fact of the matter is that this investigation is exactly what you termed it first, Chris, it's an investigation about Russia. And whether you're a Democrat in the House or you're the biggest Trump supporter in America, every American should want to know why Vladimir Putin wanted Trump elected president.

WALLACE: But you're not investigating --

MOULTON: That's the most important conclusion.

WALLACE: But -- but -- but the -- the House Democratic investigations are not about Russia, they're about Trump. You're subpoenaing him -- not him, but, you know, some of his top people, Barr, McGahn. This is not about -- about Russia, it's about Trump.

MOULTON: Well, we need to hold the Trump administration accountable because that's our constitutional duty.

But you're right in criticizing us for not focusing enough on Russia. I mean that's why I'm in this race, to talk about national security, because Democrats should be leading on national security when we have a president who is literally cozying up to some of the worst dictators in the world, some of our biggest enemies.

I do think, Chris, that, you're right, that that should be the focus, because that is the unmistakable conclusion of this report. Obstruction and everything else aside, those are really important.

But Russia meddled in this election. And don't get me wrong, they're going to meddle in 2020 as well because this administration has done nothing to stop them or deter them.

WALLACE: I just want to ask you one more question on this and then we're going to move on to something I think you probably want to talk about, which is your campaign for president.

We saw two very different approaches this week to the Russia investigation from the two top leaders of the House and the Senate. Let's take a look.

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PELOSI: Every single day the president is making a case - - he's make -- he's becoming self-impeachable.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY: The special counsel's finding is clear, case closed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: Now, there is an argument that Democrats would be in a stronger legal position to get access to documents, to get access to current and former advisors of the president, if you were to open a formal impeachment proceeding -- not say you necessarily are even going to impeach the president, but open it and seek all of that under the impeachment -- which, as you talked about in the Constitution, it's in the Constitution, impeachment.

MOULTON: Right.

WALLACE: Do you support that?

MOULTON: I do. In fact, I supported it last year. I think we made a mistake as a part by waiting until the Mueller report came out.

The fact of the matter is that this is our constitutional duty. And a lot of people make the argument that it's not a politically opportune time for us to proceed with this, to have this debate. Don't forget, Congress does two things, we debate things and then we vote on them. I'm not saying we should vote on impeachment yet. We don't even have the full Mueller report. But let's have that debate. I called that -- for -- for that a year ago and we should be discussing it because it's our constitutional duty.

So, politics aside, Chris, how about just doing the right thing by the Constitution?

WALLACE: OK.

You got into this Democratic presidential race pretty late, April 22nd. You're a third term congressman -- forgive me sir -- with almost no national profile. What makes you think -- although it will obviously explode after your appearance here today -- what makes you think that you have a realistic chance of winning the Democratic presidential nomination?

MOULTON: Because the most important thing to Democrats is beating Donald Trump and bringing this country together. And the hardest job I've ever had in my life is leading American troops in combat. It's bringing together a remarkably diverse group of Americans with different religious backgrounds, different political backgrounds, different political beliefs and getting them united behind a common mission to serve our country.

And that, I think, is exactly the kind of leadership that we need from the next president of the United States. (INAUDIBLE) terribly divisive time.

WALLACE: I understand. I'm going to get into your foreign policy, but what makes you think you have a -- I mean, politics is practical. Politics is tough. What makes you think -- you're one of, what, 22 in the field now. What makes you think you have a chance? There are a lot of people who are a lot better known than you are.

MOULTON: Because I'm the only one with that experience. I'm the only one with that expense of uniting Americans in the most difficult circumstances imaginable. And I'm also the only one in this race that is taking on Donald Trump on issues of security, on strength, on what we need to do to make America stronger, on what it truly means to be a patriot.

I don't believe that we can win this race if we don't challenge Donald Trump, not just on his job as president, but in his job as commander in chief. And we have to challenge them there if we're going to win.

WALLACE: And -- and, briefly, because we're running out of time here, what is -- because, you say, you keep talking about, it's national security, defense, foreign policy, what is the Moulton foreign policy?

MOULTON: We need a totally new generation of arms. We need to be challenging China on developing artificial intelligence, on building a cyber wall to protect America, not building, you know, a fifth century border wall. China had that debate 2,000 years ago about building a wall. We need that new generation of alliances because we have to make NATO relevant for today, because Russia is attacking us through the Internet, not by sending tanks into western Europe. And we need to make sure that we have a new generation of leaders to lead this charge.

I think it's time for the generation that went to Iraq and Afghanistan to take over for the generation that sent us there.

WALLACE: I have about a minute left. The DNC has set a June 12th deadline, which is a month from today, for deciding who is going to be in that first set of two debates at the end of June, Democratic presidential debates. Here are the criteria. Candidates must either raise money from at least 65,000 donors, or have at least 1 percent support in three poles.

If you don't qualify and you don't end up getting on that debate stage for the first debates in June, doesn't that kill your candidacy before it's even really begun?

MOULTON: No, it doesn't, but we're on track to meet those goals.

You asked earlier, you said earlier that I got into this late. And I did. And the reason I got in this race late is simple, I have a seven-month-old daughter at home. And leaving her at home to hit the campaign trail was not an easy decision. I had never even been a father before. But if there's a personal reason why I'm doing this, aside from Trump and the policies and everything else, it's that I want my daughter, Emmy, to grow up and know that I did everything I could to serve this country.

WALLACE: Congressman, thank you. Thanks for coming in. We'll be watching how the campaign goes. Safe travels on the campaign trail, sir.

MOULTON: Thank you, Chris.

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