CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Dan Kildee

Interview

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HARLOW: OK. Let's listen to Manu Raju and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- since the NBA finals. Sorry about Kevin Durant's injury. It was a very grisly injury. Hope he's OK.

And I do -- before we get into the issues of the conference, I do want to talk about some of the issues that have been in the news over the past week. You were traveling abroad and you were in Normandy.

The president was in Normandy, too, and he made some comments about you. He was sitting in the American Cemetery in Normandy. And rather, probably the most aggressive remarks I've heard from the president, make about a speaker of the House.

He said that you were nervous. He called you a disaster. He also called you a "nasty, vindictive, horrible" person.

(LAUGHTER)

This is not me. This is the president saying this.

He later went on to tweet that you were a disgrace to yourself and your family. So, I mean, how do you react to the president of the United States calling this -- calling you, the speaker of the House, insulting you like that?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, what bothers me more is that we're talking about that instead of how to reduce the national debt.

(APPLAUSE)

And let's just say this. We were in Normandy. And that morning, before the president made his statement, I was being interviewed by MSNBC. And they asked me about the president. And I said, "We're here about our veterans."

And I have a rule for any CODEL -- and you ask anyone, Democratic or Republican -- I always say the first rule of our CODEL is we never criticize a president of the United States when we are overseas. We just don't do that.

We have plenty of time to do that back home. But when we travel, we don't -- and especially when we're here to honor the courage of our veterans and thank them for that courage, and also to salute the cooperation and collaboration of our country with our allies. And the greatest naval invasion in the history of the world, to save civilization as we know it today and our freedoms.

So my -- I said, basically, "I'm not here to say anything about the president." And we had the same backdrop, the tombstones of our veterans who are buried in Normandy.

The president took a different tack. I don't think it --

RAJU: But how do you work with --

PELOSI: -- I'm done with him. I don't even want to talk about him.

RAJU: But how do you work -- I mean, you have to work with him. How do you work with him after he levels such an insult against you overseas?

PELOSI: I just consider the source.

RAJU: What do you mean by that?

PELOSI: I mean, my stock goes up every time he attacks me. So what can I say?

But let's not -- let's not spend too much time on that because that's his victory. The diverter in -- diverter of attention in chief, you know. "We'll talk about this instead of talking about the fact that we" -- the president, his behavior in terms of tariffs and trade and all the issues, in terms of what we need to do for our country to solve some of the challenges that we face.

[10:40:19] Infrastructure, infrastructure. We thought that we had a working relationship with him on that. He's always talked about infrastructure as a priority. And I believed him in that regard. But when it came time to pay for it, he diverted attention to personal nastiness.

But, you know, again, that's not -- that's not the point. That's a waste of time.

RAJU: But he was apparently set off by remarks you reportedly made in private, saying that you'd rather see him in prison that impeached. Is that how you -- is that how you really feel?

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: Let me (ph) -- I don't care what motivates him, and we never know. But in front of the tombstones of our fallen, when we're there to observe the 75th anniversary of Normandy, you be the judge as to whether you think it's appropriate for the president to take that tack. That's all I'm going to stay about it. RAJU: But it --

PELOSI: I don't care what you ask any more. I'm not going to talk about him anymore. I came here --

RAJU: But I want to know, did you actually say that? Did you actually say that the president, you'd rather see him in prison than impeached?

PELOSI: When we have conversations in our caucus, they stay in our caucus. Do people think that there's some impeachable offenses that the president committed? Yes. How serious are they? Are they criminal? Many people think they are.

RAJU: Do you think they are?

PELOSI: That's not the -- I'm here to talk about --

RAJU: We will -- we will get into that. I promise you --

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: -- I'm not -- I'm not going to that place of what happens within our caucus. What we're talking about is what's happening within our country, about how we go forward with investments in the future, to educate a workforce for the 21st century, workforce development, essential to infrastructure development.

Our For the People agenda. For the People, that was what we ran on. That's what we're here, delivering for the people. Health care with -- lowering the cost of health care by lowering the cost of prescription drugs. And guaranteeing and strengthening the pre- existing condition benefit.

Lowering health care costs, bigger paychecks by building infrastructure of America in a green way, for the future. And cleaner government. H.R.1 to stop it -- we won the Congress, a 40-seat net gain in the Congress in the most gerrymandered voter-suppressed political arena in history. And yet we won 40 seats.

But that's not right. We have to make -- end the voter suppression, have people choosing their representatives rather than representatives choosing their constituents through partisan gerrymandering.

So that is our agenda. That's the bills that we are passing, whether -- and -- and we want the Senate to pick up some of the legislation and go forward in terms of the Dreamers, the Equality Act, LGBTQ as we begin Gay Pride Week.

We passed, a couple weeks ago, the Equality Act, which ends discrimination against the LGBTQ community. The Dreamers. The gold standard of immigrants to our country, these lovely young people who, through no fault of their own -- they didn't make the decision to come here -- they contribute so much to our military, to our teaching force in our country, to the health care, all the rest.

And the list goes on. Equal pay for equal work for women. The Violence Against Women Act, the list goes on and on.

RAJU: Speaker Pelosi --

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: -- violence prevention and the rest.

RAJU: You talk a lot about legislating and investigating as part of the priority --

PELOSI: And wait a minute --

RAJU: -- if I could finish my question --

PELOSI: No, wait a minute. Legislating, investigating, litigating. I want you to add the litigating part.

RAJU: OK. The litigating, that's -- I'm glad you mentioned that because one argument that people are making in your caucus is that opening up an impeachment inquiry would strengthen your case in court. So why are you against an impeachment inquiry?

PELOSI: Well, is that true? Will it open it --

RAJU: Some people argue that.

PELOSI: -- yes (ph), (inaudible) that. But that's -- I mean, we have to -- that's a question to be asked. If you open an impeachment inquiry, does it -- do you get more information? You still end up in the court.

So if you want to go down that path, if you want to go down the -- now, I'm glad you asked that question. So if you want to talk about that -- I thought we were talking about reducing the national debt, but --

RAJU: We'll get there.

PELOSI: -- this is very important to our country, as to who we are. We have a situation where the Russians, by all accounts with full confidence of our intelligence community, made an assault on our election, an attack on our democracy.

The president of the United States calls it a hoax. The president of the United States sides with Putin and not with our intelligence. We must pass legislation to make sure they cannot do it again. And according to the FBI, 24/7, they are working to do it again. So we have a -- to protect our democracy with what we do.

[10:45:02] And at the same time, we have to see what happened in all of that. And the question -- and that's a good question that you ask, Manu. Is it -- do you get more information by having an inquiry than if you just have investigations?

Well, I don't have a straight answer on that. But even if you could, you can't do it without going to the courts. And I maintain that, to go to the courts, we have to have the strongest possible case. Iron- clad.

With one of the case (ph) courts (ph), the -- couple of the things that Mr. Cummings has put forth, Mazars, the president's accounting firm, they should release their documents. On the Deutsche Bank, Maxine Waters' case. We won that case in court. Of course, they'll appeal because they want to obstruct the American people from having the truth.

So it -- the question you ask, do we get more by having an inquiry? Some say yes, some say no. Some say some --

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: If a majority of your caucus -- if a majority of your caucus wants to go forward with an impeachment inquiry, would you go for it?

PELOSI: There's not -- it's not even close in our caucus --

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: But eventually, if (ph) this (ph) --

PELOSI: -- about (ph) -- well, you know what, why are we speculating on hypotheticals? What we're doing is winning in court. We won a victory, getting the documents from the Justice Department today, for fear of further going to court. Although we're still going to hold the attorney general in contempt today.

And (ph) the path that we are on is a path that I think -- look I want to tell you something. If nothing (ph) --

RAJU: You said you're not (ph) --

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: -- as much (ph) -- nothing as divisive in our country, in my view, than impeachment. Our founders gave us so much to be grateful for. They were a blessing intellectually, in values and all the rest. Thank God they made our Constitution amendable. They had that wisdom as well.

But they gave us guidance in this way. They said, "E pluribus unum." From many, one. They couldn't imagine how many we would become or how different we would be from each other. But they knew we had to be one.

So we're trying to make decisions as we go forth that are unifying, not dividing.

RAJU: Because you last --

PELOSI: Infrastructure, the president says he wants to do that. Lowering the cost of prescription drugs, the president says he wants to do that. Cleaner government, not so sure about that. But nonetheless, it is part of our agenda. And as we do that -- and as we do that, we try to find as much common

ground as possible while maintaining the boldest common denominator. Impeachment, if you're going down that path, you don't go to court with your weakest case. As long as you keep getting more information to build your case, you have --

RAJU: Jerry Nadler said last week (ph) --

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: -- a responsibility to do that.

RAJU: Last week, Jerry Nadler said that impeachment inquiry, it may come to that. You've said in the past, there's (ph) not a path to impeachment. Are you still -- how do you reconcile those two things?

PELOSI: But it's not off the table. You can't -- I don't think you should impeach for political reasons and I don't think you should not impeach for political reasons. It's not about politics. It's not about Democrats and Republicans. It's not about partisanship. It's about patriotism to our country.

It's upholding the Constitution of the United States. If, in fact, the executive branch can say, "You can never have oversight over us, you have destroyed the system of checks and balances," which is the wisdom and the heart of our Constitution.

And if you go down that path and you look to the Bill of Rights and the assaults that they make on the press, et cetera, then you are undermining the Constitution, not honoring your oath of office to support and defend. And part of all of that is, again, our responsibility, our oath of office.

And it's -- what is appalling is the lack of respect for the oath of office that the Republicans in Congress, in the House and in the Senate, have for their own oaths of office, to strengthen the institution in which they serve.

And it's not about Congress. It's about the American people. We're about -- we are representatives of the American people who deserve to know the truth.

RAJU: Before we move on to the other issues, a very quickly though. But if you really believe the president may have committed crimes in office, isn't it your obligation to mount an impeachment inquiry?

PELOSI: My obligation is to do whatever we do in the most effective way possible.

RAJU: Then you believe he committed crimes in office?

PELOSI: I think it's -- the Mueller report very clearly spells out at least 10 or 11 instances of obstruction of justice. But I'm not here to have that discussion here. That's for the committees.

We have six committees that work on this, one doing taxes, Ways and Means Committee, Maxine Waters. Financial Services, Jerry Nadler. Judiciary, Elijah Cummings. The Government Oversight Committee, Eliot Engel. Foreign Affairs Committee, they're all doing their work very well. And I believe in the committee system and it will bubble up from there.

[10:50:02] RAJU: Another issue over the weekend was the president backing off his threat on tariffs on Mexico. He says that he deserves credit for enforcing -- forcing Mexico to take a tougher line on the immigration issue. Do you think the president --

PELOSI: If I had been invited to talk about the president, I would have had more important --

RAJU: But do you think the president deserves any credit --

PELOSI: -- work to do at home.

RAJU: -- but do you think the president deserves credit --

(APPLAUSE)

PELOSI: Really. Really. No. Everybody knows that those issues were -- if they were agreed to, they were agreed to long before the president made the announcement, A. But they were designed to take your attention away from the Mueller report. Look at the timing.

This all happened a while back. And even now, the foreign minister of Mexico is saying that's not really -- the way the president describes is not really the way -- what we have agreed to.

But the fact is that I come here each year, very complimented to have the invitation of the Peterson family. Pete Peterson, to me, was a national hero. I loved him very much. He was the personification of the American dream. Greek American family, rising to the heights, up Mount Olympus, of the financial community in our country.

Always sensitive to the needs of working people, always teaching us that the increase in the national debt was a tax on our children and that we have to hold it in check and be creative at how we did it. He always said to me, "Nancy, keep your eye on the tax expenditures in the budget -- in the budget."

So I feel very honored, always, to be invited to this --

RAJU: I want to ask you a question about the budget and when (ph) --

(CROSSTALK)

PELOSI: Oh my goodness.

(LAUGHTER)

RAJU: I know, exactly. I'm so (ph) -- we still --

(CROSSTALK)

RAJU: -- have time to talk about that. So but -- but --

PELOSI: But I will not be part of the diversionary tactics of the White House that you are obviously into.

RAJU: -- but there is a legislative -- one big legislative issue on your plate is what to do about the U.S.-Mexico trade agreement. What do you -- how do you pin the prospects of that passage of that, if you were to gauge --

PELOSI: How did a policy issue slip in there?

RAJU: We're going to get to it. I told you.

PELOSI: The -- I originally thought that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada -- whatever we're calling it, NAFTA -- after NAFTA, NAFTA 2.0, they all have different names for it.

But this current attempted agreement, I thought that would be the easiest trade bill we've ever had the opportunity to pass because those who were unhappy with NAFTA really want to have a new NAFTA. And that includes many people in the Democratic Party.

I myself voted for NAFTA. I didn't -- I was disappointed in how it was implemented, but there were some winners and there were some losers. And there's no question about the fact that many people lost jobs in our country because of it. Many people gained jobs. Depends on where you are regionally, as trade usually is measured. It's frequently regional.

But -- so we have what -- I met yesterday with Chairman Grassley. I don't know if that's news or if he's -- we did get our picture taken together, so maybe it's out there that we met -- with Senator Grassley and Ranking Member Brady, who was with you earlier, and Richie (ph) Neal, of course, my -- our chair of the Ways and Means Committee. I think that has such a nice ring to it. Richie (ph) Neal, chair of the Ways and Means Committee.

Anyway, we met. And our concerns are as follows. Overarching enforcement. We must have enforcement, else you're just having a conversation. So if you don't have enforcement, you're just having NAFTA again with sprinkles on top or something, but you're not having a new NAFTA. Because enforcement is very essential to implementing a trade agreement.

Our three areas of concern, our (ph) that overarching priorities (ph) are, workers' rights. What does it mean to America's working families. Secondly, environment. What does it mean in terms of the environment. Big disappointment, some of what happened with NAFTA in terms of the environment.

And the third, which is a big concern in my caucus, is the pharmaceutical -- prescription -- the pharmaceutical -- how pharmaceutical drugs are treated in the agreement. More on the subject if you ask me, but those are the three areas. Now, then there are overarching, three categories. If you don't have

enforcement, it's no use even having the conversation on the other things.

And then there's some what we call dogs and cats, different things from around the country not to be considered anything but a compliment because we all love our dogs and cats. But these are parochial -- more parochial issues.

RAJU: I'll take that as a chance -- what do you think the chances are of passage right now?

PELOSI: I -- I've always -- we're on a path to --

HARLOW: OK. Manu is going to continue interviewing Speaker Pelosi. We'll bring you the highlights as we have them. But Karoun Demirjian is with me for some political analysis here.

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