CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Ro Khanna

Interview

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BLITZER: Sunlen Serfaty up on Capitol Hill, thanks for that report.

Let's get some more on all of this.

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California is joining us. He's a member of the Oversight and Reform Committee.

Congressman, thanks so much for coming in.

REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Great to be on, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, so, the president of the United States has a one- hour phone conversation with Vladimir Putin today, discussed a whole bunch of issues.

[18:10:01]

They spoke about what the president still calls the Russian hoax. And Putin made a big joke about it. But the president, President Trump, never warned Putin against interfering in the 2020 election, let alone discussed what happened in 2016. What does that say to you?

KHANNA: It's really astounding. Even Republicans on the Hill acknowledge Mueller's conclusion that the

Russians intervened, that that intervention was systematic. The most basic duty of the president of the United States is to tell Russia to knock it off, to make sure that they never do it again.

And Sarah Sanders' statement is totally hypocritical to go after Obama. Obama had the guts to tell Putin to his face that this interference needs to stop.

BLITZER: Why do you think the president doesn't just do that when he has a conversation with Putin?

KHANNA: I think he's so concerned and wrapped up in his own legitimacy of his own election, and he can't separate the two.

And I would just ask, as an American citizen, that he be able to do that. Put aside the issue of his campaign. He needs to stand up for the United States' sovereignty.

BLITZER: And when it comes to Russia, he also publicly totally contradicted what his own secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said earlier in the week in a conversation with me here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Pompeo made it clear that Russia was directly responsible for Maduro's regime in Venezuela right now, that Maduro was ready to get on a plane and fly out. The Russians talked him out of it. And he seemed to accept Putin's suggestion that Russia's really not involved.

KHANNA: Well, Wolf, here's what I think is going on.

Putin said Russia is not involved, and I think the president actually disagrees with his own advisers. I think the president's instinct is ,we shouldn't be involved in a civil war in Venezuela, and Bolton and Pompeo are pushing him to that.

Here's the irony. He's tweeting out that we should have good relations with Russia, and Bolton is the one who is trying to get us out of the INF Treaty. So my view is that the president is being ill- served by some of his advisers.

BLITZER: Because he's disagreeing with Bolton, his national security adviser, and with Pompeo, both of whom have done several interviews this week on this very subject.

What do you make of Senator Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, his proposal now to Mueller to come and testify and potentially correct some of the statements made by the attorney general, Bill Barr, involving Mueller?

KHANNA: Well, Senator Graham's been in Washington a long time, and this is a cynical ploy. He knows that Bill Barr and Mueller are good friends, and that Mueller is going to want nothing to do with contradicting Bill Barr.

And it's a total sideshow, a distraction. The country needs to hear from Mueller about the president's conduct, about what happened with the president's administration. We all know that Bill Barr has misled Congress. That shouldn't be the topic of conversation.

BLITZER: But Mueller was irritated by the public statements that the attorney general was making, and that in part led to a phone conversation and then a letter that he sent to the attorney general specifically saying that what he was suggesting was not necessarily in line with the substance of the Mueller report.

KHANNA: And I'm sure Mueller would testify, at some point, when he's called before Congress, that Bill Barr mischaracterized the report. But he's not going to make the entire show about whether Bill Barr wrote an accurate summary letter to the United States Congress.

What we need to hear from Bob Mueller is the conclusions of the report, what the conduct was of this administration, and whether he thinks it was...

BLITZER: You think Mueller will testify before the House Judiciary Committee?

KHANNA: I do. And I think he owes that to the country, and I'm confident he will.

BLITZER: And you think Don McGahn, the president's former special counsel, who is now a private citizen, will he appear before the House Judiciary Committee?

KHANNA: I do, but this is why it's so important to get the underlying evidence.

We need the notes of what Don McGahn told the FBI witnesses, so we can lock him in. Otherwise, McGahn, who is a lifelong Republican, is not going to be inclined to implicate the president. What we need is the underlying evidence, so that he can't contradict his testimony.

BLITZER: What do you think of these incredibly positive jobs numbers, the low unemployment rate, the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are being created?

How much credit do you think the president of the United States deserves for this?

KHANNA: Look, the numbers are good. I'm sure Trump is going to run on them.

But here's the real story. Rural America and communities of color have been left behind. I'm going to Spencer, Iowa, with Bernie Sanders, and the story there is not having a robust downtown, not having access to rural broadband and high-speed Internet, not having a shot at the jobs of the future.

That's where Democrats are focused. We need to bring prosperity to the places...

(CROSSTALK) BLITZER: But unemployment among African-Americans is at record lows also.

KHANNA: The unemployment has fallen. No one can deny that. But the question is, do people have good-paying jobs? Do they have an opportunity for upward mobility in the middle class, and are communities of color in rural America really facing the prosperity?

I'm happy to have that conversation with Donald Trump. The growth has been in the coasts. The growth has been in Wall Street. The growth has been in places where people work for Fortune 500 companies.

What Democrats believe in is, we need to bring that prosperity to communities left behind.

[18:15:03]

BLITZER: Ro Khanna, Congressman, thanks for coming in.

KHANNA: Thanks, Wolf.

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