MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Castro

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

MATTHEWS: Well, even if Trump didn`t discuss it with the Attorney General,

he wouldn`t have needed to since he`s been calling for it. He has been

calling for that inquiry for many occasions.

Anyway, I want to bring in U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, a

member of the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman, it`s an

embarrassment to have an Attorney General who looks like a Roy Cohn, a guy

who will do anything to defend the President and has become his hit man.

Not only will he play defense, he`s out to destroy the government, the FBI,

everything in order to cover the tracks of the President. What do you make

of this guy and how can you stop Barr from doing what he`s out to do now,

destroy the FBI?

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO (D-TX): Yes. What`s interesting is that Barr is a

very quiet and somewhat unassuming guy in his demeanor but, really, he`s

been a fixer for the President and a protector. And now, as you said, he`s

actually going after people. And I think the reason they`re opening this

investigation is because they want to chill anybody else from looking into

anything else that the President does. And, in fact, I saw earlier today,

I don`t know when the motions were filed or the briefs were filed, but the

President`s lawyers are making the argument that Congress can`t even

investigate the President. So I think this is part of that.

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the fact that the Attorney General of the

United States refers to the FBI, which is under his supervision a and chain

of command, as a spying operation, it was spying on the Trump campaign? He

likes that word. It`s Trump`s word. It`s now his word.

CASTRO: That is absolutely remarkable. And if you think about it, it

would be the most derelict of things if the FBI had good information that a

presidential candidate or his campaign or her campaign was working with a

foreign government and did absolutely nothing to investigate it. In some

ways, that would be an even bigger scandal if we found out that they had

solid information about that and didn`t lift a finger to protect the

country. So this wasn`t a case of spying. This was an investigation.

MATTHEWS: I`m thinking about all the prosecutions that Mueller was able to

take, all the indictments against all those Russian figures, all involved

in undermining our election or trying to in 2016. And then for the

President, the chutzpah to keep saying it was a hoax, how does he get away

with that rhetoric? I mean, how come the democrats can`t fight that in the

public square? Look at what was discovered here, not just the Americans

but all the Russians involved in this intrigue and he still gets away with

saying it was all a hoax.

CASTRO: Yes. I mean, Chris, you know, for years now since 2015, this

president has built a campaign in part around his persona. And his persona

is that he never admits that he`s wrong, that he tries to construct an

alternative reality. that his supporters and the people that want to

support him can buy into. And I think that`s consistent, what you

described as consistent with that. He is giving something that people can

hang their hat on and still believe in him as a candidate and as a

president.

MATTHEWS: Well, President Trump has launched a public offensive now

against his own FBI Director, Christopher Wray, just like he did with

Comey. Trump is angry Wray defended the FBI in this congressional

testimony last week by refusing to describe lawful surveillance by the FBI

as spying. He won`t use the word. He said that`s not a word I would use.

And now, Trump is refusing to say, well, he still has confidence in the FBI

Director.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Do you still have confidence in Christopher Wray after he said

he wouldn`t exactly call it spying?

TRUMP: Well, I didn`t understand his answer because I thought the Attorney

General answered it perfectly. So I certainly didn`t understand that

answer. I thought it was a ridiculous answer. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, this follows the President`s public attack on Wray this

weekend when he quoted baseless accusation that the FBI Director was

protecting people to tried to overthrow him. Trump`s allies are following

Trump`s lead. Here he goes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: So far I don`t see Director Wray frankly

doing a darn thing to clean up the upper echelon of this FBI. That`s his

job. The former highest ranking employees in his bureau committed real

crimes and yet no signs that Wray seems to care one bit to bring them to

justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: You know, the interesting thing about this, Reagan was always

clever as being a guy who lived in California but worked in Washington. He

was always a Californian. He never called the California White House. He

was out there. He`s just a citizen president, right? Very clever. This

president has gone beyond that he acts like the federal government isn`t

his, the FBI, the whole -- all the bureaucracy or the deep state are

something else. He`s sort Mr. Citizen who happens to be living in the

White House. He doesn`t take any responsibility for executive branch and

he`s getting away with it.

VANCE: He`s absolutely the victim in every story he tells here, right?

He`s always the object of a conspiracy, the FBI is out to get him, people

are spying.

MATTHEWS: The coup.

VANCE: And I think the Congressman`s point is so important. Had the FBI

not investigated when there was good evidence that Russia was involved in

our elections, that there were people involved in the Trump campaign who

had ties to Russia. Had those investigations not taken place, we would be

looking now at criticism of the FBI for dereliction of its fundamental

duty.

MATTHEWS: Michael, my favorite reporter on earth, let me ask you this.

Where is this story going? Because I think that we`re going to get Michael

-- we`re going to get Donald Junior to testify. But I think on the House

side, they`re going to continue to stonewall. I don`t think they`re going

to send anybody up there. They`re going test their ability to find them or

imprison them in this little cell up on Capitol Hill. They`re going to

make them into a laughing -- I think even Nancy Pelosi is scared of looking

completely stupid and impotent now. Who`s -- where is he going to win? I

think Trump is winning against his own government, against both branches,

executive and legislative branch, and the courts. He`s winning right

across the board.

SCHIMDT: Well, he always wants a foil, and Mueller is gone. So the

democrats are probably the next best bet for him. And he thinks that in an

election where it`s about growing his base and trying to rally the

republicans to his support, a standoff may not be the worst thing. Part of

their strategy is to try and call the democrats` bluff. They think the

democrats are conducting an impeachment proceeding but not in name. And

they want the democrats to go out and actually say we`re trying to impeach

the President, because the republicans think that`s bad politics for the

democrats. And they think that they need to force them in that direction

in order to sort of sass (ph) them out here. Rudy Giuliani is saying to me

last week that democrats are just going to slither around and slither

around until they find something here.

Trump has taken a lot of fairly aggressive moves here to block and protect

himself and it is sort of in a standoff. But, politically, it`s a good

thing for him. He can -- you know, on Fox News, they can talk about this

sort of continued democratic witch hunt of the President and how this has

continued to go on even though Mueller investigated for two years and the

President seems comfortable with that narrative.

MATTHEWS: And he`ll end up having Durham up there in Connecticut, his new

inspector (INAUDIBLE) or an investigation. It will be like that thing down

in Hawaii during the birther thing. He`s out there investigating. He`s

getting interesting stuff. They`re learning new things about the game they

play about that.

SCHMIDT: The only thing I would say about the appointing of a U.S.

attorney to sort of overlook this and review this is that there is a big

cloud over the FBI. That`s been created by the republicans. And a lot of

questions whether anything went wrong in the election. The FBI Director,

Wray, has said that there`s no indication that they did anything illegal.

But there`s an argument to be made that the FBI may benefit from a

prosecutor, someone who is non-partisan coming out and saying, hey, we

looked at this as well and we didn`t see a problem here. That would be one

of the arguments from Barr`s side about why they did this.

MATTHEWS: I think we`ll get that information a day after the next

election. Thank you, U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro of Texas, Joyce Vance

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source