CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Maxine Waters
Interview
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CABRERA: OK, Boris Sanchez at the White House, thank you. I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California.
Congresswoman, glad you are with us tonight. You are a member of the congressional progressive caucus. The President appears to be referring to your progressive colleagues -- Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar -- in his tweet. Are you surprised your Republican colleagues have yet to call the President out for his racist attack?
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: I am surprised that anyone would be shocked by the racism of this president. The President is an illegitimate racist occupying the White House who has defined himself over and over again. Yes, he attacked these four women of color, who are members of Congress, who have been elected from their districts to come to the Congress of the United States and represent the people in their districts. They are certainly legitimate. He is not.
This is a president who has defined himself as a sexual predator, a liar, a con man. This is a man who has cheated young people who went to the fake university that he set up, thinking they were going to become developers, et cetera. This is a man who lied about the President of the United States, Obama, on this birther movement.
But don't forget, long before he was elected to office, he tried to get the Central Park Five death penalty. He wanted them killed even though they were found not to be guilty of the crimes that they were being accused of. So what is it about anybody that we'd be surprised about what he would say or what he does? If there's anything we should be talking about, it is the lack of the responsibility of the Congress of the United States to impeach him. He needs to be impeached.
[19:05:07] He has defined himself thoroughly. He is dangerous. He is divisive. And this is someone who does not understand or appreciate the constitution of the United States of America. He needs to go. We need to be talking about impeachment.
CABRERA: So do you believe that Nancy Pelosi is making the wrong decision in holding off from an inquiry?
WATERS: I disagree with Nancy Pelosi, and I've said that over and over again. I started two years ago when I saw him, even in the campaign, against his own colleagues in the Republican Party, when I understood there was collusion going on with Putin and the oligarchs and the Kremlin in Russia, when I saw this president basically obstruct justice before our very eyes. I've known for a long time that he should be impeached.
CABRERA: OK.
WATERS: Yes, I've been on that for a long time, and I disagree with anybody who thinks differently.
CABRERA: Let me ask you about what's happening at the border because Vice President Mike Pence toured two detention facilities on Friday, one that has children and families, one that has men. And he agreed the conditions in the facility housing the men were unacceptable. But here is where he laid the blame. Listen to this.
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MICHAEL PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Remember, it was just a few short weeks ago that Congress finally acknowledged the crisis and gave us an additional $4.6 billion in humanitarian aid. Remember, for the last six months, Democrats in Congress said it was a manufactured crisis, and it was all we could do to finally get the Democrats in Congress to agree to give us additional funding to deal with this crisis.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Congresswoman, to what degree are the deplorable conditions those men are being kept in at the border the fault of congressional Democrats?
WATERS: Well, let me tell you, I don't know exactly what the Vice President is trying to do. I guess he was sent there to try and place blame on Democrats, but it's not true. We know that the President of the United States is not interested in comprehensive immigration reform.
What he's interested in doing is using these unfortunate individuals as political pawns in this campaign that he has to demonstrate to those people that are his supporters that, somehow, our country is being undermined and destroyed by who he calls rapists and criminals and who he's assigned the worst things to. That picture that you see of all of those men behind that cage is simply a picture that they wanted to send out to their constituents to say, see, we're capturing them. We've got them.
And they don't care about the children. They are separating the children from their families. It is the most horrific and ornery thing that any human being could do to separate children from their parents. These children will be damaged for the rest of their lives.
And so I don't care what Pence was sent there to do. Nobody believes him and the President of the United States. They lie. They distort. They do it on a daily basis.
He wakes up every morning tweeting. He needs to be impeached. He needs to be --
CABRERA: Congresswoman --
WATERS: -- gotten out of here. Yes.
CABRERA: Congresswoman, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was with Pence on these tours. He was at that men's facility. Our reporters there say the stench was overwhelming.
WATERS: Yes.
CABRERA: That it smelled like urine.
WATERS: Yes.
CABRERA: That the men didn't have water or beds.
WATERS: Yes.
CABRERA: Here's what Senator Graham said afterward.
WATERS: OK.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: What I saw is a bunch of people who've been here before, broke the law before, and we're not going to let them go. I don't care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we're not going to let those men go that I saw. It would be dangerous. I'm willing to buy beds for these people, so they'll have a better place to get a night's sleep, but I'm not going to let them go.
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CABRERA: To that, you say what?
WATERS: I say that this lying senator, who's basically another sycophant of -- basically using his voice to protect the President of the United States cannot be trusted. We've seen how he turned on John McCain. We've seen how he's been kissing up to this president, wanting to be embraced by this president.
But he is going to have a great challenge, and we believe that we can get rid of him also. We can defeat him in the election that's coming up. I don't believe him. The average person with any sense of logic does not believe him.
He, too, has defined himself, and we see how he double-crossed John McCain who was supposed to be his friend. He is not trustworthy. He's a liar.
CABRERA: But it kind of sounds like everything that you're hearing from them -- I mean, it doesn't sound like you want to work together at any -- in any capacity with Republicans.
WATERS: Well, it's not that we don't want to, they have shown us that they will not. They are not interested in working with anybody.
[19:09:56] When you have a president who constantly lies on top of lies -- and each day he's attacking somebody, not only the members of Congress, not only Nancy Pelosi, not only, you know, anybody who disagrees with him. He has created a division between us and our international allies.
And that memorandum that you saw that came from the U.K. Ambassador was simply the truth being told about what he has observed, but this is what our allies are thinking about us. They don't know what has happened to the United States of America. How could we constantly wake up every day and basically allow this illegitimate president to keep up the kind of trash that he's doing?
CABRERA: A senior administration official says that the planned ICE raids are currently underway. We're trying to find out what that means and where it's happening. Your district is in Los Angeles County. The city of Los Angeles is one of the cities expected to be targeted. Are you aware of any raids there today?
WATERS: No. As a matter of fact, I went out early this morning, and I went to two of the biggest Catholic churches in my district and I passed out flyers. And I asked them to beware that if anybody knocked on their doors, don't let them in. So I passed out flyers and I went to some of the restaurants, et cetera. I didn't see anybody, but I did have a complaint from one of my constituents that they had tried to come to her door once before even though she is a citizen. So I'm going to follow up on that to see what happened.
CABRERA: OK.
WATERS: I have not seen them today, but I was out there warning and letting people know what their rights are so that they would not be taken advantage of. And so, no, I have not seen them today.
CABRERA: OK. Please follow up with us if that changes. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, thank you for taking the time.
WATERS: You're so welcome.
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