CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Pete Aguilar

Interview

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BROWN: Haven't read it.

All right, let me turn now to Democrat and California Congressman Pete Aguilar.

Congressman, thank you for coming on the show.

And, bottom line, what is your response to the president's comments telling your Democratic colleagues to go back to the countries where they came from?

REP. PETE AGUILAR (D-CA): It's terrible. It's awful. It's racist, and clearly so is the president.

And that's the unfortunate part of this discussion, is that the president has shown us exactly who he is, from campaigning and saying Mexicans are rapists and drug dealers, to saying that the prior president was from another country.

He stokes this fear in the country to fan his political base, and it's truly unfortunate.

BROWN: What do you think about the Democrats' response so far? We just played several responses of Democrats condemning it to various levels.

AGUILAR: Well, we're going to...

BROWN: But we haven't heard from Mitch McConnell.

AGUILAR: Sure.

And not enough of my Republican colleagues have commented, clearly.

BROWN: Did I say Republicans or Democrats?

AGUILAR: You said Democrats.

BROWN: I'm sorry. I meant Republicans. My bad.

(LAUGHTER)

AGUILAR: I can't speak for them, but clearly not enough of them have commented, or, as we just saw in your clip, have read these tweets. So that's unfortunate.

They need to read these tweets. They need to work to tell the president to take this back.

I mean -- but, clearly, he's shown us who he is with these comments. And he does time and time again. We can't pretend that we're surprised by this. And, at some point, you have to ask the question, is the Republican Party going to continue to stand for this? BROWN: I was just talking to Dana Bash, my colleague, about how, in a

sense, he handed Nancy Pelosi a gift with this, because this, of course, comes amid divisiveness within the party with Nancy Pelosi and some of the Democratic congresswomen we're discussing.

So did he had a gift? Is this uniting Democrats?

AGUILAR: Well, nothing unites Democrats like fighting against racism and bigotry. And so, clearly, that's something that we're going to continue to stand for.

But, just this week, we're going to stand for the American worker by raising the minimum wage. We're united behind that. We have passed 10 of 12 appropriations bills. The Senate hasn't moved on a single one of them.

We're united and we're moving forward. But, clearly, when it comes to racism and bigotry and xenophobia, the Democratic Caucus is going to continue to stand to push back against that.

BROWN: And let's talk about another word that you didn't use, but it's demagogue.

Let's look at the definitions here: a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power; a person, specifically an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions and prejudices of the people.

Is the president a demagogue?

AGUILAR: Yes, by that definition, absolutely, racist demagogue.

It's terrible that we're in a country that -- where we have to talk about this, and that this is the political discourse that the president is fanning. But he does it for strictly political purposes, but this is who he is, when he talks about welcoming immigrants from Norway, but making any immigrant with dark skin feel like they are less than an American.

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That is clearly what he has done time and time again. We can't stand for it. We have to push back every time we see this behavior.

BROWN: Congressman, thanks for coming on the show.

AGUILAR: Thank you, Pamela.

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