MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: "Dorian moving North along Eastern Seaboard."

Interview

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MADDOW: President Trump is going to try to move ahead to raid billions of dollars from the U.S. military in order to fund the section of border wall instead. But there will be a legal fight over that as sure as the sun rises. And Democrats in Congress have seen this coming. And among other things, they have explicitly blocked him from doing this in the language of the bill that funds the military. Joining us now is Congressman John Garamendi, the chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Readiness. Sir, Congressman Garamendi, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate your time.

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): My pleasure, Rachel.

MADDOW: So, it`s been interesting to watch the country react to this on a few different levels. First of all, can the president -- first of all, isn`t Mexico paying? Second of all, can he raid the Pentagon? Can he raid the U.S. military to do this? You are seeing local reaction to the kinds of projects that the president is trying to de-fund.

GARAMENDI: Sure.

MADDOW: The overseas projects he`s trying to defund have some pretty serious foreign policy consequences.

GARAMENDI: Exactly.

MADDOW: Is it a done deal? Or do you think this is something that still might be blocked?

GARAMENDI: We have to stop it. There`s absolutely no choice about having to fight back on this. And this is going to be one big, big battle. Not only because of the affect, as you so correctly pointed out on our relationships trying to push back on Putin, making sure that he doesn`t have the opportunity to overrun Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which he could do in three short days if we were not there, if those countries were not part of NATO. Beyond that, this is a fundamental issue of the Constitution, the very democracy of America is at stake here. If this man, this president is able to literally appropriate his money for his own purposes, then the balance of power, the power of the purse has been taken away from Congress. And we may not even exist in any meaningful way in the future. Keep in mind, the Vietnam war essentially ended when Congress said, no, we`re not going to fund this anymore. So, it goes. So, all of this is critical and important for the defense of Europe, pushing back on Russia as well as our own system of government.

MADDOW: Do we know, sir, how decisions were made as to which projects would lose funding and which ones wouldn`t? I mean, obviously, there appears to some rhyme and reason in terms of what they chose to de-fund through this process. But was the House Armed Services Committee, for example, brought in on this decision making at all?

GARAMENDI: Absolutely not. This is my responsibility. Every one of those programs are programs that the Readiness Subcommittee has analyzed over the last half decade and said these are important for the reasons that you stated and the other projects for many, many other reasons have to be built if we`re going to have a military that is ready to do what must be done whenever it must be done. So, this is a long process. All of these projects have been thoroughly reviewed. They have been stacked as to their importance. And these are the ones that must be done now. Unless, of course, you want to just shrug your shoulders and let Russia and Putin do anything they want to do in Eastern Europe. And I will tell you, the Congress of the United States, the Armed Services Committee and my colleagues are saying, no way. Trump, you cannot do this. You do not have the power of the purse. And we`re not going to allow you to de-fund these programs that are critical to our NATO allies, to the countries on the eastern border up against Russia.

MADDOW: California Congressman John Garamendi, who is the chair of the subcommittee on readiness in the House Armed Services Committee -- sir, I really appreciate your time tonight. Keep us apprised. I know this is going to be a big fight. I would love to say in touch with you on this as it unfolds.

GARAMENDI: It will be a monumental fight --

MADDOW: Thank you for coming. Thank you, sir.

GARAMENDI: -- for both the constitutional reasons as well as the defense of Europe.

MADDOW: All right. We have news on another effort to try to block the administration, in this case, on the Trump administration`s plan for targeting sick and dying children. The story that we`ve been covering over the past couple of weeks took an interesting turn today. That`s next. Stay with us.

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