CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Michael Bennet (D- CO) Presidential Candidate, about Trump and Impeachment

Interview

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: As the House debate the rules for tomorrow's historic impeachment vote, the Senate is looking already looking of course ahead to their expected trial in January. Democratic Senator and Presidential candidate Michael Bennet is with me, he also serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. And so Senator Bennet, welcome back.

SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thanks for having me back, Brooke. Appreciate it.

BALDWIN: We have a little bit to discuss today. I do want to begin, of course, as the Senate prepares to hold this impeachment trial on the President next month, I have to get your reaction to this six-page letter that the President sent today to Speaker Pelosi. Let me just read part of it for folks who are watching if they haven't heard about this yet.

He writes, there is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. Is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American people.

[15:35:00]

While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

What did you think when you read this?

BENNET: I thought it was absolutely pathetic when I read it and I thought history is going to judge Donald Trump very harshly as it should. You know, he has pursued an approach to the presidency where he starts lying first thing in the morning and he lies all day long. And then the next day it's a whole other series of lies and the day after that, just the way he ran his real estate business in New York. But history will not be kind to him on this stuff, because it will

catch up to his lies. He's relied on a social media environment and a cable news environment where from day to day he just changes the subject.

Just the discussion about Ukraine alone in there where he says you know I did this and you know I did that, and he refers to President Zelensky. I mean, my first reaction was, maybe he should invite President Zelensky to be a character witness in the trial in the Senate.

And then my second reaction was maybe he should invite Vladimir Putin to be his character witness in the trial. People that are Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, are not going to buy what he's saying in this letter.

BALDWIN: Well, that's what I wanted to ask you about, Senator Bennet. Because let's home in on your colleagues across the aisle in the Senate. How do you think this letter will sit with them and when it comes to the trial in January, will this change anything?

BENNET: Well, I don't know. I mean I certainly don't think it's going to have a positive effect for the President, because it really does show that he's existing in some completely alternate reality. There are people on the other side who are saying, well, he shouldn't have done what he did with Ukraine but it doesn't rise to an impeachable offense.

I wonder if they think the President continues to believe that what he did in this attempt to extort a foreign leader to get them to involve themselves in a Presidential campaign if he can't understand how wrong that was, maybe that will lead them to reflect and change their vote. I just don't know.

What I do know is that the American people are being really poorly served by the guy that's in the White House right now.

BALDWIN: We've learned over here at CNN that the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and some over at the White House are nervous about Republican Senators who may support Democrats, right, in having perhaps some of those witnesses come to trial. How valid are those concerns? What are you hearing from some of your colleagues?

BENNET: Well, I believe that the list that Chuck Schumer put forward was a very reasonable list. I support that list and I think Trump should be saying, let me have these witnesses. You know, they're the people that work for him. But as you know, he's completely stonewalled the House from its ability to be able to hear the witnesses, and as your earlier guest said, the courts would take too long.

So we're trying, again, in the Senate to put witnesses in front of the American people in part so they can also make a judgment about what happened here. So, it says a lot to me --

BALDWIN: What about your fellow Coloradan, Cory Gardner?

BENNET: Yes, I haven't been able to talk to him about it in the last

couple of weeks. So I don't know where he is. But I do think that it's going to be very hard for some Republicans to vote against having some witness testimony as part of this discussion in the Senate.

BALDWIN: Over this past weekend, Senator Bennet, you told a town hall, assuming the facts don't change, that you will vote to convict President Trump. Is that first of all still the case? Has anything changed in the last 24, 48 hours?

BENNET: Well, the only thing that's changed is he's underscored the fact he has absolutely no idea why he did what he did was wrong, which is staggering to me. I mean, if any CEO in America had done what Donald Trump has done, he'd be gone. By the way, not even the impeachment stuff. If we had a CEO in America, who spent all their time, no offense to you, Brooke, watching cable television and tweeting as a result of it 24 hours a day, we'd find something else for them to do.

That's not a reason to impeach him but it is a reason for him to be a one-term President and I think unless the facts change, I will vote to convict. And unless he actually treats Congress with some respect here, because we're representing the American people in this process. It allows witnesses to come forward instead of stonewalling the investigation, which he's done from the start.

BALDWIN: Now let me ask, let me push you a bit because I hear you on especially with this letter, voting to convict, but how can you say that voting to convict without having sat through the trial?

BENNET: Well, I said that if the facts don't change. So if the trial doesn't show anything different than what we've learned in the House of Representatives.

[15:40:02]

Then what we're going to working on is a set of facts that looks like what they developed in the House of Representatives. Be hard not to convict on those facts since it's a pretty ironclad case notwithstanding what the President says about it.

I mean I think the President's admitted to the behavior that is in front of us and I think on top of that he has made it impossible for the House to hear these witnesses and to have a full airing of -- if you were innocent, he should send the witnesses forward to testify. He should have done it in the House. He should have done it in the Senate. Instead what he's done is every step of the way tried to avoid the responsibility, or the accountability that a President should accept.

BALDWIN: Last question, Senator. Just going back to this six-page diatribe from the President. Do you think this is a preview of an impeached but not removed President Trump?

BENNET: I do. I think that he will spend the next, you know, however many months he is in office, until the election, lying to the American people about his lack of accomplishments. And trying to say that he's been a victim somehow, when the reality is, he's the one that's disgracing our democracy every day. He ran for office saying I alone can fix it.

Since he's been President of the United States, he's completely disregarded our First Amendment freedoms, the independence of the judiciary, the importance of separation of powers, the democracy itself. And I for one don't think the American people want to have another four years of this chaos in the White House.

That doesn't mean that it's going to be easy to beat him, but it does mean that I think somebody who runs for the presidency is saying we're going to restore opportunity to the American people and we're going to restore integrity to this government, is going to be able to win in purple states, beat Donald Trump and move the country forward again, which is what we have to do.

BALDWIN: We'll let the American people be the judge come next year. For now, Senator Michael Bennet, thank you so much.

BENNET: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Hope to talk again. Thank you.

BENNET: Thank you.

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