CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Is Interviewed About Military Czar For Medical Supplies

Interview

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WHITFIELD: All right, with me now Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Senator, good to see you.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Good morning, Fredericka. Hope you and your family and loved ones are safe.

WHITFIELD: We're doing well. I hope you are as well. So you know the governor tried to be very optimistic there. You know saying that while some of the numbers are going down in New York City, you know some of the numbers are going up in Long Island.

He's getting some assistance from the state of Oregon and even a shipment from China. Are you optimistic even though this apex of the government is talking - the Governor's talking about is still a week possibly away? How optimistic are you about New York, your home state being prepared?

SCHUMER: Well, look, we New Yorkers are a tough breed and will overcome it no matter what happens and I can't predict how long it will be. I leave that to the medical experts but I can tell you one thing Fredricka, and this is what I'm focused on.

We do not have the supplies we need. The Governor, the Mayor, they're reaching out all over the place, all over the country and all over the world to get what they need but just during the last day, I heard from hospitals who didn't have ventilators.

Police officers who don't have masks. Nurses, medical technicians on the front lines risking their lives who don't have PPE. So the system that the federal government has put in place is not working, plain and simple.

It's not adequate. Our mayors, our governors, I spoke to our hospital heads, they have to run big hospitals. At this point, they're spending hours each day reaching out to private contractors or other countries even, to get supplies.

So here's what we need. We need the President to invoke the Defense Production Act.

[12:30:00]

It dates from this Korean War, President Truman and the DPA allows a military leader, the military to take over the factories and supply chains and then the same person can distribute the materials, the PPEs, the ventilators, the masks.

I heard in Michigan, they're short of swabs to all over to where exactly it is needed.

This is what the President should do. I talked to him last few days ago. Well, we all know what happened there. But yesterday, I talked to Vice President Pence yesterday afternoon. I talked to Chief of Staff, Acting Chief of Staff Mark Meadows yesterday evening, and they seem very seriously to consider this. We are not going to overcome this supply problem unless we have

someone, a military person, in charge. Someone who knows command and control, someone who knows logistics, and someone who knows quartermastering.

And then the President has to backup this military person with all the authority of his office. So when the military person says, factory A, you make a million swabs this week, you can do it. And then I'm going to take those swabs and send them to Michigan and New York say, where there were short of them. That is what's going to solve this.

And we're at the epicenter, as the governor said in New York. But it's going to spread to other places, and they're going to have the same supply shortages that we have. And those supply shortages, make people less healthy, less likely to overcome it and extend the timeline that you're talking about.

So I hope that the President could re-upping my call. I've been doing this for two weeks. I spoke to the President about this two weeks ago to invoke the DPA because right now, the supply system is scattershot, catches catch can, it's a spectacle that hospital chiefs, mayors, and governors have to be calling private companies in countries across the world to get the supplies that we should have ready and available to them.

WHITFIELD: So what is your assessment as to why the President has exercised portions of the Defense Production Act, but has not utilized appointment of a military czar, as you put it, you know, military leadership. If you're saying, you know, in your conversation, the Vice President is receptive to it, what is it going to take, who is going to be able to get at the President to make that selling point?

SCHUMER: You know, I called the president two weeks ago, and we suggested this and he said, we should do it. And he said to someone he must have been there in the Oval Office. Let's get it done. But then a few hours later, he said he wasn't going to do it. I don't know why --

WHITFIELD: What's behind reluctance, you think?

SCHUMER: Well, maybe, you know, there's a view let the private sector do what it wants. But you know, we're in wartime. In wartime, the private sector didn't have freedom. Ford couldn't say, I don't want to make tanks. And it's -- we're in a wartime here, and we need this military leader command and control with the President's full backing and that will make this horrible, horrible scourge and more quickly with fewer illnesses and fewer deaths.

WHITFIELD: How much of a dent do you believe it might make that the CDC recommends now face masks, cloth masks, people should use them if they're out and about but then the President yesterday kind of undermined that recommendation by saying he wasn't going to wear a face mask and that you can do it if you want to. What does that message send? And then for you, will you be wearing a face mask?

SCHUMER: Yes. I walk -- I tried to take an hour walk every day. I stay six-feet away from people. Other than that, the only people I've seen since I got back from Washington 10 days ago in person are my wife, my daughter, my son-in-law, and my one-and-a-half-year-old grandson. When it's my hour and a half to watch him. That's the most I'm busy all the time, working all the time.

But that's the most exhausting hour and a half. You know, we're not baby proof if he pulls down the books, pulls the pot set of it across everything else.

WHITFIELD: Of course.

SCHUMER: But, but no, I am wearing it yesterday for the first time given the recommendations of the experts. I wore a mask. I didn't enjoy it. But you have to do it. One of the big problems here we've had from the beginning, we have to listen to the experts, the medical experts. And they've been too many times when others, I won't name who, you can guess, have just ignored the military experts thinking I mean, sorry, the medical experts, we have to listen to the medical experts.

They know best. If they say wear a mask. I'm wearing a mask, even though I don't particularly enjoy it.

WHITFIELD: Is there encouragement. However, when you see the President standing alongside the leading infectious, you know, disease Dr. Anthony Fauci. However, Dr. Fauci was not present yesterday still unclear why not. But, you know, does it lend any encouragement that the President has?

SCHUMER: Yes.

WHITFIELD: It appears to be more on board with the science community or the medical community?

SCHUMER: Well, the truth is in the pudding when Fauci recommends something, we as a nation, he and the medical experts, we ought to do it. They know best.

[12:35:06]

WHITFIELD: What's next? How might, you know the Senate or, you know, the House of Representatives be able to play a role here in offering some optimism on the horizon, whether it be to further nudge the President on getting a military czar, or whether it's in some way, getting this, you know, Defense Production Act to work more aggressively for the American public?

SCHUMER: Well, you know, one of our most important job as legislators is to legislate. And we passed a very strong bill. I'm proud of it. It had much of the footprint of our Senate Democratic Caucus. It called for a Marshall plan for our healthcare infrastructure, $100 billion -- $150 billion to go to hospitals, nursing homes, clinics used flexibly for what they need.

And I'm hopeful that money will go out soon. I've been urging the White House to do that. And it also called for workers first, helping unemployed workers, keep their full salaries, preventing foreclosures, and evictions. Making sure small business people need the help they need.

Now our job is now oversight. We don't implement that. By the Constitution, that's the Article two branch of government, the executive, but we can oversight. We can make suggestions. We can hear. I talked to hundreds of people in New York and what I hear on the ground here at the epicenter, I convey to the White House, to the President, to the Vice President, to the Chief of Staff, and to others about what needs to be done and what's not going right.

And sometimes they listen to us, sometimes they don't. But we're going to keep at it, because our constituencies depend on it.

WHITFIELD: And unrelated to coronavirus, what is your view on the President, you know, firing the intelligence community watchdog, you know, Inspector General Michael Atkinson, particularly, you know, he's the one who led the whistleblower complaint to Congress and now two months after, you know, an acquittal in the Senate, the President has removed him. What's your view on that?

SCHUMER: Let me say this, there's all too familiar a pattern in this administration. When you tell the President the truth, you get fired. This guy was a patriot. This guy stood for our intelligence agencies have done such a wonderful job. You know, they don't make movies about him, like about the military, because obviously most of its secret.

But they risked their lives like our soldiers do, like our men and women in uniform do. They do amazing things to protect this country. And by politicizing it, dismantling it, not wanting to hear the truth, that's since World War II, we've built up this fine, fine agency and the President is undermining it.

WHITFIELD: Is there any protection for retaliatory firing?

SCHUMER: -- in this Fredricka. When you when you speak truth to power, you should be a hero. But in this administration, when you speak truth to power, all too often you get fired, ask the captain of the aircraft carrier, Theodore Roosevelt, ask Colonel Vindman, ask other people.

WHITFIELD: Yes. So there is no protection against a retaliatory firing.

SCHUMER: No. It's the President's discretion. But it's going to -- I guarantee you, I've met thousands of men and women in the intelligence agencies are feeling awful today, that is fine man who protects them was fired.

WHITFIELD: Senator Chuck Schumer, thank you so much for being with us, continue to be safe, enjoy your grandchild as well and the rest of your family --

SCHUMER: You too Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: -- while there in New York.

SCHUMER: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: All right. Take care.

SCHUMER: Thank you.

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