CNN "Newsroom" - Interview with Ruben Gallego

Interview

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Let me bring in now Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego.

And, Congressman, a pleasure to see you looking well there.

And I want to get to, of course, the reason why we're talking to you, the president heading to your state in just a second. But I need to get your reaction to this report. I mean, again, these are allegations. I'm sure the White House will have thoughts. But, again, Rick Bright was alleging that he was fired as a form of retaliation -- his word -- that he essentially sounded the alarm on coronavirus back in January and was ignored.

Your thoughts, Congressman?

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-AZ): Well, how can we be surprised?

This president has consistently been attacking whistle-blowers that have been trying to keep him in check and accountable, whether it had to do with firing of people around the Ukraine incident. And now we have seen a trend here when it comes to coronavirus, where he purposely has misled the public, ignored science, ignored his daily briefings that told us -- that this told him that this was happening.

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And now that he knows that the -- that he's caught, he's going to try to cover it up. And part of that cover-up is getting rid of anybody that is not going to toe the party line and say that he did a great job, when, in fact, we all know he did not do a good job.

BALDWIN: OK. I appreciate your response on that.

I have also just been told by my producer that President Trump has just landed.

There we go. There's Air Force One touching down in Phoenix.

You are critical of this trip. I mean, he's going to go see these N95 Honeywell mask workers who are helping provide these essential masks for folks on the front lines. Why are you so critical of this trip?

GALLEGO: Well, first of all, this is actually in my district, and I and I have a lot of friends who actually do work at Honeywell, and I appreciate their work.

I'm critical of the president because this is not what he should be doing right now. He should be putting together a national plan of how to get us out of this predicament that we have right now.

Instead, we're basically throwing away the CDC guidelines that said that no states should reopen until they have 14 days of downward trends in terms of infection rate. Arizona hasn't hit that.

We have a very horrible situation around the Navajo Nation, a nation of about 230,000 Native Americans, isolated and has some of the fourth highest death rates in this whole country.

The president is here to do a town hall, but still hasn't released all the money that Native American countries -- the Native American country deserves.

So this is just a press opportunity. It doesn't really help us in the end. And if the president had been serious about this, he should have been mandating through the Defense Production Act companies like Honeywell actually start making PPE equipment early on.

BALDWIN: You can -- so, absolutely no credit for this president? You say this is all -- this is all P.R.? You don't give him any credit?

GALLEGO: This is him trying to put the horse back in the barn.

And we have lost tens of thousands of Americans because this president did not want to deal with the fact that there was a virus coming and he was more worried about the stock market and his poll ratings than the actual health of Americans in this country.

BALDWIN: Let me turn the page, Congressman Gallego, and ask you.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made news when he was talking to my colleague Dana Bash. And this is what he had to say about reopening the U.S. economy. Here's a clip.

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CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: Well, of course everybody wants to save every life they can, but the question is, towards what end ultimately?

Are there ways that we can thread the middle here to allow there -- that there are going to be deaths -- and they're going to be tests no matter what -- and if we can do things to keep people in the mode of wearing masks, of wearing gloves, of distancing where appropriate, we have got to let some of these folks get back to work, because, if we don't, we're going to destroy the American way of life and these families.

And it will be years and years before we can recover.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BALDWIN: To be fair, even Dr. Fauci is echoing some of that sentiment.

And I know I was -- I was looking up the numbers in your state. An estimated half-a-million people in Arizona alone have filed for unemployment.

And so how do you, Congressman, weigh human life vs. families needing to provide for themselves and America's livelihood?

GALLEGO: Look, there is no doubt that the economic stress that's being caused by coronavirus is important.

But you can always get a job replaced. You cannot replace your grandmother. You can't replace your grandfather. You can't replace your kids.

And I think we have to heavily weigh this, and not just do it in such a flippant manner that Governor Christie is doing. I want to point out something too. After 9/11, we joined together as a

nation. We said we were not going to take any more chances for us to get struck in that manner. We didn't say, we're only going to put scanners in some airports, but not in all airports. We said, we as a country are going to keep everybody safe.

So every airport had increased screening, increased security. During World War II, we used to black out our cities, right? We didn't say only one part of the city should black out a city vs. the other, because we wanted to make sure, if there was a bombing run, that they wouldn't be able to hit anybody. Right?

That is how you collectively protect each other. Now, we're not at war. We're not fighting terrorists. What we're fighting, I think, right now is this sense of hopelessness. And that sense of hopelessness is caused because you have a president that has not led, does not give us a clear direction, shows like he has no plan, and really is not providing any hope.

That's what we really need to be fighting here right now, is that sense.

BALDWIN: Congressman Ruben Gallego, thank you very much for your opinions.

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