MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript Interview with Tammy Duckworth

Interview

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For more on the President`s negligence on the Coronavirus, I`m joined by

Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois. And Senator, it`s been

fairly clear in the beginning, the President has said many times things

that effectively were I don`t want to test because if we test we`ll find

cases, If we find cases I`ll look bad and I don`t want to look bad, ergo,

let`s not test. But it`s striking that he has now essentially admitted

that.

SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Well, of course. I mean -- and you know, this

is a problem with Donald Trump for himself, right? He says without

thinking. He speaks without thinking and in this case, we see into the real

Donald Trump. And, frankly, he cares more about what testing numbers are

than 120,000 dead Americans. That`s the president of United States.

He`s supposed to care about Americans who are sick and who are in danger of

losing their lives as well as those who we`ve lost, and he`s worried about

how testing numbers make his politics look. It`s shameful.

HAYES: They`re -- Democrats have pointed out the fact that there`s already

about $14 billion for Coronavirus testing and contact tracing that was

appropriated by the Senate and the House that the admin has access to, it

is not using currently, as we`re watching this spike happen. It just seems

like there has been total abandonment at the federal level, really total.

Like it`s just the governors issue and let`s cross our fingers and hope it

doesn`t get too bad.

DUCKWORTH: Well, Chris, I mean, this is from the very beginning. Remember

that at the very beginning back in December-January timeframe, the World

Health Organization offered test kits to the United States and we would be

-- we turn them down. We turn them down. They offered test kits to us, at

the time when our CDC was having problems with producing the correct test

kits, we turned down test kits. And we -- so we`ve been behind this virus

from the very beginning because this Trump administration has failed to

mobilize.

Really, you know, we have some pretty significant resources in this

country, and they just refused to mobilize it. And in fact, the president

even early on, said to our governors, you`re on your own. Go get your own

stuff. Go get your own PPE, go get your own testing kits, go do it

yourself. He didn`t want have anything to do with it. He refused to use the

Defense Production Act and to call that into use until very late. He told

the governor to go out on their own.

My own governor, Governor Pritzker had to negotiate for PPE and fly in an

aircraft and not tell the -- not to the federal government so that we could

actually get PPE into our state and into all of our hospitals. This

President has been -- I mean, not just behind the virus but willfully

behind the virus, and we have 120,000 dead Americans to show for it.

And what does he do? Does he take leadership? No, what does he do? He

stopped testing? That`s negligent. And that`s putting it kindly, Chris.

HAYES: I wonder how you think about Illinois right now, because there are

states that went through the -- got hit pretty hard in the beginning of

this. New York and the New York metro area chief among them, but also

Illinois, also Michigan, also to a certain extent Louisiana. And in those

states, we`ve seen fairly rapid declines.

And the question I think on everyone`s mind is, is Arizona, or Texas,

Florida, everyone`s future, is that where we`re all heading towards? And if

so, that seems untenable. I mean, at some point, it`s -- people are going

to have to hit emergency brake or there`s going to have to be some kind of

natural response that doesn`t just say, you know, (INAUDIBLE).

DUCKWORTH: I think the key thing in Illinois was that we were able to ramp

up production of test kits, and we were able to get to the goal and then

surpass the goal of 10,000 tests per day, and we`re well above that. And

that was the turning point for Illinois.

The Shelter in Place Order that Governor Pritzker called for very early on

and the people in Illinois actually headed the shelter and place orders and

stayed home. Much to a lot of economic pain, but people stayed home and did

the sensible thing and believed in the science. And then we ramped up our

testing.

And so now, Illinois has been able to very slowly reopen our economy. And

just this week, we entered the phase five, the final phase of our

reopening. I think other states can be there too, but they have to be

realistic about it. And if we open too soon, I`d like a Florida or Arizona,

you face the potential of having to shut your economy back down. That is

even worse. That`s even worse for the economy if you have to shut

everything back down, and that`s going to hurt people even more than a much

more methodical opening.

HAYES: Yes. The two doomsday scenarios right now in front of us are death

starting to spike again and or a state having a shutdown. I think both of

those would just be -- would knock the wind collectively out of -- out of

just sort of the American people given everything that we`ve gone through

so far. Senator Tammy Duckworth represents the great state of Illinois,

which is in phase five, and our fingers are crossed for you. Go get them.

Thank you very much.

DUCKWORTH: Thank you.

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