MSNBC "Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell - Transcript Interview with Tammy Duckworth

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

O`DONNELL: Joining our discussion now is Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth

of Illinois. She`s a former Army lieutenant colonel and is now a member of

the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senator Duckworth, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I just want

to give you an opening for your reaction for this story as to where it

stands tonight. "The New York Times" latest reporting saying they have --

they are tracking the money and they`ve found over half a million dollars -

-it looks like Russian money going into Afghanistan for these bounties.

DUCKWORTH: It`s incredible that the president so far, his only response to

all of this information is to say, I didn`t know, nobody told me.

In fact, he should be out in front of this saying, I`m going to get to the

bottom of this.

What we know so far, Lawrence, is that there was intelligence products that

said, hey, you know, something is going on. We think this is happening, but

they couldn`t substantiate.

And then later on, we had some detainees we captured that said the Russians

are going out to kill Americans. And then the intelligence community found

these wires, these financial transactions from a Russian military

intelligence, the GRU-controlled banks to known Taliban middlemen. And then

U.S. forces and Afghan security forces went out and did a sweep, and in

going after known Taliban agents and known criminals, they found a half

million dollars.

All of this points to the fact that the Russians have been paying folks in

Afghanistan, Taliban or other criminal organizations, to kill Americans.

All our president can say is, nobody told me about it. It boggles the mind.

And I`m just -- I`m putting on my most polite language, as opposed to my

Army language, which would be something a lot -- you couldn`t air -- put it

on the air, I don`t think. But it`s -- the incompetence is incredible.

O`DONNELL: Senator, feel free to use army language here. We`ll do what we

have to do with it.

(CROSSTALK)

O`DONNELL: But so what would you do? What should be done in this White

House? I mean, just imagine a future in which is possible, in which Joe

Biden is president and if you were there as vice president, what would you

advise the president to do when this information was discovered and brought

to the president?

DUCKWORTH: Well, the first thing -- I mean, I wouldn`t even have to advise

Joe Biden. He would have done it on his own.

The minute that he read that report in the daily presidential brief, which

by the way we now know that this report was in the daily presidential brief

as early as February, at the end of February, and this president did not

read it apparently. So, we know for sure that Joe Biden would actually read

his daily briefs. He would have stepped out already and got in front of

this and reached out to the Russians to say, you cannot do this. You will

not do this. And to sanction the Russians and to show them the consequences

of putting bounties on American heads.

What he would not have done would be to do what Donald Trump has done,

which is to say, hey, you know what? The Russians aren`t so bad and, by the

way, you know, we`re just going to go ahead and try to help them rejoin the

G7, and do the G8.

You know, Trump has been in the Russian`s back pocket, and I don`t know

why. But it is -- it is absolutely shameful and downright obscene that the

commander-in-chief of the United States military would turn a blind eye to

a foreign adversary, putting a bounty on the heads of men and women who put

on the uniform of this great nation to defend and to protect us, and we`re

in harm`s way right now while he`s out there on the golf course.

O`DONNELL: Let`s listen to more of what Joe Biden said about this today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: If these allegations are true, and he did nothing about any of this,

then, in fact, I think the public should, unrelated to my running, conclude

that this man isn`t fit to be president of the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: He also -- Joe Biden also called this a dereliction of duty by

Donald Trump. Is that the right way to look at this?

DUCKWORTH: It is very much a dereliction of duty by Donald Trump. And to

think -- look, Lawrence, there`s several things that could have happened

here. He was given the briefing and he didn`t read it, which is

incompetence on his part, a dereliction of duty. You`re not doing your job,

reading your daily briefing.

Number two, he was briefed and he forgot, or he chose not to do something

and he chose to put Russia`s interest above the well-being of American

troops in harm`s way.

Or three, his -- the people around him know that he`s so incompetent that

they`re not going to brief him about it. At which point, you need to fire

not just Donald Trump but the folks that should be bringing him these

intelligence reports in the first place.

So, it`s incompetence all around. But you cannot delegate responsibility.

It rests with Donald Trump. It rests with the president of the United

States and Donald Trump has failed in his responsibility to the American

people and especially to our military men and women. Those brave folks are

willing to go out and defend us to their deaths, if they may.

And it turns out the president might be turning a blind eye to Russians,

helping them get killed.

O`DONNELL: Senator, let me ask you about the possibility of serving as vice

president. If Joe Biden asks you to do that, would you accept that?

DUCKWORTH: Well, I just want Joe Biden in office. If Joe Biden came to me

and said, Tammy, the best thing you can do for this country is to go sweep

floors in a V.A. hospital, I`d go sweep floors in a V.A. hospital.

Our nation right now has such deep wounds that we will have to come

together to recover. And no one knows better about cooling our country

together about recovering and fixing and binding the wounds of our nation

than Joe Biden does. And so we have a lot of things we have to do. One, we

have to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and get us out of the situation

that we`re in now with not enough testing, not enough test kits, and an

economy that is in a freefall.

We have to rescue the economy. We have to, as we are seeing now, go after

our foreign adversaries who would go after American troops who are in

harm`s way. There`s a lot to be done, and I`m on team Biden a 100%.

Whatever it is he asks me to do to help our nation, keep America strong, to

make sure that we move our country forward and pull our country back

together again. I`m willing to do that.

O`DONNELL: Senator Tammy Duckworth, thank you for bringing both a Senate

perspective and a combat veteran`s perspective to the discussion tonight.

We really appreciate it.

DUCKWORTH: Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source