CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Congressman James Clyburn

Interview

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HILL: Arlette Saenz with the latest for us. Arlette, thank you.

My next guest has been credited with saving Joe Biden's campaign, securing him the Democratic nomination for President. Congressman Jim Clyburn's endorsement helped launch Biden to victory in South Carolina, helped reinvigorate his campaign in the final stretch.

Congressman, good to have you with us tonight. Listen, it is true, are you one of the reasons we are now discussing President-elect Biden at this point. You and South Carolina voters played a very important role helping them to rally pack in February.

I am curious, as you look at what is on the table now, eight months later, with Joe Biden as President-elect. He is taking over a country that is in a divided state dealing with this virus, which impacts just about everything.

What are your expectations? What does he need to deliver after January 20th?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. Let's begin to put the real issue is in this campaign and before this country and that is COVID-19.

This coronavirus is just wreaking havoc on our country. Here in South Carolina, people are redoing all kind of plans, people are canceling family gatherings. We are really concerned that the deaths are taking their toll and nothing like this had to happen.

If we had national leadership, we could be in a very different place today and that is what Joe Biden is going to be faced with.

I want to see him do a lot of things. But I want to see us as a country get beyond this pandemic so first and foremost, it has got to be, get this virus under control.

And it's a shame that the President of the United States is refusing to share all of this information that is needed to this administration -- with the incoming administration.

We have got to have the information in order to do it right and the people of this country need to rally behind Joe Biden, the President- elect and they need to do what is necessary to tell this President, this country is not his and the citizens of this country are not to be played with and that is what he is doing. He is playing with their lives and that, to me, is a shame.

And the people around the world are looking at this country and wondering, what have we come to? This is no longer that shining beacon on the hill that so many people around the world looked up to.

[18:10:08]

CLYBURN: This President is putting this country in a very bad place and that to me should incur the wrath of every single American who wishes to keep breathing and wish their families can have a better Holiday Season and a better way of life going forward.

HILL: Congressman, as you look at COVID-19, right, that is clearly the priority as you point out. But where do you begin? Is it prioritizing vaccine distribution? Is it prioritizing testing which is a mess right now? Is it prioritizing a national mask mandate?

I mean, how are you within COVID-19, where does the priority need to be in your eyes?

CLYBURN: The priority has to be on testing and tracing. We've got to do the testing in order to see who is affected and where it started from. You've got to trace it in order to do that.

And we have got to have the resources and the information as to know what to do and where to do it.

You know, I chaired the Coronavirus Oversight Committee and I can tell you, we've had nothing but trouble with this administration. We just saw what -- three or four days ago, there were $490 million that small businesses, the Main Street Project should have and not only that, the Treasury trying to take that money back, putting it back into the Treasury.

People need to money. They need to be out on the street. And I want to thank Chairman Powell for saying to Mr. Mnuchin that that is not the way to go.

I wrote him a letter saying that makes no sense. How do you tell people that we want to get back to business and you have taken the assistance that we gave them, Congress gave them this money in order to keep them afloat and here he is taking the money back, putting it back into the Treasury in order to cripple the incoming administration?

This is a sin and a shame. I never thought I would see this kind of myopic leadership sitting in the White House of these United States. I don't know what to say about that kind of foolishness.

HILL: When you look at the need that is out there, I know you see it in South Carolina. We see it across the country, these pictures, and people waiting for hours on end at a food distribution. So many Americans who have never needed to ask for help before in their lives.

They are tired of politics. They don't want to hear about Mitch McConnell, they don't want to hear Speaker Pelosi. They want help.

Is there a chance that that help is coming in this lame duck session? Is there a chance that Americans will get the help that they need?

Again, they don't care about the politics, right, not the people that I talk to. They care about what they need and they care about their families and the fact that they are very close to not being able to provide for them. They don't know that they will have a home to live in come 2021.

CLYBURN: Well, I agree with you. Unfortunately, it is the political process that they have to look to in order to get the help that they need.

The House has put two big bills up, one, Heroes Act, $3.2 trillion. We came back and reduced the size of it in order to try to make it more attractive to Mr. McConnell and he has rejected that.

He doesn't want to do anything and we are told that 20 or 25 senators have said they are not going to vote for anything. I wish he would put some bill on the floor.

If he puts the bills on the floor, there would be enough Republicans and enough Democrats voting for it. It would not be, if he were to do that. But he has decided, unless he can do it with his Republicans alone, he is just not going to do it.

We have Democrats and Republicans and independents that make up this great country. Put the bill on the floor and let's see what happens to it. Don't take your partisanship out on the American people and that's what he is doing here.

HILL: Congressman, real quickly before we let you go, how are you feeling about bipartisan efforts heading into the Biden administration?

CLYBURN: You know, I said throughout this campaign, Joe Biden kept saying that this was a campaign to restore the soul of America. I have said from day one, borrowing from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy of America," that this country is great because its people are basically good and if the people of America never cease to be good, this country will cease to be great.

[18:15:18]

CLYBURN: I sincerely believe that the greatness of this country is at stake because we have a President that rather than trying to bring people together are trying to drive people apart, Joe Biden is the polar opposite of that.

He spent his whole life bringing people together. He empathizes the way this President seems to not be able to.

I have always said that we are all the sum total of our experiences. But when you look at the experiences Joe Biden has had, he knows what tragedy is. He knows what illness is. He knows what sadness is and he has lived through it all and I really believe those experience are going to work on behalf of the American people.

He is going to bring this country together and we are going to be able to move into the future in a better way than we had over the last 40 years.

HILL: Congressman James Clyburn, good to have you with us tonight. Thank you.

CLYBURN: Thank you for having me.

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