CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview with Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi
Interview
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[16:43:31]
TAPPER: In our 2020 lead today, new documents reveal the Trump administration's $250 million ad campaign to rebrand the coronavirus and that that money was actually being used in part to help President Trump's re-election campaign.
Documents released by House Democrats on the Oversight Committee found that Michael Caputo, the top Health and Human Services official who oversaw the ad blitz, who has since resigned, reportedly sought to frame the taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a way to boost the president's chances of re-election, according to the Democrats.
And with me now, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi. He's a member of the House Oversight Committee and a Democrat from Illinois.
Congressman, tell me exactly what your committee found?
REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): We found two things, Jake.
First of all, the Trump administration tried to use $250 million of taxpayer money that was otherwise dedicated to the CDC for education education-related purposes to deal with the COVID pandemic on basically what amounted to a slush fund for the campaign of the president to get re-elected.
And then the second thing that we found is that they basically compiled a Joseph McCarthy-esque list of celebrities, 274 of them and they evaluated them based on their political preferences. For instance, about Christina Aguilera, they said, she is, quote, an Obama-supporting Democrat and gay rights supporting liberal. And these types of comments pervade the documents and it's something I've never seen in a government contract.
[16:45:06]
TAPPER: I mean, that is an accurate description of Christina Aguilera. But let me ask you a question -- it's not an insult. She is gay rights supporting liberal and an Obama-supporting Democrat.
How do you see this as being used for the president's re-election as opposed to an education campaign about what needs to be done in order to help defeat the pandemic?
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, these particular ads were not meant to, for instance, encourage mask wearing, or social distancing, but rather to promote the theme, quote, helping -- the president will help country. That's a slogan that you might see in the former Soviet Union or even Russia today, not in the U.S., not certainly in a public service announcement.
With regard to Aguilera and the others, Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake and so forth, repeatedly, those comments were meant to essentially diminish or denigrate them as people that could be used in public service announcements. Typically, you would evaluate them based on, you know, whether they would be an effective spokesperson to the target audience in question.
TAPPER: Right.
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Not whether they support Donald Trump.
TAPPER: Yeah, no --
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Or support gay rights.
TAPPER: I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that it's not -- it's not denigrating necessarily to say somebody is -- I understand what you're saying.
You're also accusing Alex Azar, who is secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, of a cover-up. How so? What do your documents suggest that he knew about the plans for this?
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, this particular campaign of television advertisements was essentially supposed to start in the run-up to the re-election which, as you know, is happening next Tuesday. We, early on, working with Jim Clyburn and Carolyn Maloney of the Oversight Committee, brought this to Alex Azar's attention very early on in September and basically demand documents from him related to this particular contract.
He refused to comply with those requests for documents. Instead, we had to go to the contractors to get these very documents and now we know why Mr. Azar or Secretary Azar did not produce the documents, because they have such inappropriate material in them that I don't think they wanted to turn those over to us.
TAPPER: So, this was $250 million for an ad campaign. You said it was out of a specific budget for educational campaigns for the public, right? This money could not have been used for testing or contact tracing? It was designated for this.
Was it ever used? They didn't do this ad campaign. Did they ever use it for anything else?
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Fortunately, we were able to stop the campaign in its tracks. However, the contract has not been killed. And so, it is possible that the money could be used after the election.
But as of right now, it's been paused. We hope to terminate it. And actually, I've introduced legislation to prohibit the use of taxpayer funded money for this type of purpose, this type of political purpose, because that's obviously not what the taxpayers want.
TAPPER: Did you have a script of the ad? I mean, what were they supposed to say in this ad, as opposed to the messages that would be good, such as wear a mask, practice distancing, wash your hands, that sort of thing?
KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, they were meant to, quote, inspire hope and defeat despair. That was the general theme. And those words would repeat -- repeatedly, presumably, appear in these commercials.
However, as you know, right now we need to defeat the coronavirus pandemic, and that means adopting mitigation measures, such as wearing masks and socially distancing. It kind of is part of the theme that the president is sounding his re-election campaign, which is, you know, trying to diminish what's happening with the pandemic, diminishing the scale of the loss economically or from a health standpoint, and trying to distract attention away from it to other themes. And that's what's happening with this particular campaign.
One other thing I want to mention -- two other things I want to mention briefly, which is this also seems to coincide at a time when the president's fund-raising was flagging. He didn't have the resources necessarily to run the campaign that he thought he would. And so, this advertising campaign seemed to start at the same time using taxpayer-funded programming to basically further a political end.
TAPPER: Yeah.
KRISHNAMOORTHI: And then the second is, you can go to our Twitter handle, @CongressmanRaja, to see all the other comments that have been made about the 274 celebrities on this list that they compiled.
TAPPER: It sounds like -- the ad campaign being proposed sounds like everything is awesome from the Lego movie, that kind of, you know, cognitive dissonance.
[16:50:01]
Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, thanks so much for your time today. We appreciate it.
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