CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Interview with Mary Gay Scanlon

Interview

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Joining us now Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon, Democrat of Pennsylvania. So, Congressman, thanks for being with us.

Congresswoman Greene saying Democrats are stupid and that by trying to strip of her committee assignments, you and your colleagues are actually helping her in her quest to, I guess, gain more power and get more Republicans elected.

Do you think there's some truth to that? Not to the stupid part, but to the building up her name, her name recognition, focusing on her gives her more power than she actually would have?

REP. MARY GAY SCANLON (D-PA): Well, I think what she is focusing upon is the fact that she has been fundraising off this like crazy. She is milking her base, yet again. I think the last report we heard was $1.6 million off this.

So you know, it's the race to the bottom for the Republican Party here.

COOPER: Well, it's so interesting because in her statement, she also said that you know about being -- or in that interview she did with "The Examiner," she also says -- she was asked about, you know, being taken off -- potentially being taken off committee assignments, which from -- it certainly doesn't look like it's going to happen from what the Republicans are doing.

And she seemed to indicate, well, she didn't really care because it allowed her more time to focus on the things she really wanted to focus on, which basically means fundraising and building her name and just being a -- you know, throwing Molotov cocktail -- you know, rhetorical Molotov cocktails, or let's hope, just rhetorical ones. And you know, that seems to be really what she wants out of serving in Congress.

SCANLON: Well, I don't think she's really interested in serving in Congress. Clearly, she is interested in being on Twitter and spouting whatever pops into her head or into Q's head or whatever.

I mean, since the moment she hit town, she has done everything she can to, you know, excite people it doesn't matter if it's true or not. I know when she first got to town, she was tweeting about you know, not being able to go to the gym and so then she put up a tweet about working out and or -- you know, she's just all about the publicity and apparently all about the fundraising. It's not about public service.

COOPER: She is like an Instagram influencer, a wannabe Instagram influencer, except with anti-Semitic and, you know, bizarre, anti- Semitic conspiracy theory beliefs.

SCANLON: Well, I mean, what's really concerning to Members of Congress is she is also about inciting violence. She totally bought into the ex-President's big lie that he hadn't actually lost the election and she was part of the crew that helped to incite the attack on the Capitol and the attempt to disrupt a joint session of Congress just a month ago today.

COOPER: Do you --

SCANLON: We had our Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick who was lying in state in the Capitol today.

[20:25:08]

COOPER: Yes.

SCANLON: We've moved on.

COOPER: Do you think Democrats could or should remove her from her committee assignments? I mean, that would be a really, I think, an unprecedented step, or at least a highly unusual step.

SCANLON: It's certainly highly unusual. I mean, in the past, we've been able to rely upon the parties to police their own, and it wasn't that long ago that the Republican Party did police its own, just last term or the term before it, the Republican Party removed Steve King from his assignments because he had said despicable and false things.

Now, the things that the Representative from Georgia has done are much, much worse, but apparently the Republican Party has changed.

COOPER: House Minority Leader McCarthy's statement tonight, in which he says that he takes Marjorie Taylor Greene at her word, that she will hold herself to a higher standard now, it's almost a parody of what one might expect from him, sadly, at this point.

I mean, you know, I think it was Dana, in our last segment who pointed out, it's not as if he sat her down and point by point said, okay, do you really believe that the Rothschilds are behind lasers from space causing wildfires? Do you really believe that, you know, the leaders of the Democratic Party eat babies and drink their blood for a chemical which is all part of Q?

It's like, he is basically just giving her a pass and just sort of saying, just don't talk about that kind of stuff now?

SCANLON: Well, I mean, we're taking her at her word, and her word is that she has incited violence against members of Congress, and she has espoused some pretty crazy theories that are not going to help us do our job to help the American people.

What does it say about the party that they're talking about stripping Liz Cheney of power, when she's trying to hold the ex-President accountable for inciting an insurrection? And they're elevating this new member who is inciting violence and just, you know, doubling down on fringe conspiracy theories?

COOPER: What is it like working in the Capitol now? I mean, it's never been more important given the stakes right now for our country, and at the same time, it's -- I mean, not in our lifetimes has it probably ever been as surreal.

SCANLON: It's extremely surreal. I haven't been here that long, but we've certainly had our fair share of unusual events in the last three years. But it has been really different. You know, in the day -- after the couple of days after January 6th when I would see colleagues from across the aisle, there was one of two reactions.

One was they would kind of avoid your eyes and, you know, kind of try to scuttle by quickly. The other was kind of sheepish, and, wow, you know, that was really wild what happened and oh, gosh, we're all in it together. But that's turned now that they're into this, oh, we need to move past -- we need to move past six people dying. We need to move past an attempt to overthrow the government.

That's the most surreal thing of all.

COOPER: Well, that's -- I mean, one of the quotes that came out of this, you know, meeting of the Republicans are having right now was one Republican lawmaker, a supporter of the Georgia Congresswoman, you know, saying that Liz Cheney's crime was that she aided and abetted the enemy.

I mean, the idea that that's how he or she -- I think it was a male -- views this as the other side is the enemy.

SCANLON: But the other side is just anyone who opposes Trump at this point.

COOPER: Exactly. Yes.

SCANLON: I mean, we have seen the Republican Party, it has no platform, other than whatever dear leader wants.

COOPER: Literally, they do not have a platform that's not just rhetorical. Yes.

SCANLON: Right. COOPER: Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon, I appreciate your time. Thank

you.

SCANLON: Thank you.

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