CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Maxine Waters

Interview

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ACOSTA: And Congresswoman Maxine Waters joins me now.

Congresswoman, thanks so much for joining us. You made this very strong charge that these images looked worse than what we witnessed during slavery. What did you mean by that?

[16:25:00]

WATERS: Well, first of all, the world was watching. In slavery, we didn't have the technology that showed the kind of mistreatment that were perpetrated on our slaves. But what we saw really shocked us because what we witnessed was our own Border Patrol that we pay on horses the way we've never seen before, chasing Haitians who were fleeing their country and fleeing violence, to be met with this kind of treatment. It is unconscionable, and I meant it was bad, and it shocked me.

ACOSTA: And why are you so unhappy with the Biden administration about this? Is it because you expected better?

WATERS: It's not so much of being so unhappy with the Biden administration in that I expected our administration to know better than to have horses chasing down black people and that, you know, they would be working on the kind of immigration reform that would recognize the emergency that we have now.

First of all, those people under those bridges should have been offered shots. They should have been given the COVID shots in order to assure that they would not be spreading, you know, the virus around wherever they would be sent or wherever they were going to live. Secondly, they should be treated like the Afghans. The Afghans who come in here that we have brought in here because they have been supportive of us during the war is the right thing to do.

But they found ways to house them and to treat them a lot better. Nobody should be treated the way the Haitians have been treated.

ACOSTA: And I wanted to ask you, Congresswoman, do you think that the current administration is doing enough to reform the Trump Homeland Security Department that as we saw during the Trump administration had so many episodes of just downright cruelty demonstrated towards immigrants?

WATERS: Well, one of the things I know is we cannot continue with the kind of leadership that we saw with Trump. First of all, our Constitution says you have a right to petition to try to get into the country, particularly if you are victims of violence. Well, it doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to know that the people of Haiti are victims of violence. We see it every day. We see that the president was assassinated.

We see that the gangs have taken over Haiti. We see that people are afraid that they're going to be killed. They don't have places to live because of the earthquakes that they have experienced. And so we should be treating them the way Constitution allows us to treat immigrants who want to get into our country. That's the first thing that should be done.

And of course, secondly, we should be prepared to house them in this emergency and prepared to vaccinate them and ensure that we're doing what we're supposed to do with all of the countries in cooperation so that this pandemic is not supposedly achieved, you know, and overcome by any one country. All of the countries have got to be involved in order to get rid of the pandemic. So if we're going to help Haiti, why not help them whether they're in-country or whether they're on the border?

ACOSTA: I want to ask you about the Biden agenda. The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus says at least 50 of her members won't vote for the bipartisan infrastructure deal unless that bigger spending package is on the table. How is the House speaker going to be able to navigate her way out of this? I mean this just seems like a mess because even if you get these bills out of the House, you have the issue in the Senate of Senators Manchin and Sinema, who are balking at this price tag as it stands now.

WATERS: Well, let me just say this. The progressive caucus is using its power to try and make sure that many of the very progressive programs that are in the reconciliation bill be honored. I get that. And so they are making a case for it. Nancy Pelosi has said she understands that, but she's not going to put anything on the floor that we don't have the votes for. And so in the final analysis, Democrats are going to be together.

We're going to work together to make sure that we have a reconciliation bill and we have an infrastructure bill. Then there's the Senate that we have got to deal with, and we are going to deal with them. And I can tell you this, Republicans and Democrats alike, even if there are some parts of the reconciliation bill they don't understand and they don't like, I know that they're all anxious to get the resources and the dollars that are coming into their districts with the infrastructure bill, where we will have the repair of our bridges and our roads, and all of those things that we understand as traditional infrastructure.

[16:30:05]

And I've included in that housing is infrastructure, and I have a $30 billion plus bill that is addressing the housing needs of this country.

ACOSTA: And I want to ask you about the political fallout of this, if this infrastructure bill fails, if all of these agenda items fail in the coming weeks. Are you concerned that that could pave the way for a Republican takeover in next year's midterms, and are you having those kinds of discussions behind closed doors with your fellow Democrats, that if you don't work together on this, there could be some major consequences come next year?

WATERS: Well, we certainly don't anticipate failure, and we're not talking about if we don't get the cooperation. We're going to get these two bills out of the Congress of the United States, and whether we see people on the opposite side of the aisle or inside the Democratic Party that's having problems, it's going to work.

In this COVID-19 atmosphere that we're in with Delta threatening to take the lives of so many people, it is inevitable that we answer the call for this emergency. And in the final analysis, we're going to get both bills. I believe that.

ACOSTA: All right. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, we'll see how it plays out. We'll bring you back and see how it turns out here in the coming days. Thanks so much for being with us. We appreciate it.

WATERS: Thank you.

ACOSTA: Thanks as always.

WATERS: Well, thank you so very much for having me.

ACOSTA: All right. We appreciate it.

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