MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Ruben Gallego

Interview

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Congressman Ruben Gallego represents Arizona`s 7th Congressional District. He`s been very outspoken about his experience during the January 6 insurrection including in a new interview with the Independent. And he joins me now.

Congressman, first as someone who served in the U.S. armed forces, I just want your reaction to watching what has happened to Michael Flynn. I mean, this is an individual who was called one of the finest intelligence officers of his generation. This individual was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, you know, one of the key pillars of American intelligence apparatus, the key one for the DOD. And here he is running around. He advocated martial law, talking about the conspiracy being stolen, and that we have to have one religion under God.

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D-AZ): Look, this is probably the most un-American thing I`ve heard in quite a while. You know, Mr. Flynn, and I think people should stop calling him General Flynn. He`s no longer a general. Mr. Flynn served with Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Catholics, people from all over. I served with all the above, and people from, you know, Native American traditions.

We are very clear, there is no religion -- there is no one religion in this country. It`s been very clear since the Constitution of the United States. And I don`t know what this man is espousing but it`s crazy talk. We will not have one religion. We are a free country and you will be allowed to worship who you want or not worship. And there`s not going to -- Flynn or anybody else is ever going to be able to change that.

HAYES: You`ve been very vocal about your experience on the day of January 6, your desire to make sure that never happens again. And I wonder, from that perspective, as someone who is watching this take place and trying to plan how things may have to go down if violence did come to that chamber, if people came into the chamber, what you think about the increasing revelations of the coup plotters and how far along they got including Mark Meadows, the man you served with in the United States Congress.

GALLEGO: Well, look, nothing surprise me with Mark Meadows. I mean he was a cheap man before, and cheap in terms of his soul even before he left the House and went to the White House. So, it doesn`t surprise me that he sold our country for a person like Donald Trump. He would have done it for anybody.

Does it surprise me that they were plotting this coup as well as they did? Not really. I mean what surprises me though is the reaction to it. The fact that we have a not such a great and aggressive DOJ right now, the fact that we have a Republican Party who basically has endorsed the insurrection at least by ignoring the fact that it was an attempted insurrection, attempted a coup.

I thought better of them. I thought they`d be more patriotic than what they are now. Right now, they are just a group of people that are following a person, not even the Republican Party. Just you know, politicians just trying to sell their souls so that way they can win another election. It`s a very sad, sad reflection on the Republican Party right now.

HAYES: One of the members of your state delegation, a Republican named Paul Gosar has been -- I mean, courting controversy I think is to put it far too mildly. He put out an anime video that appeared to have him assaulting Alexander Ocasio-Cortez. He appeared at a conference of the white nationalist.

There`s discussion about some sort of official censure for Gosar, rather maybe a resolution taking him off committees. Do you support that?

GALLEGO: I do. Like, this has gone too far. This is not the first time he has incited violence. He`s hung out with anti-Semites, has said anti- Semitic, you know, phrases and tropes, you know, threatening the president also. It`s time to move on. He`s a joke. He`s been a joke to Congress. He`s not serving his constituents well.

If he doesn`t want to act, you know, in a civilized manner, then he shouldn`t be able to serve on committees. If he changes his tune, maybe it`s restore, but right now uh there`s no way that a member of congress like him should be serving. If he was in the private sector, he would have been fired by now by the way when you like threaten violence upon one of your co-workers.

But, you know, he continues to unfortunately get off the hook because you have someone like Congressman McCarthy who is -- you know, wants to be Speaker of the House and is afraid of losing his vote. And let me tell you. It`s not worth having the vote of an anti-Semite like Gosar in order to be speaker. I don`t think anybody wants to have that. But I guess, McCarthy feels like he needs it.

HAYES: You had an interesting -- you noted something interesting today about what was going on in your home state of Arizona with Doug Ducey who`s the governor there who`s doing a big hundred million dollar rural broadband thing. And you note in his -- in his announcement, the money came from the American Rescue Plan, President Biden`s initiative, and all Republicans voted against it.

The money, by the way, expands broad -- high-speed broadband, connect home schools, small businesses, more on underserved areas one of the largest broadband investments in state history. I`m guessing that that ARP and Biden didn`t get a huge shout-out at the press event for the governor today.

[20:15:06]

GALLEGO: I`m pretty sure it didn`t. But look, we are connecting rural America and, you know, people forget that, you know, Arizona has huge swaths of royals not just Maricopa and Pima. And during the, you know, COVID shutdown, a lot of them were significantly affected. It was very difficult for their students to get online to go to school. It`s very difficult for workers to get online and go to work or just simple as e- commerce.

So, we`re going to connect rural Arizona. You know, we have a not Donald Trump attitude. We don`t care that rural Arizona doesn`t vote for Democrats. They`re Arizonans, they`re Americans, we`re going to take care of them no matter what. I just wish that Doug Ducey would understand we`re on the same team here and actually give us credit for actually making this happen because it seems like -- it seems like he wants the best of both worlds. He wants the money, he wants the programs, but doesn`t want to give credit out.

HAYES: All right, Congressman Ruben Gallego, thank you so much for your time tonight.

GALLEGO: Thank you.

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