Meet the Press - July 16, 2023
Interview
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It's good to be on. Thanks for having me.
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We've given him many options for a vote, and he's turned them all down. Joni Ernst has a bill that goes even further than where Senator Tuberville is, and he declined that vote. And Republican leadership had offered him multiple off-ramps to this, and he's backed himself into a corner. I mean, you know, what he's saying is, "Well, Democrats need to pass a national codification of Roe v. Wade." We would love to do that. Obviously that's not going to happen any time soon with the Senate as closely split as it is. And so, you know, I'm going to just say what President Biden has said. It is bizarre for Senator Tuberville to say that he's not jeopardizing national security when he injects politics into the defense process. And frankly, this is not the time to do it, not when there is a war going on in Europe, not when American leadership is vital to the international global order. And for him to really jeopardize our national security by injecting politics and preventing our military leaders from being able to take their positions and do their jobs, is really, you know, it's beyond distressing. It is just that. It is a jeopardization to our national security.
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Well, in part, I mean, one of the ways you can do it is we can vote on each individual nominee, but that would take well into next year. The process is very slow. What Senator Tuberville is doing is upsetting how we normally confirm candidates. We would take, you know, all 250 officers and say, "Okay, you know, with unanimous consent let's go ahead and promote all of these officers." And generally there's unanimous consent, and Senator Tuberville is the one who's saying, "Nope, I want this done one by one." Well, there's so many promotions that we're going to fall further and further behind, and we could never get any other business done. You know, Senator Sullivan is a good friend of mine. We've traveled together. We share many of the same concerns. And he's right. This is something that is done often in the Senate but not to the extent that Senator Tuberville's doing it. I only held for 14 days, and that was over Alexander Vindman being retaliated against by the Trump White House. And right now Senator Tuberville is jeopardizing our nation's ability to lead the free world at a time when there's a war in Europe, because he wants to inject politics into this.
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I think it is. I agree with my friend. And frankly, you know, it already has started to do that with our successful AUKUS agreement between the U.K., Australia, and the United States. Our Asian allies, I will tell you -- I travel extensively throughout the Indo-Pacific, and our Asian allies are looking very closely to what has happened with Ukraine and realize that there is a greater need to participate themselves in NATO, as well as NATO allies coming back into the Indo-Pacific region. I think what Vladimir Putin has done is not only has he expanded NATO, he's actually strengthened the resolve of countries like Japan and Korea and Taiwan and other nations. I mean, even the ASEAN nations put out a statement condemning Russia's actions in Ukraine. So he's in fact united the world, in a way, against what he's doing there.
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You know, I don't think so. But I will tell you, one of the things that we can do to cool the earth back down is to transition into greener energy alternatives. My home state of Illinois is a big energy state. We have more nuclear reactors than anyone else. We grew 100,000 new jobs in ten years under wind, and, of course, biofuels. And this is where we really need to turn and look at companies like United Airlines that is looking to be a leader when it comes to sustainable aviation fuel. There's nothing better than good-old American-grown corn and soybeans to produce the biofuels that will lead us into a greener future.
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You know, I think -- I'm not opposed to court expansion, but I'm not certainly there where I would support it at this point in time. I think what we need to do is what we're continuing to do. And my senior senator from Illinois, Senator Durbin, is doing a great job of confirming justices to all of the various levels of federal benches, so that we have folks in place who can be elevated to the Supreme Court who are not going to be the activist judges like Neil Gorsuch, who, by the way, did not tell the truth when he came up for his confirmation hearing. In fact, he told Senator Collins that he would not oppose or work to overturn Roe v. Wade, and that's exactly what he did -- similarly, justices like Amy Coney Barrett. And so we need to take a look at where we're going in terms of confirming judiciary appointments all across the country.
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Thanks for having me on.
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