MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person tried in connection with 9/11 was sentenced to life in prison without parole today. He will not be executed. Here to give us his reaction is New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Senator Schumer, you‘re right there. You‘re at 9/11, you‘re at Ground Zero, you know the people who died. What‘s your reaction?

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Well my reaction is that the death penalty clearly would have been appropriate. If it ever was appropriate, this kind of situation is the case.

But the fact that he will be in jail the rest of his life surrounded by Americans, not be a martyr, is the other side of it. So I would have, if I would have voted, I couldn‘t sit in the jury. But I probably, looking at it from afar, would have preferred the death penalty. But this is an bad verdict.

MATTHEWS: Take me right now, Senator, into the cab drivers of New York. The cabs of New York, into the saloons of New York tonight. What are they saying?

SCHUMER: They‘re probably saying what I said. They would have preferred the death penalty, but sitting there in jail, no life parole, no martyr, all right.

MATTHEWS: We‘ve had Kristin Breitweiser on, she‘s become quite celebrated as a fighter for her husband‘s loss. She said today, as did Mike Isikoff, one of the best investigative reporters around, as did Richard Ben Veniste, there are still bad guys out there. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, you‘ve got Ramzi Binalshibh, and the other name I can‘t pronounce. But are they going to be caught—they‘re caught, are they going to be brought to justice?

SCHUMER: Well, you know, they‘ve been in military custody. And at the beginning, no one questioned it because the first thing you want to do is interrogate these people, see what they know, try to prevent other terrorist incidents.

They‘ve been in military custody a very long time. And I think at the very least, we‘re owed an answer as to what is going to happen with them. Will they be tried as Kristin Breitweiser said? Are they caught up in what they may—the policy decision that this administration has to make on what to do with all these people who are still in military custody.

MATTHEWS: She‘s tougher than you. She said, and Michael Isikoff from "Newsweek" is tough. He said the reason we‘re not getting trials from these guys is the fear that if you get them in a trial, their defense attorneys are going to bring out the fact of how they were tortured, water boarding, all that stuff we‘ve been hearing about.

The vice president on down do not want to take responsibility for those decisions. Maybe the president, that‘s what is holding this up.

SCHUMER: Well, it‘s possible. We just don‘t know the answer. The bottom line is that they can‘t keep them just in this limbo forever. They either have to try him or decide to do something. And sooner or later, they‘re going to have to decide that.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the New York soul right now. I remember being up there in those—oddly wonderful months afterward where you get on the subway, like the J train, the bottom of Manhattan. And there would be a guy playing the sax and everybody is kind of mellow. And people were saying hello to each other who wouldn‘t have said hello to each other in a million years. And there was a warm feeling. What is the feeling in New York right now?

SCHUMER: Well, you know, New York has bounced back. And obviously, you look at the population, people are moving downtown. not moving away. Our great fears in the months afterward that south of Canal Street would become a ghost town, they‘re gone.

MATTHEWS: SoHo is very packed.

SCHUMER: Yes, everybody. People are moving downtown, they‘re not moving away.

MATTHEWS: My son‘s down there in college.

SCHUMER: There you go. But—so we‘re back, New Yorkers are resilient. To say there isn‘t a scar in everyone‘s heart that will never go away, that we won‘t be the same, that‘s for sure. New Yorkers live with that, we live deep in the back of our minds as we go forward, as we progress, that this happened, that this was terrible, that we have to do everything to prevent it from happening again. It is not the same as it was before.

MATTHEWS: How does it work together? We have got a criminal trial today, which led to life without parole. We‘ve got a war going on in Iraq right now. We‘ve got a war on terrorism, which is a general kind of condition we‘re in right now.

It was said of the Democrats, they thought upon terrorism as a crime, not as a political or a military threat. They were wrong. Is that a fair shot, that Democrats looked upon terrorism as a crime under Clinton?

SCHUMER: I think Democrats looked at terrorism as a war as well. I mean, I don‘t think—it is not a crime in the sense that you kill large numbers of civilians. It is like a military action, which is supposed to bring the capitulation of a nation. A crime is directed for some kind of economic gain or to get at a particular group of people. It is—I mean, you may disagree on how to fight a war on terror but it is a war. It is a war.

MATTHEWS: When you drive home—when you fly home...

SCHUMER: And it is going to be with us.

MATTHEWS: OK. You‘re unique because you fly home to New York every couple of days.

SCHUMER: I do.

MATTHEWS: And you look out that left side window, if you‘re on the left side, and you see the bottom of Manhattan.

SCHUMER: Still can‘t get over it.

MATTHEWS: What do you think?

SCHUMER: I look out my window in Brooklyn—I live in Brooklyn. Looks out over lower New York Harbor all the time, all the time, you say, those towers used to be there. In fact, I was married at the top of those towers.

MATTHEWS: At the windows of the world.

SCHUMER: The top windows of the world. That‘s right.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the president of the United States. Do you think that he was right today when he made his statement? He didn‘t talk about any further prosecutions. He talked about this as if this were a closure. Is it?

SCHUMER: Well, again...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: ...condemnation in the sentencing of Moussaoui.

SCHUMER: I don‘t think it is enough of a closure. Because Moussaoui may have been involved but he was not at the heart of this. There is not going to be closure here until bin Laden is captured or killed.

MATTHEWS: Thank you very much Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the senior senator from New York. That young lady up there is the junior senator.

SCHUMER: Indeed. Indeed.

MATTHEWS: When we return, New York Republican Congressman Peter King, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, he is going to be joining us. This is HARDBALL only on MSNBC.

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