MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: State of the Union

Interview

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SCHULTZ: Welcome back to the Ed Show from Washington D.C. tonight.
The President will focus on foreign policy in a good section of his speech
tonight with all of the things that are unfolding in Middle East. The
White House on record saying that they think Assad has to go under any
scenario. And the development of deployment of more troops is also an
issue.

Joining me tonight is Congressman John Garamendi of California who sits on Armed Services on the House.

Congressman, what do you need to hear from the President tonight as this
whole thing on the Middle East unfolds?

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI, (D) CALIFORNIA: Well, first of all, he should been
has been very, very strong on the Middle East. Obviously, he`s sending
troops into Iraq to deal with ISIL and that needs to be done, but we need a
broader strategy. We need diplomatic strategy pulling together the
countries in the area.

They are much more at risk than either Europe or the United States, not
that we`re not.

SCHULTZ: The President has been very clear Congressman that he does not
want more sanctions on Iran and he`s going to talk about that tonight. How
big a fight is this going to be in Congress?

GARAMENDI: I think it`s going to be a big one. The question is, one of
timing. Clearly, the sanctions have worked. Are more sanctions are going
to be useful? Probably, but it`s a question of timing. He`s going to need
to be very clear not just tonight but as the days and weeks go by.

SCHULTZ: The White House feels like that could blow up the deal, that that
could blow up the opportunity of a nuclear agreement, and really we could
find ourselves isolated. Your thoughts.

GARAMENDI: I don`t think that`s going to be the case. Iran with the
nuclear weapons not in anybody`s interest except perhaps Iran, so Russia
and the other of the P5 all of those folks are similarly situated as United
States, but it may come about in the next month or so that the President
needs some additional support and that could be the sanction bill.

SCHULTZ: Does the President need to spell out how we`re going to protect
this country tonight, with this new wave, this new genre of terrorism that
we`re seeing with ISIL?

GARAMENDI: I think he will and he should. One of his principal jobs is to
protect the country and he -- I believe he is going to do that. And there
are many different pieces to it, obviously ISIL dealing with that in Iraq
and Syria but also on the home front.

How do we deal with these folks that have gone off to fight in Syria? I
don`t know why we don`t just pull their passports so they can`t travel.

SCHULTZ: Senator, did we blow -- or Congressman, did we blow it with
Syria? Did we miss something big here? The Republicans are really talking
(ph) about how the President just has misjudge this entire thing and which
has really elevated the explosiveness of these radical groups.

GARAMENDI: I think it`s going to be a lot of second guessing going on, it
always is. But clearly Syria has been a serious problem all along. Should
we have sent troops? Should we have sent arms along the way? It`s never
been easy to sort out who is the good guy in Syria.

It`s just the whole lot of bad options. Right now, we`re on a path where
we need to isolate, degrade ISIL but we don`t need to have troops on the
ground.

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

GARAMENDI: You need to have Turkey and the other countries involved in
that (ph).

SCHULTZ: And finally, cybersecurity, your thoughts.

GARAMENDI: I`m sorry, the...

SCHULTZ: Cybersecurity.

GERAMENDI: Critical, absolutely critical. You can talk to Sony and
Japanese about that but you can talk to our own military when they`re able
to get in. We need to really work on this and it`s also in the home front.
It is our infrastructure that is at risk here.

We have to act aggressively to make sure that our infrastructure that we
have the security here at home on cyber, and that`s going to require a lot
of these big national corporations to back down and to accept the reality
that this is a critical element of our nation`s security.

SCHULTZ: Congressman, good to have you with us tonight. I appreciate your time.

GARAMENDI: Thank you Ed.

SCHULTZ: Thanks so much. Congressman John Garamendi from California with us.

That`s the Ed Show, I`m Ed Schultz.

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