“I think they’re asking for too much money,” Paul said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

Paul is among a handful of Senate Republicans who have expressed opposition to the centerpiece legislation of Mr. Trump’s second term agenda that addresses the president’s tax, defense and energy priorities and which the House narrowly approved last month. The Kentucky Republican argued Sunday that with the legislation, “there’s going to be a lot of extra money” going toward “padding the military budget” and additional border security when “the President has essentially stopped the border flow without new money and without any legislation.”

But Paul’s red line, he indicated, is on the legislation’s provision that would to raise the debt ceiling. The House-passed bill includes a $4 trillion debt ceiling hike, while the Senate’s budget blueprint contained a $5 trillion increase. And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told congressional leaders earlier this month that the federal government could be unable to pay its bills as soon as August if Congress doesn’t act. Paul has advocated for removing the debt ceiling provision from the bill and voting on the issue separately. 

Paul said he wants to vote for the legislation and its tax components should the debt ceiling component be removed, saying “in all likelihood, I can vote for what the agreement is on the rest of the bill, and it doesn’t have to be perfect to my liking.” But for him, the debt ceiling increase is a nonstarter. 

“If I vote for the $5 trillion debt, who’s left in Washington that cares about the debt?” Paul said. “The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this.”

Congressional Republicans have sought to raise the debt ceiling as part of the broader budget package because the reconciliation process that governs the bill allows them to move forward without support from across the aisle. Separating the debt ceiling component from the broader bill would mean Senate Republicans would have to negotiate with Democrats, giving them an opportunity to extract leverage despite the GOP majorities in Congress. 

Still, Paul argued that the Republicans who support the spending increase should be the ones responsible for voting for a debt ceiling increase, noting that Democrats have historically supported raising the debt limit as well. The Kentucky Republican has also proposed smaller increases that suspend the debt limit for a matter of months, forcing lawmakers to verify that spending cuts have been implemented before approving a further hike. 

Mr. Trump warned Paul about opposing the legislation in a post on Truth Social Saturday, saying “Rand will be playing right into the hands of the Democrats, and the GREAT people of Kentucky will never forgive him!”

Meanwhile, Bessent, who also appeared Sunday on “Face the Nation,” pushed back on the bill’s forecasted impact on the deficit, pointing to income from tariffs among other things that he said will improve the full picture. 

The treasury secretary said changes to the bill will be “the Senate’s decision,” noting that he’s been working closely with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, whom he said has been “doing a fantastic job.”

“Everyone said that Speaker Johnson would not be able to get this bill out of the House with his slim majority – he got it out, ” Bessent said. “Leader Thune has a bigger majority, and this is with President Trump’s leadership.”

Asked about the administration’s red lines as the bill heads to the Senate, Bessent pointed to some of the president’s campaign promises, including no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, among others, which he said would “have to stay in.”

On the debt limit, Bessent urged that “the United States of America is never going to default.” But he declined to specify an X date, or the date the U.S. will run out of money to pay its bills. 

“That is never going to happen,” he added. “We are on the warning track, and we will never hit the wall.”

The post Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” holdout Sen. Rand Paul says “the math doesn’t really add up” appeared first on My Blog.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin. Senator, welcome back. We really came down to the wire here.

SEN. JOE MANCHIN: It’s good to be with you. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: When you were– 

SEN. MANCHIN: Well, it’s a shame that we do that.Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I know. When you were with us in March, I remember you saying Speaker McCarthy and Joe Biden, they just have to stop grandstanding. And they needed to start negotiating. How much of a miscalculation was it by Democrats to wait?

SEN. MANCHIN: I think it’s harmful. It shows you that the extreme left was pushing so hard not to even negotiate, not to even talk about it. You know, just hold your ground, hold your ground, hold your ground. That’s not who we are in America. The process of democracy, you sit down and–

(CROSSTALK)

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, they- they said that the Republicans were hostage takers, right?

SEN. MANCHIN: How can you be a hostage taker if basically you’re talking about shouldn’t we recognize that we have an unmanageable debt? Shouldn’t we figure out how we got here so fast and so high at 31 and a half trillion dollars? Trajectory is out of sight if we don’t do something. So I want to give both sides, negotiating teams, credit. When you have Garret Graves and- Congressman Graves and his team, on behalf of Kevin McCarthy, did a wonderful job. And when you have basically- you have Shalanda Young, you have Steve Ricchetti, and Louisa Terrell working on behalf of the president. Those were good people that worked together to make this happen. It’s a shame that we didn’t acknowledge it much quicker. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah. 

SEN. MANCHIN: Three months ago, at least, and not come down to brinksmanship when it kind of throws the uncertainty into the market, to where here we are the reserve currency of the world market- the reserve currency of the world has to have stability where people believe that it’s- it’s safe. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. MANCHIN: You can’t play these games.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Agreed. Well, you- you also got an energy project tucked into this, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which cuts through your state. It’s also cutting through Virginia and Senator Tim Kaine said this was a slimy way to handle it. That was his word, because it bypasses the courts and has the government seizing land from people in a hard hit part of his state. How do you respond to that?

SEN. MANCHIN: Well, first of all, Tim Kaine is my dear friend and a good person. He and I were governors together so we understand both of our states very well and the southwest Virginia area he’s talking about is entirely, my entire state is demographics along those lines. First of all, this has been under review for over eight years, eight years. Now, after eight years, basically a lot of this land has already been purchased and people have been paid. Fair market values and they’ve negotiated and paid. Next of all, it’s gone through eight NEPA reviews. Eight. It’s been in the court system nine times. And then on top of that, Margaret, these processes or these projects cannot move forward unless the FERC commission determines there is a need. Now, three times they have issued a need for this product as far as more gas in the market. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

SEN. MANCHIN: Next of all, Jennifer Granholm and this administration came out with a statement saying this is the national interest. The people in the Carolinas are paying 10 times more than we are in West Virginia for the gas we produce. That’s ridiculous for them to have that. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well–

SEN. MANCHIN: A heck of a stranglehold on them, and also helping the rest of the secured national markets as far as energy. You have to be independent. You have to be secured. This is a great project that’s going to help, not only just West Virginia– 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. 

SEN. MANCHIN: But the entire energy security system.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Well, it’s interesting, because last month, you said you were going to block all of Joe Biden’s- President Biden’s EPA nominees until he halts a radical climate agenda. But he just greenlit a whole bunch of fossil fuel projects, including this one. You’ve been very critical of the president in recent months. Does this change your point of view? Are you ready to endorse them?

SEN. MANCHIN: Well, the bottom line is, is that I’m going to work whenever I think that basically we’re moving in the right direction. What you’ve just seen is basically the extremes trying to run this operation, the United States government, from the far left and far right. It was the middle that pulled everybody together. It was basically reacting to the people saying enough is enough.

(CROSSTALK)

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that wasn’t a yes. When I asked you about endorsing him, though.

SEN. MANCHIN: Well, the bottom line is I’m not involved in the political process right now, with all the things that we have to do. Everyone thinks about politics first. I don’t. It’s not about the politics. It’s not about my reelection, or anyone else. We have an awful lot of work to do. And we still have permitting to get done. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. MANCHIN: We have geopolitical unrest around the world. We have to support Ukraine, we have to make sure that we get our financial house in order and get inflation down. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. 

SEN. MANCHIN: But if you throw politics in, I’ll guarantee it. You won’t get any decisions on any of that. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. 

SEN. MANCHIN: I don’t think we would have got this bill done.

MARGARET BRENNAN: To get all those permitting issues done. Because you only got a fraction of them in this bill. You want things that will help speed up energy infrastructure permitting for both fossil fuels and for clean energy. Do you need a second term? 

SEN. MANCHIN: Absolutely.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you need a second term to get those things done? I mean, another term- excuse me, are you running for reelection?

SEN. MANCHIN:  Well we basically- you got to continue to keep working. We can get it done now. We’re on the brink of getting it done right now. We coulda got it done last year, but politics entered into and we couldn’t. And now here we are, we got part of it done. We got basically some reforms done as far as permitting. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

SEN. MANCHIN: And now what we can do is basically make sure that we’re able to get the pipelines and the delivery system we need for clean fossil all over this country to be energy independent, and also be able to invest in the technologies- the cleaner technologies with- with less carbon, but we’re gonna need more transmission. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you know, why–  

SEN. MANCHIN: I’m for all in above energy policy.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you know why I asked it that way because–

SEN. MANCHIN: I can support this from wherever I’m at.

(CROSSTALK)

MARGARET BRENNAN: From wherever you’re at. You’re leaving your options– 

SEN. MANCHIN: Yeah I know. I know exactly why.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You know why. Because, Jim Justice, your governor, Republican- he is coming for your job. He has declared. And I know you have said you are going to take your time till the end of the year to decide. But doesn’t he have- at least six month advantage here? Don’t you need to tell people what your plans are?

SEN. MANCHIN: Well, here’s the thing, Margaret, you just said- I’m- I’m- about my job. My job is to do what I can to help the people of West Virginia and support this great country of ours and defend the Constitution. That’s truly the primary cause of my job. It’s not for me to get reelected.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

SEN. MANCHIN: Now, if I run, I’m gonna win. And I’m looking at everything I can to basically help my country to be stronger, to be more moderate, more centrist governed, than anything I’ve ever done. That’s what my focus is. Because I know that’s where good decisions- look what happened here. We got clear to the brink. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen from the House working with the Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries and his team working with Kevin McCarthy and his team to make something happen. I read about that when it used to be Tip O’Neill and President Reagan. Now I’ve seen it. And I’ve seen also, President Biden and his team come back to the middle getting away from where the left have pushed them. So basically, it’s the middle that brought them together.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well- that’s what- Joe Manchin there’s always more to talk to you– 

SEN. MANCHIN: That’s where we are.

MARGARET BRENNAN: More to talk to you about. And I want you to come back to talk to us when you make a decision about whether you’re running for reelection. Or that other option you said last time you’re leaving open, possibly. A presidential run.

SEN. MANCHIN: Everything’s open, everything’s on the table and nothing off the table. But hey Margaret, one thing I wanted to mention to you, we need a- we need a risk assessment team, a risk management team. For the United States of America to get to this brinksmanship every time- we should be taking this on seriously every day. What’s the risk we’re taking if we don’t do that–

(CROSSTALK)

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk- I want to talk about that with one of our upcoming guests, the CEO of Bank of America, so stay with us.

The post Transcript: Sen. Joe Manchin on “Face the Nation,” June 4, 2023 appeared first on My Blog.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York Rep. French Hill, Republican of Arkansas Austan Goolsbee, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago president and CEO CBS News cybersecurity expert Christopher Krebs 

Click here to browse full transcripts of “Face the Nation.”    

MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m Margaret Brennan in Washington.

And this week on Face the Nation: Breaking overnight, the White House and congressional Republicans reach a deal in principle on the debt limit. But will they find the votes to pass it in time to head off a default?

Finally, a breakthrough in Washington. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters late last night that he and President Biden had agreed on a two- year post-2024 election extension of the nation’s debt limit and that both sides had made concessions.

(Begin VT)

REPRESENTATIVE KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-California): Yes, historic reductions in spending, consequential reforms that will lift people out of poverty into the work force, rein in government overreach.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: But the plan has a potential for a resounding round of no’s on both the far right and the far left in the House, exactly what President Biden feared earlier in the week.

(Begin VT)

JOE BIDEN (President of the United States): We have to be in a position where we can sell it to our constituencies. We have a pretty well-divided House, almost down the middle. And it’s not too different in the Senate.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: We will talk to the top Democrat in the House, Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and to an ally of McCarthy’s, Congressman French Hill.

Plus, Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee will weigh in on the economic impact.

Then: a closer look at the growing concerns over A.I. with the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith and analysis from CBS News cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs.

And a tribute to the class of 2023, a generation of graduates who faced down some unprecedented challenges.

(Begin VT)

JIM RYAN (President, University of Virginia): You can do hard things because you have already done hard things.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s all just ahead on Face the Nation.

Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation.

With just eight days to go before Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says the U.S. will be forced to default on its spending obligations, there is a deal in principle to head off the crisis. The bill is still being written, and we are short on details at this point, but it will include a temporary cap on spending in areas other than defense, veterans or entitlements.

The plan would expand work requirements for able-bodied adults who receive some government benefits, including food stamps, but not for Medicaid recipients. And it calls for clawing back some unspent money from COVID relief funds.

Leaders in both the House and Senate will now have to convince their members to vote for the bill. And we are seeing signs just in the last hour that it could be a tough challenge for both sides.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries joins us now from his district in Brooklyn.

Good morning to you.

Let’s get straight to it. Can you deliver a majority of Democrats?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-New York): Well, good morning Margaret.

I do look forward to the White House briefing that’s going to take place later on this afternoon with the House Democratic Caucus. We’ll be able to have a robust discussion.

But let me say this. President Biden has delivered a result that avoids a catastrophic default, that prevents us from our economy crashing, and stops the extreme MAGA Republicans from triggering a job-killing recession, which, as we’ve seen over the last week or two, increasingly seemed to have been a position that they were taking for political reasons.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK, well, we’ll only avoid a default if you can get the votes to get it through.

Speaker McCarthy predicted this morning he can get a majority of Republicans, he says. Some Democrats, he thinks, will vote for it. But he also quoted something he says you told him. Listen.

(Begin VT)

REPRESENTATIVE KEVIN MCCARTHY: I think there’s going to be a lot of Democrats who vote for it too. Right now, the Democrats are very upset. But one thing Hakeem told me, there’s nothing in the bill for them. There’s not one thing in the bill for Democrats.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you say that? And how do you convince Democrats?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: I have no idea what he’s talking about, particularly because I have not been able to review the actual legislative text. All that we’ve reached is an agreement in principle.

Now, what I have consistently said both privately and…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Did you even talk to him?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: I talked to him yesterday afternoon.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: But I haven’t talked to him since that point in time.

What I have consistently said, however, privately and publicly, was that the extreme MAGA Republican negotiating position, and that the extreme bill that they passed on April 26, the default on America act, contained nothing that was consistent with Democratic values or American values.

And it was unreasonable to think that that negotiating position was going to be able to result in a resolution…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: … that would make sense for the American people, when he understood and everyone understood that a bipartisan resolution was the only way forward to avoid a catastrophic default.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK. OK. And that’s a bill that is going nowhere.

In terms of the one that was or is being written as we speak, the head of the Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, said on CNN this morning, you need to worry about the left flank of the party. She has 102 members in that caucus. How many Democratic defections do you expect?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, I have had several conversations with Pramila Jayapal over the last several days, and will continue to do so. And I expect that she’ll be part of the caucus briefing that takes place later on today.

Here’s what I can say is that the agreement that was reached in principle by President Biden does several important things. In addition to avoiding a devastating default that would hurt everyday Americans, it protects Social Security.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: It protects Medicare. It protects Medicaid. It protects veterans. It protects the American people from the type of devastating spending cuts that they were…

MARGARET BRENNAN: She’s concerned about environmental — environmental policy changes and food stamps.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Hold on. It protects — hold — hold on. I will get to that.

It protects the American people from the types of devastating spending cuts that were proposed by Republicans in their default on America act. Those are incredibly significant steps forward.

Now, in terms of the permitting issue, I haven’t had the opportunity, nor have any of us had the opportunity to review what the proposed language may ultimately be in terms of the permitting situation.

In terms of SNAP, as I understand it — and, again, we’ll have the opportunity to review that language in a few hours, when it is released, but, as I understand it, it will actually result in an expansion of eligibility for people like veterans and the homeless because of changes made to exemptions as a result of what will be in this agreement, in terms of the original 1996 law that was passed.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, according to the White House, it is going to relax work requirements for veterans and homeless people, but it still pushes up the age to 54 from 49.

Are you implying — do you mean to say here that the White House hasn’t kept you fully briefed on the details?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: The White House has, of course, kept all of us fully briefed every step of the way.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: However, I do think that, as the White House has indicated, this is only an agreement in principle.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: There will not be a final agreement until we all are able to review the actual legislative text.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

The White House is still calling this a budget deal and a separate debt limit increase, but McCarthy says it’s a 150-page bill and not a clean debt ceiling increase. Is this one vote, one bill?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, that remains to be seen. And, ultimately, that’s a decision that House Republicans have as their prerogative to make.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: I do hope and expect to see a significant number of House Republicans voting for this agreement.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: It’s my understanding that they are committed to producing at least 150 votes, if not more.

They were the ones who negotiated this agreement with the White House. And I expect that they will provide a significant number of votes to get it over the finish line.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK, so 150 Republicans. You need something in the range of 70 Democrats. Do you think you have that?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, I do expect that there will be Democratic support once we have the ability to actually be fully briefed by the White House.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: But I’m not going to predict what those numbers may ultimately look like.

We have to go through a process consistent with respecting every single member…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: … of the House of Representatives and their ability to fully understand the resolution that has been reached.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

Well, Jim Himes of Connecticut, not a progressive, said this morning: “If this vote fails, I think we’re going to see the kind of market reaction that none of us want to see.”

Can you deliver a vote? Can you deliver someone like him? Can you deliver a vote that wins on the first try? He’s talking about a market crash.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, we have to, of course, avoid a market crash. We have to avoid tanking the economy. We have to avoid a default.

The reason why we’re in this situation from the very beginning is that extreme MAGA Republicans made the determination…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: … that they were going to use the possibility of default to hold the economy and everyday Americans hostage, period, full stop.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. Understood. But that’s — that’s where we are right now.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: And that’s why — that’s why…

MARGARET BRENNAN: And that negotiation happened.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: That’s right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You negotiated with them. So here we are.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: And that’s why I’m — and that’s — well, that’s why I’m thankful that President Biden has reached a resolution.

And that’s also why I’m thankful that, notwithstanding the fact that they were trying to jam 10-year spending caps…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: … down the throats of the American people, we were able to apparently match up a freeze in spending consistent with 2023 levels…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well…

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: … 2023 levels, not the 2022 levels that what they were trying to extract…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes, there’s some disagreement.

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: … and make sure that we avoided a catastrophic default.

MARGARET BRENNAN: There’s some disagreement on those, but we don’t have the text. So we will just have to wait on that.

But I want to ask about the backup plan; 213 Democrats voted for this discharge petition, this idea of being able to vote to lift the debt ceiling, even if Republicans — if the Republican leader doesn’t do it. You’d need five Republicans. Can you do that? Can you guarantee people that we will not see a default?

REPRESENTATIVE HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Hakeem Jeffries, glad to have you with us. Hopefully, we see you here in person next time.

We got a lot of work ahead in Congress and also on the Democratic side of – – Republican side of the aisle.

And that’s where we’re turning now, to Arkansas Republican Congressman French Hill, who joins us from Little Rock.

Good morning to you, sir.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL (R-Arkansas): Margaret, good to be with you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Let’s pick up where we left off. The leader says 150 Republican votes can be delivered by the GOP. Do you have those votes for this deal?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: I feel confident that we’ll have those votes after people review the text, talk with their colleagues, compare it to our goals.

Speaker McCarthy is the only person who’s demonstrated urgency on this point, starting when he was sworn in, and starting with this first meeting with President Biden to get to a sensible and responsible increase to the debt ceiling.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: He had two red lines, Margaret…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: … no tax increase and not a clean debt ceiling. And I think he’s achieved that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK. So it will be just one bill, one vote?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: That’s my view.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK. That decision has been made, it sounds like, based on what you’re indicating here.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: In terms of the votes, though, you still have to be able to deliver those 150 Republicans to vote this through.

Hakeem Jeffries says he can get the Democrats in line. We’ll see. Can you guarantee that this vote will happen and will succeed on first try?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: I believe it will.

I will tell you why. We had our plan, which we passed, as you noted, on April 26, with the full support of the American…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: … people to stop the avalanche of spending. And each component we had of limiting the rate of growth limiting the amount of spending…

(CROSSTALK)

MARGARET BRENNAN: But that — but that’s past tense. I don’t want to talk about the past tense. That bill’s dead.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: No, no, no, it’s not past — no, no, no, it’s not…

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re talking about the deal that just was brokered.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: No, no, no, it’s not past tense.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk about whether you can actually deliver that on Wednesday.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: We can. We can.

MARGARET BRENNAN: This Wednesday is when the speaker says it will happen on this tentative agreement.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: OK, well, my point is that it’s not past tense.

Each of the components we had in the bill on the 26th is reflected in this negotiated deal and principle that the speaker achieved with President Biden. And that’s why I believe that we’ll have those votes on Wednesday, because we limit the rate of growth, we cut spending, we claw back unneeded spending and recision, we stop unnecessary spending, and we get our economy growing with regulatory relief and by encouraging more people back to work.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

Well, Chip Roy and others from the Freedom Caucus said they don’t even want to see the vote happen, and they’re going to try to block it.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: OK. Well, they need to read the text and visit with their colleagues.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Have you read it? Because we haven’t.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: This is a — not a — no, I’m going to read it this afternoon…

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: … when it’s posted on the House Web site.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

So, in terms of what is being drafted, there’s differences here in terms of spending freezes, and which year we’re comparing it to. The spin for the Republicans and Democrats is very different on this. What is actually going into the text?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, we’re going to limit the rate of spending growth for nondefense, nonveteran spending. It will be at FY22 levels. Defense and Veterans will be at FY23 levels, and then we capped the growth right and spending 1 percent a year for six years.

That was a key component in the April 26 bill when we offered 1 percent of growth for 10 years. We also are going to go to a Massie-Emmer approach on appropriations bills, which finally opens up and gives strength to the appropriations process, that if all 12 bills are not passed by September 30, then we go to a continuing resolution at 99 percent of current year spending levels.

That’s an immense incentive for the Congress to do its work and pass all 12 bills in the House and the Senate.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: And that’s the spending issue. And then we — we claw back, as you noted, COVID relief money, other recisions.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: We stop the first year of the 10-year increase in the IRS budget. That’s nearly $2 billion of spending stopped of about $80 billion that was to be spent over 10 years for hiring IRS agents.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

Well, we will wait to see that text as well.

I want to get to what you were just talking about in terms of freezes. I mean, every American knows that — that your dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to because of inflation. This may be a problem for you in the Senate, because we already have Republican Senator Lindsey Graham criticizing this deal and the defense increase, as you referred to it, because it doesn’t keep up with inflation.

How do you sell that?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, inflation is…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because he just — he’s — he’s said…

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: … that national security threats are increasing, and this is a disaster for the Navy and a win for China and Putin. How do you respond to that?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, first, I think that’s why Speaker McCarthy and President Biden agreed to the $888 billion spending level, which was the president’s level, plus 3 percent inflation, was exactly that point contained in this negotiated deal.

I also would say, look, we’ve had a gross overreaction in fiscal and monetary policy since the pandemic. And that’s why House Republicans are trying to slow the growth in spending and get back to normal before the pandemic, and all areas are going to have to sacrifice.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: But, look, the speaker and the president agree. We want to preserve defense, preserve — preserve veterans, and take Social Security and Medicare off the table.

And those are big chunks of the federal budget.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, this has to make it through the House and then through the Senate.

So, it sounds like there’s still a lot of convincing you need to do on those points you just laid out.

Are you worried that the scope of this isn’t big enough for you to then go back and sell to some of the skeptical members of your caucus who wanted to see bigger reductions?

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, I’m one of those people that wanted bigger reductions. But I also recognize we control only the House of Representatives. We’ve got to get it through the Senate, as you note, and the Biden administration controls the central government here.

If they were so concerned about the debt ceiling, they could have negotiated with McCarthy a lot earlier, or they could have even raised the debt ceiling when they controlled both branches of the House and Senate and the federal government in December. But they didn’t.

So this is the world we have. It’s not the spending cuts I would prefer. But when you look at pay-go on regulatory costs, that’s a big change. When you look at the Massie-Emmer note…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: … on 99 percent C.R. on appropriations, that’s a big change.

So I think we’re in the absolute right direction. And it absolutely follows the goals of House Republicans as laid out on April 26.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

All right, Congressman, thank you very much for coming on, giving us a glimpse into what Republicans are putting on paper right now.

Face the Nation will be back in a minute. Stay with us.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to Austan Goolsbee, who is the current president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a former White House economic adviser in the Obama administration.

It’s good to talk to you.

I know you were chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers when we came to the brink back in — in 2011. Markets are closed tomorrow, but we are still very close to that default deadline. How dangerous is the territory we are in, even with this tentative deal?

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE (President, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago): Well, it’s definitely a little dangerous.

As — as Chair Powell has stated from the beginning, we must raise the debt ceiling. Now, the fiscal decisions, of course, are between Congress and the president. And however they sort it out is — is good by us.

But if you — if you did not do that, the consequences for the financial system and for the broader economy would be extremely negative.

MARGARET BRENNAN: How important is it that this vote succeeds on the first try?

AUSTAN AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: I know — like I say, this is a fiscal decision left to Congress and the president. So, I — I — it’s — it wouldn’t be the place…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: … for anybody from the Fed to be saying what — what they should pass or — or how they should vote.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: But I — I liken it to there’s a legitimate argument, if you’re trying to lose weight what, what can you eat and how much exercise.

Everybody should be able to agree that the first strategy should not be cutting off your toe.

(LAUGHTER)

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: Because that doesn’t save much weight, and it’s really painful.

(LAUGHTER)

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: And that’s — that’s kind of where the debt ceiling is.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Treasury Secretary Yellen said it’s — it’s already kind of painful, because she’s already seeing borrowing costs and that — go up and that there is a cost to being in this place of brinksmanship.

What is — can you in any way quantify what the impact is to the economy being in the place we are?

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: Yes, look, Margaret, you raise a great point that even the anticipation of these problems does have consequences on the economy and does have consequences on financial markets.

In a way, this couldn’t be happening at a worse time. So, I’m — I’m definitely heartened that you saw both parties there on the program expressing confidence that they’re going to be able to raise the debt ceiling, and — and — because if you — if you just look at what’s happening to the rates, you already see that — that there’s fear and uncertainty.

But there are multiple steps that can get worse. So,if you have banks already on edge because of the financial and — and banking stresses that we’ve seen over the last couple of months, taking the safest asset on anyone’s balance sheet, which is U.S. Treasuries, and kind of calling it into question is not good for the banking system, is not good for lending, is not good for the real economy.

And you’ll start to get into other problems. Like, if the rating agencies downgrade…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: … U.S. Treasuries again, then that could raise the interest rates we have to pay even more.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: And you get into secondary problems, like there are insurance companies that aren’t allowed to hold things that — whose rating isn’t high enough. So let’s just avoid it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: Let’s just raise the debt ceiling and — and get on to the next thing.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

And — and I understand that you’re in a very different role now at — at the Fed than you were back then, but this is a complicated economic environment we are in. Can you say at this point — I know you haven’t seen the text — no one has — what this will do to the fight against inflation and some of the choices you will have to make at the Fed?

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: Well, look, as I say, raising the debt ceiling and decisions about the budget have — that — that’s none of the Fed’s business.

The law gives the Fed two jobs, maximize employment, stabilize prices. We’ve done very well on the employment side. We’re improving on the inflation side, but we have not succeeded. Inflation’s still well higher than where we want it to be.

So, at — at a moment of banking crisis, it will be a great relief if we raise the debt ceiling. We can go back to dealing with the — with the matters at hand, which are the real economy side of — of employment and inflation.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you have a sense yet of whether you personally want to raise interest rates again at this next June meeting?

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: Well, as a voting member of the FOMC, I have tried not — to make it a point not to prejudge and make decisions when you’re still weeks out from the meeting.

And we are going to get a lot of important data between now and then. I think the part that makes this job difficult is, you got two simple goals, but the actions that the Fed takes take months or even years to work their way through the system. So the Fed has raised the interest rate by 5 full percentage points over the last year.

That’s the fastest increase in decades, rivaling ever. And some part of that still has to work its way through the system.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: So, there’s no doubt inflation is too high still. It has come down. And we’re just trying to manage, can we get inflation down…

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: … without starting a recession?

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right.

AUSTAN GOOLSBEE: There are people who say we cannot. But I think we — that — that we can. And that’s for sure the goal.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, President Goolsbee, thank you for your time.

And we’ll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: On this Memorial Day weekend, we want to pause and pay tribute to those who lost their lives protecting our country.

We would not be here today without them. And we thank them for their service.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: We will be right back with a lot more Face the Nation.

Stay with us.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to Face the Nation.

Artificial intelligence is raising concerns on a number of fronts, even among the companies who have devoted considerable resources towards its development.

We spoke with Microsoft president Brad Smith late last week.

(Begin VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: You said: “A.I. offers perhaps even more potential for the good of humanity than any invention that has preceded it.”

I mean, that’s an incredible statement.

BRAD SMITH (Vice Chair and President, Microsoft): It’s fundamentally an invention that can help us all do research, learn more, communicate more, sift through data better.

And its uses are almost ubiquitous, in medicine, in drug discovery, in diagnosing diseases, in scrambling the resources of, say, the Red Cross or others in a disaster, to find those who are most vulnerable where buildings have collapsed.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Data crunching, essentially?

BRAD SMITH: That’s one part of it.

It identifies patterns in data that may be difficult for humans to access. But, in a sense, it’s going to impact all of our lives in a multiple of different ways. So, think about it as the next step in our ability to learn, communicate, express ourselves.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But what should American consumers know about artificial intelligence?

BRAD SMITH: It’s a co-pilot, if you will, to help us do things.

I think one good thing for everyone to know is, it’s already part of our lives. If you have a Roomba at home, it finds its way around your kitchen using artificial intelligence to learn what to bump into and how to get around it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: OK. Mm-hmm.

BRAD SMITH: So it isn’t necessarily as mysterious as we sometimes think.

And yet, at the same time, it is getting more powerful. It can do much more to help us, and I think the other thing that all of us should think about as Americans is, like any powerful technology, we need to keep it under human control. We need to keep — keep it safe. And that will require the work of companies that create it, that use it. It will require, I think, a level of law and regulation as well.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You just made a big jump from a Roomba…

(LAUGHTER)

BRAD SMITH: Yes, I did.

MARGARET BRENNAN: … to the machine takeover here.

I mean, when you say that you have to make sure humanity has control — in control here, is there really a risk that it won’t be?

BRAD SMITH: Whenever you have something that fundamentally can do good, but could also go and do harm, you put a braking mechanism in place. You put a safety brake, an emergency brake.

We should think about A.I. the same way.

MARGARET BRENNAN: What’s the most promising concept you’ve seen?

BRAD SMITH: Well, I do love these examples where A.I. can detect a disease, a form of cancer, before the human eye or other human doctors might.

You take something like pancreatic cancer. You know, it is so small when it begins that typically it’s undetectable to the human eyes of doctors. And yet A.I. is very good at sifting through patterns and detecting things and flagging them.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So what’s the next interface that people should expect?

BRAD SMITH: Think of the ability to, in effect, tell a computer what you want it to do. You don’t need to learn to code. You can simply say, can you go find information about whether this restaurant is open on Monday nights, and, if so, does it take reservations and how do I make one?

You can write that in one sentence and get all of the information back. You no longer have to spend your time clicking on links and finding answers. Take that example and generalize further. You want help. You have writer’s block. You’ve got to write a memo. You need to sift through your e-mail. You want to create a PowerPoint slide.

You can tell a computer what you want it to do. As I say, we’re — we create what we call a co-pilot. You don’t have to know how to do everything. You just have to know what you want done and how to ask for it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: How do you know the — the information is accurate?

BRAD SMITH: I do think that it’s, in part, based on using your brain.

I have often found, in the world of technology, if something doesn’t sound right, you should double-check. That will still be true.

MARGARET BRENNAN: On the concerning side of the ledger, Goldman Sachs predicted A.I.’s ascendance will disrupt 300 million jobs here in the U.S. and in Europe. How fast is this going to happen?

BRAD SMITH: It will be years, not decades, although things will progress over decades as well.

There will be some new jobs that will be created. There are jobs that exist today that didn’t exist a year ago in this field. And there will be some jobs that are displaced. There always are.

But I think, for most of us, the way we work will change. This will be a new skill set we’ll need to, frankly, develop and acquire.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You have a very deep concern here about deepfakes.

Now, this is content that looks realistic, but is completely computer- generated. On Monday, there was a photo that actually moved the markets. It was a fake photo, it looked real, of an explosion near the Pentagon. And it was potentially partially created by A.I.

The market sold off quickly. It was fact-checked.

BRAD SMITH: Yes. Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But that image was put out there from an account that looked legitimate as well.

So how do you stop something like this from happening?

BRAD SMITH: We’ll need a system that we and so many others have been working to develop that protects content, that puts a watermark on it so that, if somebody alters it, if somebody removes the watermark, if they do that to try to deceive or defraud someone, first of all, they’re doing something that the law makes unlawful.

We may need some new law to do that. But, second, we can then use the power of A.I. to detect when that happens.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So that means a news organization like CBS would have video that somehow could be identified, besides our little eye icon, something embedded in there that your computers would see…

BRAD SMITH: Yes, absolutely.

MARGARET BRENNAN: … to say this is real?

BRAD SMITH: Yes, that is exactly where this should go.

And I would guess and hope that CBS will be absolutely at the forefront of this. You embed what we call metadata. It’s part of the file. If it’s removed, we’re able to detect it. If there’s an altered version, we, in effect, create a hash. Think of it like the fingerprint of something. And then we can look for that fingerprint across the Internet.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask about another topic here that’s related.

The RNC — politics — they put out an attack ad using A.I., and I know we have video of it. It was meant to mimic a news report from the future, from 2024. It said, Joe Biden won the election, and then it shows this dystopia.

And in teeny, tiny little script in the upper left hand corner, it says, generated by A.I. Is that sufficient?

BRAD SMITH: I do think that there is some real virtue in telling the public when they are seeing content that has been generated by A.I., instead of a human being, especially if it is designed to look like a human being, a human face or voice, so that people know, no, that’s not the real person.

We, I think, will need some new standards in that space.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Who sets that?

BRAD SMITH: This, I think, is one of the issues that we’re going to need to discuss together and find a path through.

Now, we do need to balance that. We live in a country that, I think quite rightly, prides itself on free expression.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re on the cusp of a presidential election year. How much of a factor is this going to be, these deepfakes and misleading ads?

BRAD SMITH: Well, I think there is an opportunity to take real steps in 2023, so that we have guardrails in place for 2024, so that we are identifying, in my view, especially when we’re seeing foreign cyber influence operations from a Russia, a China or Iran, that is pumping out information that they know is false and is designed to deceive, including using artificial intelligence.

And that will require the tech sector coming together with government, and it really will require more than one government. This needs to be an international initiative. But we’ve done that in recent years in other spaces. We can do it again, and I think we should.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which made ChatGPT, testified recently before Congress and recommended an entirely new federal agency be set up to oversee A.I.

You like this idea.

BRAD SMITH: Yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But it’s also implying that the federal government is not currently up to the task.

BRAD SMITH: We do need more than we have.

We need our existing laws to apply. They need to be enforced. But, especially when it comes to these most powerful models, when it comes to the protection of the nation’s security, I do think we would benefit from a new agency, a new licensing system, something that would ensure not only that these models are developed safely, but they’re deployed in, say, large data centers where they can be protected from cybersecurity, physical security and national security threats.

MARGARET BRENNAN: How do you convince people that this isn’t the big bad tech giant of Microsoft setting the rules of the road and running the little guys off of it?

BRAD SMITH: We’re not suggesting that any single company or the entire industry together should be the one to set the rules.

We should have the United States government, elected by the American people, setting the rules of the road, and we should all be obliged to follow them. Look, we need rules, we need laws, we need responsibility, and we need it quickly.

MARGARET BRENNAN: There were a number of tech leaders, including Elon Musk, and one of the co-founders of — of Apple, Steve Wozniak, who called publicly for a six-month pause in A.I. systems that are more powerful than GPT-4 or have governments institute a kind of moratorium until there are safety protocols in place.

Is there something to that? Do we need to tap the brakes a bit here?

BRAD SMITH: I’m not inclined to think that that’s the answer. First of all, it will take 12 months to get the government to debate whether to decide whether to have a pause that will last for six months.

(LAUGHTER)

BRAD SMITH: But I think the more important question is, look, what’s going to happen in six months that’s different from today?

How would we use the six months to put in place the guardrails that would protect safety and the like? Well, let’s go do that. Rather than slow down the pace of technology, which I think is extraordinarily difficult — I don’t think China’s going to jump on that bandwagon — let’s use six months to go faster.

Let’s adopt an executive order here for the federal government, where the government itself says it’s only going to buy A.I. services in certain categories, say, from companies that are implementing A.I. safety protocols and the like. You know, let’s start to get some legislation moving.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you think this will happen, some — some regulation or some legislation in the year ahead?

BRAD SMITH: I do.

The world is moving forward. Let’s make sure that the United States at least keeps pace with the rest of the world.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: You can see our full conversation with Microsoft president Brad Smith on our YouTube channel.

We will be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: We want to turn now to Chris Krebs. He was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Trump administration and is now a CBS News cybersecurity expert and analyst.

Good morning to you.

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: Good morning, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to start on some of the other news from Microsoft within the past days, which is that they, alongside U.S. intelligence, revealed the discovery of malware from a state-sponsored Chinese actor embedded in U.S. critical infrastructure that was meant to shut down communications between the U.S. and Asia in the event of a conflict.

That sounds a lot like planning for a potential invasion of Taiwan to a lot of analysts. How significant a breach was this?

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: Well, I think it’s significant, in the fact that it’s an escalation or evolution of Chinese capabilities.

I think it’s no surprise that China is in the cyber-offensive operations game. Ten years ago, Mandiant, a cybersecurity company, released a report called APT1. They talked about their espionage capabilities. That same year, there’s evidence that they were in U.S. gas and oil systems and stealing network schematics.

So, from a pure cyber play perspective, China is quite capable. Even — even this year, Director Wray of the FBI said that the Chinese have 50 hackers to every one FBI agent. So they are quite capable.

But, to your point, what’s different about this report is, it shows operational preparation of the battlefield. It shows that they’re getting in place, that, if tensions continue to escalate with Taiwan, they are in a position to cut off lines of communication, logistics and the ability of the United States to support and defend Taiwan.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes, this was in Guam, which is a — there’s a U.S. military installation there in the Pacific, that would be very key in the event that you just laid out there.

But, broadly speaking, how vulnerable is U.S. infrastructure to these kinds of attacks?

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: Well, I mean, I think, just as Brad Smith pointed out in the previous segment, is that we are using technology in virtually every aspect of our lives, from day-to-day to operational capabilities and critical infrastructure.

So we are highly dependent upon technologies. And we don’t always implement them in the proper way. And there are vulnerabilities. And there are misconfigurations that we have seen bad guys from criminals to state actors take advantage of.

But I think we have seen an improvement in resilience. And I think the Ukrainians’ performance in the face of a Russian cyber onslaught last year shows that you can be resilient, you can prepare, given the right information and the right time and investments to secure and harden and improve systems.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Microsoft is proposing an entirely new branch agency, government agency, be set up to regulate A.I. Do you think we’re at that point?

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: I called for the creation of a digital agency last year in a keynote I gave at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

I think we are well past the time that the U.S. government needs to rethink how it engages and creates market interventions on technology, cyber disinformation and beyond. And A.I. is probably that kind of forcing function that will push us there.

And there is precedent for reshaping government to meet emerging risks, 1939, the Federal Reorganization Act. The government was reorganized, 2001 in the wake of 9/11, we reorganized. I think we’re on the cusp of that. And I think the issue is that government is not keeping pace with technological development…

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: .. and the harms that we’re seeing in society.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, the U.S., the Biden administration is looking to restrict the sale of certain technologies, export controls, to adversaries like China, for example.

But the CEO of some — some of these companies, they don’t — they don’t like it. Nvidia, which is an A.I. chipmaker, they have pushed back, saying the Chinese will just build their own chips.

What do you think of this solution of trying to export-control?

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: Well, they — China is a significant market for many American companies, whether it’s on Wall Street or technology and chip companies.

I think the current policy to restrict the more mature and advanced chips to the Chinese market, I think it’s a smart policy decision. I think it maintains European and American geopolitical competition — competitive posture. I think we need to think, though, how does this apply in an A.I. model perspective?

And I think that’s, in part, what Brad was getting at with his policy agenda. And that is going to take quite some time from a legal and regulatory framework to really scope these things out and figure out, at what points of the economy do we make those interventions?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right,so not a quick timeline to turn that around.

What do you think?

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: Not at all.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I mean, hearing a tech giant ask to be regulated is unusual, to say the least. What are we to make of that?

CHRISTOPHER KREBS: Well, if you kind of sit back and look at it, the tech industry is one of the least directly regulated.

There are secondary regulations that come in through the New York State Department of Financial Services, for instance, and other California laws. But I think, when you see this sort of push for regulation, in part, it says that they’re concerned, they’re worried, but they’re also looking for, I think, a little bit of protection.

And I think, if you step back and look at kind of the range of risks that you may encounter across A.I., there are very mundane risks that do not require additional regulation. And Brad talked about that. And that’s criminals using A.I. to build the better mousetrap. It’s students using A.I. to cheat.

But as you get further up the risk hierarchy, there is disinformation. There’s autonomous weapons systems that will have A.I. built in. And then you kind of get to that point of, as Elon Musk has talked about, that super intelligence turning into the Terminator. There are areas, particularly, I think, on the models, not necessarily implementations in the apps, but the actual learning large language models that are driving a lot of the innovation right now, that’s an opportunity to look at licensing.

And, in part, I think what they’re trying to achieve is some indemnification that, hey, we — we’re playing by the rules. You have put in place guardrails. You have reviewed our models. And, if it’s abused by someone else outside of our control, then that’s not — that’s not on us.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Protect themselves as well.

Chris Krebs, always good to get your analysis.

We will be back in a moment.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: This Memorial Day weekend, we’d also like to pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of college graduates this year who may be better prepared for real life than those before them.

(Begin VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: This spring, on college campuses from coast to coast, reminders of the unprecedented challenges faced by the class of 2023.

KAMALA HARRIS (Vice President of the United States): A once-in-a-century global pandemic took millions of lives and disrupted life for billions more. America ended our longest war, and Russia launched the first major ground war in Europe since World War II.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Some faced more adversity than others. Graduates at the University of Idaho spent an agonizing six weeks without an arrest in the stabbing deaths of four of their fellow students last November.

LOUIS FREEH (Former FBI Director): You have gone through a fiscal crisis, a pandemic, and a horrific tragedy that could shatter any community, but did not here because of the strength and the work and the love that were shown to you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Tulane students had been looking forward to some normalcy in the fall of 2021 after a long year of COVID restrictions.

What they didn’t expect was an evacuation ahead of what ended up being a Category 4 hurricane.

MICHAEL FITTS (President, Tulane University): This is a class that came back together after being displaced by Hurricane Ida, only to defy expectations, defeat the odds, and question the status quo.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The University of Virginia community lived through the horror of one of its own allegedly murdering three and shooting two others just hours after what would become the school’s last football game of the season.

JIM RYAN (President, University of Virginia): The deaths of three students, Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr., and D’Sean Perry, were devastating. The depth of the loss of these talented and beloved teammates, classmates, and friends is incalculable.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The tragedy, UVA’s President Ryan said, on top of COVID brought more life lessons than could be taught in any classroom.

JIM RYAN: You rose to those challenges with grace and courage. You masked when it mattered and even when it didn’t, because you cared about this community above all else. And when tragedy struck last November, you organized and attended a silent vigil that brought this community together in profound and powerful ways.

MARGARET BRENNAN: UVA’s athletic director, Carla Williams, was invited to deliver the school’s commencement address.

CARLA WILLIAMS (Athletic Director, University of Virginia): I had decided to politely decline, because I just did not know if I had enough left in the tank to give you guys my best. But, as fate would have it, I received a text from D’Sean Perry’s mom, Ms. Happy Perry, asking me if I thought the university would consider allowing her to stand in D’Sean’s place today.

I said: “It’s permissible, but are you sure you can do it?”

She paused and said: “Yes. He would be very proud of me, and I will power through to do it for him.”

It was in that moment that I knew I would be speaking today.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: We thank Carla Williams for her perseverance and for offering this sentiment we wish to pass on to all graduates this year:

(Begin VT)

CARLA WILLIAMS: You are bright and shining examples of the best we have to offer. We need your courageous spirit. We need your innovation. We need your creativity. We need your stubbornness. We need your toughness, your brilliance, your grit.

And we need your compassion. We need each of you, and we need all of you.

(End VT)

MARGARET BRENNAN: We will be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s it for us today. Thank you all for watching.

Until next week, for Face the Nation, I’m Margaret Brennan.

The post Full transcript of “Face the Nation,” May 28, 2023 appeared first on My Blog.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re now joined by Dr. Fiona Hill, a Trump administration National Security Council adviser on Russia, and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan, who is now a CBS News contributor. Good morning. Good to have you both here. Fiona Hill, I’d love to talk to you first. Secretary Blinken admitted Russia is not isolated, it’s getting support from China, it’s getting support from Iran. So, does that mean the West’s main tool here, sanctions, are failing?

FIONA HILL: Well, I think sanctions was never the only tool that we had, I mean, diplomacy, as well as the military support for Ukraine. And I think, you know, what we heard from Secretary Blinken and, you know, the fact that he’s just been at the Munich Security Conference, underscores the fact that we’re going to have to really up our diplomatic game. Because, you know, as you’re suggesting here, a lot of other countries just don’t buy that there’s as big an issue as we see with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I mean, they’re always making comparisons with, you know, the great power competition among the United States and Russia and China and seeing it as part of that. 

And I think, you know, what Secretary Blinken and other members of the administration have been really striving to get across is that it’s not part of that same- the United States isn’t fighting over Ukraine for any kind of competition with China and with Russia. They’re trying to help Ukraine liberate itself. That’s the message that we have to get across. And, frankly, if Russia gets away with a land grab in Ukraine, it makes the world unsafe for every country imaginable that has a territorial dispute, including, of course, all of the neighbors of China in the South China seas and East Asia, and many other countries as well. India, and China have a major dispute in the Himalayas, for example. And what we really have to do is to work with those middle powers, the countries in the UN General Assembly, to make that point that we’re trying to help Ukraine liberate its territory from an unprovoked aggression.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Ambassador, you heard from the Polish Prime Minister, this concern that not just the blast radius from this conflict, but that there will be some pushing of it beyond borders, maybe not over invasion, but destabilization. 

SULLIVAN: Sure. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: When you were in the administration, you left in September, there was talk about the surrounding countries also being targeted by Russia. Do you think that’s underway now?

SULLIVAN: Absolutely. I mean, we’ve seen the- the story earlier this week about a potential effort by the Russians to undermine the government in Moldova. We’ve seen overflights by Russian missiles that were attacking Ukraine that have gone over the territory of other countries that aren’t parties to the conflict. But this is a long standing concern by Poles, by Eastern Europeans, have always felt threatened by that colossus on their eastern border by Russia. They’ve always described it to me as when I was deputy secretary, they felt that they were on the front lines against this Russian- imperialist Russian state.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but this feels differently when you were here with us. Last time, you said when you talked to Secretary Blinken, February 19th of last year, he asks you ‘How are you feeling?’ You said it feels like August 1939. You saw the Polish Prime Minister invoke Hitler.

SULLIVAN: Right- Yes. So, what happened on February 24th last year, Putin pushed all of his chips to the center of the table. He went all in. You’ll recall before February 24th, there were- there was speculation about ‘Yeah, there’ll be maybe a limited incursion into Ukraine.’ Putin went all in he went full World War Two, World War One scale. This is war, and we’re going all in we’re going to take down the Ukrainian government, we’re going to subjugate the Ukrainian people, and by God, we’re going to do with Ukraine what we wish, because Ukraine isn’t a country, Ukraine is part of our “Russkiy Mir.” We’re going to do with it what we wish- what we want to, and you, the United States, EU, NATO, anybody else, you can’t stop us,

MARGARET BRENNAN: And he’s betting on a short attention span here in the West, here in the United States. Vladimir Putin is set to give an address Tuesday, it’s going to be his first State of the Nation since the war began, very same day, President Biden is going to give a speech in Poland. What’s the message you expect, and should be delivered?

HILL: Well, I think what Putin is going to deliver is a message that picks up on what Ambassador Sullivan’s just said, he’s going to depict this as a great patriotic war of you know, they use interchangeably fatherland war, protection of the motherland. In this case, Putin has been actually trying to say that this is the third invasion of Russia, after Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars back in the 1800s, and then Nazi Germany. So, he’s actually portraying this as an existential threat for Russia. So, what we would imagine is that he’s really trying to mobilize the Russian population in support of what he’s depicting as the fight for their lives. Now, President Biden’s gonna have to counter that. We have to counter that narrative, not just in Europe. And you know, as we’ve heard from the Polish Prime Minister, we’ve heard from many other European leaders, they do see things in the same term as a rerun of World War One and World War Two in the sense of an unprovoked aggression by great power in Europe. But they’ve got to basically and President Biden’s got to convince the world, the whole world at this point, not just Europeans, that we’re in a fight to help Ukraine liberate itself and that everything that Putin is saying is a distortion of history, and a fact.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Ambassador when- when you talk about the war in Ukraine, politically here in the United States, President Biden gets attacked by Republicans in particular for being too slow moving to approve certain types of weapons, fighter jets, for example, for a year have been debated about whether to give them or not. Is this too slow moving, if we are actually in this incredibly important moment?

SULLIVAN: Well, it is an incredibly important moment and I think some of the criticism has been fair, it has been, I think the administration, which I was a part until recently, has been a little slow, has been cautious. President Biden, the- the marching orders we got at the start of this conflict was he wanted to do everything we could to support Ukraine, but he didn’t want to work with Russia. And that’s the careful balancing act that we’ve with- the administration has been going through–

MARGARET BRENNAN: But Vladimir Putin doesn’t want a war with the United States either.

SULLIVAN: Well, Vladimir Putin says he’s already at war with the United States. He says the reason that he invaded Ukraine is that Ukraine, put up to it by the United States, was going to invade Russia, Ukraine was going to develop nuclear weapons, the United States and Ukraine were developing bioweapons. The times that he will use the word war, to discuss what’s happening in Ukraine, is when he says the West, the United States and all of its vassals, the word they use, is actually at war with Russia. When he talks about the special military operation, that’s the response by Russia to the war that the United States is already waging, through its Ukrainian proxies, as they say, the United States wants to fight against Russia to the last Ukrainian and it’s- it’s all made up

MARGARET BRENNAN: And those are the words you’re gonna be listening for on Tuesday when he–

SULLIVAN: He’s going to- absolutely. Fiona’s absolutely right. It’s- it’s going to be rallying the Russian- Russian people to- to- and to support the fatherland in this what he considers ‘existential war’ that he’s engaged in in Ukraine.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Hill, I mean Ukraine’s foreign minister said at Munich, ‘the true end to the war will be when Russia’s president comes to key falls to his knees and begs for forgiveness.’ That does not sound like Vladimir Putin.

HILL: No, but perhaps, you know, 90 years from now, some Russian president might do that. And I’m saying 90 years because actually, Ambassador Sullivan and I have some Irish heritage, and it took 90 years for the Queen, Elizabeth the Second, to actually come and ask for forgiveness in Ireland, in a very highly symbolic way for you know, many of the conflicts. It’s not inconceivable that at some point, some Russian leader, not in the immediate future, would in fact ask for forgiveness for what’s been done in Ukraine. We saw German leaders after World War Two, you know, eventually asked for similar forgiveness at war memorials, including in the Soviet Union and in Russia itself. But it is true that when Russia drops as a country, these Imperial aims, then this will finally be over, but it won’t be anytime soon.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you. It’s hard to believe we’re a year into this conflict. We will be back in a moment.

The post Transcript: Fiona Hill and John Sullivan on “Face the Nation,” Feb. 19, 2023 appeared first on My Blog.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who is also a board member at Pfizer, and he joins us this morning from San Francisco. Dr. Gottlieb, good to have you back. You have been on this program warning for some time now that monkeypox was past the point of containment. This week, the Biden administration acknowledged it is a national public health emergency. They added two senior advisors to the White House to run point, what difference does it make now? Can they catch up?

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Well, look, I think they can still catch up. I think there’s a potential to get this back in the box, but it’s going to be very difficult at this point. We’re continuing to look for cases in the community of men who have sex with men. It’s primarily spreading in that community. But there’s no question that it’s spread outside that community at this point. And I think we need to start looking for cases more broadly, we’re looking for cases in that community. So, we’re finding them there. But we need to start looking for cases in the broader community. And that means probably testing anyone who presents with an atypical case of shingles or an atypical case of herpes for monkeypox as well, I think we need to broaden testing. And so far CDC has been reluctant to make that recommendation. I think if we’re gonna contain this and make sure that it doesn’t spread more broadly in the population, we need to start testing more broadly. We have the capacity to do it. Right now, CDC has the capacity to conduct about 80,000 tests a week. They’re doing about 8,000. So, they can broaden this substantially by changing the case definition and–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hmm.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –recommending that more doctors be testing more patients looking for this infection in the community.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, to your point about broader spread. In Illinois, a daycare worker tested positive for monkeypox and exposed children. The FDA are allowing those kids to be vaccinated. Parents about to send their kids back to be- back to school, should they be worried about this now?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Look, I don’t think this is something that people need to be generally worried about, I think that probably the incidence of this infection in the broader community is still very low. So, your- your risk of coming into contact with monkeypox is exceedingly low outside of certain social networks where you see a higher case rate. But if we want to contain this, if we want to prevent this from becoming an endemic virus, we need to be looking more widely for it. And the worst case scenario is that we start testing more broadly. And we don’t find it and that would be reassuring. But we should be doing that. We should also be testing wastewater for monkeypox. That’s something that CDC can turn on instantly, starting to look for monkeypox in wastewater to see if it’s spreading in communities and locations- geographic locations where right now we don’t think it’s spreading, but it could be.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We don’t know what we don’t know. On vaccines we know there is a national shortage. There are two doses of this vaccine that are required. HHS and the FDA said on Thursday that they’re looking at a dose sparing approach to stretch out existing supply. How does that work? What- what does that mean?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Right, so this decision could come as early as this week, and the emergency use author- authorization that they could issue is it flows from the public health emergency that they declared. So, this would be the first practical effect of that public health emergency. What they would do is cut the dose by a fifth, so they only give one fifth of the dose. And instead of injecting it subcutaneously, so below the skin, they’d inject intradermally into the skin, so into the top layer of the skin. So think about a test that you get, for example, for tuberculosis, where you used to get an injection under the skin and you’d get a small welt as they injected fluid under the skin. That’s an intradermal infection. We know that we inject certain things into the skin in that way, it’s very immunogenic, you get a strong immune response. And there’s a lot of data that FDA has looked at, that was actually collected in the context of trying to prepare for smallpox, a potential outcome with smallpox with smallpox might be used as a bioterrorist weapon, and how we would extend doses of the smallpox vaccine. What they learned from those studies is transferable to this vaccine for monkeypox. And so they feel very assured that they can- they can generate a strong immunological response by delivering this intradermally and that would allow them to stretch out the doses of the monkeypox vaccine they have by fivefold, so instead of having about 800,000 doses–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hmm.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –they would have somewhere between four and five million doses immediately.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But this is essentially an experiment in real time?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Well, we- we’ve done it before. I mean, we did it for yellow fever, we’ve done it for Ebola. We’ve done these dose sparing strategies in public health emergencies. It’s unfortunate we find ourselves in this position. There’s decisions that could have been made earlier where we’d have more doses available, but this is a practical solution to a very immediate public health challenge.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about COVID now. President Biden has tested negative twice now. He’s out of isolation. Pfizer makes Paxlovid, the drug that the President took, I know you’re on the board of Pfizer’s we say. The White House says just five to ten percent of cases have these rebounds. But this is a pretty high profile case. Dr. Fauci had a rebound too. Does this indicate anything about how someone fares long term from COVID? What- how do we understand this?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Yeah, well, look, the good news is that the President’s feeling well, my understanding is that he didn’t experience any new symptoms during this second bout of infectivity. So, he was testing positive but didn’t in fact mount new symptoms. And that’s a good sign. I don’t think that he’s going to have any long term implications because he had this second course of illness from- from COVID. We don’t know, but I think the President’s going to do quite well given what we know about his case, and the White House has been very transparent. You are seeing these cases of rebound. You’re right. So far, the data seems to suggest it’s about 5% of cases. You also see rebound with the other drugs and you see it in the- in the setting of natural infection. It’s being studied. Pfizer right now, which as you mentioned, I’m on the board of, is talking to FDA about doing some additional studies on how to approach these cases, whether or not you recourse the therapy or extend the dose, the- the length of treatment–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-Hmm.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –in certain patients. So we don’t know how to– 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –approach this fully right now. But it’s a small percentage of cases where you’re–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –seeing this phenomena.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Quickly. CDC is expected to loosen COVID guidelines for schools. Do you favor this?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Look, I think it reflects the reality that more kids are- have been exposed to this virus. They’re not immunologically naive. We want to do more to keep kids in the classroom and changing attitudes about COVID. I think there are still ways we can keep kids safe in the classrooms, remain vigilant and lift some of these restrictions that have caused a lot of kids to have to miss school days. So the test to stay strategies. We’ve turned over a lot of infections that were asymptomatic and forced kids out of the classroom, quarantining kids who are exposed to COVID. I think they can lift those things at this point. And that seems to be where CDC is heading. But still remain vigilant, for example, notifying parents when there’s a close contact so–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –parents can keep an eye on their children and get them tested.

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right, Dr. Gottlieb, we’ll be watching that. Thank you. We’ll be back in a moment. Stay with us.

The post Transcript: Dr. Scott Gottlieb on “Face the Nation,” Aug. 7, 2022 appeared first on My Blog.

Vice President Kamala HarrisGov. Glenn Youngkin, Republican of VirginiaRep. Jamie Raskin, Democrat of MarylandAlex Holder, documentarian

Click here to browse full transcripts of “Face the Nation.”  

ROBERT COSTA: I’m Robert Costa in Washington.

And this week on Face the Nation: Supporters of abortion rights push for more action from the Biden administration and Congress. And the midterm campaign ramps up.

(Begin VT)

PROTESTER: My body!

PROTESTERS: My choice!

(End VT)

ROBERT COSTA: Outside the White House, frustration over abortion rights intensifies, amid growing confusion over where and how women can safely get abortions.

President Biden’s executive order seeking to expand and strengthen access can only go so far. His solution, this November’s elections.

(Begin VT)

JOE BIDEN (President of the United States): What we’re witnessing wasn’t a constitutional judgment. It was an exercise in raw political power.

We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe as federal law. Your vote can make that a reality.

(End VT)

ROBERT COSTA: We sat down with Vice President Kamala Harris. She will outline the administration’s strategy on abortion rights and more.

(Begin VT)

ROBERT COSTA: Finish this sentence for me: Americans need to vote for Democrats in November because?

KAMALA HARRIS (Vice President of the United States): Our democracy is on the ballot, truly.

(End VT)

ROBERT COSTA: Do Republicans see it differently? We will talk with a rising star in the GOP, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a businessman who won in an upset last November.

We will preview this week’s January 6 hearings with Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin.

Finally, a look at the documentary shot behind the scenes during the final weeks of the Trump administration.

(Begin VT)

DONALD TRUMP (Former President of the United States): It’s not even a contest, but you still need a judge that has courage. And, so far, we haven’t found that judge.

(End VT)

ROBERT COSTA: It’s all just ahead on Face the Nation.

Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation. Margaret is out today.

Last week, we witnessed a series of shocking events around the world. After refusing to resign for months, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson finally succumbed to political pressure and quit. In Japan, a country with some of the toughest gun laws in the world, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed during a campaign event.

Here at home, seven people were shot and killed and dozens injured while watching a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago. So far this year, in the U.S., there have been 327 mass shootings, 12 of them since that shooting a week ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris visited Highland Park just after the shooting. We sat down with her in her ceremonial office on Friday. And that’s where our conversation began.

(Begin VT)

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: When you meet with first responders, when you meet with families of these victims, you cannot avoid the reality of what the impact of this gun violence is on a community, on families, on people who — who love their community, who love their family member, and assault weapons.

So let’s just go right to that, assault weapons. Assault weapons were specifically and intentionally designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly. It is a weapon of war. If you’ve ever looked at, if I may be so blunt, an autopsy photograph to see what it does to the human body, and the fact that we can’t get Congress to renew.

It’s not like we’re pulling something out of our hat — we’ve done it before as a nation — to renew the assault weapons ban is outrageous. And you can support the Second Amendment. I support the Second Amendment. But we should agree we should not have weapons of war on the streets of America.

ROBERT COSTA: Why do so many mass shooters, often young men radicalized online, seem to still have access legally to weapons and to slip past red flag laws, like those in Illinois?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Because those weapons are available. And we have to stop allowing those weapons to be available to civilians living in communities of people who have a right to believe that they are not in a war zone.

ROBERT COSTA: President Biden issued an executive order…

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: … on abortion seeking to expand and bolster access.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: But so many Democrats in this country remain very angry about the recent Supreme Court decision.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: California Governor Gavin Newsom said this in May:

(Begin VT)

GOVERNOR GAVIN NEWSOM (D-California): Where is the Democratic Party? Where’s the party? Why aren’t we calling this out? This is a concerted, coordinated effort. And, yes, they’re winning.

(End VT)

ROBERT COSTA: Is he right?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I think all of us share a deep sense of outrage that the United States Supreme Court took a constitutional right that was recognized, took it from the women of America.

I mean, sit back and think about that for a moment. The highest court in our land just took a constitutional right that was recognized for women to make decisions about their own bodies. And so now we are looking at a situation where the government can tell a person in our country what they can and cannot do with their own body.

You don’t have to agree that you want to or would advocate that you or a loved one would have an abortion to agree that the government should not be making that decision for any individual woman.

ROBERT COSTA: Did Democrats fail, past Democratic presidents, congressional leaders, to not codify Roe v. Wade over the past five decades?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I do believe that we should have rightly believed, but we certainly believed that certain issues are just settled. Certain issues are just settled.

ROBERT COSTA: Clearly were not.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: No, that’s right.

And that’s why I do believe that we are living, sadly, in real unsettled times. There’s another example of this point, voting rights. The fundamental principle of our democracy is, everyone should have access, who are entitled, to have access to vote.

And now you see states across the country that are intentionally making it more difficult for people to vote. We thought that was settled. We thought that was settled at least by law in the ’60s.

We look now at the issue of choice. We thought that was settled.

ROBERT COSTA: What will this administration do to try to codify Roe, to try to through Congress put into law some of these priorities?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: What we will do through the executive branch to ensure that women have the ability to travel freely, unencumbered, that women will have access to the medication, but we also need Congress to act, because that branch of government is where we actually codify, which means put into law the rights that, again, we took for granted, but clearly have now been taken from the women of America.

We’ve seen this in the past, if you think about the Voting Rights Act.

ROBERT COSTA: Sure.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Congress acted. Civil Rights Act, Congress acted, because where there was any question, especially through the courts or any other system, about the sanctity of these rights, we decided as a nation we would put it into law. That’s what we need to do with Roe and the principles behind Roe.

ROBERT COSTA: Some senators have suggested that Justice Gorsuch, Justice Kavanaugh misled them during the confirmation hearings on Roe v. Wade.

Some Democrats have even called for those justices to be impeached. Do you believe they should be impeached?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I start from the point of experience of having served in the Senate.

I never believed them. I didn’t believe them. It’s why I voted against. And…

ROBERT COSTA: So, what now, though?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: We need to understand that states are passing laws because of what the Supreme Court has now allowed to happen.

So what does this mean? It means that we’re looking at elections coming up in 120-something days.

ROBERT COSTA: Right.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: They’re going to be about who serves in Congress, and we need a pro-choice Congress.

Again, you don’t have to advocate or believe that this is right for you or your family, but don’t let the government make the decision for her family, whoever she may be.

ROBERT COSTA: Right.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: It means state offices, governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general. It means local races. Who’s going to be your DA, who’s going to be your sheriff enforcing laws that are being passed to criminalize medical health providers, and maybe even the women who seek the service?

ROBERT COSTA: Basketball star Brittney Griner…

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: … she remains imprisoned in Russia. You and President Biden spoke with Cherelle Griner, her wife.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes. Yes. Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: You reassured her. But what kind of reassurance is possible now? She has pled guilty. Is a prisoner swap on the table?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: We take very seriously — and we’ve been very clear — Brittany Griner. And there are sadly other Americans who are being unlawfully detained around the world.

And it is on our highest priority list to bring those folks home. I can’t talk to you about the details what’s happening behind the scenes, but I can tell you that it is one of our highest priorities to bring these Americans home.

ROBERT COSTA: We’re just months away from the midterm elections.

Finish this sentence for me. Americans need to vote for Democrats in November because?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Our democracy is on the ballot, truly, truly.

If you look at an issue like choice, it’s on the ballot, a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and potentially what can happen in the not-too-distant future around issues like access to and making decisions about contraception or same-sex marriage.

Elections matter. The people who are elected, especially to the United States Congress, will decide the outcome of all of these issues, voting rights. The ability of us to pass voting rights legislation, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, will be a function of who is in Congress.

ROBERT COSTA: When I go around the country as a reporter and I talk to Black Americans, they bring up voting rights. They also bring up police reform.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: And they say, two years after George Floyd was killed, you have Jayland Walker in Ohio…

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: … 60 wounds from police officers. And…

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Sixty gunshots.

ROBERT COSTA: Sixty gunshots.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: Gun violence still killing Black Americans from police officers.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Yes.

ROBERT COSTA: Polls, though, show that support for this administration among Black Americans has softened. How will you turn that around?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Black Americans, Americans in general should be demanding, and rightly, that we pass legislation that addresses these issues that you have mentioned.

I was an author of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. I believe very strongly that we should have accountability in all systems, including in policing.

ROBERT COSTA: But they’re frustrated police reform has stalled.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: You’re right.

I mean, but, again, there is a connection between what we are — what we want to have happen and the power of Congress to actually make it happen, when it comes to changing the laws, when it comes to writing and then putting, in effect, laws that create accountability and greater fairness in our system, be it our criminal justice system, be it our health care delivery system, all of that.

But I will say this. What we have also seen is that Black Americans and all Americans said — look at the United States Supreme Court. There has never in the history of that court been a Black woman to serve. There now is, because people stood in line in 2020 for hours demanding that, of the things that they would stand in line to see happen, there would be a Ketanji Brown Jackson on the United States — Justice — excuse me — Ketanji Brown Jackson on the United States Supreme Court.

So, there are demands that were made by voters, saying these are the things we want out of this administration. And a lot of those demands have been met in the first year-and-a-half. There’s still more work to do, without any question.

ROBERT COSTA: Up on Capitol Hill, there is speculation among some Democrats and some Republicans that President Biden won’t run for reelection in 2024.

What’s your message to those who say that?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Listen to President Biden. He intends to run. And, if he does, I intend to run with him.

(LAUGHTER)

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So there you go.

ROBERT COSTA: Another run by former President Trump is possible. He is signaling that. Would that make it more likely that the president runs?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: He did it before.

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERT COSTA: Another issue is immigration.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott this week authorized state officials there to arrest migrants and take them to federal border crossing facilities. And he’s blamed the administration for the immigration issue in his state. He’s called it a — quote — “invasion.”

What will the administration do about Governor Abbott’s decision in the migrant issue?

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I would suggest that so-called leaders focus on solutions, instead of attacks, if they really are concerned about a problem.

And that includes on the issue of immigration, passing a pathway for citizenship, fixing what, in particular under the prior administration, was a badly broken system, so that we can have a humane and appropriate approach to this issue, including, of course, what we will continue to do in terms of prioritizing border security, but understanding we also need to create a pathway.

And that’s where I think everyone should be focused, if they’re actually concerned about solutions instead of flamethrowing.

ROBERT COSTA: Vice President Harris, thank you very much for taking the time.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: You’re welcome. Thank you. It’s good to be with you, Bob.

ROBERT COSTA: Good to be with you.

(End VT)

ROBERT COSTA: Our full interview with Vice President Harris can be seen on our Web site and on our YouTube channel.

Face the Nation will be back in one minute. Stay with us.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: We turn now to the Republican Party.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is a newcomer to politics who won in an upset last November.

We want to welcome Governor Youngkin to the broadcast.

Good morning, Governor.

Let’s begin with the Supreme Court and abortion. You just heard from Vice President Harris. She said, you don’t have to abandon your faith to believe that a woman should have the ability to decide whether she gets an abortion or not.

Do you agree?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN (R-Virginia): Well, first of all, good morning, and thank you for having me.

And the debate on abortion has been raging for a long time. And I believe, as a pro-life governor, that life begins at conception. And my job as a pro-life governor in a state in Virginia, where, 18 months ago, the debate in our General Assembly was around whether abortion should be allowed all the way up through and including birth, funded by taxpayer money.

And so this in Virginia is a debate that we are going to run to. The Supreme Court’s decision, I agree with, that this is a decision for states to make by elected officials by the citizens of Virginia

And that’s why, right out of the box, I called for a 15-week pain threshold bill to be formed and crafted by a bipartisan group of legislators. I think this is what it’s all about is, this is a moment for our country to have a discussion around this. And each state will decide something different. And I think that’s the — that’s the real value of the Supreme Court’s decision.

ROBERT COSTA: You’ve said you’ve proposed a 15-week ban. Will you ever pursue a full ban on abortion in Virginia?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, the reality is that, as a pro-life governor in a state like Virginia, where I have a Senate that’s controlled by Democrats and a House that’s controlled by Republicans, we have to find a way to get things done.

And I believe that’s what we’ve been able to do, is get things done at a time where you have to bring people together in order to make progress. As I said, I believe life begins at conception. In Virginia, we’ve got to work with a Senate and a House. This is what we’ve been doing.

ROBERT COSTA: But will you ever pursue a full ban?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, I believe that what my job is, is to get something done.

And I believe we can get a 15-week pain threshold bill done in Virginia for the first time. Think about it. This was a state, again, that just 18 months ago was talking about enabling abortion all the way up through and including birth. And now we’re able to talk about a 15-week pain threshold bill, where a baby feels pain.

This is a remarkable moment for us. And it’s an opportunity I’m not going to let go.

ROBERT COSTA: You support exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. Some other Republican governors do not, Republicans. Are they wrong?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Again, I think this is a moment where we have to reflect on our personal beliefs.

And as a pro-life governor, I have really reflected on my own faith and my beliefs. And I do believe that there should be exceptions that are made in the case of rape and incest and when the life of the mother is truly at risk.

Again, this is a moment, though, where people have to come together. The one thing that’s very much agreed upon in Virginia today is that we want fewer abortions, not more. And I think this is a chance over the next five months for a bipartisan group of legislators to craft a path there and give me a bill that I can sign.

ROBERT COSTA: On education, one of your first actions as governor was to propose the end of teaching of — quote — “inherently divisive concepts.”

What’s an example?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, in Virginia schools — and we saw Loudoun County literally be ground zero.

We saw students being taught that they should view everything through a lens of race and judge one another. And, again, we’re not talking about forgetting our history. And, in fact, one of the things we have to do is teach all of our history, the good and the bad.

But we shouldn’t — we shouldn’t play — we shouldn’t play privilege bingo with children. We shouldn’t teach children that they should judge one another, and one group is privileged and another group is going to find it hard in life necessarily. And we shouldn’t blame someone and have them form a view that they’re inherently racist because of their race or their sex or their religion.

We shouldn’t judge one another. We can do this. And so, right out of the box, we worked in order to remove inherently divisive concepts from curriculum. We absolutely — we absolutely are pushing to teach all history, the good and the bad. And, again, we can bring people together around this, as opposed to divide them.

ROBERT COSTA: It’s a challenge, though. You say Virginia is willing to teach all history. Suppose your Board of Education comes to you, Governor, and says to you, Governor, the Civil War, we recommend it’s too divisive. We want to call it the war between the states.

What would you do?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, I don’t think they’re going to do that.

ROBERT COSTA: So they could.

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: But I don’t believe they will.

And I think what we all recognize is that slavery was an absolute — was an absolute black spot in our history. I mean, it is so, so abhorrent. We have to teach it. And this is not a moment where we’re running away from these topics. And this is why I’m so excited about our education agenda in Virginia. I mean, we stepped into our day-one game plan with a comprehensive education plan to have the highest education budget in the history of Virginia, to fund special ed programs, to fund into laboratory schools to provide choice, to give teachers raises.

And we got it all done, all of it. That’s what’s so exciting is that we brought people together around an education agenda which is common-sense- focused. And, again, I believe that there’s certain groups that want to drive people apart. And my job is to pull them together around a vision for education that can deliver for our states.

ROBERT COSTA: Security is also an issue in your state. We’ve been talking about the Supreme Court. Some of those justices live in Virginia.

Do you have confidence the justices who live in Virginia are adequately protected?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Our judges in — our judges in Virginia are adequately protected. I wish we could do more.

And this is why I have called on Attorney General Garland to enforce the federal law, which is so clear. You can’t parade and picket in front of the judge’s home and try to influence them. And I have been — and I have been consistent in calling on him to please enforce the law.

We have substantial state resources positioned right around from the justices’ homes. I speak to them frequently to make sure that they feel adequately protected. And I’m encouraged by those conversations. This is not a moment where we can allow anything to happen to our justices. Broadly speaking, this is about democracy.

ROBERT COSTA: On the court, the court is moving right now on several different fronts. It could move on same-sex marriage in the coming years. Will you take any steps to codify same-sex marriage in Virginia?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, I believe that what the Supreme Court has done most recently is so consistent with what we know the Constitution stands for, which is returning the rights to states to make these decisions like Roe v. Wade, protecting, in fact, the right of lawmakers to make laws, not an executive branch to pass rules and regulations that overstep boundaries.

This is what our Supreme Court has — has been so focused on.

ROBERT COSTA: Yes or no, though, protect same-sex marriage or not?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: In Virginia — we actually do protect same-sex marriage in Virginia. That’s the law in Virginia And, therefore, as Governor of Virginia, we protect same-sex marriage.

I think what’s happening in — right now is that there are so many — there’s so many elements that are trying to pull people apart. And we have a chance to hold them together.

(CROSSTALK)

ROBERT COSTA: Governor, we’ll be right back.

We need to take a break for a moment, but we’ve got a lot more to ask Governor Youngkin.

And we will be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: If you can’t watch the full Face the Nation, you can set your DVR. We’re available on demand.

Plus, you can watch us through our CBS or Paramount+ app. And we’re replayed on our CBS News Streaming Network at noon Eastern.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: We will be right back with more from Governor Youngkin, plus January 6 Committee member Jamie Raskin and more.

Stay with us.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION.

We want to continue our conversation with Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Governor Youngkin, you were just in Nebraska on Saturday speaking to Republicans across the country. You have also said President Biden was legitimately elected. Former President Trump continues to falsely claim the 2020 election was stolen. Should he stop saying that?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, let me begin with my trip to Nebraska, which was really great fun. Governor Rickets had really helped me in my race, and it was a great chance for me to show up and help in the next race to elect a Republican in Nebraska.

And one of the things that I’m really focused on is helping Republican governors get elected. You know, I’ve got a big job in Virginia, and it takes the – it takes the vast majority of my time. But I do think there’s spots that I can be helpful. And so I plan on doing that this year.

Of course, the other thing we plan on doing this year is helping congressional wins in Virginia. And I think there’s a great opportunity there.

ROBERT COSTA: Well, what about former President Trump?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, I think this is a moment for the Republican Party to recognize exactly what I recognized last year, was this is not a or moment but an and moment. I mean we brought together Virginians last near, forever Trumpers, never Trumpers, independents, Democrats. We won the – we won the Latino vote, the Asian vote, the largest voter turn-out for black Virginians that anybody can remember to vote for Republican. I mean I think this is the future of the Republican Party, which is to recognize that we have to come together in these common sense, kitchen table issues that are on the forefront of everybody’s mind, inflation, schools, safe communities, an economy that isn’t stealing everybody’s hard working money through inflation but gives them a job. This is what the Republicans —

ROBERT COSTA: So, stop talking about 2020.

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: This is the Republicans who – that we can win.

ROBERT COSTA: So, former President Trump should stop talking about it?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: I think — what I did last year was I focused on 2021. And we had 5,000 people come and volunteer at elections, and that gave everybody confidence in our election process. They showed up. They voted in record numbers for the governor’s race, and we won.

ROBERT COSTA: The January 6th committee continues its work this week. Some members of the committee believe the former president has criminal wrongdoing. There have been many revolutions made by this committee. What do you believe you should do in the wake of all of this new evidence, can you continue to support someone like President Trump?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, let me begin with, what happened on January 6th with the – with the invasion of our Capitol was awful. And it’s a blight on our democracy.

I have to be honest, though, I talk to thousands of Virginians and the topics they want to talk about are not January 6th. What they want to talk about is run-away inflation, gas prices. They want to talk about crime in their communities. They want to talk about education and the rights of parents to be engaged in their kids’ schools.

I just fundamentally believe that the media’s attention on this, while – while I think it’s important to the media, is really not what voters are focused on.

ROBERT COSTA: Well, but look – but – it’s not just – it’s not just the media. Some Republican governors, like Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, have said President Trump shouldn’t run again. Is that your view?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: President Trump’s going to do what President Trump wants to do. And my job is to have the best Virginia we can have and to demonstrate that Republican agenda, on low taxes and great schools and safe communities and, by the way, a thriving economy that’s working with companies like Boeing and Raytheon moving to Virginia, this is the Republican agenda of the future. And this is the one that I think we’re delivering in Virginia and I think this is the one that’s going to really carry a red wave across the nation this year.

ROBERT COSTA: So that – so that’s — that’s your agenda. That’s your focus. You also have political capital. You are a rising star in the Republican Party. Every reporter wants to know how you use that political capital.

You have a political action committee that’s busy right now. Will you support and spend money through your PAC to help candidates like Doug Mastriano, the election denier who’s running for governor in Pennsylvania on the Republican side?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, I believe what I can do with – with our supporters is, first, get congressional representatives elected in Virginia. First and foremost. I think the road to the majority in our House of Representatives comes through Virginia. And I’m going to spend – I’m going to spend real time there making sure that we win those elections.

And then I believe there are governors’ elections around the country where I think I can make a difference.

ROBERT COSTA: Is Mastriano’s one of them?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Well, I have a huge job in Virginia, and so I’ve got to be real careful in how much I spend time out of Virginia. We’re still working on my agenda. But I think there are states, like Virginia, where people recognize that a Democratic governor has not done a good job and a Republican governor, like the Republican governors all over America, can do a good job. And those are the ones that I’m going to go support. We haven’t figured out where I’m going yet. But, at the end of the day, I’m going to help some Republican governors get elected.

ROBERT COSTA: When you look at a map, Nebraska right next to Iowa, the early voting state in the 2024 presidential election. Are you open, and your family, to considering a run for president in 2024?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: First, I am hugely humbled by this discussion that’s going on.

ROBERT COSTA: So donors have come to you.

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: And the reality, of course, is, I think it’s based on the fact that I won in a state that was blue and we turned it red. I ran on a platform that we’re delivering. And I often find it shocking that people are surprised that a person runs for office and then goes to work to deliver on what they promised they were going to do. And so I think my job is to be a great governor in Virginia.

ROBERT COSTA: But are you open to considering, along with your family, the idea of a presidential run in 2024?

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: That’s not a decision that we have even begun to undertake. The reality, of course, is I’ve been in – I’ve been governor of Virginia for six months. We’ve got an extraordinary amount done. $4 billion tax cuts. A record budget for education. $400 million in to law enforcement to raise salaries and keep our communities safe. This is where I’m focused.

ROBERT COSTA: I didn’t – I didn’t hear you rule it out. And I hope if you make a decision you come back here and break the news with CBS.

GOVERNOR GLENN YOUNGKIN: Great.

ROBERT COSTA: Governor Youngkin, thank you so much for being here.

And we’ll be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: Former President Trump’s top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, talked with the January 6th committee for eight hours Friday. The committee tells us this morning that they received critical system on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump’s misconduct and providing highly relevant, new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings.

We’re back with Maryland Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin. He will be a lead questioner in Tuesday’s January 6th committee hearing.

Good morning, Congressman. Thanks for being here.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Delighted to be with you, Robert.

ROBERT COSTA: A rare statement from the committee characterizing Cipollone’s testimony from Friday. What will we hear Tuesday? And will it include some of Cipollone?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, we’re going to continue the story of Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. And at the last hearings we showed how lots of doors were closing on him, if not all the way at least part of the way when the state legislatures, that didn’t work for him. The Department of Justice mini coup didn’t really work for him. The attempt to get the DOJ to say that the election was corrupt had not come through. The effort to intimidate election officials like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia had not succeeded. But now he was turning his attention to January the 6th. And we are going to get to use a lot of Mr. Cipollone’s testimony to corroborate other things we’ve learned along the way. He was the White House council at the time. He was aware of every major move, I think, that Donald Trump was making to try to overthrow the 2020 election and essentially seize the presidency. And so I considered his testimony valuable (ph).

ROBERT COSTA: So, we’ll see him perhaps on video or part of his testimony excerpted. But who will we have in the hearing room as live witnesses?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, one of the things that people are going to learn is the fundamental importance of a meeting that took place in the White House on December the 18th. And on that day, the group of lawyers, of outside lawyers who have been denominated team crazy by people in and around the White House, came in to try to urge several new courses of action, including the seizure of voting machines around the country.

And, so some of the people involved in that were Sydney Powell, Rudy Giuliani was around for part of that discussion. Michael Flynn was around for that. But against this team crazy were an inside group of lawyers who essentially wanted the president at that point to acknowledge that he had lost the election and were far more willing to accept the reality of his defeat at that point.

So — so there will be — there will be other witnesses coming.

ROBERT COSTA: Witnesses who were at the December 18, 2020 meeting? First- hand witnesses?

JAMIE RASKIN: No, no. There will be testimony about that, that — there will be other kinds of evidence submitted about that. But there will be other witnesses and I’m afraid I’m not authorized to disclose who those witnesses are at this point.

ROBERT COSTA: Oh, (INAUDIBLE). If anyone’s authorized, it’s you.

What about Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, seems to be signaling he’s willing to come in. Do you buy it? Is it a genuine offer and will you accept it?

JAMIE RASKIN: Look, we want everyone’s testimony. We’ve talked to more than a thousand people and, to me, it vindicates the way our system of justice works and the way that our democracy works, and legislative democracy works.

ROBERT COSTA: What about Bannon?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I understand from reports today he’s had a change of heart. And after watching presumably all of these people come forward, you know, including Cassidy Hutchinson, you know, he’s decided that he wants to come in. And if he wants to come in, I’m certain that the committee would be very interested in hearing from him.

ROBERT COSTA: Would it — would it be closed door with Bannon or do you want to — because he could go out there and pontificate if it’s a public, live hearing.

JAMIE RASKIN: The way that we have treated every single witness is the same, that they come in, they talk to the committee. There is — if they’re going to take a deposition, they’re sworn under oath. It’s videotaped. It’s recorded. And then we take it from there.

ROBERT COSTA: Bannon was at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the night of January 5, 2021, the eve of the insurrection. What are we going to learn from your hearing on Tuesday about the Willard Hotel, Roger Stone, also present at the Willard that night, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani. Is there a real connection between those so-called war rooms, the violence outside, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers gathering, and what was happening inside the West Wing?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, I think your question practically answers itself. Donald Trump was, of course, the central figure who set everything into motion. He was the person, Rob, who identified January 6th as the date for the big protest. And he announced that in his tweet in the middle of the night on December 19th after a crazy meeting, one that has been described as a crazy meeting in the entire Trump presidency ended December 18th and Mark Meadows escorted Rudy Giuliani out the door. It sort of ended at that point.

And then just an hour or two later, Donald Trump sent out the tweet that would be heard around the world. The first time in American history when a president of the United States called a protest against his own government, in fact, to try to stop the counting of Electoral College votes in a presidential election he had lost.

ROBERT COSTA: Right.

JAMIE RASKIN: Absolutely unprecedented. Nothing like that had ever happened before. So, people are going to hear the story of that tweet and then the explosive effects it had in Trump world and specifically among the domestic violence extremist groups, the most dangerous political extremists in the country at that point.

ROBERT COSTA: What about Ginni Thomas, the spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her lawyer now says she doesn’t want to appear. Will she ever appear before your committee?

JAMIE RASKIN: I mean, again, that’s like with Steve Bannon, I mean, the vast majority of people, young, middle-aged, old, Cassidy Hutchinson’s a great example, have done their civic duty, have done their legal duty, have done their patriotic duty and have said, I’m going to come forward and tell you everything I know and nothing but the truth and the entire truth.

ROBERT COSTA: What’s your message to her if she’s watching?

JAMIE RASKIN: So — to whom?

ROBERT COSTA: Ginni Thomas.

JAMIE RASKIN: My message to her is my message to all Americans, which is, if you have relevant information, if you are a material witness in any respect to these events, come forward and tell us what you know.

ROBERT COSTA: Can you force her hand?

JAMIE RASKIN: Again, you know, I don’t want to enter into questions and negotiations about specific witnesses.

ROBERT COSTA: Right.

JAMIE RASKIN: I mean it’s kind of a violation of our responsibility to the public. But we are telling everybody in the public, come forward and tell us what you know. And, you know, if you get a subpoena, I mean, a subpoena is not an invitation to a valentine’s day party. A subpoena is telling you — the world subpoena means under penalty of law. You get a subpoena. You come in.

ROBERT COSTA: When you look at your previous comments, you said these hearings would, quote, blow the roof off the house. Major hearing this week on Tuesday led by you in part. Another major hearing on Thursday. Will your statement still stand by Friday, that these hearings will blow the roof off the house?

JAMIE RASKIN: Well, not literally, certainly. But I think what I meant is that when you add all of this up together, it is the greatest political offense against the union by a president of the United States in our history. Nothing comes close to it. It — you know, the —

ROBERT COSTA: A criminal offense.

JAMIE RASKIN: The attempt — the attempt to overthrow the result of a presidential election through a political coup and the mobilization of an armed, violent mob cannot really be compared to anything else a president has done. It makes the Watergate break-in look like the work of Cub Scouts.

So I — I just hope that we’re telling everything we know in a competent and effective way to the American people because, you know, Madison said that in a democracy, the people have the right to the most awful truth, which is the truth about the nature of government and their rulers. And we need Americans to look very carefully at what happened.

ROBERT COSTA: Congressman Raskin, thank you.

The next January 6th hearing will be on Tuesday, July 12th. And you can watch it right here on CBS on our broadcast and our streaming network.

We’ll be back in a moment.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: During the final weeks of the Trump presidency, including the day the Capitol was attack, British film maker Alex Holder had behind the scenes access to former President Trump and his inner circle as part of a documentary project. The footage his team gathered was subpoenaed by the committee probing the attack and investigators have interviewed Holder as they seek to piece together what happened.

Alex Holder’s three-part documentary series “Unprecedented” premiers today on Discovery Plus

And he is here with us this morning.

Good morning, Alex.

ALEX HOLDER, (“Unprecedented” Director): Good morning.

ROBERT COSTA: Your documentary, which I’ve watched, powerful footage of the brutal violence on January 6th. Your documentary also focuses on the Trump family in an intense way. Do they feel any culpability for what happened?

ALEX HOLDER: I mean, in my – in my interactions with them, no, not at all. I mean I think President Trump, when I interviewed him in Mar-a-Lago, he doubled down on the position. In fact, he even says that the reason why the protesters went into the Capitol on January 6th was because they had — believe that the election was stolen. Well, who told them that the election was stolen other than him?

And then with respect to his children, they declined to discuss the subject of January 6th. So, I think that their silence will be for others to determine what that really means.

ROBERT COSTA: You and your crew captured this amazing moment in January 2021 with Vice President Pence as he has to confront a decision on something most vice presidents never have to make a decision about, whether to invoke the 25th Amendment.

Let’s take a look at that moment.

(BEGIN VC)

ON SCREEN TEXT: Six days after certification.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): I join the Senate Democrat leader on calling on the vice president to remove this president by immediately invoking the 25th Amendment.

ON SCREEN TEXT: The 25th Amendment gives the vice president, along with a majority of cabinet secretaries, the power to declare the president unfit for office.

NANCY PELOSI: If the vice president or cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment.

MIKE PENCE (Vice President of the United States): Huh, it’s 7:48.

MAN: That’s when I received it. But the House members got it a while back.

ON SCREEN TEXT: During our interview, the vice president received an email with the congressional draft resolution demanding that he invoke the 25th Amendment.

MIKE PENCE: Yes. Excellent. Tell Zach (ph) to print me off a hard copy for the trip home.

MAN: Sure. Sure.

MIKE PENCE: Great.

I’m always hopeful about America. I always believe that America’s best days are yet to come. And I still believe that.

(END VC)

ROBERT COSTA: What did you witness behind the scenes that day that you may have shared with the January 6th committee that we didn’t see?

ALEX HOLDER: Well, I mean, that day was pretty extraordinary. And this is about six days or so after the events of January the 6th. We’re now in the White House in the OEOB (ph). Soi this is the ceremonial room for the vice president. And we saw things in the corridors of desks that was sort of, you know, upended and chairs outside because they were obviously moving out for the new administration. There was this sort of really dower, quite, sort of depressed mood in the building at that time. And some of the aids around the vice president as well were also, you know, talking quietly, whispering. Things were, you know, just — it was a very uncomfortable situation. And then the vice president walks in, he sits down and this is, I mean, on that day he was probably the most famous man in the world because this was all about the 25th Amendment and whether or not he was actually going to invoke this procedure.

So, it was an extraordinary day. And he sits down in the chair, and his aid hands him over his phone. And myself and a lot our director of photography saw that it was from the speaker’s office. And we captured this extraordinary moment. And also the aftermath of it as well.

So, it was — we were walking in history all the way through this entire process of making this documentary. And I hope people, you know, tune in and watch it and see these incredible moments unfold.

ROBERT COSTA: You were walking through history. You were with the Trump family again and again. And you cast them as a family that’s also a brand and it’s a brand that cannot accept defeat. Do you believe the former president will run again?

ALEX HOLDER: Oh, I don’t know whether or not he’ll run again. I mean I —

ROBERT COSTA: But you’ve been up close with him.

ALEX HOLDER: I mean I think, you know, he tends to not do the same thing twice when he fails. And I think the reason for that, and this is what the series shows, is that it’s all about the brand. It’s all about the word “Trump.” And the association of the word “Trump” to failure is something that he can’t accept and his kids can’t accept. So, the idea that it may happen again, that he might fail again is something that would be something that he could not accept. So, maybe he might take the risk, maybe he won’t take the risk, we’ll see. I mean he says we’ll see, so.

ROBERT COSTA: You spoke to former President Trump about democracy. What did that conversation reveal to you?

ALEX HOLDER: Well, I don’t think he really understands what that really means. I mean when I was sitting in front of him in the White House on, you know, sort of four or five days after his own attorney general has said there’s no evidence to support his claims of election malfeasance and he’s giving me all these different reasons as to why there actually is election issues and how we need to intervene and we need to sort of get brave and courageous judges. I mean, this isn’t a man who really sort of fully understands what it means to be — what democracy actually really means.

ROBERT COSTA: You’ve probably spent more time with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump than almost anyone else outside of that family. Do you believe they are angling to continue the Trump brand politically and run for office, if not in 2024, at some point in the future? You know them.

ALEX HOLDER: I mean I wouldn’t be surprised if they do. I mean, Don Jr. certainly came across, at least in my interactions with him, and I think in the series people will see that he does have an interest in politics for sure, and he goes into sort of the background of where his political awakening comes from, which is pretty interesting.

I think Eric maybe not as much. And Ivanka we’ll see as well. But I think that they’re – but, ultimately, with these — with this family and what the series shows is this sort of — the dynamic, the sort of succession and vibe, the dynamic between the three children and the relationship they have with their father and vice versa.

ROBERT COSTA: Alex Holder, thank you so much for coming by. We appreciate it.

ALEX HOLDER: A pleasure. Thank you very much.

ROBERT COSTA: Thank you.

And we will be right back.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

ROBERT COSTA: That’s it for us today. Thanks for watching.

Don’t forget, if you can’t watch us live, be sure to set your DVRs and watch us later.

And Margaret will be back next week.

For FACE THE NATION, I’m Robert Costa.

(ANNOUNCEMENTS)

The post Full transcript of “Face the Nation” on July 10, 2022 appeared first on My Blog.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by California Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. He is a member of the January 6 Select Committee and chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Good morning, and good to have you here in person.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF: Thank you. Good to be with you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to pick up on what we just heard from the Secretary when we were talking about this far-right group, the Proud Boys. This was one of the militias involved in January 6. And in this incredible testimony this past week from Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump White House aide, Chief of – Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, she testified she heard conversations inside the White House about this far-right group, and another one called the Oath Keepers. Is there corroborating evidence to show that there was communication between those militias in the White House?

REP. SCHIFF: I don’t want to get too far ahead of what we intend to present in our next hearings, but our very next hearing will be focused on the efforts to assemble that mob on the mall, who was participating who was financing it, how it was organized, including the participation of these white-nationalist groups like the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and others. And so we’ll be presenting information we have. We haven’t answered all the questions that we have, we continue our investigation into precisely the issue you’re describing.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Hutchinson was specific in saying Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney was someone she heard talking about them.

REP. SCHIFF: Well- and this is one of the reasons we had interest in his testimony and have interest in the testimony of others. We obviously want to probe any connection between these dangerous groups and the White House. I think we’ve gotten some answers, but there’s still a great deal we don’t know that we’re endeavoring to find out.

MARGARET BRENNAN: It’s an incredible allegation, of course. So we’ll track that. I want to also ask you, the vice-chair of the committee, Liz Cheney, said not prosecuting former President Trump over the attack on the Capitol would be a much graver constitutional threat to the country than the political difficulties involved with bringing charges. She said this in an ABC interview. She also said there are possible criminal referrals, not just one, but multiple. Do you agree?

REP. SCHIFF: I do. I do. You know, for four years, the Justice Department took the position that you can’t indict a sitting president. If the Department were now to take the position that you can’t investigate or indict a former president. Then, a president becomes above the law. That’s a very dangerous idea that the founders would have never subscribed to. Even more dangerous, I think in the case of Donald Trump. This- Donald Trump is someone who has shown when he’s not held accountable, he goes on to commit worse and worse abuses of power. So I agree with Judge Carter in California, I think there was evidence that the former President engaged in multiple violations of the law, and that should be investigated.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But there will be a political calculus to this as well. This is an incredibly divided country right now. Millions of people voted for the former president and still believe, wrongly, that he won the election- prosecuting him, isn’t there a very high risk to that?

REP. SCHIFF: You know, it’s certainly not a step to be taken lightly at all. At the same time, immunizing a former president who has engaged in wrongdoing, I would agree with our vice chair- I think is more dangerous than anything else, and the decision not to move forward to the investigation or not to move forward to the prosecution, because of someone’s political status or political influence or because they have a following. To me, that is a far more dangerous thing to our Constitution than following the evidence wherever it leads, including when it leads to a former president.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Your colleague, Adam Kinzinger, was on another program this morning and said new witnesses have come forward since Cassidy Hutchinson testified. How many? How significant? Is there more new information that requires more hearings?

REP. SCHIFF: You know, I think there’s certainly more information that is coming forward, in terms of whether that will materialize into particular witnesses on this topic or that topic, we’re going to wait and see, but we are following additional leads. I think those leads will lead to a new testimony. It’s part of the reason we wanted her to come before the public is we were hoping it would generate others stepping forward, seeing her courage would inspire them to show the same kind of courage. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Has she inspired the former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, to take up the request- to speak to him again?

REP. SCHIFF: I hope so. We’re in discussions with Mr. Cipollone’s counsel. I’m hopeful that we can work out bringing him in for testimony. He clearly has information about concerns about criminal violations, concerns about the President going to the Capitol that day, concerns about the chief of staff having blood on his hands if they didn’t do more to stop that violent attack on the Capitol. Hard to imagine someone more at the center of things, and I hope that he’ll demonstrate the same courage we saw Cassidy Hutchinson display. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Who is attempting to intimidate the witnesses as- as Congresswoman Cheney said, and how significant are the security threats against Hutchinson?

REP. SCHIFF: Uh, you know, I have to imagine the security threats are very pronounced. Certainly, our members are feeling them and hearing them. I have to expect the same is true of her, since the former president and his enablers are going after her, and we want to make sure that she is safe. We have several concerns. We have the concern over safety for witnesses, we have concern over people who are trying to influence or intimidate witnesses–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –Who’s doing that?

REP. SCHIFF: You know, I can’t comment on specific but– 

MARGARET BRENNAN: –But you know?

REP. SCHIFF: We- we wanted to let the country know, and anyone in the former president’s world know, that if they seek to intimidate witnesses, they will be referred for prosecution. And we hope that Justice Department will move against them. But we also have a concern about the fact that some of these witnesses are sharing lawyers, that, essentially and this gets to some the testimony revealed during the Cassidy Hutchinson hearing- that they’re reviewing transcripts, that they’re essentially coordinating, potentially, their stories, or that witnesses feel they’ve got big brother watching them when they sit in for their depositions.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So on that, I want to ask you- one of the things that Cassie Hutchinson described having been told by another individual is about this tussle in the beast, the president’s vehicle, where he allegedly lunged for the wheel demanding to be taken to the Capitol. The committee’s already interviewed Tony Ornato, the White House operations director, and Secret Service agent Robert Engel. Was this the first time you heard about that incident? Did they back that up or contradict that testimony?

REP. SCHIFF: I can’t go into the specifics of the prior testimony. But I can say I think we’d be interested in having them come back, and others that can shed light on this. But- but the most important thing is there doesn’t appear to be any dispute over the fact the President was furious that he could not accompany this armed mob to the Capitol. That seems to be undisputed, and the fact that the President knew that the mob was armed, wanted the magnetometers down so they could take their arms to the Capitol. That doesn’t seem to be disputed by anyone except Donald Trump. And he has, as we’ve seen in the past, no credibility at all. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Quickly, before I let you go, with your intel hat on here, the bullet that was used to kill American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has been handed over to the United States. It’s undergoing ballistics testing right now. If Israeli soldiers did indeed kill her, what consequences should there be?

REP. SCHIFF: Well, I think there needs to be an independent investigation so that we understand exactly what happened and who was responsible and why. Once we know that, then I think we can talk about what the consequences should be. But I do think there needs to be an objective investigation. And I’m glad that the United States can help play a part in that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Congressman Schiff, thanks for your time. 

REP. SCHIFF: Thank you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Face the Nation will be back in a minute. Stay with us.

The post Transcript: Rep. Adam Schiff on “Face the Nation,” July 3, 2022 appeared first on My Blog.

Antony Blinken, Secretary of StateGina Raimondo, Secretary of CommerceRep. Ro Khanna, D- CaliforniaRep. John Curtis, R- UtahClaire Boogaard, Medical Director of the COVID-19 Vaccine Program, Children’s National Hospital 

How to watch “Face the Nation”

Date: Sunday, October 31, 2021

TV: “Face the Nation” airs Sunday mornings on CBS. Click here for your local listings

Radio: Subscribe to “Face the Nation” from CBS Radio News to listen on-the-go

Free online stream: Watch the show on CBS’ streaming network CBSN at 10:30 a.m., 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET.

With the latest news and analysis from Washington, don’t miss Margaret Brennan (@margbrennan) this Sunday on “Face the Nation” (@FaceTheNation). 

And for the latest from America’s premier public affairs program, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post This week on “Face the Nation,” October 31, 2021: Blinken, Raimondo, Khanna, Boogaard appeared first on My Blog.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We’re joined now by former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who also serves on the board of Pfizer. Good to have you with us in studio. 

DOCTOR SCOTT GOTTLIEB: Good to be here. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, we’re headed into respiratory virus season. Is this new version, this new Delta variant, something that has you concerned? What is the direction we’re headed in? 

DR. GOTTLIEB: Yeah look, I don’t think this is enough to really change the trajectory, the direction we’re heading in. We’re much closer to the end of this Delta wave than we are to the beginning. The South looks very good right now in the Midwest, where there’s been a very dense epidemic. We see cases starting to decline. There’s a pickup in cases in the Great Lakes region in parts of New England, so that’s concerning. This Delta wave still has to course its way through parts of the country. But I think as we get to Thanksgiving and maybe shortly thereafter, we’re going to be on a downswing across the whole country. You’re seeing cases come down all across the country. This new variant, we think it could be more contagious. I don’t think it’s enough to change the overall trajectory. My lament is that we’re not better at figuring out these questions. I mean, we should have an answer to the question of just what the characteristics of this new variant are and what kind of risk it poses.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s something you’ve been saying throughout this pandemic, and it sounds like you’re saying we haven’t gotten any better.

DR. GOTTLIEB: We don’t really have a coordinated system globally. We parcel this out to certain academic groups; we were dependent upon certain academic researchers to do this kind of analysis. The UK is very good at identifying these- these new variants. They have better sequencing in place than we do, but we don’t have good follow up in terms of the epidemiological work to try to figure out whether or not these new variants are spreading more aggressively. This one, if it is more contagious, it appears to be perhaps slightly more contagious. Again, the vaccine should be protective, and certainly people who are infected with Delta will be protected, probably against this new variant. So, I don’t think this is going to be a new variant that sweeps across the globe. And we’re back- we’re back at square one here. I think that this is something that’s going to probably push us in the direction of eventually reformulating our vaccines for Delta backbone vaccine, because what we’re seeing is the new mutations are occurring within that Delta lineage.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you said the other day there are two remaining pockets of vulnerable, the very young and the very sick. So let’s start with the compromise. This week we lost the former Secretary of State Colin Powell. He was battling multiple myeloma. His family said he succumbed to COVID, though he had been vaccinated. What is the lesson there?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Look, I don’t think anyone should die from COVID now. This is an avoidable death. People who are- have intact immune systems have vaccines available to them, highly effective vaccines. There’s two pockets of vulnerability to point young children who will eventually be able to vaccinate and then people who are immune and competent. They can’t mount an effective response to the vaccines because they are organ transplant patients, because they’re on active chemotherapy. We have the tools to protect them. We could be using the antibody drugs and a prophylactic basis, giving them regular infusions, probably monthly infusions, to protect them through this Delta wave. The drugs are being used that way off label. They’re available under compassionate use. There is an emergency use authorization sitting with the FDA right now for that specific use. Look, I was an adult cancer patient at one point undergoing chemotherapy. If I was in that position right now, I would be wanting to use these drugs on a regular basis to protect me. These patients have become prisoners in their homes because they know how vulnerable they are. We know there’s people who aren’t going to respond well to the vaccines. We can be protecting them.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So the former secretary was not given that antibody treatment when he became sick. You’re saying, as a preventative measure, people should ask their doctors about this?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Right. It’s happening. Look, these drugs are being used on a regular basis as a prophylaxis, not post-exposure prophylaxis for what- which is what they’re approved for, but as a general prophylaxis in people who are immune incompetent, who can’t mount an effective response to a vaccine because of their underlying health conditions. And it’s a small subset of Americans, but it’s our most vulnerable Americans.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.

DR. GOTTLIEB: The drugs can be used in that way. Regeneron is making them available under a compassionate use basis for that use. Again, there’s an application before FDA, but we should be protecting these lives. These are fragile lives. We have the tools to do it. We’re not making aggressive enough use of those tools.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve been saying Nov. 4 is the soonest we could see vaccinations available for 5 to 11 year old’s. What do you think of the administration’s rollout plan that they detailed this week?

DR. GOTTLIEB: Yeah. Look, the effort has been to push the- the vaccine for 5 to 11 into pediatrician’s offices. So, Pfizer, the company I’m on the board of, is developing a tray that’s 10 vials, 10 doses each vial. So that’s one hundred doses. That’s small enough that any small-to-medium sized pediatrician’s office can stock the vaccine and deliver it– 

MARGARET BRENNAN: In a regular refrigerator?

DR. GOTTLIEB: –In a regular refrigerator. It could be stored in a regular refrigerator for up to 10 weeks. It was formed- It was purposely packaged that way. And so, the idea is to try to get it into pediatrician’s offices because we know that, you know, getting children vaccinated is a much more consultative endeavor. Parents are going to want to talk to their own pediatrician about that. And so, you want the vaccine to be delivered at those sites. You don’t want children to have to go to mass vaccination sites or even necessarily a pharmacy. You want them to go into the comfort of their own pediatrician’s office. So, the administration has been behind that. The company has been behind it. That’s been the plan all along. Once- if Pfizer does get the authorization on Tuesday from FDA, even before the CDC votes on this on Nov. 2 and 3, they’ll start to ship it into the supply chain so it will be available for use once there is a hopefully positive vote from CDC. So, it could be as early as Nov. 4 and 5 that you can go into some locations and get your child vaccinated.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And toddlers and the smallest children still have to wait. I want to ask you to clarify the boosters and the information we received this week because it’s a little confusing for people. When will the general population be able to get a boost? And with this authorization to mix and match, what should people go out and do? Where do they begin asking questions?

DR. GOTTLIEB: I think the guidance from CDC that’s going to come out, they haven’t put out the guidance on the use of boosters. I think it’s going to recommend you sticking with the vaccine you’ve had unless you have a compelling reason not to. And there are certain patients who might want to switch vaccines, but I think by and large, most people are going to prefer the vaccine that they had or that’s going to be the general recommendation that comes out of CDC. They didn’t issue that guidance yet. In terms of the total general population, the criteria for who’s eligible for a booster is fairly broad–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

DR. GOTTLIEB: –and it was purposely broad, and the administration sent a signal to the pharmacy that they wanted this to be a frictionless process. So, I think they want these to be generally available for people who deem themselves to be at sufficient risk of contracting COVID or spreading COVID that they- they could benefit from a booster.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Dr. Gottlieb, always good to have you on the show and great to have you in person. We’ll be back in a moment.

The post Transcript: Dr. Scott Gottlieb on “Face the Nation”, October 24, 2021 appeared first on My Blog.

JOHN DICKERSON: For insight into this episode and the questions it raises, we turn to a man who held this job before him, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who joins us from Hilliard, Ohio. Good morning, Admiral.

FORMER CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF ADM. MIKE MULLEN: Good morning, JOHN. It is good to be with you.

JOHN DICKERSON: It’s good to have you here. You were chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. What do you make of this episode?

ADM. MULLEN: Well, I think the reporting, from what I understand, has been pretty accurate, pretty chaotic time, particularly after the election and the two threats that you talked about, the external one, and whether or not we would commence some kind of combat or conflict with Iran and then the internal one in terms of where it might go, particularly with respect to how the military would be used by President Trump to somehow validate that the election actually was a fraud and keep the president in power. I think that’s all very accurate and obviously incredibly disturbing, literally in every respect.

JOHN DICKERSON: And it’s fair to say you don’t train for those kinds of eventualities with a commander in chief.

ADM. MULLEN: No, you don’t, although I think General Milley and others who’ve served over the last four years would tell you it’s been a very chaotic environment, very difficult to predict what was going to happen from day to day and great concern with respect to the possibility of some of the orders that might come the military’s way, which generally will go with the advice of the chairman and certainly directly to a combatant commander in the case of Iran, it would go to Central Command. And so the chairman’s got in this case, General Milley, I thought, really did the right thing on both fronts, quite frankly. I don’t think he was alone with respect to Iran. But I think on the- on the internal potential for a coup really, really stood up, did the right thing, and I think made the case that he was the right officer to have in the right job at the right time in a- in a very, very difficult, stunning and unprecedented situation.

JOHN DICKERSON: Help us distinguish between garden variety conflict between a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a president. And what we’re talking about here, because I know President Obama wrote in his book about once being in a tough conversation with you. Those are you- those are- those happen in that job. But that’s something quite different from what Millie was worried about. Right.

ADM. MULLEN: Absolutely, every chairman for the four years that he’s there has huge challenges, and so you get into some very, very tough, heated debates about what- what’s recommended or what’s going to be done in a given situation. But in the end, you know, the chairman and the military leadership, once the president makes a decision, you know, we carry it out. There’s no discussion with respect to that. In this case, you know, clearly, had President Trump decided to use the military against the American people and somehow create an opportunity for the president to stay in place, that rubs up or actually it’s contrary to the Constitution, which is what the military serves, as opposed to the president, and could be seen as an illegal, immoral or unethical order, in which case, you know, General Milley and the rest of the military leadership, the other four stars, in my view, would be would be required to either resist or if they’re unable to resist, resign.

JOHN DICKERSON: One of the turning point moments for General Milley was the president’s walk-through Lafayette Park, in which General Milley walked with him, clearing protesters for a photo op. You wrote you spoke out after not speaking out about the Trump administration in an article in The Atlantic and said that you were worried about the military being used in political ways. That was a turning point for you and for General Milley. I guess my point is this- these episodes in his book were a part of a growing trend. It wasn’t just what happened at the end of the Trump administration. You- YOU had fears about the politicization of the military long before that.

ADM. MULLEN: I do and- I did and I continue to have them even now, because the political environment is so intense and so divided and we need to work hard to make sure the military doesn’t become part of what is politicized in this country, I think as far as Lafayette Park is concerned. General Milley spoke publicly very quickly thereafter and readily admitted he made a big mistake with respect to literally from June until- until after January 6th, when Milley really started to be concerned about what was possible. His antenna was up. He knew the right thing to do. He knew he knew how to do it, as best you could figure out, and what is a very, very fluid situation. And then he executed accordingly. So, I think he more than made up for that mistake that he made surrounding Lafayette Square.

JOHN DICKERSON: All right. Admiral Mike Mullen, thank you so much for being with us and helping us put all of this in context. We really appreciate it. And we’ll be back in a moment.

The post Transcript: Admiral Mike Mullen on “Face the Nation” on July 18, 2021 appeared first on My Blog.