NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Lamar Alexander
Interview
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CHUCK TODD:
Joining me now is Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Senator Alexander, welcome back to Meet the Press.
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Thank you, Chuck. Good to see you.
CHUCK TODD:
Let me start by playing something Dr. Ford said at her testimony about her basic initial fear about coming forward and get you to react to it. Here it is.
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CHUCK TODD:
That feeling that she was, essentially now, being mowed down by a freight train.
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Yeah. Well, I, you know, I can't put myself in her shoes. But I can imagine that any, anyone who believes they were a victim of sexual assault, first, has that to live with. And second, the difficulty of coming before a public audience, particularly one that large, must be terrifying, as she said. I believe that.
CHUCK TODD:
Did you believe her?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
I thought she was credible. What i had --
CHUCK TODD:
What does that mean to you?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
What that meant was, if listening to her was all I had to do, I would've said, "She, she seems to believe what she believes." But that's not all I had to do. For example, this week, I went down in the secure place, where we could read the F.B.I. reports. I read six F.B.I. reports between 1993 and 2018, 150 people interviewed about Judge Kavanaugh. And in every case, the interviewee was asked, "Do you know of any instance of alcohol abuse?" And the answer, in every case, was, "No." There was no evidence, by any of these people, of behavior that had anything to do with sexual impropriety. So you have to consider that. And you also have to consider the fact that the only person who remembers the alleged incident that Dr. Ford describes is Dr. Ford. The other four said, under penalty of perjury, that it either didn't happen, or they didn't remember it. So you have to be fair about it in a very difficult case. You have to consider that, as well as her testimony.
CHUCK TODD:
What do you think ended up happening? Why is it that you think she remembered it this way? Do you think she just misremembered?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
I don't know the answer to that.
CHUCK TODD:
She said 100 percent that she was -- 100 percent --
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Well --
CHUCK TODD:
-- that it was Brett Kavanaugh.
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
So did he -- but every -- I'm sure that every sexual assault case is usually "he said, she said," except in this case it's "he said, she said, they said." And the "they" were the witnesses that she said were there all said it either didn't happen or they didn't remember it. One of whom is one of her best friends.
CHUCK TODD:
I want to play for you something one of your colleagues, Senator Murkowski, who -- she ended up voting no, here's what she said about this whole situation.
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CHUCK TODD:
And this is the, I think the larger concern, I think, a lot of us are wondering about now. And she also, in her floor speech, talked about the issue of public confidence and the concern that she has that Justice Kavanaugh does not have public confidence.
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Well, it'd be hard to have public confidence, if you go through a, a inquisition, like he did, arranged by the Democrats. If you go down and read six F.B.I. investigations of him over 25 years and see not just the bad things that were not said about him but the remarkably good things that were said about him, you would be very glad he would be on the Supreme Court. And it would be fundamentally unfair to allow people to make accusations against someone and, by simply doing that, destroy their reputation and their opportunity to serve in public life.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, in the aftermath of this is when then-Judge Kavanaugh was defending himself, he himself, apparently, admits he went over the line in some of the things that he said. It was interesting to hear Retired Justice John Paul Stevens react that that. I want to play that sound for you and get you to react. Here he is.
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CHUCK TODD:
It's clear to me Judge Kavanuagh's concerned -- was concerned enough about this that he wrote the op-ed. Is that enough? Or does he need to do more to restore some confidence?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
No I think, I think that's enough. You know, someone said to me -- my answer to that is, if, if you had a group of people deliberately trying to destroy your reputation with accusations that you know aren't true, and every rumor that comes up about you is the most awful kind of accusation, you're not going to just sit there calmly and take that. You're going to defend yourself against people deliberately trying to damage and destroy you. And I think that's what he did, and I think the fact that he did that is the reason he's on the court. I think if he'd just sat there and taken it, that people would, would've been very suspicious. Go back to those F.B.I. investigations over 25 years --
CHUCK TODD:
So you're saying he was in a box, that if he didn't deny outrageous --
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Yeah, but all, all of the people who were interviewed over 25 years said his demeanor was excellent. The American Bar Association said his demeanor was excellent. If he's under assault, he fights back.
CHUCK TODD:
Talk to me about the United States Senate. You did something very interesting, I thought, seven years ago, when you said, "I'm going to retire, I'm going to resign from my leadership post." Because you said, "You can't be in leadership and work across the aisle," which was, on one hand, obvious and, on one hand, I thought, a bit disconcerting, when you admitted that reality. Have things really gotten better in the last ten years, or have things gotten worse in the United States Senate?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
They're worse. But you know, I, I look at the Senate like a split-screen television. On one screen, this past three weeks, you would've seen Kavanaugh, Trump tweets, et cetera. On the others, you would've seen 70 senators, half Democrats, half Republicans, passing landmark opioids legislation that affects millions of people. You would've seen record funding for biomedical research, for science, for technology, for supercomputing, the biggest increase for military in 15 years. You would've seen a bill to make flying airplanes safer. This is all in the last three weeks. So, the Senate is doing a pretty good job in its problem-solving capacity.
CHUCK TODD:
But the one place it has a problem is judicial nominations. So let me ask you this. Democrats Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin said, if Democrats get control of the Senate, they would consider restoring the filibuster. I think you were somebody that didn't want to see it go away in the first place. But let me ask you this. If it comes back, will you support keeping it for judicial nominations?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Well, now, wait a minute. We have never had the requirement. The practice has always been that judicial nominations were approved by 51 votes. There's never been a Supreme Court justice who had to get 60 votes, with the exception of Abe Fortas. Even Clarence Thomas was 52 to 48. Chuck Schumer was the one, under George W. Bush, who insisted that George Bush's nominees get 60 votes.
CHUCK TODD:
All right. So obviously --
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
And I was the one --
CHUCK TODD:
this is one of these times that each side --
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
No it's not either.
CHUCK TODD:
But, do you want to see --
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
There has never --
CHUCK TODD:
Do you want to see it restored, though, the 60-vote threshold to end debate, which would force more consensus nominees?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
No, not for nominations. Because we never had that. Another example, on federal district judges in the history of the United States Senate, no federal district judge has ever been denied his or her seat by a 60-vote requirement. They've all been majority votes. I know, because Mitch McConnell wanted to do that once. And I stopped him by getting enough Republicans to do it.
CHUCK TODD:
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Do you think that -- what's the unintended consequence of a judiciary that is made up of judges that were confirmed 51-49, depending on which party controlled the Senate?
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Well if you consider the United States of America as a success, then that's the right way to do it. Because ever since we've had a United States Senate with Thomas Jefferson, judges have been approved by 51 votes. Remember, Clarence Thomas was 52 to 48. You could've required 60 votes, but no one ever did.
CHUCK TODD:
All right. Senator Alexander, I'm going to leave it there. Appreciate you coming on and sharing your views.
SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER:
Thank you, Chuck.
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