MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: "The process of impeachment."
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
MADDOW: We`re continuing to follow the fallout over the president`s handling of Ukraine, this allegation that he leaned on Ukraine to dig up dirt on his political opponent in advance of his re-election effort. The story keeps unfolding not in dribs and drabs over the course of today but sort of in buckets, because there is on top of everything else a presidential campaign going on in the middle of all of this, and not just the president`s campaign. There was a chorus of reaction from 2020 Democratic candidates after Nancy Pelosi today formally launched this impeachment investigation against President Trump. It was also a good illustration of just how fast this thing is moving. For example, just last week, candidate Andrew Yang, former tech executive and entrepreneur in the 2020 primary, Andrew Yang just a week ago said he was for impeachment but he called it impractical to try to do it without the votes in the Senate to successfully remove the president from office. Now after a week of fresh reporting on this president and his involvement in the Ukraine scandal, Mr. Yang as of today has a fresh take. Quote: Given the president`s latest actions, I think impeachment is the right path forward. Asking foreign leaders for political help in return for aid and then suppressing your own agency`s inquiry is egregious. There have to be limits and Congress is right to act. I have spoken to a lot of the 2020 presidential candidates. I have never before had a conversation with Andrew Yang, but I`m very happy that he is here in studio tonight. Mr. Yang, thank you so much for being here.
ANDREW YANG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Oh, it`s great to be here. I wish that we had a busy news day to talk about.
MADDOW: I know. Unfortunately, we can just chitchat for 20 minutes or so because there`s nothing happening.
(LAUGHTER)
MADDOW: I will -- actually, let me just say this out loud, even though I said this to you off camera. Because we haven`t spoken before, I would love to do a long format interview with you where you`re here for most of the show, mostly because I have lots of questions to ask you. In this case, you got squoze a little bit by this breaking news, but I promise you`ll come back for a longer discussion.
YANG: Thank you. And, obviously, I mean, it is a historic occasion. So, I just feel fortunate to have this conversation with you.
MADDOW: Good. Well, let me get your reaction to what`s happened today. Obviously, this -- what happened over the last few days and today shifted you a little bit on this question of the president`s liability and whether he should be pursued with an impeachment proceeding. How have you evolved on this issue? What do you think about this latest news?
YANG: You know, I`m -- I`m in lock-step with Nancy Pelosi. Where I think she was reluctant earlier to pursue impeachment because she thought it would run aground in the Senate, and then there would end up being this -- this motivating or galvanizing force for Donald Trump supporters, how he`s being persecuted unfairly. And then after you impeach him if it doesn`t work, then it`s hard to impeach him again. And so, I think these were some of the things that were going through Nancy Pelosi`s head. They were going through my head. But then this past week when we saw just how far he`s willing to go even now after we had already investigated his collusion with foreign powers, I feel like Nancy Pelosi felt she had no choice but to move forward and I agree with her.
MADDOW: In terms of -- I have been thinking of this as collusion 2, Electric Boogaloo, that this is the president turning around -- I mean, literally, the day after Mueller testified, to say that he`s willing to try -- he didn`t get nailed for it, for what happened with Russia, he`s willing to try it with Ukraine. I guess the part of the strategic calculation the Democrats have to make here is whether or not this is something that they should investigate, spell out everything that happened behind it, get to the bottom of everything, or should they just consider this the president has admitted to, publicly admitted behavior. Is that enough to just move forward with impeachment proceedings regardless of what else happened around this?
YANG: Well, I think this is a great catalyst, but I believe one of the benefits of impeachment is that we can unearth new details about any of the myriad avenues of investigation that maybe individually might not have led to impeachment.
MADDOW: Uh-huh.
YANG: But I think this is in many ways an opportunity for us to see just what`s been going on after you turn over the rocks.
MADDOW: In terms of the president`s behavior here, your initial reaction about this. That if he`s not removed from office by this process, that it might politically bolster him, might make him more effective in the 2020 campaign, might make him be able to turn sort of a persecution complex into more support from his base -- do you just feel more relaxed about those concerns or do you feel like they can`t be operative given the seriousness of what -- the thing he`s accused of?
YANG: I think it`s the latter, where at some point, you have to exercise your constitutional authority and utilize the checks and balances system to say, look, this is a country that has the rule of law and that you can`t have your president colluding with foreign powers and putting pressure on them in return for aid against political rivals. At some point, you have to do the right thing, even if the political calculation isn`t necessarily in your favor.
MADDOW: Uh-huh. In terms of the Democratic field -- obviously, you`ve had a slow and steady rise in the polls. You got -- in a national poll, you came in at 8 percent today.
YANG: Yes, I like that one.
MADDOW: Yes. So, I was going to say, it`s the highest standing that you`ve had in a national poll, put -- leaving in the dust a lot of your fellow candidates who have held elective office before when you haven`t. Obviously, you have to be really happy with where your campaign is right now. And I feel like it`s been sort of an important stylistic difference in the campaign that some candidates have talked about Donald Trump as being a really singularly bad thing for the country, somebody who sort of hit the country like a lightning strike. Whereas other candidates have talked about the country as being sort of sick enough to elect Donald Trump in the first place and that he should be seen as a symptom rather than a singularly bad thing. Where do you come down on that?
YANG: I`m very much in the camp that Donald Trump is a symptom but he`s not the cause of all of our root problems.
MADDOW: Uh-huh.
YANG: If you dig in, you see that 78 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. We automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in the swing states, and now, 30 percent of America`s stores and malls are closing because of Amazon. And being a retail clerk is the most common job in most of the country. Even if we were to get rid of Donald Trump in 2020, and I frankly expect him to be there and to beat him at the ballot box, then we have to do the hard work of reversing many of the problems that got him elected in 2016.
MADDOW: If you had the choice between running against Donald Trump or running against Mike Pence because Donald Trump just got removed --
(CROSSTALK)
YANG: Oh, no (ph), you just said that, President Pence.
MADDOW: President Pence. I mean, I doubt that Donald Trump is going to get removed by the impeachment process, but today has been a weird day. If you, Andrew Yang, had the choice of running against Donald Trump, president, or Mike Pence, president, who do you think you`d have an easier time beating?
YANG: I would be thrilled to be running against Mike Pence because that means that Donald Trump has been out of office for some period of time. That would require 20 Republican senators to have a change of heart, which as you suggest, you know, I don`t see happening. But if that were to happen, I`d be there celebrating alongside many other Americans.
MADDOW: Andrew Yang, thank you for being here on this very, very busy day. I look forward to having another opportunity to talk to you in this exact same place and I look forward to seeing you at the debate next month.
YANG: Thanks. I`ll see you soon, Rachel. Thank you.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source