CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: "Interview with Rep. John Garamendi"

Interview

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SCIUTTO: It will be quite a moment, quite a remarkable one. Manu Raju on the Hill, thanks very much.

I'm joined now by California Democratic Congressman, John Garamendi. He also serves on the Arms Services Committee. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us today.

First question in the simplest terms for folks watching at home, is there a formal impeachment inquiry of the president?

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): Absolutely. That's exactly what they did. However, you want to take it, we are now in a formal process. That's extremely important, as I see it, because that gives standing together information. It makes it going to be very difficult to stonewall because we are doing our constitutional responsibility moving down, determining whether there are facts that would lead to an impeachment vote sometime later, probably next year. But, yes, it's very, very important in my mind, it is the standing that we now have under the Constitution to proceed to investigate.

SCIUTTO: You know as well as I do, however, that, one, there is not large public support for impeachment of this president, even among people who do not support the president, and two, you have Republican control of the Senate, so even if you got an impeachment through the House in terms of conviction, of course, taken up in the Senate, you need 2/3 vote, it ain't going to happen. So why do this so close to the 2020 election when you have a chance to remove the president at the ballot box?

GARAMENDI: Because there's been wrongdoing. Right now, I just left a meeting with the acting secretary of the Air Force talking about Prestwick, the airport in Scotland, that we have seen an incredible threefold increase in the number of times the Air Force has used that facility right next to the Trump golf course there, of now 245 times this year in the last eight months. Why? How did that happen, when before it was maybe 50 times?

So there's all kinds of questions out there about the corruption [10:05:00] with this man and with his administration to say nothing of the Mueller report, which in and of itself has plenty of reasons to move forward with an impeachment inquiry.

Bottom line is we have a task to do here. We have a corrupt president. We need to get those facts out there, whether it involve, say, ultimately an impeachment vote in the House, or a trial in the Senate. That's down the road. We need to lay out those facts. That's our responsibility. We must do that.

On the armed services committee, we are proceeding with the Prestwick thing, together with the Oversight Committee.

SCIUTTO: And we'll continue to ask for updates on that story.

I want to ask about another issue, it is gun legislation. President Trump has said he spoke with Senators Murphy, Toomey, Manchin, about the idea of expanding background checks. But as you know, the president has often reversed himself on a whole host of gun control measures. Do you trust the president to get definitively behind substantial gun control legislation?

GARAMENDI: I trust the members of Congress and the Senate to do what is necessary to protect Americans. We absolutely have to have these measures, just as simple as they are about background checks, eliminate the loopholes, deal with the issues at gun shows and on and on. That's our responsibility.

The president ultimately can decide whether to sign the bill or not. But I would think each and every one of us should have the courage to stand up to protect Americans. It would be nice to have the president along, but frankly, you can't count on him because it does change every day.

SCIUTTO: Well, beyond the president, it would require GOP lawmakers to do something they've been loathed to do, which is to stand up to the NRA which opposes universal background checks. Do you believe your Republican colleagues in the House and across the way in the Senate will do so?

GARAMENDI: I just mentioned courage, didn't I? Didn't I just mention the responsibility that we have to protect Americans? I would hope that every single one of us, Democrat, Republican and an independent, would stand up and say, I am going to protect Americans. I am at least going to provide a vote for background checks. All of the loopholes, get those out of the way.

It seems to me that it doesn't take much courage to do that, but for some, that may be a substantial leap for them.

SCIUTTO: Yes. The president is a shortage of courage on this particular issue.

I want to talk to you about the president, his now outgoing or gone, national security adviser, John Bolton. There was a remarkable moment in the Oval Office where the president indicated that because the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, did not like John Bolton, that that seemed to be a factor in his decision. Tell us the significance of a president seemingly taking the preference of a hostile foreign leader for such a senior role.

GARAMENDI: Yes, and one of the most egregious leaders in the world, a man that has no problem of killing most of his relatives in the most aggressive manners. No, I do not understand the love affair that President Trump has with Kim Jong-un. He uses the word I'm in love with him. What's going on here? This is craziness.

So who knows what's going to happen here. But the reality is North Korea is a very serious problem to the United States as well as to the neighbors and certainly to South Korea. We've seen North Korea continue to build its nuclear arsenal despite the love affair that Trump has with Kim Jong-un. We see North Korea continue to shoot off missiles, more and more sophisticated missiles despite the love affair that the president has with Kim Jong-un. This is a bad relationship.

SCIUTTO: Final question, if I can ask you, CNN is reporting that the night before Bolton was fired, he and Trump got into a heated argument specifically over the president's invitation of the Taliban to Camp David as part of a larger negotiation on U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Based on what you know of the administration's withdrawal plan, does that look to you like a capitulation?

GARAMENDI: It looks to me like it's an incomplete negotiation. First of all, I never understood why the negotiations did not include the legitimate Afghan government. They were on the sidelines. It seems to me there's no way that you can have a successful negotiation when one of the key partners is not at the table. Nonetheless, that's where this president had been going.

The notion of inviting the Taliban to Camp David is absolutely beyond belief. If the president was responsible for that invitation, thankfully, Bolton had a very short conversation and said, no, this is the wrong thing to do. And if the president backed down, all the better. Bad idea, never should have happened in the first place.

Hopefully, the negotiations are absolutely essential. Hopefully, they'll move forward in a more productive way that will ultimately lead to a situation where [10:10:00] Afghanistan no longer needs to have American troops. I suspect that will be a long, long time for now. But nonetheless, those negotiations between the Taliban, the Afghan government and the United States and also the surrounding countries is essential, it must go forward.

SCIUTTO: Congressman John Garamendi, thanks for taking the time this morning.

GARAMENDI: Thank you very much.

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