Fox News "Sunday Morning Features" - Transcript Interview with Doug Collins

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Republican Congressman Doug Collins was among those who questioned A.G. Barr. He joins me now with more.

Congressman, good to see you this morning. Thanks very much for being here.

REP. DOUG COLLINS (R-GA): Good morning, Maria. It's good to see you as well.

BARTIROMO: Well, what a hearing.

First, what struck you most about hearing from A.G. Barr this week?

COLLINS: Well, it would have struck me more if I -- my Democratic colleagues would actually have let him speak.

What struck me the most is that, after you have waited a year-and-a-half to get the attorney general in there, all you wanted to do was do political posturing, and make statements, and then not let him answer.

And if he didn't answer the way you wanted him to -- I mean, it just showed that the Democrats have no desire at the truth. They went over talking points after talking points of peaceful protesters, which we all know are not true in Portland and all over this country.

They went into issues of wanting to investigate the president on the commutation of -- the sentence commutation of Roger Stone. And then, if they just didn't like it, they just lectured him. And then, when he tried to answer, they just wouldn't him answer.

It showed in a capsule what this Congress has been like under Democratic leadership, wasted time, signifying nothing.

BARTIROMO: Actually, we have talked about this before, because, once the Democrats took over the majority in the House of Representatives at the end of 2018, 2019 was all about investigating Donald Trump, right?

You didn't really have -- where were the hearings on China? We have just finished a very important conversation with the secretary of state and how the Chinese Communist Party has a massive espionage campaign in this country. How much did you cover that in your Judiciary Committee this -- the last two years, Congressman?

COLLINS: Not a bit, Maria.

And we have talked about this. And this is the part that just is really disturbing.

Chairman Nadler, again, who had an opportunity to take this committee and to do good things in a bigger scope, when we could do investigations, like actually on China in the espionage and the spying that they have been doing, but also on the theft of intellectual property, and the things that we have been working on for a long time.

And, instead, we chose not to do that. We had well over 100 hours -- think about that -- 100 hours of just simply investigating the president on nonsense hearings at the full committee level. And that's not what the American people are looking for.

And so, when you have had the attorney general there, when they could have asked questions, just like you just did very well with the secretary of state, they could have asked it of the attorney general. They chose not to.

The Democratic Party seems to have a problem admitting that the communist Chinese are infiltrating our country, trying everything they can to steal our intellectual property and infiltrate our businesses and our politics.

They have turned a blind eye to it every time, because all they want is to get at the president and to make anybody who's associated with him look bad.

BARTIROMO: Yes, and we just heard a little of that from the secretary of state.

We're going to zero in more on that, who specifically in Congress is the CCP trying to influence right now, because it seems that there's a lot of influencing going on.

Let's take a short break, Congressman. I want to get into the Russia probe, as well as what's happening in our cities across the country.

Doug Collins is with us this morning.

We will be right back with more on "Sunday Morning Futures."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BARTIROMO: Welcome back.

We are back with Republican Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia.

And, Congressman, we just talked about A.G. Barr and that hearing this week.

I want to talk about what's happening in our cities across the country. The crime rate is up in your neighborhood in Atlanta, crime rate, shootings up in Chicago, in New York. And, of course, then there is Portland, with this effort to take down federal buildings.

COLLINS: Yes. It's been...

BARTIROMO: What are you doing about it, you and your colleagues?

COLLINS: Well, we're actually trying to bring it to the attention of our Democratic colleagues, because they don't believe it actually seems to exist. They keep talking about peaceful protesters. They keep ignoring it.

And when you have Democratic mayors of Chicago, Portland, and these others, and even here in Atlanta, who are ignoring crime rates -- the crime rate -- the homicide rate in Chicago is up 50 percent, and they're one of the highest in the nation every year.

placeholder
In Atlanta, the crime rate is up in double digits among murders and aggravated assaults and burglaries. When you see this happening, it gives some implication into something I saw just recently on a study that's coming out that say over 238 police departments who have been polled have seen a decrease recently in their budgets.

This defunding the police movement is actually taking hold. And it's actually causing our cities and municipalities to be unsafe.

But yet, in that Barr hearing, when everything was brought up, they kept talking about peaceful protests.

Real quickly, Maria, here's what you bring to a peaceful protest. You bring a sign, you bring a T-shirt, you bring a hat, a whistle, a noisemaker. You march peacefully. You have civil disobedience.

What you don't bring to a peaceful -- to a peaceful protest is Molotov cocktails, bolt cutters, industrial-grade fireworks, lasers to blind people in the Marshals. That's what they're trying to face. And the Democrats are just ignoring that altogether.

Bill Barr brought that out very well the other day. But we have got a problem in our cities. And they have got to take a look at it.

BARTIROMO: Yes, it's really horrible to look at what has taken place in our cities. We are just tearing the country apart, on top of what we're all dealing with, with COVID.

I want to ask you about one other threat that we have talked a lot about, and that is the tech companies and their dominance, their hearing last week.

Talking about Section 230 is something you have spoken about a lot.

COLLINS: Yes.

BARTIROMO: What is going to be the change in terms of congressional movements against tech on that Section 230 going into the election? Are they going to censor conservative speech going into this presidential election?

COLLINS: Well, they're trying right now.

They did me and Jim and -- Jordan -- and several others recently. I was off for 36 hours, off of Twitter, still with no reason.

I think what's interesting is, this hearing, it finally happened last week, because it was one of the hearings that I actually got started, me and Chairman Nadler and Cicilline and Chairman -- and Mr. Sensenbrenner.

We were the ones that actually instigated -- I was the one that actually instigated the hearings, because we knew that, if you get at antitrust, because of their size, if you look at their market dominance in ads and revenue and content stealing that they have done, that that is the hook to get to Section 230.

Well, if you're out there, and you're watching this morning, and you don't know what Section 230 is, that is what allows these tech folks to hide behind them being able to censor conservatives, them being able to take down what they don't want on their sites, and being able to manipulate from a political perspective what's going on.

They're no longer these small start-up companies that are simply bulletin boards. They're actually publishers. They're content creators and content stealers, by the way, that we actually need to make sure that they're now playing by the same rule as every other media company and content generator does.

And that's where I hope we're having the discussion. We have got to get the Democrats to focus on the fact that we can use antitrust to make sure that this is a fair playing field, because the influence and the scope that they have is amazing.

I have been fighting against this since day one. That's why Paul Gosar and I put out a bill and others put out a bill on Stop the Censorship Act, which goes directly at 230 and makes the necessary changes in 230, while still preserving First Amendment rights for people to comment.

BARTIROMO: Well, you don't have a lot of time before the election -- that's for sure -- to ensure that they play fairly.

Congressman, we will be watching. Thanks for your efforts here. Good to see you this morning, sir.

COLLINS: Maria, it's always good to be with you. Take care.

BARTIROMO: Congressman Doug Collins.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source