MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Debbie Dingell

Interview

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O`DONNELL: Also today a disgraced Republican member of Congress who is in her first year in the House of Representatives and has been removed from all committee assignments, decided to heckle Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi in the middle of the speaker`s press conference outside the Capitol today were upon our next guest, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell had a few words for Marjorie Taylor Greene. We`re not showing you the video of that because we don`t want to give Congressman Greene the pleasure of being on television which of course, is the only thing that matters to Republicans like her.

Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan she is the senior democratic whip. Congresswoman Dingell, I want to begin on what they call a point of personal privilege in the Congress. And if there are any more words you`d like to share with us about what you experienced on the Capitol steps today.

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI) SENIOR WHIP: You know, Lawrence, it`s not my finest moment. I think we should be civil to each other. She was heckling. She was bullying. Quite frankly, she had been bullying us at the top of the stairs for about 10 minutes. And she was trying to disrupt the press conference with about 150 of my colleagues that the speaker was having. And just throwing obscene comments and her hope was to post publish. She was bullying everybody and I just said Why can`t you be civil to your colleagues? Why can`t you -- I was angry and it was better me than some others I think. I don`t want people to think that they should yell at each other.

But I`ll tell you something. I`ve been bullied many times in my life. And I`m at a point in my life that I don`t like bullies. And when you have to speak up against them, I will and that`s what was happening on the steps of capital today.

O`DONNELL: Well, I don`t want to belabor this but just for the audience`s perspective on this, what she was doing is something that has never happened before. I mean, no one would ever dream of doing, no member of the House would ever dream of doing that kind of thing. So the shock level that anyone who`s been around there would experience just in seeing that. It is almost indescribable.

[22:45:08]

DINGELL: It is indescribable. It`s disrespectful. I`m someone who believes in talking to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, many of them are my close friends. But what bothered me more than anything was the hatred. And it`s that anger that we see dividing us as a country, and it was there on the Capitol step. She was very much trying to disrupt another colleague, disrupt a press conference with a lot of my colleagues. You just -- you treat each other with respect. And disability, it`s not right.

I, you know, I don`t want children to watch this or other people that think you should yell at people. But I also think people have to stand out when you just need to finally stand up to somebody and just say, why can`t you be civil? Why do you have to do this? And I will say, she did leave.

O`DONNELL: OK. We can`t take the suspense anymore. You have to tell us right now everything that`s going to happen on Monday.

DINGELL: You know, this is what I`m going to say to you. Failure is not an option. We have got to get this figured out. We are the old well, Rogers saying that people with weak stomach shouldn`t or sausage or laws being made, we are in the ugliest part of watching the sausage being made.

But I think the Speaker of the House, Budget Committee has been a meet. D and Democrats mean we have to deliver. And if we don`t get this figured out, if we don`t deliver, absolutely everybody is going to be in trouble. So I don`t think it`s going to be a pretty weekend. I think there are going to be a lot of discussions that we have no choice but to get this done.

O`DONNELL: The White House issued a readout just within the last hour of the President`s call with Speaker Pelosi and with Chuck Schumer saying, in effect that they feel that there is broad agreement on the principles of the reconciliation bill, and a recognition of the urgency to address economic challenges of families are facing. They agreed to stay in touch over the course of the weekend, a pretty standard read out for that kind of call. It`s actually the kind of call I suspect is happening multiple times a day with all three of them.

But clearly, the White House trying to convey that everyone`s working on this, everyone is at their desks. And they`re not going to let an hour go by where they`re not trying to make some progress here.

DINGELL: I think it`s very important. I think it`s important that the President engage with House members. There are two houses of the Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives. You know, you talk to a couple of members all the time. But there are a whole lot of members in the middle that know what`s at stake. They want to know what`s happening, they want to be communicated with. And I think that`s going to be one of the most important things that happens over the course of the next few days. But failure is not an option. And every Democrat needs to know that.

O`DONNELL: So as I was saying to Rachel, at the beginning of the hour, I was kind of surprised at how smoothly this went in the earlier stages of the legislation. I was very surprised that the budget resolution passed reasonably easily with democratic or democratic votes in both the House and the Senate.

That budget resolution was the framework, that budget resolution was a $3.5 trillion budget resolution. And if people were not ready to support 3.5 trillion, that would have been the normal time to try to work that out. What happened between all the Demo -- the time when all the Democrats voted for 3.5 trillion and tonight?

DINGELL: Well, first of all, I`m not going to tell you what I think the United States Senate right now. But the United -- we began to see some senators who were expressing their concerns about the amount of money and throwing a lot of bonds, it`s not constructive. And I`m not going to point fingers at anybody.

But, you know, I want to -- we need both bills. I want to be very clear on that. We need to fix our roads and our bridges, and we need to get the lead out of height, and we need to get broadband but there`s not enough money in the bipartisan bill to accomplish what we need to get done.

You know, I was in the White House with the President on electric vehicles, where he set a goal of 50 percent electric vehicles by the year 2030. We`re not going to get that if we don`t build out the EV infrastructure, that`s in the other bill and I could go through a list of old things like that.

There are a lot of things that we`ve got to get done. People got to come together. They`ve got to understand what`s in here. Quite frankly, everybody needs to be talking to the entire caucus do. We spent too much of people just talking to a few near groups of people and not including the whole caucus and I think you`re going to see more of the whole caucus included these next few days as we get where we got to get.

O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, always an honor to have you join us but it`s especially good to see you tonight after this long day for you on Capitol Hill.

[22:50:07]

DINGELL: It was a long day. So thank you for those kind words. It does help to end the day. Thank you.

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