CNN Newsroom: Interview with Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT)

Interview

"Thanks for having me, Paula.

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Yes, Paula, it's a little hard to listen to that. You know, the Ukrainians are engaged in truly an existential, an overused word, but an existential fight for their country. And it's our fight too, right? It's a fight against a brutal dictator by a fledgling democracy. And to say that just because the fighting season may slow down their advance, that that somehow is equivalent to their failing when they have done nothing but win unexpectedly now for -- you know, coming on two years, is a little rich.

Yes, the fighting will be different when the ground is frozen, but you know, frozen ground also makes it easier for vehicles to get around under some circumstances. So my point is here, that this is not something that's going to be over quickly. And if, you know, people are expecting a Hollywood ending here, that at the end of two hours, the Ukrainians are going to merge victorious, this is the real world.

They have brutal, brutal fighting to do against an entrenched enemy and they're going to continue to win so long as we in the West continue to support them in their fight, which is why at the end of the day, I'm pretty animated against people who were saying that this is somehow verging on failure.

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Well, look, you know, Nikki Haley is running for president. She is doing exactly what you would expect her to try to do which is to appeal to the Republican base. There was a point in time when Nikki Haley had a responsible government position, that time is not now.

If you want to call them an enemy, OK, they have certainly, you know, been extremely aggressive in the South China Sea, it's stolen our I.P., we don't like what they do in terms of political repression or the way treat their ethnic minorities, but, guess what, there's also some $700 billion in cross-border trade with China. They own about a trillion dollars of our sovereign debt. Everything that you and I wearing right now, much of the equipment that we're using, the furniture in the rooms that we're sitting in was made in China.

And so, you know, if you -- again, I understand using the word enemy in the context of a Republican presidential primary. The fact is what is called for here is statesmanship. And that is to say that we're very clear with the Chinese about what we're not going to tolerate and hopefully the West isn't going to tolerate aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, turning fire hoses on Philippine naval vessels, that kind of thing, even as we do exactly what Joe Biden has been doing these last couple of days, which is making it clear that we also have common interests that we cannot forget.

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Well, I'll know an awful lot more on Tuesday when I get down there. It's been five weeks or so since we've been in session.

Look, here's what I would point out, you know this. The Senate has actually been passing appropriations bills almost exclusively in a bipartisan way. So here you have one chamber that is making progress. You have a Democratic president and, yes, there are 10, 20 Republicans who want to outlaw abortion in this country as a, you know, ransom for actually letting a budget go forward, who want to, you know, do all sorts of ideological things.

They are very isolated, right? Yes, they control the House by a very narrow margin and yes, the speaker of the House has to listen pretty hard to any four Republicans, including people like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene because without them he no longer has a majority. But the reality is, we know how this ends. A budget does get passed. I do imagine that the, you know, social media performers on the Republican side are going to demand their pound of flesh. But I do think given the way the poker table is laid out here, we do eventually get a budget passed.

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Thank you.

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