Interview With Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) About High Stakes Super Tuesday And 2024 Elections
Interview
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Hey, Jim. Thanks for having me on.
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You know, I don't think the presidential election has been joined yet. I think it's going to take a couple more months. The president has got to do a lot to perform. I think Thursday night is going to be a big night for him. He has a tremendous record to run on. But the polls, you know, talk about his age.
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And he can't change his age, but he can communicate more effectively the things he's done regarding infrastructure, regarding creating jobs, regarding addressing inflation better than any other Western country. So the president has done a lot of great things to improve infrastructure and manufacturing, and so much more. But he's got to sell that to the people, and the Democrats as a whole has to help him sell that. So I think that as the campaign joins and it becomes a clear choice between two candidates, things are going to change.
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Yes. I think the president is doing that already. He's got to do more of it. Every single day quite frankly. And it's not my advice, it's me looking at history, looking at President Clinton. President Clinton used to take the issue they were attacking him on, make it his own, proposed a comprehensive, bipartisan solution. If the Republicans go along with him, hey, we finally move forward after 35 years of not dealing with this issue.
If they don't go along with him, it's very easy for him to point out, hey, you're just playing politics and you're trying to weaponize this issue, which is clear when you hear that President Trump says, let's not pass that bipartisan law because that would give a victory to Biden. I want to run on the chaos. That's just -- as Mitt Romney said, that's appalling.
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You know, the thing I looked to with my campaign is to prove that campaigns matter. When it comes down to choosing between two candidates, and the campaigns they run that has a very big impact on the results so if the voters have to choose where the campaign has been joined for real between Biden and Trump, and they're both running on their records and they're both running on their visions for the next four years, that's when people will really start to focus.
You know, you see that President Trump has been underperforming in his polling in the actual primaries. And the Democrats, as a general rule, have been overperforming as far as polling in all these different elections that have been leading up over the past couple of years. So, you know, campaigns matter, issues matter. I think this immigration issue is going to be a very, very big issue. People want us to address it.
If they see the Democrats are actually trying to address it and are proposing reasonable solutions and are trying to get something done, and the Republicans are just saying it's a problem, it's a problem, it's a problem
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It's a really big problem, and then you say, well, what do you want to do? Well, it's a problem. It's a problem. It's a really big -- yes, but what do you want to do? It's a problem, that's not enough. So that's what happened to my campaign. And I think that the president has demonstrated that he's willing to move. He's willing to compromise. He wants to get something done. And he's being obstructed not only by the House and some members of the Senate, but by former President Trump, who's telling his acolytes not to do anything.
So I think, you know, campaigns matter, issues matter. I think the president has got to really perform on State of the Union.
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You know, I don't know that -- I'd like to get money back to New York state and to New York City so that they can help pay for this crushing burden that we have right now and we need legislation to do that. But I think it's important to note that the system we have now was designed for 400,000 people. Right now there's millions of people that are coming across each year, not 400,000, million.
When they say we need more border agents, we need more immigration judges, we need more detention bunk beds, which were all part of the bipartisan deal, we need to build more wall, fine. We'll build more wall. We need to give more money to the states and the cities affected by this. We need to improve the asylum process so that cases can be processed in a matter of weeks instead of a matter of years. Those will all make a big -- I keep on making this point. James
Lankford is the Republican senator who negotiated this deal in the Senate. You're not going to find a smarter, harder working, more honest conservative than you're going to find in Jim Lankford. He negotiated the best possible deal you could get. Anybody says, the "Wall Street Journal" endorsed the deal. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed this compromise.
The Border Patrol union president was a big Trump supporter endorsed this compromise. Why won't President Trump and others support this compromise? Because they're playing politics. So we just need to keep on making that point over -- can I say one other thing, Jim? Very important. We keep on hearing about the 5,000, the 5,000, the 5,000? Those 5,000, if under this compromise proposal will be processed on a timely basis, 90 percent of those 5,000 will be sent back right away.
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And James Lankford, Republican senator, debunked that 5,000 talking point much as you are, repeatedly, but, you know, clearly didn't move Trump.
You mentioned Biden's age. Last night, "Saturday Night Live" spoofed the president's supposedly extraordinarily high behind-the-scenes energy, which we often heard from his advisers. Have a listen. I want to get your thoughts on one thing.
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Yes. You know, I remember this. You know, I'm 61 years old. I remember this with President Reagan and they used to make fun of him. And he goofed up in his first debate and everybody said, oh, he's too old, you know, he's losing a step. He's falling apart.
And he came back for the second debate and he said -- and they brought up his age, and said, Mr. President, your age -- is age going to be a problem for you in his campaign? And President Reagan said, I'm not going to let the youth and inexperience of my opponent affect this race.
I mean, so, yes, he's got -- he can't change his age. He is how old he is. Everybody knows that. We should be pushing the fact that he's accomplished so much, that he's very wise, he's very pretty experienced, and he has an incredibly strong team around him. And he's gotten a lot of bipartisan accomplishments done as part of his administration, from infrastructure to manufacturing through the Chips Act, to things with guns, for veterans. There's so much this administration has done and this president has done.
When the campaign is joined, which I think will happen over the next couple of months, when I made it really, you know, people have to choose between candidates, I think the president has a very strong case to make.
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He had a double and a homerun today in the scrimmage games
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So we're very, very excited. Yes, very excited.
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Thank you.
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