MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I want to start with Congressman Stupak. What"s going on out there?

Here"s a message, by the way, (INAUDIBLE) lighten up the show. It"s a

recording of a message left for you, Congressman. Let"s listen to it.

We"ve got some bleeps in there to clean it up a bit.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing

(EXPLETIVE DELETED), you turncoat son of a (EXPLETIVE DELETED), I hope you

bleed out your (EXPLETIVE DELETED), got cancer and die, you (EXPLETIVE

DELETED). You do not--you do not say that you"re pro-life and then for a

few bucks, you know, do turncoat and hurt the country, you (EXPLETIVE

DELETED) piece of (EXPLETIVE DELETED), (EXPLETIVE DELETED), mother

(EXPLETIVE DELETED). I hope you die!

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, the good news, Congressman Stupak, is, is that I

don"t think that was said in a Michigan accent. At least, that"s good

news. It sounds like a guy further south from you a bit. But your

thoughts on getting that hateful kind of call in your e-mail.

REP. BART STUPAK (D), MICHIGAN: That"s one of the nicer ones, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Not e-mail but voicemail.

STUPAK: Yes, that"s one of the nicer ones. You know, it"s--that"s

how far this whole debate has degraded to. It"s sad. We should be talking

about health care and the positive aspects in there that helps out all

Americans. Thirty-two million Americans will have access to quality,

affordable health care. That"s what we should be talking about.

MATTHEWS: Well, if you think that guy"s a jerk, here"s Glenn Beck

today with his thoughts on the subject. I think we have a bit of his tape

today, or at least some--some quote from his show.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GLENN BECK, HOST, "GLENN BECK": I can guarantee you they walked out

and said, What the hell do you have to do to these people to get them to

kill us?

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: That"s him speaking of Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic

leaders, Congressman, saying that they"ve consciously tried to figure out a

way to get the protesters from the right wing, the tea party people and the

others against you, to kill them. He says that Pelosi wanted people to

shoot at them.

STUPAK: That"s--that"s insane. I mean, no one is suggesting that

anyone shoot at anyone, especially the Speaker. It seems to me it was

Republicans that were on the Speaker"s balcony, second floor, with the sign

that had the big photo of the Speaker, showing it to the crowd, and they

would go across her throat. I think Mr. Beck has it backwards. But that

wouldn"t be the first time.

MATTHEWS: Congressman Perriello, you"re from southern Virginia. You

have been written about a lot in this regard. I"m impressed by your

constituent service, the way you"ve gone down and dealt with people and

explained, for example, what the jobs bill has done for them in (INAUDIBLE)

down there. You"ve tried to be a smart politician and a good congressman.

And how"s it going for you? I"ve heard there"s a weird case involving your

brother, apparently.

REP. TOM PERRIELLO (D), VIRGINIA: There is an unfortunate case where

some bloggers posted my brother"s address as being mine. And someone went

on his property and cut a propane line to the tank. And it"s being

investigated, and I feel like law enforcement is just doing a tremendous

job.

But this should be a no-brainer. This should be very, very simple to

simply say, in this country, the most American thing is that we settle our

problems at the ballot box. And I"ll tell you, the Republican governor of

my state, the Republican attorney general, they didn"t hesitate. They

didn"t run a focus group or a poll. They simply said, This is wrong. This

is way over the line.

But for two or three days, we tried to get the Republican leaders in

Washington to understand the same seriousness. There are colleagues of

mine, I"ve listened to the tapes, where their children are being threatened

I will kill your children if you don"t vote this way. You don"t need to

run a focus group on that. The very conservative attorney general of my

state, who thinks the bill is unconstitutional, still said even the posting

of the address was way over the line. Certainly, anytime, this is a no-

brainer.

MATTHEWS: What do you think of Eric Cantor"s behavior? What do you

think of--well, let"s listen to Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip

here. Here he is. He"s from Virginia, from Richmond. Here"s what he has

to say. I think he"s--well, he"s got a couple of points he"s making.

Let"s listen to them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ERIC CANTOR (R-VA), MINORITY WHIP: It is reckless to use these

incidents as media vehicles for political gain! That is why I have deep

concerns that some--DCCC chairman Chris Van Hollen and DNC chairman Tim

Kaine, in particular--are dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting

that these incidents be used as a political weapon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, I have to tell you, I don"t know how you fan the

flames when you--when you say you don"t like something. And by the way,

Congressman Stupak, I"ve got to ask you a question. I know this is

rhetorical. But you know, when Bush got his way on a number of issues--

forget the war. The parties agreed on that for a while there. He got a

huge tax cut for the wealthy. I didn"t see the Democrats burning down the

barns and sending hate mail, and you know, throwing rocks through windows.

They lost a big fight on fiscal issues. They got the wrong end of the

stick, you might argue. They still get it in the sense of tax policy. But

they didn"t go doing this stuff. They took it on the chin.

STUPAK: You"re right. I mean, I"ve been here for 18 years, and I"ve

never seen it to this degree, this much hatred being spilled out and fanned

throughout the country. It"s--it"s--as Tom said, it"s really gone over

the line. We"ve got to clamp down on it.

And if Eric Cantor is right about the DNC and DCCC--well, when Randy

Neugebauer made his comments to me when I was speaking on the floor, the

"baby killer" comment--so what did he do? Next day, he has got a Web

site up to raise money off the comments he made. I mean, it"s almost like

this is it now. You shout down somebody on the floor, whether it"s the

president or myself during a heated debate, and then you turn around and do

an ad to raise money off it. I mean--it"s--it seems like unethical

behavior.

MATTHEWS: You"re being nice. Let me go to Congressman Perriello. It

seems to me that there"s some ethnic piece to this. Let"s be blunt about

it. Neugebauer is out there selling the birther stuff, the crap, if you

will, that the president wasn"t born here. This is of a piece, the "baby

killer" line, this over-the-top attack on the president as a person, as a

person who"s not really one of us, and then using this kind of "baby

killer" talk against your colleague.

This isn"t--you know, it seems like the right wing likes everything

about democracy except elections and majority votes and government action.

They seem to go for the theory, at least, the nice--well, I don"t know

what it is about the democracy they do like. They don"t seem to like its

results. Your thoughts?

PERRIELLO: Well, you know, there"s certainly a long history of

"othering," and race is a big part of that in our country. But keep in

mind there are a lot of good, decent people out there who are against

health care reform. I happen to think it"s a great thing for America, a

great thing for small business. There are a lot of good people who

disagree.

We had 21 town hall meetings, over an hour. We have five different

tea party groups in my district. We"ve met together. We"ve disagreed,

occasionally agreed. And for the majority of people, they understand

that"s the way that democracy works. And if you disagree, you go to the

ballot box and you try to win.

So for the Republican Party, or for certain leaders, to be trying to

say it"s anything other than that seems disrespectful to those who have

done this the right way and played by the rules. So we don"t want to paint

everyone with one brush.

It just seems to me again like for the Becks and the Boehners, this

should be an easy one. Simply come out and say violence and threats of

violence against elected officials, trying to influence a vote through

threat of violence on someone"s children--it"s clearly wrong. And leave

it there, no political tip-toeing around it. It"s just wrong. And then we

can move on to what the benefit, the pros and cons of health care are. It

just seems like a no-brainer.

MATTHEWS: Mr. Stupak, I want to give you one bit of information I"ve

come across. That is, I know you"re pro-life, but among the pro-choice

community in this country, most people who are pro-choice and believe the

ultimate decision doesn"t lie with the government or the law, it lies with

the individual--among that group of people, the plurality are against

federal funding.

So the organizations that have come out against you and are putting in

primary opponents against you are off base when it comes to most pro-choice

people. Pro-choice people are against funding! They want the government

to stay out of abortion. They don"t want it subsidizing it, getting

involved in it, insuring for it or anything. Stay away from it. Let the

individual person make the decision. Your thoughts?

STUPAK: I would agree with you. I would agree with you. The Supreme

Court said, though, we have to make a decision, and our decision in the

federal government for the last 30-some years is we don"t fund it. We

haven"t moved to restrict abortion rights. We cannot pass that

legislation. But what we"re really saying--and what most pro-life, pro-

choice members agree with--is don"t ask us to pay for abortion that we

find objectionable.

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you very much. Good luck with your campaign,

sir.

STUPAK: Thank you.

MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr.--and good luck against the violent types -

Bart Stupak and Congressman Tom Perriello.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source