MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
SCHULTZ: Joining me is congressman Jim McDermott of Washington. Great to have you with us tonight.
For you veterans in Congress, this has got to be pretty good entertainment at this point.
REP. JIM MCDERMOTT (R), WASHINGTON: We`ve seen the movie before, Ed. The way Gingrich operates, the first thing he does is attack the press. Attack the press, anybody who`s made any accusation. Then he dismisses and says, I didn`t do anything; there`s no way I did that.
Then he starts to tell a tale as he rewrites history. And that`s exactly what he did here. He said, I was not a lobbyist. You`re wrong. You guys are attacking me. I was simply a historian there. I was sitting
around with them, telling them what was happening, and I gave them no advice. And they paid me 300,000 dollars for it?
Well, a lot of people would like to be paid 300,000 dollars to sit around and tell stories. That`s just nonsense, the whole thing.
SCHULTZ: I think the public would like to know -- I`d like to know was Gingrich trying to sell Republicans on Freddie Mac back in 2006?
MCDERMOTT: Of course he was. He didn`t want them to dismantle it. He didn`t want them to have any hearings on it. He didn`t want them to examine what was going on there or the housing bubble or all the problems that were -- ultimately that rolled out.
Everybody -- there were many people who knew there were problems in the housing industry, but nobody wanted to have a public hearing where somebody might come out and testify in public. Then the Republicans would have had to do something about it. And Gingrich didn`t want that to happen.
SCHULTZ: I tell you what, politically, he seems to be a cat with nine lives. I mean, one of the most recent polling out there, the PPP poll, Gingrich is at 28 percent. He`s ahead of Romney and Cain in the latest
polling. I mean, he seems to be able to dodge things.
I mean, his answers are pretty smooth and solid. And he speaks with a veteran voice and has experience. He doesn`t have the gaffes that the other candidates on the Republican side seem to have. What do you make of all of this, the way it`s coming down?
MCDERMOTT: That`s only because the public has forgotten. This guy was the most divisive member of the House of Representatives. He split the Republicans and Democrats, got the Republicans in power, was speaker for four years, and then his own people threw him out after the Ethics Committee fined him 300,000 dollars.
Now, nobody talks about that, but that`s the same thing. When he was accused in the Ethics Committee, he said, you guys are -- you`re attacking me, you liberals. It`s awful. And I never did it. I never did any of
this stuff.
Then he paid 300,000 dollars to buy his way out of that situation and lied to the committee. He told them he wouldn`t spin the result in the public, in the press. And that`s immediately what he went out and did on a telephone call with his entire leadership.
So this guy is not very well known because people have forgotten. But in this campaign, if he gets to be the nominee, and I -- I think from Obama`s point of view, he`d be a wonderful one because we could have a Hay Day with this guy. This is a guy that was carrying on with a woman while he was accusing Bill Clinton of all sorts of things.
This is -- this is a guy with a long tattered history that people have forgotten.
SCHULTZ: Congressman Jim McDermott, always a pleasure. Thanks for joining us tonight. Appreciate your time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source