NBC Meet the Press Transcript

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Senator Moseley-Braun, welcome.

FMR. SEN. CAROL MOSELEY-BRAUN, (D-IL): Thank you. Delighted to be here.

MR. RUSSERT: During your career in the Senate, you were always for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: Is that still your position?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: We have a deficit of $500 billion right now.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: It's awful.

MR. RUSSERT: How would you balance the budget?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I think we start with rolling back the third of the tax cuts this administration's come up with, turn away from the kind of trickle-down economics that I like to say has given voodoo economics a bad name, that is not working, has not worked, cannot work, that we begin to re-energize this economy, to rebuild American by investing in job creation, investing in infrastructure, rebuilding our crumbling schools. You'll recall I did a lot of work on rebuilding schools when I was in the Senate and...

MR. RUSSERT: But if we have a balanced budget, how you going to do that? We have a $500 billion deficit. The tax cuts won't balance it.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well...

MR. RUSSERT: How are you going to have more spending and still balance the budget?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well, it will take a year or two as when Clinton--I was part of the Democratic team that helped Bill Clinton get the budget balanced--move in the direction of budget balance. It precedes from a revived economy. And this economy, for all of the wishful thinking--and we all, of course, hope the economy turns around, but, you know, we're in the doldrums, and have been there now for the entirety of this administration. And the only response is the approach of trickle-down and, you know, "Let's give rich people some more money and hope that that'll solve our problems." It won't, it hasn't, and, frankly, the misadventure that you were just talking about in Iraq only serve to deepen the hole that was already being dug.

MR. RUSSERT: You talk about the misadventure. I want to show you an interview you gave to the National Public Radio in May and I'll show you and our viewers on the screen: "...the question becomes, again, whether it was the right course, whether this unelected president had any right to send American men and women into harm's way."

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: "Unelected president"?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well, you know, I wasn't here for the last election, but I saw what happened. And the fact is this president did not win the majority of the votes of the American people. Now, our system allows the Electoral College to make another decision, but he did not have a mandate. And as much the point, the Constitution in Article I calls on the Congress to issue declarations of war. So what you have is an almost Orwellian situation in which the Congress ducked its responsibility, passed a resolution to someone that did not win the popular vote to put us on a course that, frankly, in my opinion, has precious little to do with finding bin Laden, with actually fighting a real war on terrorism and while...

MR. RUSSERT: But George Bush is not the duly-elected president of the United States and the commander in chief who has the right to send men and women?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: He is the commander in chief. And he was selected by the Electoral College to be the president, and everybody stands by that. We all did. And we all do.

MR. RUSSERT: He's not the duly-elected president?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: But he did not win a majority of the votes of the American people. I mean, that's just mathematics. That's just the numbers. Joe Lieberman likes to say--people ask if we can win; well, we already did. The fact is that this president did not get the mandate from the American people, I think, to go on a misadventure into Iraq that does not address the issue of fighting terrorism.

MR. RUSSERT: You also said that George Bush picked a fight with Saddam Hussein.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Let me put it this...

MR. RUSSERT: Do you really believe that?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Let me put it this way, Tim. If there's a crack house down the street from you and in it are the murderers who killed your brother and your sister-in-law, do you blow up the crack house or do you go after the murderers? And what I think we have here is a situation in which out of our pain, everybody suffered around 9/11, and everybody wanted to see the criminals who visited that terror on the American people brought to justice, but to go after Iraq while giving the criminals a chance to run away, a chance to regroup and a chance really to step up recruitment, it just seems to me winds up being a misadventure. And the further down this road we get, the more it becomes pretty clear that going after Iraq was a misadventure, was a distraction from bringing those criminals to justice who did what they did to our country and to all of us on 9/11.

MR. RUSSERT: So you wish Saddam Hussein was still in power?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Of course not! Of course not! Nobody--he was...

MR. RUSSERT: Well, then why was it a misadventure?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I said crack house, OK? If anybody was running the crack house, it was him. I mean, the fact is it was a terrible situation...

MR. RUSSERT: So it was not a misadventure?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: It was in terms of going after bin Laden, in terms of fighting a real war on terrorism, in terms of all of the harm that has been done not only in the loss of American life, but in what's happened with our international institutions, with our relationships with our traditional allies around the world.

We have just, if you will, blown up our ability to fight terrorism in the real sense because we have gone and gone into Iraq. And now we're going to be spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to rebuild Baghdad when our cities are crumbling, when our schools are falling apart, when the American people are terrified. The jobless rate went up to 6 percent, the highest it's been in nine years. So, you know, these things are not unconnected to each other.

MR. RUSSERT: When you were defeated running for re-election to the U.S. Senate, you sat down with the Chicago Tribune, and let me show you and our viewers exactly what you told them. "Carol Moseley-Braun appeared to write her own political obituary by declaring she would never run again for public office. 'Read my lips... Not. Never. Nein. Nyet.'"

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: What was that song?

MR. RUSSERT: Why are you breaking your word?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: What was that old song? Never say--I'll never say never again again? I'll never say never again again. No. I'm running for office out of a passionate patriotism because I believe my country is on the wrong track, because I believe that we are being held hostages to fear and taken in the wrong direction by leadership that, in my opinion, is failed leadership, and I can be a voice for all those people out there who think that we have another course, that we can rebuild America, that we can put this country back on a track to peace and that we can get our prosperity back, that we can restore the hope in America. I mean, think about it. FDR told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. And yet this president took the occasion of the State of the Union address to call on the American people to imagine the very worst that could happen to them.

I think that what we ought to have is some hope in this country, that our generation is going to live up to its responsibility to do better than the last one, that we can provide opportunity again, get this economy working for the masses again, and that is why I decided to come out of retirement after my ambassadorial--after being ambassador to paradise, and step forward for this Democratic nomination.

MR. RUSSERT: And Gerald Austin, who ran your campaign in 1992, worked on...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well, he didn't run my campaign, but...

MR. RUSSERT: ...he worked on it--said that your candidacy is an embarrassment. You have raised $72,000 thus far.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: No, well, that--go ahead. Go ahead.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, how much will you have raised by the end of June?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Ask your question. Ask your question. I don't know, and I can't predict. But let me say this: We started late. As you know, or may know, we're only 90 days, roughly 90 days, in the field. Everybody--this political season has gotten started so fast. Everybody kind of jumped the gun. It's not normal, really, that these campaigns take off until the fall. And so we jumped--we got in when we had to. It was before we had planned to, but I think we're doing very well. And the responses around the country have just been phenomenal.

MR. RUSSERT: But by September, unless you raise significant amounts of money and get some traction...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: That's right.

MR. RUSSERT: ...you're going to have to fold your tent.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: By September, but we've always said that. This is an exploratory committee, and so far, the responses have been wonderful and I've been really grateful for the kind of--for the taking up of this candidacy that we've seen all over.

MR. RUSSERT: There has been some controversy around your public career. When you first came to the Senate, you missed an orientation session...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Nope, I didn't.

MR. RUSSERT: ...for new senators. You went to Nigeria. I just want to talk about Nigeria, because this is an important subject. First of all, who the former dictator was--and I'll show you and on our screen exactly who he was: "Abacha has jailed the country's elected president, cracked down on the pro-democracy press, imprisoned as many as 7,000 political opponents, allegedly stolen more than $1 billion in oil revenues and presided over the country's economic collapse." And then this: "Moseley Braun has acknowledged at least seven visits to Nigeria...despite growing international efforts to isolate the Abacha regime because of human-rights violations and allegations of involvement in heroin trafficking."

The Congressional Black Caucus outspoken on imposing sanctions on that regime; the State Department criticizing you for taking your trips; and then people said, "Well, the reason she went to Nigeria, and the reason she's against sanctions, is because of this," and I'll show you on the screen: "One trip was with Kgosie Matthews, her former fiance and co-owner of her Hyde Park apartment. According to Justice Department records, Matthews was registered as a foreign agent for the Federal Republic of Nigeria from mid-May to mid-July in 1994, after a military coup ousted the government." True?

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I'm glad you asked that question, because none of that has any--if anything, Tim, I lost the public-relations war, but there was no truth to any of what you've just gone through. Let--to go back and just to hopefully answer this and put a stake in this Dracula's heart for the last time.

I voted for sanctions against Nigeria. That's on the record. I did not support expanded sanctions that somebody else wanted, that the administration opposed. So at no time did I take a position in regards to Nigeria that the administration didn't take. I have a 25-year history and support of human rights and human-rights advocacy, not just words but advocacy and activism on behalf of human rights.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator, you were saying things...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Let me...

MR. RUSSERT: ...about Abacha that were denounced by the State Department...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Let me...

MR. RUSSERT: ...and denounced by the Congressional Black Caucus.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Let me say--no. Well, I did not see denunciations. If there were, then that's my own fuzzy memory. But I can tell you that I never--it was never a matter of support for the Abacha regime or anything like that. I went--my trips to Nigeria were privately paid for, privately funded. We were visiting with other people who were friends of mine. And the last time that was called a visit with the horrible dictator was to go to a funeral. I went to a funeral. Now, was it wrong place, wrong time? Absolutely. But it was in no way intended to send a signal of any support for any human-rights violator.

And I can say this, also, Tim, to make the point: There was so much misinformation that I didn't attend Senate orientation. There's a picture of me on the front page of The New York Times, above the fold, at Senate orientation. So I did attend Senate orientation. I did my job and I have...

MR. RUSSERT: You missed some of those sessions.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: No, I didn't. I have a 99 percent attendance record in the United States Senate.

MR. RUSSERT: No, you missed some of the orientation sessions.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: No, sir, I did not, not one of them. I was there for all...

MR. RUSSERT: Not one day, one hour.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Not one day, one hour.

MR. RUSSERT: But what...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: And there's a picture in The New York Times to verify that.

MR. RUSSERT: But you did have problems about Nigeria. There were problems about a Medicaid fraud where your mom had inherited some money that you...

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: She didn't...

MR. RUSSERT: ...and later you had to make a reinstatement. You yourself went on the air during the campaign: "I'm Carol Moseley-Braun. I know I've made mistakes and disappointed..."

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: And you know what those mistakes were? I lost the PR war. Karl Rove made $700,000 to muddy me up in my re-election campaign.

MR. RUSSERT: You did nothing wrong.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I had no way--look at the records. $311.28, people saying that I had mishandled campaign finances-- $311.28. We're even using that, by the way, for our matching funds number. Instead of $250, we're asking people to give us $311.28. All of that noise around campaign finances for $311.28. All the noise around Nigeria for going to a funeral. It was a lot of public-relations hysteria, and there was no truth to things like--my record in the Senate for my state was an exemplary one. I fought to rebuild crumbling schools, provided leadership on women's pensions, provided leadership on the Underground Railroad, viatical settlements; dollar coin was my bill. You go right down the line.

MR. RUSSERT: But you were not re-elected.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: No, that's right. I was outspent 3:1, too.

MR. RUSSERT: To be continued. If you stay in the race, we'll have you back.

MS. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I'm going to stay in the race, and I look forward to coming back.

MR. RUSSERT: And we'll be right back with a preview of Katie Couric's interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton right after this.

Copyright 2003 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.