CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Ruben Gallego

Interview

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HILL: Still a lot of questions. Ed Lavandera, appreciate it. Thank you.

Joining me now Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who sits on the Armed Services Committee and has served in the United States Marine Corps in Iraq.

Sir, good to have you with us. You have been critical. One of the many --

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D), ARIZONA: Good morning.

HILL: Good morning. One of the many questions I know you have is about the cost here, the cost that would be incurred. And that was actually brought up. Your concerns specifically brought up yesterday with the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. Take a listen to her response.

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HILL: What's your response?

GALLEGO: Well, I'll gladly work with the president when his ideas aren't stupid and detrimental to the United States. Unfortunately this is what this plan is. It was not planned out. It's using our National Guard troops who are greatly trained. You know, you're going to pull them out of their private lives to essentially go and try to solve a political problem.

This is a failing presidency. Their ideas are failing. So now they're just throwing essentially red meat at the base by, you know, essentially sending troops to the border. Ironically, by the way, if the president had actually worked with Congress and actually had struck a deal with us when it came to the Dream Act and to other immigration issues, there would have been more assets at the border than he's going to end up doing with these National Guards troops.

But this is what happens when you have failing presidency, a bad administration, in general just a president that does not know how to lead this country.

HILL: We should point out the president, though, setting the wheels in motion. As we know that your governor is on board and your GOP colleague, Martha McSally, says now it's up to Democrats. Here's what she had to say at a campaign stop yesterday. "It depends on how long it takes to get the Democratic leadership to come to the table and be willing to provide the resources and everything we need to secure the table," going on to say, "Perhaps this will bring them back to the table."

GALLEGO: This is again --

HILL: Do you believe it's in your hands now?

(LAUGHTER)

GALLEGO: I wish it were in my hands but the Republicans are in charge of the House, the Senate and the presidency. The reason they're having problems in terms of governance is because they don't know how to govern. For them to kind of deflect on to Democrats what's going on here really shows you, you know, the lack of leadership you have coming from the Republican Party.

Look, answer simple questions. How long is this going to take? Where are the funds going to come from? Is it going to come from the Department of Homeland Security? Is it going to come from the Department of Defense? Who's going to pay for this? Is it going to be the states? Is it going to be the federal government?

These National Guardsmen aren't going to have arresting power. They're not even be able to hold weapons. But we're going to put them on -- in the desert and basically make them stand around just for, you know, political show so these politicians can say they're doing something.

This is utterly ridiculous because some of these areas haven't even had a homicide in years. There are counties in Arizona, for example, some of them that actually were in McSally's area that have not seen one homicide in almost five years. But yet we're going to send these National Guard troops down there and waste human time, resources and money basically because Donald Trump wants to boost his numbers. And of course then you also have Republican members of Congress and governors that are afraid to actually stand up to Donald Trump and actually try to speak sanity to that man.

HILL: What we know that your governor has said he's voicing his support for. One thing I found interesting, though, in a statement from his spokesperson what that it sort of downplayed the impact here on potential illegal immigration and was talking more about stopping drug cartels. Is that more of a concern you believe in the state of Arizona?

GALLEGO: Well, I think -- you know, we are always having problems, no matter what part of this country we have with drugs and the extent to what drug cartels can do. You know, if the governor is so concerned about that, he should really look at his state budget and actually implement, you know, some changes and actually investments that would actually stop that.

You know, the drug cartel -- I'm sorry, the drug cartels here in Arizona are not necessarily going to be stopped by, again, these National Guardsmen who are going to be unarmed, largely at this point, we don't know what exactly they'll be doing and we don't know to what extent and how long they'll be in Arizona or other parts of this country.

So these are all great ideas if they were actually planned out. But again, this president doesn't plan out anything, doesn't coordinate, and essentially is using again our troops as a political ploy so he can, you know, again boost his numbers with his base voters.

[09:10:04] HILL: Representative Ruben Gallego, appreciate you joining us this morning. Thank you.

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