CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview With Congressman Ruben Gallego

Interview

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BLITZER: We will see if he does.

All right, thanks very much, Jim Acosta, on the scene for us.

Joining us now, congressman Ruben Gallego. He's a Democrat. He serves on the Armed Services Committee.

Congressman, thanks for joining us.

REP. RUBEN GALLEGO (D), ARIZONA: My pleasure.

BLITZER: The president says the special counsel's investigation is meddling in the midterm elections, which are coming up in November.

Democracy doesn't work, as you know, if voters don't have confidence in the legitimacy of their votes. How damaging are these comments by the president?

GALLEGO: They could be potentially very damaging, but it also shows you that the president again cares more about him, him and his career, vs. the country and democracy in general.

I also think it's quite interesting that he happens to avoid the fact that there was Russian meddling in the election of 2016, but somehow is now coming up with conspiracy theories for the elections of 2018.

Again, this is the president of not acting like a president, not acting responsible, and just coming up with straight-up lies out to confuse people and to basically rile up his base.

BLITZER: Should Robert Mueller, Congressman, consider the timing of the midterm elections, once again in November, as he prepares to release his final report, or should be released whatever he finds whenever he finds it?

[18:10:00]

GALLEGO: I think in terms of executing a proper report, that he should do whatever it takes to make sure that he's coming out with a report.

And if that's after the elections, then that's fine. If it's before the election, that's fine. If it's tomorrow, that's fine, provided that he has done the job properly, made sure that he represented the United States well, that he investigated thoroughly what he could.

But for us, as politicians, to try to put pressure on Robert Mueller or any prosecutor, for that matter, for them to release any type of finding, especially when it involves politics, I think is very dangerous and it's a slippery slope that we don't want to go down.

BLITZER: According to a recent CNN poll, only 17 percent, 17 percent of Republicans approve of Mueller's handling of the Russia investigation.

And this I among Republicans. Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer, admitted that he wants to undermine the entire investigation because it will ultimately come down to whether or not you guys in the House of Representatives decide to pursue impeachment.

Has the president, for all practical political reasons, already succeeded?

GALLEGO: Well, to begin with, I think it's very interesting that Giuliani is acting like a mob lawyer at this point, just trying to sway the -- quote, unquote -- "jury."

Number two, the assumption that we're going to go to impeachment, I think, is a very big assumption. We haven't seen the report. For all we know, Mueller is going to come out with a bunch of indictments of people that are involved, and not necessarily indict the president or mention the president.

But the fact that they're jumping to this kind of shows you that there's a lot of guilt being presented by both the president and the people around him. And, yes, I do think the president's having an effect on at least the Republican base about what's going on with this investigation.

He's purposely doing it. He's purposely throwing misleading and just outright lies about what is going on this investigation. And he's being aided by people like Giuliani, who are just basically making up bold-face assumptions about what's going with his investigation. And they're just being repeated in the press, unfortunately.

BLITZER: Let's turn to another important story we're reporting on today. ABC, as you know, has canceled Roseanne Barr's highly rated television show after a series of racist and anti-Semitic tweets. What are your thoughts on that decision?

GALLEGO: Well, number one, it's the right decision.

They should have fired her a long time ago. She did tweet out in -- or sent pictures of that were clearly anti-Semitic. She has made fun of several African-American women politicians before.

I'm glad that this done. But this also a problem that is happening right now because of the Trump administration, or I should say Donald Trump, not necessarily the Trump administration.

We have seen increasing amount of racist rhetoric being thrown out, whether it's the lawyer in New York, whether it's other people claiming -- or using racist vile.

I guarantee you, after I'm done with this show, I'm going to get called some very horrible Latino slurs because I'm talking about the president.

But this president has brought it out of people to make it acceptable to me openly racist. It shouldn't surprise anybody. This is the man that basically created a conspiracy theory about the first black president not being born here and being born in Kenya. And that has basically given some signals to some of these closet racists that they believe they could come out and not face any repercussions.

But this is what we need to do. We need to be punishing these types of racist acts to make sure that people understand this is not acceptable in society.

BLITZER: Congressman Ruben Gallego, thanks so much for joining us.

GALLEGO: Thank you for having me.

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