MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Murphy

Interview

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HAYES: That`s about as passionate as Mitch gets. As the New York Times  points out, there`s also a growing chorus of Republican critics for Trump`s  foreign policy. Yesterday, the nation`s intelligence chiefs went before  Congress and contradicted Trump saying ISIS and North Korea are more  significant threats than Trump suggest and that Iran is in compliance with  a nuclear deal.

The president responded by telling them to "go back to school" simply  dismissing the collective knowledge of the nation`s intelligence agencies  out of hand. As NBC News Ken Dilanian notes, "Senior intelligence  officials have said that it`s extremely difficult to convince Trump he is  wrong about something no matter how much evidence they could put in front  of him. He believes what he believes."

Joining me now Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a member of  the Appropriations and Foreign Relations Committees. Let`s start with the  President taking a swipe at the Intelligence Community after the testimony  yesterday. It does strike me as both you know, it`s sort of ridiculous but  also I do remember the way the Iraq war got sold was essentially the White  House manipulating intelligence in order to pursue their favorite course of  action.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONNECTICUT: So this is extraordinary the President  in public warfare with his own intelligence agencies. Let`s stipulate at  the outset that as you mentioned, intelligence has been wrong in the past.  The foreign policy establishment in Washington is not always right. But  this degree of denial that Trump is engaging in with regard to the basic  facts about what`s happening around the world.

ISIS is not defeated inside Syria. Iran is not restarting its nuclear  weapons program. Kim Jong-un is not going to give up his is unprecedented,  and these continued attacks on the Intelligence Community coming on the  heels of attacks on his Defense Secretary in a State Department personnel are just chilling the interest of anybody who has any decent idea  of how America should play in the world from joining this administration  and that`s a crisis in and of itself the lack of personnel that he has  right now that able to do these jobs around the world and in key  departments.

HAYES: You know Tony Blinken who worked in the Obama White House on  National Security Foreign Policy, he brought this piece that I thought some  things up well. He said there`s no people, no process, and no policy about  what`s going on that White House.

And what I`d noticed since the shutdown, a kind of new equilibrium in which  almost everyone just sort of ignores the President. Like Congress goes to  the -- on the Hill and the conference committee is going to try to cut a  deal on the border, foreign policy United States seems to be the domain of  whoever can get out in front on whenever a specific issue and there`s this  massive vortex in the middle.

MURPHY: Yes. Except that all the president has to do is show up for work  one day and he throws the country or the world into pandemonium. So he  wasn`t around in December and so we thought we were going to be able to  pass a continuing resolution that would keep the government no open and operating. He noticed and all of a sudden the government was shut down for 30 days.

And then all it takes is for you know, Trump to you know, take a look at  you know, one piece of paper that John Bolton slips him recommending to put  a couple thousand troops into Colombia and all of a sudden we`ve got a  crisis on our hands in South America that makes this crisis look like  child`s play.

So you know, the president can be a wall for a month and all he has to do  is make one really terrible decision on one day and we`re all scrambling.

HAYES: Well, and that`s a great point. I mean it to the point about  Bolton, here`s how I see it. You know, we talk about failed states, right,  and you get sort of a warlordism where you know, this and that warlord  controls their territory. American foreign policy seems like the  bureaucratic equivalent at that point. It`s essentially a failed state.  Like the President isn`t running foreign policy.

Whoever has their little domains so Bolton gets Venezuela and maybe the DOD  can roll the president back on Afghanistan and Syria, but there is no  central operator making American foreign policy this moment.

MURPHY: Yes. We`re essentially in post foreign policy America. It  doesn`t exist. And you know, the rest of the world is kind of woken up to  that. I remember in 2017 all of our allies, all the people who had come to  see us, we`re you know, in freak-out mode about what was going to be  America`s role in the world.

Now they`re not. They`re just kind of over it and they`ve gone and made  other plans without us and that is, of course, led to the continued rise of  China and of Russia and all sorts of other contestants for global  supremacy. So now the problem is that you know, the world doesn`t wait for  the United States any longer.

They`ve moved on and the influence that  we`ve lost I don`t know that we get it back even after Trump is gone.

HAYES: So I want to play for you -- we played Mitch McConnell saying he  doesn`t like shutdowns. He -- no one seems to want to go through this game  again and it`s not a game. I mean, the human misery that was imposed by  last shutdown. But I want to play you him in December. He was saying the  same thing and then yesterday and see if you think he means it this time.  Take a listen.

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HAYES: I mean that mule`s behind is going to be sore at this point but  does he mean it?

MURPHY: Yes, well -- I mean, McConnell doesn`t like shutdowns but the only  thing that he doesn`t like more is confronting Donald Trump, right? He  just doesn`t like picking fights with him in part because he really worries  about Trump running primaries against his members. So you know, he --  McConnell could`ve ended this shutdown a week into it by calling up for a  vote a bill on a continuing resolution that he knew would get a veto-proof  majority of his members.

And if it comes down to it again when this conference committee is done, I  am not confident that McConnell is going to do what`s necessary to keep the  government open and operating and I do worry about us falling into another  shutdown.

MELBER: How -- where are we right now? How tenable is the state of  affairs? Things seem you know, they always seem perpetually on this the  cusp of spinning out of control under this President. But there`s a new  set of circumstances here which is you just lost a shutdown fight, he`s got  a Democratic House, there are a lot of things to be worried about in the  world. Where do you see us at right now?

MURPHY: I don`t know. I`ve been worried stiff for two years now and I  think that -- I think that -- I think Blinken`s piece in The Times is one  that everybody should read because this is a president who is never really  ready to handle a crisis. But now he doesn`t seem to have anybody around  him who`s ready to handle a foreign policy crisis.

And so I don`t know. Our domestic politics are you know no less sound than  they have been, but our foreign policy and our ability to step up if  something really goes wrong is compromised right now in a way that it  hasn`t been. So I guess that`s what keeps me up at night more than  anything else.

HAYES: The final question I guess is about how much pressure -- you know,  the President has tested the loyalty of the Republicans particularly the  Senate side. I mean, he`s got a very hardcore group of devotees in the  House side about as much as he can. I mean, there was a lot of rumblings  we heard, the notes out of that caucus meeting right before the shutdown  ended where you got Republican centers yelling at each other and yelling at  Pence and yelling at McConnell, other than McConnell will they put up with  a second shutdown?

MURPHY: So I think they were willing to put up with it in December and  January because we were 24 months away from their next election and they  might have figured that folks would forget about it. But as time goes on,  they are going to be less willing to engage in deliberate political suicide  because if the election were held today there would be an absolute tidal  wave for Republicans.

So I think as time goes on there is more willingness to stand up to Trump.  They will create more lines in which they are not willing to cross at least  that`s my -- that`s my hope.

HAYES: Final question for you on foreign policy and this is something that  has sort of receded the background a little bit. The U.S. continues to  assist the Saudi war in Yemen. It continues to be the most awful  humanitarian disaster in the world. You and a number of other senators are  now sponsoring a resolution again in this Congress. Where is that going to  go?

MURPHY: So it`s going to pass the House and the Senate. We introduced it  again today. This is a War Powers Resolution that pulls the United States  out of this coalition with Saudi Arabia that has bombed Yemen into a  humanitarian nightmare. It passed the Senate with a bunch of Republican  votes in December but Paul Ryan wouldn`t call it up in the House. It will  pass both chambers, Trump will likely veto it.

But what we know is that when Congress acts, it is the only thing that  pulls the two parties in Yemen together, the Saudi side and the Houthi  side. And so at the very least I think that this will be leverage to try  to move the peace negotiations even further forward. And that alone could  save thousands upon thousands of lives inside that war-torn country.

HAYES: All right, Senator Chris Murphy, thank you for your time tonight.

MURPHY: Thank you.

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