NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Marco Rubio
Interview
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
CHUCK TODD:
And joining me now is Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who by the way sits on the Intelligence Committee, which has its own investigation into Russian interference. Senator Rubio, welcome back to Meet the Press.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Thank you.
CHUCK TODD:
I want to start with the Wall Street Journal, in the weekend opinion section, said essentially didn't trust Congress nor the president not to leak pieces of the Mueller Report and basically says, "You know what? Release the whole thing, as much as possible." Is that where you stand?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Absolutely. In fact, I want to see all of it. What was the criminal -- what was the underlying criminal predicate for the entire investigation? Let's see the FISA applications because this is an extraordinary use of government surveillance power and we have legal reasons why you might be able to use it, but show us what those were. What was the underlying predicate for those FISA applications? Let's see all of that. Let's put all of that out there as well so we can pass judgment about how the, how the investigation was conducted, or at least the predicate for the investigation was conducted during the Obama years.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, one of the things that I think is difficult for the public is going to be does the president get to see the report before Congress? And in order to decide about executive privilege, it does seem as if that's a rabbit hole that potentially the attorney general would have to go down. How do you prevent that?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Well, first of all, you know, prosecution and everything that has to do with prosecution and counter-intelligence, that's an executive function. And so, frankly, the president does have the power to fire the prosecutor.
CHUCK TODD:
Sure.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
He does have the power to prejudice an investigation if they so choose. And there's a remedy for that. For number one, the president is politically accountable, and second of all, the president, if they've done things or abused power, they can be impeached and if the someone -- if the House wants to make that argument, then they can. That hasn't happened yet. But I think that's separate from the Mueller Report and separate from what's going to be released to the public. I would suspect that at the end of the day they are going to release the report. They're going to redact intelligence information or classified information, and they're not going to put things in there about people, that is damaging to people that they chose not to prosecute. But that's not unique to the president. That is the way the Justice Department handles every case. They don't go out there and smear people and then say, "But we chose not to prosecute them anyway."
CHUCK TODD:
Right. Now, this Special Counsel Provision was written with a floor of transparency, not a ceiling. So, it is up to the discretion of the attorney general. Would you recommend to the president not to invoke executive privilege here?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Well, it really depends on what it is it's going to be invoked on. I mean, there are things, like internal deliberations inside of an administration, that you don't want out there because then it becomes difficult for the president to talk to people. But I would certainly ask the president to lean towards transparency because I've been very clear from the very beginning. I wanted the Mueller probe. I wanted it to be conducted without any interference because I believed, and I've said this. You can go back to the tape and find me saying this now for two years, that when it was all said and done, the best thing for the country and for the president is for this probe to move forward and to be concluded. And that's what's happened now. And so, we want to learn as much as we possibly can, that's allowed and permissible under Justice Department policy, and of course the law of the country.
CHUCK TODD:
What does the end of the Mueller Report mean for the Intelligence Committee's investigations? There had been -- there was some -- you needed the Mueller Report before finishing some of those conclusions. What does this mean going forward now?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
I don't think we'll see it before anybody else. I think senior Congressional leadership might, but I'm not sure the members of the committee all will. Second of all, I would say that, you know, that's a good question about, about that part, but let me tell you what the relevance of the Mueller report is to the Congressional investigation. The relevance of it is that there are witnesses that the investigators and that the committee wants to talk to, but these witnesses, the Justice Department has not wanted us to talk to them because they feel like their testimony or --
CHUCK TODD:
Got you.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
-- something they might say say in order to get them in might conflict with the report. So, the end of this means there really should be nobody out there that we should not be allowed to bring in. And there shouldn't be anybody out there that we shouldn't allow to interview fully, especially that Mueller has wrapped up and said he's not going after anybody else with any new charges. So, there's really no reason for no one to be able to come in now and talk to us.
CHUCK TODD:
Because I have you here, I want to switch over to some national security issues. I want to first talk about, ask you about North Korea and the confusion about new sanctions that Treasury Department issued. The president putting out this tweet, "It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large-scale sanctions would be added to those already existing sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional sanctions." When asked for an explanation from the White House, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders simply said, "President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn't think these sanctions will be necessary." It was a 24-hour rebuke. What does this incident do for the reliability of the United States on sanctions regimes overall?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Well, I've never seen that before from this or any administration, so something happened here. Those things have to usually be approved. In fact, I know that they are. They go through a long interagency process, signed off on by the president. So, something happened between the time it was announced and the time that the president put out that statement. I don't know the answer, to be honest. I don't know why he would do that or why it happened the way it did. It's unusual. It's never happened before.
CHUCK TODD:
Does it -- does it at all introduce any concern that -- will he be there -- you know, look, you have talked him into doing more in Venezuela than I think a lot of people expected. Do you trust him now on Venezuela, considering what he just did with North Korea?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Yeah, it's a little different obviously. I mean, the president is, has been involved in now two one-on-one negotiations with North Korea. Let me just say this about North Korea and the president's engagement. I have -- I would love for Kim Jong-Un to give up his weapons and everything else. I would. And I don't criticize the president for trying. I just never believed he would. I don't believe he ever will. This is a young dictator who has to figure out how to hold onto power. So, I'm not skeptical because I want it to fail; I'm skeptical because I believe it will fail. Now why -- how this happened, look, you have to ask the White House. I don't know how they issued this and then suddenly he changed his mind. I don't know the rationale behind it. Maybe it was a good reason. But it certainly is not the way it's normally done.
CHUCK TODD:
But obviously the concern among some national security folks is, "What does this mean? We're trying to get more of the world to align on sanctions when it comes to Venezuela and Maduro.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Yeah. So, on this part, at least with North Korea, it's not helpful, right, to have the Treasury Department go out and do something that's been vetted and discussed. Unless somebody made a mistake at Treasury and got ahead of themselves, it doesn't make any sense why they would put something out there, and a few minutes or a few hours later, the president revoke them. It doesn't make a lot of sense that that happened that way. And frankly, look, I think people around the world would look at it and say from now on, when they hear about sanctions, they're going to want to know if -- they're going to ask for double confirmation from the White House, you know. So, look, I wish it hadn't happened that way, and it shouldn't have happened that way.
CHUCK TODD:
Before I let you go, I want to ask you about the attacks by the president on John McCain. I know how you feel about John McCain. I'm not, I'm not questioning that. But let me read you something in the Post. "Inside the powerful and populist wing of the party that is most loyal to Trump, McCain is not a revered war hero, but a useful foil, encapsulating everything his core voters have come to loathe about establishment Republicans. By attacking McCain, the president is stoking his supporters' rawest emotion and suspicions about the GOP's political elite." What is it about John -- is this -- what portion of your party so loathes John McCain that they cheer this?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Yeah.
CHUCK TODD:
There is a chunk of it. Do you understand it?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
No. I don't. You know -- first of all, John McCain's not here to defend himself, so that first and foremost is a reason not to use him as that. Second of all, I don't get it. I don't understand it. I didn't agree with John McCain on everything, you know, so what? I mean, but I honored and I respected the service to our country and his time in the Senate. I always felt he did things that he, he felt passionate about and worked hard on behalf of those things. Whether you agree with him or not, I knew why he was doing it. It wasn't for some nefarious purpose. He was a man who was deeply influenced by his experience and by the things he went through. I was an admirer of John McCain as a man, and a lot of the things he did in the United States Senate. So, no, I don't understand that feeling about him and I don't think, frankly, he is the person that should be singled out for these attacks. And it's -- I don't get it. I don't understand it. And frankly, I don't know how it furthers anything in terms of what we're trying to get done. At the end of the day, my job is to represent the people of Florida and serve the country. And I don't know, you know, why any of this furthers that objective for me or anybody else out there.
CHUCK TODD:
I think you're not alone in that aspect there. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican from Florida, I've got to leave it there. I appreciate you coming on this morning.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO:
Thank you. Thanks.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source