CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: "Interview with Sen. Michael Bennet"
Interview
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HARLOW: All right, President Trump claims that, quote, many Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, want to do something on background checks when they come back from the August recess. Sources tell CNN that Republican lawmakers, some of them and aides, are privately telling the president they oppose expanded background checks, claiming it would not have stopped the shootings in El Paso and Dayton, and said they want the president to push forward on those red flag laws.
[09:40:15] With me now is Democratic candidate for president, Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. He also has a new book out "Dividing America: How Russia Hacked Social Media and Democracy." We'll get to that in a moment. There it is.
Senator Bennet, thank you for your time.
SEN. MICHAEL BENNET (D-CO), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you for having me.
HARLOW: Of course.
So let's begin on guns. The president is convinced that Mitch McConnell wants to do something. He says he's a good man. He wants to do background checks. That's a quote from the president.
Do you buy it?
BENNET: Well, the proof will be in the pudding. We'll see. You know, there are a lot of us said that we should go back during the August recess and have a vote on background checks.
HARLOW: Did you want to go back?
BENNET: I would have been happy to go back. And in September Mitch McConnell will have an opportunity to put a bill on the floor that Colorado passed almost 20 years ago. We passed these same background checks 20 years ago, a western state.
HARLOW: Let's get into this a little bit more.
BENNET: Yes.
HARLOW: You now have an F rating from the NRA. You used to have about a C rating from the NRA.
BENNET: Yes.
HARLOW: You voted on such things as allowing guns on checked bags on Amtrak back in 2009. It's something that Hillary Clinton hit Bernie Sanders hard on that same vote back in the last election. But I am interested on things like mandatory buybacks on assault rifles, for example. Senator Cory Booker supports that. Congressman Eric Swalwell, who was running, supports that.
Do you -- should there be mandatory buybacks of all assault rifles in this country?
BENNET: I think where we should be focused is on the background checks. I was there after the children in Connecticut were killed in their elementary school. And we couldn't even get our act together to do the background checks. People got distracted by all kinds of other things instead of focusing on that.
We have the opportunity right now to do what 90 percent of the American people want us to do, which is to have background checks. In my state, 2 percent to 3 percent of the people that buy guns every year are prevented from buying them. They are rapists, they're murderers, they are domestic abusers. And if we can do in a western state like Colorado, a Second Amendment state, I don't understand why we can't do it in Washington.
HARLOW: Look, I was there, too. I will in Sandy Hook days after the massacre. It -- I will never forget that feeling --
BENNET: Yes.
HARLOW: And can never imagine what it's like to be those parents.
BENNET: No.
HARLOW: But on the issue, I hear you on background checks. I guess I'm wondering if you think it should go further. Do you agree with Senator Booker and Congressman Swalwell that at this point in our country's history and seeing the mass shootings we've seen, we should push for mandatory buybacks, including criminal prosecution for those who don't sell them back?
BENNET: I would say that pushing for mandatory buybacks would be a recipe for getting nothing done. And I want to get something done.
HARLOW: OK.
BENNET: My kids were born the year after Columbine happened in Colorado. So for 20 years they have grown up in the shadow of not being able to go to school without worrying about getting blown up. And they've gone to school knowing that the Congress has never done anything to address this. So --
HARLOW: You're essential saying to your party, don't push too far, push on background checks now. Let's get that done.
BENNET: Let's get that done.
HARLOW: OK. So let's talk about your book.
BENNET: Thank you.
HARLOW: Again, "Dividing America."
I had a chance to go through it. I mean it's striking. There's all of these images in it that the Russians have used the Internet Research Agency, et cetera --
BENNET: Right.
HARLOW: To divide our democracy.
You sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee. You saw a lot of this evidence first-hand first before a lot of Americans did.
How great is the threat to the 2020 election right now?
BENNET: It's a serious and profound threat to our democracy and the democracies in western Europe, which make it -- makes it really problematic that we have a president who won't even admit that it's happening. You know, who goes to Helsinki and says, I believe Putin, I don't believe the intelligence agencies in the United States of America. That's why I put this book out so the American people can actually see what this propaganda looks like.
We had -- we were being attacked by the Russians for a year before anybody noticed that, you know, they couldn't distinguish it from our own political vocabulary. That's a problem.
HARLOW: You've done things like pushing for mandatory paper ballots in elections to come.
BENNET: Right.
HARLOW: You've cosponsored the Election Security Act of 2019. One of the things that struck me and our producer a lot is the -- is the sort of division that is attempted through a lot of these images and ads, et cetera, to divide the left.
BENNET: Absolutely.
HARLOW: I mean many of them using Bernie Sanders as a foil trying to divide the left.
Do you expect that to be exacerbated to further divide your party during the primary?
BENNET: I am deeply worried about it. I mean you can see the Russians in this book basically trying to divide the Sanders supporters from Hillary supporters, just like Trump was trying to do at the beginning of his election. So I think it's just vital for people to understand the kind of division that they've been stoking. And their -- you mentioned election protection. There are things that we can do, and Mitch McConnell has not allowed the bills to come to the floor. Just like the gun bills. I mean he had eight opportunities to put an election protection thing on the floor and he hasn't done it. I've asked people to go to my website to send Mitch McConnell a copy of the book to urge him to put the election protection stuff (ph) on the floor.
[09:45:13] HARLOW: Did you send him a book?
BENNET: I'm going to send him a book, yes.
HARLOW: All right, let's talk about the national debt, something that every day I wake up and think, this is not talked about enough.
BENNET: Right.
HARLOW: I don't think most of your fellow members of Congress seem to care about this enough, the debt, the deficit. We just learned this week that the deficit is going to exceed a trillion dollars by the end of this fiscal year.
You voted against the recent two year budget that raises spending by $320 billion. You lost the vote. Most of your Democratic fellow members of the Senate and the House voted for it. The Committee for Responsible Budgets says that it will increase the deficit by $1.7 trillion over the next decade and said, the head of it, it appears that Congress and the President have given up on their jobs and that this may be the most terrible, worst budget agreement in the nation's history.
Should we believe that Congress at this point just doesn't care what we're leaving our children on this front?
BENNET: I hate to say this but after ten years of being there, it seems to me -- and I say this as a Democrat, that the Democrats don't care. The Republicans say they care, but they are lying about it. You've never seen more fiscal hypocrisy than what the Republicans have delivered.
HARLOW: But what about --
BENNET: The Trump-McConnell era is the most fiscally irresponsible era in American history. That's what this all adds up to. $4 trillion over ten years and they've accomplished it in just three.
HARLOW: What do you say, though, to your fellow Democrats about this and what is being left to our children?
BENNET: The argument that I try to make is twofold. One, this is a theft from our children. And, two, it is restraining what we're able to spend on investments in them, because at the same time we're loading them up with this debt. We've cut domestic discretionary spending by 35 percent since Ronald Reagan was president. So -- and, by the way, it's also, what are you spending the money on.
HARLOW: So -- so if --
BENNET: We --
HARLOW: I just want to ask you, on the front about maybe more spending. There are rumblings about a middle class tax cut coming before the 2020 election. That would add to spending. That would add to the red. Is that a good idea?
BENNET: If Donald Trump -- every single person who voted for Donald Trump, because they thought he'd be fiscally responsible, I hope they vote against him. He would buy a brand new truck for every farmer in America that said the word Trump on the outside of it if he could get away with it. HARLOW: Can America -- can America afford a middle class tax cut right
now, yes or no?
BENNET: We can afford it if we reverse the Trump tax cut.
HARLOW: But you know that's not going to happen in this administration.
BENNET: It will happen if we have a new president.
HARLOW: So would you support a middle class tax cut under this president without a reversal of the other tax cut?
BENNET: I wouldn't, but --
HARLOW: OK.
BENNET: Yes.
HARLOW: All right, final question to you.
The next Democratic debate is in September. So far you have not hit the two pronged threshold to be there. Are you going to be on that stage?
BENNET: I'm working hard to get there. If people would go to russiaattackedourdemocracy.com and register their support for this book, that will help me get to the debate stage.
HARLOW: I appreciate your time, Senator Bennet.
BENNET: Thank you for having me.
HARLOW: We'll see you.
BENNET: Nice to see you.
HARLOW: Thanks very, very much.
BENNET: Thanks, Poppy.
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