NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Ted Cruz

Interview

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CHUCK TODD:

Joining me now, from Houston, is Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Cruz, welcome back to Meet the Press, sir.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Good morning, Chuck. Good to be with you.

CHUCK TODD:

Let me start with a larger, sort of -- I want to look at a forest here, through all of these individual trees. And it was a busy week in this larger forest, here. For the third time, the White House enlisted help of one of your Republican colleagues to block a bipartisan resolution that you have been pushing to recognize Armenian genocide that took place in Turkey. You called out the administration for failing to block completion of that Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany. 71 House Republicans voted in a resolution, basically saying, "It would be fine if Russia came back into the G7 if they -- before they basically gave back Crimea to Ukraine." Is it -- have you asked yourself, why is it that this administration continues to publicly say tough things about Russia, but in their actions, they don't seem to get tough on Russia?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Listen, Chuck. I don't think it's shocking that there are foreign policy disagreements in our government. Two of the things you mentioned right there, the Armenian genocide resolution and Nord Stream 2, I think we're likely to get both of those done in the coming weeks. We're likely to finally acknowledge the horrific Armenian genocide, which I've been fighting for years to do. I think we're also likely, in the National Defense Authorization Act, to pass my bipartisan legislation, stopping the Nord Stream 2. What that's going to do is stop a multi-billion-dollar natural gas pipeline that goes from Russia to Germany. And it'll cost Putin billions of dollars. And so -- and actually, those questions illustrate part of the joke of what we're facing right now. If you look at substance, the substantive policy we are implementing has been tougher on Russia, by orders of magnitude, than Barack Obama ever was. And yet, the media is playing along with this show trial the Democrats are putting on in the House --

CHUCK TODD:

How is it the media-- wait a minute.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

I think the American people are getting really disgusted with it.

CHUCK TODD:

Do you believe that what the president did with Ukraine somehow was tough on Russia? Or didn't the president, by just introducing all of this delayed aid, play into the hands of Russia?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

You know, Chuck, substance matters. By any measure, the president's policy and this administration's policy have been tougher on Russia and, actually, better for Ukraine than Obama's was. Let me give you an example. You just mentioned Ukrainian aid. The Donald Trump administration gave lethal defensive aid to Ukraine, Javelin missiles, to take out Russian tanks. Do you know what? Throughout the Obama administration, I repeatedly pressed President Obama to give lethal aid to Ukraine. I traveled to Ukraine. I went to the Maiden Square, in Kiev. And they needed lethal aid. But the Obama administration, they sent, teddy bears and MREs. They wouldn't actually give weapons. And at the end of the day, Chairman Nadler doesn't want to talk about any of that. He doesn't want to talk about the substance.

CHUCK TODD:

Senator I just -- yeah, go ahead.
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SEN. TED CRUZ:

You know, it was really striking, listening to his comments. At one point, he said, "Well, there's no crime." And you know what? He's right. There is no crime.

CHUCK TODD:

No, he was talking about the president's lawyer, not about the president. But go ahead. Don't take him out of context on that.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

All right, but let's talk about yesterday. Yesterday -- you're right. He said -- at first, he said it was contempt. And then he said, "Oh, well, not really contempt. There's no crime." But let's be clear about the president, since this is impeachment of the president. Yesterday, House Democrats put out a 55-page report, they called it a scholarly report, that purports to say, "You don't have to prove a crime, you don't have to prove a law was violated, to impeach a president." That's garbage. What nonsense. You know, Chuck --

CHUCK TODD:

Senator, well wait a minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Let me finish my point real quickly, Chuck --

CHUCK TODD:

Senator, That is exactly why the impeachment was written into the constitution. That's exactly why the phrase, --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Is it really?

CHUCK TODD:

-- "High crimes and misdemeanors," is in there. Because they did it before they even wrote our laws, sir. Before we had our -- so how do you know --

SEN. TED CRUZ:So actually what the Constitution --

CHUCK TODD:

-- how do you -- you're saying that. That is not -- that's exactly the opposite of what is true.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Chuck, actually, what the Constitution says is you can impeach a president for treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors. It specifies it.

CHUCK TODD:

That's right.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

High crimes and misdemeanors was a -- hold on, Chuck. Don't interrupt me--

CHUCK TODD:

And what is a misdemeanor? What is a -- define misdemeanor.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

So high crimes and misdemeanors was a term of art that the framers used -- and you know, it's striking. In poker, there's something called a tell. When a player has a really bad hand, and they reveal it, it's a tell. What we saw last night was a tell from the House Democrats. You know, just a few weeks ago, their talking point was bribery, bribery, bribery. They're now admitting they can't prove a crime. They can't prove a law was violated. And here's why. Any president, any administration, is justified in investing corruption. And there was serious evidence of real corruption concerning Hunter Biden on the board of Burisma, the largest natural gas company in Ukraine. You know how much Hunter Biden was paid every month? $83,000. That's $1 million a year.

CHUCK TODD:

You know that number keeps changing. So far, there hasn't been a lot of confirmation on exactly all of that. And I know the number changes. But let me ask you this --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

And why not? Because the House won't call him. The House --

CHUCK TODD:

Let me ask you this, Senator.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

But hold on, Chuck. Chuck, hold on a second.

CHUCK TODD:

All right.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

The media ought to care if there's actual corruption.

CHUCK TODD:

The media's covered this. You know how you learned this?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

$1 million a year, do you know how much you make on the board of Exxon Mobile --

CHUCK TODD:

Do you know how you learned --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- You get $110,000 a year. Do you really think Hunter Biden, with zero oil --

CHUCK TODD:

Senator, the reason you know this information is the media reported it.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- and gas experience justifies making ten times as much as a board member of Exxon Mobile?

CHUCK TODD:

What I don't understand is, why do you believe that, if an American is committing corruption, we should ask a foreign government to announce an investigation? Is that appropriate? Or do you go to American authorities?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

So I believe any president, any Justice Department, has the authority to investigate corruption. In this case, there was serious evidence, on the face, of corruption. The reason Hunter Biden got that position is because his daddy was Vice President of the United States.

CHUCK TODD:

So you believe Ukraine meddled?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

If his name was Hunter Smith --

CHUCK TODD:

Do you believe Ukraine meddled --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- they wouldn't pay him $1 million a year to serve on the board.

CHUCK TODD:

Do you believe Ukraine meddled in the American election in 2016?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

I do. And I think there's considerable evidence of that.

CHUCK TODD:

You do? You do?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Yes and Chuck let me say --

CHUCK TODD:

Look this is -- Senator, this sort of strikes me as odd. Because you went through a primary campaign with this president. He launched a birtherism campaign against you. He went after your faith. He threatened to, quote, "spill the beans," about your wife about something. He pushed a National Enquirer, story, which we now know he had a real relationship with the editors of the National Enquirer --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

And Chuck, I appreciate you dragging up all that garbage. That's very kind of you, go ahead.

CHUCK TODD:

No, but Senator is it -- let me ask you this. Is it not possible that this president is capable of creating a false narrative about somebody, in order to help him, politically?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Except that's not what happened. The president released the transcript of the phone call. You can read what was said on the phone call. And let me point out --

CHUCK TODD:

Yeah and the Bidens. And you, yourself, thought the Biden part was troubling.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Chuck, Chuck, let me point out a game that the media is playing. You know, a question that you've asked a number of people is you've said to senators, sort of aghast, "Do you believe that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the election?" Now, that, that, in a court of law, would be struck as a misleading question. Of course Russia interfered in our election. Nobody looking at the evidence disputes that. What the media is pretending is --

CHUCK TODD:

But the President of the United States does.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Look, on the evidence, Russia clearly interfered in our election. But here's the game the media is playing. Because Russia interfered, the media pretends nobody else did. Ukraine blatantly interfered in our election. The sitting ambassador from Ukraine wrote an op-ed blasting Donald Trump --

CHUCK TODD:

Do you know why --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- during the election season. --

CHUCK TODD:

Do you know why he did that?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- That is unusual.

CHUCK TODD:

What did Donald Trump, what did Donald Trump, as a candidate, say about Ukraine and Crimea during the election that might've inspired the ambassador?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

So you're saying they had disagreements with Donald Trump --

CHUCK TODD:

No, I'm just saying --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- and they wanted Hillary Clinton to get elected.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay, so they wrote an op-ed --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

I'll tell you a Ukrainian parliamentarian --

CHUCK TODD:

They wrote an op-ed. That is the difference -- what you're saying is, you're saying a pickpocket, which essentially is a Hill op-ed, compared to Bernie Madoff and Vladimir Putin. You're trying to make -- you're trying to equal -- make them both seem equal. I don't understand that.

SEN. TED CRUZ:

Chuck, Chuck, I understand that you want to dismiss Ukrainian interference, because, A) they were trying to get Hillary Clinton elected, which is what the vast majority of the media wanted, anyway. And B) it's inconvenient for the narrative. You know, it's hysterical. Two years ago, there was article after article after article, in the mainstream media, about Ukrainian interference in the elections. But now, the Democrats have no evidence of a crime, no evidence of violating the law. And so suddenly, Ukrainian interference is treated as the media clutches their pearls. "Oh, my goodness. You can't say that." Last week, Chuck, you called Senator John Kennedy, basically, a stooge for Putin.

CHUCK TODD:

I did not. Don't basically --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

The press needs to stop being ridiculous and --

CHUCK TODD:

Are you concerned --

SEN. TED CRUZ:

-- acting like they work for Adam Schiff.

CHUCK TODD:

Okay, so did you get the briefing, from the intel community, that said, the Russian intelligence services are trying to actively use this Ukraine story to frame Ukraine for the Russian -- for the interference in 2016?

SEN. TED CRUZ:

I have been in multiple briefings. I have been in multiple briefings, year after year after year, about foreign interference in our election. Russia has tried to interfere in our elections. China's tried to interfere in our elections. North Korea's tried to interfere in our elections. Ukraine has tried to interfere in our elections. This is not new. 2016's not the first year they did it. And they're going to keep trying. And so we need to be strong in dealing with it. But the media needs to actually report facts. This is a kangaroo court in the House. They're going to impeach, not because they have the evidence, but because they hate the president, want to do the election. But it's going to go to the Senate. It's going to go nowhere. I think the American people know this is a waste of time. And this is Democrats putting on a circus.

CHUCK TODD:

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican from Texas, always good to go back and forth with you. So I appreciate you coming on and sharing your views. When we come back, where impeachment goes from here. Does anybody really know? Panel is next.

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