MSNBC - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC - Transcript

MR. MATTHEWS: Let's go to Sheldon Whitehouse, he's the senator from Rhode Island.

Senator, thank you for joining us. I want to ask you on the first point about the economic well being of our country. Are you hopeful that the Democratic majority led by Harry Reid can deliver a majority vote today for the financial bailout package?

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Yes, I am hopeful about that. I think as sketchy as the TARP program has been to date; this is now, as you say, a vote of confidence in the Obama administration. He has our confidence. I think he'll have our vote.

MR. MATTHEWS: What do you make of the fact that what seemed to be an easy thing to do just a few weeks ago, pass a huge amount of money, $700 billion in guarantees and other financial methods to give backing to these banks, is this something that has just turned against -- here, we go, there's Richard Cheney, the Vice President of the United States and President of the Senate swearing in Roland Burris.

Let's go to that live.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Discharge the duties of the office on which you're about to enter, so help you God?

SENATOR ROLAND BURRIS (D-IL): I do.

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Congratulations.

(Applause.)

MR. MATTHEWS: That's Roland Burris, of course, the brand new senator from Illinois just appointed by Governor Blagojevich and taking office now. All the papers have been signed, in fact, there he is signing in as a member as all the other senators have done as they've been sworn in this year. There's the vice president swearing as well as president of the Senate.

Let's go back to Sheldon Whitehouse for a couple of points. You're confident that the Democratic majority in the Senate can pass the TARP bill. Let me ask you about this confirmation here. You sit on Judiciary. The questioning so far, has it told you much about the questions that Republicans have raised, especially about the conduct of Eric Holder as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton administration?

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: So far, there has been nothing new that wasn't foreseen, that wasn't part of the early press and Republican statements about this. There haven't been, you know, trips or theatrics. I think it's going smoothly. I think nominee Holder is showing himself extremely well, calm, sensible, candid, humble, wonderful story about his family background.

So I think, so far, it's going more smoothly than I expected.

MR. MATTHEWS: What do you make of his capsulizing his handling of the Marc Rich pardon back in 2000, in the last days of the Clinton administration as a mistake? Is that enough for you for him simply to say, he handled it wrong? Or is Arlen Specter more onto something in suggesting it's a character flaw?

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I think the character flaw that Senator Specter is suggesting is a lack of independence and unwilling to challenge his party and the leadership, and when you look at this from a deputy attorney general's perspective, really relatively minor matter in all that's going on at the end of an administration and you compare that to his decision to indict and convict the Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, his decision to allow a special prosecutor to go forward against a member of President Clinton's cabinet, his decision to enlarge the Monica Lewinsky investigation, I mean, where it really counted, this guy has been there with independence in abundance.

And so I think the story doesn't really hold very well. I think that many of us who have been prosecutors look back at moments where we wish we had done something different. He has been very candid about that, and I think he's pretty well through that issue unless something really astonishing and unforeseen should emerge.

MR. MATTHEWS: You're a senator from the Northeast, from Rhode Island. You're a Democrat. You've worked with Senator Clinton from New York State. What is it going to be like losing her? Describe her as a colleague. Well, you don't get to see what it's like sitting with Hillary Clinton as a colleague in the cloakroom. What was that like? What was it like having her as one of the people brokering business within the Senate?

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Well, she's fiercely smart just for starters. So some of the issues we have to deal with are very complex and her ability to cut through those complexities and get to the right policy answer is an attribute that we will miss. She is astonishingly also, I think, for people that don't know her, they're often surprised, very funny, very good-humored. She is somebody who lightens up the Senate, who makes us all very happy to be there.

So we'll miss her personally as well as missing the intellect, the rigor and the policy experience that she brings to the table, but, gosh, we wish her well and we're so proud of her as our next Secretary of State.

MR. MATTHEWS: You know, it's a stunning thing to give up a seat in the United States Senate, especially from New York. Do you think that was something that was easy for her to do or hard, I mean, would you have done it? Would you give up a Senate seat for a cabinet post? I mean it seems to me an extraordinary decision on someone's part to give up what could be a lifetime seat in the U.S. Senate for what's going to be a limited in time experience in a cabinet.

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: We talked about that, and I think it's fair to say that she truly agonized over the choice. I think the opportunity to do something significant for this new administration to help bind the party together and to have an active role in the foreign policy issues that have gotten so much worse under the Bush administration, all combined to encourage her to do this, but there have been tears as she has left.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me ask you one last point, it's great to have you on this show, by the way, right now, the program. You ran on the issue of the Iraq war, the Iraq war, I think it's fair to say really did much to clear out a lot of Republican strength in the Northeast in the last several elections.

Do you think it's troubling that the President of the United States has yet to admit that he went into Iraq under false circumstances? And I mean by that something very particular? He said the other day in his press conference, one of his disappointments, one of the departing interviews, that he was disappointed that we didn't find WMD, nuclear weapons especially in Iraq.

Do you find that a sound assessment he was disappointed, rather than some other sort of discerning comment about what happened in our history the last decade, where we went to war based upon WMD? It turns out there wasn't WMD and yet the leadership of our country continued to argue we were justified?

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I think it borders on fantasy, and I think his situation is that if he looks around at all the troubling things he'd have to fess up to, whether it's the lack of any action on climate change, the pollution of the integrity of the Department of Justice, you can just go down the list, what was done wrong in the intelligence community. He has to live in a state of denial to live with himself and I think that's what we're seeing.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. Sheldon Whitehouse, senator from Rhode Island, thank you for joining us. You'll be back on the Judiciary Committee. We'll be watching your questioning as well as that of your colleagues.

SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Thank you, sir.

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