( J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo )
Kathleen Rice, United States Representative for New York's 4th congressional district, joins Brian to discuss the news — from growing fears of election night violence to COVID relief efforts, and more.
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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show On WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We have Michael Moore on today's show with his home state of Michigan being perhaps, the epicenter of election-year intensity right now, a lawsuit over when they can count absentee ballots. The right-wing plot to kidnap governor Gretchen Whitmer, 14 people under arrest, and more, so Michael Moore on Michigan this hour. Also, today the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, I don't know if you've heard this yet, but they're waiting into election-year politics for the first time in the journal's 200 year history. We will meet another newly minted MacArthur Genius from our area. New York area cleaned up in the MacArthur Genius Grants this year.
Before we get going with our first guest, New York Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, I just want to briefly mention that we are in the homestretch already of our short and full membership drive. Because of the amount of news and the seriousness of the news this fall, we are doing a much shorter drive than we usually do in October. It's just through Friday. Usually, we would go through the weekend and into the first part of next week, but we don't want to impede the election coverage that much, or all the local Coronavirus information that we're trying to keep you abreast of and impede that very much, so we have shortened the drive.
We still have our fundraising goals to meet, so we're counting on you to come up with the memberships that you may have anyway, but in fewer days. I'm not going to go on about it right now because the Congresswoman is standing by, except to say that if you are a regular listener to the show and the station, we hope you'll also be a financial contributor and stand up for independent journalism on WNYC. Because that's really what it's about right now, standing up for independent journalism, and a lot of journalism these days that we need to bring you and hopefully constructive talk on this program as a part of that.
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Now, Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, Democrat from Long Island in a district that ranges wide from the city line out through around Jones Beach on the south shore to around Westbury further north. She's a member of the Homeland Security Committee with an eye on possible domestic terrorism around the election. She's on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and has been an advocate for passing a new Coronavirus relief bill, which is actually looking more possible this morning than it did a couple of days ago. Congresswoman Rice, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.
Kathleen Rice: Thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: First, can you give us an update on the Coronavirus relief bill I see in the Washington Press this morning. They seem to be saying that the White House and Speaker Pelosi are close to a deal, but Mitch McConnell in the Senate wants the White House to refuse. What can you tell us about the status of those talks?
Kathleen: Well, first of all, I'm grateful to hear that they are still talking. I'm not surprised that Mitch McConnell is acting in this obstructionist way. Brian, from the very beginning, on everything that we passed from the HEROES Act about five months ago to a miniature version of the HEROES Act, about a month ago, Mitch McConnell has refused to bring anything to the floor of the Senate for a vote. I don't know if that's political reasons. I don't know if he thinks a relief bill might jeopardize some of his Republican incumbent senators from coming back. Is it a total political power play?
I know that my district here on Long Island, we have families and businesses that need this help. We have hospital systems that need this help, schools that need this help. I am glad to hear that it seems that now the negotiations are primarily between the White House and the speaker. I believe that at the end of the day if Trump wants to steal, he's going to shove it down Mitch McConnell's throat, and it's going to get done. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. We only have a couple of days left because the legislative process, with timing and everything, but my hope is that we're going to get something that puts money in people's pockets before election day.
Brian Lehrer: Are you concerned that a deal right now would make the President look too good and make it more possible for him to be re-elected?
Kathleen: Well, I'm sure that's why the President wants it, but I'm at the point where I don't care who gets the benefit. People need the help. Look, I think that Trump's record is horrible enough that no amount of money or aid is going to change how people feel about him and his leadership. We should put politics completely aside and answer the call of the American people, and this is what they want, this is what they need. They don't care who signs the deal. They just want the help.
Brian Lehrer: Are there certain compromises that you would want Speaker Pelosi to get to "yes" on some kind of Bill, and others you think should be deal-breakers?
Kathleen: Mitch McConnell has always said that limiting corporate liability for employees who get the infection, who get the virus has been his drop dead. The bill that he put out, or tried to put on the floor of the Senate a couple of weeks ago was ridiculous. It was laughable. I would not sign off on anything that basically gives blanket immunity liability to big corporations as far out as 2024 for things not even related to COVID. That's ridiculous, and that should be a deal-breaker.
I think that they have begun to work that out and get the language-specific just to COVID. Look, we want the economy to open up, but we want businesses to do it, following CDC guidelines, so that their employees who come back to work can do it safely without getting sick. If any business follows CDC guidelines or the State Department of Health guidelines, and people get sick, there should be some limited liability there. I think that that's one of the last sticking points. Look, unless we are giving help, financial aid to states and municipalities, that's another deal-breaker. Those are the two big issues that we're trying to figure out here.
This is not a blue state bailout like Trump keeps talking about. The economy of every single state, red or blue across this country is in deep trouble, and we have to get money out the door. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve Chair, has said, "This is not the time to stop putting money, injecting money into the economy." The checks, direct payments to people, and the enhanced unemployment insurance that people were given through the CARES Act, that's what kept us from going into a full-blown depression. We have to prevent that from happening. We have to inject this money, put it into people's hands. It'll get into the economy and hopefully begin to put us down the path to a full economic recovery.
Brian Lehrer: My guest, if you're just joining us, is Democratic Congresswoman Kathleen Rice from Long Island. Let me ask you to put on your Homeland Security Committee hat. We haven't talked yet on the show that the President last week at his town hall on NBC, seeming to go beyond his usual reluctance to denounce right-wing terrorist threats and actually seeming to encourage the group known as QAnon. Here's part of an exchange under a minute between the President and the moderator Savannah Guthrie.
Trump: Don't tell me what they're doing.
Savannah: All right. While we're denouncing, let me ask you about QAnon. It is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior- of that. Now, can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true and disavow QAnon in its entirety?
Trump: I know nothing about QAnon.
Savannah: I just told you.
Trump: I know very little. You told me, but what you tell me doesn't necessarily make it fact. I hate to say that. I know nothing about it. I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They fight it very hard, but I know nothing about it.
Savannah: They believe it is a satanic cult run by the deep state.
Trump: If you like me to study the subject, I'll tell you what I do know about. I know about Antifa, I know about the radical left, I know how violent they are and how vicious they are, and I know how they are been burning down cities run by Democrats, not run by republicans.
Savannah: Republicans--
Brian Lehrer: Now, that was all he had to say about QAnon even though the FBI has officially called them a domestic terror threat, and that was last Thursday. It builds on a body of statements that could get other people placed under FBI surveillance for potential incitement to violence charges, I would imagine. Here he is winking at the alleged plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer. This is pretty new. A lot of you have not heard this yet. The FBI has arrested 14 people for that, but at a rally over the weekend, Trump encouraged a "lock her up" chant in Michigan and dismissed it all as, "I guess they said she was threatened."
Trump: Then I guess they said she was threatened. She was threatened. She balmed me. Our people were the ones that worked with her people, so let's see what happens.
Brian Lehrer: One more. We know that he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by. We don't need to play that one again, but last month, he refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if the state certified Joe Biden as the winner in the Electoral College.
Brian Karem: We commit here today for a peaceful transfer of power after the elections.
Trump: Well, we're going to have to see what happens. You know that I've been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.
Brian Karem: I understand that, but people are rioting. Do you commit to making sure that there's a peaceful transfer of power?
Trump: Get rid of the ballots and you'll have a very peaceful-- There won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation.
Brian Lehrer: Congresswoman Rice, as a Homeland Security Committee member, what do you make of all that?
Kathleen: There's a lot to unpack there, Brian. First of all, the president's refusal to condemn white supremacy and his promotion of COVID conspiracy theories have absolutely contributed to inciting these acts of terror. There is no wonder why extremists feel emboldened to take matters into their own hands. Tweeting "Liberate Michigan", called the armed mob that stormed the Michigan state capital demanding an end to the COVID shutdown measures, very good people and telling the governor to give a little.
Then they have this plot uncovered, 14 men who were planning to kidnap and potentially kill the governor. There is no wonder that people are doing these things when you have the leader of the free world standing up there, giving marching orders to these white supremacy groups. None other than his hand-chosen, handpicked head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has come before our committee just within the past month and a half and told us the biggest domestic threat, domestic terrorism threat in this country right now is our white supremacy groups. That's what he said. He didn't say any Antifa. He said white supremacy groups. Just the ones that the president is emboldening.
The fact that the president is teasing this whole, "I don't know if I'm going to leave peacefully. If I lose, it's a rigged election." It's ridiculous. First of all, this president and his family all vote by mail. There is not one shred of evidence that there is any fraud involved in mail-in voting and with ballots. Absolutely not one shred of evidence. You know what the American people can do? They're doing it already. Already 36 million people have voted early. They can show how they feel about what this president is saying by going out and voting and voting early. Here in New York, we can start voting on Saturday and I'm encouraging everyone who feels that they can do it safely to go out and vote as early as possible so we can put an end to this ridiculous rhetoric that's coming from the White House and this president specifically.
Brian Lehrer: To be clear, people can send in their absentee ballots anytime, the in-person early voting in New York State begins on Saturday. Let me just stay with QAnon for a minute because a lot of people only think of it vaguely as this peddler of made up conspiracy theories. How much is it just that? How much is it an actual domestic terror threat, a threat of violence?
Kathleen: I can tell you that the FBI thinks that there are potential threats of violence. There's no question about it. Christopher Wray said in front of the committee that Antifa is not an organized group like this QAnon and other white supremacist groups, but this has been around for quite a while. The whole QAnon craziness. It was around four years ago.
It has just begun to enter the mainstream in large part because we had the president re-tweeting QAnon craziness. He doesn't listen to any of his intelligence agencies unless they have been completely co-opted him.
I have a lot of faith in Director Wray. I do. He comes across to me as a pretty honest broker who's not afraid to say there is no fraud in mail-in voting and the biggest domestic terrorism threat are these white supremacy groups, which are both completely contradicted by what the president says every day. I would choose to listen to him, and we'll see what his investigations show, but people also have to take responsibility for what information they ingest as well. The craziness of the QAnon theories, what they say, what they believe in, and the false misinformation that they put out there is just unbelievable. First of all, we have to begin to talk about regulating these social media platforms for sure. Hopefully, people will get off social media and pick up a book or get their information elsewhere like your show, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Before you go, I want to touch on another couple of things. I know you're involved again as a member of the Homeland Security Committee in making sure New Yorkers can travel if they are going to fly, and some people are still flying with the Trusted Traveler Program which there seemed to be some singling out of New Yorkers by the federal government, with respect to that. What can you tell us?
Kathleen: This is an unbelievable situation. It was shortly after New York passed the Green Light Law that allowed undocumented people to get a driver's license identification, that the president was railing about the sanctuary city, the sanctuary state, and just out of the blue, I proposed nothing. Every single New Yorker became ineligible for getting global entry, for doing any of the Trusted Traveler Program, for applying for it or reapplying for it.
We immediately got on that. We called people in front of the Homeland Security Committee. They gave knowingly false information that was ultimately confirmed to be false by the US attorney here in the Southern District because this was a case that was in court. They have not admitted that this was the reason why, but they said that New York had a different rule than every other state and what we have shown is that that's not true. There were other states that limited the information, that they allowed the Department of Homeland Security to get in order to approve someone for one of these programs.
This is the kind of political games that this president plays. He just says, "That's it." How about tens of thousands of New Yorkers who have to travel out of this country for business, for their livelihood, are not going to be able to do it because I'm mad that they passed this law. We are right now subpoenaing documents from the Department of Homeland Security. They have been incredibly non-responsive to us, but we're going to get to the bottom of this.
There will be people, and it could be as high up as Chad Wolf who is in his position as acting Secretary of DHS illegally. That has been established by an ethics group, governmental group that he is in his position illegally. He's been there. They purposely took him out of the chain of command or did not follow the appropriate chain of command for appointment of someone to be in that very important position, and he's been in it for over 100 days, which is a violation of the acting secretary law as well.
This is the kind of stuff that this administration does every single day. He's no longer a New Yorker, so he's going to stick it to New Yorkers any way that he can because he's upset because they passed this law. Our committee is on it and there are going to be people who are held responsible for it. There's no question about it. Because they gave provably false information under oath in front of a congressional committee. That is the finger-in-your-face disrespect that this administration has shown for the House of Representatives and the Senate for that matter, but with the complicity of the Republican leadership. We can't allow that to happen.
Brian Lehrer: New York Congresswoman Kathleen Rice, Democrat from Long Island, member of the Homeland Security Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. Thank you much for your time today.
Kathleen: Thank you, Brian.
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