MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show - Transcript: "Interview with Kamala Harris"
Interview
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MADDOW: See if you can spot the pattern. Since the Democratic presidential primary debate, California Senator Kamala Harris jumped nine points in CNN`s national polling. She jumped 13 points in the latest poll by Quinnipiac. It`s three points when you look at "The Washington Post"/ABC News poll. Eight points up in the "Politico"/Morning Consult poll. Emerson College shows the same thing, Harris with an eight-point jump since the debate. The latest Economist/YouGov poll has her up seven since the debate. A Univision poll of Hispanic primary voters shows that her support jumped 16 points following the June debate. According to "USA Today"/Suffolk University poll, she also jumped to second place in Iowa following the debate. Senator Harris appears to be heading in one direction, and it`s not down. As I mentioned at the top of the show, NBC News has just tonight released its first poll of the 2020 Democratic race. So, we can`t talk about a jump because it`s their first snapshot. But after Biden and Warren ranked first and second in that national poll, Harris is tied with Bernie Sanders at 13 points. It is indubitably clear at this point that Kamala Harris is a top tier candidate in this giant race. With that happening, how do you keep that momentum going? I mean, there`s a whole lot of race still to be run. How do you capitalize on recent moves in a horse race like that? Joining us now is California senator and Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris. Senator, it`s nice to see you. Thanks for being here.
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It`s great to be with you, Rachel. Thank you.
MADDOW: I have not seen you since the debate. Obviously, America thinks you did well. How has it changed your campaign or how you are doing this?
HARRIS: Well, on a daily basis, it has not changed. I`m spending a lot of time in the primary states. This past weekend, I was in Iowa, I was in South Carolina, New Hampshire. I`m going tomorrow to Nevada. We are building up a great ground game in each of the states. We`re hiring staff. We`re organizing folks around voting and registration. And -- but there is momentum and the way that I think about it is that it is steady. And to your point, the trajectory is a good one, but there`s a lot of work to be done. I`m in this campaign to win it, I fully intend to win, but it will not be without a lot of hard work and smart work, and I have a great team. And so, one day at a time. One day at a time.
MADDOW: One of the other things that happened in the wake of that debate in which you made such a splash is that some of the attention that you got from the fringe turned ugly. We saw sort of birtherism-style attacks on you. These attacks circulating online that you`re not really black.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: When the president`s eldest son briefly joined in that attack on Twitter, for me, that was an "aha" moment that this was what the campaign is going to be like.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: If we thought that was in the past, there`s no reason to believe that. It made me wonder how you and your campaign approach issues like that, if you have a strategy for thinking about that kind of really ugly campaigning now that you have seen a taste of it.
HARRIS: Well, I mean, I have to be candid with you. I was not surprised. And I found it uninteresting, because it`s just -- it`s a revival of an old playbook that was debunked a long time ago. And so, everyone was used to it and as you can see, and I really thank my colleagues and other Democrats who are running in this race who spoke up. I have thanked them and I will continue to thank them because it was bunk. And so, we`re going forward. But, look, the stakes are high, Rachel, as you know. And their -- and people are going to play -- unfortunately, people play dirty.
MADDOW: Uh-huh.
HARRIS: So, we have to be prepared for it, but ultimately, I think American voters and the American public want that we are going to -- those of us who profess to be a leader and want to be president of the United States, have to prioritize elevating public discourse and educating the public about issues that concern them when they wake up at 3:00 in the morning worrying about their families and their future. So, that`s how I`m going to focus. And, you know, where necessary, we`ll also punch back.
MADDOW: Let me talk to you about the sort of strange announcement that we got from President Trump today concerning the census.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: So, as you know, the president and the administration had been trying to sort of rejigger the census in a way that was expected to undercut Latino, specifically communities and immigrant communities. They lost in the courts. But I was talking with Dale Ho, the voting rights lawyer from ACLU --
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: -- who you just saw on the way in here.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: About the possibility that maybe the damage is done. That maybe Latino communities and immigrant communities have received the message that the census will be part of the way this administration wants to go after them, and therefore, they should fear it, they should stay away from it. They should not respond. That will accomplish what the Trump administration was trying to do here. What do you think about that as a worry and what do you think about how to counteract it if you think it`s based on anything (ph)?
HARRIS: So, he has done incredible work as has the ACLU in general, on this issue, and many others. It`s a legitimate point. And we actually started to see that the day after the election in November of 2016. The number of families where the children did not want to go to school for fear that if they came back, their parents wouldn`t be home. The number of families that did not send their child to the pediatrician, pediatricians were talking about this, for fear that they would -- that the child and the family will have contact with the government. We have seen it over and over again. And what we are seeing from then until today is just constant displays of the fact that this administration and this president -- he is in the business of intimidating and instilling fear in people. And in particular, those people that he perceives to be vulnerable. And I look at this issue in particular through the lens of my career as a prosecutor. I`m going to tell you, Rachel. The best tool in the tool belt of the predator against an undocumented immigrant is to convince that victim that if you report the crime against you, rape, child assault, fraud, it is you who will be treated as the criminal. So, when he makes these grand proclamation through his big tweets, what he is doing I believe intentionally is trying to create fear in these individuals and these families. And that is not the sign of a strong president. Strength -- the display of strength in my book is you lift people up. You don`t beat them down. This guy in the White House has a continuous pattern of trying to beat people down, specifically on this issue on the census. What we know -- and we have always been afraid of this, is that there are a lot of blended families in America. And by that, I mean on this issue, families where certain family members will be documented, others not. So, what`s going to happen? When the census taker comes knocking on that door, they`re not going to answer the door for fear that this being an agent of the government might be in the business of deportation.
MADDOW: Uh-huh.
HARRIS: Or investigating who is in that household for purposes that are about deportation, not counting people. The result will be and include that people will not be counted and who in particular? Immigrants. Who in particular? Specifically in terms of the largest population that we know has been the target of this administration`s, you know, fear campaign? Latino immigrants. So, our legitimate fear and concern is that this census in 2020 will not be accurate. And the census, the United States census, which is conducted every 10 years, is done as a reflection of our democracy, which is to say that we pay attention to who is here. We distribute resources based on the need and the population of communities. We draw lines and make decisions about elected offices and jurisdictions based on these population sizes. So, what this president is contributing to is a faulty census that we will have to live with for the next 10 years. It is highly irresponsible because it`s yet another example of this president trying to interfere and if not weaken our democracy.
MADDOW: Senator Kamala Harris is our guest. If you can stay with us, Senator --
HARRIS: Sure.
MADDOW: -- we will be right back. I want to talk to you a little bit about some of the ways that even local mayors and governors are trying to fight on this issue.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: Some controversial stuff breaking, including tonight. We`ll be right back with Kamala Harris right after this.
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MADDOW: We`re back with Senator Kamala Harris of California, Democratic presidential candidate. Senator, thank you for doing this.
HARRIS: Glad to be with you.
MADDOW: One of the other stories that we are covering tonight and we will be through the weekend is this threat from the Trump administration that there are going to be nationwide round-ups of immigrants and their families.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: They`ve announced a list of 10 and then they changed it to nine major cities in which they say they`re going to target these raids. And we don`t know if they`re actually going to do them. But it`s been interesting to see mayors in these cities and some other officials. I was struck by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in Chicago today saying that Chicago PD will not be allowed to cooperate with any federal raids and federal officers will not have access to any police databases permanently from here on out because of this sort of thing. It is striking to see the federal government be sort of stood up to by mayors, by local police departments, by local officials.
HARRIS: Yes.
MADDOW: That sort of conflict is heartening and one way, it`s also a little bit scary in a way. What`s your take on this?
HARRIS: Well, I think that -- and I assumed that what Mayor Lightfoot is doing in Chicago, similar to what, you know, Mayor Breed will do in San Francisco, what Mayor Garcetti will do in Los Angeles, which is to say, we don`t want the limited resources of local law enforcement to go into the job that the federal government has got to do and we want our local law enforcement to be trusted by our community and not be feared by our community. Because again, as a prosecutor, I don`t -- you know, as a former prosecutor, but I saw it as a prosecutor, I don`t want a victim of crime to be afraid to wave down that patrol car when she has been hurt for fear that if she stops that police officer, she is going to be deported, because I`m going to tell you something -- if she is a mother, if he is a father, they will endure any kind of abuse they have personally experience to make sure that they can go home at night and take care of the babies, which means they will not report bad things that happened to them and therefore to their community, meaning our community. Because, by the way, a crime against any one of us is a crime against all of us. And so, I applaud that mayor saying we`re not going to put local resources into that. And when we put local resources into something like that, like we have done in the past, we`re going to go and prosecute transnational criminal organizations. What are you doing picking up people who by ICE`s own definition have not committed a crime? It`s a misuse of resources.
MADDOW: When you look at the cities that they announced they`re going to be targeting today -- it is San Francisco, L.A., Atlanta, Baltimore, Miami, New York. I think, obviously, it`s large cities, right? But it`s also I think places where they are pretty sure they`re going to have people outrage and those people are going to be protesting and confronting federal officers as they try to do this.
HARRIS: Uh-huh.
MADDOW: A lot of people have suggested and I think I`m partial to this analysis, that the president may be picking fights around immigration and sort of displaying performative cruelty toward immigrants and immigrant communities because he thinks it helps them politically, because he thinks that it causes Democrats and liberals to stand up for immigrants and that should be somehow alienating to the electorate in the broad sense that will him get reelected in 2020. If that is what he is doing, what do you think the antidote is to that sort of thinking?
HARRIS: Well, I am with you. I think that throughout this president`s tenure, he has been throwing flames with, for example, that multibillion dollar vanity project of his called a wall which, by the way, will never get built. And he`s doing that with this hand over here by tweet, he basically institutes a so-called trade policy that has resulted in farmers in Iowa looking at bankruptcy who have soybeans rotting in their bins because he has cut off a market they cultivated over 10 years or more in China. While he is doing this thing over here to get everyone riled up about immigration, he on this hand has had a so-called trade policy where it is by some estimates, hundreds of thousands, as many as maybe 700,000 auto workers may be out of their job by Christmas. While he is doing all that, he is passing a trade policy where American families every month right now are spending $1.4 billion a month, on anything from shampoo to washing machines. He passes a tax bill that benefits the top 1 percent and the biggest corporations of this country while he made this promise to help working people that he has betrayed them. He said he was going to deal with infrastructure. There`s no evidence of an infrastructure plan. So, the guy has now got to start distracting people from the fact that he made all these promises that I believe he had no intention of fulfilling. And he has failed to perform on every level by which we should measure a president of the United States. Not to mention failed as a commander-in-chief. And so, he`s going to create, as he often does, this distraction -- I agree with you -- and do these raids which is a crime against humanity and I believe in the way he is coming about this and the way he has been handling the issue when you got babies in cages, I went down after the debate in Miami. That next morning, I went down with many of my colleagues who are running and we went to a place in Florida called Homestead. And you know why we went there, Rachel? Because in Homestead, Florida, there is a private detention facility that currently houses 2,700 children. And as a sitting member of the United States Senate, Julian Castro was there, others were there, they would not let us in. We walked down -- and I walked down the road and got on a ladder to look over the fence to see what was going on and I saw children lined up by gender, single file like they`re criminals being led into barracks. So, these are the kinds of policies that he institutes as a way to, one, extend I think what he believes which is that he believes that we are not a nation that should embrace immigrants, but it`s also to distract from the fact that he has failed to perform. He has failed to perform. And so, he engages in this exaggerated kind of response to an issue as a way to distract. I mean, you talk about commander-in-chief, you know, this is a guy who takes the word of the Russian president over the word of the American intelligence community when it comes to the fact that Russia interfered in the lection. He takes and embraces the worth of a North Korean dictator over the word of the American intelligence when it comes to an American student who was tortured and later died. He embraces a Saudi prince over the word of the American intelligence community when it comes to a journalist who was assassinated. And he does not want to be judged in this election based on all of that stuff, so he distracts the American people.
MADDOW: Senator Harris, we`re going to take one more quick break. I have one last question I want to ask you before you go tonight.
HARRIS: Sure.
MADDOW: Senator Kamala Harris is our guest. We`ll be right back.
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MADDOW: We`re back with Senator Kamala Harris. Senator, thank you for sticking around.
HARRIS: Thank you.
MADDOW: I have one last question that I want to ask you about something else that`s in the news.
HARRIS: Of course.
MADDOW: There is this challenge to the Affordable Care Act that appears to be rocketing its way through the courts. It appears to be on its way to the Supreme Court. If you won the presidency and the AC was gone, 20 million people been thrown off health insurance because the ACA was overruled by this Trump administration lawsuit, would that change your approach to what you want to do with health care? Would you try to get back what had been lost with the ACA? Or would you still proceed with the radical reform you have been talking about, single-payer plan for everybody?
HARRIS: Well, immediately, one of the things that I think all American families know that they do not want by any stretch of imagination to lose is the ban on preexisting conditions being the reason that people can`t have access to health care. Children being able to be on their parents` coverage until age 27. That has to come back immediately. There are so many people who have benefitted from it. So, there have to be immediate priorities. But ultimately, I support Medicare-for-All. I think that`s where we are looking at a system where we`ve got to have people not have cost be the barrier to their access to health care. You know, I was in Iowa recently and a pediatric -- a pediatrician who works on emergency room, she said to me, Kamala, you know we currently do have Medicare-for-All. I said, how is that? She said, emergency rooms.
MADDOW: Yes.
HARRIS: Right? And so, let`s do it in a way that is actually more effective and cheaper, where people don`t have access to health care because they are in crisis and we are paying so much more because they are getting in at the latest stage of their needs. Let`s have a system where we have everyone having access as a right and not a privilege for just those who can afford it.
MADDOW: Senator Kamala Harris, a leading Democratic presidential contender, thank you for making the time to come in and spend this time.
HARRIS: Thank you. Thank you, Rachel.
MADDOW: I really do appreciate it.
HARRIS: Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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