NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Rick Scott
Interview
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Thanks very much. Joining me now is Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida. Of course, Senator Scott as Governor Scott went through his share of hurricanes. Senator Scott, welcome back to Meet the Press.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Good morning.
CHUCK TODD:
You just heard --
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Yeah, we went through quite a few.
CHUCK TODD:
Yes, you did.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
I got lots of experience.
CHUCK TODD:
You just heard -- this is a familiar path of a hurricane in that looks a lot like that Hurricane Matthew, which, which scared the living daylights out of a lot of Florida and just missed there. What is your message to northeast Floridians though as they -- again, everybody's watching the model, the path, and the average Floridian's going, "Oh, out of the woods."
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
They're not. First off, I, I just got an update from the National Hurricane Center. And the storm wobbled a little bit more to the west. So it'll be a little bit closer to Florida than they even anticipated last night when I went to bed. So the bottom line is: You need to follow this. Look at that cone of uncertainty. That's where this might be. We're going to have significant rain, we're going to have storm surge, and we're going to have hurricane, I mean, hurricane-force winds, big winds. This is a, this is a big storm. And here's the issue. If this, if this turns right at the last minute and goes due west, you've got to say, "Am I ready? Do I have my food, water? Should I have evacuated?" Don't take a, don't take a chance. Because, I mean, this is where they think it's going to go, but it could clearly go due west and hit right into Florida.
CHUCK TODD:
You've done eight years of hurricanes. We've yet another one. You've seen pretty much every corner of the state of Florida been hit with damage from a storm. And now looking back, what are some things you want -- if you could sit here and say, "All right. I want all this money to prepare the state of Florida to handle this better," what would that look like? What would mitigation look like if you could have all the funds in the world to protect Florida more from these storms?
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Well, I think, first off, I want to make sure money doesn't get wasted. I have a bill right now to try to make sure, like, with debris pickup that we spend the money right. But with regard to mitigation, we've got to make sure that we're not building where there's -- where we know there is significant risk. And so -- we all saw the pictures of, as an example, Mexico Beach. That's an easy one --
CHUCK TODD:
Right. I'm glad you brought that up.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
-- for people to remember.
CHUCK TODD:
Because I want to talk about that in a minute. Yeah.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
I mean, that's an easy one. So if you remember, we had the houses right along the coast. Then we had the road. And then we had the houses on, just on the other side. So if they're going to rebuild there, they've got to rebuild in standards. And we do have the standards now. If you look at most of -- when Irma hit, we didn't have as much damage -- anything that was built after Andrew. So but let's just make sure that all those standards are met and if there's new ones. We all remember the one house. Chuck, remember that one house on Mexico Beach that withstood everything?
CHUCK TODD:
Yeah.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
And I think that when I talked to the owner, I think he only spent an extra $30,000. So -- but unfortunately some places -- like, we had in Irma that 30-mile stretch where it hit Irma down in the Keys. It was stuff that had been a lot older, built -- most of it built way before Andrew. So we're doing it now. There's always something you could do better. But I want to make sure the money's spent well and make sure people build up to standards.
CHUCK TODD:
When Congress comes back, I have a feeling the issue of gun regulations is going to be now more front and center. The New York Times added up just of mass shootings in the month of August alone, senator, 51 deaths. We know the names of these cities as if they're markers now, right, on the highway. You just say the words "El Paso" and "Dayton," and now we're going to say, "Odessa." You say "Parkland." You say "Pulse." We know what all of that means. What's going to happen when Congress comes back?
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Well, I've talked to the president, the White House. I've talked to Mitch McConnell and others. I think they ought to look at what we did in Florida after Parkland.
CHUCK TODD:
That's a model? You think?
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Well, here's what we did. We sat down immediately. Within, like, three days, Chuck, we sat down with law enforcement, mental health counselors, and educators and said, "What would really work?" And so we passed historic legislation within three weeks. One is a red flag law, that says that if you have threatened harm to yourself or somebody else, then through law enforcement and through due process, through the court system all your weapons can be taken away. And then on top of that we said every school in our state's going to have law enforcement and we're going to have more mental health counselors and we're going to set up a process where we can really evaluate problems before they happen.The problem we have is, Chuck, we've got a problem in this country. We've got young men for whatever reason, totally different than when I was growing up. No one thought about doing a mass shooting. But young men today for whatever reason have this in their mindset. And we've got to figure this out, and we've got to figure out how we get guns away from mentally ill -- people who want to harm others or themselves.
CHUCK TODD:
Where are you on a background -- an expansion of the background check? That's going to be probably one of the debating points. And I know that some people are for expanding, and there's different degrees of the expansion. Where are you on this?
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
So when I was governor, what we found is that there wasn't enough coordination, especially with the mental health and illness issue that was getting onto the background check in Florida. So we worked on that. There's lots of proposals out there. I'm going to review all of them. But I, Chuck, I can tell you right now if you want to have an impact, do what we did in Florida. Do the red flag laws. And the other thing let me tell you I'm frustrated about. We had -- take Parkland as an example. The FBI had prior knowledge, had a tip, and did nothing about it. And to this day I've been asking, "Did you - did they do anything about it? Was anybody reprimanded?" Nothing. Same with the shooting at the airport in Florida. That person had given their gun to the FBI in Alaska and nothing's happened as far as I can tell with anybody.
CHUCK TODD:
Big picture though, How do you -- do you think we have too many guns in circulation? And if you do, how do we, how do we get them out of circulation?
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Well, Chuck, you know, I believe in the Second Amendment. I don't want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens. I want to focus on the people that have mental illness. That's my, that's my focus.
CHUCK TODD:
Okay. You don't think there's too many guns?
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Well, I think there's-- just take all weapons, there's too many people that have mental illnesses that we're somehow not addressing, and they have access to weapons, and they shouldn't.
CHUCK TODD:
All right. Senator Rick Scott, Republican from Florida, former governor. Like I said, been through his share of hurricanes. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you coming on, sharing your views.
SENATOR RICK SCOTT:
Thanks, Chuck.
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