"Face the Nation" Full Broadcast — Dec. 22, 2024

[0:01] I'm Margaret Brennan in Washington, and this week on Face the Nation, a potential government [0:06] shutdown is averted in the 11th hour. But President-elect Trump and first pal Elon Musk [0:12] show they will disrupt the way Washington works. Nudging Congress to do their work is [0:19] technically still President Biden's job, but it was Trump and Musk calling the shots by social [0:25] media last week. They didn't get all of what they wanted, but will the drama prove to be a preview [0:31] of what's to come within the GOP in 2025. We'll talk with two House Republicans, Arkansan [0:38] French Hill and Texan Tony Gonzalez. Then outgoing Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas [0:45] weighs in on extremism and the immigration crisis. And West Virginia Independent Joe Manchin reflects [0:52] on his 14 years in the Senate as he leaves office, with advice for both parties going forward. [0:59] Finally, an update on the new efforts to locate journalist Austin Tice, who's been missing [1:06] in Syria for 12 years. It's all just ahead on Face the Nation. [1:27] Good morning and welcome to Face the Nation. We are just three days away from Christmas and [1:32] the start of Hanukkah. Congress has gone home, but is last week's chaos on Capitol Hill an omen [1:39] of what is ahead in 2025. Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzalez is here in studio [1:45] to answer that. Good morning to you. Good morning, Margaret. Thanks for having me. [1:50] So we just saw turmoil within the party over the past few days after President-elect Trump and Elon [1:56] Musk scuttled this bipartisan deal, then demanded another deal that couldn't get enough Republican [2:03] support to get over the finish line. Then we have this emergency stopgap measure that only takes us [2:08] through mid-March. You are one of 34 Republicans to vote against it. Why? [2:15] It's pretty simple. My constituents were against the CR just as much as I was against the CR. [2:21] It's been a tough week, though. It started with a tragic shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. [2:26] I've worked in a very bipartisan manner to make sure we have a national strategy that prevents against [2:32] some of the school shootings that are occurring. I've been working with others to get that done. [2:37] I think that's important. And then in the House, of course, we had this messy bill that was put on [2:42] the floor. It started with a 1,500-page bill. In my eyes, there's no doubt that there is a sickness [2:47] in D.C. and that sickness isn't going to be cured with these big, long, pork-filled bills. [2:53] You do got to give President Trump a lot of credit, though. He was able to whittle that down [2:57] to 116 pages. Once again, the reason I voted no is I think CRs are terrible. They do nothing [3:04] but kick the can down the road. Let's fast-forward to March. Do you think we're going to be any [3:09] closer to coming up with a spending deal then than we are now? I don't think so. [3:14] But if the government had shut down, the Border Patrol agents who live in your district [3:17] wouldn't have received paychecks. [3:18] Right. That's why we should have done our job instead of just saying, hey, give us three more [3:22] months, and I promise you in three months we're going to do our job. We've ran that play before. [3:27] Yeah. [3:27] In my eyes, you use Christmas, you use New Year's, you lock everybody in a room, and you say, [3:32] let's get it done now. There's also a bigger danger to this, too, is if we're not funding the [3:37] government long-term, now all of a sudden you're telling the government you have to spend a year's [3:41] worth of money in six months or three months. That's not fair to any of these agencies as well. [3:46] So basically, it was a vote on my end to say, let's do our job. [3:51] Right. Which the Republicans who are in leadership had failed to get some of those bills done. In fact, [3:58] Speaker Johnson chose to go this route with the CR. But I want to ask you about the dynamic here [4:04] because it's confusing, frankly. I mean, Elon Musk is tweeting against bipartisan deals negotiated and [4:11] led by the Speaker of the House. What role exactly is he playing here? [4:17] It's kind of interesting. We have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker. [4:21] It feels like it is as if Elon Musk is our prime minister. And I spoke with Elon a couple of times [4:26] this week. I think many of us. Unelected. Well, unelected. But I mean, he has a voice. [4:31] And I think a large part of that voice is a reflection of the voice of the people. [4:35] Once again, a 1,500-page bill, how does that pass the smell test? It's absolutely wrong. It's what's [4:42] wrong with this place. So we have to get back to regular order. [4:45] The other part of it, too, is while House Republicans were fighting over the spending bill, [4:50] guess what Senate Democrats were doing? They were ensuring that President Biden got his 235th [4:57] liberal judge over the finish line. That's why it's so important that House Republicans stay united, [5:03] stay laser-focused on delivering on a President Trump agenda next year. [5:06] But Republicans in the House are clearly not united. And it was Speaker Johnson who led that [5:12] bipartisan deal. Do you support him? If he's standing for re-election, should he still lead [5:18] the party if you're saying he was leading in the wrong direction with a 15-page initial funding deal? [5:24] Yeah. And I do support Speaker Johnson. I think he's done a fantastic job keeping us all together. [5:31] It's like feral cats on the House, right? So that's a tough job to begin with. But the fact [5:35] that he was able to work with President Trump in order to whittle it down to a little over 100 pages, [5:40] the fact that he was able to work with, you know, with Elon Musk and some of these other folks, [5:45] other members to find a solution just goes to prove that he's found a way. But there also, [5:50] this can't be the norm. This cannot be the norm. Once again, that's the reason why I voted against the CR is [5:55] this cannot be the norm. We have to get back to regular order and pass our appropriations bills. [6:01] Homeland Security is certainly important to us. There's other things that are going on in the world. [6:04] So because the Republican majority now is so thin, it will also be thin in the new Congress. But right [6:09] now, any missed vote gets a lot of attention. Congresswoman Kay Granger hasn't cast a vote since [6:16] July. And there was a local reporter in Dallas who looked into this and found the 81-year-old has been [6:22] living in a local memory care and assisted living facility for some time. That was not shared with the [6:29] public. Were you and others in the Texas delegation aware? I wasn't aware. I think there's no doubt a lot of [6:35] us knew that she was gaining an age like a lot of members do. And sadly, you know, some of these members [6:42] wait until it's too long, too, too, too, things have gone too far. And leadership allowed for it? I think it's maybe [6:49] I'm not too sure what leadership knew on it or didn't know on it. I'd say on the other side of [6:52] the aisle is the same thing. I mean, we saw what happened on the Senate side, you know, with with [6:57] Senator Feinstein and some of these others that have missed votes for a long time. I think this goes [7:02] gets back to the root of it. Congress should do its job. And if you can't do your job, maybe you [7:08] shouldn't be there. Well, she wasn't there. And apparently it went either unnoticed or just not [7:14] acknowledged to the public, which certainly raises eyebrows. I need to get to the border [7:20] because that is, what, 800 miles of the border in your district. Border Patrol had fewer than 50,000 [7:28] apprehensions at the southern border last month. That's a Biden era low. Does that mean coming into [7:34] office that essentially the crisis has been fixed before Donald Trump even arrives and that it's not [7:40] as big of a project as initially thought? Oh, no, it's a huge project. And while the Biden [7:45] administration has has started to do some things right, the Trump administration is going to do [7:50] everything right in this manner. And I'll tell you why. This is why it's important. Earlier this week, [7:54] I had a classified briefing on the threat, the worldwide threats to homeland to our homeland. I won't [8:01] share some of the sensitive stuff, but I'll share some of the open source stuff in Syria. A lot of us [8:06] are rooting for a free Syria. Free Syria brings a lot of opportunities for stability in that region, [8:12] but it also brings a national security threat. Assad was a bad guy. He imprisoned a lot of folks, [8:18] sometimes wrongfully. Some of those folks are terrorists. Now they are loose. Where are they? [8:23] Where are they going? Let's bring it back to the southern border. This year, the Biden administration [8:27] has apprehended 600 Syrians. Does that mean all those Syrians are terrorists? Of course not. But do we know [8:34] who these people are and who are they coming into our country? This is something that President Trump [8:38] is going to get to the bottom of. So you want to halt refugee admissions like Donald Trump is [8:41] talking about? You want to block travel from Muslim majority countries like the Trump team is talking [8:47] about? I want the president, I want the president to enforce the laws that we have on the books. [8:52] That simple. So no, those aren't laws on the books. Refugees are accepted in the United States of [8:58] America. And they should be, right? I want us to follow our laws, right? And if we need to make [9:04] changes to our laws, Congress should be the body to make those changes. And in my eyes, [9:08] we can both protect those that are warm and welcoming. We want people to come and live the [9:13] American dream. Those that are fleeing political persecution, but we also have to go after the [9:18] criminals and the terrorists. Understood. Tony Gonzalez, good to have you here. [9:21] Thank you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Space Nation will be back in a minute. [9:25] On Friday, we sat down with outgoing DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to get his thoughts [9:34] on the homeland security challenges facing the next administration. Here's part of our conversation. [9:41] We recently saw that killing of the United Healthcare Division CEO on the streets of Manhattan. [9:48] Manhattan prosecutors called it a killing that was intended to evoke terror. Would you consider him [9:54] a terrorist? Is this domestic violent extremism? [9:56] The rhetoric on social media following that murder is extraordinarily alarming. It speaks of what is [10:06] really bubbling here in this country. And unfortunately, we see that manifested in violence. [10:15] The domestic violent extremism that exists, the threat of it in the United States is one of the [10:21] great threat streams that we must counter. But when you say something's bubbling, what's the national [10:28] trend that you're seeing? I look we have we have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for [10:36] some time. And that's against CEOs. That's against the government. That's against leadership. [10:40] We've seen narratives of hate. We've seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We've seen personal [10:48] grievances in the language of violence accompanying or being a part of those narratives is something that we're very concerned about. That that is a heightened threat environment. [11:00] I still am alarmed, though, by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York City. [11:17] And a lot of that seems to be around the health care industry and what that company was doing. It's depersonalized. The victim is depersonalized. [11:28] And and the victim is a person. Yeah. And the victim is a husband. And the victim is a father. [11:35] Face the Nation has been to the border towards some of the federal facilities. And we saw some of those small children who came across without parents and without caregivers. [11:45] And I don't think I certainly won't ever forget that. There were also children who were separated from their families by the Trump administration. [11:56] The last report we saw shows that Homeland Security reunified just short of 800 children with their parents. [12:04] Why is it so hard to reunite families and how much unfinished business are are you leaving behind here? [12:10] So we are very proud of the work that we performed through the Family Reunification Task Force. But there's more work to be done. [12:18] Some of the parents who were removed are difficult to find. Some are reluctant to come forward, worried that the separation could occur again. [12:35] We're dealing with vulnerable populations who have gone through trauma. So there are a myriad of challenges, some of which we have been able to overcome, as you note, for 800 or so families. But there's more work to be done. [12:51] How many are left? [12:53] It is unclear because we were not left with good records. Data was not kept. And so that was also one of the great challenges that we had to overcome. [13:06] ICE was also unable to account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied kids who failed to appear in court from 2019 to 2023, according to the report we read. [13:18] The incoming boarder czar. Tom Homan says these children are being exploited and trafficked. Is that true? [13:26] Well, we certainly, Margaret, we certainly have received reports of children being trafficked, even those as to whom we know where they are. [13:38] That is outside the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. What we do is we turn children over within 72 hours, as the law requires. [13:47] To the Department of Health and Human Services. And then HHS places those children. Of course, we investigate cases of trafficking. But there are children who are reunited with a parent here in the United States or a legal guardian. And they move. And sometimes the government loses track. Individuals do not comply with the reporting obligations or otherwise. [14:15] Or otherwise. I think it is inaccurate to say that all of them are trafficked or victimized. [14:22] In December of last year, border crossings were at record highs. Now they've dropped to the lowest level of the Biden administration. How much of that drop off is because Mexico is now stopping migrants from even getting to that southern border of the United States? [14:38] That is critically one element of it. It is not the only element of it. The president took executive action in June of this year. That has been a key driver of the low number of encounters at our border. We are now delivering to the incoming administration a southern border at which the number of individuals encountered is well below the level experienced in 2019. [15:07] The last year before the pandemic. [15:10] But the immigration surge into the U.S. since 2021 has been the largest in American history. [15:14] Yes. [15:15] That is incredible. [15:16] Oh, and it is, Margaret, it is one element of the greatest displacement of people in the world since World War II. This is a phenomenon that has not been unique to the southern border of the United States. [15:33] Right. [15:34] It is something that has gripped the entire hemisphere and the world. [15:40] I think you have said to me, one of the very first things the Biden administration did was ask Congress to act in the earliest days. [15:46] Yes. [15:47] And then, fast forward, you had this bipartisan near miss on a border bill. All that time passed. Why wait until five months before the U.S. election to put in place those asylum restrictions that did cut off the flow? [16:01] Margaret, remember? [16:02] Margaret, remember? [16:03] That ended a crisis. [16:04] Margaret, remember where we were when the president took office? We were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The prior administration had imposed Title 42, which is a public health authority, and enabled us to expel individuals, to continue to expel individuals at the border as the prior administration had done. [16:30] Right. [16:31] There was tremendous pressure to maintain the workings of Title 42, which we did. That held until May of 2023. We then turned to Congress, and we asked for supplemental funding that was desperately needed to make our administration of a broken immigration system work much better. [16:55] Mm-hmm. [16:56] We were denied. We went back to Congress a second time and requested supplemental funding. Denied. We then turned to the bipartisan negotiations, which proved successful, which were then killed. [17:10] The result of it, a really terrific solution, was killed by irresponsible politics. Looking back now, in hindsight, in 2020, if we had known that irresponsible politics would have killed what was clearly a meritorious effort and a meritorious result, perhaps we would have taken executive action more rapidly. [17:32] Because Republicans argue in this back and forth over whose job it is to fix the problem. Congress would argue there was executive authority that could have been used before Congress legislated. [17:47] And they point back to the crisis starting at day one, when Trump-era immigration policy was peeled back, remain in Mexico, the 100-day moratorium on most deportations that was announced, the halt-to-walt construction. [18:02] Did those measures—and I know you weren't yet in office personally—but did those measures set you up for failure? [18:08] Remember something, remain in Mexico is touted as the great panacea. The trend lines of migration were increasing quite exponentially from 2018 to 2019, and that is reflected worldwide. And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. [18:28] Remember something also about the executive action that the president took in May—in June of this year. We also, over time, built capabilities that we did not previously have. [18:45] Not just domestically, the number of facilities that we stood up, the ability to transport individuals and decompress areas that were experiencing surges of individuals, [18:57] but our negotiations with Mexico, with other countries in Latin America, and around the world. [19:03] We are now removing or returning more individuals in three years than the prior administration did in four. [19:10] And we are doing so not only greater in volume, but greater in speed because of the negotiations with other countries, and to more countries than has ever been the case. [19:23] But why didn't we hear more about those enforcement actions during the election cycle, when immigration was so key? [19:29] Margaret, we've been executing on enforcement at an unprecedented level throughout this administration. And ICE just published data that evidences that quite powerfully. [19:43] But that data you just cited shows deportation of migrants is at a 10-year high under President Biden. A 10-year high. [19:51] So, what shifted at DHS that prompted this deportation of more than, what, 200,000 unauthorized migrants from the United States this year? That's one of the highest numbers in recent years. [20:05] Margaret? [20:06] Margaret? [20:07] If Congress didn't give you the power, how did you do it? [20:09] Margaret, we did it with skill, with strategy, and with unflinching dedication to that mission. [20:20] But it would also suggest that there is the ability to do it without Congress acting, right? That's the downside of showing you can make it work. [20:29] Yes, but, Margaret, we made those very impressive statistics happen. But there is much more work to do. [20:39] Yeah. [20:40] And what we have to do is to ensure that the problem does not continue. This broken system needs to be fixed. [20:46] And it's not just to ensure that individuals who do not have a lawful basis to remain in the United States are removed. [20:55] But it's also to ensure that we are providing humanitarian relief to those who qualify, one of our proudest traditions, and that we are also fueling the economy. [21:09] You said recently that this massive Chinese hacking known as Salt Typhoon, the hacking of eight telecom companies that siphoned up this metadata, the phone call records, logs, and information from millions, potentially, of Americans, was accessed. [21:27] Why hasn't the U.S. government stopped it? [21:30] The intrusion is a very significant one, and an extraordinarily impactful one, and an absolutely unacceptable one. [21:40] And the president has demonstrated a strong response to the People's Republic of China. [21:47] It is very sophisticated. [21:48] Rhetorically, you mean? [21:49] I'm sorry? [21:50] Rhetorically, when he met with Xi Jinping? [21:52] Well, just recently, the United States Department of Commerce proposed an action against China Telecom. [22:02] So this is an ongoing situation. [22:06] It is not static. [22:07] The intrusion is a very sophisticated one. [22:10] The telecommunications companies are working very vigorously to remediate it. [22:16] They are working in partnership with us, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security, [22:25] with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other agencies of the federal government. [22:33] This is the largest intelligence compromise, potentially, in U.S. history. [22:38] It is a very serious compromise and requires very serious action to remediate and recover from it, and also very serious response to it. [22:53] How did you find it? [22:54] That is not something I can speak to. [22:59] The full interview is on our website and our YouTube page. [23:02] We'll be right back. [23:03] Here's some optimistic news. [23:09] The CBS News poll finds that Americans are feeling more hopeful than discouraged as they look ahead to the new year. [23:15] That's up 10 points from how they felt a year ago. [23:18] Welcome back to Face the Nation. [23:27] We go now to Little Rock, Arkansas, and Republican Congressman French Hill. [23:31] Good morning to you, sir. [23:32] Good morning, Margaret. [23:34] Merry Christmas. [23:35] And Merry Christmas as well to you. [23:37] This was quite the journey to get you back home and to get lawmakers to wrap up business this past week. [23:44] No Democrat voted against this measure to keep the government open, but 34 Republicans did. [23:50] Doesn't this show that Republicans really struggle to govern when they pass things along party lines? [23:56] I mean, won't they need to work with Democrats in this new Congress? [23:59] Well, I think it's very, very important that Speaker Johnson and incoming Majority Leader Thune have [24:07] a steady plan together to work with the incoming Trump administration to prioritize the president's priorities, [24:14] our priorities in the House and Senate. [24:17] Make sure we're on the same page, because with narrow majorities, we've got to work together. [24:22] And that's critical. [24:23] And I think this last week demonstrated that. [24:26] Well, you will have a fractured conference, a slim majority. [24:31] Mark Short, who was the director of legislative affairs in the first Trump administration, [24:37] said this chaos shows just how hard it will be to tackle border and tax policies in 2025. [24:43] What's the reality check on the timing of that and actually delivering on what Trump campaigned on? [24:49] Well, I think Speaker Johnson and, again, Majority Leader Thune working with President Trump [24:56] want to use the budget reconciliation process. [24:59] That's still being discussed as to exactly what that procedure will be. [25:04] But I believe, actually, that Republicans on both sides of the Hill are united, [25:08] that we want to unleash American energy for future production and an all-of-the-above energy strategy. [25:14] We want to secure the border. [25:16] We want to fight inflation through supply-side regulatory reforms. [25:20] We want to roll back those regulations that are constraining the markets [25:25] and constraining private business having access to capital. [25:29] So I think we're on the same page. [25:31] And I think budget reconciliation will be a way to start that process [25:34] and also rein in unsustainable $2 trillion deficits. [25:38] Right. But you can do a party-line vote in the Senate there with the Republicans. [25:41] But can you really get 218 Republicans to vote in the same direction [25:47] when it was such a struggle just with keeping the lights on? [25:54] I think we can. [25:55] I think we demonstrated that year when we last year in the last Congress, [25:58] when we put together the most comprehensive Republican-only voting for border security, [26:04] for an all-of-the-above energy strategy. [26:06] Those are two priorities that President Trump campaigned on. [26:09] We are united on those strategies. [26:11] And I think we can get those priorities across the House floor as well, as I say, [26:16] rolling back unneeded regulatory burden on the American economy and small businesses to help fight inflation. [26:23] Well, one of the things that was stripped out of that initial bipartisan deal that Speaker Johnson had put together [26:30] was a restriction on U.S. investments in China. [26:33] It would have affirmed presidential authority to impose sanctions on advanced technologies. [26:37] Your Democrat colleague, Rosa Delora, insinuated publicly that Elon Musk came out against this [26:44] because his real motivation was his extensive business ties to China. [26:49] Do you share her concerns and will this get passed? [26:52] Well, look, President Biden had an executive order governing outbound investment. [26:59] We've had a debate in Congress between the House and Senate on the best way to do that. [27:05] We all want to limit American investment in dangerous, I would say, dual-use technologies that can be turned around [27:13] and hurt America's national security. [27:17] But striking that balance has been difficult. [27:20] But I don't believe that was at the heart of the 1,500-page problem. [27:24] I think people, a majority of members clearly wanted a simple, straightforward continuing resolution [27:30] and not what was turned into a large omnibus spending bill on top of a CR. [27:36] So I think President, I mean, Speaker Johnson did a good job coming back around from that, [27:42] focusing on disaster assistance to the hurricane hurt states in the southeast. [27:47] Yeah. [27:48] Farm assistance for those farmers and having a clean CR with an agreement with President Trump, [27:55] with Majority Leader Thune on how we would tackle reconciliation to cut spending next Congress. [28:00] You are going to be the incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee in the new Congress. [28:06] That's one of 17 committees. [28:08] Patrick McHenry, the outgoing chair of House Financial Services, was asked whether it matters [28:13] that the Republican Party chose only male leaders. Take a listen. [28:17] For us to have no women chairs of committees is a huge mistake and really an unfortunate thing, [28:25] because we have powerful, smart, capable, tenacious Republican women [28:31] that are capable of leading big committees and doing major things. [28:35] Why didn't the Republican Party select any female leaders? [28:39] Well, that's a decision made by our steering committee, [28:44] but I'm delighted in the House Financial Services Committee that we have strong, [28:49] very passionate, successful Republican women like Ann Wagner of Missouri, [28:54] Young Kim of California, Monica Dela Cruz of Texas. [28:58] And we're very excited to have Lisa McClain from Michigan, our conference chairwoman, [29:04] and also Maria Salazar from South Florida joining our committee. [29:11] They will be active leaders in financial services policymaking. [29:14] Quickly, I know you've been trying to restrict Captagon, this amphetamine drug that the Assad regime [29:21] was selling to prop up the dictatorship. Our teams in Syria filmed factories full of this stuff. [29:29] What's going to happen now? [29:32] Well, first, we need the United States to be very active, work with partners to support a free and democratic Syria. [29:41] Secondly, we need to document the war crimes committed by the Assad regime as it relates to all the people murdered, [29:49] killed, imprisoned, tortured from the regime, and also track down the networks that were producing Captagon. [29:57] We will have support from the kingdom in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states to do that, but it needs to be stopped. [30:04] But I'm proud of the work we did to interdict Captagon and cut off the funding, [30:08] because I think it absolutely contributed to the end of the Assad regime, and that's something to celebrate. [30:14] Well, we will be tracking what happens with that. Before I let you go, I do want to ask you as well, [30:21] a source familiar with the investigation tells CBS News that tomorrow the House Ethics Committee's work [30:28] investigating former Congressman Matt Gaetz alleged sexual misconduct and drug use will be released. [30:35] Last month on this program, you said it's up to that committee, but we don't want to set a precedent [30:40] where we under any circumstances will release documents from that committee. Do you still object? [30:49] That's not. Well, I don't know that that's how I would characterize what I said. I said it's up to that committee. [30:54] I think they are. They have released documents before, but I think that's something they should do with a great deal of caution, [31:01] because you open up a Pandora's box of a lot of other investigations over many, many years conducted by that committee. [31:07] But if they've thought it through, reviewed the material and made that decision, that's their decision. [31:12] Okay. Congressman French Hill, thank you and have a Merry Christmas. We'll be right back. [31:20] Late last week, we spoke with retiring West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, known for playing a pivotal, [31:29] sometimes frustrating role with Democrats in many of their legislative achievements. [31:35] The full interview is on our YouTube channel and website for the broadcast we looked to next year, [31:41] when Republicans are fully in charge of Washington. [31:44] So, when you were speaking to us on Face the Nation last January, you said, [31:50] I love my country too much to vote for Donald Trump. I think it would be very detrimental to my country. [31:56] He's the president-elect. Do you think he is detrimental to America? [32:01] January 6th was a bridge too far for me, and I think everyone knows that. [32:05] I was one of the few Democrats that went over and worked with him, and we always got along great. [32:09] We were very friendly. We just had disagreements on some things, but you can do that. [32:14] When the people speak, and they make their choice, and the election's over, [32:18] you better pray everything you have that the president will be successful. [32:22] This is about our country, and I want him to succeed, and I have said this to him. [32:26] I'll do whatever I can to help in any way humanly possible. [32:29] But you've talked about the need to return to bipartisanship and regular order. [32:35] Donald Trump is promising to destroy regular order, upend the system. [32:41] I have... [32:42] How do you reconcile that? [32:43] I have total confidence and faith in my Republican Senate colleagues that are institutionalists [32:49] that will not let that happen. They have the chance. They have the power. [32:52] And I think there's enough Republican senators and Democrat senators too [32:56] that are not going to let the filibuster blow apart. [32:59] They're not going to let, basically, run amok of the reconciliation process just to do anything they want to. [33:05] It takes four Republican senators, just four, and I guarantee you, I think there's a lot more than four. [33:13] Who are going to hold the line. [33:14] That'll protect the institution. They've been here long enough. [33:17] What goes around comes around. And in two years, this thing could flip. [33:21] 2026, you never know. It's the power of the people. [33:26] In the first 100 days of the Trump administration, leader John Thune has said he plans a once-in-a-generation investment in border security, [33:35] but he's going to try to do it without Democratic votes, using that reconciliation process you just talked about. [33:40] So with 51 votes, not the 60. You're saying right now that this is not how the system's supposed to work. [33:47] It's not supposed to work. [33:48] It's not supposed to work policy. [33:49] And yet that is what the Republican leader is saying he's going to do right out of the gate. [33:52] Hold on, Margaret. If he's going to have to show the financial connotation and how it's harming our country, [33:58] if it's harming it and the financial burden that we're carrying because of all the illegals coming, [34:03] and he can tie that to it, then he'll have a pathway for it. [34:06] And then step two is tax reform. That's the plan. [34:08] Tax reform definitely falls in it. [34:11] Also through reconciliation. [34:12] Yeah. Well, here, I follow Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden, [34:16] starting out in their 117th Congress with the ARP. [34:20] I begged the president— [34:21] The American Rescue Plan. [34:22] The American Rescue Plan. [34:23] Not to go in reconciliation. [34:25] That's basically when you've given up that you can't work with the other side. [34:29] They come out of the box that way. [34:30] So this is the plan that the Republicans are following now that the Democrats basically showed them the pathway. [34:35] But is it a strategic mistake? [34:37] Oh, I think it is. [34:38] But the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, you played a big role in crafting. [34:42] That was party line. That was through reconciliation. [34:46] That's how the vote came down. [34:48] We wrote that bill on my committee. [34:49] And I guarantee you, I had over five years of input for Republicans. [34:52] But because of reconciliation, they don't cross over and vote. [34:55] That's just the way it was. [34:56] And you feel good about that? [34:59] Well, I feel—no, I feel horrible about that we had to do it in reconciliation. [35:02] I felt horrible about that. [35:04] But I can tell you, the United States of America has benefited from that. [35:10] We didn't fall into a recession. [35:12] We brought down inflation from 9% to 3%. [35:15] We brought down gas prices from $5 to $3. [35:17] We did all of that. [35:18] But the supply chains were so broken because of the pandemic. [35:21] The prices of everyday staple of life, food, things of that sort made us almost unbearable [35:27] for people with the burden they were carrying. [35:31] The IRA kept the United States economy in better shape than any place else in the world during the pandemic. [35:37] That's a fact. [35:38] The president-elect has vowed to repeal it. [35:42] Well, I think there's some things that need to be fixed. [35:45] When you pass a piece of legislation and you write the bill, and we wrote it as tight as we possibly could, [35:50] and then they start basically putting the rules to it. [35:53] If the White House says, I want this type of interpretation, that makes it very, very liberal interpretation. [35:59] It's not what the bill was supposed to do. [36:01] I said, you people are going down the primrose path, which is horrible. [36:04] We didn't write the bill that way. [36:06] In spite of themselves trying to liberalize and putting EVs out and all of the critical minerals, [36:12] we're still depending on China when we're supposed to be weaning ourselves off of China. [36:16] He can fix that immediately. [36:18] President Trump can come in here and change some of those rules to get back. [36:21] And then change the bill. [36:23] It'll be his energy bill. [36:25] So, reprogramming some of these funds, you'd be OK with? [36:29] Reprogramming, absolutely. [36:30] There are things in there, tax credits for nuclear, biofuels. [36:33] Do you think parts of this will survive? [36:36] I think it almost has to. [36:37] The investments are made, and most of the investments, the majority of the investments are made in what you would consider red states, Republican states. [36:44] That's just because of what they do and how they operate, like West Virginia. [36:48] And you didn't hear much about that from the Democratic ticket during the campaign? [36:52] They couldn't talk about it. [36:53] He was tongue-tied. [36:54] Why? [36:55] I had no idea. [36:56] I kept saying, can't you just exactly tell what the bill did? [36:59] They were saying, renewable, renewable, renewable. [37:02] Only thing I said, you cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner environment, Margaret. [37:06] You can't just say, I want to get rid of coal. [37:08] I want to get rid of oil. [37:09] I want no gas. [37:10] I want nothing. [37:11] Extract it. [37:12] We're going to do everything with renewables. [37:13] We'd be a third world country. [37:15] You can't keep this economy running. [37:17] Now, you can do it with innovation, technology. [37:20] So, I said, we're going to produce what we need. [37:22] We do it cleaner and better than anywhere in the world. [37:24] Producing more. [37:25] So, the bill did exactly on energy production. [37:28] You wouldn't be number one in the world right now, 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, 4.7 billion [37:34] barrels of oil. [37:35] You wouldn't do that if we hadn't written that bill. [37:37] He can take that and even go further with it. [37:40] There are so many good things in that bill that he can change it, change the name. [37:44] It will be his. [37:45] I'll help any way I can. [37:46] You sound, speaking about energy policy, like a Republican. [37:49] I hope I sound like an American. [37:51] It makes sense, OK? [37:54] My Democrat friends are so far off the rail, OK? [37:57] I love them all, but they're just... [37:58] I say, guys... [37:59] But a lot of them really understand it. [38:01] They just can't speak it because the base is going so far. [38:04] Mm-hmm. [38:05] And that's why I just... [38:06] I couldn't take it anymore. [38:07] Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, she is a Republican, but she's also known for being pretty independent. [38:12] She's the best of the best, my dear friend. [38:15] She said the next four years are going to be hard. [38:17] The Trump administration's approach is going to be everybody toe the line, everybody line up. [38:22] We got you here, and if you want to survive, you better be good, or we will primary you. [38:28] Thank God for rank-choice voting. [38:30] Without rank-choice voting, my dear friend Lisa wouldn't be here. [38:35] Or open primaries. [38:36] If the Democrat and Republican Party control the primaries, they can control you up here. [38:41] So they're going to say, hey, Margaret, I'm sorry, you just didn't toe the line right. [38:46] You didn't vote with us when we needed you. [38:47] Mm-hmm. [38:48] So I'm going to find somebody else that I can control. [38:50] Who else is going to stand up to the president-elect when they disagree and be willing to say so out loud? [38:55] Are there other senators up here who will do it? [38:57] I would hope, you know, you... [39:00] My father used to tell me, if you can say no with a tear in your eye, you're okay. [39:05] If you can do it with respect and just say, Mr. President, I'm so sorry. [39:08] Where I come from, that doesn't make sense. [39:10] I can't explain it back home. [39:11] I never just say, oh, you're wrong. [39:13] You don't go... [39:14] You can't start out a conversation that's going to end productive if I tell you how bad you are on the front end. [39:19] We'll be right back. [39:22] The ambassador charged by the Biden administration with freeing Americans held overseas, Roger Carstens, traveled to Syria late last week to make the first known contact with that country's caretaker government following the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad two weeks ago. [39:42] Karstens sought help finding American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared 12 years ago. [39:48] We spoke with Karstens on Friday about why it was important to be on the ground in Syria. [39:54] You told reporters that you were amazed at the number of secret prisons that Bashar al-Assad had, more than 40 of them. [40:05] Have those prisons been searched yet? And do you know if journalist Austin Tice was held in them? [40:12] So it's not going to shock me to find out that there are prisons that have yet to be discovered and searched. [40:17] I would say if I'm stunned by anything, it's just the amount of prisons. [40:21] I mean, you'd almost think that if you were running a country and you wanted to jail your enemies, you'd have one prison and it wouldn't be secret. [40:29] But to have like 35 or 40 secret prisons, I find that just horrifying, disturbing and yet in a way fascinating. [40:37] But really the bottom line is that we have to help or rather work with our interim authorities officials to make sure that we do a good search so that I can one day look Deborah Tice in the eyes and tell them that our search has been exhaustive. [40:53] Now, in a perfect world, we're going to find Austin Tice. I think I've gone on record numerous times saying that I believe that he's alive and he's waiting for me to find him. [41:02] And the president not long ago said that he believes Austin's alive. [41:05] Our job in the U.S. government is to keep pressing and pressing and pressing to find out Austin's location, his disposition, his status and to bring him home. [41:14] You're referring to them as interim authorities. Ahmed Al Shara, the head of HTS, also known as Mohammed Al Jolani, was described by State Department officials as being very pragmatic in those meetings today. [41:31] But his group and he himself are still technically designated as terrorists under U.S. law because of prior affiliation with Al Qaeda. [41:41] Do you trust that they are being helpful to the U.S. now? [41:46] They were definitely helpful today. We conducted a joint search of a facility that we all thought would have a probable, I guess, have some sort of relation to Austin Tice. [41:58] So I understand, of course, their past. What I can tell you is that right now they're being helpful in the search for Austin. [42:06] So you conducted a joint search with HTS of a prison today. Did you believe that that is where Austin was being held? [42:15] We came up with a priority list of about six sites. And of those six sites, we felt that this had the highest probability of having held Austin at one time. [42:23] But really, the long I guess I would say the best way to describe it is we're just not sure with the time that we had in the ground seem to be our best shot. [42:32] So we gave it a good hard look. We're going to review all the information and evidence that we collected and hopefully render some more decisions about the probability. [42:41] But really, our job is to just keep searching. [42:45] The Assad intelligence ministries were known for keeping scrupulously detailed records numbering prisoners alive and dead. [42:57] Do those records still exist? [42:59] So we've had a chance to find various documents or I would even say file folders holding information. [43:06] Again, in the joint search that we conducted with the interim authorities today, we came across numerous documents. [43:13] That's going to have to be brought back. It's going to have to be translated from Arabic into English. [43:19] And sometimes these documents will actually have evidence on it. They may have fingerprints. They may have traces of DNA. [43:26] And this was a search you conducted along with special operators from JSOC? [43:31] I would never go into talking about who I was with, but I will tell you this. I was with members of the FBI. [43:36] The hostage recovery fusion cell holds primacy on these cases. [43:40] People that are experts at looking at crime scenes, and they did a wonderful job of sweeping it. [43:45] I know back in 2020, you went there at the direction of then President Donald Trump, along with Kash Patel. [43:54] The regime at that time never admitted to the United States that they held Austin Tice. [44:01] Do you believe they were lying back then and that the regime did have him? [44:06] The regime, when we talked to them in 2020, they issued maximalist demands. [44:12] They asked for the world. They weren't really giving anything. [44:15] They never admitted to having Austin Tice. They never promised to give us any proof of life, P.O.L., as we call it. [44:22] I would say that at some point we came across information, and that's as highlighted by President Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken, that led us to believe that at one point the Syrian government truly did have Austin Tice. [44:36] Did they have him until the very end? That's information we're still trying to sort through. [44:43] But at one point we feel very confident that the regime did detain and have Austin Tice in their custody. [44:48] We will be right back. That's it for us today. We want to wish you all a very happy holiday season. [44:58] This year, I wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, because they are all celebrated this week. [45:05] And since my colleague, Major Garrett, will be here next Sunday while I spend some time with my family, I'll add Happy New Year. [45:12] Thank you all for watching Face the Nation. I'm Margaret Brennan.