Jamie Raskin says Democrats need midterm ‘landslide’ that is ‘too big to rig’: Full interview

[0:02] Welcome back. And joining me now is Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. [0:07] Congressman Raskin, welcome back to Meet the Press. [0:09] I'm delighted to be with you, Kristen. [0:10] We are delighted to have you. Thank you for being here in person. [0:13] We, of course, have to start with the midterms. [0:15] I know you've been traveling all around the country, including in Michigan, [0:19] where you've campaigned with Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed. [0:22] You've campaigned alongside, of course, Congresswoman Hillary Scolton. [0:26] She has declined to endorse Al-Sayed in this race. [0:31] Do you believe the Democratic Party is too divided right now, Congressman, to win back control of Congress? [0:39] No, I think we're too big for the Republicans to defeat, which is why they're trying to divide us with that kind of rhetoric. [0:45] I was also with Cali Barr in Michigan, which is the Upper Peninsula, and a very rural area. [0:51] And what people are talking about there is the fact that Trump's billion-dollar cut to Medicaid [0:56] is forcing rural hospitals to cut back on services. [0:59] Cali Barr talks about how there are three different OBGYN birth delivery clinics that have had to close there. [1:07] I was also with the 4th District. [1:09] We have a great candidate there, too, called Sean McCann. [1:13] And, again, people are concerned about corruption. [1:16] They're concerned about the Iran war and the fact that gasoline prices and diesel prices are through the roof. [1:23] Inflation is killing people there. [1:25] There's a Canadian boycott of America because of all of Donald Trump's high-handed, contemptuous, snotty treatment of the Canadians. [1:33] I think, you know, a big plurality of Canadians now say that America's their enemy. [1:39] I mean, this is the stuff people are talking about in the rural areas of Michigan. [1:44] And in upstate New York, I was with Blake Jendabean, who's running a fantastic campaign in the 21st District. [1:49] And the people there want to see change. [1:51] And the Republicans are going to be blindsided because there's this huge political reaction in the rural areas against what Donald Trump's been doing. [1:58] Well, I do want to ask you, because Congressman Skolten has said she will not endorse Dr. Al-Sayed because she still has questions about his association with streamer Hassan Piker. [2:11] He's notably faced questions about his past statements. [2:14] He's compared Hamas to Israel. [2:16] I want to play a little bit of something that he said and get your reaction on the other side. [2:20] I do mean it. [2:21] I think it's a rhetorical move because it frustrates a lot of people. [2:24] I've also said I'm a harm reduction voter, I'm a lesser evil voter, and therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time. [2:30] I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time. [2:34] Is the Democratic Party tent big enough to include Hassan Piker? [2:38] I don't even know if Hassan Piker considers himself a Democrat. [2:41] I know he attacked me for campaigning with Cali Barr and Sean McCann and other Democrats in Michigan. [2:48] I think all of that is an irrelevant distraction. [2:50] Obviously, nobody supports Hamas, a terrorist organization which brutally attacked Israel on October the 7th. [3:00] But people here also don't support the policies of Bibi Netanyahu. [3:04] But we're not going to be able to work that out in the next 60 days. [3:08] We're going to stand strong for democracy, national security, human rights all over the world. [3:13] But beginning right here in America, where our national security, our democracy, and our human rights have been undermined by Donald Trump and his MAGA followers. [3:22] Well, let me ask you about one of the big flashpoints that has emerged, Democrats preparing for potential disruptions to the midterms. [3:30] NBC News is out with a report that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined former Attorney General Eric Holder in what was described as a war game to protect election integrity. [3:42] What exactly are you preparing for? [3:44] Well, look, people ask me all the time, is Donald Trump going to try to steal the election? [3:48] And I say, no, he's trying to steal the election. [3:50] He's trying to steal the election when they're closing polling places in Texas, when they're throwing voters off the rolls in Georgia or other states for having missed an election. [4:00] Every day, they don't have any plans to get health care to the American people or to combat climate change. [4:06] They've got plans to try to steal the election. [4:08] It's just a bag of dirty tricks. [4:09] So we're preparing for everything. [4:11] We made a list of more than 100 different ways that they're going to try to undermine the right to vote and try to steal the election, as Donald Trump did very clearly in 2020 when he called up Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia and said, just find me 11,780 votes. [4:28] That wasn't Donald Trump trying to stop electoral fraud. [4:31] That was Donald Trump trying to commit electoral fraud. [4:34] And so people know that that's their plan. [4:36] What we need to do is to build a political landslide so vast and so strong across America that it's too big to rig. [4:42] They're not going to be able to steal it. [4:44] It's interesting. [4:45] You use the term too big to rig. [4:46] We've heard former Vice President Kamala Harris use that language. [4:49] I want to play a little bit of what we're hearing and get your reaction on the other side. [4:54] They are cheating. [4:55] They are trying to cheat. [4:57] And we have got to turn out in big numbers and be too big to rig. [5:01] We want a landslide that is too big to rig. [5:07] Too big to rig. [5:10] Is too big to rig the right message for Democrats? [5:13] You hear Donald Trump there using that term. [5:15] Well, we got different messages, you know, for different moments. [5:19] I mean, my message to everybody and especially the young people, because we just completed our Democracy Summer Project with 2,000 young people across America embedded in Democratic campaigns. [5:28] With seminars on the air every day with people like Mark Elias, people like Tim Snyder and Nancy Pelosi. [5:35] But our message is everything that you need to know about voting is everything you need to know about driving. [5:41] If you want to go forward, you put it in D. [5:44] And if you want to go backwards, you put it in R. [5:46] That's all fundamentally people need to understand. [5:49] Donald Trump and his party are driving us backwards on everything from civil rights to civil liberties, foreign policy, you name it. [5:56] Well, you take me to my next question, because if Democrats retake the House, you would be in line to chair the Judiciary Committee. [6:03] This week, House Democrats rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have codified the court's nine-seat bench. [6:11] Congressman Jim Clyburn told me on this program last week that he does support expanding the court to 13 justices. [6:19] The next time Democrats control Washington, do you believe they should add four justices to the court? [6:24] OK, to be clear, they didn't just want to codify nine justices. [6:28] They wanted to constitutionalize nine justices. [6:31] In other words, they wanted to revoke a power that Congress has had since the beginning of the republic to set the size of the Supreme Court. [6:38] It started at six. It went to five, back to six, then seven. [6:42] It's been up to ten, back to nine. [6:43] It's always been within the legislative province to do it, just like they gave away our war powers by letting Donald Trump go to war against Iran without a vote to declare war, [6:53] just like they've given away our tariff powers, our spending powers, our taxing powers, [6:58] even our power over federal buildings like the Kennedy Center and the White House. [7:02] Now they want to give away Congress's power to set the number of people on the Supreme Court. [7:06] So they need two-thirds in the House, two-thirds in the Senate. [7:09] And we overwhelmingly rejected and repudiated that running-on-empty proposal they've got. [7:14] Do you support adding four more justices? Is that something you have? [7:18] Oh, well, that's statutory. That's a legislative proposal. [7:21] It could be 13. It could be back to five or six or seven. [7:24] The point is not to give away Congress's power to decide. [7:28] But you're open to adding more justices, it sounds like. [7:30] Traditionally, we've had one justice for each federal circuit. [7:35] So we have 13 federal circuits in America, and we only have nine justices, [7:39] which means in the best of times, four circuits are completely left out. [7:42] In fact, today we've got five justices from the New York City metropolitan area, one for each borough. [7:47] I would think that all of those members of Congress from the West didn't even realize [7:54] that they were arguing against getting more justices on the court for their people. [7:58] But that proposal is not on the table right now, but we can certainly discuss it. [8:01] It sounds like you're arguing for the possibility of more justices. [8:04] Do you have faith in the legitimacy of this court, this current court? [8:09] No, no. It's been stacked and packed and gerrymandered by Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans. [8:14] Take, for example, my constituent, Merrick Garland. [8:18] He was nominated to the Supreme Court 11 months before the next election in the final year of President Obama's term. [8:26] And Mitch McConnell said he would not allow a hearing, a vote in the Judiciary Committee, or a vote on the floor. [8:32] He said 11 months was too close to the next election. [8:35] But then when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, four years later, two months before the next election, [8:39] early voting had already started in some states, he laughed about that and said, [8:43] oh, that was a rule we created for the Democrats, and that's why they put Gorsuch on the court. [8:47] We're going to barrel this through for Amy Coney Barrett. [8:49] That's two seats right there that were essentially stolen by the Republicans. [8:53] And by the way, he was happy to keep that open for a year, making it eight justices, not nine. [8:58] So think about that. Now they want to sacralize and constitutionalize nine [9:02] because Donald Trump likes the fact that they overturned abortion rights, [9:06] they destroyed the Voting Rights Act, and they dealt Donald Trump presidential immunity [9:11] for felony crimes he commits in office, something nobody had noticed for more than [9:15] two centuries was in the Constitution. [9:17] Let me ask you, though, Congressman, because we've seen President Trump [9:20] accuse justices of being, or judges, of not being legitimate because he disagrees [9:26] with a decision that they have. He says they're political. [9:30] What's the difference between that and what you're saying? [9:32] Well, I'm talking about process failures. [9:33] I'm talking about actually interference with the process where we say we're not [9:37] going to have anybody considered for a year before the election, but then doing it [9:42] for your own team. And that's exactly what Mitch McConnell did. [9:45] That is a form of illegitimacy in the process. [9:49] There is also illegitimacy in terms of their jurisprudence, and there's definitely [9:53] illegitimacy in terms of their ethics. And I'd love to come back sometime to talk [9:56] about the ethics of this Supreme Court, because in Congress, we've got a $50 gift ban. [10:00] These are people who are taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from their billionaire [10:04] sugar daddies like Harlan Crowe. [10:06] Very quickly, because Republicans are warning that if Democrats retake the House, your first [10:11] move is you're going to move to impeach President Trump. Do you support that? Would you want [10:16] to move to impeach President Trump should Democrats retake the House? [10:19] Look, everybody on our side understands that impeachment is a critical tool in the toolbox for [10:24] constitutional self-defense against a president acting like a king, an imperious, lawless, [10:30] arrogant king. On the other hand, Donald Trump already has 50 percent of the impeachments [10:36] of a president in American history. And we saw what happened last time. He incited a mob to storm [10:42] the Capitol to attack his own vice president and Congress. We impeached him in the House, [10:47] and we could get only seven Republican senators to join us. We were 10 short, again, because of [10:53] Mitch McConnell. [10:53] So you don't support impeachment. You think it would be a waste of time? [10:56] No. Impeachment is not a taboo with us. It's not a fetish with us. We understand it's not a [11:01] panacea. It is a tool in the toolbox. We will not hesitate to use it if we need to use it. But we [11:06] also understand the framers gave it to Congress rather than the Supreme Court because they wanted us [11:10] to contextualize impeachment in the whole sphere of things we got to deal with, like getting health care [11:15] back to our people because they've thrown millions of people off their health care with the Medicaid [11:20] cuts and the destruction of the ACA tax credits. [11:23] Do you believe that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses at this point? [11:27] Undoubtedly. We don't have time to remotely scratch the surface. But going to war without a declaration [11:32] of war, for example, continually defying Congress in terms of our appropriation of money, [11:39] stealing our spending power from us. I mean, I would say even just bulldozing the East wing of the [11:45] White House, if he can bulldoze the East wing, he can bulldoze the West wing. He believes that he is a king. [11:51] They've been plundering money from our government in the most massively corrupt presidential administration [11:56] in American history. I mean, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, brought back billions of dollars [12:00] from Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the other corrupt oil monarchies. They are engaged in all kinds of insider [12:08] political trading. And Donald Trump has made more money in a year and a half as president of the United States [12:14] than every other president in American history combined. And every member of the House and the Senate [12:20] have made in our legitimate salaries in this Congress. So nothing comes close to the kind of plunder [12:27] and corruption we've been seeing in this administration. And all of that could warrant an impeachment investigation [12:33] if we wanted to do it. But more important to us right now is getting health care to the American [12:39] people and ending the lawlessness. Okay. Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you so very much for being here. [12:44] We really appreciate it. You bet. Thanks for having me. [12:46] We thank you for watching. And remember, stay updated on breaking news and top stories on the NBC News app [12:52] or watch live on our YouTube channel.