On the other side of the aisle,
Wisconsin Democratic Congresswoman
Gwen Moore, who represents
Milwaukee, joins us for
her take of the quick action
on the part of President Trump.
And Congresswoman Moore, thanks very
much for being here.
Thank you for having me, Fredricka.
Happy New Year.
You, too.
How do you regard the newly
installed Trump administration?
Well, I'll tell you,
there really aren't any great
surprises.
He sort of campaigned on this
these themes.
A lot of people said, he wouldn't do
that.
He's just exaggerating.
But he is really focusing
in on some of the things that he
promised, like
sort of trying to suspend
birthright citizenship,
which, of course, is
a constitutional provision
which is already brought,
you know, I think 22 states
to the table with regard to
litigating that, including our
own attorney general,
Josh Karl in Wisconsin.
He said that he would put tariffs
on our neighbors to the north
and south, you know,
usurping the U.S.
treaty with Canada and Mexico,
which, of course, he
executed.
And, of course, that will be very
disruptive, particularly
to our farm community.
And I think that he
maybe plans to backfill that
with a general appropriations
to farmers.
But I do think that it will be very
disruptive to our
economy.
You know, he's talked about
increasing sort of trade
wars and so on with China
really using some
IRS provisions that have never
been used before.
So I just
think that
it's going to create a lot of chaos
and hopefully the
very narrow margins
that are.
In the in the House.
And then the Senate will
force Congress
to bring some cooler heads to
the table.
It really examined the outsized
portions of this.
And thinking of
what happened in the transportation
space just a
couple of days ago,
where there was some sort of
disruptions and states were
complaining about
some transportation policies they
put out. So hopefully
we'll be able to see
the Senate
stand up to him even if the House
can't.
So, as you said, the president is
making good on his campaign
promises. What's your reaction to
his pardons of the January 6th
defendants, including 11 of
them from Wisconsin?
I tell you, Fredricka, I
maybe I'm cowardly, but I'm
terrified.
One of my staffers said that she
went to the cafeteria in
this building and
one of the January 6th
people were there.
And I do know that most of the
nonviolent, you know,
little old ladies that had handmade
signs were not the people who were
indicted in jail,
The people who were indicted in
jail. That mean they attacked
police officers, they directed
people to be violent.
They had had days of.
And I'm terrified.
And my sense, I mean, they
were actually in this building
and I'm scared of it.
And I do think that
we have seen Republicans
here,
you know, who are very
they're very, very careful not to
criticize Trump, But we
have seen them stumbling over their
words as they have been
stunned by this.
I think they thought that there
would be a little bit more passing
and this one and that one.
But these 1500 commutations
and releases are absolutely
stunning.
And I think that it's going to be
very difficult, you know,
to
to talk about law
enforcement and
initiatives in this government when
we have let all these lawless people
out. And I you know,
I agree with some other
analysts and critics to say
we can bet that we're going to see
some of these people again.
There very few of them that are
going to just learn their lesson
and take their pardon and just
go back into society.
Hopefully some of them will.
But we're going to see some of these
these jokers again.
And that is very terrifying.
As to pardons.
What do you think of Joe Biden's
pardons to his own family and
members of the January 6th
committee?
You know, I think some of the
January 6th committee members
didn't necessarily think they had
done anything wrong, and I don't
think they did anything wrong.
But I think Joe Biden was thinking,
you know, when you just think
about Trump's entire inaugural
day, he spent complaining
and whining about how badly
he was treated and all the people,
you know. So I do think
that even though they did nothing
wrong, I think they did spare
them from hiring
a lot of lawyers and protecting
themselves against nothing.
So that probably was a strange
thing to do.
I don't know why he felt that he had
to pardon his family
or anything like that.
But, you know,
we've seen you know, Trump
promised that
he would have a
an administration focusing
on revenge.
And I think he wanted to spare
his family that,
including the, you know, the January
6th investigators.
Terrorism hunter Biden.
I didn't necessarily think that he
would pardon him.
And I bet anything he
would not have
pardoned Hunter if he thought
that there was a Justice Department
that was going to be fair to his
son.
When I have heard I'm not a lawyer
for any reason, but what I have
heard is that any other person
with the same set of crimes
would not have been in jail
or had a case brought against them
at all.
And in terms of signing
some document saying, are
you on drugs or something
before you buy a weapon,
as Ali has said,
is that enforced by anybody?
You know, no telling how many
alcoholics or former
drug addicts or whatever
have
weapons.
I certainly would love to see
the numbers of weapons decrease
in this country. But I do think
that he was trying to protect
his son from
extreme
vindictiveness.
Back to immigration
policy.
Donald Trump's new executive orders
effectively shut the border and
asylum and as we've discussed,
a call to end birthright
citizenship.
What are your constituents saying to
you about this?
Again, not unexpected news.
Well, you know, one of the things
that I think is that, you know,
nobody wants violent criminals,
you know, in their community.
And I think the to the extent
that Trump is focusing on
getting violent criminals out, this
is something that probably has
widespread support.
Nobody thought that a whaler
who's been here for 40 years and had
bothered anybody was going to
become one of the victims of this.
And so I think that if he
is enabled
to go further than that,
people will be concerned.
Like the Dreamers, for example,
you know, 78, 80%
last time I checked of Americans
think that the Dreamers should have
a path to citizenship.
After all, these are our children.
They speak English.
They benefited from having a
public education.
They're talented.
We don't have it. We have a worker
shortage in this country.
And there's no reason
to send our kids back to some
country that they don't even know
about.
And I think that if you,
you know, depends on the Dreamers,
we might see some
rising up from from the electorate.
It depends on how he executes
this.
But
immigration was one of the issues.
Getting control order
was one of was one of the issues he
campaigned on.
But I do think that
our Constitution still provides
the ability for people to seek
asylum.
So we might find a lot of litigation
with regard to how he specifically
administers, as it were,
these executive orders.
So we asked Senator
Johnson about
Donald Trump's rescinding of Biden's
order on the cost of prescription
drugs, and he said
he just didn't think that that would
make a big difference.
What do you think?
Well, I'll tell you this.
We kept the cost
of insulin at $35
a month.
Now, I have no idea
why insulin has
been costing people.
Something is upwards of $500
a month for all of the
medications and
the paraphernalia that goes
around it.
But I mean, if he does that, again,
there is not anybody doesn't
have a relative
who who's not a diabetic.
Diabetes is one of
the the
costliest
disease in America.
Not just to
institutions and the medical
field generally,
but to individuals.
And I think that, you know, this
is this $35 a month
cap has been a relief
to Americans in all
sectors of our society.
And I think that there will be
consequences if this
is rescinded.
So also, the administration
is aggressively, as you know,
dismantling DEA programs
and efforts within the federal
government. How does that sit with
you?
Well, I can tell you that the
military is certainly going
to push back
hard against
the DEA because they need
DEA.
I mean, you know, if they're trying
to recruit,
you know, some spies
to go into some of these,
you know, Muslim countries,
they can't very well since some
white man over there.
You know, if they if
they think that the military
really relies on DEA,
the CIA, the FBI
to complete their missions,
this will undermine
their operations
tremendously.
And so I think that
that the pushback you're going to
get is from the military
in particular.
They're not they just cannot
function without
DEA.
You know, some other things that
he's talking about, the Inflation
Reduction Act was so funny.
And the vice the vice ranking
member of the Ways and Means
Committee this cycle.
And so yesterday, we listened
to testimony from members of
Congress and I mean, Republican
after Republican after Republican
came and sat before us and
talked about how we IRA,
which is why the prescription drug
provisions came from talked
about how partizan but
pleaded with the panel
Republicans to to
take a scalpel to this
and that and not a big
night for sort.
Because they said that these I
these
energy related
legislation ev things
are creating great investment
in our country.
And prescription drugs, I
think items are part of
that. So we had Republican
after Republican after Republican
begging the Republican leadership.
You know, not to totally dismantle
everything in the biden
administration's i
r a bill.
That being the inflation reduction
act.
That's right.
So from your perspective, what
will the next four years look like?
And what can those in opposition
of of many of these things
like yourself do about it?
Well, we're not talking about four
years. We're really talking about
two years.
I think that the Republican Party
overreaches on some
of these items, like, for example,
trying to get rid of the premiums,
the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare
premiums, like they tried
to destroy
the ACA, and you had John
McCain doing his thumbs down.
It is so popular and
so important that if they
try to overreach on items like
that in two years,
it will subject them, I think,
to lose it in the House of
Representatives for sure,
and maybe even flip in the Senate.
And then you'd have Donald Trump in
the White House with
that particular
configuration of the legislature.
I mean, we still
you know, Trump wants to take over
all of the institutions of
government.
And I think that if he overreaches,
as he's already starting to do,
that he will pay a price
because the American people, the
American people will they
will react.
I mean, there are 85 million
eligible voters that didn't vote.
So this notion that he has some sort
of mandate does anything
he wants to is not the case.
Some of those 85 million people
will react.
You know, one of the things they
want to do is to block
grant Medicaid.
And I think that if they do that,
seniors in nursing homes
in particular, are going to
catch it.
They find themselves in nursing
homes with severe
staff shortages because
Medicaid won't be there
and their loved ones will be
maltreated.
And this, I think,
you know, they'll pay a price for
that.
All right, Congresswoman Gwen Moore,
thanks very much for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you. We took a bunch of extra
time, which I really appreciated.
I could have asked more questions,
but I started.