Transcript: Adam Schiff: People in homes have to step up and take leadership roles, as we can't count on Donald Trump: March 26 Stephanie Miller Show interview

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(The Covid-19 Transcripts) 

SM: Today we have a hero on the program, good morning, Congressman Adam Schiff.

AS:  Good morning it's good to be with you.

SM:  You've heard all the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington references about your speeches.

AS:  I've heard some of them, I'm still chuckling over Smooth Jazz Congressman though, that's stalked me for years now.

SM:  Chairman, thanks so much for doing this and by the way you're doing another town hall tonight. 

AS:  Yes, I am tonight at seven o'clock, people can call in, we'll have a couple of health experts on from UCLA to answer people's questions. At a time when there's a lot of bad information out there, we're trying to push out some good information about what to do to be safe but also what's in this economic relief package. 

SM:  Chairman, let's talk about this bill.  I love this, "Republicans are now holding up the relief package because the unemployment benefits are too generous" this notion that people are going to love this, they're going to just take the money and not want to work if we take too good of care of the regular worker.  It's so absurd.

AS:  It is and frankly what I would love to see happen, and I was pushing as much as I could in this direction, is to have the government to guarantee payroll, a certain percentage of payroll, and that way you avoid layoffs, people  furloughed if they're not able to work, even from home.  But the advantage of keeping people on payroll, it's much less disruptive when you get past this virus.  People don’t have to go out and job search because they already have a job.

But as you say, people want to work.  They don’t want to be laid off but they also need to keep a roof over their heads.

This same crowd that is complaining about unemployment compensation was the same crowd that gave a two trillion dollar a tax cut to corporations.  This disaster relief, and I really think that's what this package is, is a disaster relief package is about two trillion.  If we had the two trillion that we wasted on those corporate buybacks and giveaways of that last tax cut, we would be in much better financial position right now to be helping people who are going to desperately need it.

The Senate bill, the original Mitch McConnell Donald Trump Bill had that five billion dollar fund but basically no strings attached.  And when the President was asked, where is the oversight, his answer was, I will be the oversight. 

SM:  No one better than you understands how calming that is.

AS:  Uh, [LAUGHS] yes exactly. Well that was obviously going to be a complete no deal.  So there are a number of changes in the bill, most of us in Congress are frankly still looking at those accountability protections and oversight. To make sure simply that Steve Mnuchin and Donald Trump can't use that fund to reward friends and punish enemies.

We do want to keep the workers afloat in those large industries and we want to make sure those industries don’t go away, but you're absolutely right.  We've had such a bad experience in the past with relief, where they essentially used it for the advantage of the corporate executives and to the detriment of their employees.  Had they made more sensible investment of the relief they got before, they'd not be in quite as dire a situation.  We're going to have to make sure that there is a very careful eye on anything that's given to industry.

SM:  You made a speech two months about that you can't trust this president in a crisis, you said it better say it again.

AS:  That's actually right.  This is a bad President to have when things are going well and up until this pandemic all the crises were essentially crises of the President's own making, but now that we're in a bona fide disaster, a natural disaster, pandemic, that we could have taken very strong steps early on to severely mitigate. 

I suspect he disbanded the pandemic office because it was part of the Obama administration.  Anything his predecessor had to be bad- the result is tragic in that we lost valuable time, we didn't get testing, the President kept happy talking this.  Those weeks were critical and we lost them and we won't get them back and now you see the President already dithering, already going week in the knees in terms of maintaining the precautions that health experts and epidemiologists tell us that we must do if we're going to hope to avoid the worst besiegement of our health care facilities, our hospitals our clinics. 

He's been so focused on the stock market, on this artificial deadline of Easter because it's politically beneficial to him, that we don’t have the confidence that he's going to maintain the confidence of experts like Anthony Fauci.

SM:  It's what you said about him and Ukraine, it's not about the country it's about what's good for himself.  Once again he did not listen to our intelligence officials that told him back in January, he listened to a dictator again, President Xi.  And the fact that he was deliberately holding down the testing to help his re-election, it's Ukraine all over again, just a different version. 

AS:  Well it's certainly similar.  We need a president to rise to the occasion but failing that, we in Congress and people in their homes are going to have to step up and take leadership roles right now, because I don't think we can count on that from Donald Trump.

SM:  You were just about to paraphrase, I'm glad I stopped you because as you know, that is illegal. [LAUGHTER] as the President has tried to warn you.

AS:  [LAUGHING] yes that's right.  He does not like to be mocked, I think I found that out.

SM:  Weird being able to see you on camera via Skype for interview, you seem not at all shifty to me.

AS:  How does my neck look today?  [LAUGHTER]  

SM:  Less like a pencil than anything I've ever seen.  You tweeted, the same guy who said I alone can fix it has now said I don't take any responsibility.  So here we are, we know what to do we've seen it in other countries.  The other thing- medical equipment market descends into chaos as Trump insists it's not his problem and refuses to use the Defense Production Act to provide medical equipment that's badly needed. 

 States are competing with each other in a mass scramble for masks and ventilators, they're asking nail salons and construction companies for equipment.  Third world countries are better equipped than we are in Seattle.  This is where his leadership has brought us, right. 

AS:  Unfortunately that's exactly right, there is an agency in the government that's very good at logistics, the Defense Logistics Agency.  Part of the Defense Department, they could be brought in to manage the logistics here. 

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 The clips I transcribe for this project contain information that I don't think is available  in print anywhere else. Please show your appreciation by clicking some cash into my PayPal account through button at top of left hand column.)  https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-covid-19-transcripts-origin.html 

Watch this Adam Schiff interview 1.5 hours into this morning's Stephanie Miller show https://www.stephaniemiller.com/

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(At this point the transcriber ran out of steam.  Watch this website for more transcripts in the days to come. ) 

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Posted by Kay Ebeling
Producer, City of Angels Blog
the city of angels is everywhere