GLENN: Hello, America. A lot to talk about. Of course, what happened with the white nationalists. The Justice Department has opened the civil rights investigation into this. I don't know how much there is to investigate: They're Nazis, and they killed somebody.
But did the president go far enough? Was his statement also true? What role do we play in this? What is the future of a small government constitutionally minded people? Does that even exist?
Mo Brooks is a congressman who is running now for the Senate. And the election is happening tomorrow. He's a congressman for Alabama. He's running for the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. And there is an interesting race going on and a battle inside this conservative movement. The election is tomorrow. Mo Brooks joins us right now.
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GLENN: Welcome, Congressman Mo Brooks. How are you, sir?
MO: I'm doing great, Glenn. How about yourself today?
GLENN: Very good. As you probably know, you have our favorite clip of anyone ever on MSNBC, when you were trying to explain the economic crisis we were in. And this is what happened.
VOICE: We were looking at going -- reverting into a depression at that point. Everyone -- the fed chairman --
MO: Well, I disagree that we were going into a depression, but go ahead.
VOICE: Well, do you have a degree in economics?
MO: Yes, ma'am, I do. Highest honors.
VOICE: Okay. So --
PAT: I love that.
STU: "Okay. So --"
GLENN: You can tell us, Mo. That was satisfying, wasn't it? That moment was just like, "Oh, yeah, that felt good?"
MO: Every now and then, they pitch a softball.
(chuckling)
GLENN: So, Mo, tell us, first of all, your thoughts of what happened over the weekend in Virginia.
MO: Well, you know, it's very disheartening that there are still people out there who judge other people based on inherent qualities that those people have no control over: A skin pigmentation is not a basis for defining who we are. Ethnicity is not a basis for defining who we are. Sex is a basis for defining who we are. We should all be judged based on our conduct and how we interact with other people.
Unfortunately, there are still people in our society, on both sides of the fence, that look at skin pigmentation, sex, and ethnicity, when those should not be factors of concern.
GLENN: You reject outright nationalism and the national socialist Nazi movement?
MO: Well, I don't agree with socialism. I don't agree with Nazis. I don't agree with any group that says that your skin pigmentation alone makes you superior to another group. That's silly. I mean, skin pigmentation is skin pigmentation. You know, I've got freckles. Does that make me good or bad because I've got freckles? That's a form of skin pigmentation. It's so absurd.
And so, yes, I agree -- I disagree -- I disagree with anybody -- anybody who tries to define somebody else based on characteristics that they were born with. That is not what defines a human being.
GLENN: Now, you were -- you were a congressman who in 2016, endorsed Ted Cruz.
MO: I was his Alabama state chairman, and I was one of his national spokesmen for his campaign. So, yes.
GLENN: Okay. So now here comes this opening in -- you know, in the Senate. And you want to run for it. You're a great conservative small government guy.
And the president -- a couple of weeks ago, you were scheduled for an interview with us. Last week, President Trump endorsed your opponent Luther Strange. Any idea why that happened?
MO: It's baffling to me. Luther Strange is a decades' long Washington, DC, lobbyist. We all knew when President Trump declared that he was going to Washington, DC, to drain the swamp, the swamp was going to fight back. And Luther Strange is the swamp's candidate. So to me, there seems to be a conflict between draining the swamp and endorsing the swamp's candidate on the one hand.
And on the other hand, the president most recently was, rightfully so, complaining about Mitch McConnell and the do-nothing Senate. And the 60-vote rule that prevents us from passing our agenda. And I agree with the president, in that regard.
Yet, he endorses the person who supports the 60-vote rule that kills President Trump's agenda over the next three and a half years. So, yes, I'm puzzled by it. I don't know who gave President Trump this bad advice, probably Mitch McConnell. I do know the president is spread rather thin. He's got a lot of different issues he's got to focus on. But whoever it is that led him to endorse Luther Strange led him astray.
GLENN: If you go in, who do you caucus with?
MO: Well, I'm a Republican, so I'm going to caucus with the Republicans in the United States Senate. I do prefer a different leader. Mitch McConnell may be a nice guy. I really don't know him that well personally. But his job is to get through the United States Senate a repeal of Obamacare. His job is to get through the United States Senate funding for the border wall and stronger security measures. His job is to get through the United States Senate tax reform. His job is to do what must be done to get our deficit and debt under control. And, quite frankly, he has failed miserably on each of those different public policy issues. So it's time to try somebody knew, someone who perhaps can get the job done, someone more aggressive, more conservative, somebody who is able to persuade a majority of the United States Senate to do what our country needs doing.
Otherwise, it's going to be a wasted opportunity with us having the House, the Senate, and the White House.
GLENN: I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime, where they have more opportunity and a president who is providing total coverage for the Congress, just to -- just to snowplow through stuff.
MO: I don't get it either. It's baffling to me. It's puzzling to me. We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reverse Obamacare, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to try to get our deficit and debt under control before we suffer debilitating insolvency and bankruptcy that will do great damage to a country that our ancestors took centuries to build, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure our southern border. Just go down the list of things that you, in 2009 and 2010, are focused on, as you helped the Tea Party movement that gave us the House of Representatives in 2010, where we gained 63 seats, if my memory serves me correctly.
And this is our chance. And to date, over seven months of President Trump's presidency, we have had zero -- zero significant legislative achievements that pertain to the major issues that face our country, the issues that I just itemized. And that's because the 60-vote rule in the United States Senate has empowered Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to control our agenda. And that's just craziness. You've got a choice: You can either support an archaic rule that was born in the 1800s, while there was still slavery, or you can go with America. And I choose America.
GLENN: We're talking to Congressman Mo Brooks who is running tomorrow the election in Alabama. Running for Jeff Sessions' Senate seat.
Let's talk a little bit about North Korea. What do you think is -- what are we headed with this, Mo?
MO: I believe that you're going to see a relationship between the United States and North Korea, akin to what we saw with China under Mao Zedong and the Soviet Union, under Josef Stalin and all of his successors.
In my judgment, the mutually assured destruction doctrine will work to deter North Korea from ever launching a first strike at the United States of America. Because a first strike by North Korea against America results in a retaliatory nuclear strike by the United States, that would turn North Korea into a sea of glass. And every single North Korean leader would be dead. The North Korean leadership acts crazy. But I tend to think they act crazy in order to achieve a smart purpose. I don't believe that they won't commit suicide.
So mutually assured destruction doctrine ought to work with them to prevent a first strike from ever being launched by either party, just as it has worked with the United States and the Soviet Union -- now Russia and China over the decade. However, to be on the safe side, we need to bolster our radar systems and our interceptor systems so that we can shoot down any missiles that may come from North Korea. Having said all that, we must not be distracted from the bigger threat. The bigger threat is Iran.
Iran -- mutually assured destruction doctrine may not work because of their religious beliefs, where they believe that giving up their own life in the furtherance of Allah's will is worthwhile. And if Iran gets nuclear weapons, with missile delivery systems that can knock out what Iran calls the little Satan, Israel, and knock out the United States of America, even if it means the total and complete annihilation of Iran, some of these Iranian leaders may do it as a matter of religious belief. And so I would tend to focus a little bit more on Iran and the threat that they pose, given that Barack Obama has empowered Iran to get nuclear weapons and the delivery system sometime within the next ten to 15 years.
GLENN: So do you have any insight at all on why President Trump ran on I'm going to tear up that Iranian deal, and then has come out and said, "No, no, we can't do that." Do you have any insight, any feelings on that, Mo?
MO: Well, I am baffled again. Once you make a campaign promise, I'm one of those who believes you ought to keep it. And I do not understand why the president may have said one thing on this particular issue, dealing with the Iran nuclear agreement, while he was a candidate, and not fulfilling whatever his campaign promise may have been, during the campaign.
That's -- that's akin to repealing Obamacare. We promised the American people we would repeal Obamacare. But apparently, there are a lot of people in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives that didn't really intend to keep that promise.
And the American people need to hold their feet to the fire to ensure that we deliver on the promise to repeal Obamacare. You just can't go through the motions and say, "Well, I tried. I voted that way."
In the Senate, you have tremendous power to force things to happen. And unfortunately, we don't have enough people in the United States Senate right now, fighting hard to force that repeal of Obamacare.
GLENN: Talking --
MO: There's nice guy stuff going on, instead of real fighters to achieve our goals.
GLENN: Talking to US congressman from Alabama, Mo Brooks, who is running for the Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. That election happens tomorrow.
Mo, what happens to the -- the conservative movement or the Republican Party should voices like yours be brushed out and lost? And -- and voices -- and voices like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan or even worse, the Steve Bannons of the world are held up.
MO: I'm going to flip it a little bit and talk about what happens if we prevail. If we get a principled conservative in the United States Senate -- and as an aside, if anyone wants to help, please go to MoBrooksforSenate.com. MoBrooksforSenate.com.
But if we are able to prevail, that is a huge message to the establishment, and they'll be shivering in their boots. Okay?
This 60 percent rule that blocks us from repealing Obamacare, from funding the border wall, from dealing with deficits and debt, from getting rid of a lot of these giveaway programs that cause people to no longer respect the work ethic and that encourage the breakup of families, and having kids out of wedlock, because you get more money that way -- we can make huge strides, if we win -- if you elect Mo Brooks from the state of Alabama in this election, because it sends a message to Mitch McConnell, that he better get on the ball, that he better start working. And this recess, this vacation that the Senate is on right now, they should get back to work and continue to confirm every single one of President Trump's nominees to various positions. They need to get back to work on repeal of Obamacare. They also need to start thinking about new Senate leadership because it will be a debacle and an embarrassment for Mitch McConnell if after spending 5 to $10 million in attack ads against Mo Brooks and against Judge Roy Moore, if their handpicked establishment candidate, Luther Strange, does not win.
So we can send a huge positive message to the United States Senate and Washington, DC, that it's time for a change. We're not satisfied with a do-nothing Senate. We're not satisfied with allowing Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to be obstructionists because we let them. That's the message.
We have to win this race tomorrow. Then that message gets to Washington, DC. And they like keep their jobs, they might start working better.
GLENN: Mo Brooks for Senate. Mo -- M-O -- BrooksforSenate.com is where you can go and get more information and help out. And get to the polls if you're in Alabama. If you like what you heard, those -- that -- those polls open tomorrow. And if somebody doesn't get 50 percent, there will be a runoff. MoBrooksforSenate.com.
Mo, thank you so much. Best of luck to you. And, sir, thank you for the years of good service in Congress. And we hope that --
MO: Thank you, Glenn. Thank you for all your help.
GLENN: Thank you. We appreciate it.