Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes

Contact: Speaker's Press Office,

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Chris Hayes. Right now, as I speak, the House is voting on a new police reform bill, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The bill was named for George Floyd, the 46 year-old Black man who died one month ago, today, after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck in plain view of people recording with their phones for nearly nine minutes.

The act would ban the use of chokeholds and some use of no-knock warrants at the federal level, and encourage state and local governments to do the same; create a national registry to track police conduct, to help keep offenders from just moving to new job after new job, something that happens quite often. Crucially, the bill would end qualified immunity for police officers, a legal shield from personal liability while on the job.

It's the second piece of major legislation the House passed in the last six weeks or so, including a multi-trillion dollar coronavirus rescue package known as The Heroes Act, though that bill has not been taken up in Mitch McConnell's Senate.

Joining me now is the person who engineered the passage of both those bills, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Do you have, Speaker, do you have any hope that this – if it passes tonight, would move, be taken up by Mitch McConnell, particularly after Democrats filibustered the Republican version of police reform in that chamber?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, first of all, thank you for presenting some of the provisions of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

Yes. As we speak, people are voting. When I leave here, I'll go there to vote and to gavel the passage of that important legislation. Also what we voted tonight, was the Republicans put forth the Senate bill, 100 percent of the Democrats voted against that toothless short bill – bill with so many shortcomings. A few Republicans voted with us on that.

But this is an historic day for us. One month since the sad death – eight minutes 46 seconds: ‘I can't breathe.' We'll never forget that. And, since then, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, day in and day out, week in and week out, saying enough is enough. That's what George Floyd's brother said when he came to testify at the Judiciary Committee.

So, we would hope, as Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything,' that the Republicans will catch the spark of the public sentiment in our country where people overwhelmingly support the provisions of this legislation and think enough is enough of the brutality.

We don't paint every police officer, first responder, with the same brush. But we do need to correct the behavior of those who will engage in brutality as they're supposed to be protecting the people.

Chris Hayes. When you say enough is enough, the complaints about the system run wide and deep.

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah.

Chris Hayes. And they vary from place to place. But, you know, there are some who say this isn't enough, that this particular piece of legislation wouldn't have, for instance, prevented Officer Chauvin from kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. Do you see this as the beginning of a longer march in terms of reforming public safety in America?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I do think that we need to do more. This addresses police brutality, and I'm so pleased that it has the support of Eric Garner's mother, Tamir Rice's mother, John Crawford's [father], those who have lost their lives because of police brutality.

We have some other issues that we have to deal with. But, in terms of justice in policing, this goes a long way down the road, and it is very effective, and it gets the job done.

Again, we hope that public sentiment will change the minds of some in the Senate because, to do nothing – well, let's be hopeful. Let's hope that the Senate – we passed our bill. It was bipartisan. Some Republicans voted for it. In the Senate, it is time for them to sit down together and prepare a bill that can pass the Senate. They haven't done that so far. And in the House we have rejected overwhelmingly, unanimously, and with Republican support, the Senate bill earlier this evening.

But it's just interesting because some of the anger is also springing from other injustices that need to be addressed, and one of them is the disparity of deaths in the coronavirus – in the coronavirus pandemic. We have in The Heroes Act, which you mentioned, the answer: testing, testing, testing.

We don't have a vaccine and we don't have a cure. God willing, we hope and pray that science will get us that soon. But we do have an answer: to test, to trace, to treat and to isolate. At the same time, as was just suggested, wear the mask, wash your hands, isolate, keep your distance so that we can kill this virus.

And, at the same time, I'm a temporal marker, at the same time as we're in the pandemic, the President is going to be in the Supreme Court today, the Republicans are already there, to overturn the Affordable Care Act to take health care away from over twenty million people: the benefit for pre-existing conditions – to not prevent people from having access because of pre-existing conditions, [130] million families affected by that. The President is trying to take that away, today, in the middle of a pandemic.

But, just to bring it to this point: if you don't believe in science and you don't believe in governance, you have the tragedy that we have, a pandemic that has grown in ways that it should never have grown.

Chris Hayes. So you, in the House today, are going to pass this police justice act.

Speaker Pelosi. Yes.

Chris Hayes. You have passed The Heroes Act. And you are proposing expanding, actually, ACA subsidies to make premiums cheaper for folks.

Speaker Pelosi. On Monday.

Chris Hayes. Here is my question for you – on Monday. So, here is my question for you. On May 15th, when The Heroes Act passed, which is money for state and local governments, crucially, and for beefed up testing and tracing; basically, Republicans said it's DOA and more than that, ‘We don't need another package. We think we're on the downward slope. I think we're in the clear here.'

It's six weeks later. Do you sense that the trajectory of the legislative openness is changing there? Because we're all watching this outbreak happening and it looks terrifying. And we're also watching millions of Americans who are going to lose unemployment bonus checks starting in July. And it seems like there should be some urgency, but I'm not sure there is. Do you have conversations with folks on the other side that maybe we are going to move toward something?

Speaker Pelosi. There is urgency. The urgency is that at the end of July, the unemployment benefits will expire. The urgency is at the end of June, state and local governments are going to have to balance their budgets.

Chris Hayes. Right.

Speaker Pelosi. The urgency is that when McConnell says, ‘We want a pause,' rent payments don't take a pause, feeding – food on the table need doesn't take a pause. All of these things have to be addressed. And to their peril, Republicans will ignore this.

I just want to tell you this one thing before I have to go preside to gavel down the bill. In The Heroes Act, you mentioned one part of it: testing, tracing. You mentioned another part with the Unemployment Insurance and the direct checks that are needed. The Secretary, the Secretary of the Treasury even has admitted that there needs to be another bill. The Chairman of the Fed has said we really are going to have a bigger, bigger economic hit if we don't have another package.

Chris Hayes. Yes.

Speaker Pelosi. We know that. They have to come to the table.

But let's remember this one thing, and I've told you this before and I'll say it again, in the first part, the first pillar of our bill, The Heroes Act to salute our heroes: our health care workers, our first responders, our transit workers, food, sanitation, teachers, teachers, teachers, all get paid – many get paid by the public sector, state and local government. In that part of the bill, go to speaker.gov/heroesact and look up where you live, where you may have grown up, where your parents may live, any place in the world, where you went to school, look there and see how much – how many resources are going to that state, that little city, that county. And you see all that money that's going to help them pay for their coronavirus outlays and their loss of revenue for the coronavirus. Look at that. It's dazzling.

And then, understand this. It's one-half of what the Republicans did with their Tax Scam to give a tax break to the high end; 83 percent of the benefits going to the top one percent in our country, adding $2 trillion to the national debt. This is half of that. And it is a stimulus that will help grow the economy, pay our workers, meet the needs of the American people.

Chris Hayes. You have to go. Finally and quickly before you do, yes or no, are you in negotiations with the White House actively right now on another piece of legislation for rescue?

Speaker Pelosi. There are – how – let me say it this way. The best way to negotiate with the Administration is in the public domain. That's how we were able to pass the Mexico-U.S.-Canada trade agreement. That's how we were able to keep governments open with our appropriations bills. That's how we were able to pass four coronavirus bills in a bipartisan way.

You remember when we were doing the more recent one, Mitch McConnell was like, ‘Never, no way am I doing what the Democrats are suggesting.' And he ended up doing it.

Chris Hayes. Right. So you are negotiating in public?

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah. Well, I'm not negotiating in public –

Chris Hayes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I know you have to go gavel that bill closed.

Speaker Pelosi. The public will be weighing in on this.

And now I have that honor and I salute the Congressional Black Caucus, Karen Bass and so many people who made this very historic day possible for the Congress and for our country to make a difference as we honor George Floyd and his family.

Thank you.

Chris Hayes. Thank you.

Speaker Pelosi. Bye-bye.

Chris Hayes. Thank you, Speaker. Appreciate it. Thank you.