Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports

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Andrea Mitchell. NBC News has also obtained exclusive images from a postal worker of a high-volume mail sorting machine in a Dallas, Texas facility that had been removed in July. Postal workers were trying to repair and install those mail sorting machines, but they had to stop after discovering critical parts the machine readers were missing. These sorting machines process tens of thousands of envelopes an hour, including mail-in ballots.

Joining me now is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Madam Speaker, thanks very much for being with us.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure. Thank you.

Andrea Mitchell. And of course you're joining us the day after a hearing, a very difficult hearing for the Postmaster General, indeed on the House side.

So let's start with those – with the voting. On Saturday, you passed a $25 billion emergency bill for the Post Office. We know it's not going to be taken up by the Senate. The President said he would veto it. So what happens next? How can you ensure the Post Office is not crippled going into the election?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, first of all, thank you for bringing up the Postal Service because it's a matter of good health for America's veterans who get almost 100 percent of their prescriptions through the mail: 1.2 billion prescriptions for veterans and others went through the mail in 2019, so this is a health issue. In times of a pandemic, the worst possible time for the Post Office to be cutting back and of course the health of our democracy at risk.

Actually, what the President said is that if they send – if they pass a freestanding bill on the Post Office, he would sign it. ‘Yeah, I would sign it,' he said. That's what we did. Until he decided he wasn't going to sign it.

So let's not predicate anything on what he says or does, because the association with fact, with science, with ethics, with what is right to be done for the American people, is a completely foreign notion to this President.

And in terms of the –

Andrea Mitchell. He was –

[Crosstalk]

Speaker Pelosi. I'm sorry. To your question, about the –

Andrea Mitchell. Go. Go ahead.

Speaker Pelosi. Postal Service, if you want me to go to that. This is a big issue. It affects every family in America. I don't think Members on either side of the aisle or either side of the Capitol can tell you that they've ever had such an immediate reaction to a change in how an agency affects their lives.

This is not a business. They keep saying, ‘Well, it keeps loses money.' It's a service. It's a service that largely pays for itself as it meets the needs of the American people. And what they are doing is wrong. What they're saying about it is not true. And what we will have to do is hold them accountable. I'm very proud of the work of our Committee and the Committee Chair, Carolyn Maloney. She will get the information.

What you pointed out at the beginning about them dismantling the sorting machines, is – it's not only a matter of time and holding up the mail. It's a matter of workplace safety as well, in terms of what kind of people can work in the Post Office if that kind of machinery is not available. So it excludes some from that.

So in every possible way, they are sabotaging the mail. They're harming our democracy. They're injuring the health of the American people, starting with our veterans and they will be held accountable.

But in terms of the election, we don't agonize, we organize. And we will make sure that people have a plan to vote, they vote early enough so that they're not counting on any of the President's henchmen to deliver their mail on time.

Andrea Mitchell. I wanted to play an exchange with Congresswoman Katie Porter with DeJoy yesterday.

Congresswoman Porter. Do you know about, within a million or so, can you tell me how many people voted by mail in the last presidential election?

Postmaster General DeJoy. No, I cannot.

Congresswoman Porter. To the nearest ten million? Is that a no, Mr. DeJoy?

Postmaster General DeJoy. I would be guessing and I don't want to guess.

Andrea Mitchell. Madam Speaker, is he qualified for this job?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, if the qualification is that you're a mega donor to Donald Trump and chair his Inaugural Committee, if that's the criterion, then yeah, he qualifies. But on the basis of knowledge of the system, he's known how to profit off of it. He's known how to compete with the Post Office.

He just doesn't share the value of it being an all-American service to the American people, written into the Constitution. Our first Postmaster General, Benjamin Franklin. A Postmaster was Abraham Lincoln. Harry Truman was even a Postmaster, although he yielded the position to a widow who needed the money when he was a – named a Postmaster. This is as American as apple pie, motherhood, baseball, you name it.

Except when it comes to these guys who want to privatize it, make a profit off of it. That's all they really know is ‘show me the money,' for them, instead of ‘show me the service for the American people.'

No, I think he's absolutely the wrong person for the job. I think there has to be some scrutiny over how he was chosen. And I think it has a lot to do with Secretary Mnuchin who wanted to weigh in on how the Post Office was run, in a way that was inappropriate for the Secretary of the Treasury to do.

Andrea Mitchell. I want to ask you about the whole issue of convalescent plasma and the fact that the FDA commissioner Steven Hahn has now apologized for what he said alongside the President and Secretary Azar about the efficacy of convalescent plasma justifying emergency use authorization.

Peter Navarro was just defending that, saying that if any one person can be helped, that it has 100 percent ability to help people. But that's not what the data show. They're not using the scientific standard of randomized studies. Do you have concern about this, which may not be harmful, but that would mitigate against being able to have proper randomized studies once it's out in widespread use?

Speaker Pelosi. Let's just say this. Let's enlarge the issue to say what the White House is doing is politicizing science. It's shameful, but I'm so glad that so many scientists and medical professionals are speaking out to say this is not right.

Shame on Hahn for what he did. And he even had to backtrack on what he said, because it was not science-based. He was just there as a prop for the President to pretend that something was happening. We all pray for a therapy that will make things better for people. We all pray for a vaccine. So we're all on the same team when it comes to that. But don't, as what – I don't even want his name – your previous guest was saying that –

Andrea Mitchell. Peter Navarro.

Speaker Pelosi. Yeah, I know his name. I just didn't want to use it because I didn't want to validate what he is saying. They take speed over effectiveness and safety. And again, this is – they are going down a very bad path.

They politicize science and the process that is – that we're all depending on and praying will work. They politicize the State Department by having the Secretary of State speak in the manner — which, thank you for pointing out, they criticize the Post Office by standing in the way of medicines getting there on time and people being able to vote and not having to substitute, choose between being well and having a vote in this time of a pandemic. They politicize everything. They reject science when it comes to climate change, et cetera. And, really, they do such a disservice. And people say, ‘Well, it isn't strictly illegal.' It's totally unethical. It's totally unethical. They're anti-science, anti-ethics, anti-credibility of our elections.

But I say to people: ignore them. Don't pay attention to them. They're trying to scare you into not voting. Don't let them take your vote or voice away by anything that this President says about vote by mail which he does on a regular basis. And by the way, I want to just say this about our men and women in uniform. It's very, very important that the mail run on time and that we are not undoing the processing that makes that happen. We owe – at least, you would think, they would owe it to our men and women in uniform around the world for whom the mail takes a longer time to get to them and back when it comes to them exercising their right to vote, which they are there to defend.

Andrea Mitchell. The President keeps talking about how quickly a vaccine might be possible this fall. And are you concerned now that they are going to rush a vaccine out without the proper trials?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I'm always concerned about that, but let's hope that this incident with Hahn having to backtrack on his foolish statements will be a warning to them that people are watching. People have judgment about this. And God knows, as I say, we're all praying that we have a vaccine as soon as we can have it, but not any sooner than it is safe and efficacious in terms of immunizing the American people and people throughout the world.

We have a whole other arena of who gets this vaccine when it's there and that has to be in the most ethical, in the most ethical way. Your previous guest even went and visited some of the clinical trial people and criticized them for taking all that time to do the clinical trials that would be necessary. So again, it's really sad, because this is something that should be so unifying for us, so prayerful.

Science is an answer to our prayers. I always say, when people here say you have to choose between science and faith. No. Science is an answer to our prayers. It's created by God, and hopefully, with all the brilliance that we have, the best minds in the country working 24/7, that this will happen as soon as it can happen, not one day later. But not one day sooner than it is safe and efficacious.

And that is where we have to watch closely, because clearly they've already indicated that they will overstate the safety and the efficacy of a drug. But it is – it's really sad, because science, science, science, for so many reasons, is the answer to so much. Whether it's our health, whether it's protecting our planet, whether it's making us preeminent in the world in terms of our economy and jobs, whether it's in the security of our country, the inventiveness and creativity to keep us qualitatively number one in the security of our country, science is our answer. It seems not to be valued by this Administration.

Andrea Mitchell. I want to ask you about the use of the Rose Garden, the South Lawn and the Secretary of State on a foreign trip. They are crossing all lines on what is the proper use for political reasons of their official locations.

Speaker Pelosi. It's appalling. And of course, we have not seen this by anyone, as you've said, as records show, Democratic or Republican, who would have the Secretary of State engaged, and as the Secretary himself cautioned employees at the State Department that they should not be engaged in any partisan activities because they work for the State Department. And now he's doing just that thing.

And then of course, really sadly, discoloring our bipartisanship in terms of our support for Israel, which has always been bipartisan, and we always want it to be. So, he's making that – I don't know what he's going to say. But whatever it is, the image is something that's going to say, ‘Look at us. We're here in Israel making a speech to the Republican National Convention,' violating our values in terms of the bipartisanship in our support for Israel, violating in many ways what he told his own employees that they are not allowed. It would be a violation of the law if they were to engage in partisan activities.

This is – well, as Colin Powell I think said earlier, this is the wrong way to go. And we don't want this as an example for anything. I mean, the Rose Garden, it's ridiculous, that shouldn't be happening, but who cares?

You know, what we care about is the fact that they won't support funding for children in our country who are food insecure, millions of them and they reject our proposals in that regard; that they're ignoring the fact that millions of people will be on the streets if they are evicted and we have the resources in our bill to get that done; that children are going back to school now and school needs to be a safe place for them. But the president is saying that unless kids go actually, we're not going to really fully support the virtual and the rest, which is where the overwhelming amount of education will take place. That's what we care about.

We care about, again, supporting our state and local governments which conduct the services for people including education. So for the children, at this time, when it's time to go back to school and families have angst about how safe it will be if they have to actually go or how much they will miss if they don't, let's put our resources there to make it, again, safe for them to do so, safe for teachers to teach. And if they have to teach and leave their own children at home because they can't go to school, then let's have childcare sufficient to meet their needs. I care more about that, than about whether the refurbished Rose Garden is appropriately under the Hatch Act or not in terms of what the First Lady may say tonight.

But let us go into the homes of the American people. I have children in every aspect of school, and whether it's public, private or catholic, and different – elementary, all the way up to college. I have kids who teach. And everybody is concerned about the safety of it all for our children. And yet the President says unless it's actual, most of the money will not be spent for virtual or hybrid education.

Again, what – science, science, science and science. I wish that they would open their minds to science. I wish they would open their hearts to the needs of America's children, including their education needs but also their hunger needs and their housing needs, as well as the economic well-being of their families.

Andrea Mitchell. Thank you. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure, thank you.

Andrea Mitchell. Appreciate you being with us today.