Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe

Contact: Speaker's Press Office,
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Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist on MSNBC's Morning Joe to discuss the ongoing efforts to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, including the agreement on the interim emergency funding package transformed by Congressional Democrats to provide real support for small businesses, hospitals, health care workers and all Americans. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Mika Brzezinski. We want to bring the Speaker of the House now, Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California. Speaker, thank you very much for being with us.

Joe Scarborough. Madam Speaker, let's start with some good news. A bill was passed yesterday that's going to help out small businesses, going to help out hospitals and what we're excited about – and I know a lot of senior citizens, Democrats, Republicans alike – a lot of money going towards testing. Give Americans the good news, how you came together with Republicans and actually passed a bill that can help our hospitals, help our seniors, help small businesses and help out on testing.

Speaker Pelosi. Good morning. Happy Earth Day to you.

Yes, we were very pleased that the Senate finally accepted the fact that we needed more money for testing, for hospitals, for lower, lower – smaller businesses to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program. It took them a couple of weeks, but they finally did. We are in the tradition of having this be the fourth bill that we are passing in a bipartisan spirit. Three in the month of March.

The first one, March 4th, passed in the House, was about testing, testing, testing. A month and a half later, we still aren't where we need to be. Hopefully with the bill that passed the Senate yesterday and will pass the House tomorrow, there will be the recognition that if we want to open the country, if we want to open our economy, well, the key to that is testing, testing, testing, contact tracing, as well as, again, whatever you want to call it, isolation, separation or the rest.

But, again, Mitch McConnell likes to say we delayed the bill. No, he delayed the bill. Two weeks ago, he came to all the Floor and said, ‘This is all we're doing, just the $250 [billion].' Democrats were united, House and Senate, the Senate Democrats went to the Floor and said no, no to that. We have a better idea about hospitals and testing and more funds for all of the businesses, the lower, shall we say the unbankable businesses. So we were very pleased that he finally came around to the fact that we had to go forward with this. So he was the one wasting time. I say that because I keep hearing him say we delayed. No, he delayed.

But, here we are and we're ready to go onto the next bill to help our heroes: our health care workers, our firefighters, our EMS, our folks who are doing all the wonderful work to save lives as they risk their lives, and now they may lose their jobs.

Joe Scarborough. Madam Speaker, can you tell us how the money is going to help hospitals, how the money is going to help move national testing forward? Just give us a few specifics about – I know a lot of senior citizens who are watching this show and they're really concerned, especially about the economy opening up before testing, more robust testing gets rolled out. Tell us how this bill moves America in the right direction for testing.

Speaker Pelosi. Well, this is a very important step. We thought the first bill in March would have been acted upon certainly by now. This allocates $25 billion for testing. Some of it to go to the states, some to different agencies of government to do research, et cetera, and approvals. This is very, very positive in that it recognizes the need for testing and also recognizes the need for us to document how this terrible pandemic is affecting different communities.

If you do not test, you cannot possibly know the size of the challenge. Once you do, then you have – are in a better place to get rid of it. And that is the path to opening up the economy. So for our seniors in nursing homes and the rest, as you say, that is a big toll being taken there. But if we can test and isolate people, we're on a much better path.

There is a Boy Scouts saying: Proper preparation prevents poor performance. Well, that is exactly where the president gets an F. He was not properly prepared; not with the truth, with the facts or the admission of what was happening in our country. Delay – whatever – delay, denial, death. So, we said we'd like to see him insist on the truth and we must insist on the truth with him. And that is really what should give us hope. If he finally – it's never too late, as I keep saying to him, it is never too late to tell the truth, Mr. President, and it is never too late to do the right thing and to pay attention to science, science, science and science.

Mika Brzezinski. I couldn't agree with that more. I am just wondering though, about the actual reality of this. Who is going to manage, for example, the $25 billion toward testing? And just very honestly, because people sort of know the truth about what is going on here, what is your confidence level in the President's ability to manage mass testing for the American people, to manage this in a way that is productive and in a way that will help?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, my confidence is not high in that regard, but my faith is in science. And the scientists who are speaking out, really debunking some of what the White House experts are saying, that we just need X number of tests a day. We're never going to get there at the snail pace that they are putting forth. But you have seen scientists outside, academics and the rest, setting a standard three times higher than what the White House is talking about.

So, we have put the resources there. We're prepared to do more in terms of the testing in the next legislation, as we see how productive it all is. But again, this has to be across the country. It's all ethnic groups. It's all geographies. It's all income levels.

I just saw that the former President of Stanford, a scientist himself, passed from the coronavirus. So, this is – it's so indiscriminate.

And I'm very sad about the people in the streets, because – I pray for them, because they are exposing themselves and hopefully not taking it home to their children and their families.

So, I wish the President, instead of being an agent of distraction, to say, ‘Oh, he embraces what is going on in the street' because it's a distraction from his failure on testing. Or instead of talking about immigration, talking – because it's a distraction from his failure testing. Frankly, just grow up to the fact that we have a big challenge our country.

Mika Brzezinski. Madam Speaker, Willie Geist has a question.

Willie Geist. Good morning, Speaker Pelosi. Thank you for being with us this morning.

Speaker Pelosi. Hi, Willie.

Willie Geist. The lion's share of the money – good to see you – of this $484 billion goes to small businesses, and that's good news. $322 billion to the PPP, $60 billion for small business loan grants. These small businesses, as you know well from hearing stories in your own district, fighting for their lives, many of them were disappointed that they didn't get money in the first round, but here comes the second round. Are you confident that the system – the PPP system has been tuned, finetuned to the point where a company that applies for say $30,000 to cover their payroll for a few weeks is not seeing the money but national business chains are getting $20 million? Has that been sorted out for this round?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, but having a set aside for very small businesses, we are making it easier for them to participate. Just so you know, what it says is, that what seemed like a good idea at the time, when Secretary Mnuchin said, we're just going to go through the banks so that the – it doesn't have to go through the SBA process, which takes longer. The banks were just supposed, the banks be a touch stone. The money is guaranteed. The Fed has taken the loans off the books, so there is no exposure at all for the banks.

So, for them to have acted as if this was their money and it was going to their preferred customers, is really a very sad thing. So, we have this set-aside of $60 billion, which goes to the community development financial institutions.

These are institutions, many of them insured by the FDIC, many of them regulated by the Treasury Department, well-known and recognized institutions, specifically to go into neighborhoods. They know the neighborhoods. They know the businesses. They know the people. They know the culture, and we hope that this will accelerate the approval of loans into that community – those communities.

So, this is separate. So, we said, we'll do the $250 [billion] because the PPP needs that, and we fully support small businesses, the great entrepreneurs, the optimists of our country, job creators, wealth creators, but at the same time, seeing the behavior of what happened in that first couple of weeks, we got this set-aside, which two weeks ago, Mitch McConnell said, ‘No, never, it will never happen. You're delaying things,' but it did unanimously in the Senate yesterday.

And then, again with the other increases that we did for the loans – the disaster loans which are used by all of the small businesses, but very much so by some of these smaller businesses, because it's an easier process. And also, the grants, we – the grants – we increased the funding for the grants.

So, it went from $250 [billion], 60 more, $310 [billion], 60 more, $370 [billion] and then another $100 billion for the hospitals and the testing. And this is absolutely urgent – absolutely urgent, but they resisted that. You don't – you have to wonder why, but they resisted it until yesterday. Just over this weekend, they finally agree until over this they would negotiate. And the package they accepted is just about exactly what the Senate Democrats put on the Floor two weeks ago, Wednesday, April 8th, and now it is being passed. And so, we'll pass it tomorrow in the House.

Willie Geist. Speaker Pelosi, if I'm a small business owner who missed the boat on the first round, didn't see any money back, how quickly now can I expect that money to come in to me?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I hope very quickly, and we'll make a measure of that. You know, obviously the bright light of public opinion is shining on the process now. I frankly – I just met somebody this morning on the way here who said – at a distance of course – who said he got the grant, not the loan, but the grant. So, this is the first person that I know who got something. Yesterday, by phone, someone told me that he had gotten a loan. So, again, it's really anecdotal at this point, not scientific in terms of that it is working.

But the world is watching. That is to say the world of our economy. And this has a purpose, and the purpose was not to have the banks – now I want the banks to be friends to all of this. I don't want this to be a villainous situation.

But they really do have to respond in a way, almost by computer. The facts come in; you get a loan or not, but it's not about, ‘who do I know best on this list?' Because you have no exposure. It's covered by the SBA. It doesn't contribute to any capital requirements and the rest on your sheet – your balance sheet, because the federal reserve has taken it off there.

So, in any event, let's just think in a really positive way. I know people who really enthusiastically were out looking for $25,000, $30,000 loans, had all their ducks in a row and the rest and don't even get a response. Well, that really has to stop.

And Congress will be watching. You can be sure because this is a great deal of money, and one of the things we wanted to be certain of is that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were not being used to solidify the disparity of access to capital and to credit that exist in our economy already.

So this is to, again, take us down a to, again, access to different path: access to credit, which businesses want. They want credit. They want a trained workforce. And you know what else they want, customers. So we have to figure out how many more people participate in our economic largess, if you want to call it that.

And that is why the state and local is so important. It's not state and local thinking bureaucratically. It is health care workers, police and fire, as I said before, emergency services folks. It's about our teachers, ours teachers, our teachers in our schools. It's about our transit workers who enable people to get to work and the rest.

It's about all of that. And they have their jobs at risk. Hundreds of them in one hospital, Mr. Schumer talked about yesterday, being fired yesterday because they just don't have the resources. Now some of these hospitals are public hospitals.

So if you want to help education, state and local. If you want to help health care, state and local. If you want to – if you want to have PPE for our workers, state and local. It's so important, as well as the assistance that we are doing for hospitals which has the protection equipment in it as well.

Let me just say this one more thing. The American people, god bless them, they have their priorities in order. They respect those who are on the front line. Those on the front line in all of this. They want them to have their personal protective equipment. They respect them. They want them to have job security, and that's really very important. And they also know, in large numbers, that there is no use rushing out the door too soon until you have more assurance about the health and well-being of your families. Their values are just so beautiful to behold. God bless them for that.

Joe Scarborough. It is so remarkable.

Hey, Speaker Pelosi, for a final questions let's move beyond the pandemic and talk about some big news that I think got overlooked yesterday. You talked about a unanimous vote, there was another unanimous vote that we learned about yesterday. I am reading from the New York Times: ‘On Tuesday, a long awaited Senate review led by members of Mr. Trump's own party effectively undercut his allegations against the intel community' – remember he called them ‘scum' earlier this week – ‘A three year review by Republican-led Senate Intel Committee unanimously found the intel community assessment pining blame on Russia and outlining its goals to undermine America's democracy was fundamentally sound and untainted by politics, which the President and his allies have been saying for years now.

And this is what the Republican-led Intel Committee in the Senate concluded. The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community's conclusions. Big news.

It undercuts so much of what the President has said about our intel community, calling them, again, ‘scum' earlier this week, which is just shocking. It's something that you would expect from Vladimir Putin instead of the President of the United States, calling members of the intel community ‘scum.' But the Republican-led Intel Committee unanimously said that they got it right in this investigation. What's your reaction?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, I'm not surprised. As a member of the Gang of Eight, I watched this whole investigation proceed and the rest.

And that leads you to the question: what does Vladimir Putin have on President Trump, personally, politically, financially, in any way that he would choose Putin's word, what Putin said, over the Intelligence Community? And that he would give any currency to a charge that it was the Ukraine – people in the Ukraine that had conducted this, to divert any culpability from the Russians, something is very wrong there.

But, this was, again, it gives you hope and faith that with the facts and respect for the intelligence that was gathered cannot be denied. No matter what the President says, it cannot be denied.

But it takes us to the next step. They've also told us: 24-7 the Russians are still at work trying to undermine our election. That's why we have to have an important chunk of money in this next bill that will enable us to have – protect the integrity of our elections, as well as enable the American people to vote by mail, especially at this time of a health danger of going to the polls. As well as, again, just shining a bright light on what they are trying to do, to play with people's minds as well as tinker or worse with our critical infrastructure, which is our elections. This is the lifeblood of our democracy: the vote.

And so here we are trying to protect the lives of the American people, the livelihoods of the American people and also the life of our democracy. And that is what we are going to do in this next bill as well.

But this is shameful and it really gives lie to what the President has said. We must start to have – insist on the truth with the President. This is what I – the conclusion I came to on Easter Sunday. I was saying, ‘Other people are being political. They're not speaking out strongly enough.' And then I realized, maybe I'm not either.

I don't want to be political. We want to do this in a unified way, every bill bipartisan. But, the fact is, if the President refuses to accept evidence, data, truth and the rest, we must insist on the truth because that is the path. Whether it is about testing, testing, testing, which he doesn't want to test because he doesn't want to know the numbers probably or he just doesn't accept the science of it. But, testing in the fullness of it all: contact tracing, isolation and, of course, treatment and prevention as well. We know the path.

And, now, we have to recognize that there is another path. If we have it – when we have it, God-willing it will be soon, a vaccine or a cure. We are going to have to have a plan. Proper preparation prevents poor performance. We have to have a plan for how it is distributed to the American people, so it is done so in a way that is fair.

Mika Brzezinski. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, thank you so much for being on this morning.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure.

Mika Brzezinski. Thank you.

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you. Happy Earth Day!

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