State of the Union: Interview With Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX)

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Well, you don't have to be a lawyer to look at this case and think it's on pretty weak grounds.

Look, you even -- when you even have "The Washington Post" editorial board criticizing this prosecutor, looking at this and saying, you need to be careful with how you move forward because this is just very clearly a very weak case -- whatever evidence they might have, you're still talking about very low-level business fraud charges.

So I think people need to ask themselves a fundamental question. If this were anyone but Trump, would this DA even take up this case? I mean, this DA has a habit of not taking up cases that are pretty serious, like violent crime and prostitution rings, things like that, but he chooses to take up this one.

So it feels obvious to a lot of us that it's politically motivated, it's personally motivated. And I think that's why you're seeing those kind of statements.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

No, they should definitely not be immune from criminal charges.

It's just -- again, this one is as weak as it can get, it seems.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

And, plus, you're -- you're looking at a supposed crime that's years and years and years old. It's very clearly personally motivated. But, no, of course, they shouldn't be immune.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Well, look, you're never going to make your point really well if you devolve into violence. That's a really quick way for everyone to stop agreeing with you, if they agreed with you previously.

So, my message is, if you want to support the former president and make your voice heard, by all means, but you better do it peacefully.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Not at all.

Look, and I think we do need to have a real conversation about what's happening here. What I have long called this is a sort of social contagion that's occurred ever since Columbine. This never happened before Columbine, but then Columbine happened, and it was very famous, and it sort of opened the door for very, very disturbed people, whoever they might be, to go in and commit these kind of dramatic, randomized shootings as their outlet for their own evil and crazy.

That's basically what's happening.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Now, because it's so random and unexpected, it's hard to prevent.

And because -- and they seem like they happen a lot, but they're still anomalous events, and they're very difficult to build a pattern behind. It's not like criminal activity, which you can target and prevent through law enforcement. This is harder. It doesn't mean there's nothing we can do.

The truth of the matter is, if we had a minimum of two armed guards or police officers at every single school in America, you would probably prevent these from here on out.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

That's the truth.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

No, it absolutely should be, which is why I say I would look to the thing that would absolutely stop this, which is putting armed police officers at every school.

I visit a lot of schools. I do talks at various schools. It's very rare that I go into a school, especially the newer ones, and they don't have some kind of armed police presence there at all times.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

That's a preventive measure. That, I know will stop this. And there was nothing like that in these last few mass shootings. There's no armed guards there.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

So, if I'm just looking for actual solutions, that would be it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

No, the answer is armed guards. No, the answer is armed guards, right, armed guards. Yes, more guns, the kind of guns that protect the president, that protect you all at CNN.

Is it easy to get into your headquarters at CNN? Absolutely not. There's armed guards there. There's single points of entry. I think we should look at our school as a place that is precious and have the same kind of security that your corporate offices do, that we do in Congress.

If we consider a place to be important, where our children go to learn every day, it should have the same level of security as every other place, whether it's a shopping mall or a corporate office that's hard to get into.

You're not going to get rid of guns. And I'm not going to say that people can no longer -- that law-abiding citizens cannot defend themselves anymore and exercise their Second Amendment rights and think that's going to stop mass violence. People will figure out other ways to commit mass violence once they have, unfortunately, reached that point in their life.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

It's tragic, and it's sad, and, a lot of people, we don't understand what's happening, what's inside their heads.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

And so we look to these other solutions that I think aren't viable.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

But they weren't -- but they weren't there, which is the point.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Sure.

Well, if you want to look at it -- well, I will give you an easy example. So, how has the United States decreased its carbon emissions more than the next 10 countries combined, right? We have decreased our carbon emissions massively over the last 20 years. That's almost entirely because of natural gas and the fracking revolution, because what's that done?

It's displaced coal production. Natural gas emits about half the carbon emissions of coal. This does -- and, by the way, this undoes very middle of Biden's climate policies. It stops the attacks on oil and gas. It makes permitting easier. It doesn't reduce a single environmental regulation. It doesn't take away a single environmental standard.

It does things like, say, look, if we're going to make a decision this pipeline, it has to be done in this amount of time. If we're going to make a decision this mining operation, which, by the way, you need critical minerals if you want to build a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines.

If you want to build more transmission lines to get the power from the solar farms to the cities, you need to build transmission lines. You need to mine for copper and steel, all right? Democrats have been shutting these projects down. This makes it easier to actually do these things, because, if we don't do them, then we have to buy them from China. And, by the way, their environmental standards are very, very low. Let

me tell you the best way to reduce carbon emissions right now. Export more natural gas around the world. Displace foreign coal production, which accounts for about 50 percent of total global emissions when it comes to power production, and replace that with natural gas.

If you want to have a major, major, major effect on carbon emissions in the near term, in the right here and now, by the way, also while making sure that we have energy security, affordable, reliable energy that actually works when we need it, that's what you would do. And that's what this bill does, makes it easier to build export terminals...

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

... pipelines to get from production to those export terminals and send that out to the world. It's a cleaner form of energy. It actually works, and it's certainly what developing nations are going to want.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Thanks for having me, Dana. Appreciate it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source