Rep. Adam Schiff on Biden’s Efforts To Unite the Country

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Congressman, can I start by asking you, before we get into impeachment, about President Biden’s pledge during his address, where he said he would put his whole soul into uniting the country? And I guess that starts with Congress, I guess, and elected leaders. And, apparently, he is having them over as soon as tomorrow. Is that a realistic, I guess, aspiration to unite right now?

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): I think it’s an essential aspiration. And it is really the core of who Joe Biden is. I thought that was among the most moving parts of his address yesterday, when he talked about how Lincoln, in signing the Emancipation Proclamation, said he put his whole soul into that. And Joe Biden was going to put his soul into healing America and bringing us together. So, he’s, I think, taking exactly the right posture. He’s putting out his hand and hoping that it will be reciprocated. That’s the most that we can all do. And so I think it’s the right approach. I hope it’s met with a welcome by my GOP colleagues, but only time will tell.

AMANPOUR: Well, they have already told a little bit, certainly in the Senate. The outgoing majority leader, Mitch McConnell, basically said that in his first 24 hours on the job, he claimed that President Biden has made a lot of — quote — “wrong moves,” gone in the wrong direction. What do you make of that? Mitch McConnell obviously does have a history of putting up massive roadblocks at the beginning of a Democratic president, we remember, with Obama as well. What does that bode, do you think, for the future? And remember — of course, we remember, he’s not the majority leader right now.

SCHIFF: Well, I would hope that Mitch McConnell will recognize that we’re in the midst of a national emergency, 400,000 of our fellow citizens have died from this virus, and we need to get the country back open, but we need to get the country vaccinated. We need to get help to families that are struggling. And it needs to be more than his mission to make Joe Biden fail. We can’t go into this the way that he and others did when Barack Obama was elected, designed to thwart any positive movement for the country. So, I hope whatever comments he’s made are not an indication that he intends to pick up where he left off at the beginning of the Obama administration. The circumstances are different and they are dire. Even under good circumstances you would hope that they would be an appetite to work together for the betterment of the country. But we’re in an emergency right now and we need all hands-on deck.