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Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) is Interviewed about Omar's Oust; January Jobs Report; Darren Foster is Interviewed about "American Pain." Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired February 03, 2023 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:00]

REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): Is very disheartening and it makes me angry. And so I believe that she can be on any other committee, right, but she can't be on the Foreign Affairs Committee representing our nation to other countries.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: So, Congresswoman, to the first point you make in your objections of her, she did respond since saying that to say, quote, I was in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries - of democratic - with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems.

To the point about anti-Semitism, she tweeted apologizing in 2019 for some of her statements saying, quote, anti-Semitism is real. I unequivocally apologize.

At that moment she also voted for a House resolution condemning anti- Semitism. And just yesterday, before this vote, she co-sponsored another resolution condemning anti-Semitism and calling Israel an ally of the United States.

Would any apology be enough for you to believe she could serve on this committee?

MALLIOTAKIS: I mean the problem is, how many times are we going through this, right? She says these things and then maybe later on she goes and apologized when there's such outrage, including from her own party. Remember, she apologized after even Nancy Pelosi condemned what she had said. So, the problem with her is that it just doesn't end. She apologizes and she continues to spew this type of rhetoric.

And, you know, my colleagues focused on the anti-Semitism. In my speech I focused on the anti-American comments because the point is you're representing our country, our Congress to foreign governments. And to have this anti-American viewpoint that you're going to blame our country for what Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro did to their own people in destroying their country and driving those people out into - into poverty because of communist and socialist policies, I think that's a major problem.

HARLOW: But - MALLIOTAKIS: And as you pointed out at the beginning of the interview, I've been consistent. You know, I've held that same standard with my own side of the aisle.

HARLOW: Well -

MALLIOTAKIS: And so I think this is about being consistent and - and holding those accountable.

HARLOW: So let's talk about consistency and holding those accountable. You voted against the center of Congressman Paul Gosar, despite him posting on social media that anime video depicting the killing of your fellow congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and swinging swords at President Biden. He did not apologize for that. In fact, he said this. Let's play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL GOSAR (R-AZ): I did not apologize. I just said this video had nothing to do with harming anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: So are you then, for consistency's sake, comfortable with Congressman Gosar sitting on the House Oversight Committee?

MALLIOTAKIS: Look, I actually condemned the video. But the reason I didn't take that vote was because we were seeing how it's all one- sided, right? At that time, after voting for the Marjorie Taylor Greene vote, I had said, we now need to remove Eric Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee, we need to remove Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee. Ilhan Omar, for the reasons I've mentioned, but Eric Swalwell, I mean, this is someone who had a relationship with a Chinese spy, sits on the Intelligence Committee, could not get a clearance in the private sector and yet he's on a committee where we are sharing -- they are given secrets that I don't - I don't know because I don't have privy to that information. The most important secrets pertaining to our nation's security and safety on that committee. He should have been removed then.

HARLOW: So -

MALLIOTAKIS: And the fact that the Democrats had this - this -- it's a double standard that they have, not that we have.

HARLOW: Congresswoman -

MALLIOTAKIS: And, by the way, we've said that they can sit on other committees. It's just those specific committees.

HARLOW: OK. I want to --

MALLIOTAKIS: When they removed our members, they removed them from all committees.

HARLOW: OK. I'd like to get back to the question I asked you. Just because you brought up Congressman Swalwell. "The Washington Post," as you know, has given four Pinocchios in their fact check of that claim and "The San Francisco Chronicle" article cites an unnamed FBI source that says Swalwell was, quote, completely cooperative and under no suspicion of wrongdoing.

The question I asked you about Congressman Gosar is, given that video, are you comfortable with him sitting on the House Oversight Committee?

MALLIOTAKIS: Look, he - he's on that committee, Oversight, and I don't think that it's about Gosar or Swalwell. What I'm trying to say is that there is no consistency.

HARLOW: But you brought up Swalwell.

MALLIOTAKIS: When the Democrats do it - when the Democrats do it, it's OK. But when the Republicans - who, by the way, we've said that they can sit on a committee, it's just those particular committees that were problematic because of the information that they share in the committee and the nature of interacting with foreign entities.

HARLOW: I want to --

MALLIOTAKIS: And, by the way, Speaker McCarthy - yes, OK, go ahead.

HARLOW: No, please finish.

MALLIOTAKIS: No, I was just going to simply say that, you know, Speaker McCarthy and Speaker Pelosi were briefed specifically about Mr. Swalwell by the FBI, and they had shared concerns about him. So, it's probably information that none of us have because it pertains to the Intel Committee.

HARLOW: So then let's stick with the information that we do have.

Before we move on to the issue of China, where I want to end this interview, I would note that, you know, Congresswoman Omar was the only Muslim and the only refugee on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

[08:35:00]

And Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, who you know is a Jewish American, tweeted this yesterday, the most dangerous act by elected officials in a democracy is to silence voices of dissent, even those with which we fundamentally agree.

Do you agree a diverse set of views is important on that committee?

MALLIOTAKIS: No, absolutely. Look, we should have a diverse set of views. And as a daughter of a refugee, I actually understand the need to have individuals who understand the turmoil that our nation -- nations around the globe face because we're dealing with a very - a lot of very sensitive issue.

Again, my problem is, when someone speaks anti-American rhetoric on the committee, when they do equate Hamas with Israel and the Taliban with the United States, which she did do, and when you try to blame our country for socialist -- the actions of socialist and communist dictators around the globe, that is when it becomes a problem.

HARLOW: OK.

MALLIOTAKIS: I think it's very easy to understand. And I think that most Americans would agree with our decision to remove her from this committee considering her views.

HARLOW: Finally, I want to end on this because you did just sit on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And we have all this news this morning about that Chinese spy balloon flying over the continental United States.

Your fellow Republican senator, Roger Wicker, who, of course, is a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he's concerned that the DOD failed to act with urgency and that Congress and the American people deserve more of an explanation.

How -- what is your level of concern over this?

MALLIOTAKIS: I think it's very concerning. I mean if you have surveillance of particularly our military assets by a country that is the greatest threat right now to the United States, along with Russia, who has a, you know, surveillance 90 miles from the shores in Cuba, this is a concern.

And I think this is why we have established, in a bipartisan basis, the select committee on China, to try to drill down on these issues to make us better prepared for the future. It's about them knowing about our military capabilities. It is about them purchasing farmland here in the United States near military installations, about stealing intellectual property and about -- even in New York, having a CCP police facility right here in the city of New York to spy on, you know, Chinese Americans, many of those I represent.

And so it is very concerning. And that is why we created this in a bipartisan fashion. I'm glad that, you know, we understand that this threat is real and that it is growing and that we need to work together in Congress to address it.

HARLOW: Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, thank you for your time.

MALLIOTAKIS: It's great to be with you. Thank you.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, the Labor Department just released the January jobs report. You are going to want to see these numbers. They will make your jaw drop. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:42:44]

HARLOW: All right, breaking news just into CNN. The January jobs report. The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January. That is so -- two and a half times more than what the street was expecting. Our chief business correspondent Christine Romans is here, Catherine

Rampell, an economics commentator and "Washington Post" columnist.

What - I'm not going to tell people what you said when the number came out but -

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It was a bad word. I said a bad word, which is rare for me, because I was so surprised, 517,000 jobs added. That is, you're right, more than double what we had thought. And you look in these numbers, there are revisions all along the way.

You can see that December was revised higher. You can see that - well, just about every month was revised higher. So, where they got it a little bit off, it was because they undercounted.

This is a very, very strong job market. And the employment rate, 3.4 percent, ticked down just a tiny bit. The government pointing out that since the beginning of 2022 there's been no real meaningful change in what is nearly a 50-year low for the unemployment rate.

And the government also points out that the hiring was always - it was widespread, led by leisure and hospitality, which, as you know, is a part of the economy that has been booming as people have like shook off three years of kind of restraint and now want to spend on experiences, they want to go out.

So, this is a really strong number. This is not what you would expect after eight interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. You know, the Fed chief, Jerome Powell and company, would like to see this market cooling off. It doesn't show signs of cooling off here. Wage growth, 4.4 percent. That's a little bit lighter than December, but it's still showing wage gains for workers.

COLLINS: Yes, what did you think of - I mean Christine said a four- letter word. What's your reaction?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's - it's less rare for me to say a four letter word, so that won't tell you anything one way or the other, but I did.

Look, it's really surprising. You know, for months I have been asking, where are the workers? It's, you know, all these employers have been talking about worker shortages. And I think a lot of people were expecting that that problem would have been somewhat resolved. There have been tons of stories about how the axe has been swinging in Silicon Velley and in media. You know, lots of layoffs there, which we don't really see in this report.

ROMANS: No.

RAMPELL: A tiny decrease in information services. But, in general, it's like, where are the layoffs? I mean that's a - that's a good question to ask, right?

HARLOW: Yes. [08:45:00]

RAMPELL: That there was this fear that the economy -- well, the Fed wants the economy to cool. The fear was that the economy would plummet, right, that we would go off of a cliff. And that hasn't happened.

ROMANS: Didn't see it.

RAMPELL: Instead, you see hiring increasing. You see unemployment decreasing. You see wage growth cooling a little bit, but still pretty strong.

ROMANS: Yes.

RAMPELL: So, there's this puzzle again of like, how is it that the Fed has been administering this medicine, these rate hikes as Christine mentioned, that a lot of people feared would, you know, put the economy into a deep freeze, and instead it seems to be heating up.

ROMANS: You know, I think bosses say they're worried about a recession this year. They're planning for a recession this year, but they don't want to let go of their workers because they fear more not being able to find the people they need when the economy is really, really running again. So, I think there's a fear in corporate suites about losing workers. That's why you're not seeing layoffs --

RAMPELL: Yes, the labor hoarding.

ROMANS: Yes, exactly. Why you're not seeing layoffs outside of tech and, in some cases, media.

HARLOW: Do you think that this indicates that this soft landing is more real than we thought potentially?

ROMANS: I think this indicates you could have an economy that slows this year, maybe even slips into a recession, without big job loss. And what is terrible about a recession, factories close, main street pain, because people lose their jobs in huge numbers.

HARLOW: Is the job loss.

ROMANS: Is the job loss. What if you are facing a situation that you have some sort of mild recession this year but not massive job loss? That would almost probably feel better than the terrible inflation people endured for six or eight months.

RAMPELL: Well, it also depends a little bit on what the Fed does, right?

ROMANS: Yes.

RAMPELL: If this report makes the Fed nervous, maybe all of these things we heard this week about how they're going to sort of -

HARLOW: Yes. RAMPELL: You know, step back on how -

HARLOW: Temper.

RAMPELL: Temper their rate hikes. Maybe that will change. And I'm sure all of Wall Street is going to be watching very carefully for how Fed officials talk about the recent numbers. Are they going to say now we need to act more aggressively, or are they going to say, hey, maybe it's working? I don't know.

HARLOW: Yes.

ROMANS: A recession is not inevitable.

RAMPELL: Yes.

ROMANS: And, honestly, a soft landing is possible. No one will know for sure until we live through it.

HARLOW: Wow.

COLLINS: On that note.

HARLOW: Thank you, guys, very much.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

COLLINS: Thank you both.

All right, up next, we're going to talk to the director of the new CNN film "American Pain." It traces the rise and fall of two Florida twins, brothers, who trafficked more than $500 million in opioid pills in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had been on the job as a special agent for over 20 years. I have seen a lot of crazy, but this was just bat (EXPLETIVE DELETED) crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:51:05]

COLLINS: It's hard to believe, but more than a million people have died from drug overdoses during the opioid epidemic of the last 20 years. Nearly 100,000 of those deaths a year are from opioids. And now the new CNN film, "American Pain," takes us inside the opioid crisis itself, revealing the rise and fall of the identical twin brothers who ran one of the largest opioid pill mill empires in the country.

Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The George brothers did not start the opioid crisis, but they sure as hell poured gasoline on the fire. They became the largest street-level distribution group operating in the entire United States. Nobody put more pills on the streets than they did. Nobody. They created a blueprint for how this is to be done, and they were operating in broad daylight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The scale of this enterprise -- I mean, it was enormous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You had addicts streaming in from all over the country, thousands of miles, just to come to Florida to get drugs.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you see what's going on inside that clinic, your jaw just falls to the floor.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get your pills in the parking lot (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I had been on the job as a special agent for over 20 years. I've seen a lot of crazy. This was just bat (EXPLETIVE DELETED) crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Wow.

COLLINS: Joining us now is Darren Foster, the director of the film that you saw there, "American Pain."

Darren, we're so glad you're joining us on this remarkable film because this is such an issue in the United States that does not get enough attention. And what I was so struck by was what you heard from people saying, you know, about one of these clinics, that they would go down there, they would buy them for $3 a pill from these clinics, they'd go back to Kentucky and sell them for $20 and make all of this money. They said they would even sponsor people to go down there for their doctor's visits to bring pills back to other states.

DARREN FOSTER, DIRECTOR, "AMERICAN PAIN": Yes.

Well, first of all, thank you for having me.

Yes, the story of "American Pain" is basically the story of the greatest drug racquet to hit south Florida since the cocaine cowboys of the 1980s. You talk about the profit margins. Yes, a pill that could be bought for $3 at a clinic in Florida could be resold for ten times that much. And the profit margins were so big that people that were typically dealing in traditional street drugs, like heroin and cocaine, made the switch back in the mid to late 2000s to get in on the pill racquet because it was just much more profitable.

HARLOW: You know, I think a lot of the attention, rightly so, in this crisis in America has been focused on the big pharmaceutical giants, namely Purdue Pharma, right? Not as much on folks like this.

FOSTER: Yes. HARLOW: And the fact that you got such remarkable access to them, how did you do it?

FOSTER: Well, I started reporting on this story in 2009. I went down to report on the pain clinics in Florida. And at the time there was one clinic that had a reputation of being the biggest and the most prolific dispensary of these drugs. And it was called American Pain.

And so I went down there to film the clinic and I got my camera out, I took one shot and the next thing I knew I was surrounded by some pretty big dudes. And they chased me down I-95, me and my production crew.

HARLOW: Wow.

FOSTER: And, you know, we got basically -- the police came and broke us up, but as they drove away I wrote down the license plate and then the license plate traced back to Chris George. That was the first time I heard the name. About nine months later, Chris George and his identical twin brother Jeff George would be the targets of the large prescription drug trafficking case in U.S. history.

HARLOW: Wow.

COLLINS: And they both went to prison. One of them is out. One is still in, I think, until 2030 is how long his sentence is. You know, what do people see when you talk to them in this film?

FOSTER: You know, I wanted to tell the story of the George brothers because I thought it illustrated an important chapter in the history of the opioid crisis in America.

[08:55:06]

The rise and fall of the George brothers is very colorful. There's a lot of colorful characters in this. But, ultimately, it's a story about pharmaceutical -- the corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. These are the people that the pharmaceutical industry partnered with to pump out billions of pills to people who didn't need them and basically spawned the opioid crisis.

You know, what differentiates the opioid crisis from other drug crises in American history is that it was made in America. These pills did not come from foreign cartels in foreign lands. They came from American pharmaceutical manufacturers. So, even today, when we're looking at, you know, people switching to heroin and fentanyl now, which is driving the overdose rates, you know, it was the prescription drug who -- that primed the pump for all this.

COLLINS: Yes. Darren Foster, it's fascinating.

HARLOW: Wow.

COLLINS: And I'm so grateful that you spent so much time on this because it matters to so many people. So - so, thank you for joining us this morning to preview it. FOSTER: Thank you so much for having me.

COLLINS: Yes, absolutely.

And you can watch Darren's new film, CNN film, "American Pain." It's going to be on this Sunday on CNN, 9:00 p.m. Eastern.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning. We've had quite a busy few hours.

HARLOW: Yes.

COLLINS: And I hope everyone has a great weekend.

CNN "NEWSROOM" starts right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)