'This Week' Transcript 6-16-24: Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Sen. Tim Scott and Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein

'This Week' Transcript 6-16-24: Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, Sen. Tim Scott and Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein

ByABC News

June 16, 2024, 9:47 AM

A rush transcript of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" airing on Sunday, June 16, 2024 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the "This Week" transcript archive.

JONATHAN KARL, ABC "THIS WEEK" CO-ANCHOR: And there were several potential Trump running mates cheering him on as he returned to Capitol Hill. One of them joins me now, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Senator Scott, thank you very much for being with us this morning.

I want to start with the Supreme Court's decision on Friday.

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): Good morning.

KARL: Good morning.

The Supreme Court's decision on Friday, overturning an order – an executive action by President Trump to ban bump stocks after they were used in what was and still remains the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Were you satisfied with that? Have any concerns about that decision?

SCOTT: You know, Jon, it's simply this. We – we trust and believe and respect the decision of the Supreme Court. What we need to focus on, Jon, is the violence that we're seeing across this nation. Under Joe Biden we've seen the greatest increase in violent crime in my lifetime. And so focusing on ways for us to reduce that crime means getting four more years of Donald Trump. Under Donald Trump we actually respected law enforcement.

Under Joe Biden, we've seen the movement to defund the police, leaving communities like the one I grew up in devastated and ravaged by a wave of violent crime that we have not seen literally in five decades.

KARL: Actually, senator as I – as you probably know, the latest stats on violent crime and on the murder rate, they're actually down this past year. But let me get back to my question about the Supreme Court's decision.

SCOTT: Well, let's – let’s – let’s take – let's take a look at those – those – let – let's take a look at those crime rates.

We've seen over 4,000 shootings just in the city of Chicago. We've seen a spike in violent crime. It's nice to see something plateau. But the fact of the matter is simple, under Joe Biden neighborhoods like the ones I grew up in have never been ravaged.

KARL: OK. But – but – but – but back to –

SCOTT: When mothers, like the one that raised me, are trapped in their houses from the time the sun goes down until it comes up again.

KARL: So, to my question though on – on bump stocks, would you now favor a Congress acting to ban bump stocks? You had said after that shooting in Las Vegas that if – if the vote came up it would sail through Congress. So, are you in favor of that ban right now?

SCOTT: Well, I'm strongly in support of the Second Amendment. But what we're going to do in the party, and President Trump said it on Thursday, we’re going to focus –

KARL: I asked about the ban on bump stocks, not the Second Amendment.

SCOTT: We're going to focus – we’re going to focus on the priorities of the American people. And what the priorities of the American people are today is to focus on closing our southern border. Under Donald Trump we had a precipitous drop in illegal border crossings. Under Donald Trump – under Joe Biden, we've seen an explosion, 10 million illegal immigrants have invaded our country, leading to migrant crime that we just saw just yesterday.

KARL: OK.

SCOTT: The mother of five killed by an illegal immigrant. So, what the focus will be is on the safety of the American people. That starts with focusing on our southern border.

KARL: OK, so you're not going to answer that question.

Let me get to Donald Trump's visit to Capitol Hill. I want to ask you about a few of the policies he spoke out in the meeting with the House Republicans and with the Senate Republicans. During the meeting with House Republicans, he declared that he, quote, “loves tariffs.”

I'm just wondering, do you – I know you’ve been a free trader for as long as I've known you. Do you love tariffs now?

SCOTT: Well, listen, one of the things that we have to do is recognize that we should focus on free trade, but free trade requires a fair competition. When you have China literally lying, cheating and stealing our intellectual property, yes, tariffs create headwinds that actually levels the playing field. But more importantly, what we need is a president who understands how to fix our broken economy today. And Donald Trump led us to the strongest economy we've seen in the last 50 years.

KARL: So, let me –

SCOTT: It started with the tax cuts and jobs act that lowered rates and made us more globally competitive. But, frankly –

KARL: So, let – let me ask you about – let me ask you –

SCOTT: China absolutely steals our intellectual property, and that's devastating. We have to have (INAUDIBLE).

KARL: So – so – so – so let me about you about one of the specific policy ideas he floated while he was in Washington. He floated the idea of raising tariffs high enough to be able to eliminate all of the income that comes in from income taxes. Is that – I mean by some calculations that's a 70 percent across the board tax on everything imported in the country. Some other estimates it’s nearly 100 percent. Would you favor a policy like that, replacing the income tax with a massive new tariffs on everything coming into the country?

SCOTT: Well, Jon, I wasn't in that House meeting.

KARL: Yes.

SCOTT: I was in the Senate meeting. But what I can tell you he spoke about during his time with the Senate is actually exempting taxation on tips. The working class coalition that is now supporting Donald Trump is supporting Donald Trump because they know looking back over his four years they were better off under Donald Trump. Their wages went up. Their taxes went down. They had more spending power.

Under Joe Biden, we've seen the exact opposite. Their wages, frankly, have gone down. Costs have gone up. And they have less spending power. And so what we talked about during the meeting with President Trump is the importance of focusing on the actual working class. Exempting tips is a great idea, followed by more tax cuts that actually generates more revenue to the Treasury and more money in the pockets of the average family.

KARL: OK. All right.

SCOTT: Jon, when we did this in 2017, we saw revenues go up to the Treasury in 2018 and 2019, and $4,000 back in the pockets of the average family.

KARL: So – so this was Trump's first visit to Capitol Hill since before the attack on January 6th. I want to play something for you that he said just days before he came back to Capitol Hill about those who have been convicted for attacking the Capitol.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Those J6 warriors, they were warriors, but really more than anything else, they're victims of what happened. All they were doing is protesting a rigged election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: So, do you -- do you buy that? The people that came and beat up Capitol police officers, broke into the building, that they're warriors, or he's also called them hostages, that they're victims.

Do you -- do you agree with that?

SCOTT: Yeah. Anyone who attacks an officer whether on the Capitol grounds or any place else in the country should serve time. The question is for those nonviolent folks who sat outside, who actually simply protested or came into the Capitol because the doors were open, and created no crime, no challenges, those folks today sitting crime in pretrial. That's a devastation.

Some of those have been in pretrial incarcerated for longer than the sentence attached to that crime.

But let me say simply, Jon, the greatest threat to democracy today is Joe Biden. It started back when he became president. We saw a botched Afghanistan withdrawal where 13 Americans lost their lives. We've seen a wide-open, insecure, unsafe southern border with sleeper cells likely in our country, over 100,000 Chinese nationals crossing our southern border, men from Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan now populating our country.

KARL: Senator -- Senator --

SCOTT: Part of the 10 million illegal immigrant invasion.

KARL: OK. Senator, the day before that violent mob attacked the Capitol, you put out a statement explaining your decision to certify Joe Biden's election victory.

Do you stand by that? You were not one of those that challenged the results. You voted to certify Biden's election victory. Do you stand by that?

SCOTT: Certainly. I will stand by that decision and the next decision to certify the fact that Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. November 5th, the day of reckoning, is coming. Early ballots go out in places like North Carolina starting in September.

We're going to focus on making sure that we use every tool in the tool kit to make sure that this election results are clear and profound, and that the American people get four more years of low unemployment, low inflation, high enthusiasm, and a president respected and sometimes feared on the global stage. That president will be Donald Trump.

KARL: All right, and very quickly, we're just about out of time, but you had said that Mike Pence absolutely did the right thing when he defied Donald Trump's demand to -- to not certify that election.

Do you still stand by that, that Pence absolutely did the right thing on January 6th?

SCOTT: The Cons -- the Constitution is clear. What we're trying to focus on is how do we make sure we get four more years where the American people, particularly kids like me, growing up in poverty, have the best future we could possibly have --

KARL: Senator Scott, thank you.

SCOTT: -- getting (ph) their version of the American Dream. That takes Donald Trump.

KARL: Senator Scott, thank you very much for being with us here this Sunday. Thank you.

SCOTT: Thank you, Jon. Yes, sir.

JONATHAN KARL, ABC "THIS WEEK" CO-ANCHOR: All the President’s Men the book, which Time Magazine later called perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history. Did it seem that way at the time?

BOB WOODWARD, “ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN” CO-AUTHOR: No, this, this was a necessity. We'd signed up -- Carl had the idea, let's do a book, because we'd written these stories that no one believed and --

CARL BERNSTEIN, “ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN” CO-AUTHOR: Well, but more than that, we didn't think the truth about Watergate was going to ever come out.

KARL: But the book became about you guys, kind of, right?

WOODWARD: Yes, and so we're going through and how do we write it? And I said, Well, the one rule of journalism, write about what you know best and know -- you know nothing better than what you've done, so let's write about what we did. And your reaction was --

BERNSTEIN: -- that this was going to be an ego trip, that we could not do it. But Woodward said, look, we don't have anything to write about at this point, but ourselves.

WOODWARD: And so my mother had a house in Naples, Florida. We went down there with our boxes of data. Carl sat out by the swimming pool in the most awful pair of green shorts you've ever seen, let alone his body, and typed on a, had a little table and his typewriter there. I sat in the kitchen and we said, to get this done, we're going to have to each do 10 pages a day, and then we can go out to dinner. And so that's what we did.

KARL: So I want to get to the beginning of the book, because you talk about how the day of the break in, the day after the break in, when you guys come in, you're assigned to the story.

WOODWARD: I looked across the room and he was working on this story, and I said to myself, Oh, God, no, not Bernstein.

KARL: And according to the book, when you find out that Woodward's on, on the story as well, you write “that figured, Bernstein thought Bob Woodward was a primadonna. Bernstein knew that Woodward couldn't write very well. One office rumor had it that English was not Woodward's native language.” Who wrote that line?

BERNSTEIN: I suspect I did sitting in that chair in my green shorts.

WOODWARD: No, because I knew that was what the office story was on me, so I wrote it.

BERNSTEIN: The real thing is, though, that within a few days of working on this story together, each of us saw in the other remarkable things. In fact, we often switch, to this day half a century later, roles that are expect– what's expected of me, he'll do. What's expected of him I'll do. A lot of the writing in here, some of the best writing in the book is his. It's the way it’s worked all along–

WOODWARD: Can you, will you say that again?

KARL: Yeah, yeah that's on -- we’re on the record now.

BERNSTEIN: It's true and in a number of other things that we've written together.

WOODWARD: But I mean, what it demonstrates is the power of collaboration. One, I mean, you learn always. We learn in our personal lives, you never do anything alone effectively. And it's the same with journalism and the culture at the Washington Post at the time was Ben Bradlee was the great editor, and it's true, he believed in giving reporters running room.

KARL: Why is it that this book has become such an iconic book for journalists? I mean, this was a huge bestseller, but, you know, in a way, it inspired not just one, multiple generation of journalists. The book and the movie?

BERNSTEIN: Well, I think two things, and you said the movie, the book itself is like a primer on basic reporting. It's -- you see, what's the most important decision we make as reporters? To go out at night and to visit people who work for Richard Nixon and his reelection in their homes, knock on their doors, have the doors you know, slammed in our faces, except for the few that didn't. And then you see in the movie those people who talked to us, enabled us to get our foot in the door. And the movie took it to another level, because visually, you see what we write, and it has a different kind of power.

KARL: So rereading the book, I was blown away at how closely, particularly, that opening chapter follows the movie, or the movie follows the book.

BERNSTEIN: There was an understanding from the beginning when Robert Redford bought the rights to the movie and Alan Pakula became the director, it was an understanding among all of us that the movie was going to be absolutely truthful and follow the book, because that's what happened. [BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

JASON ROBARDS AS BEN BRADLEE IN “ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN” (1976): We’re under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, First Amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press and maybe the future of the country. [END VIDEO CLIP]

BERNSTEIN: Ben Bradlee came up to us and said, ‘Okay, you really sure about this story?’ And we said, ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘because there's never been a story like this before.’

WOODWARD: Well, you're about to accuse the Attorney General, the person closest to Richard Nixon, of being a criminal.

BERNSTEIN: Right. You better be right.

KARL: What are you thinking when you are seeing, you're watching the president resign?

BERNSTEIN: Awe that the system had worked. We knew we were a part of what had happened.

WOODWARD: Yes, but there's a lot of accident in this. When I was in the Navy and worked for the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Moore, he sent me over to the White House to deliver documents. And by accident, I'm sitting next to a guy with gray hair like this, and we’re waiting because you always had to wait. And I introduced myself, Lieutenant Woodward, and he said, I'm Mark Felt.

KARL: Deep Throat.

WOODWARD: And I met him, got his phone number, and essentially, he obviously had gone to law school and so forth. I was thinking of law school, and so my initial contacts with him, were kind of career advice, and– and I'm working at the Post, and realized there's this guy Felt and oh, he's now the number two in the FBI and in charge of the Watergate investigation–KARL: Incredible. WOODWARD: And so we kept that secret from 1972 to 2005. BERNSTEIN: Well, I remember when he first told me, I said, ‘How does he get in touch with you?’ and Woodward said, ‘I moved the flower pot on my balcony,’ and I thought, ‘I'm with somebody here who is kind of pathological.’ You move the flower pot on your balcony?

WOODWARD: But see at the core, it’s protect the source, because if you can have a source like that, who gave us direction and encouragement. And remember, we're living in a world where even our colleagues at the Washington Post were saying, you know, those two young kids have – are off on some sort of bender.

BERNSTEIN: And we were 28 and 29 at the time.

WOODWARD: This is somebody who can speak from truth and you really have, we know in journalism, you have to protect truth and the sources of truth.

KARL: But you have to trust him too. You shared the name with him.

WOODWARD: Yeah.

KARL: You guys had a joint byline --

WOODWARD: We have to. He has, we have to know. And then we– there came a point, I don't know exactly when it was, when you said to me, he said, you know, we are connected for life.

BERNSTEIN: Well, that's the thing that's really, you know. And 50 years later, we're on the phone, usually a couple times a week to each other. We keep up with the work that the other is doing. We talk about what's going on here in Washington, about what's going on in the White House, and uh --WOODWARD: And what we don't know, which is always too much –

KARL: Which is a lot.

BERNSTEIN: We're joined at the hip.