Transcript: Rep. Chrissy Houlahan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Sept. 22, 2024

The following is a transcript of an interview with Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, Democrat of Pennsylvania, on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Sept. 22, 2024.

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MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to Democratic Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania. She joins us from New York this morning. Good morning, Congresswoman, I know you are one of the lawmakers looking into this near miss in terms of the attempt on the life of Donald Trump recently, and the incident back in July. Did you get the answers you needed from Secret Service this past week? 

REPRESENTATIVE CHRISSY HOULAHAN: And first of all, thank you for having me. And yes, I’m one of 13 members, seven Rs, six Ds, that are looking into this particular event on July, but also the most recent one as well. Yes, we have been getting the answers that we’ve been asking for. We have been asking for quite a lot out of both the Secret Service as well as local law enforcement. And I believe that the answers have been largely forthcoming. If for whatever reason they’re not, the good thing about this particular group is that we have subpoena authority to be able to make sure that we get the answers. It’s really important that this group works bipartisan-ly and quickly to be able to understand what happened, to be able to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, and to your conversation with Senator Rubio, to make sure that we restore the faith and trust in the- with the American people in the institutions such as law enforcement and the Congress.  

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Congresswoman, I know the Secret Service on Friday publicly admitted some of the failures on their own part. It was a five-page summary, but the Secret Service said agents failed to use technology to detect the attacker back in July as he flew a drone over the rally. Trump’s detail had no idea police were looking for a suspicious person until shots were fired, and they never directed local police to cover a nearby rooftop. Do you trust the current leadership to address very serious issues like this?   

REP. HOULAHAN: These are very, very serious issues, and they have come up in our conversations and in the briefings that we’ve received, and there were some enormous gaps that you’ve mentioned, in terms of people texting information to each other rather than using the radio. In terms of people not even knowing that there were two command centers, there were huge gaps. And there were also some gaps, frankly, in kind of culture and people being relatively lax in the way that they communicated with one another, and all of these things have to be fixed. I do believe that the attention of the organization is fully on all of the different things that they can and should be doing to be correct- to correct themselves. I think also the attention of the Congress is on them as well to make sure they have the resources to be able to make those corrections too.   

MARGARET BRENNAN: And I want to talk to you more about some of those solutions on the other side of this commercial break, if you could stay with us, Congresswoman, so we could finish our conversation. And we’ll be right back with more from Congresswoman Houlahan. Stay with us.   

[COMMERCIAL BREAK]

MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to “Face The Nation.” We are continuing our conversation with Pennsylvania Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan. Congresswoman, just to button up this conversation about the Secret Service and political violence right now, our latest CBS poll shows Harris supporters think the nation will see a higher threat of violence if Donald Trump is elected, and Trump backers think the nation will see higher threats if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected. Do you have any concern about rhetoric? And with Democrats characterizing Donald Trump as a threat to democracy, do you think that can be used to justify or inadvertently even encourage violence?  

REP. HOULAHAN: Sure, and let’s start from the beginning. Political violence of any form is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it. And the Democratic Party, starting from the very top, from President Biden to Vice President Harris to members of Congress such as myself, have decried political violence full stop. And it is one of those things where we really do need to dial down the temperature and the vitriol and I think that it’s important that everybody do that. And as you mentioned in your earlier segment, it starts at the top. Leadership matters, and so both sides of the aisle need to make sure that we’re being thoughtful about these conversations that we’re having. But important to you about me to know is, you and I would likely not be talking had there not been the first election of President Trump. And many of the ways that he conducts himself, really need to make sure that that we understand that should he return to the White House, I am personally concerned that that would be a problem for our democracy. But that means that I’m working hard to make sure that I get out the vote and have the conversations to make sure that Kamala Harris is successful in her efforts to go to the White House.  

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you said that in this bipartisan investigation that is a focus for you, to make sure that you have Republicans and Democrats delivering the same message. And I take your point there.  

REP. HOULAHAN: Absolutely and- exactly. We were chosen because we’re serious lawmakers. We were chosen because we tend to be those people who are willing to do the work and to do it quietly and effectively, and to do it bipartisan-ly, and that’s what I intend to do.  

MARGARET BRENNAN: You are, as we said, a representative from Pennsylvania and the Commonwealth is a key battleground. Our CBS polling shows it is just dead heat there. But yesterday, Senator JD Vance was campaigning in Pennsylvania, and he said they feel extremely good about their prospects there. Do you have that kind of confidence?  

REP. HOULAHAN: I have the opposite feeling, which is, as I mentioned, I would not be talking to you had Hillary Clinton been successful years ago. And we had confidence as Democrats that evening that Pennsylvania would be blue, and as we all know, that wasn’t the case. So I will let Mr. Vance have his confidence, because I’m going to keep working all the way into the end of the election and through the finish line and through the tape, because I really believe it’s that important that we take nothing for granted and that we work as hard as we can during this next several weeks I guess. Six weeks now.  

MARGARET BRENNAN: Six weeks. And you know, on that debate stage, I heard Vice President Harris very specifically speak to the 500,000 Polish Americans she said, live in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and she drew that directly to her position on Ukraine and the war there. I know you are leading outreach to Polish Americans. How do you quantify how that war, 1000s of miles away from the United States, impacts how voters in the state of Pennsylvania actually think about it? Do you really think that it has an influence on the vote?  

REP. HOULAHAN: I do, and I can draw a straight line to it. My father was born in Poland. He was born in 1942 into a Jewish family. He and his mother survived the Holocaust. I’m here, I’m here in America because he was able to survive and came here and had a thriving naval career, and now I’m a member of Congress one generation later. That is because of the constant war that goes over that part of our of our world, starting back in the Huns. And I think it’s really important that we talk to the Polish-American population, as well as everybody from the kind of Eastern Europe area, because it’s not that long ago that World War Two was and that is absolutely something that can repeat itself if we don’t support the Ukrainians, and we don’t support their fight for their democracy, which is their fight for all of our democracies. Also, importantly as a Pennsylvanian, the Lithuanian National Guard is our partner country, and so our men and women are in Lithuania at this moment, within harm’s way, if we don’t help Ukraine. So I do think it’s absolutely an issue that makes sense and that we should talk about in places like Pennsylvania. 

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. And my producer is telling me it’s actually higher than half a million. It’s 800,000 Polish Americans. 

REP. HOULAHAN: It is 800,000–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Wow. Okay, all right– 

REP HOULAHAN: –It’s a good number 

MARGARET BRENNAN: It certainly seems like that. And the President of Poland visiting the Commonwealth today as well. We’ll watch and see how that impacts what your voters think. Thank you, Congresswoman, for joining us this morning. We’ll be right back.