On this “Face the Nation” broadcast, moderated by Margaret Brennan:
- Rep. Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas
- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
- Sen. Joe Manchin, independent of West Virginia
- Rep. French Hill, Republican of Arkansas
- Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostage affairs
Click here to browse full transcripts of “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
MARGARET BRENNAN: I’m Margaret Brennan in Washington.
And this week on Face the Nation: A potential government shutdown is averted in the 11th hour, but president-elect Trump and first pal Elon Musk show they will disrupt the way Washington works.
Nudging Congress to do their work is technically still President Biden’s job, but it was Trump and Musk calling the shots by social media last week. They didn’t get all of what they wanted, but will the drama prove to be a preview of what’s to come within the GOP in 2025?
We will talk with two House Republicans, Arkansan French Hill and Texan Tony Gonzales.
Then, outgoing Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas weighs in on extremism and the immigration crisis.
And West Virginia independent Joe Manchin reflects on his 14 years in the Senate as he leaves office, with advice for both parties going forward.
Finally, an update on the new efforts to locate journalist Austin Tice, who’s been missing in Syria for 12 years.
It’s all just ahead on Face the Nation.
Good morning, and welcome to Face the Nation.
We are just three days away from Christmas and the start of Hanukkah. Congress has gone home, but is last week’s chaos on Capitol Hill an omen of what is ahead in 2025?
Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales is here in studio to answer that.
Good morning to you.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES (R-Texas): Good morning, Margaret. Thanks for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So we just saw turmoil within the party over the past few days after president-elect Trump and Elon Musk scuttled this bipartisan deal, then demanded another deal that couldn’t get enough Republican support to get over the finish line.
Then we have this emergency stopgap measure that only takes us through mid- March. You are one of 34 Republicans to vote against it. Why?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: It’s pretty simple. My constituents were against the C.R. just as much as I was against the C.R.
It’s been a tough week, though. It started with the tragic shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. I have worked in a very bipartisan manner to make sure we have a national strategy that prevents against some of the school shootings that are occurring. I have been working with others to get that done. I think that’s important.
And then, in the House, of course, we had this messy bill that was put on the floor. It started with a 1,500-page bill. In my eyes, there’s no doubt that there’s a sickness in D.C., and that sickness isn’t going to be cured with these big, long, pork-filled bills.
You do got to give President Trump a lot of credit, though. He was able to whittle that down to 116 pages. Once again, the reason I voted no is, I think C.R.s are terrible. They do nothing but kick the can down the road. Let’s fast forward to March. Do you think we’re going to be any closer to coming up with a spending deal then than we are now? I don’t think so.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But if the government had shut down, the Border Patrol agents who live in your district wouldn’t have received paychecks.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Right.
That’s why we should have done our job, instead of just saying, hey, give us three more months, and I promise you, in three months, we’re going to do our job. We have ran that play before.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: We’re – in my eyes, you use Christmas. You use New Year’s. You lock everybody in a room and you say, let’s get it done now.
There’s also a bigger danger to this, too, is, if we’re not funding the government long term…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: … now all of a sudden, you’re telling the government you have to spend a year’s worth of money in six months or three months. That’s not fair to any of these agencies as well.
So, basically, it was a vote on my end to say, let’s do our job.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, which the Republicans who are in leadership had failed to get some of those bills done. In fact, Speaker Johnson chose to go this route with the C.R.
But I want to ask you about the dynamic here because it’s confusing, frankly. I mean, Elon Musk is tweeting against bipartisan deals negotiated and led by the speaker of the House. What role exactly is he playing here?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: It’s kind of interesting. We have a president. We have a vice president. We have a speaker. And it feels like – – as if Elon Musk is our prime minister.
And I spoke with Elon a couple of times this week. I think many of us…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Unelected.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Well, unelected.
But, I mean, he has a voice. And I think a lot of – large part of that voice is a reflection of the voice of the people. Once again, these – a 1,500-page bill, how does that pass the smell test? It’s absolutely wrong. It’s what’s wrong with this place. So we have to get back to regular order.
The other part of it too is, while House Republicans were fighting over this spending bill, guess what Senate Democrats were doing?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: They were ensuring that President Biden got his 235th liberal judge over the finish line. That’s why it’s so important that House Republicans stay united, stay laser-focused on delivering on a President Trump agenda next year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But Republicans in the House are clearly not united. And it was Speaker Johnson who led that bipartisan deal.
Do you support him if – he’s standing for reelection. Should he still lead the party, if you’re saying he was leading in the wrong direction with a 15-page (sic) initial funding deal?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Yes. And I do. I do support Speaker Johnson. I think he’s done a fantastic job keeping us all together. It’s like feral cats on the House, right?
So that’s a tough job to begin with. But the fact that he was able to work with President Trump in order to whittle it down to a little over 100 pages, the fact that he was able to work with – with Elon Musk and some of these other folks, other members to find a solution just goes to prove that he’s found a way.
But there also – this can’t be the norm.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: This cannot be the norm. Once again, that’s the reason why I voted against the C.R. is, this cannot be the norm. We have to get back to regular order and pass our appropriations bills.
Homeland security is certainly important to us. There’s other things that are going on in the world.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, because the Republican majority now is so thin, it will also be thin in the new Congress. But, right now, any missed vote gets a lot of attention.
Congresswoman Kay Granger hasn’t cast a vote since July. And there was a local reporter in Dallas who looked into this and found the 81-year-old has been living in a local memory care and assisted living facility for some time. That was not shared with the public.
Were you and others in the Texas delegation aware?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: I wasn’t aware.
I think there’s no doubt a lot of us knew that she was gaining in age, like a lot of members do. And, sadly, some of these members wait until it’s too long – too – too – things have gone too far.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And leadership allowed for it?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: I think it’s maybe – I’m not too sure what leadership knew on it or didn’t know on it.
I’d say, on the other side of the aisle, it’s the same thing. I mean, we saw what happened on the Senate side with Senator Feinstein and some of these others that have missed votes for a long time.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: I think this goes – gets back to the root of it. Congress should do its job.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: And if you can’t do your job, maybe you shouldn’t be there.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, she wasn’t there. And, apparently, it went either unnoticed or just not acknowledged to the public, which certainly raises eyebrows.
I need to get to the border, because that is – you have, what, 800 miles of the border in your district.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: That’s right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Border Patrol had fewer than 50,000 apprehensions at the southern border last month. That’s a Biden era low.
Does that mean, coming into office, that essentially the crisis has been fixed before Donald Trump even arrives, and that it’s not as big of a project as initially thought?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Oh, no, it’s a huge project. And while the Biden administration has started to do some things right, the Trump administration is going to do everything right, in this manner.
And I will tell you why. This is why it’s important. Earlier this week, I had a classified briefing on the threat – the worldwide threats to homeland – to our homeland.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: I won’t share some of the sensitive stuff, but I will share some of the open-source stuff in Syria. A lot of us are rooting for a free Syria.
A free Syria brings a lot of opportunities for first ability in that region, but it also brings a national security threat. Assad was a bad guy. He imprisoned a lot of folks, sometimes wrongfully.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Some of those folks are terrorists. Now they are loose. Where are they? Where are they going?
Well, let’s bring it back to the southern border. This year, the Biden administration has apprehended 600 Syrians. Does that mean all those Syrians are terrorists?
MARGARET BRENNAN: No.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Of course not.
But do we know who these people are and who are – and are they coming into our country? This is something that President Trump is going to get to the bottom of.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you want to halt refugee admissions, like Donald Trump is talking about? You want to block travel from Muslim-majority countries, like the Trump team is talking about?
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: I want – I want the president – I want the president to enforce the laws that we have on the books, that simple.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, no? Those aren’t laws on the books.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: It…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Refugees are accepted in the United States of America.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: And they should be, right?
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: I want us to follow our laws, right? And if – and if we need to make changes to our laws, Congress should be the body to make those changes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: And in my eyes, we can both protect those that are warm and welcoming.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: We want people to come and live the American dream, those that are fleeing political persecution.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: But we also have to go after the criminals and the terrorists.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood.
Tony Gonzales, good to have you here.
REPRESENTATIVE TONY GONZALES: Thank you. Merry Christmas.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
Face the Nation will be back in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: On Friday, we sat down with outgoing DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to get his thoughts on the homeland security challenges facing the new next administration.
Here’s part of our conversation.
(Begin VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We recently saw that killing of the UnitedHealthcare division CEO on the streets of Manhattan.
Manhattan prosecutors called it a killing that was intended to evoke terror. Would you consider him a terrorist? Is this domestic violent extremism?
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS (U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security): The rhetoric on social media following that – that murder is extraordinarily alarming.
It speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country. And, unfortunately, we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists. The threat of it in the United States is one of the great threat streams that we must counter.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But when you say something’s bubbling, what’s the national trend that you’re seeing?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: I – look, we have been concerned about the rhetoric on social media for some time.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And that’s against CEOs? That’s against the government? That’s against leadership?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: We’ve seen narratives of hate. We’ve seen narratives of anti-government sentiment. We’ve seen personal grievances.
And the language of violence accompanying or being a part of those narratives is something that we’re very concerned about that. That is a heightened threat environment. I still am alarmed, though, by the heroism that is being attributed to an alleged murderer of a father of two children on the streets in New York City.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And a lot of that seems to be around the health care industry and what that company was doing. It’s depersonalized. The victim is depersonalized.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: And – and the victim is a person.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: And the victim is a husband, and the victim is a father.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Face the Nation has been to the border, toured some of the federal facilities, and we saw some of those small children who came across without parents and without caregivers.
And I don’t think – I certainly won’t ever forget that. There were also children who were separated from their families by the Trump administration. The last report we saw shows that Homeland Security reunified just short of 800 children with their parents.
Why is it so hard to reunite families? And how much unfinished business are you leaving behind here?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: So we are very proud of the work that we performed through the Family Reunification Task Force. But there’s more work to be done.
Some of the parents who were removed are difficult to find.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Some are reluctant to come forward, worried that the separation could occur again. We’re dealing with vulnerable populations who have gone through trauma.
So there are a myriad of challenges, some of which we have been able to overcome, as you note, for 800 or so families, but there’s more work to be done.
MARGARET BRENNAN: How many are left?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: It is unclear…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: … because the – we were not left with good records. Data was not kept. And so that was also one of the great challenges that we had to overcome.
MARGARET BRENNAN: ICE was also unable to account for more than 32,000 unaccompanied kids who failed to appear in court from 2019 to 2023, according to the report we read.
The incoming border czar, Tom Homan, says these children are being exploited and trafficked. Is that true?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Well, we certainly…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you know?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Margaret, we certainly have received reports of children being trafficked, even those as to whom we know where they are.
That is outside the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: What we do is, we turn children over within 72 hours, as the law requires, to the Department of Health and Human Services, and then HHS places those children.
Of course, we investigate cases of trafficking. But there are children who are reunited with a parent here in the United States or a legal guardian. And they move, and, sometimes, the government loses track. Individuals do not comply with the reporting obligations or otherwise.
I think it is inaccurate to say that all of them are trafficked or victimized.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In December of last year, border crossings were at record highs. Now they’ve dropped to the lowest level of the Biden administration.
How much of that drop-off is because Mexico is now stopping migrants from even getting to that southern border with the United States?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: That is, critically, one element of it. It is not the only element of it.
The president took executive action in June of this year. That has been a key driver of the – the low number of encounters at our border. We are now delivering…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: … to the incoming administration a southern border at which the number of individuals encountered is well below the level experienced in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But the immigration surge into the U.S. since 2021 has been the largest in American history.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That is incredible. So…
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Oh, it is – Margaret, it is one element of the greatest displacement of people in the world since World War II.
This is a phenomenon that has not been unique to the southern border of the United States.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: It is something that has gripped the entire hemisphere and the world.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I think you have said to me one of the very first things the Biden administration did was ask Congress to act in the earliest days.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Yes. Yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And then, fast forward, you had this bipartisan near- miss on a border bill. All that time passed.
Why wait until five months before the U.S. election to put in place those asylum restrictions that did cut off the flow, that ended the crisis?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Margaret, remember where – Margaret, remember where we were when the president took office. We were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The prior administration had imposed Title 42, which is a public health authority…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: … and enabled us to expel individuals, to continue to expel individuals at the border, as the prior administration had done.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: There was tremendous pressure to maintain the workings of Title 42, which we did. That held until May of 2023.
We then turned to Congress, and we asked for supplemental funding that was desperately needed to make our administration of a broken immigration system work much better.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: We were denied. We went back to Congress a second time and requested supplemental funding.
Denied. We then turned to the bipartisan negotiations, which proved successful, which were then killed. The result of it, a really terrific solution was killed by irresponsible politics.
Looking back now in hindsight, in 2020, if we had known that irresponsible politics would have killed what was clearly a meritorious effort and a meritorious result, perhaps we would have taken executive action more rapidly.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
Because Republicans argue in this back-and-forth over whose job it is to fix the problem, Congress would argue there was executive authority that could have been used before Congress legislated, and they point back to the crisis starting at day one, when Trump era immigration policy was peeled back, remain in Mexico, the 100-day moratorium on most deportations that was announced, the halt to wall construction.
Did those measures – and I know you weren’t yet in office personally, but did those measures set you up for failure?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Remember something. Remain in Mexico is touted as the great panacea.
The trend lines of migration were increasing quite exponentially from 2018 to 2019. And that is reflected worldwide.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Remember something also about the executive action that the president took in May – in – in June of this year. We also over time built capabilities that we did not previously have, not just domestically, the number of facilities that we stood up, the ability to transport individuals and decompress areas that were experiencing surges of individuals, but our negotiations with Mexico, with other countries in Latin America and around the world.
We are now removing or returning more individuals in three years than the prior administration did in four.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: And we are doing so not only greater in volume, but greater in speed, because of the negotiations with other countries and to more countries than has ever been the case.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, why didn’t we hear more about those enforcement actions during the election cycle, when immigration was so key?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Margaret, we’ve been executing on enforcement at an unprecedented level throughout this administration. And ICE just published data that evidences that quite powerfully.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
But that data you just cited shows deportation of migrants is at a 10-year high under President Biden, a 10-year high. So what shifted at DHS that – that prompted this deportation of more than, what, 200,000 unauthorized migrants from the United States this year?
That – that’s one of the highest numbers in recent years…
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Margaret…
MARGARET BRENNAN: If Congress didn’t give you the power, how did you do it?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Margaret, we did it with skill, with strategy, and with unflinching dedication to that mission.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But it would also suggest that there is the ability to do it without Congress acting, right? That’s the downside of showing you can make it work.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Yes, but, Margaret, we made those very impressive statistics happen.
But there is much more work to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: And what we have to do is to ensure that the problem does not continue.
This broken system needs to be fixed. And it’s not just to ensure that individuals who do not have a lawful basis to remain in the United States are removed, but it’s also to ensure that we are providing humanitarian relief…
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: … to those who qualify, one of our proudest traditions, and that we are also fueling the economy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You said recently that this massive Chinese hacking known as Salt Typhoon, the hacking of eight telecom companies that siphoned up this metadata, the phone call records, logs and information for millions, potentially, of Americans, was accessed.
Why hasn’t the U.S. government stopped it?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: The intrusion is a very significant one and an extraordinarily impactful one and an absolutely unacceptable one.
And the president has demonstrated a strong response to the People’s Republic of China. It is very sophisticated.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Rhetorically?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: I’m sorry,
MARGARET BRENNAN: Rhetorically, when he met with Xi Jinping?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: Well, just recently, the United States Department of Commerce proposed a – an action against China Telecom.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: So this is an ongoing situation. It is not static.
The intrusion is a very sophisticated one. The telecommunications companies are working very vigorously to remediate it. They are working in partnership with us, with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies of the federal government.
MARGARET BRENNAN: This is the largest intelligence compromise, potentially, in U.S. history.
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: It is a very serious compromise, and requires very serious action to remediate and recover from it, and also very serious response to it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.
How did you find it?
SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS: That is not something I can – I can speak to.
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: The full interview is on our Web site and our YouTube page.
We will be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Here’s some optimistic news.
Our CBS News poll finds that Americans are feeling more hopeful than discouraged as they look ahead to the new year. That’s up 10 points from how they felt a year ago.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will be right back with a lot more Face the Nation.
Stay with us.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. We go now to Little Rock, Arkansas, and Republican Congressman French Hill.
Good morning to you, sir.
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL (R-AR): Good morning, Margaret. Merry Christmas.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And a Merry Christmas as well to you.
This was quite the journey to get you back home and to get lawmakers to wrap up business this past week. No Democrat voted against this measure to keep the government open, but 34 Republicans did.
Doesn’t this show that Republicans really struggle to govern when they pass things along party lines? I mean won’t they need to work with Democrats in this new Congress?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, I think it’s very, very important that Speaker Johnson and incoming Majority Leader Thune have a steady plan together to work with the incoming Trump administration to prioritize the president’s priorities, our priorities in the House and Senate, make sure we’re on the same page because with narrow majorities we’ve got to work together. And that’s critical. And I think this last week demonstrated that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you will have a fractured conference, a slim majority. Mark Short, who was the director of legislative affairs in the first Trump administration, said this chaos shows just how hard it will be to tackle border and tax policies in 2025.
What’s the reality check on the timing of that and actually delivering on what Trump campaigned on?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, I think Speaker Johnson and, again, Majority Leader Thune, working with President Trump, wanted to use the budget reconciliation process. That’s still being discussed as to exactly what that procedure will be. But I believe actually that Republicans on both sides of The Hill are united that we want to unleash American energy for future production and an all of the above energy strategy. We want to secure the border. We want to fight inflation through supply side regulatory reforms. We want to roll back those regulations that are constraining the markets and constraining private business having access to capital.
So, I think we’re on the same page. And I think budget reconciliation will be a way to start that process and also rein in unsustainable $2 trillion deficits.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but you can do a party line vote in the Senate there with the Republicans, but can you really get 218 Republicans to vote in the same direction when it was such a struggle just with keeping the lights on?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: I think we can. I think we demonstrated that last year when we – last year, in the last Congress, when we put together the most comprehensive Republican only voting for border security for an all of the above energy strategy. Those are two priorities that President Trump campaigned on. We are united on those strategies, and I think we can get those priorities across the House floor, as well, as I say, rolling back unneeded regulatory burden on the American economy and small businesses to help fight inflation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, one of the things that was stripped out of that initial bipartisan deal that Speaker Johnson had put together was a restriction on U.S. investments in China. It would have affirmed presidential authority to impose sanctions on advanced technologies.
Your Democrat colleague, Rosa DeLauro, insinuated publicly that Elon Musk came out against this because his real motivation were – was his extensive business ties to China. Do you share her concerns, and will this get passed?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, look, President Biden had an executive order governing outbound investment. We’ve had a debate in Congress between the House and Senate on the best way to do that. We all want to limit American investment in dangerous, I would say, dual use technologies that can be turned around and hurt the – America’s – America’s national security. But striking that balance has been difficult. But I don’t believe that was at the heart of the 1,500-page problem. I think people – a majority of members clearly wanted a simple, straightforward, continuing resolution and not what was turned into a large omnibus spending bill on top of a CR.
So, I think president – I mean Speaker Johnson did a good job coming back around from that, focusing on disaster assistance to the hurricane hurt states in the southeast –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Farm assistance for those farmers, and having a clean CR with an agreement with President Trump, with Majority Leader Thune on how we would tackle reconciliation to cut spending next Congress.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
You are going to be the incoming chair of the House Financial Services Committee in the new Congress. That’s one of 17 committees. Patrick McHenry, the outgoing chair of House Financial Services, was asked whether it matters that the Republican Party chose only male leaders.
Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPRESENTATIVE PATRICK MCHENRY (R-NC): For us to have no women chairs of committees is a huge mistake and really an unfortunate thing because we have powerful, smart, capable, tenacious Republican women that are capable of leading big committees and doing major things.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Why didn’t the Republican Party select any female leaders?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, that’s a decision made by our steering committee, but I’m delighted in the House Financial Services Committee that we have a strong, very passionate, successful Republican women like Ann Wagner of Missouri, Young Kim of California, Monica De La Cru of Texas. And we’re very excited to have Lisa McClain from Michigan, our conference chairwoman, and also Maria Salazar from south Florida, joining our committee.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: They will be active leaders in Financial Services policymaking.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Quickly, I know you’ve been trying to restrict Captagon, this amphetamine drug that the Assad regime was selling to prop up the dictatorship. Our teams in Syria filmed factories full of this stuff. What’s going to happen now?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: Well, first, we need the United States to be very active, work with partners to support a free and democratic Syria. Secondly, we need to document the war crimes committed by the Assad regime as it relates to all the people murdered, killed, imprisoned, tortured, in the – from the regime, and also track down the networks that were producing Captagon. We will have support from the kingdom in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states to do that. But it needs to be stopped.
But I’m proud of the work we did to interdict Captagon and cut off the funding because I think it absolutely contributed to the end of the Assad regime. And that’s something to celebrate.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we will be tracking what happens with that.
Before I let you go, I do want to ask you as well, a source familiar with the investigation tells CBS News that tomorrow the House Ethics Committee’s work investigating former Congressman Matt Gaetz’s alleged sexual misconduct and drug use will be released. Last month, on this program, you said it’s up to that committee, but we don’t want to set a precedent where we, under any circumstances, will release documents from that committee.
Do you still object?
REPRESENTATIVE FRENCH HILL: And it’s not – well, I don’t know, but that’s how I would characterize what I said. I said it’s up to that committee. I think they are – they have released documents before. But I think that’s something they should do with a great deal of caution because you open up a pandora’s box of a lot of other investigations over many, many years, conducted by that committee. But if they’ve thought it through, reviewed the material and made that decision, that’s their decision.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
Congressman French Hill, thank you and have a Merry Christmas.
We’ll be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Late last week we spoke with retiring West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, known for playing a pivotal, sometimes frustrating, role with Democrats in many of their legislative achievements. The full interview is on our YouTube channel and website. For the broadcast, we looked to next year when Republicans are fully in charge of Washington.
(BEGIN VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, when you were speaking to us on FACE THE NATION last January, you said, “I love my country too much to vote for Donald Trump. I think it would be very detrimental to my country.”
He’s the president-elect. Do you think he is detrimental to America?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN (I-WV): January 6th was a bridge too far for me. And I think everyone knows that. I was one of the few Democrats that went over and worked with him and we always got along great. We’re very friendly. Had – just – we just had disagreements on some things. But you can do that.
When the people speak and they make their choice and the election’s over, you better pray with everything you have that the president will be successful.
This is about our country. And I want him to succeed. And I have said this to him, I’ll do whatever I can to help in any way humanly possible.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But you’ve talked about the need to return to bipartisanship and regular order.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Sure.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Donald Trump is promising to destroy regular order, upend the system.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I – I have –
MARGARET BRENNAN: How do you reconcile that?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I have – I have total confidence and faith in my Republican Senate colleagues that are institutionalists that won’t (ph) let that happen. They have the chance (ph). They have the power. And I think there’s enough Republican senators, and Democrat senators too. That are not going to let the filibuster blow apart, they’re not going to let basically run amok of the reconciliation process just to do anything they want to. It takes four Republican senators, just four. And I guarantee you, I think there’s a lot more than four.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Who are going to hold the line.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: That will protect the institution. They’ve been here long enough. What goes around comes around. And in two years, this thing could flip. 2026, you never know. It’s the power of the people.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In the first 100 days of the Trump administration, Leader John Thune has said he plans, “a once in a generation investment in border security,” but he’s going to try to do it without Democratic votes using that reconciliation process you just talked about. So, with 51 votes, not the 60, you – you’re saying right now that this is – this is not how the system’s supposed to work.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: It’s not supposed to on policy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And yet that is what the Republican leader is saying he’s going to do right out of the gate.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Hold on, Margaret. If – he’s going to have to show the financial connotation and the cost it’s causing and how it’s harming our country. If it’s harming it in the financial burden that we’re carrying because of all the illegals coming and he can tie that to it, then he’ll have a pathway forward.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And then step two is tax reform. That’s the plant.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Tax reform definitely finds (INAUDIBLE).
MARGARET BRENNAN: Also through reconciliation.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Yes. Well, here, I followed Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden starting out in their 117th Congress with the ARP. I begged the president –
MARGARET BRENNAN: The American Rescue Plan.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: The American Rescue Plan. Not to go in reconciliation. That’s basically, when you’ve given up, that you can’t work with the other side, they come out of the box that way. So, this is the plan that the Republicans are following now that the Democrats basically showed them the pathway.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But is it a strategic mistake?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Oh, I think it is.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRA, you played a big role in crafting. That was party line. That was through reconciliation.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: That’s how the vote came down. We wrote that bill in my committee. And I guarantee you, I had over five years of input for Republicans. But because of reconciliation, they don’t cross over and vote. That’s just the way it was.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And you feel good about that?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Well, I feel – no, I feel horrible about that we had to do it in reconciliation. I feel horrible about that. But I can tell you, the United States of America has benefited from that. We didn’t fall into a recession. We brought down inflation from 9 to 3 percent. We brought down gas prices from $5 to $3. We did all of that. But the supply chains were so broken because of the pandemic. The prices of everyday staple of life, food, things of that sort, made it almost unbearable for people to – for the burden they were carrying.
The IRA kept the United States economy in better shape than any place else in the world during the pandemic. That’s a fact.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The president-elect has vowed to repeal it.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Well, I think there’s some things that need to be fixed. When you pass a piece of legislation, and you write the bill, and we wrote it as tight as we possibly could, and then they start basically putting the rules to it.
If the White House says, I want this type of interpretation, that makes it very, very liberal interpretation. It’s not what the bill was supposed to do. I said, you people are going down a primrose path, which is horrible. We didn’t write the bill that way. In spite of themselves trying to liberalize and putting EVs out and all of the critical minerals, we’re still depending on China when we were supposed to be weaning ourself off of China. He can fix that immediately.
President Trump can come in here and change some of those rules to get back. He – and change – change the bill. It will be his – it will be his energy bill. But, you know –
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, reprogramming some of these funds you’d be OK with?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Reprograming, absolutely.
MARGARET BRENNAN: There are things in there, tax credits for nuclear biofuels. Do you think parts – you think parts of this will survive?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I think it almost has to.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: The investments are made. And most of the investments – the majority of the investments are made in what you would consider red states. Republican states. That’s just because of what they do and how they operate, like West Virginia.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And you didn’t hear much about that from the Democratic ticket during the campaign.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: They couldn’t talk about it. He was tongue tied.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Why?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I had no idea. I kept saying, can’t you just exact – tell what the bill did. They were saying, renewable, renewable, renewable. The only thing I said, you cannot eliminate your way to a cleaner environment, Margaret. You can’t just say, I want to get rid of coal. I want to get rid of oil. I want no gas. I want nothing extracted. We’re going to do everything with renewables. We’d be a third world country. You can’t keep this economy running.
Now, you can do it with innovation, technology. So, I said, we’re going to produce what we need, and we do it cleaner and better than anywhere in the world, producing more. So, the bill did exactly on energy production. You wouldn’t be number one in the world right now 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, 4.7 billion barrels of oil, you wouldn’t do that if we hadn’t written that bill. He can take that and even go further with it. There are so many good things in that bill, then he can change it, change the name, it will be his. I’ll help any way I can.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You sound, speaking about energy policy, like a Republican.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I hope I sound like an American. It makes sense. OK? My Democrat friends are so far off the rail. OK, I love them all, but they’re – I said, guys. But a lot of them really understand it. They just can’t speak it because the base has gone so far. And that’s – I just – I couldn’t take it anymore.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, she is a Republican, but she’s also known for being pretty independent.
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: She’s the best of the best, my – my dear friend.
MARGARET BRENNAN: She said, “the next four years are going to be hard. The Trump administration’s approach is going to be, everybody toe the line, everybody line up. We got you here. And if you want to survive, you better be good or we will primary you.”
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: Thank God for rank choice voting. Without – without rank choice voting, my dear friend Lisa wouldn’t be here. Or open primaries. If the Democrat and Republican Party control the primaries, they can control you up here. So, they’re going to say, hey, Margaret, I’m sorry, you just didn’t toe the line right. You didn’t vote with us when we needed you. So, I’m going to find somebody else that I can control.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Who else is going to stand up to the president-elect when they disagree and be willing to say so out loud? Are there other senators up here who will do it?
SENATOR JOE MANCHIN: I would hope – you know, you – my father used to tell me, if you can say no with a tear in your eye, you’re OK. If you can do it with respect and just say, Mr. President, I’m so sorry, where I come from that doesn’t make sense. I can’t explain it back home. I never did say, oh, you’re wrong. You don’t go – you can’t start out a conversation that’s going to end productive if I tell you how bad you are on the front end.
(END VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: The ambassador charged by the Biden administration with freeing Americans held overseas, Roger Carstens, traveled to Syria late last week to make the first known contact with that country’s caretaker government following the ouster of dictator Bashar al Assad two weeks ago. Carstens sought help finding American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared 12 years ago.
We spoke with Carstens on Friday about why it was important to be on the ground in Syria.
(BEGIN VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: You told reporters that you were amazed at the number of secret prisons that Bashar al Assad had, more than 40 of them. Have those prisons been searched yet, and do you know if journalist Austin Tice was held in them?
AMBASSADOR ROGER CARSTENS (U.S. Special Presidential Envoy For Hostage Affairs): So, it’s not going to shock me to find out that there are prisons that have yet to be discovered and searched. I would say if I’m stunned by anything, it’s just the amount of prisons. I mean you would almost think that if you were running a country and you wanted to jail your enemies, you’d have one prison, and it wouldn’t be secret. But to have, like, 35 or 40 secret prisons, I find that just horrifying, disturbing and yet in a way fascinating.
But really the bottom line is that we have to help and – or rather work with our interim authorities, officials, to make sure we do a good search so that I can one day look Debra Tice in the eyes and tell them that our search has been exhausted.
Now, in a perfect world, we’re going to find Austin Tice. I think I’ve gone on record numerous times saying that I believe that he’s alive and he’s waiting for me to find him. And the president, not long ago, said that he believes Austin’s alive.
Our job, in the U.S. government, is to keep pressing and pressing and pressing to find out Austin’s location, his disposition, his status and to bring him home.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re referring to them as interim authorities. Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of HTS, also known as Mohammed al-Golani, was described by State Department officials as being very pragmatic in those meetings today. But his group and he himself are still technically designated as terrorist under U.S. law because of prior affiliation with al Qaeda.
Do you trust that they are being helpful to the U.S. now?
AMBASSADOR ROGER CARSTENS: They were definitely helpful today. We conducted a joint search of a facility that we thought – we all thought would have a probable, I guess, have some sort of relation to Austin Tice. So, I understand, of course, their past. What I can tell you right – is that right now they’re being helpful in the search for Austin.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, you conducted a joint search with HTS of a prison today. Did you believe that that is where Austin was being held?
AMBASSADOR ROGER CARSTENS: We came up with a priority list of about six sites. And of those six sites, we felt that this had the highest probability of having held Austin at one time. But really the long – the – I guess I would say the best way to describe it is, we’re just not sure. With the time that we had on the ground, it seemed to be our best shot. So, we gave it a good, hard look. We’re going to review all the information and evidence that we collected, and hopefully render some more decisions about the probability. But really our job is to just to keep searching.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Assad intelligence ministries were known for keeping scrupulously detailed records, numbering prisoners, alive and dead. Do those records still exist?
AMBASSADOR ROGER CARSTENS: So, we’ve had a chance to find various documents or I would even say file folders holding information. Again, in the joint search that we conducted with the interim authorities today, we came across numerous documents. That’s going to have to be brought back. It’s going to have to be translated from Arabic into English. And sometimes these documents will actually have evidence on them. They may have fingerprints. They may have traces of DNA.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And this was a search you conducted along with special operators from JSOC?
AMBASSADOR ROGER CARSTENS: I would never go into talking about who I was with. But I will tell you this, I was with members of the FBI. The hostage recovery fusion cell holds primacy on these cases. People that are experts at looking at crime scenes. And they did a wonderful job of sweeping it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I know back in 2020 you went there at the direction of then President Donald Trump along with Kash Patel. The regime at that time never admitted to the United States that they held Austin Tice. Do you believe they were lying back then and that the regime did have him?
AMBASSADOR ROGER CARSTENS: The regime, when we talked to them in 2020, they issued maximalist demands. They want – they asked for the world. They weren’t really giving anything. They never admitted to having Austin Tice. They never promised to give us any proof of life, POL as we call it.
I would say that at some point we came across information and that is highlighted by President Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken that led us to believe that at one point the Syrian government truly did have Austin Tice. Did they – did they have him until the very end? That’s information we’re still trying to sort through. But at one point we feel very confident that the regime did detain and have Austin Tice in their custody.
(END VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We will be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s it for us today. We want to wish you all a very happy holiday season. This year, I wish you Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, because they are all celebrated this week. And since my colleague Major Garrett will be here next Sunday while I spend some time with my family, I’ll add Happy New Year.
Thank you all for watching FACE THE NATION. I’m Margaret Brennan.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
