WGN: Quigley Discusses Trump's Obstruction and the U.S.-China Trade War

HOST (Larry): Joining us now from Washington, DC is Congressman Mike Quigley. Congressman, good morning. Thank you for joining us. Glad to be here. Thank you. Most analysts would say any kind of impeachment thing is not going anywhere with the Republican controlled Senate. So, do you vote on a principle? Or, do you play the long political game in this?

QUIGLEY: Well, what I've talked about for a long time now is let impeachment take its course. Some of my colleagues wanted to file, and did file, articles of impeachment over a year ago. That's before we had any aspects of the Mueller report, before we knew about General Flynn, before we knew about Manafort, and Cohen, and others. The frustrating part here, Larry, is it is very clear the Special Counsel wanted us to review the aspects of obstruction by the President of the United States. It's extraordinarily difficult to do when this is what you have to review. A largely redacted report. Clearly, the guts of the report are redacted. So, it's our constitutional authority to review what the Administration has done. It's very hard to do when the President continues the obstruction through his Attorney General.

HOST (Robin): I'm wondering if you're hearing from constituents. Are any of them suffering from what some might say is "Mueller fatigue?" You get a different story about this every day, and some might say "we Congress should just get about doing things that are proactive." Are you hearing from your constituents that they want you to focus on this?

QUIGLEY: Oh, I think they want both, and we're capable of doing both. Just in this Congress so far, we passed gun control legislation. This week, we're dealing with disaster relief. Last week, we passed a climate change bill. So, we're doing both. And you're right about fatigue, but it's not a new syndrome. Just months before Richard Nixon resigned, polling showed the American public was very tired of the Watergate investigation and didn't feel like the President of the United States should resign. Obviously, a couple months later, it was a different story.

HOST (Larry): Congressman, do you expect Mr. Mueller to testify and what particular question do you have, first and foremost, for him?

QUIGLEY: I do believe he will testify, and part of the reason I think so is he was seemingly extraordinarily frustrated with the Barr response to what he did for two years. I want to ask the Special Counsel about things that aren't in the report, including the counterintelligence investigation, which is how this all began. And did they begin to look at the money laundering issues or whether the President of the United States was compromised by foreign agents or countries?

HOST (Robin): With these Chinese tariffs increasing overnight, I'm wondering if you would take a different tactic or what you would to instead to maybe even out things and how this approach, you think, is going to work?

QUIGLEY: Yeah, no one wins a trade war. What we're seeing right now, for example, is Illinois farmers suffering mightily. And often a trade conflict has economic victims that take months, and sometimes even years, to surface. This is working with our allies and diplomatic means to bring the Chinese to the table. But obviously, Robin, it has ramifications for everything else. As we know, everything in the world is tied to everything else. So our faltering relationship with the Chinese is impacting our ability to control the leader of North Korea. Obviously, his recent tests show that he feels that he has carte blanche to act because Beijing has his back. And obviously Moscow does too. So, there are means. There are plans that could be put in place to confront this. One of them was something we missed under President Obama. We should've completed a trade deal in the Pacific Rim to counter the Chinese presence there. That's going to affect us economically. It's going to affect us militarily.

HOST (Larry): Alright, Representative Mike Quigley, we appreciate you joining us.