Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews

November 19, 2015

Chris Matthews: Well, late last night, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, as you saw there, spoke out from Times Square after ISIS released a propaganda video suggesting that the iconic Midtown neighborhood of Times Square was a target of the terror group. Well, many of the clips of New York were used in previous ISIS video published in April. The implied threat comes now in the wake of Friday’s attacks in Paris, and just a week before the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In the reporting from Paris this week, we’ve learned from French officials, now acting under a state of emergency, that there are potentially hundreds or thousands of individuals in that country who have become radicalized but haven’t yet acted criminally. Similarly, an FBI – as FBI Director James Comey warned last February, there are investigations into people in various stages of radicalizing here in our 50 states.

I’m joined right now by the Mayor of New York Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, it’s great to have you on this show, although it is a sad time.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Yes.

Matthews: What do you – what do you think of, when you think about the threats to New York and the fact that there are, we’re told, radical – radicalized people who haven’t committed any crimes and therefore can’t be picked up, but are right now thinking how much they hate this country, hate your city, and might well be on the verge of a criminal act?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Chris, I think that the New York City Police Department is prepared in every way, I really do. The fact is that we obviously know of some people who have been a cause of concern and there’s a long history of ensuring that those people don’t do anything to harm this city. We’ve had 14 years since 9/11, and there has not been a successful terrorist attack. Now, the reason I think we can say with some assurance that we’re going to continue that tradition is because we have an extraordinary anti-terror capacity in this city. For a long time, New York City has maintained a separate anti-terrorism capability. We work now more and more closely with our federal partners, but we have our own capacity, including officers around the world, the NYPD, that gather intelligence, help us prepare.

We just added 500 anti-terror officers, our Critical Response Command, to help prevent terror, but also to – in the event we have a lone wolf that was undetectable, so that we can respond with a heavily armed, well trained force very, very quickly, even at multiple locations. So we’re in a high-state of readiness and we have a great track record of prevention.

Matthews: You know, years ago, John Lindsay, the mayor of New York, he was a Republican, but he said there’s no Republican way to collect garbage. His argument was some things just had to be done, regardless of your ideology or party label. You’re a pretty well-known progressive, sir, and I wondered if – is there a nuance of difference in the way you would go after this situation or Rudy Giuliani would go after it ideologically, or is it just a question of police work?

Mayor: Well, I’d say a couple of things. First, I think a muscular capacity is something that probably cuts across party lines in this city. And Mayor Bloomberg put together a strong anti-terror element in the New York City Police Department – I give him a lot of credit for that. We’ve had to add to that and build upon it because we’re dealing with a new threat with ISIS, and new dynamics. That’s why we added 500 more officers, a lot more training and equipment, etcetera. In terms of some of the strategies we employ – look, I believe fundamentally that one of the best strategies is to draw all communities closer to our city government and to our police, so that there’s actually the trust and the flow of information. That includes our Muslim community. We’ve worked very hard to improve our policies, to end some of the surveillance efforts that people in the Muslim community found to be an invasion of their rights; to add new elements, for example, we’ve added two school holidays – Muslim school holidays that have been a very, very important, passionate cause of concern for the Muslim community for years. That is part of saying to the community, look, we are all together. Vast majority of Muslims in this city, this country, are law abiding, loyal Americans. We want them to know we are with them, they are with us, in the fight against terror.

Matthews: That gets to my point. This week, front runner, of course, on the Republican side – if you look at the polls – Donald Trump of New York said he’d strongly consider – these are careful words – closing mosques as a counter-terrorism measure if he was president. On Monday, I asked former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani whether he agreed with Trump. Here’s here what Giuliani had to say.

[Clip plays: Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “[Inaudible] I don’t agree you shut them down, but I do agree that you can have police in there listening to what they’re doing. In fact, I’m the mayor who put the police in, Bloomberg continued, and de Blasio took them out. It saved us, I would say, two or three attacks.”]

Matthews: He’s talking about putting police into mosques. Sir, where do you stand on that?

Mayor: We believe that we have exceptional intelligence gathering capacity and the ability to prevent attacks without violating people’s constitutional rights and without alienating the very community we want to work with us more closely. NYPD is very, very much on top of the situation, including any people that might be a cause for concern, but we don’t achieve that by quote-unquote, “putting people in mosques.” We don’t achieve that with some of the other previous efforts that were very alienating to the community. We achieve it with good police work, good partnership with our federal authorities – which bluntly, there wasn’t enough of in the past, and now there’s a seamlessness between the FBI, NYPD, and other agencies.

But look, let’s get to the Trump quote. It is absolutely a misunderstanding of the United States constitution and our values to say, let’s think about shutting down a house of worship. That goes against the founding ideals of a country. And think about, if you’re a Muslim American, law-abiding, loyal citizen, think about what that sounds like. Chris, you’ve talked a lot about the history in this country of Catholic leaders – obviously we all think about what JFK went through when he ran for President. What if people were saying at any point in our history, let’s close down Catholic churches because we disagree with what some cardinals are saying or what some Senators were saying. It really flies in the face of our values, and bluntly, it’s almost like propaganda for our enemies who want to convince Muslims around the world that America is their enemy. We should be disproving ISIS’s theories, not helping to reinforce them.

Matthews: You know, I love our country’s freedoms, and I – we were talking tonight about the New York Times. You probably read it today, Mr. Mayor – Mike Schmidt wrote it. One thing out of the conundrum that the law enforcement people at the federal level face – and you do in New York City, since it may be a target, who knows – and he talked about the problem of the FBI anxious because they know that people are out there who make speeches against our country, who twitter really anti-American lies. They talk about support for ISIS, even directly. They also have access under our Second Amendment outside of New York to go around and buy heavy hardware. They can buy AK-47s. So we have a country – you put the First and Second Amendment together, and you throw in zealotry, religious-based zealotry, and we have a problem of predicting how the powder – when it’s going to blow. And then is it – doesn’t that worry you? It worries me.

Mayor: It worries me for sure, but I want to start at the beginning. Those same exact facts you delineated, exactly right – well, that’s what’s going on with militias around the country that aren’t about foreign terrorism. They’re home-grown, sadly. They target law enforcement officials willingly. That, and they – and same exact reality – there are people who use violence against America and against law enforcement – they can get those weapons, as you described. These campus shooters, who often don’t have any ideology, they have a mental health problem, they can get these weapons. You’re entirely right – the laws in this country governing the use of guns don’t stop this violence from happening in many, many forms. But, I agree with you, possibly the most galling of all, is that a terrorist who wants to attack the United States of America and says it out loud, can still get a gun at a store in this country, even if they’re on a list that identifies them as a danger.  You know, I’d like to believe that the NRA and others –

Matthews: 2,000 of them have done it.

Mayor: Say it again?

Matthews: 2,000 have done it.

Mayor: 2,000 have done it!

Matthews: According to – have done it. And by the way, the NRA is non-discriminatory when it comes to who gets guns. They’re for everybody getting them, including terrorists.

Mayor: Well, this is – you know, maybe – maybe this is a moment for some revelation because people are waking up to the threats we’re facing around the world more and more. Maybe it’s something that will jolt the debate in this country on the availability of guns, just like the campus massacres. I got to believe at some point there’s a critical mass that actually changes our politics and actually changes our policies. 

Matthews: You know, I thought when Bobby Kennedy, the Senator for New York, was killed by an Arab terrorist because they didn’t like what Bobby was saying about where we should have our embassy in Israel – that was the basis of his mission, if you will, of Sirhan Sirhan. I wrote my Congressman. I thought that would stir a change on gun control. It didn’t. Anyway, Mayor de Blasio, you’re going to stick with us. I want to talk to you – thanks for sticking around – I want to talk a bit about this refugee debate – which is very related to the one we’re talking about – the fears people have. We’ll be right back.

[Commercial break]

Matthews: We’re back with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. Now let’s talk about another matter – the long term issue of Syrian refugees, Mr. Mayor. Republicans have taken a tough stand opposing their admission to the country. Let’s look at what 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said about the debate yesterday.

[Clip plays: Mike Huckabee: “The people who are pushing for us to take them in, interestingly, they’re not pushing for them to come into their neighborhoods. I don’t see people saying, ‘Let’s send them to Martha’s Vineyard, let’s send them to Chappaqua, let’s send them to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.’ You know, the people who are asking for this live behind gated communities and are generally guarded by armed guards.”]

Matthews: Mr. Mayor, I don’t know how [inaudible] directed that was, but it sounded like that.

Mayor: Wow.

Matthews: I mean, Martha’s Vineyard and the Upper West Side, I would be careful the way this guy does his targeting. But I don’t think you have gated communities along Amsterdam Avenue, just a thought.

Mayor: Yeah, Broadway, not a lot of – not a lot of armed guards and gated communities on Broadway, New York City. That is a correct statement, Chris.

[Laughter]

Unbelievable. Chris, I – look, the bottom line here is, this is the kind of thing that really speaks against everything we are as a country. We are a country of immigrants; we are a country that is known for being humanitarian, compassionate in the world. We are trying to send a message to 1.6 billion Muslims – a vast majority of whom are peace-loving, law abiding – that we care about them and their humanity too. And here are hundreds of thousands of people being forced out of their country by Muslim extremism, by terrorism, and instead of embracing them and saying, how can we help, here we have presidential candidates acting like we’re no longer America, we no longer want to help people in need.

I referenced the other day a study, or I should say a public opinion survey, this – you’ll appreciate as a student of history – 1938 Fortune Magazine survey of American voters, 67% said we should not accept Jews fleeing Nazi violence and persecution – 1938. And look – look at the results of the policies that then ensued because of public opinion. We can’t let this kind of negative attitude underlie – undermine, I should say, who we are as Americans.

Matthews: By the way, I just read Martin Goldsmith’s book about that, about his going back over the – what happened to his relatives who were on the St. Louis, who was sent back to Europe, and it was not a good end for any of them. Mayor de Blasio, thanks so much for coming to us from New York.

Mayor: Thank you, Chris.