MARGARET BRENNAN: Overnight, the U.S. military evacuated some diplomatic personnel from its embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and flew in Marines to reinforce security at the facility, as the country faces a threat from heavily armed gangs occupying most of the city.
We will be back in a minute.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION.
We continue our conversation with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner and Vice Chair Marco Rubio.
(Begin VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: If I could -
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: I'm against it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I know. You're consistent in that.
SENATOR MARK WARNER We - we have different -
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Biden campaign joined TikTok, Senator Warner.
SENATOR MARK WARNER: And - and I said - and I said that sent a pretty darn mixed message because the Biden administration supported my earlier bipartisan legislation that we – would lead to a path of potentially banning TikTok because I believe that TikTok, both controlled by the Chinese communist property, both collects data and, as a news source, literally half of young people in America get a lot of their news all from TikTok.
MARGARET BRENNAN: One hundred and seventy million Americans are on it.
SENATOR MARK WARNER: And the idea – if you don't think the Chinese Communist Party can twist that algorithm to make it the news that they see reflective of their views, then I don't think you appreciate the nature of the threat. And would the United States ever allow China to buy CBS? I don't think they would. And we - we might have slightly different ways on how we go at this, but we think this is a national security issue.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: The danger of TikTok is not that somebody goes on that video and, you know, puts something up that looks stupid or silly. The reason why TikTok is so attractive, its value is it has an algorithm, a recommender engine, which is one of the best in the world. That is owned by ByteDance. Under Chinese law, ByteDance must own it. And the only way that that recommender engine works is if they have access to the data.
So, it doesn't matter who you sell TikTok to, where they're headquartered, it doesn't even matter where they store the data, the - as long as ByteDance engineers in China have access to that data, control the algorithm, they have to have access to American data to make it work. And that's what we need to confront. That's the reality here.
SENATOR MARK WARNER: And
MARGARET BRENNAN: You like this House bill?
SENATOR MARK WARNER: Listen, I think there is - I think there's a lot of creativity on TikTok, and I think if they had to discourage (ph), as long as the algorithm moved – if this was a Brazilian company or a French or a Canadian company it wouldn't cause me near the consternation.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: I don't know about the – I haven't read it in detail yet. It's not an easy thing to resolve. But ultimately what we have to focus on is who owns the algorithm, because whoever owns the algorithm will have - will have access to the data. And that's -
SENATOR MARK WARNER: And manipulating that algorithm -
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: Right.
SENATOR MARK WARNER: Can mean what kind of information you're going to see. And if you don't think that could be used as a – the most powerful propaganda tool ever, then I don't think you appreciate that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In an election yeaSENATOR MARK WARNER: In an election year, then you don't get the threat.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You, Senator Warner, said last month that we are less prepared for foreign interference in 2024 than we were in 2020. What exactly are you concerned about?
SENATOR MARK WARNER: Well, we have nation states, China, Iran, Russia, who know that interfering in our elections is both effective and cheap. We have a lot more Americans who have, for a variety of reasons, less trust in any of our institutions, including our voting system. We have a court case that was in the Fifth Circuit that it restricted the voluntary communication between social media and the FBI or SISA. And you have that cauldron of change going on. And then you throw in artificial intelligence tools that can bring deep fakes or voices or other manipulation at a speed and scale that's unprecedented.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: It's the area of maligned influence, right? What are the issues that already divide Americans? So, let's amplify messages that put them at each other's throat, that makes their politics even more conflictive. We already do a pretty good job of it on our own. Help us do that. And that doesn't just deal with elections. We're beyond just election interference with malign influence. It's now an effort to influence our policy debates, to divide us year-round.
SENATOR MARK WARNER: Right.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: On a regular basis. Russia does it and they've done it for a long time. The Chinese want to get into this business. The Iranians and others will join them because - and not just here. We've already seen examples of it in other democratic nations. It's a growing risk. And I think one of the first things you have to do is talk about it so people understand what it is we're trying to describe. It's not hacking ballot boxes. It's hacking the minds and our political debate in this country by exacerbating pre-existing tensions to the point of boiling over.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And it's not clear how people are supposed to protect themselves against what you just described.
SENATOR MARCO RUBIO: Well, it begins with awareness and the understanding that sometimes these messages that are being driven, or some of these things that people are putting up online, are not real, or they are a video of something that happened halfway around the world ten years ago, not down the street one month ago. But they're things that are designed to get people angry.
And, you know, algorithms feed this because people love content that shows something outrageous and more people will view it, so it's easy to push this. And before you know it, people are out there voting and at each other's throat over something that may not even be real.
MARGARET BRENNAN: This is the biggest risk for election night?
SENATOR MARK WARNER: It's a huge risk. And - now, we've got a job to do, and I hope others will advance this as well. Twenty tech companies said in an agreement in Munich that they would try to put watermarking and that would indicate if content has been altered or - or deep fake. And they –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Is that sufficient?
SENATOR MARK WARNER: They've said they will take it down. But it's all voluntary. So, we need to keep the pressure on.
And, frankly, I think the administration needs to lean in more and I think we need to do a better job – I think people were potentially more aware, even four years ago under President Trump, to do a better job of educating that with these new tools, like deep fakes, you know, don't believe everything you see and hear.
(End VT)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Our full conversation with our senators is on our website and our YouTube channel.
We'll be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to the House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who joins us from Brooklyn, New York.
Welcome back.
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): Good morning. Great to be with you.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Leader Jeffries, you know, our latest CBS polling shows Donald Trump with a four-point lead over Joe Biden. And Mr. Biden has not consolidated his base Democratic voters. Specifically among black voters, Biden is ahead of Trump, 76 to 23, but that core Democratic group that he won with about 90 percent back in 2020 is showing just it seems like a lack of enthusiasm. How does President Biden fix it?
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, the polling has been all over the place but I'm confident that at the end of the day, in November, the overwhelming majority of African Americans, Caribbean Americans, black voters throughout the country, will support President Biden, understand that he has delivered over and over and over again on issues of concern, whether that's the lowest rate of black unemployment in decades, whether that's historic investment in historically black colleges and universities, making sure that he has been supportive, and incredibly so, of small business creation and entrepreneurship in the black community, building upon the efforts that had been previously done by President Barack Obama. And Joe Biden has a vision for the future of an inclusive economy that grows the middle class and ensures things like home ownership within the African American community can continue to grow.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, we heard a bit of that vision in the State of the Union Address, but we don't often hear from the president on many of these things.
Al Sharpton was just quoted in "The Washington Post" saying the campaign needs to do more to draw comparison between, quote, "two old white guys." He said they need to spend more money on ads, more money touting the record you just laid out.
Is that it? What is it that is making people not have this enthusiasm?
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Well, I travel throughout the country and spend time, of course, in the district that I represent here in Brooklyn, and there is a high degree of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden, and it is growing. President Joe Biden had an incredible State of the Union Address. He was strong, he was serious, and he was substantive, and he drew a clear contrast between his vision of moving America forward in an enlightened way that's inclusive of everyone, and the contrast with the extreme MAGA Republicans who want to turn back the clock, turn back the clock on reproductive freedom, turn back the clock on voting rights, turn back the clock by ending Social Security and Medicare as we know it. President Joe Biden is on the right side of those issues.
MARGARET BRENNAN: They would say they don't plan to do that.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: On the right side of those issues for the American people.
MARGARET BRENNAN: On the issue of the border, our polling shows by more than five to one voters say Biden's policies will increase the number of migrants attempting to cross versus Trump policies. That's an impression. I know in the state of New York you recently had a race in New York Three, the victory of Tom Suozzi. And he campaigned on tougher border positions. Specifically, he said he was comfortable describing this as an invasion. I wonder if you endorse that language and if you would encourage Democrats to adopt it?
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Tom Suozzi ran a great campaign. He communicated with voters. He talked about common sense solutions to meeting the challenges that are facing the American people. Now, we believe, as Democrats, that we have a broken immigration system and that we need to address the clear challenges at the border. President Biden has repeatedly made that clear.
Entered into negotiations with Republicans who decided to detonate their own border policy bill because they were ordered to do so by Donald Trump, who's more interested in playing political games than solving the challenges at the border. Tom Suozzi leaned in to the fact that he supported the bipartisan bill that was being negotiated in the Senate.
<p>MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: And that Republicans are the ones who walked away from it. That is what was decisive in that campaign.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It wasn't just process. He used that word, invasion. He used much stronger language. Do Democrats need to campaign in a – with a stronger message specifically on immigration, and you know the - the flow of migrants is only expected to pick up in the coming months. This isn't going away as a campaign issue.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Invasion is not a word that I would ever use. I'm not sure whether he used that word or not or in what context. I do know what Tom Suozzi said he believes that we are a nation of immigrants, of course, through his own experience, his grandfather coming over from Italy.
At the same period of time, we need to also deal with the challenges that we confront at the border, anchored in the notion that we also are a nation based on the rule of law. And we can and should do both
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK. Dreamers are not in the Senate bill. And as you know, the speaker in the House has said it would be dead on arrival, even if it were to pass the Senate.
So, moving to another issue that seems also stuck in Congress right now, aid to Ukraine. It runs out, ammunition does, in the month of April, according to the Ukrainian government. You want to get the $95 billion package, I know, from the Senate through the House. There's no date to do that. Speaker Johnson has not committed to do that. Do you need an alternative? And can you promise Joe Biden, who made this issue number one in the State of the Union, that you can deliver on it?
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: Of course we don't need an alternative when you have a comprehensive, bipartisan national security bill that has come over from the Senate and all we need is an up or down vote in the House of Representatives. And everyone in Washington knows that it will secure at least 300 votes if not more so we can meet the needs of America's national security -
MARGARET BRENNAN: But there's no date to do that.
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: And to support our democratic allies in Ukraine and Israel, humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians who are in harm's way, support our allies in the Indo-Pacific. That's a question for Mike Johnson, when he knows that the House has the votes to act on America's national security interests.
The reason why it's not happening is because there's a pro-Putin faction in the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, who are blocking this legislation. And that's shameful.</p>
<p>MARGARET BRENNAN: Will you protect Speaker Johnson from a motion to vacate if he takes that vote? Will you prevent him from being ousted?
HAKEEM JEFFRIES: We haven't had that conversation as a caucus, but I have made the observation that I believe there are a reasonable number of members, if the speaker were to do the right thing, that don't believe that he should fall as a result of it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That sounds like a yes.
All right, Leader, thank you for your time this morning.
And FACE THE NATION will be right back.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: And we're joined now by the vice chairman of IBM, Gary Cohn, who also served as former President Trump's top economic adviser in the White House.
Welcome back.
GARY COHN, VICE CHAIRMAN, IBM: Great to be here.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to talk to you about a few things with the economy, but also what President Biden took aim at in terms of taxes, because you were the architect of this tax policy.
Tax rates for most Americans could go up as soon as December of 2025 because that's just an expiration date unless Congress acts. Secretary Yellen said if Biden wins re-election he'll seek tax cut extensions only for people earning less than $400,000 a year. What do you think of that plan?
GARY COHN: So, Margaret, let me explain. So, when we redid taxes in 2017, the personal side of the tax code expires December 31, 2025. So, as of January 1, 2026, we revert back to the very complicated tax code that we had in 2017. So, people have to remember that. It was extremely complicated. You bring in all these things as personal deductions, itemized deductions. Now you bring in SALT deductions. We raised tax rates
MARGARET BRENNAN: State and local taxes.
GARY COHN: Right. We raised tax rates, but you bring in all the loopholes that we got rid of.
So, what we tried to do when we re-wrote the taxes is we tried to simplify it and we tried to get rid of all the loopholes that basically the wealthy people in America use. And that was a way that we tried to make the tax code fair. And the data shows that we've made the tax code fair. If you actually look at who pays taxes in this country, the bottom 50 percent of earners in the United States pay 2.3 percent of tax collected. And the top 10 percent pays over 70 percent of tax collected in this country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That is - that sounds like the exact opposite of what President Biden described in the State of the Union, because he took aim at billionaires. He said they pay a lower tax rate than teachers. He proposed minimum taxes of 25 percent on billionaires. How do you respond to that?
GARY COHN: Well, again, I think you've got to take one little step back here. A billionaire is a measure of net worth. It's not a description of their taxable income. You could be a billionaire and have no taxable income. You could not have a billion dollars and have a high taxable income. So, when you look at the way people are –
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because it could be you're just sitting on assets.
GARY COHN: You're just sitting on assets.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right
GARY COHN: And you could be sitting on illiquid assets, you could be sitting on liquid assets.
We do a very good job in this country of taxing income. That's what the Constitution talks about. The Constitution talks about taxing your income. There is no income in this country unless you buy a tax-free bond that doesn't get taxed at a minimum of 20 percent. Whether it's interest or dividends or capital gains. So, there's no billionaire in this country that has income that is not paying at least 20 percent.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But the president is tapping in to at least a perception that wealthy people have far more of an advantage and that corporations are taking advantage of the little guy. I mean he went down to the 10 percent fewer snickers in the bag analogy in his speech.
GARY COHN: He did. He did.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Basically saying, you're getting ripped off. So, what do you make of - of that idea, though, and - and the explanation he's trying to make for why people are experiencing inflation even though the rate is coming down?
GARY COHN: Well, let's - let's talk about inflation for a minute because I think they're really important concepts for everyone to understand. Inflation has a compounding effect. Meaning, as you look at inflation year over year you're adding up those numbers. You're not starting at a zero every year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
GARY COHN: So, if we had 6 percent inflation last year, 7 percent inflation, and now we have 4 percent inflation, that's 10 percent inflation. So, if you take a basket of groceries at the beginning of 2020, just a simple basic basket that costs $100, it costs well over $125 today because those 4 percent one year and 7 percent one year and 7 percent the next year, they add up. They're cumulative. So, there's a huge cumulative effect to inflation.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, when people are being told, consumers, you're wrong, inflation's heading – no, they're right, it is actually more expensive.
GARY COHN: They're completely right. They're completely right. And what they're more right about is we at least finally have gotten to the position where wage growth is faster than inflation. But we had not been there until the last few months.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
GARY COHN: So, people were losing purchasing power. And that's why people were angry. And then take on top of that the high interest rate environment where if you thought you might have been in a position to buy a house because you saved money, you go out to get a mortgage at 7 or 8 percent, you can't afford a house. So, people got very frustrated because the costs of their every day lives got very expensive and the cost of investing in their future by buying a home got nearly impossible.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, president – former President Trump is campaigning, talking a lot about the frustration consumers have. And I want to ask you specifically about this idea he's floating of tariffs. He's said tariffs as much as 60 percent on - on China. Last night he outlined these plans.
(BEGIN VC)
DONALD TRUMP (R), (Former U.S. President And 2024 Presidential Candidate): And if China or any other country makes us pay a tariff or tax, let's say 100 or 200 percent, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100 or 200 percent right back. It's called, you screw us and we screw you and everybody's happy.
(END VC)
MARGARET BRENNAN: You've said on this program in the past, Trump's tariffs in the last administration hurt consumers. Will this hurt consumers?
GARY COHN: So, remember what a tariff is. A tariff is a tax that the importer pays at the border of the United States. That tariff then gets passed on to consumers here in the United States. It is a consumption tax.
Now, look, I want to refine that a little bit. If we manufactured those products in the United States, and we're using a tariff to protect our manufacturers because China can produce cheaper, because they don't pay fair wages, they don't have health care, they don't have to have a return on capital, I'm OK with the president – or the president nominee or whoever it is putting a tariff on. But if we're putting tariffs on things that we do not manufacture in this country, and everyday citizens need to consume those products, that is highly inflationary and it will really have a dramatic impact on our economy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, when he's talked about the tariffs on Mexico or tariffs on other countries, you're saying, that's going to cost consumers more at the end of the day?
GARY COHN: So, if you're buying something - if you're buying a baby stroller or baby formula and it costs x today and it's now x plus 60 percent at the border -
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
GARY COHN: You are paying that as the consumer. No one's absorbing those tariffs except for the ultimate consumer. And - and if you have to buy those goods, you are going to have an inflationary impact on the economy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, in terms of what you are thinking, as someone from the business community going into this election, there is the presumption that business community will be with Trump. Do you have any misgivings about him and his plans given what he has done, including bringing autocrats to Mar-a-Lago as he did with Viktor Orban this week?
GARY COHN: Look, I think the business community at this point is still open minded. I think the business community really wants to hear the policies. You know, there's a lot of big policies out here. We touched on taxes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Y Es.
GARY COHN: You know, what's going to happen in taxes by the end of '25? Where are we going to be? That's very important. Energy policy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
GARY COHN: Very important to business. Business consumes a lot of energy. We haven't even talked on AI. AI is a huge consumer of electricity. It's going to change our demand profile dramatically in this country. The southern border. What's going to go on at the southern border?
MARGARET BRENNAN: OK.
GARY COHN: Legal - legal immigration. We need skilled laborers in this country.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yes.
GARY COHN: We need to bring in 2 million skilled laborers in this country. The business community is going to look at those topics and they're going to look at the platforms of the candidates and I think that's going to have a huge impact on how they vote.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You're saying it's still open. You would be open to voting for either Joe Biden or Donald Trump at this point?
GARY COHN: I think based on those policies, that's going to influence the corporate community because those are the factors that really impact how they can run their businesses.
Look, I can throw regulation on there. The ability to merge. The ability to consolidate. The ability to buy back stock. All of those things really have dramatic impact on the corporate community and how they look at the campaigns.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, President Biden, in his State of the Union, said Wall Street didn't build America, unions built America. But he ad libed, but they're not bad guys. So, you're not a bad guy, Gary, according to Joe Biden.
GARY COHN: Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But, I mean, what – in - in the rhetoric alone, does there need to be outreach? Or you're saying it's actually going to come down to - to the dollars and cents of it?
GARY COHN: Well, look, there has to be - there has to be outreach. There has to be outreach. The current administration is an administration that is standing in the way of business and business growing and business trying to grow jobs. You know, business wants to invest capital in this country. One of the other things we did in the 2017 tax plan is we made companies repatriate their offshore earnings. Companies want to reinvest that capital in the United States, but they want to make sure they can reinvest it in a sound way that will give their shareholders a return. When they invest the capital, it creates jobs. But they want to make sure the regulatory environment makes sense for them to invest capital.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Gary Cohn, thank you for coming in. We have to leave it there.
GARY COHN: Thank you for having me.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We'll be back in a moment.
(ANNOUNCEMENTS)
MARGARET BRENNAN: That's it for us today. Thank you for watching. Until next week, for FACE THE NATION, I'm Margaret Brennan.