Transcript: Rep. Tony Gonzales on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Dec. 22, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with Rep. Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that aired on Dec. 22, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: 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.
REP. TONY GONZALES: 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 were one of 34 Republicans to vote against it. Why?
REP. GONZALES: It's pretty simple, my- my constituents were against the CR just as much as I was against the CR. This- it's been a tough week, though. It started with a tragic shooting in Madison, Wisconsin. I've 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've been working with others to get that done. I think that's important. And then in the house, of course, we have this messy bill that was put on the floor. It started with a 1500 page bill. In my eyes, there's no doubt that there's a sickness in DC, 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 CRs 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.
REP. 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've ran that play before–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –Yeah.
REP. GONZALES: 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, 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- 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, those bills done. In fact, Speaker Johnson chose to go this route with the CR, 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. At- what role exactly is he playing here?
REP. GONZALES: It's kind of interesting. We have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker. 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.
REP. GONZALES: Unelected, But I mean, he has a voice, and I think a lot of the large part of that voice is a reflection of the voice of the people. Once again, these- a 1500 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 the spending bill, guess what Senate Democrats were doing? They were- 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 leaning in the wrong direction with a 15 page, initial, funding deal?
REP. GONZALES: Yeah, 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 in 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 the, you know, 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 they're also- this can't be the norm. This cannot be the norm. Once again, that's the reason why I voted against the CR is, this cannot be the norm, that 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?
REP. GONZALES: I wasn't aware. I think there's no doubt a lot of us knew that she was gaining an age, like a lot of members do. And sadly, you know, some of these members wait until it's too long to things have gone too far–
MARGARET BRENNAN: –And leadership allowed for it?
REP. 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 is the same thing. I mean, we saw what happened on the Senate side, you know, with Senator Feinstein and some of these others that have missed votes for a long time. I think this goes- gets back to the root of it. Congress should do its job, 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 what 800 miles of the border–
REP. GONZALES: -that's right.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In your district. 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?
REP. GONZALES: Oh no, it's a huge project. And while the Biden administration has has started to do some things right. The Trump administration is going to do everything right in this manner. And I'll 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. I won't share some of the sensitive stuff, but I'll share some of the open source stuff. In Syria, a lot of us are rooting for a free Syria. Free Syria, it brings a lot of opportunities for- for stability in that region, but it also brings a national security threat. Assad was a bad guy, he imprisoned a lot of folks, sometimes wrongfully. Some of those folks are terrorists. Now they are loose. Where are they? Where are they going? 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? Of course not. But do we know who these people are, and who- are they coming to 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.
REP. GONZALES: 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. Refugees are, except in the United States of America.
REP. GONZALES: And they should be right. I want us to follow our laws right. And if we need to make changes to our laws, Congress should be the body to make those changes. And in my eyes, we can both protect those that are warm and welcoming. We want people to come and live the dream- those that are fleeing political persecution, but we also have to go after the criminals and the terrorists.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. Tony Gonzales, good to have you here.
REP. GONZALES: Thank you. Merry Christmas.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Merry Christmas 'Face the Nation' will be back in a minute.
