ERIC SHAWN (GUEST CO-HOST): This comes as California senator and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris defends the Green New Deal's hefty price tag. She said, quote, “It’s not about cost.” What does all this mean? John Sununu joins us, former New Hampshire governor, former White House chief of staff under George H.W. Bush. So is this,governor, in your view, the Republicans just trying to do a Statue of Liberty play and distract as [Tom] Perez claims?
JOHN SUNUNU (FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR): Well, it is an old claim. It's almost as old as the pandering politics of the Democrat Party. This is the party, the Democrats were the party that flirted with communism in the 40s and 50s, the Republicans criticized them for it, to the point where Ronald Reagan left the Democrat Party, became a Republican. The attraction of socialism and communism to the Democrats has historically been so strong that Bernie Sanders chose to spend his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. So Perez just dismissing the criticism without taking the responsibility for the reason for the criticism is what's wrong with what he said. The Democrats are flirting with government takeover of life, limb, property, and freedom. And the Republicans are rightly calling them out for it.
SHAWN: What do you say to -- you just mentioned Bernie Sanders. I mean there's videotape all over the place of him praising the Soviet Union, praising what he saw when he went there, and also praising Cuba. I mean is this the message that you think the American people want to hear?
SUNUNU: No, they don't want to hear that and the Republicans are fortunate that the Democrat Party is going back into this mode. And it's going to be a donnybrook in the Democrat primary as they try to outdo each other on socialism and government control of our lives. I think they're making a serious political mistake, but as a Republican I thank them for it.
SHAWN: That praising comes in tapes from 1988 but still you see the echoes resonate today. We have Senator Kamala Harris, for example, kind of dismissing the price tag of the Green New Deal, which supporters say really is needed to deal with climate change.
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SUNUNU: Look, this has been the line of the Democrats since the mid 80s, that climate change is going to destroy the world tomorrow. Tomorrow has never come. It is an issue that has to be addressed, but in a responsible way, not with the ridiculous Green New Deal that the Democrats are talking about, which would not only bankrupt America but disrupt economies all around the world. There is a rational way to deal with tough problems. The Democrats are choosing an irrational road. I have said it before. They are quantitatively illiterate. She does notunderstand what a trillion dollars is, she does not understand what it is in comparison to a billion or a million. She throws numbers out and, frankly, it's going to catch up with them, as there is going to be more scrutiny of these wild claims and wild policies as she and others go into the Democratic primary.
