A rush transcript of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" airing on Sunday, September 26, 2021 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the "This Week" transcript archive.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, and welcome to "This Week," a week that may be make or break for President Biden's ambitious agenda, more than a trillion dollars for infrastructure investments, another $3 trillion-plus to address climate change, child care, education and more, all this as a government shutdown looms on Friday, plus the prospect of America defaulting for the first time in history if Congress does not soon authorize government borrowing to pay past debts.
At the center of it all, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who joins us this week from the Capitol.
Good morning, Madam Speaker.
PELOSI: Good morning, George. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, I just laid out a pretty daunting list right there. You have called the next few days a time of intensity for Congress.
Have you ever faced a challenge with so much at stake?
PELOSI: Every time we face a challenge, you say it's an historic challenge, whether it's passing the Affordable Care Act or other legislation that we passed in the previous administration.
It's all the wonderful legislative process that we have. But I thank you for calling this President Biden's agenda, because that's exactly what it is. This is the vision of the president. And he has said that, while he wants to pass the infrastructure bill -- and we will -- that he will not confine his vision for the future to just that bill, that it had to be about building back better.
And building back better has the support over 95 percent of our caucus. So, when you say Democrats divided, no, overwhelmingly -- I have never seen, actually, over 95 percent of a caucus just about for anything. There are some who disagree, and I respect that, about the size of the package, and so some in the Senate, a couple in the Senate as well.
And we have to find our common ground, respectful of each other's views. But this isn't about moderates vs. progressives. Overwhelmingly, the entirety of our caucus, except for a few whose judgment I respect, support the vision of Joe Biden. And we will pass -- make progress on it this week.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So make progress, not necessarily pass.
You said you have support of 95 percent of Democrats.
PELOSI: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The problem is, you need 98 or 99 percent...
PELOSI: Yes...
STEPHANOPOULOS: ... to pass -- to pass the bills.
And I know you said the infrastructure bill is going to pass. But the leader of the Progressive Caucus in the House, Pramila Jayapal, is balking. She said on Friday that -- that voting on this bill tomorrow, it's an arbitrary date, adding that more than 50 members will vote no if you first don't have agreement on the broader social investment bill.
So, are you confident these progressive members are going to vote yes, even though she says no?
PELOSI: Well, let me just say we're going to pass the bill this week.
I promised that we would bring the bill to the floor. That was according to the language that those who wanted this brought to the floor tomorrow wrote into the rule. We will bring the bill to the floor tomorrow for consideration.
But you know I'm never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn't have the votes. And I think, any time you put an arbitrary date, well, remember when the Republicans said they were going to overturn the Affordable Care Act on the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act.
I knew, right then and then, they were doomed. You cannot choose the date. You have to go when you have the votes in a reasonable time. And we will. And I do believe that we will do -- first of all, let me just say, it's an eventful week.
First of all, we have to make sure -- just chronologically, we have to make sure we keep government open. And we will.
Second of all, we have to honor the vision of President Biden. And we thank him for his leadership and his courage putting forth such a bold package.
In order to move forward, we have to build consensus. It's not winners, losers. It's bring people together, and that's what we always do in the Democratic Party, and what the president has put forth will create many, many more good-paying jobs, especially in times of addressing the climate crisis which has not been fully addressed in the infrastructure bill. It will lower cost for families by lowering the cost of prescription drugs for seniors, and health care costs across the board. It will give a big -- one of the largest tax cuts for the middle class with the Biden child tax credit and it will be paid for by making everyone pay their fair share. Lower costs, tax cuts, paid for, more jobs for the American people.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC “THIS WEEK” ANCHOR: But the question is -- the question is, can you get everybody to agree to that? If I heard you correctly, you're saying --
PELOSI: Yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: -- the vote will not necessarily be tomorrow on the infrastructure bill. You're going to put it up when you have the votes to pass it. Are we --
(CROSSTALK)
PELOSI: -- it may be tomorrow. If --
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: It may be tomorrow, but -- right. But let me just say, in order to get the votes to pass it, it sounds like you're going to need agreement on the broader social investment bill, the bill --
PELOSI: Absolutely. You're right.
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: And so that is going to happen this week as well?
PELOSI: Well, that’s -- we -- we’re -- let me just say we're prepared. We're ready. Yesterday the budget committee passed out the Build Back Better legislation at the full $3.5 trillion, that was the number that was sent to us by the Senate and by the president. Obviously with negotiations there will have to be some changes in that, the sooner the better, so that we can build our consensus to go forward. And we will do that. The American people need that to happen, and that's the overwhelming --
STEPHANOPOULOS: The whole --
PELOSI: -- for the people agenda.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The holdouts in the Senate, of course, everyone knows Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema -- at least those two. Joe Manchin says, $3.5 trillion is way too much and it doesn’t necessarily have to pass this year. Kyrsten Sinema says she’s not going to support any increases in income taxes or corporate taxes.
Have you made progress on those issues? It doesn't sound like it.
PELOSI: Well, Chuck Schumer and I and Secretary Yellen the other day came forward -- and the president and said that we had reached a framework of agreement. People said, well, what are the specifics? Well, we'll see what we need. We’ll see how the number comes down and what we need in that regard, but we have agreed on an array of pay force (ph) in the legislation.
This will be paid for, so when some say, oh well, what about inflation? It will be paid for, and that's the beauty of it, by having those in our economy and society who have not paid their fair share, paying their fair share. So, again, the Senate and the House, those who are not in full agreement with the president, right, let's see what our values -- let's not talk about numbers and dollars. Let's talk about values. The values are about --
(CROSSTALK)
PELOSI: I’m sorry?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is the solution to paying forward a carbon tax?
PELOSI: There's an array of issues that are there, I’m not ramping (ph). Let's see what we need to have, and there are those who have suggested that. So every -- when I say we're ready, we've investigated or shall we say, documented everything that we need to be ready with legislative language to go forward.
And I’m very excited about the hard work that everybody did. We stayed on schedule. They said you couldn't do it by September 15th. We did. We had our budget committee yesterday taking the work of the committees and putting it forward. We have been carefully trying to see what could be avertable (ph). You know we -- in the House, I’m used to negotiating with the White House or among ourselves and with the Senate, but -- to negotiate with, but we don’t negotiate with the parliamentarian. She will make judgments about something that might violate the (inaudible) -- provisions of privilege, whatever that is, and that's a bath that legislation has to take.
So all of these things are in place. We're trying to get them --
STEPHANOPOULOS: It’s --
PELOSI: -- be as ready as possible. We are ready on our side. We just have to see how quickly the parliamentarian can operate.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I know the budget committee -- I know the budget committee passed a resolution calling for $3.5 trillion, but it sounds like you acknowledge that the final number is going to be somewhat smaller than that.
PELOSI: Yeah. I mean, that seems self-evident. That seems self-evident, and so it's not just -- we have some, shall we say, birdbath kind of things. It's legislation. So the fact is is that this is the excitement of it all. It's just in real-time, and exploitation of the few people not in agreement being called a division in the Democratic Party. Everybody overwhelmingly, and I think even those who want a smaller number, support the vision of the president, and this is really transformative. It's transformative for women when you think about child care and child tax credit and family medical leave, and universal pre-K, and home health care. How much in agreement are we all on that?
When you talk about the climate crisis, which we have a responsibility, again, to the children, but to our faith to protect God's creation, this planet, how much can we -- do we want to spend on that?
So, that, adding up, what our priorities are, should take us to a number where we find common ground. Can we shorten the time or some other things to make these numbers smaller? That's our discussion now, but we're ready for it.
STEPHANOPOULOS:: You said -- you said the government is going to stay open.
PELOSI: Yeah.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you as confident that the government is going to avoid default? Because Republicans made it very clear they're not going to provide any votes.
PELOSI: Isn’t that irresponsible beyond words? The full faith and credit of the United States should not be questioned. That's in the Constitution of the United States, the 14th Amendment. Go look at that. It's in the Constitution of the United States.
There's a school of thought that says we don't have to have these votes, but we do. We -- as of now, we still do have to have it, and we cooperated when -- three occasions -- when President Trump was president in order to lift the debt ceiling. Even to have the discussion that it could possibly be in default, it lowers our -- it did the last time lowered our credit rating.
I -- who said it more articulately than Mitch McConnell at the time? You cannot play Russian roulette with the debt ceiling and wellbeing of our economy. So --
STEPHANOPOULOS: He's willing to eat that right now. Are you confident Democrats can pass it on their own?
PELOSI: Well, we want this to be bipartisan. If we didn't want it to be bipartisan, we would have put it in the reconciliation bill. That would have been a decision we had to make when we wrote the budget out. But nonetheless, the decision was made that it would always be bipartisan, whether on our part as we have cooperated in the past with Republican presidents or on their part.
It is totally irresponsible, and it just -- I would think that the business community would -- would speak out on this because it has devastating impact on our credit rating as well as global economy. This is a big -- beyond a big deal.
So let's hope that the Republicans will find some -- enough of them, find some level of responsibility to our country to honor what's in the Constitution, that we not question the full faith and credit of the United States of America. They know full well what the consequences are. They preached it when the former president was in office, and we always cooperated.
It's always been bipartisan, and it should be again.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Madam Speaker, thanks for your time this morning.
PELOSI: My pleasure. Thank you, George. Bye-bye.
STEPHANOPOULOS: CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announcing on Friday that the Pfizer booster shot is now cleared for older adults, those at high risk and frontline workers.
Big questions now about who else should be eligible, what's next for children under 12, and how this will impact the course of the pandemic.
And here to take those on, the chairman and CEO of Pfizer, Dr. Albert Bourla.
Dr. Bourla, thank you for joining us this morning. I know Pfizer believes that the booster is safe -- is safe for every eligible American right now. Did the CDC go far enough?
BOURLA: I think that the -- it is the responsibility of the CDC, and of the FDA, to assign the policies. Clearly there were people that were thinking that maybe it is time to go broader, and there were other people that were thinking that it's not really the time to go broader.
But -- and both of them, they have the best of intentions, and they are having very high scientific competency and they have very high integrity. At the end of the day, I think the decision that they made is a very good one, I think, and we are looking forward to be able to vaccinate all these vulnerable people so that we can put an end to this pandemic.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The World Health Organization reiterated this week that now is not the time for widespread rollout of booster shots. Instead they said wealthier nations should focus on getting more first shots to countries with low vaccination rates. Your response to that?
BOURLA: I think it's not right to decide if you're going to approve or not boosters based on other criteria other than if the boosters are needed. I think it is also not the right thing to try to resolve it with an or, when you can resolve it with an end. It's not -- sorry -- give boosters or give primary doses to other people. I think the answer should be, let's give both boosters and doses to other people.
And this is the way, why we have invested so hard and we put all our scientists and engineers to work hard, so that they can produce enough doses for all. Right now, by the end of the -- of this month, we will have produced two billion doses.
And, by the way, 500 million of these doses already will have gone to middle- and low-income countries. In the remaining of the year, we will produce an additional billion doses, so a total of three. And one billion of these doses will have gone to low- and middle-income countries.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Many...
BOURLA: That will not change because of the approval or not of boosters.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Many experts say you should be doing more, including Tom Friedman -- Frieden, the former CDC director.
Here's the tweet he put out this week. He said: "While focusing on selling expensive vaccines to rich countries, Moderna and Pfizer are doing next to nothing to close the global gap in vaccine supply. Shameful," he says.
He believes you should be waiving intellectual property to speed vaccine distribution. Is that a good idea?
BOURLA: No, it's not.
I think the intellectual property is what created the thriving life sciences sector that was ready when the pandemic hit. Without that, we wouldn't be here to discuss if we need the boosters or not, because we wouldn't have vaccines.
And, also, we are very proud of what we have done. I don't know why he's using these words. We are very proud. We have saved millions of lives with the...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But is there more you could be doing now?
(CROSSTALK)
BOURLA: ... vaccine.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But is there more you could be doing now?
BOURLA: I think we -- always, there are more that we can do.
But I want to make sure what -- we understand what we are doing right now. And what we are doing right now, in order to have vaccine available everywhere, the first one is that we need to have a vaccine, because now it is considered given, but, 10 months ago, nobody thought that we will be able to do it.
The second is that you price your vaccine in a way that everybody can access it. And you need to know that you are giving the vaccine in the high-income countries at the cost of a takeaway meal, but in the middle-income countries, we are giving half of this price. In the lower-income countries, we give it at cost.
And the third that you need to do, it is that you have enough doses for all. And we have invested billions of dollars. So, right now, we can make, only Pfizer, three billion doses this year, and, only Pfizer, four billion doses next year.
By the way, also, with a recent agreement with the U.S. government that stepped up significantly to enhance the global equity, they are buying one billion doses from us at cost. But they themselves donate them at no cost, completely free, to the poorest countries of the world.
I think no one can claim that the -- has -- there is no other company that can claim that we have done so much good to humanity as we have done. So it's unfair, the comments and the words that he used.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's talk about children's vaccines.
Pfizer announced this week that the vaccine was safe for children 5 to 11. When should they be eligible for the vaccine?
BOURLA: I think we are going to submit this data pretty soon. It's a question of days, not weeks.
And then it is up to FDA to be able to review the data and come to their conclusions and approve it or not. If they approve it, we will be ready with our manufacturing to provide this new formulation of the vaccine, because the vaccine that the kids will receive which is 5 to 11, it is a different formulation.
It is almost one -- not almost -- it's one-third of the dose that we are giving to the rest of the population.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, Moderna's CEO said this week that the pandemic is on course to be over in about a year. Do you agree with that?
BOURLA: I agree that, within a year, I think we will be able to come back to normal life. I don't think that this means that variants will not be continuing coming.
And I don't think that this means that we should be able to live our lives without having immune -- without having vaccinations, basically. But that's -- again, remains to be seen.
The most likely scenario for me, it is that, because the virus is spread all over the world, that we will continue seeing new variants that are coming out. And, also, we will have vaccines that they will last at least a year.
And I think the most likely scenario, it is annual re-vaccinations. But we don't know really. We need to wait and see the data.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Dr. Bourla, thank you for your time this morning.
ALBERT BOURLA, PFIZER CHAIRMAN & CEO: Oh, it was a great pleasure speaking to you. And we are having (ph) a common heritage (ph). So, it was --
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah, we certainly do.
BOURLA: -- honor to talk to you.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Honor for me as well. Thank you very much.
STEPHANOPOULOS: There you see the House Intelligence Committee reacting to a whistle-blower complaint from Brian Murphy, a top Homeland Security official who accused Trump appointees of manipulating intelligence to help Trump in 2020. Murphy retired from the agency Friday after more than two decades of public service and he joins us now for his first network interview.
Thank you for coming this morning.
As I said, you spent more than two decades as a public servant. You're a Republican who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
Why did you become a whistle-blower?
BRIAN MURPHY, FORMER DHS ACTING UNDERSECRETARY FOR INTELLIGENCE: Sure. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.
I think I became a whistle-blower because when I arrived at DHS in 2018, from the outset, everything that I had stood for, all the, you know, finding objective truth when I was in the FBI and serving in the Marines and serving the American public was quickly told to me that's no longer acceptable. And, you know, I heard --
STEPHANOPOULOS: How so?
MURPHY: I heard on the -- the intake there that, you know, it was a -- I have a credibility problem. And I want to explain some of that right now.
So, in 2018, I issued my first whistle-blower complaint. It was only six months after I arrived. I think that's often missed. From the outset, there were three things that I was told that we would look to manipulate intelligence on and bend the truth about. And I told them up front that I wasn't going to do it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What are the three things?
MURPHY: So, the three things were Russian disinformation as it related to the president. The second was the southwest border. And the third was white supremacy. Those were three issues that I was -- there was intense pressure to try to take intelligence and fit a political narrative. And right from the outset I had a target on my back because that objective truth --
STEPHANOPOULOS: So -- so take us inside if I'm one -- let's take one example. Take the issue of the Russian disinformation, as you say. How would that work? What -- what were you finding? What were they trying to get you to say?
MURPHY: Sure. So, you know, it's all now in the public domain, but I'll just go back a little bit to give an example. In 2020, late 2019, early 2020, it was highly classified that President Putin had ordered all of the Russian services to denigrate the Democratic candidates and support then-President Trump. So, there was a push on across government at the senior levels, the cabinet officials, to do everything possible to stifle anything to get anything out to the American public or to our overseers in Congress --
STEPHANOPOULOS: About that interference?
MURPHY: About that interference. They did not want the American public to know that the Russians were supporting Trump and denigrating the -- what would soon be President Biden.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about downplaying the threat of white supremacists?
MURPHY: Absolutely. After Charlottesville, it became a third rail issue, if you would, within the department to talk about white supremacy in any meaningful way. I disagreed with that. I made that known to my superiors. And, like I said, I issued two complaints, two IG complaints detailing what was happening in the department well before 2020 occurred.
And even when 2020 came along and they were -- I think the whistle-blower complaint that I'm better known for, I -- I had no intention for that to become public. You know, that -- that was leaked by somebody. I don't know who did it. It was my intent to work within the system to protect classified information. That's what the whistle-blower process is set up for, and that was my intent.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As you know, your critics are saying you do have a credibility problem. Chad Wolf, who was the head of Homeland Security, acting head under President Trump, said your claims were patently false. He went on to say this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHAD WOLF, ACTING HEAD OF HOMELAND SECURITY (September 2020): I removed or reassign Mr. Murphy at the beginning of August for a very specific reason, that I had received allegations that he abused his position, he abused his authority, and possibly violated numerous legal requirements when he personally directed the collection of information on U.S. journalists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: He's talking about the collection of information during the Portland riots. Your response?
MURPHY: Sure, so I appreciate the question. That's absolutely not the case. I've sworn under oath twice now, you know, to Congress and to the inspector general's office, and I'm prepared to appear at any time to tell you unequivocally at no time was I aware or direct anybody in my organization to collect information on journalists.
What did happen was Portland was a very chaotic situation. We were collecting information, open source information available -- you know, people put things out on Twitter, Facebook, et cetera, primarily about violence.
We weren't collecting information on reporters. We weren't collecting information on first amendment protesters. It was about violence. And in there we have a very structured way to collect information about leaked information or whether it's classified or not.
Very -- a lot of oversight went into it, and, you know, I understand why, at the time, the media reacted the way they did. Because anything coming out of Chad Wolf's mouth, quite frankly, and many members of the department at that time, was false, and people did not trust them. There was a war against the media, and I wasn't going to be a part of that. And that's why, when the moment they had their opportunity, they took their shot.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But this week the inspector general did put out a report that said that Customs and Border Patrol had lookouts placed on journalists during the migrant crisis in 2018 and 2019, and you were in charge of intelligence then.
MURPHY: Sure. I -- I don't know anything about what Customs and Border Patrol was doing with respect to journalists. I can tell you right now that if I had become aware of it, I would have followed a pattern that I did before. And unfortunately, you know, I'm not surprised that they were doing that. It's shameful that they did that, if -- you know, I believe the inspector general's report. And if that had ever come across my radar, I would have quickly reported it to the inspector general as well as told my bosses that it was unlawful and unethical.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You managed to make it through the Trump administration. What was the pressure like inside?
MURPHY: It was intense. You know, when I left the FBI -- you know, I'm an apolitical person in the sense of I don't let politics get in front of my work. I had never experienced that personally at the FBI. But when I got to DHS, it was all about politics.
And, you know, I made it -- as you noted, I'm not -- I was not an anti-Trumper. I voted for the guy in 2016. I am a Republican. But that doesn't come in front of my obligation to use the truth as a north star, to follow it where it goes. And in the intelligence profession, that's -- that's the sacred part of it, is to put out the truth regardless of what it says.
STEPHANOPOULOS: President Trump is making moves to run again perhaps in 2024. In your view, what would that mean for the intelligence community and the country?
MURPHY: I think it would be a disaster. I think he has denigrated -- he's put out -- the intelligence community. He's -- puts out disinformation. And that's an existential threat to democracy, and he is one of the best at putting it out and hurting this country.
As I was saying before to you, I have the opportunity to go work for a company called Logically. That's my next step in life -- I'm very appreciative of it -- where we are going to go combat disinformation at scale across the globe. We're not the thought police, but disinformation is a deliberative campaign to put out false information, often for nefarious reasons.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you explain the relative success of the strategy?
MURPHY: The strategy, in...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Spreading disinformation.
MURPHY: So disinformation is -- is a slow-moving threat that is in front of us. It's on social media. It's not really understood by a lot of people. I think it's conflated with a lot of political talk. But in reality disinformation is the type of threat that, if we do not do something about it; if we don't build resiliency within this country so people know and take the scrutiny and the time to evaluate the sources of information, it polarizes us.
Political polarization in this country is at the worst it's ever been. And the director of national intelligence in -- put out a report a few weeks ago. I encourage the American people to read it. It's a forecast about what 2044 (sic) would look like, and disinformation and polarization is one of the number one threats they articulate. And we are no stranger to that in the United States.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Brian Murphy, thanks for your time this morning.
MURPHY: Thank you.