Transcripts For WTXF FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace 2015

WTXF FOX News Sunday With Chris Wallace April 12, 2015

Senator Robert Menendez in his First Television interview since his indictment on bribery charges. Its a Fox News Sunday exclusive. Plus, the Police Shooting of an unarmed black man in South Carolina reignites the debate over race and justice. The system is working and please dont politicize this. It is working. Our sunday group weighs in. And our power play of the week redskins quarterback, robert griffin, iii on football and his unique foundation. This is not just the money. Its about the relationships. All right now on Fox News Sunday. And hello again from fox news in washington. The 2016 president ial field is starting to come into focus. On the democratic side, Hillary Clinton entering the race as the clear favorite for her partys nomination. For republicans florida senator marco rubio set to announce tomorrow joining rand paul and ted cruz in what shapes as a crowded gop contest. Here to discuss that and more the 2012 nominee, mitt romney. Governor, welcome back to Fox News Sunday. Thanks, chris. Good to be with you. Lets start with Hillary Clintons entry into the president ial race. What do you think is the most effective way for republicans to make the case against her . Well i think the American People are making that case already. Youve seen in polls and in discussions across the country a feeling that Hillary Clinton is just not trustworthy. This whole story about her having erased all of her emails even though they were subject to recall and review by congress i think thats made people remember that with the clintons its always something. And i think also the fact that shes been there a long time. Shes a creature of washington. How many years did she say, 18 years she hasnt driven a car. Shes been driven by secret service and other securities. Shes been there a long time. I think people want to see change, want to see something new and Hillary Clinton is just not that person. Lets talk also about her policy agenda top clinton advisers say she is going to frame the economic message around the idea of fighting for the middle class and that shes a pragmatist who can make washington work, which seems to be little bit implied criticism to barak obama placed specifically on economics. Shell talk about responsible capitalism and say this in effect Business Needs to be responsible in how they make money and what they need to give back to society. Governor romney your reaction to that idea of responsible capitalism . Well, theres no question that businesses have to be responsible and have to follow the law and have to do whats in the best interest of their employees and shareholders and customers and suppliers. Theres nothing new in the message. The real charge shell have is running away from Foreign Policy. Shes been the secretary of state for four years. And the Clinton Barak obama Foreign Policy has been a bust. You see that around the world. The world is not safer. Shell try to run away from Foreign Policy. It will be an issue that dogs her throughout the campaign. Lets turn to what looks like will be a very crowded republican field. You say that you are going to be i love this phrase, aggressively neutral but there are some reports that you may have a soft spot for florida senator marco rubio who is announcing tomorrow. You say that the party has to connect with minorities. Hes a hispanic american. You say its time to turn to the next generation of republican leaders. Hes in his 40s. And frankly i was surprised to see how many members of your 2012 staff are working for rubio this time. Do you have a kind of soft spot for rubio . I have a soft spot for almost all the folks that are running for president in 2016 on our side. Very close to jeb bush. He and i have been friends for a long time and served together for governors. Chris christie and i get together a lot and enjoy his company. Im just getting to know scott walker a little better. Marco campaigned for me in 2012. Did a very nice job. Theres a lot of good folks. I met with Carly Lindsey graham is one of the funniest people i know. So theres a good crowd of people. Rand paul has been kind enough to come out and speak at my conference a couple of times. So, weve got a good group and frankly i think we have the advantage of having an exciting debate in the republican party. Its going to go on throughout the primary season. Compared to the democrats side, it looks like it will be quiet over there. Well have the energy, the eyeballs of america on our process and im looking forward to see who it is that is able to get some distance and become our nominee. But, you know, theres a downside to that and you saw it to some degree in 2012 in which the long drawnout primary fight may have moved you and may have moved the party too far to the right for the general election. In the last couple of weeks there was a controversy over these religious freedom laws in arkansas and indiana. All of the republican president ial candidates supported the law but there was a backlash that they had to fix the laws to explicitly to rule out any discrimination against gays. And i guess the question i have is, do things like that, where you have republican pieces of legislation and such a backlash that the republican governors of arkansas and indiana had to, quote, fix them, does that make this party or run the risk of making this party look out of touch . Well, there of course will be circumstances that arise laws or events that happen in the world and each side is going to try to take advantage of those things politically. The democrats did that. Those that were very concerned about some of these issues, made it a big issue. Its appropriately something that has to be considered. I think jeb bush said it well. He said, look we have a couple of principles in this country that are fundamental. One is people have the right to worship god according to the dictates of their own conscious. At the same time, we oppose discrimination. Legislatures have to har mon niez them and it will be a process that will have bumps and starts and legislatures will have to make corrections from time to time. I know that there will be people who try to take political advantage of that circumstance but its an important series of topics and we have to work at it and hopefully give people the benefit of the doubt as they try to wrestle with ways to try to protect both of those fundamental principles. You saw in 2012 on the issue of immigration, isnt there a danger that an appeal to the base to try to win the primaries youre forced to say things or take positions that could end up hurting you in the general election. Well, i do think that people running for office whether in the past or in the future will stick to the principles that they have, but sometimes during these debates the moderators focus on issues that are highly with divisive issues and end up having people pull away from us, so i think the Republican National committee is probably wise to say hey, lets have eight to ten debates. Lets not have 20 or 22 debates like we had because at some point you just keep on rehashing some of the same attack lines that are coming from the left. Senator rand paul is toughening and he just got into the race this last week is toughening some of his Foreign Policy positions. Now he supports foreign aid to israel. Now he supports a bigger defense budget, but theres a conservative National Security group that put out a very tough ad against him. Take a look at this. Rand paul supports obamas negotiation with iran. And he doesnt understand the threat. You know its ridiculous to think that theyre a threat to our National Security. Rand paul is wrong and dangerous. Governor is rand paul too soft on National Security . Well were going to get a better chance to see exactly where rand paul is on these issues. He wasnt a senator ten years ago. He is now a United States senator. He is experiencing whats happening in the world and i think as he gets greater perspective, he will be very clear on where he stands on Foreign Policy issues and well give him the benefit of the doubt, take what he says today and that will be the platform he runs with as a candidate for president if he gets into this race. Well, no, hes in the race. He got in last week. I know its hard im sorry. I havent kept my score card up as to who is actually officially in and who is just kind of in. So, let me ask you a Foreign Policy question because youve been quite critical of president obamas negotiation with iran. What i want to ask you is whats the alternative . If on the one hand you have the deal that the president seems to be working out with the iranians right now and on the other hand you have taking military action to try to degrade or destroy Irans Nuclear infrastructure, whats the alternative in terms of finding a way to a deal that there is any realistic chance that the iranian leaders will accept . Well, first of all, you have to have effective negotiators and president obama and john kerry have been amateur negotiators have not done the job they should have done. The alternative is pretty straight forward that is to return to put in place more and more crippleing, tightening sanctions so iran feels more and more pressure and is more willing to come to the bargaining table willing to give things up as opposed to us going to the bargaining table and giving things up. Look, the president was saying theres no reason for iran to have which is developing advanced Nuclear Technology and plutonium. He was right. He drew a red line. But there doesnt seem to be a read line the president meets that he is not willing to walk away from. And this is another circumstance where hes walking away from that just trying to get a deal done and a bad deal is not as good as no deal. And the right thing to do is to cripple cripple them with tougher sanctions, bring them back to the negotiating table six months or year from now and get the kind of agreement that doesnt do what happened with north korea. Dont forget what were doing is going down the same path we went with north korea. North korea now has a bomb. They have technology they send to others around the world. This deal that the president has laid out is not the kind of deal that will protect us and protect the world. Couple of final areas i want to get into with you. Democratic leader, harry reid, took to the senate floor in august of 2012 and declared flatly that you had not paid any taxes, any income taxes for the previous ten years. He didnt offer any substantiation for that. He was asked about that the other day and did he have any regrets and he said, well romney didnt win, did he . And then he said this take a look no apologies to mitt romney . Nonwhatsoever zero none. Question is that just political hardball or did harry reid go over the line, sir . He surely went over the line but disappointed in harry reid. Thats really not appropriate for someone in his position to make unsubstantiated claims and of course theyre entirely wrong. I wish we could somehow go back and pay no taxes but the truth is i paid a lot of taxes, released tax returns so people could see that and harry, i guess just isnt big enough to admit it. What do you think of harry reid . I think he was effective in his party but terribly ineffective in pursuing an agenda thats right for america. Im glad he is retiring and i wish him well in his retirement. But im glad he is out of the senate soon. Finally, and this kind of pains me but i must say i have real admiration, you finished in the 99. 9th percentile in your march madness bracket. You picked all of the final four. You picked duke to win the championship and i have one question, how the heck did you do that, governor . Well, you know, i looked at the capabilities of the team, i looked also what the attitude of the team would be, overconfident versus challenging underdogs and i looked at the experience of the coach. And all that together accounted for 10 of my success. And 90 was luck so im not going to fill out another bracket. This was the high point. Im retiring after some success. Did you get any help or was that all mitt romney . I got no help whatsoever. I got the bracket, filled it out in a relatively short amount of time and then crossed my fingers. Well since youre not going to do any more brackets, if i call you next march, would you give me some help . Absolutely. You bet, chris. Ill give you all the help i got. No it wont do any better than my prior brackets. Governor romney, thank you. Thanks for coming in today. Always good to talk with you, sir. Thanks, chris. Up next unarmed black man killed by a white Police Officer in South Carolina, but is the case being politicized . Our sunday group joins the conversation. Plus what would you like to ask the panel about Hillary Clinton getting into the race for the white house . Just go to facebook or twitter foxnewssunday and we may use your question on the air. The pursuit of healthier. It begins from the second were born. After all, healthier doesnt happen all by itself. It needs to be earned. Every day. From the smallest detail to the boldest leap. Healthier means using wellness to keep away illness. Knowing a prescription is way more than the pills. And believing that a single life can be made better by millions of others. Healthier takes somebody who can power modern health care. By connecting every single part of it. Realizing cold hard data can inspire warmth and compassion. And that when Technology Meets expertise. Everything is possible. For as long as the world keeps on searching for healthier. Were here to make healthier happen. Optum. Healthier is here. Our sunday group joins the lets talk. Lets chat. Lets start a dialogue about your ideas and mine. Because the conversation in washington has been just a little onesided lately, dont you think . Email account to conduct official business. I want to reset relations with russia. Not really working out. Catastrophicic move for Hillary Clinton. Hillary clintons warm and fuzzy announcement of her candidacy eight years ago and a republican attack ad released this week before clinton got into the race. And its time now for our sunday group. Fox news senior political analyst brit hume. Welcome back. Usa today columnist kirsten powers. Syndicated columnist george will and charles lane. Brit, theres been a lot of talk about how clinton is going to take a softer more intimate approach this time than eight years ago. What struck me looking back at that video, thats exactly the kind of tact, the tone she set last time. It seems to be her goto move. What do you see going in . What are her strengths and weaknesses on day one . She has huge advantages. Better known than any democrat in america or any democrat running in this election year. She has tremendous body of support and supporters that dates back years. She has a huge fund raising apparatus. She has professional people around her. She has long experience. She knows the issues but at the same time she has tremendous baggage. Do American People really want another four eight years with the clinton and their weird marriage . Do they really want more of the kind of behavior the Deceptive Behavior we saw with regard to the emails and all the rest of it which is so redolent of clinton administrations and clinton experiences past. And theres the fact that the public is hungry for someone new, she is not somebody new. She is old, she is not the new. We ask you for questions for the panel and we got this question on facebook for Hillary Clinton from joan, she writes to clinton how do you explain your silence from benghazi and destroying information from your private server . Take a look at what we got today. This was sent out to political reporters all over the country, i guess, who might have something to do with the campaign it is a fun drive sent by the rnc which supposedly you plug into your computer and it has, quote, secret Hillary Clinton emails. Kirsten theres nothing on it. My question is do you think this is at least in the beginning, wont last for the whole campaign, a good tact for the republicans to take whether its the specifics of the scandal or just what it brings up about kind of secretiveness and entitlement of the clinton . The minute they saban ga si theyll lose a lot of people. Whatever you think about the merits of the situation, the democrats did a very good job convincing people thats for people who hate Hillary Clinton and conspiracy theorists. She will be able to turn that around. The email thing will dog her but to a certain extent, people who have been in the public eye for as long as Hillary Clinton, people made up their mind about her. They are not developing new opinions of her. So people who like her know that shes secretive. This is not a new thing. I dont think theyre going to change their position for supporting Hillary Clinton over it. But you do see her ratings on trustworthiness and honesty have taken a hit. They have. But when you ask the same people do you think shes a good leader they say yes. If the republicans go overboard on it i can guarantee you they will, she will turn it around and turn it oh here they come with their clinton hatred and shell be able to turn it around to her advantage. Perhaps the most explosive story this week certainly the most surprising was this horrific video of a white Police Officer shooting a black man repeatedly in the back and by the end of the week, Hillary Clinton sent out this tweet heart breaking and too famil

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