Transcript: Sen. Jeanne Shaheen on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” April 27, 2025
The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on April 27, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We go now to New Hampshire. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Senator President Trump repeated his threat Saturday to look at potential sanctions on Russia. Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted he’s got nearly 60 co-sponsors for a sanctions bill. Yet in our interview, Minister Lavrov basically said their economy is self-sufficient and sanctions don’t matter. Are they actually leverage at all?
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: Well, I think we ought to take up the Graham legislation, and we ought to pass it through both houses and put those secondary sanctions on Russia. And the fact is I’ve been watching Minister Lavrov for 16 years since I’ve been in the Senate, and he is very adept at talking a lot and saying nothing. And in that interview, as we know, he refused to acknowledge Russia’s aggression into Ukraine. He refused to acknowledge that it’s Russia that’s firing on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, not the Ukrainians. He refused to acknowledge the children from Ukraine who have been disappeared into Russia, kidnapped there he he does not. He’s a an excellent prevaricator who never takes a position that is in opposition to what he believes is Russia’s interest.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Fair summary there as to his abilities to evade direct answers, but he did directly answer on the sanctions bit, saying trying to brush off these threats. Given the vote count, do you think that you could actually get this to be veto proof? That you could force President Trump to put these sanctions on Russia and get congressional leadership to actually allow you to vote in the first place?
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: Well I do, and I think in fact, the administration has been working with Senator Graham, and certainly understands that this is legislation that is in the works and that there is some real benefit as Vladimir Putin continues to drag his feet, to do everything he can to play for more time, so that they’re able to take more territory in Ukraine and to better advance Russia’s position, this is something that can help slow them down.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I want to ask you about the oversight roles you have on some of the committees you serve on. At the State Department, Secretary of State Rubio announced a major reorganization this past week with plans to reduce staff by 15%, eventually. It will also condense certain bureaus or eliminate them. One of them is the Office of Global Women’s Issues. And I know you have personally worked with many of these diplomats. Can Rubio just eliminate it with the stroke of a pen?
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: Well, I noticed that one of the things in your polling that people were not happy about was the actions by the administration without oversight and advice and consent from Congress. And this is what this administration is talking about, what Secretary of State Rubio is talking about. They’re talking about going in, making these changes without really consulting with Congress. The reason we have an Office of Global Women’s Issues is because what we know about foreign policy is that those countries that have women who are empowered are more stable. We know that women give back more to their communities, to their countries, to their families, than men do. And there’s a good reason why we have an Office of Global Women’s Issues, because it helps us as we think about our foreign policy, and it’s been one of the advantages that the United States has had over our adversaries like China and Russia and Iran.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And had previously received support from the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who I know you worked with during that first administration.
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: I worked very closely with Ivanka, and she was very supportive of the Office of Global Women’s Issues.
MARGARET BRENNAN: We’ll, watch what happens to it. I need to ask you about Armed Services Committee in which you also serve. A number of political appointees at the Pentagon have been fired or resigned in recent days, which means the Secretary of Defense currently has no chief of staff, no deputy chief of staff, and no senior advisor for policy. Does it concern you that he doesn’t have this kind of architecture around him, and what is Congress doing in terms of oversight?
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: It concerns me greatly that he he has created chaos at the Pentagon. The fact is, Pete Hegseth was not qualified to take the job as Secretary of Defense, and he has shown that time and again. He showed it with his sharing classified information on a Signal chat with the recent sharing of information again with his wife, with his brother, with his lawyer, on a Signal chat inappropriate to take classified information and then share it in an unclassified source with people who do not have the credentials to hear that information. He has created chaos that is now embroiling uniform- our uniform military in the chaos that he’s creating at the Pentagon without having the appropriate people to run things, and he’s not taken responsibility for his actions. And for those people who serve under him, he has shown that he is not the kind of role model, not the kind of leader that we need at this time.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Very quickly, it’s sensitive information the Pentagon is looking into through this inspector general inquiry, whether it was classified. Do you have any idea when you will get a clear answer?
SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN: I don’t, and I think it’s important that that’s a bipartisan request to have that investigation done to see what was appropriate, and hopefully they will come out soon with recommendations. You know, one of the things the concerns that I raised with the Secretary of Defense was what the tariffs are doing to the supply chain for our Department of Defense, we know that the Ukraine war showed us that we have some real challenges with our defense industrial base. Those are being made worse by these tariffs. I was at a company in New Hampshire last week that does ball bearings for the aerospace industry. They told me that because of the tariffs on steel, that what used to take them 20 weeks to get steel. They’re now having a two and a half year backlog that puts a real strain on our Department of Defense.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And I know you sought more information on that Senator. We’ll have to leave it there for today. Thank you for joining us. We’ll back in a moment.