After a summer of laying low due to various allegations, some of which stemmed from his close relationship with disgraced former U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, Arizona Senator returned to the Elitist Media Sunday shows- namely, CNN’s State of the Union. And host Jake Tapper made sure to keep Gallego as comfortable as possible.
A softball interview closed out with a question on whether a 2028 presidential candidate Gallego might call to tear down the various Trump builds, and with Tapper completely ignoring Gallego’s unsettling rhetoric:
"WE HAVE TO WIPE HIM OUT:" Ruben Gallego uses unsettling language to explain his support for tearing down the White House ballroom and Great Triumphal Arch, in conclusion of his warm tongue bath of an interview from Jake Tapper:
JAKE TAPPER: President Trump is putting his mark… pic.twitter.com/xrG7q1kn2S— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 13, 2026
JAKE TAPPER: President Trump is putting his mark on Washington, D.C., quite a bit, building a White House ballroom. He plans to build an arch, attempts to rename the Kennedy Center, the Reflecting Pool, and on and on and on. It seems clear to me that this is going to be a big issue for Democrats running for president in 2028. I know you haven't made a decision yet about whether or not you're going to run for president, but, if you do, would you advocate for tearing down the ballroom or tearing down the arch?
RUBEN GALLEGO: I think I'd be advocating for almost all of that. You know, the real stain that this president has put on this country has been the fact that he eroded democracy, right? Let's start with January 6, the fact that, for the first time ever, a U.S. president attempted an actual coup. That right there is a reason why we should not have anything's name towards him.The fact that he has destroyed the institutions that have kept this government together through some of the hardest times and eroded, for example, our Department of Justice is another reason why we need to be taking down all these honorific situations or emblems of him. The fact that he wants to destroy the Kennedy Center, a man that contributed so much to this country, for -- to replace it with his name, who's done everything to destroy this country, is another reason why we have to make sure that we wipe him out.So this is not me trying to get to Donald Trump because I don't like Donald Trump. It's because of what Donald Trump has done to this country. And as somebody that visits a lot of my friends at Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, the fact that we're going to have this ugly monstrosity in the view of this very sacred site...
TAPPER: The arch, you mean.
GALLEGO: Yeah, the arch -- is another reason why that needs to be taken care of, because, again, this man has done nothing but actually destroy the very fundamental things that these men and women have fought for, which is to save this country and continue this democracy.
TAPPER: Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, thanks for joining us this morning.
GALLEGO: Thanks, Jake.
TAPPER: We appreciate it.
“We have to wipe him out” is wild language in the current political environment. But Tapper didn’t even blink, instead signing off and going to break as if he were on autopilot. There wasn’t any effort to clarify the statement which, again, was uttered while talking about D.C. monuments and Gallego’s desire to erase Trump from the history books or whatever. I mean, it’s not like an MSNBC-inspired Sandernista didn’t once shoot up a field full of Republican congressmen, or there having already been three attempts on Trump’s life.
The rest of the interview was a warm tongue bath, with Tapper teeing Gallego up for his takes on AI, the recently-concluded Republican Midterm Convention, and the GOP’s warning against socialism.
The “interview” was notable for its lack of questions on the several ethics investigations held against Gallego. One of those, regarding sexual allegations, was closed by the Senate Ethics Committee. Another investigation, by the Department of Justice related to campaign finance, is still ongoing. Tapper also skipped questioning Gallego about his close ties to Swalwell.
Instead, Tapper rolled the blue carpet out for Gallego, and enabled him in a way that would absolutely not happen for a Republican facing similar allegations. It was (D)ifferent like that.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned interview as aired on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, September 13th, 2026:
JAKE TAPPER: On Thursday, President Obama urged Democrats in a private meeting, including Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to lean into the issue of AI safety, to make it a center of the Democratic agenda.Quote: "Certainly, if I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this. This is something that is moving very fast in private hands. And if we don't get on top of it, I think it can be dangerous" -- unquote -- information provided from President Obama's office.
My next guest is calling for Congress to act now. Joining me in studio: Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona.So, you're calling on Senate leadership to establish a select committee on AI as soon as possible -- as soon as possible. We're at a point now where AI leaders are sounding the alarm, saying that this needs to happen now, that AI could take over the Internet in six to 12 months, potentially eliminate the human race within a decade. Congress has really done nothing about this.
RUBEN GALLEGO: That's right. And, look, I heard the speaker talk about previous tech. This isn't previous tech. Previous tech could not make a decision to kill us, right? If you -- when we turned on the Internet, it did not have autonomy, right?When we created a nuclear weapon, the nuclear weapon did not have the decision-making power to drop a nuclear weapon. AI has the capability and will have the capability to make decisions like that. This is more akin to Dr. Frankenstein telling us the monster is loose, help me stop the monster.
And what we have right now is -- the method that we're answering is not meeting the moment. Speaker Johnson's not meeting the moment. Trump's not meeting the moment. Senate and Congress are not meeting the moment. We need to get together as fast as possible with the smartest people, with the skeptics, with the people that want to regulate, the people that want to actually deal with this, the people that are going to figure out how to actually have that perfect balance. And we can't just use this idea that if, we do this, we're somehow going to lose to China, because AI does not care, once it becomes fully dangerous, whether we're Chinese or American. That's the danger of this. This is -- everyone's thinking about this in a way that is based on old tech and not what's going towards the future. And this is why we need to get the people in the room.
TAPPER: So, Bernie Sanders, your colleague in the Senate, he's been calling for a temporary ban on the development of AI Would you support that?
GALLEGO: Look, I think we have to take everything under consideration. And the way you figure this out is, again, you use this -- the sense of urgency to get the smartest people in the room to figure -- if that is the way to do it, then we go down that road.Right now, the problem is, we don't know everything we don't know. And we need to get the people in the room to actually do that. And they do know what they know. And that includes the skeptics. That includes the futurists. That includes the people that have to put the ethics around AI. But the way that we're going about this is that we're hoping that some committee in the House or in the Senate is just going to come together with some staffers and put together the framework that's going to go into place maybe three years from now. We don't have that time. We don't have the time. Dr. Frankenstein is telling us the monster has escaped, help us stop this.
TAPPER: You heard the speaker also attack Democrats, saying the party's under the influence of Marxists, radical socialists. I'm sure you think he's overstating the case. But President Trump this week at the convention went after Michigan Democratic candidate Will Lawrence for some of the things Lawrence had said about the nuclear family. Is it true that some of these Democrats, some of these DSA candidates are making it easier for Republicans to caricature all of you as socialists?
GALLEGO: Look, this is the scare tactic of 2026. When Republicans are losing, and they're losing on every front, they just try to find the nearest boogeyman. Right now, the American public is hurting. Food's expensive, gas is expensive, buying a piece of property is expensive, cars are expensive, all because of everything that this decision -- that -- these decisions this president has made and the Republicans have backed, in addition to entering into a stupid war that we have not been able to get out of and that actually has diminished our world standing around the world.And so they're going to find some of the most egregious statements that are made by young men, young women from maybe 10, 20 years ago. I couldn't tell you. But, at the end of the day, the reason they're doing that is because they're weak. They're in a weak position right now.The American public absolutely dislikes the president and what he's doing, and they're going to go and punish him. So, they're going to have to throw some red herrings out there. At the end of the day, there is no solution. They have no solutions to actually bring down the cost of living for Americans right now. So all they can do is scare, scare, scare- and when they should be talking about is trying to figure out how do we solve this AI conundrum right now.
TAPPER: Senator John Fetterman, your colleague, appeared in a video at the Republican Midterm Convention saying nice things about Dave McCormick and also about President Trump. This followed a report from The Wall Street Journal that Fetterman has been shirking a lot of- many of his Senate duties. Do you have any concerns about Senator Fetterman's commitment to his job or to the Democratic Party?
GALLEGO: Look, I can't talk about his job. That's a -- the position of the Pennsylvania voter. In terms of his commitment to the Democratic Party, what we have seen so far, everything that he's communicated to us when we talk to him, whether in the hallways or in caucus or anything of that nature, that he's a committed Democrat. Obviously, we have different points of view on different issues and how to handle things, but he has always said that he's going to stay as a Democrat and will continue to be in the Democratic Caucus with us.
TAPPER: President Trump is putting his mark on Washington, D.C., quite a bit, building a White House ballroom. He plans to build an arch, attempts to rename the Kennedy Center, the Reflecting Pool, and on and on and on. It seems clear to me that this is going to be a big issue for Democrats running for president in 2028. I know you haven't made a decision yet about whether or not you're going to run for president, but, if you do, would you advocate for tearing down the ballroom or tearing down the arch?
GALLEGO: I think I'd be advocating for almost all of that. You know, the real stain that this president has put on this country has been the fact that he eroded democracy, right? Let's start with January 6, the fact that, for the first time ever, a U.S. president attempted an actual coup. That right there is a reason why we should not have anything's name towards him.The fact that he has destroyed the institutions that have kept this government together through some of the hardest times and eroded, for example, our Department of Justice is another reason why we need to be taking down all these honorific situations or emblems of him. The fact that he wants to destroy the Kennedy Center, a man that contributed so much to this country, for -- to replace it with his name, who's done everything to destroy this country, is another reason why we have to make sure that we wipe him out.So this is not me trying to get to Donald Trump because I don't like Donald Trump. It's because of what Donald Trump has done to this country. And as somebody that visits a lot of my friends at Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, the fact that we're going to have this ugly monstrosity in the view of this very sacred site...
TAPPER: The arch, you mean.
GALLEGO: Yeah, the arch -- is another reason why that needs to be taken care of, because, again, this man has done nothing but actually destroy the very fundamental things that these men and women have fought for, which is to save this country and continue this democracy.
TAPPER: Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, thanks for joining us this morning.
GALLEGO: Thanks, Jake.
TAPPER: We appreciate it.
