>> A political pragmatist from a battleground state this week on "Firing Line."

>> There has to be distinction between people who have totally different views than you and people who are fundamentally not accepting of democracy.

>> A CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq.

Now, Elissa Slotkin represents Michigan in Congress, the only Democrat to win a district carried by Republican presidential candidates three elections in a row.

But that didn't stop her from voting to impeach Donald Trump twice.

>> Obviously, I know and I can hear that this is a very controversial decision.

>> She was at the Capitol on January 6th and says the attack revealed a seismic shift.

>> The single greatest national security threat right now is our internal division.

>> With debate across the country over voting rights, a scramble in Washington to deliver an infrastructure package, and divisions in her own party over how and whether to compromise, what does Representative Elissa Slotkin say now?

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... Corporate funding is provided by... >> Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, welcome to "Firing Line."

>> Thanks for having me.

>> Before you were elected to Congress, you began your career as a CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq, and you later served in both President Bush's White House National Security Council and President Obama's Departments of State and Defense.

How does your background in national security inform your approach as a legislator?

>> Well, I mean, it certainly -- it certainly affects how I legislate, how I approach the job as a congresswoman.

I mean, being a CIA officer and an analyst in particular, you do this rigorous look at facts.

And it really shocked me when I first got to Congress, just how many people don't even read the bills, how many people just kind of like look at what others are doing and vote a certain way.

And I think -- I hope I bring the same rigor to legislating that I did to being an analyst where you're just like really, really connected to the details and the facts and the actual lines that you're reading.

>> You know, you're remarkably the only Democrat in the House of Representatives from a district that voted in the last three presidential elections for the Republican presidential candidate Trump, Trump and Romney.

After you voted to impeach Donald Trump the first time, many observers thought that you would lose your seat, but you didn't.

You managed to win.

How did you do it?

>> Frankly, because my district was Republican and voted for Donald Trump, I was really wary of signing up for impeachment, right, and feeling like that would have been sort of a one-way ticket to lose my seat.

But, you know, nine months in, it just became so clear that there was just a ton of information coming in about how the current president at that time had reached out to a foreign country and asked for help in an American election.

And that was just too much for me.

And I made this decision, along with six of my colleagues, to write an op-ed and saying, hey, we're all from districts that are Republican, that voted for Donald Trump, but it's time to at least have an inquiry.

And that kicked off three straight months of me being asked, usually live on camera, you know, "Are you going to lose your seat?

Are you going to be a one-term congresswoman?

Are you going to be kicked out of office?"

And when you're asked that every day for three months, you get really comfortable saying, "I might.

I might lose my seat, but there has to be things that are more important than just getting re-elected."

And I would go home and people would say, "Listen, I didn't -- I don't agree with your decision, but like, you had guts to do that."

And I think that really helped me when the election came around in 2020.

A lot of people who voted for Donald Trump also voted for me.

Right?

There was a big overlap.

And part of that is trying to lead with some sense of mission and integrity.

And part of it also is like going to small communities where they have not seen their Congress person in like 40 years.

You have to show up.

And I think that really helped as a Democrat running in a Republican seat.

>> You know, you just said something in that explanation.

You said there have to be some things that are more important than getting re-elected.

>> Yeah.

>> For you, what are those things?

>> I mean, I think that there are some foundational issues to democracy that are worth losing your seat over.

And for me, that's the sanctity of the presidency, of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

And then it's the tenets of democracy, right?

It's the things we fought over to become a nation voting and access to the voting booth.

That, to me, is a pretty foundational one.

The rule of law.

You know, we're nothing if we don't have the rule of law and you don't get to bend the rules just because one party or another is in power, and, you know, the security of the country.

I think that that's our primary responsibility, is to provide for the security of the country.

And if you're going to play politics with that, you're going to have a problem in my book.

So the foundational things I think are, to me, the ones that are worth losing your seat over if you have to.

>> You were one of five Democratic members of the House of Representatives that didn't vote for Nancy Pelosi to be speaker.

And you're part of the Problem Solvers Caucus.

How do you, Congresswoman, describe your politics?

>> Well, I'm an independently minded person from an independently minded district.

And I'm from the state of Michigan, which is inherently a swing state.

We are still a split-ticket state where people vote the person over the party.

And when you represent a place like that and you come from a place like that, you carry that same approach to legislating.

So when people come and let's say, try to lobby me to vote for something, I say, "Look, I'm going to tell you exactly what I tell everyone else.

I'm going to read it.

I'm going to evaluate it on its merits.

If it's targeted and transformational and is going to affect my constituents in a positive way, I'm in," whether that's a Democratic bill or a Republican bill.

But I'm not going to vote for something just because my team is voting for it.

>> On January 6th, you were on a staircase headed to the House floor when you heard yelling and screaming and the breaking of glass and something that you have said could have been a gunshot.

That's when your training kicked in.

Tell me about that moment.

>> Frankly, I didn't even think about it.

My brain just sort of clicked into some of the training that I had before I went to Iraq, which is just get off the X, get off the bull's eye, get off the target and just get out of Dodge as fast as you can.

So I turned around and ran back to my office through the tunnels, locked myself in.

A couple of minutes later, a colleague of mine could not get back to his office, another member of Congress.

We brought him in and then I clicked into another part of my experience, which is calling the senior folks at the Pentagon and making sure that they knew that we had lost control of the situation.

Frankly, in the CIA, we're trained, you know, when a parliament abroad is attacked, they go after leadership.

They're doing what's called a decapitation event where they're trying to literally dismantle the activity of a branch of government.

And it felt like we were in the middle of that.

>> You actually spoke on the phone that day to General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the attack was ongoing.

What did you tell him?

>> I told both him and then secretary of the Army that "we do not have security in the Capitol, we don't know where our leadership are, and I don't know what happened with the preparedness ahead of time.

But you better get people down here."

And, you know, this is why we have a January 6th commission to help us understand why there wasn't a quick reaction force waiting just off campus, why, with such big protests that many of us knew were coming.

If you're from Michigan, you knew that there was going to be violence that day.

I just thought it'd on the lawn of the Capitol.

>> Congresswoman, how did you know something was going to happen on January 6th?

>> I represent Lansing, Michigan, where in April of 2020, armed protesters forced their way into the gallery, watching -- looking down on folks.

People were putting on bulletproof vests.

We've had a precipitous rise in participation in militias.

And then the raid on the group that was attempting to kidnap and kill my governor took place in my district.

And then, of course, just watching Facebook and we saw that 17 buses were being organized from my area to come to the -- you know, from Michigan to the protest on January 6th.

So there were some signs, and I was worried that the protests on the lawn would get violent and sent a note to my staff saying no one is to be in work on January 6th.

Not because I thought they'd have a problem inside, but I didn't want them crossing that lawn in the middle of all of that, and it ended up obviously being a very dangerous day.

>> Americans just heard incredibly emotional testimony from key law enforcement officers who confronted violent rioters that day.

To you, Congresswoman, what are the key questions that the House select committee needs to answer and get to the bottom of?

>> Well, I think we need to understand, you know, the origin and intent of the protests.

It is clear to me that there were some people who were there for a protest but had no idea that they would be going inside the Capitol that day.

Frankly, when I flew home to Michigan on January 7th, I was surrounded by a bunch of people who were all bragging about getting into the Capitol and they did not seem to have any plan on the morning of the 6th to go into the Capitol, but they sure as heck went in when the barriers came down.

But we know that there was a certain subset of folks who were quite organized, who in some cases had real training in how to organize something like this.

So I want to understand that group in particular, who they had relationships with, if they were receiving funding from anyone, and sort of how we got from an idea to an actual violent event.

I want to make sure we understand leadership.

We obviously had a very public impeachment trial for President Trump in inciting some of that violence.

But I think there are other leaders across the country who bear some responsibility for that incitement.

And I want to make sure we understand that.

But then obviously security was not where it needed to be.

So I want to understand why was it that there wasn't a quick reaction force.

Why was it that seemingly the federal government didn't take the threats as seriously as a random congresswoman from Michigan?

>> I know you support the select committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol, but I also know that you would have preferred a bipartisan commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission.

And we have all seen already that Republicans are already diminishing the select committee's work.

They are calling the committee hearing a partisan hearing.

Some Republicans are labeling the two Republicans who are participating on the committee, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as "Pelosi Republicans."

Do you worry, Congresswoman, about the number of Americans, some of whom are in your district, who will perhaps never take seriously the findings of the select committee?

>> I do.

I'm concerned about it.

And that's why I strongly preferred that we do a 9/11-style commission, a bipartisan group of outside experts, not sitting members of Congress.

And we had 35 Republicans who voted with us in the House, but it died in the Senate.

And so we're already in the world of second-best options.

But it is hard for me to accept, you know, to see Republican leaders attacking the current commission when they could have had a very different version of it.

They just chose not to support it.

So I'm not sure I really believe the crocodile tears that are coming out of some of these folks.

They had the opportunity and they missed.

They whiffed on a truly bipartisan conversation of outside experts.

Now, the committee, the current committee has to do its very best to remain objective and serious.

And I really appreciate folks' willingness to do it.

And I hope that people remember their country above their sort of political digs when the results come out.

>> Would you support, Congresswoman, subpoenas to Kevin McCarthy or to any other House Republicans about their communications with President Trump and his staff that day?

>> Yeah, I mean, I think if we're going to get to the bottom of something, let's get to the bottom of it.

And if you were spending time with the president on that day, if you were speaking to the crowd that day, if you were involved in organizing that day, if you were involved in securing funding for that day, then we should have a conversation.

And you don't get a free pass because you happen to be an elected representative, and in fact, you have more responsibility.

>> For a long time, it was your job to brief leaders, including President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama on the terror threat abroad.

And I've heard you say that January 6th demonstrated to us that actually our greatest national security risk is no longer foreign extremism as much as it is the division that we're facing here at home in the United States of America.

Tell me, how is it from your perspective that we got to this place?

>> Yeah, I think it's been a bit of a perfect storm of a bunch of things culminating at the same time.

I think, you know, there's real stress on the ground in places like Michigan, stressors like economic stress, you know, people unable to pay for their healthcare, their prescription drugs, unable to have a decent job with decent benefits.

So people are frustrated.

And then I think, frankly, what certainly was important to me and a driver for me getting into politics in the first place was we had people who were in elected leadership positions who were using division as a strategy to maintain their public support, who were splitting people apart in a country that's so diverse.

So it's easy, you know, once that starts.

And it was hard for me to hear President Trump deliberately splitting us apart as a strategy because it allowed everybody else to feel like that might be okay.

So I saw that manifest itself on the ground.

And in combination with social media and people's frustrations, it created deep divisions and that -- when you have deep divisions, it's hard to govern.

It's hard to make decisions that people can rally behind.

And that's the part that worries me about keeping us safe.

If we don't have consensus among Americans and we're fighting amongst ourselves, it's really hard to be a clear, principled leader abroad.

And so that divisiveness is a real national security problem.

>> Tell me what your top priorities are as chair of the Intelligence and Counterterrorism Subcommittee.

>> Sure.

It's clear we need to rightsize to the threat of domestic terrorism and domestic extremism.

So how do we make sure that Americans are getting the education they need to understand hate, to understand the difference between a real news story and a fake news story?

So digital literacy, Holocaust education, all those things early on that would just give someone pause, have them, you know, take pause later on when someone's trying to get them sucked into something violent or something extreme.

So those are the things we're looking at on our committee.

>> In several interviews, you say the line on the First Amendment is drawn when someone incites violence.

Let me ask you, does having Donald Trump out of the White House and off major social-media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, lower domestic terrorist threat level?

>> I think it lowers the temperature on the divisiveness.

Absolutely.

You know, I used to -- I'm sure, like you and others used to sort of wake up in the morning, roll over, check my phone and sort of hold my breath, like what kind of controversy is going to be stirred up today?

And I think one of the things I appreciate about President Biden is he's gloriously boring.

And I think that that is -- that's a good thing for bringing the temperature down in the country.

>> Let me ask about voting rights.

Despite President Trump's false claim to the contrary, in Michigan, there was "no evidence of widespread systemic fraud," according to the GOP State Senate Oversight Committee's report.

Michigan state legislature, nonetheless, is working on more than three dozen election reform bills that lawmakers say will make voting easier and cheating harder.

Now, you have said the right to vote is "under assault" in your state.

How so?

>> Yeah, well, I think, you know, we, like a lot of other states in the country, have a bunch of bills that have been suggested, and a lot of them are cut and-paste jobs across the country.

You'll see the same bills in the Michigan legislature that you'll see in Georgia or Texas or Arizona.

Some of them are meant to really shrink the the amount of time you have to vote and how you can vote, right?

Some of them are about more ID, which frankly, in most cases I don't have a problem with.

The ones that really get my attention are the ones that focus on what I call right of the vote, meaning you vote and then there's the ability to have a small group of people change the outcome of those results, right?

You could have a small group who just decide, for instance, like in Texas, the Texas bill, that there seem to be "widespread fraud."

And so they -- this small group of people would have the ability to either pause or reverse the results of that election.

I don't care who you are, Democrat, Republican.

That is scary stuff.

That is scary stuff.

If you're an elected official working as your primary job to make it harder to vote in your state, I think you've lost your way.

>> You know, you, I think very correctly call the issue of voting rights foundational to democracy.

And you wrote a letter and you had it signed by 34 Democrats.

It was written to President Biden, Vice President Harris and Democratic congressional leaders.

And you urged support for "the sword and the shield" approach.

So it was -- passing elements of H.R.

1, the For the People Act, and H.R.

4, known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

First, Congresswoman, step back and tell me H.R.

1 is very popular amongst Democrats.

What's wrong with it?

>> I don't know that there's anything wrong with it.

It's just I'm a pragmatist and we voted on H.R.

1 as my first major bill when I became an elected official.

You know, I think the winter of 2019, and then it sat in the Senate.

And we voted on it again just now in 2021.

And it's sitting in the Senate.

And while the concepts behind H.R.

1 -- you know, curbing dark money in politics and all the voting rights and, you know, getting rid of political gerrymandering as we did in Michigan -- all of those things are core things that I believe in.

But to me, you know, if I hold out and say I only want the perfect and I'm going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, then we're going to -- you know, we shouldn't be surprised when a year from now we have no voting rights legislation.

We haven't protected the vote.

And various states have gone their own direction and some scary directions on voting rights.

And so as a pragmatist, I want to focus on the voting rights provisions of H.R.

1, which I really think of as the sword.

You know, it's helping, going on offense on voting access.

And then the shield, which is H.R.

4, the Voting Rights Act, a very old piece of legislation, very important that helps protect what we have.

I think there's a compromise there that may not be perfect, but it would do so much to protect voting rights at the federal level.

So we wrote this letter and we're willing to fly back to D.C., right?

We're all working in our districts right now, fly back to D.C. and vote on it because it's that critical.

>> Let me ask you about Afghanistan.

You served three tours in Iraq.

Your background, your training is in national security.

You were part of the generation that stepped up to serve the country in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

As President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan nears completion, the security situation is deteriorating on the ground.

And the Taliban advance on major cities, including Kandahar, where the airport was just attacked, is troubling.

Is it fair to say that you've been skeptical about the details of the administration's withdrawal?

>> I mean, I think, listen, we all want to leave Afghanistan and we want it to be better than how we found it.

And we want it fundamentally to never be a place where terrorists can organize attacks on the United States or our allies ever again, right?

The original reason we got in in 2001.

And what I'm concerned about is that, as we pull out, which I understand the impulse to do, I want to make sure that if we see groups organizing to attack us, to attack the United States, that we have the intelligence infrastructure, the diplomatic infrastructure, the over-the-horizon force to be able to take care of those terrorist organizations if they're threatening us.

And I think that's what I still have open questions on.

What is the plan if we see now, you know, ISIS or another terrorist group organizing and plotting attacks from that territory?

So that is what I have sort of open questions about from the administration.

>> So you're a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Are you getting the answers you want from the administration about whether there is a plan to prevent a full-scale security collapse?

>> We've certainly had briefings, including from the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

I think what I'm interested in is sort of opening up the hood and understanding a little bit more of the detail.

Certainly as someone who served in Iraq and was involved when we were pulling out of Iraq and then involved when we were going back in, in 2014, when ISIS took over territory.

And then I'm interested in our diplomatic approach.

Right?

We know that people like the Taliban, they want to be treated like a real government.

They want to be able to go to international conferences.

Well, we should hold out on some of those things until they show that if they're going to be present in an area, they're not going to violate human rights and, you know, squelch women's opportunities.

And so I want to know what the diplomatic play is.

And then if we really did have a problem and we needed to bring the military in in a serious way, what is the over-the-horizon plan?

Where do they come from?

Where do they base?

What capabilities are we maintaining there?

Those are the kinds of nitty-gritty details that I think a lot of us on the committee are interested in learning.

>> The White House and a bipartisan group of senators have agreed on a nearly $1 trillion bill to improve roads, rails, grid, clean-water systems, and broadband, among other things.

And you live 20 minutes from Flint, Michigan.

And I know one of your big priorities has to do with the infrastructure that would clean up the environmental challenges there.

But Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has threatened to block the bipartisan infrastructure bill if it's not passed, along with $3.5 trillion of budget reconciliation package, and she says she has more than enough progressive votes on the Hill to block that bill.

What do you think of that power play?

>> Well, I think we have this bipartisan package.

The President supports it.

The Senate supports it.

I'm part of a group, the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group that supports it.

And so, in my experience, when you have a deal like that, you don't let it sit around.

I just -- I think it reflects that there's not a ton of trust right now in Washington.

No one trusts the folks that they're negotiating with that something will hold.

But I just live in a world where I know that that package is really a once-in-a-generation level of investment in infrastructure, and my district and my state needs that.

So I want it done.

>> Are progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, by taking this posture, making it harder to actually get things done?

>> Well, look, I don't fault anybody, Democrat or Republican, for advocating for what they believe in.

Right?

I do think at a certain point we need to remember the mission.

>> Representative Elissa Slotkin, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

>> Thanks so much.

>> "Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... Corporate funding is provided by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> You're watching PBS.