“She’s Demeaning The Position Of Speaker” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) On Pelosi’s Threat To Use Impeachment Tactic To Delay SCOTUS Confirmation
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spoke with Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson about the recent threats made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to use impeachment as a tactic to slow Trump’s Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation process. McCarthy hit back at Pelosi saying,
“I could make a motion to vacate the chair, meaning that everybody they would have to vote, whether she stay the speaker or not. Now, Republicans are not going to win that vote. Probably not a smart vote to do before an election because it will give 20 some Democrats a pass to say they are not with Pelosi, even though they vote with Pelosi all the time. But if she goes to make a motion to impeach a president over doing something that the Constitution tells them to do. I’m going to make that motion on her and make it very difficult for why is she using that office just as she used the salon’s special for her, not for the people different than anybody else. She cannot do it. She’s demeaning the position of speaker. She’s demeaning the Constitution. She’s demeaning of what we should use impeachment for.”
Listen To The Full Interview Below:
Full Transcript Below:
GUY BENSON, FOX RADIO HOST: We are joined now by the House minority leader, Congressman Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California. Mr. Leader, welcome back to the show. Glad to have you here.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Thank you, Guy. I always appreciate you having me back on.
BENSON: All right, so the first question is a tough one; it’s not a trick question, very straightforward, but tough. Have you recently gotten an illegal haircut or a blowout at a salon that was closed?
(LAUGHTER)
MCCARTHY: No, I have not.
BENSON: Are you sure?
MCCARTHY: I’m positive. I do need a haircut, though.
(LAUGHTER)
BENSON: OK.
MCCARTHY: But they’re open back up now in — you know the interesting thing; this is very interesting. So, in San Francisco, in California, the salons were not open and the gyms were not open, but after Pelosi goes and gets caught by going to salons, they open them up the next week. After it finds out that the city government, their gyms were still open, then they open the gyms back up. So it just shows that socialism is not equal for everybody, only just for — a few get treated differently.
BENSON: I mean, that’s always the case through history, the elite class is treated different and the buzzword is equality, but it’s not exactly equal, right, there are some very — some very special people who get very special treatment and who then get caught, and in this particular case, blame the little people for setting her up or whatever. On a more serious and more significant note, there’s a very interesting discussion happening in Washington right now about what the Democrats, mostly on the Senate side are threatening to potentially do, should they win the election in November, but when they have these press conferences — I noticed that Chuck Schumer had AOC alongside for one of his threatening press conferences where they both kept saying “Nothing will be off the table, everything will be on the table,” including apparently this impeachment notion, that I first heard floated by George Stephanopoulos, of all people. Pelosi was on that show on ABC, the speaker of the House, she did not say, she did not rule that out as a possibility. It sounds like the AOCs of the world are intrigued. I’m trying to understand how this exactly would work. Let’s say the Democrats wanted to use impeachment as a means of delaying the Supreme Court nomination process from moving forward, setting aside the Constitutionality or the reasons behind an impeachment, which in this case, would be completely baseless and outrageous; even if you guys were to impeach out of the House, it would go to the Senate and go nowhere. I don’t understand why this is even being discussed.
MCCARTHY: But they’d have to take it up. See —
(CROSSTALK)
BENSON: Would they have to immediately?
MCCARTHY: The interesting part — you know what’s ironic? Today is the one-year anniversary of Nancy Pelosi announcing impeachment. One year ago today she walked out and announced that they were going to move on impeachment of the president. And here we are talking about the exact same thing. They have wasted this majority, and they haven’t solved one problem. But if impeachment passes the House, the Senate has to deal with it and take it up. They can’t put it aside. Now what they could do is just vote it down, knowing it’s just political, not have the hearings or anything else, but they’d have to take that vote to start out with. But —
BENSON: Would they have to do it immediately? Because I feel like McConnell would probably has some flexibility. Knowing McConnell, he probably has a contingency plan for this already.
MCCARTHY: McConnell is a very bright individual, but the rules go that you have to take it up. You can’t do other business. Now they were able to do other business, but remember, they came to an agreement with the Democrats on being able to work that — on the hours that they would do it, but they have to take it up.
BENSON: Yeah, I think they would probably take it up. If I had to guess, if they weren’t allowed to punt it, they would probably — he’d get his ducks in a row, bring it up —
(CROSSTALK)
MCCARTHY: Vote it down – yes.
BENSON: — instantly; 51 votes, probably all 53 votes no, and then they move on.
MCCARTHY: Yes.
BENSON: — it’s been (ph) dispensed with. But to me it’s a hairbrained scheme, and it almost feels like, you know, Pelosi said, we could impeach him any day of the week for whatever we want. I mean, I guess technically that is true, but even with the Ukraine matter, where I think there was something there that was inappropriate, and I wrote a whole piece about censure and this sort of thing, I wasn’t convinced at all that the president should be removed from office. There was at least something there that Americans could say, all right, was this appropriate presidential action? In this case, Mr. Leader, all it would be is the president, what, nominating a Supreme Court justice to fill a vacancy which is his constitutional duty? I mean, it would be, to me, I think, hugely idiotic of them to even attempt this.
MCCARTHY: Well I would question, could it even pass the House? Remember what Pelosi said a year ago, overwhelming, compelling and bipartisan. Well, that was not what they did last time. But could — they would just be moving impeachment — think about it for one moment, moving impeachment to impeach a president for following the Constitution. You usually impeach somebody for —
(CROSSTALK)
BENSON: Yes. It’s the opposite of what you’re supposed to do.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCARTHY: Yes – exactly.
BENSON: Yes. I tend to think — my theory is they’re not going to touch this. I think it’s a weird scheme that was floated, and because they want to signal to their base that they really will take no options off the table; 5:00 — they don’t want to take that option off the table, but it’s such a dumb one that I think would backfire so badly on them that I think even that crew over there won’t attempt it, but you know, it’s 2020, anything can happen. Speaking of, we have a lot of Americans hurting, not just from the public health crisis, more than 200,000 Americans have died from this pandemic; there’s also the ripple effect, a very serious one on the economy. And we saw Senate Democrats on the other end of Capitol Hill filibuster and block moving forward with a relief package. I see that some of the members of your caucus, Congressman, tried to introduce a piecemeal piece of legislation that would at least help small businesses and keep people employed; that was summarily rejected and blocked by Democratic leadership. Talk to us about what that proposal was and how it was nipped in the bud and killed by Pelosi and all (ph)?
MCCARTHY: Well, what we tried to do — and we’re continuing to fight this, remember this is Small Business Week — there is more than $130 billion sitting in the Paycheck Protection Program, the PPP. This is the money that goes to small businesses mainly just to pay their employees and pays their rent, pays the utilities, lets them keep afloat, because we’re looking now that it could be as high as 30 percent of the small businesses that shut in (ph). So, what we’re doing is, if that money’s already sitting there, all you have to do is change the date and it could be used again. Pelosi continues to block that. But what we have is a rule in the House called a Discharge Petition, the only way to go around Pelosi. Whereas if 218 members, that’s what it takes to have a majority in the House, simply sign a Discharge Petition to move a bill forward, it automatically comes to the floor. Steve Chabot, who helped design the PPP program, he actually has written a new version, an update. So if there are companies that —
(CROSSTALK)
BENSON: And Chabot is a Republican from Ohio, just for people who are —
(CROSSTALK)
MCCARTHY: From Ohio, yes. For those who are there, please help him. But he has written – he’s (ph) been part of Small Business for a long time, where if your business was done on sales more than 50 percent, you can come back and get PPP again even if you haven’t had it, utilizing the money we already have, giving it more flexibility. Jaime Herrera Beutler, Congresswoman, Republican out of Washington State, she signed the Discharge Petition, created it. Now there are a number of day before it’s available that you can sign it; that’s going to happen tomorrow. And of course, the Democrats are releasing us today, so hopefully people will start signing it as soon as they come back next week, and be able to get the Discharge Petition moving, because if we get to 218 — and we only need 20 Democrats to join with us, we could bring the bill to the floor and bring some relief for those small businesses.
BENSON: We know that Pelosi’s conference is actually, it’s starting to get pretty antsy about this and there are a lot of reports that some of them are basically begging her to do something, right, because she said, we won’t do any piecemeal legislation. Then she brought everyone back from the Postal Service and that vote.
(LAUGHTER)
BENSON: — looks like the Democrats are abandoning that. They’re saying, never mind on the mail-in ballots. We want you all to go in person after all, because I guess they’re worried that it’s not going to work out for them. I’ll talk about that a little bit later this hour. But there’s at least enough dissention in the ranks and concern among rank and file Democrats who are worried about small businessowners and employs back home. Do you think that there’s a chance that there would be enough Democrats who would sign onto this where there could become a problem for —
MCCARTHY: Well —
BENSON: — Democratic leadership?
MCCARTHY: — there’s always a chance. But remember what Pelosi will do; she will threaten these Democrats. And remember, a lot of these Democrats ran and got elected promising they wouldn’t vote for Pelosi. And when they got there — when they got here they did. They promised that they would be different. But what do they do? They vote more than 95 percent with Nancy Pelosi. So it’s very interesting that they say one thing back home and do something else here. We’re finally going to put the pressure on them — give them an opportunity to pick their people over politics, and let’s see which one they choose.
BENSON: We keep mentioning the speaker because it seems like you know, she really does control things with a pretty clenched iron fist over there. That’s sometimes the power dynamics in the House. You did mention actually — calling back to our previous conversation that we were just having about impeachment — if the Democrats were to go down a radical route like that, you said something about maybe trying to remove her as speaker of the House.
(CROSSTALK)
BENSON: Logistically, how could that work?
MCCARTHY: I have — as leader — I can make a motion to vacate the chair, meaning that, everybody, they would have to vote whether she stayed as speaker or not. Now the Republicans are not going to win that vote —
BENSON: Right.
MCCARTHY: It’s probably not a smart vote to do before an election, because it will give 20-some Democrats a path to say they’re not with Pelosi, even though they vote with Pelosi all the time. But if she goes to make a motion to impeach a president over doing something that the Constitution tells them to do, I’m going to make that motion on her and make it very difficult for, why is she using that office, just as she used the salon, special for her, not for the people — different that everybody else. She cannot do it; she’s demeaning the position of speaker. She’s demeaning the Constitution. She’s demeaning the — of what we should use impeachment for.
BENSON: So you’re saying even though you can see that the vote would fail and it could give a little bit of a lifeline to certain vulnerable Democrats to cast a vote a certain way, you would do it anyway just on the principle of it? If she went down that path?
(CROSSTALK)
MCCARTHY: The principle of it to show the American public that what she’s doing is pure politics.
BENSON: OK. The president of the United States yesterday was asked — and this is now a big issue — about whether he would support and commit to a peaceful transition of power after this November election and his response was, we’ll have to see what happens, and then he went off in a bunch of different directions. In your view, should there be, without any equivocation, a peaceful transfer of power after this election, based on the winner? And is it appropriate for the president to give it any other answer beyond, yes, I commit to that?
MCCARTHY: You know, I’ve heard the president asked this question before, and he always said yes before. This is the only way our government works. We will have a smooth transition. There will be no problems one way or another. That’s what we do as Americans; that’s why we’re an example for the rest of the other nations as well.
BENSON: OK. That’s pretty straightforward. Last question — or last topic at least; it has to do with the upcoming elections in your House, the House of Representatives. We’ve talked about this a few times over a period of months. Basically, all the prognosticators are expecting the Democrats to hold onto the House of Representatives, keep their majority there. There’s some debate about whether Republicans will cut into that majority and gain seats. There are other people who think you know, if the election breaks bad for the Republicans, Democrats could actually expand their majority in the House. You have insisted that the Republicans are in a good position to take back the House and control of the lower chamber of Congress. Now that we’re 40 days out, what is your assessment of the realisticness (ph) of that previous bullishness?
MCCARTHY: We can take the House. I mean, it’s was (ph) proven based upon the Special Election out in California, winning Mike Garcia, moving a seat that was won by Democrats just a year-and-a-half ago by nine, that we won it by 10. But the difference is, you know, the Democrats — I think Nancy Pelosi and Cheri Bustos, they predicted that they’re going to win at least 20 seats or something to that extent, that they were in double digits —
BENSON: Gains?
MCCARTHY: — that they’re going to get these many. I look at it much different. There are 30 Democrats who sit in seats that President Trump carried. Every day the president gets stronger. As he gets stronger, and those seats, our candidate gets stronger. And remember this, Guy, if you looked at our candidates of who we recruited, there’s a reason we won in California, it was Mike Garcia, first generation American —
(CROSSTALK)
BENSON: Yeah, really good candidate.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCARTHY: — the Naval Academy. But let me tell you about our good candidates. If you looked at the number of challengers we had last time in 2018, the most women we had running for Congress as Republican after the primary was 44. Do you know what that number is today?
BENSON: No.
MCCARTHY: Ninety-five.
BENSON: Wow.
MCCARTHY: More than double. Of the 53 seats that are competitive against the Democrats, 32 percent of our nominees are women. We have more than 100 minorities and more than 125 veterans. We are more diverse than we’ve ever been. I mean you can walk from any step, from Nancy Mace in Charleston, South Carolina — the first woman ever to graduate from the Citadel –if everybody voted in 2018 who voted in 2016, we would have won that seat by 33,000 instead of losing it by 3,700. Or Stephanie Bice, in Oklahoma City, or if you go to Wesley Hunt in Houston — Wesley went to West Point. He happens to be African American, flew a package (ph) for eight years. He and his wife are about to have their second daughter, and he is going to send shockwaves with how big a quarter he’s going to have this quarter. He has the ability to win it back. Or Burgess Owens in Salt Lake City — or what about Young Kim in Orange County, California or Michelle Steel, both born in South Korea. What I’m telling you is, you have a more diverse, more representation, and in my belief, one of the best recruiting class — and I recruited in 2010 class — that we’ve ever seen in the Republican Party.
BENSON: Yes, there’s some —
MCCARTHY: That’s why I know we can win.
BENSON: There are some really strong people out there, and these races are really important. I’ve been focused a lot on the Senate for a number of reasons, but obviously, we all know there’s a presidential race and there are key House races as well, some lower-hanging fruit, some really talented and compelling people, as you just mentioned. And we’ll know, hopefully in about 40 or 41 days exactly how it’s all going to shake out. Kevin McCarthy is the Republican leader in the House of Representatives. He is a congressman from California. Mr. Leader, always a pleasure, thanks for making time for us.
MCCARTHY: Thank you, Guy. It’s an honor for me to be on your show; I really appreciate it greatly.
BENSON: We’ll be right back after this.
