Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): Presidential Campaign Comes Down To Just Two States ‘Arizona & Pennsylvania’

House Minority Leader Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) spoke with Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson about the state of the 2020 campaign. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said,

“I think this presidential campaign comes down to just two states. Now, having traveled through more than 33 cities in this last month, I think the president’s winning Florida, I think he’s winning Texas, I think he’s winning North Carolina, I think he’s winning Iowa, and I think he’s winning Georgia. If he wins Pennsylvania and Arizona, that’s 280 electoral votes. Everything else is icing on the cake. And those are the two fundamental states that I think are going to determine the outcome.”

Leader McCarthy also emphasized the strong support for the President’s reelection saying,

“Arizona and Pennsylvania. He had about 20,000 people in a second rally. Joe Biden can’t get off his futon. Joe Biden can’t produce people, even (inaudible). President Obama can’t produce people for them. I’ve never seen a Biden pop-up shop on a sidewalk selling stuff for the campaign, but I see them everywhere for President Trump. So, I know what the polls say, but I also see what’s on the ground. Just like what happened in 2016, if you check those poll numbers, Biden’s a little less than where Hillary was at this day.”

Listen To The Full Interview Below:

Full Transcript Below:

GUY BENSON, FOX RADIO HOST: Let’s get to our very first guest, as we monitor the president’s event in Tampa. It is Republican House Leader Congressman Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, of course, from California. You can follow him on Twitter @gopleader. And Congressman, it’s great to have you back on the show.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Thank you, Guy. It’s an honor to always join you.

BENSON: Well, there’s a lot going on. We just sort of teed up the program here and tried to set the stage. And you have an op-ed at foxnews.com talking about who you’re supporting in this election, no surprise, Republicans up and down the ballot.

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: Your reasons why you think this election is so important. If you would, to our audience right now, make your closing argument to why pulling the lever for the GOP is the right thing to do in 2020.

MCCARTHY: Well, it’s very clear. You don’t have a greater contrast here — more prosperous, your streets will be safer, you’ve got a commitment not that we’re just going to combat COVID, we’re going to defeat COVID. We’re not years away from a vaccine, we’re weeks away. And the effort of what this president’s done, expanding on testing and others, but your streets, you see it each and every day, we see it in Philadelphia. We’re not for defunding the police; we’re actually going to add for greater training, more community policing, 500,000 more body cameras. But what about the economy? It wasn’t just good numbers today; it was the best numbers America has ever had in the history of our country. And we’ve been able to do that under this Trump administration. We’ve built the biggest economy before; we’ll do it again through tax reform. But really, you want to think about the next hundred years, this is the president who stood up to China. We will bring those jobs back. I just saw a recent report too of the number of companies coming back to America for manufacturing and others. And then our five-year infrastructure plan, and we’re going to rebuild our roads, our highways, our airports, but more importantly make sure every house as the Internet. That is a great contrast to what the Democrats have offer — defunding of the police, dismantling of our institutions, packing the courts and others, and destroying our economy by raising taxes and ending our ability to be energy-independent by ending fracking and jobs throughout the industry when it comes to energy. I mean, there’s no greater contrast than we’ve seen in any recent election.

BENSON: Let’s linger on the economy for a second, because you pointed out the GDP number, Q3 plus 33 percent, which is crazy. Now, we’re in strange times. The reason it could bounce that big is because it crashed so big with the pandemic where we had to close so much of the economy down. What I find interesting, and I’m scratching my head as to whether this actually works with any voters, even the voters who hate Trump, what the Democrats have argued and Joe Biden has argued, and we saw it at their convention and at the debates and in some of their advertising, they’re trying to blame the economic downturn on President Trump, like without even mentioning the pandemic, which is very strange. And the U.S. is outperforming rival countries and peer countries in Europe and elsewhere in terms of the economy, even with the pandemic on, but they’re trying to say, oh, look, this is the Trump recession, this is Trump’s fault on the economic side, when they weren’t giving him credit for the really spectacular numbers before COVID arrived on the economy, and if they had had their way in terms of the various policies of lockdowns and more stringent restrictions, the numbers would have been even worse and the recovery would have been a lot slower. It really feels like they’re trying to have it every way possible, and I guess they’re counting on the media hating Trump enough that they’re not really going to fact check them and force voters to think too hard about these frankly contradictory and conflicting attacks.

MCCARTHY: Look, if Joe Biden was president during this, he never would have stopped the planes coming from China, the virus would be rampant. Second, we’d still be in a shutdown. So we wouldn’t be talking about America coming back stronger than ever before and we wouldn’t be going into a pandemic with the strongest economy America has ever had. Every part it’d had (ph) been a failure. Just look for one perspective on the two men running for president. One talks about tomorrow being better than today, and Joe Biden only offers a doomsday experience. It’s almost like he’s unhappy to be an American. Goes against everything we know from what our country is. Remember America is more than a country; we are an idea. An idea that will motivate people in Hong Kong to come out to have the freedom of speech. It motivated people 31 years ago to go to Tiananmen Square a million kids, why? Because of what we have and what proves that our GDP at 33 percent is something greater than we’ve ever had before. And they cannot say one item about it except President Trump built it. And if Joe Biden was president at that time, it would be a negative number today and we all know it.

BENSON: So I feel like that’s definitely at least part of the narrative that the Trump campaign wants to talk about; that we’re going to build back. I know Biden says, build back better, but that’s a lot easier said than done.

(CROSSTALK)

MCCARTHY: He’s never built anything yet so (ph).

BENSON: I mean that’s also true. But there are concerns, Mr. Leader, about this new wave of coronavirus cases, and it’s sweeping across the country. It’s sort of indiscriminate at this point, it’s not even regional. It’s most states now have rising case numbers, rising hospitalizations. It’s getting really ugly over in Europe which, again, complicates some of the narratives that we’ve heard on the left that, oh, Europe’s amazing, and we’re just uniquely terrible. It’s not true, and they’re in worse shape than we are right now. But this is a really awful and stubborn virus. And you’re right, the therapeutics have gotten better, the vaccines, there’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the timeline there, but if we have this second wave in the late fall and winter, that could, of course, not just have a public health effect, it could have an economic effect. There are a lot of Americans who need help on PPE, on unemployment benefits, on all sorts of different fronts. And we’ve talked about this before; here we are, five days out from the election, and it seems like everyone now agrees, OK, there’s not going to be a deal, right? Nancy Pelosi was in this room with Steve Mnuchin over and over and over again, and they revealed tea leaves, oh, we made some progress, oh, it was a setback. And I think all along — it has now been made very clear, there was no intention, at least on her side, of getting to an agreement that could be voted on and passed because of politics and so there was one game in town; the Republicans put a few votes up in the Senate, the Democrats blocked it with filibusters, and the American people with all this uncertainty don’t have a new round of COVID relief. And I just found it interesting that even some of the major mainstream media polling that otherwise was looking pretty rough for President Trump, there was more blame being put on Speaker Pelosi for this impasse, and I wonder if you think that she’s miscalculated here.

MCCARTHY: She has. But she did exactly what she wanted to do. Remember what she said, it’s better to do nothing than to do something. Well doing nothing, what does that help the small business or the small business employees? Or what does it do to help the state? Or what does that do to help the schools or others in the fear of being sued? You know, Nancy Pelosi had one plan, and she tried to carry it out every single time we did COVID relief packages. I’ve been in the room. You’d (ph) ask Leader McConnell when he was there, too. When we first did our CARES bill, Nancy Pelosi flew back and held it up for one week. Why? Was it for more funding (ph) for businesses or others? No, it was for the arts. And then when the PPP program worked so well for small businesses that it didn’t go to the employer, it went to the employee and for the rent and utilities, that we would need more money. Late night television she stands in front of her refrigerator with gourmet ice cream and proudly says no and held that up for another week. I don’t know how many people are on unemployment based upon Nancy Pelosi, but the number is high. And then what did she do this time? She took total control over it so she could make sure nothing ever passed. Why? Because she believed nothing is better than something. Because if there was nothing, she was rooting for the economy to go down, the same campaign pledge that Joe Biden has, doomsday America, to make sure that she can try to beat President Trump. Look, in California we just watched a month-and-a-half ago when the question was asked to a government official, when can schools open back up with COVID. You would think it would be based upon science, based the number of cases, based upon where we were. You know what their answer was? After the election. I don’t know what the election has to do with COVID, but you do when it comes to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats. Instead of putting people before politics, they’d rather harm us. And you’re right, COVID continues to rise, it’s moving through. But you know what’s different? We’re not like Europe. We don’t have to shut down again. Why? Because our treatments are better, therapeutics; the Operation Warp Speed. We’re not going to have one vaccine; we’re going to have many vaccines. It’s not going to be years away; they are weeks away. And they are safe and they’re effective. We are defeating this. And you know what else is so important? We never invited this virus here from this foreign land. But the one thing that we will do, we will defeat it.

BENSON: Last question, Leader McCarthy, it’s about the House and the election. I’m looking at Cook Political Report right now. They’ve got 26 toss-up districts. Most of them, not all of them, but the majority of them are currently occupied by Republicans. So, it kind of seems like you guys are on defense; more places at least in the toss-up category than you’re on offense. What are your thoughts about the realistic prospects for House Republicans coming out of Tuesday night?

MCCARTHY: Look, a lot of this plays in as you watch this campaign. If you asked every Joe Biden voter, are they going out for Joe Biden? No. We are in a very big contrast. How well we do will go across the field, from the Senate to the House, the presidency. I just was traveling with the president. I just came back to Florida with him last night from Arizona. I was just with Carlos Jimenez down here in Miami, the Mayor of Miami Dade. His is a Democrat seat, he’s ahead right now. You go to Charleston, South Carolina, Nancy Mace. You go to Oklahoma City, Stephanie Bice. I was just in New Mexico with Yvette Herrell; she’s ahead. So, as — if this is the Democrats think they’ll have such a safe time, why did they just move more than a million dollars to defend Cheri Bustos, who is the head of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee —

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: (INAUDIBLE) chairwoman.

MCCARTHY: They moved it to defend her in her seat in Illinois. Is Illinois a red state? Hey look, I think this presidential campaign comes down to just two states. Now, having traveled through more than 33 cities in this last month, I think the president’s winning Florida, I think he’s winning Texas, I think he’s winning North Carolina, I think he’s winning Iowa, and I think he’s winning Georgia. If he wins Pennsylvania and Arizona, that’s 280 electoral votes. Everything else is icing on the cake. And those are the two fundamental states that I think are going to determine the outcome.

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: Arizona —

MCCARTHY: I was with (ph) the president yesterday —

BENSON: — and Pennsylvania.

MCCARTHY: Arizona and Pennsylvania. He had about 20,000 people in a second rally. Joe Biden can’t get off his futon. Joe Biden can’t produce people, even (inaudible). President Obama can’t produce people for them. I’ve never seen a Biden pop-up shop on a sidewalk selling stuff for the campaign, but I see them everywhere for President Trump. So, I know what the polls say, but I also see what’s on the ground. Just like what happened in 2016, if you check those poll numbers, Biden’s a little less than where Hillary was at this day.

BENSON: All right. Well, I mean, we will watch very carefully. We’re looking at the data. You’ve been on the ground a lot of different places, and we’ll see how your predictions hold up, and all of our predictions hold up, next week.House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, big night ahead, big week ahead; we appreciate your time, sir.

MCCARTHY: Well, thank you, Guy, and thank you for reporting all the news, not just the stuff you agree with.

BENSON: You bet. Appreciate that.