Kevin McCarthy On Who He Thinks Can Succeed Mitch McConnell

Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy joined Brian Kilmeade to discuss Senator Mitch McConnell stepping down as Republican Leader, why he thinks Senators Barrasso, Thune and Cornyn are the best candidates to replace McConnell. McCarthy also discussed Donald Trump and President Biden’s dueling border visits, the latest on the Hunter Biden investigation the need to fund Ukraine & Israel. Plus, he discussed Speaker Mike Johnson’s handling of a short-term spending plan and the 12 separate appropriations bills that passed out of the House committee.

Rough transcript below

Brian Kilmeade [00:00:00] Your reaction to Mitch McConnell leaving? How often did you work with him? How productive? How would you describe that relationship and your thoughts about his gradual exit?

Kevin McCarthy [00:00:08] No. The first thing I want to do, I want to congratulate. He’s the longest serving leader on either side in the Senate, regardless how anybody ever feels. Being leader is difficult. It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. But the one thing I want everybody to think about this Supreme Court and you could judge, but it’s a conservative Supreme Court. We would never have it if it wasn’t for Mitch. Mitch stood up when others didn’t. To get through the judges when he did. And you know, the pressure that comes on all the fights historically, he will always be there. He is a great, statistician. He’s great putting out strategies. I worked with him a lot. The Senate has different rules in the House. Right. As speaker, I could put some on the floor. He’s got to get 60 votes for everything. He can hold things up. He plays it well when he’s sitting in the minority. We would meet. We would disagree. But I would tell you, like when when we walked into the Fiscal Responsibility Act, he could have undercut me and he did not. He stood there and in the white House, he says, I’m going to support whatever Kevin agrees to. I mean, that gave us the strength to cut 2.6 trillion, to get welfare reform, to get Nepa reform. We never would have been able to get that. So look, there’s times and places, I just want to congratulate him for his service.

Brian Kilmeade [00:01:26] So who would you think would be next? I know it’s not your side, but you know these guys.

Kevin McCarthy [00:01:30] Yeah. You know, the. You got the three johns.

Brian Kilmeade [00:01:32] They’re also.

Kevin McCarthy [00:01:33] Three. So. And Cornyn, they’re they’re all capable of doing it. Look at Cornyn has done the whip job. He’s been the NSC job. Tune’s in the whip job now showing the leadership. Barrasso has been moving up a strong voice. And, you know, there could be somebody else, but it’s much different. Remember, this isn’t like speaker. You don’t have to have 218 votes. You just need a simple majority.

Brian Kilmeade [00:01:58] Of Republicans.

Kevin McCarthy [00:01:59] Of Republicans. That’s all you need. So look, the way I’ve always looked at, if you take all the names out, everybody will write something and judge. I’ve been leader when I was a freshman in California. I’ve been leader, in the state House. I’ve been leader in Congress, for five years. I say the best rule of thumb at night. Look at the number of members who are around the other members, because that’s a natural sign of leadership. They want to be around you after hours to talk about ideas, to do others. It’s not what the press writes about, it’s who they respect and who they want to see.

Brian Kilmeade [00:02:31] Because you got to find out is the thing is, too. You can’t do it if you want high popularity ratings, am I correct?

Kevin McCarthy [00:02:36] Oh, no. It’s another thing because he’s got.

Brian Kilmeade [00:02:38] A 2% approval.

Kevin McCarthy [00:02:39] Rating. Look, there’s a lot of people who you’ll have on your show who come on every day and always. There should be a college professor with a big red pen. They always want to circle something that is wrong. They never want to tell that it’s right. Because remember, our government is designed that you’re going to have to have compromise at the end of the day. So how do you move it to the most conservative point, but lock that into law every day? I could stand up here and say, what’s wrong with the bill? Because it doesn’t go 100% right, but all it does is take you off the cliff and you go further to the right, further to the left, because you’re not passing anything. You’ve got to be a conservative that’s willing to govern. I mean, that’s that’s the thing that Reagan taught us, right?

Brian Kilmeade [00:03:16] A couple of things going on with the former president, United States and the United States both going to the border. Clearly, Trump was going, and he said a couple of weeks ago. So he’s there with Sean Hannity. He’s got an eagle pass. He’s going to go to Shelby Park, which the governor of Texas basically cordoned off. And it’s and it’s worked. It’s been effective. The president has backed off on that. He’s going to Brownsville. The Brownsville thing is going to be about the walls. Good. We only had seven people come through yesterday. And the reason why other areas are bad is because that bipartisan legislation was kicked to the ground and was stopped by President Trump. How, you know, politics, you know, reality. Nobody’s going to believe that Democrats are stronger on the border than you guys. But did Republicans lose leverage?

Kevin McCarthy [00:04:00] Look, I think you made a good point. Two presidents going to the border. You first have to analyze this. President Trump going the border is not his first time. When he sits and talks to the border agents, he’ll know him on a first name basis. He did this as I went with him numerous times there. I’ve I’ve been there numerous times after he’s been president, I watch I’ve been to Eagle Pass a number of times. I’ve watched that development there and it’s atrocious what has happened. I give a lot of praise to Abbott. He’s had to fight everything to try to.

Brian Kilmeade [00:04:30] Slow costume millions.

Kevin McCarthy [00:04:31] It’s causing billions, billions of dollars. But what’s happening West? He’s been successful. We’re now watching all these Chinese coming into California. They’re coming from 150 different countries, but.

Brian Kilmeade [00:04:42] 24,000 last fiscal year.

Kevin McCarthy [00:04:44] President Biden, thank you for going the border. This is the second time. He’s been to just as many dinners with, Hunter Biden’s, business partner partners than he has to the border. So, I mean, that’s a point. But what he what the country has to realize is no new legislation passed, and the border has became a major crisis. In last year, February of last year, we caught more people on the terrorist watch list. And think about how hard it is to get on the terrorist watch list. In that one month of last February that we caught the entire time that Trump was president. Think about that. In one month, you got more people in jail. We were catching people from Yemen, coming into California. Not on the same day. How do you get on a terrorist watch list? How are you from Yemen? Where? We’re where we’re sending our cruise missiles against the Houthis, and they’re coming into our country. What about the people are not catching all of this as transpired under the executive orders of President Biden.

Brian Kilmeade [00:05:43] I want you to hear what Congressman Robert Garcia said. Blasting Trump and crediting Biden. Cut five.

Speaker 3 [00:05:48] His visit tomorrow is nothing more than a massive political stunt to try to get reelected.

Speaker 4 [00:05:52] I wonder if you could speak to Republican claims that Biden’s trip is also a political stunt.

Speaker 3 [00:05:56] Republicans have been screaming and yelling and complaining and begging the president to go to the border now, for, for months. And so the so for any of them to now say that, it’s political, I think of course, is just, totally another insane statement by any Republican.

Brian Kilmeade [00:06:13] You know him?

Kevin McCarthy [00:06:15] Yeah, I know who he is. Look, he’s just trying to spin. But you know what we did when I became speaker, I started to have hearings down at the border just to get to the Democrats right away.

Brian Kilmeade [00:06:26] When you got to be.

Kevin McCarthy [00:06:26] Him, and they wouldn’t even come. They have ignored this border, saying it’s not a problem. And now it wasn’t until Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina that it’s the number one issue in everybody’s mind in the state of Massachusetts. There’s not one Republican member there representing in Congress. But do you know, the state of Massachusetts has a state of emergency? The governor has declared, based upon the southern border, your own city here in New York. The mayor wants to change the sanctuary city. The governor of New York. The greatest crisis they have is immigration of the southern border. And it’s all stems from who is president today, who on the very moment that he was sworn in as president on January 20th, you know, one of the first things he did was stop finishing the wall. So he left the holes in the wall. There was very little area that you have to finish.

Brian Kilmeade [00:07:15] Well, the white House said this yesterday to Fox News Digital. We welcome local law enforcement support and cooperation in apprehending and removing individuals who pose a risk of national security. When a local jurisdiction has information about an individual to pose a threat. He they urge him now to call Ice. How significant is that?

Kevin McCarthy [00:07:33] Ice won’t do anything because the this administration won’t let him remove somebody. And now we’re having Americans killed by these individuals coming in. We don’t know who’s all in here. Think about it. You had 2.5 million people just in the last year come across this border, but from 150 different countries. If you go down, you talk to the ranchers, which I’ve done many times. They will find dead bodies there. The grandchildren find some. Yeah. They get kidnaped, they get pushed out of their homes, you know, in the Tucson area, it’s all controlled by the cartels. Okay. All different segments. The Sinaloa control, the Tucson area. When people come across that border, if you come without paying, the Sinaloa wins kill you, right? But every person who comes across is wearing a camouflaged outfit that you that you were given by the Sinaloa. Even on your shoes, you have carpet so they can’t trace you. This is people they don’t want to get caught. And the majority of people are coming. Overwhelmingly, 70% are single males. So why would you pay a cartel to not get caught? Because everybody else walks up because you get a free cell phone, right? You get to go into the country and a Mexican government will actually pay to fly you to.

Brian Kilmeade [00:08:45] So obviously the sanctuary city thing would have saved this, woman’s life, this, lake and railway. Yes. Because we would have been able to have ice come in and go. This guy’s a problem. Number one, you get arrested, should be gone. Jail.

Kevin McCarthy [00:08:55] He was. He was arrested.

Brian Kilmeade [00:08:56] Before. Yes. So he should have been deported right away. Having said that, Mayor Adams comes out and says, I want to do some changes when it comes to Ice. I want to get them more involved, even though I want him to get it totally out. He does not have the power, so he wants to bring it up to the city council. Just to show you how insane these people are locally. This is Adrian Adams, a speaker in New York City Council, on the change of sanctuary city policy. Cut 11.

Speaker 4 [00:09:22] We are not considering laws, changes to laws. These laws have been in effect for decades. We believe in them. We also feel that public safety, of course, is of utmost importance. But when we start refuting back to times where, where where migrants, immigrants, feel threatened, we don’t just have one ball of wax, we have an entire picture of a scenario of a situation. And if the council were to change things, it would impact more people, I believe, negatively than a small fraction of what we are looking at right now as far as this scenario is concerned.

Brian Kilmeade [00:10:00] What do you deal with people like this?

Kevin McCarthy [00:10:01] I know they don’t care about a young woman’s life. Yeah. So so you know what’s interesting? I find this in California and San Francisco and other places, they allow illegals to vote in local elections.

Brian Kilmeade [00:10:13] I don’t know how they.

Kevin McCarthy [00:10:14] Put a non citizen up on the election board. And I’ve watched now Democrats on the floor saying these individuals who came here illegally and we’re all immigrants to our families, that somehow they should have greater rights in California. They get free health care. Now you got a Democratic member who wants to give them a benefit for for home loans. And it’s our taxpayer. You know, California under Gavin Newsom went from a surplus to like a $73 billion deficit. And he’s encouraging more illegals to come.

Brian Kilmeade [00:10:47] Do you know that he you with this? But with his change in push for electric cars, he is now going to be and burying the lines, I guess for fires, which might be a worthy cause. By doing these carbon taxes, everyone’s going to get on average $0.50 more per gallon that they’re going to be paying for gasoline as a lot of these green mandates.

Kevin McCarthy [00:11:06] The other thing, too, is you’re not going to be able to charge them because there’s this great editorial, I may get the statistics wrong, but right now, based upon his policies, are grid has actually shrunk and we need our grid to grow double. Right. And he’s gone after energy policy. He won’t renew a new, oil well, but he’s now importing more oil from Ecuador when California could actually produce it. But not everybody has an electric car in California. But when the heat gets really high, he tells you not to charge it because it only taken a small percentage of the grid. But if it goes in effect, anybody has an electric car, it’s going to take up 12 to 14% of the grid that we don’t have.

Brian Kilmeade [00:11:45] But all this stuff is coming. Do all these these pie in the sky green mandates to come and do. And nobody wants to do it?

Kevin McCarthy [00:11:52] No. It’s because they try to control government, to mandate their views on everybody else. Instead of conservatives like us that want people to have a choice. You want to buy electric car, buy an electric car, but why do you take my tax dollars to subsidize it, to give a benefit? So somebody who’s making 150 to $200,000, I’m going to take a taxpayer tax money from someone work making 50,000 to buy you a car.

Brian Kilmeade [00:12:14] You know, I think Kevin McCarthy’s telling me he’s going to be in Florida soon. And it’s like, listen, you listen to The Brian Kilmeade Show, the former speaker of the House, Kevin.

Kevin McCarthy [00:12:22] Why is the camera always on you? Oh, okay. Fine. Oh, it’s only till I mention it.

Brian Kilmeade [00:12:27] Right. Well, it heats up when I talk. Listen, back in a moment. More with the speaker. Don’t move. So yesterday, finally, Hunter Biden goes behind closed doors, and it was so encouraging. I guess for Republicans, I would think they want him out front and center to testify for the public to see. Even though Abby Lowell said this, he’s the attorney for Hunter Biden. Cut 13.

Kevin McCarthy [00:12:47] This mare is a left wing nut job into Wokeism.

Brian Kilmeade [00:12:51] I’m sorry 23.

Kevin McCarthy [00:12:53] It seems to me that the Republican members wanted to spend.

Brian Kilmeade [00:12:57] More time.

Kevin McCarthy [00:12:57] Talking about my client’s addiction than they could ask any question.

Brian Kilmeade [00:13:01] That had anything to do with.

Speaker 5 [00:13:03] What they call their impeachment. So as I said before, there is no evidence because there was no evidence.

Brian Kilmeade [00:13:10] And today only confirm that I could virtually guarantee you that nobody wanted to talk about his addiction. That’s Abbe Lowell, the attorney speaker. Kevin McCarthy, is here. Mr. speaker, you know about this investigation, the role it plays. What do you what do you understand? Took place yesterday. Where’s this going?

Kevin McCarthy [00:13:24] Look, I think more information gets out. The American public is going to see what we found out. All along, this entire family traded on their name. The president when he was vice president. I mean, think about this. I’ve a family. I’m in politics. We never set up a bunch of LLCs while I’m in office and, trading on the name to move money around. And when you’re in a business, do you do you make sure nine of your grandchildren get all the money as you’re going through? Do you go through? I look, my son and I have gone to dinner. I think we’ve been to Cafe Milano before, and he never got a push. The next day he didn’t. You know, we didn’t get $3 million from a Russian oligarch, right?

Brian Kilmeade [00:14:02] So would they say that? Well, Joe Biden got him because he cares about his son. Here’s this. A meeting. I want to make sure you’re doing good. I’m over in Ukraine. Can you come in on speakerphone? Say hello. He goes, a father cares about his son. And until you get those checks, they show Joe Biden getting it a deposit or the big guy. Where’s this going?

Kevin McCarthy [00:14:22] I mean, I think every step that we have taken, we learn something new. And remember, we have not gotten to all the bank records. We don’t have, Hunter Biden’s bank records or the president’s bank records when when I move through to do an impeachment inquiry, people kind of misunderstood what that was. That was giving Congress the legal ability to get more information. That’s because the Bidens had fought as the entire time not to give you the information. Right. And let me and you.

Brian Kilmeade [00:14:51] Some more power. I want you to hear Jared Moskowitz said about that cut 27.

Speaker 5 [00:14:54] I think my colleagues and I are witnessing the death of the fake, faux frivolous Joe Biden, impeachment inquiry. In fact, as a Jewish American, when this is over, I will say more Scottish for, this impeachment inquiry. There has been no evidence on Joe Biden from the beginning. There has been no evidence so far, in this deposition linking, Joe Biden is all.

Kevin McCarthy [00:15:18] You know, I know him well and he always he this is his role he plays. He wants to just go up.

Brian Kilmeade [00:15:23] And ask into.

Kevin McCarthy [00:15:24] Yeah. And you got Goldman to. It’s the same thing they always is and nothing or nothing here. But they’ll never open their eyes and sit and walk through what is there. When you get a paycheck do you get to do you get the check and you sign a company up because of your name and you’re the brother, do you? When you get that check, walk over, cash it, and go to another bank and deposit in your brother’s bank. Who’s elected? Does he have anything to do with it? All it does is raise other questions. Why wouldn’t they first want to know the answer to that. And if there is no evidence as they say why do they fight the idea of even getting the bank statements to no.

Brian Kilmeade [00:15:58] 12 times Hunter Biden was flying around with the president doing some type of business deal. The vice president at the time doing a business deal right after, almost in every major meeting, the presidents either showed up in person or come up on speakerphone. So this is something you can’t see. First off, you could say flat out he lied when he said, I know nothing about my son’s overseas business dealings. He flat out lied about that, knew nothing about his brother, who flat out lied about it. He the fact he was at the.

Kevin McCarthy [00:16:21] Beauty shop was money. He lied about having never having any meeting. He literally went to the went to dinners with it where he got where they got revenue from it. If if I happened to call my son or daughter and they’re in a meeting, that’d be one time. But if my son and daughter are calling me inside a meeting that they have, even Hunter Biden a minute admitted when he was on the board of Burisma, he only got it because of his name.

Brian Kilmeade [00:16:46] Kept McCarthy here for another half hour unless he tries to break out. But I’d lock the door. Listen. The break. Kill me. Joe. So good. You here in a very busy Thursday. Hey. Welcome back, speaker McCarthy here. Mr. speaker.

Kevin McCarthy [00:16:56] You get to interview Otto again, I want to. How many stations are you on across the country?

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:01] Room? Right over 200.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:03] How many? When you first started this stations were there.

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:06] How many you think we had, Allison?

Speaker 4 [00:17:09] Maybe 20. Less than 100.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:11] Yeah. And you’ve grown at that much?

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:13] Yeah. We’ve grown and we do.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:14] And it’s like the hottest working person on television that I know. You go straight from the. What time do you wake up in the morning?

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:20] 230.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:22] And you go into the void. So you prep ahead of time, right? You go in, do the morning show, then you come straight here.

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:28] Yes.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:29] Then what do you do next?

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:30] After this ten week plan for one nation Saturdays at 9 p.m.. So we, we sometimes tape it, sometimes we go live. So we go to meetings, right?

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:38] They think of it changing the name of Fox just to kill me. I mean, I already I work on that, but, you know, that’s amazing too. People don’t realize how much Shaun works, too. Oh, he does radio all day. Then he does his night show. I mean.

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:52] And if you talk to people that know him, he’s on the phone talking about talking nonstop.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:56] Then he’s called me in at one in the morning because he doesn’t sleep.

Brian Kilmeade [00:17:58] Right, right.

Kevin McCarthy [00:17:59] It’s either him or Mark.

Brian Kilmeade [00:18:01] And Mark Levin is great.

Kevin McCarthy [00:18:03] I mean, you three work so much, people don’t realize. And then you’re writing a book on your what? When do you write the book? As you walk it up?

Brian Kilmeade [00:18:09] Yes we do. I just jot it down. I make some voice memos. But, you know. Thank you. I think there’s so much fun. You know how much into it you are, right? No one has to say. Hey, Ken, why are you up? Why are you having dinner here? Why are you going out for drinks after? Because you’re trying to get that next deal to find out how to move forward. Try to get that right candidate to get that, to get that committee to whatever it is. So that’s what in your head, you’re always trying to make deals for one objective to make the country better. Yeah. So I want to see if we can get some answers to some stories soon. I know we’re an election year, but to me, I always think we could solve a lot of these problems seem solvable. They are, because they’re no longer gray area. And I always use this explanation. Stem cell research with George Bush. The difficult situation was that the Reagans against the bushes on stem cell research. Mike. Wow. Do you really need intellectual argument? Moral argument. But I’m talking about, illegal immigrants with, with neck tattoos, gangsters allowed to stay in, committing a crime. This is not hard stuff, and it’s just an absence of logic in the world right now. Is that even conservative? Liberal. And when I see more. And I was Charlamagne the God who does the morning show on an urban station right here, what I hear these guys are known as Democrats. Go. What? I can’t recognize this transgender debate. I can’t recognize that we’re giving emptying our hotels for illegal immigrants while working class people are not getting any of these services. I can’t recognize people that would put illegal immigrants into a classroom who don’t speak the language to underprivileged kids. They put them into bad areas where the teachers don’t get paid enough. The schools are resourced well, so where’s the logic? So I’m to me, I think all this stuff is solvable, and I like having people like you on that are in the eye of the storm.

Kevin McCarthy [00:19:51] Well, you know, you’re 100% correct when you get a Bill Maher who’s saying they have steps so far out there, you’d find Democrats who thought October 7th should have been allowed with just a mass secure with case. Yeah. I mean, that would be that was the equivalent of 30,000 of Americans. Diner. No one believes that an Israel should have a right, not just to defend themselves, to make sure that never happened. Hamas is a terrorist organization. They should not be able to survive. And it’s befuddles me that Democrats become almost the party of supporting Hamas. It’s unbelievable. But you raise good issues here. They’re almost black and white. And the challenge that I think all Americans have to think about, you want people who have a philosophical and principle beliefs, but understand you have to govern. Just saying no. Yeah. It’s not governing. It’s real leadership. Look, I’ve always said and I’ve studied I was in business before, did a lot of different things. But there’s two types of leaders. You’re either a thermometer or a thermostat. Think about that for a moment. A thermometer does one thing, tells you the temperature and that that’s people that you’ll see that want to make money online. They just want to tell you the temperature and fire you up and never get the facts. A thermostat tells you the temperature but changes it. It’s 100 degrees in here. But I’m going to take you to 75 and we’re going to do different actions. But it’s just like when you put the temperature down, it doesn’t cool off right away. You got to have the foresight to continue to move through, to know what you want the end result to be. That’s the greatness that you found generation after generation in America able to do that. America is more than a country. America is an idea. You know, when I would travel the world, it doesn’t matter where I go. I remember walking in to see the president of Egypt. SEC. Now Joe Biden thinks he’s president of Mexico. But I saw Assisi back in April of last year. And the first thing he says to me, you know, I watched all 15 rounds of you going for speaker. It was amazing how you stood for that. Right? I mean, what happens in America.

Brian Kilmeade [00:21:51] Matters, right? I was I was in Australia last week and on channel five inches my hotel room and still work. Yeah, in my hotel room. Fox news. Yeah. And everybody knows what’s going on. People in Australia knows what’s going on here and they’re a little disappointed, worried instead of saying, well, we have a rivalry. And look America is down the road. They get a little worried because it doesn’t see what we get at each other’s way to get anything done, especially when it comes to Ukraine. If you bring up Ukraine to a Republican now even people that they don’t want to fund Ukraine, do they not remember World War two? Do they not remit? Do they know what? This is bad.

Kevin McCarthy [00:22:25] This is a very good point. And I think this is where okay, I think the president has failed lots of times because any time you’re in a situation like this or the world affairs are like this, he should speak to the American public because he can’t. It doesn’t matter from Republicans or Democrats. America and our policies can come together as one. No. He put a lid on it when Israel got attacked. But at no time in world history do we look like the 1930s all over again. You’ve got the axis of evil. China, Russia, North Korea and Iran bounding together want to expand their influence a lot like Germany, Italy and Japan at that time. You’ve got a challenge where people say, I don’t want to give money to Ukraine. Do you understand what the money’s for? It’s not for Ukraine. It’s for America. It’s the missiles we have provided to the Ukrainians to fight the war. We need to replenish ourselves. Otherwise we’re in a weaker position. And you know what we gave them, like iPhone version one. And we’re going to build ourselves, right?

Brian Kilmeade [00:23:25] 14 but you took Mark T since, editorial in the Washington Post for the administration to realize that 80% of the money is spent in America on American companies to arm the Ukrainians.

Kevin McCarthy [00:23:37] Yes. And you know what happens? There’s not one American dying. But we’ve watched this has more, not just with Ukraine. It’s what’s going to happen to Taiwan. What’s going to happen to this? The set of what the power in the world looks like, whether freedom, democracy, republics win or not. Those are all dictatorships that pretty much from the power bases of what they look at. I know they could have their constitution, but really, when you fine with the the way they’re leading in the way they’re pushing the, the other challenge that you find that’s happening right now is you got a leader in President Biden, that almost every single decision is wrong. I’m gonna tell you a personal story. I went to Ukraine in 2015 after Russia had invaded.

Brian Kilmeade [00:24:17] And Obama’s president. Yeah.

Kevin McCarthy [00:24:19] And Ukrainians fought back. Right. They’re fighting with sticks, pretty much. And I come back and I took a bipartisan group. So we go down to the white House and we meet with the person in charge of Ukraine, then Vice President Joe Biden. We go into the Situation Room. And then when I sit there, I say, Mr. President, I brought Democrats and Republicans here, and we’re advocating let’s sell Ukraine javelins. Javelins is a is an arm held missile that would stop a tank. Okay. And let’s do it as a defensive weapon to make sure Russia will not invade further, because I don’t think merkel would support that. I said, okay, well, let’s sell them to them, keep and train them on it and keep it in Poland.

Brian Kilmeade [00:24:57] You mean the president of Germany would might not be happy about that?

Kevin McCarthy [00:25:00] Yeah. And said let’s because they’re buying Russian natural gas. Which do you know, if we replace Russian natural gas for one year, we would lower CO2 emissions by 218 million tons because American natural gas, 40% cleaner. But this administration has stopped us from selling it now.

Brian Kilmeade [00:25:18] After oil contracts, which, by the way, could help you win Pennsylvania. Yeah. Because they the number 1 or 2 natural gas.

Kevin McCarthy [00:25:23] But these are allies I know. Okay. The other thing I’ll tell you is when Biden became president. And and Putin moved those troops next to Ukraine. He called me and said, I talked to Putin. He said, you know, I told him, these sanctions are really tough, Kevin. I don’t think he’ll invade. I said, Mr. President, with all due respect, Putin has lived under these sanctions for a decade. He’s the wealthiest person in the world. He thinks like a mafia boss. He only looks at the world black and white. Mr. president, the thing you might not realize is this is the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Soviet Union this year. He will invade unless he sees we should have moved weapons in, not rooms, not troops. And he would not invade. So then, once he invades, the president calls back and talks. Me? Nobody tells me. Kevin, you gotta understand, these sanctions take a long time to work. Every form. Had he moved, given them F-16s early? Had he moved? He he has Ukraine fight, but sanctions are only allows him to have a missile that will go 40 miles. So what does Russia do. They put their troops back 41 miles.

Brian Kilmeade [00:26:31] Right. No attack arms, only Himars first, no Himars.

Kevin McCarthy [00:26:34] This would never have to even go in place. I mean, gates was right. The former secretary defense under Bush and Biden said for the last 40 years, Obama for the last 40 years, Biden has always made the wrong decision.

Brian Kilmeade [00:26:48] He’s got experience. It doesn’t mean he’s right.

Kevin McCarthy [00:26:50] Ever think about Afghanistan? His decision in Afghanistan also spurred Putin to invade Ukraine.

Brian Kilmeade [00:26:56] But did you read and it’s okay if you didn’t Robert Herz report? I read every word of it. And in Robert Hersh’s report, he’s obsessed with Afghanistan. He’s upset with Obama, upset with the military. We should be out of there. And then you say to yourself, it’s a documents document, but this is about a guy’s obsession with Afghanistan that we don’t belong. And then he becomes president and he pulls everybody out and says, no one advise him would be dangerous.

Kevin McCarthy [00:27:19] I’m going to tell you a story I don’t think I’ve ever shared publicly, and I’m not sure if I have. When Afghanistan hit the president, I’m minority leader at the time, and then President Biden is kind of ignoring me, right? He won’t even say my name at the inaugural. He just mad at.

Brian Kilmeade [00:27:32] You know, you really.

Kevin McCarthy [00:27:33] No, no, no, no, we knew each other when he was vice president. I’d go up to his house and have and have breakfast. Yeah, we know we knew each other. He didn’t like me for my support of Trump. But be what it be. Afghanistan happens. This is a president that still hasn’t spoken to me. I call the basic public line for the white House. I said, hi, this is Congressman Kevin McCarthy. I’d like to talk to the president because I’m getting all these calls from people stuck in Afghanistan, members trying to get people out. So the white House calls and says, hey, did did this did the leader call the white House? Yeah. He wants to talk to President president’s credit. He calls me back, puts me on speaker. He’s got the others. In the room goes, Kevin, what’s up? I said, Mr. President, you cannot stay with the timeline you gave for Taliban. We can’t get all the Americans out. There’s thousands of Americans. No, no, no, Kevin, the number is much smaller. What’s the number, Mr. President? Well, no, no, no, I said, but, Mr. President, I got thousands of name here from all the members literally working from a waltz from Mark Wayne Mullen, literally doing their job, trying to get people out. He goes, Kevin, you don’t know this, but the Taliban’s going to need us. What? Mr.. He told me the Taliban’s going to need us after they take over to help them govern.

Brian Kilmeade [00:28:43] Unbelievable.

Kevin McCarthy [00:28:45] And I said, Mr. President, by.

Brian Kilmeade [00:28:46] The way, publicly, he was saying the Taliban was going to take over. These are the biggest army in the world that we’ve been training for 20 years.

Kevin McCarthy [00:28:51] But the other thing I tell him to I said, Mr. President, our allies are sitting there. They’ve got troops. They’re not because they were attacked on 9/11, but because we were. Did you give him any heads up? And he he misjudged and overcorrected, left the military, came and told him what he needed to have to maintain Afghanistan. He picked the number, not the military. So then the military couldn’t protect Bagram, but.

Brian Kilmeade [00:29:16] The number they were given?

Kevin McCarthy [00:29:17] Yeah, they could only protect the embassy. And we knew this. There’s briefings. You knew it ahead of time. But when you didn’t protect Bagram, this is where the prison are. The the worst people in the world that we have collected for the last decade, said the minute we left, they broke out. Do you know who the the bomber that killed those two of those guys was in that prison? This all hinges. And people say, like, who’s running the white House? It was the President Biden who made those decisions. It was Biden who told me Putin wouldn’t invade. It was Biden who then told me sanctions take a long time to work. It was Biden who told me when I talked about Afghanistan that you can’t use that deadline. We got to get all the Americans out and we better allow our allies care about who told me, no, I was wrong.

Brian Kilmeade [00:29:58] You just know that final thought is he says it. With the Trump plan was in place, he couldn’t stop it.

Kevin McCarthy [00:30:02] So let me give you this, okay? If you’ve ever been to Afghanistan and I’ve. I’ve never served in the military. Okay. But I went there as a policymaker and I would listen to them. In Afghanistan you have a winter. It’s like a bull. Right. So the fighting is much more during the summer and spring months. Yeah. If you were going to hand something over that we’ve been fighting for 20 years, would you hand it over in the summer or spring, or would you do it in the winter when people are away so they’d have a greater ability to have the strength to take over when we’re not there? Would you tell your allies, hey, we’re getting out at this time? I know you’ve been here for 20 years with us. Let’s make sure this sustains itself, this government. No, he didn’t turned it over at the moment in time that the Taliban was stronger.

Brian Kilmeade [00:30:46] He said no one ever briefed him that things could go south. And number two is NATO.

Kevin McCarthy [00:30:50] That is.

Brian Kilmeade [00:30:51] Not right. Right. Because remember, he told George Stephanopoulos.

Kevin McCarthy [00:30:53] I was in the Gang of Eight. I was briefed before all that. I went to briefings. The the military, they do their job. We have the best military in the world. But the problem is, you have a commander in chief that gave orders to the military on how many troops they could have. When they went in to rescue Americans, they had more. They put more.

Brian Kilmeade [00:31:16] Training in and got a snap of a finger they went in with and, you.

Kevin McCarthy [00:31:20] Know, one American had died prior to that in two years. We had sustained that.

Brian Kilmeade [00:31:24] Because we they said because we promised to leave. Mr. speaker, stay right there. A few more minutes, we come back. Brian Kilmeade, you know.

Speaker 4 [00:31:30] There’s no way to run a railroad. So what we did was we broke this up so that we could actually amend and negotiate and fight for policy initiatives on 12 separate appropriations bills. We’ve done that. We’ve got an agreement now. And and now they’ll be passed into a package is because, as you noted, the calendars run out. But this was an important thing. We have got to break the cycle and the way Washington works. We got to reform budgeting and spending, and we’re going to have an opportunity to do that going forward, because we had this hard fight.

Brian Kilmeade [00:31:57] Right now, so to speak. McCarthy’s here. The new speaker, my, Mike Johnson, talking about that. They have a short term spending plan and 12 separate appropriations bills that are now passed out of committee. Are we close to getting a budget?

Kevin McCarthy [00:32:09] I think we are. And you’ve got to understand, when I when I became leader, I got frustrated because the Senate would always, never pass any of those bills into an Omni. So when I did the Fiscal Responsibility Act, I put this provision in there, a 1% cut across the board if you don’t do your job. So the Senate started to do a props bills, which structure dictates behavior. And I tried to change the structure. But what you don’t want to do is last is stick with what they did the year before because it was Democratic policies and they’re spending too much. So the the Fiscal Responsibility Act actually have you spend less and you’re in the majority. You want to put your policies and take advantage of being in the majority. By waiting this long. You weakened your hand. But I congratulate them if they can get it done now, because you you’re five months into the next fiscal year. You’re talking about last time, right? This should have all been done in October. We could have been able to have.

Brian Kilmeade [00:33:03] How do you get, how do you get the border fixed and how do you get Afghanistan? Excuse me? How do you get the border fix and how do you get Ukraine and Israel funded?

Kevin McCarthy [00:33:12] Well, first of all, I would never have put a pay for on Israel when they got it.

Brian Kilmeade [00:33:15] I mean, every dollar they get, you got to find something to cut.

Kevin McCarthy [00:33:18] Yeah. Well, if you’re going to do that to Israel, think about it. Israel gets attacked on October 7th. Iran is doing it funding Hamas. You got the Houthi is now sending missiles at us, right? You’ve got the North thinking about coming down in to.

Brian Kilmeade [00:33:33] Evacuate 100,000 Israelis.

Kevin McCarthy [00:33:35] And a and your greatest ally in Israel, they’re questioning whether America is going to act or not. That emboldens our enemies to do more.

Brian Kilmeade [00:33:44] So you never would have done that.

Kevin McCarthy [00:33:45] But then how do you know you would have sent the money right there to make sure that you calmed it down? What you should have done is if you are the if you are the majority, you got to be in the room. Okay. When I negotiate the Fiscal Responsibility Act, you never would have got the largest cut ever 2.6 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office just came up and said it’s even a bigger cut than people even projected. Welfare reform, Nepa reform. What you have to do is negotiate directly with the president, and that’s what you want to cut.

Brian Kilmeade [00:34:16] You don’t think that we’re going to be stuck?

Kevin McCarthy [00:34:18] Well, what you would do is say, okay, Ukraine’s important, but I’m not going to let you just dictate what Ukraine is. We got people who fought in theater. They know exactly what needs to happen. Our people are going to be in the room. You’re not going to sell it to us. But we need the border at the same time. We’ve got to deal with America, and we’ll do both.

Brian Kilmeade [00:34:34] All right. Let’s hope they can get it done. Kevin McCarthy. It’s been a great hour. Now, you going to go on a plane?

Kevin McCarthy [00:34:38] I’m going to go on a plane. Go back to work. I know, but you’re still working. Probably write a new book by the end of the day, right?

Brian Kilmeade [00:34:42] No, no. We’re going to get ready for One Nation Saturday at nine, which, you know, you’re going to be watching. And of course, going to finish off the show.

Kevin McCarthy [00:34:47] Invited me to be on that show.

Brian Kilmeade [00:34:48] I think it’s about time we do.

Kevin McCarthy [00:34:49] It is I’ll dress up for.