Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Interview with Se. Roy Blunt

Interview

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BARTIROMO: Welcome back.

Senate Republicans looking to hit the ground running next year after expanding their majority in the midterms. But there are still goals they want to achieve in the remainder of 2018.

My next guest will play a major role in shaping the party's agenda.

Joining me right now is Republican Senator from Missouri Roy Blunt. He has just been elected as the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee. That is the chamber's fourth ranking GOP leadership position.

And, Senator, congratulations to you. Good to see you this morning.

SEN. ROY BLUNT, R-MO.: Thank you, Maria. Great to be with you.

BARTIROMO: What are the priorities in the new -- the new Congress?

BLUNT: Well, I think, in the new Congress, one of our priorities is going to continue to be to confirm judges.

We're in the personnel business, unlike the House. And so the fact that the House has changed control really has no impact on that. What has an impact on that is, it looks like they're going to be 53 Republicans in the Senate, instead of 51.

And you can do a lot more with 53 than 51. You get a little more flexibility to maybe stretch a little bit more on someone that couldn't be appointed if it took absolutely every Republican, but could be if it took almost all the Republicans.

So we will see. We have made great impact on the judiciary branch, not just the two Supreme Court seats, but one out of six of the Court of Appeals judges are now people who've been nominated by President Trump, confirmed by the Republican Senate.

We're going to continue this year, between now and December 31, to try to clean -- to clear the calendar of those judges and others who are out of committee, and then to try to give the president the team that he needs to implement what he was elected to do.

It's been one of the big obstacles that Democrats in the Senate have thrown in the -- in the -- in our way, something that that's never happened before, the denial of a president to have his team. And they have effectively used every tool they had to slow that process down.

BARTIROMO: You know, the judicial namings probably has been one of the president's biggest accomplishments.

I want to get you to talk to us more about that and confirming judicial nominees. What about Senator Flake's resistance? I mean, you talk about the resistance coming from the Dems. It's coming from even within your own party. Senator Flake is resisting in this in order to get Mueller legislation, to make sure nobody messes with Robert Mueller's investigation.

BLUNT: You know, and to make that, I think, even more concerning, there's really nobody threatening to mess with the Mueller investigation.

Almost all of my colleagues, my Republican colleagues in the Senate, along with me, have publicly and repeatedly said how important it is to let that investigation go forward. Let's get it behind us. Let's not stop and have to start again.

And the legislation that Senator Flake would like to see voted on would have to be signed by the president. And it is clearly not going to happen. And why we would use up that time, when we could be making these kind of lifetime changes in the judiciary, is amazing to me.

I think we're still going to figure out a way to do that, and we need to be forward.

I think, Maria, on the Mueller dismissal side of the -- of the discussion, there's a huge constitutional reason not to believe that the Congress can decide who works in the judiciary branch.

So, along with many others, I have said repeatedly, Mr. President, it would be a big mistake to not let this investigation go forward. But I'm not going to be for any legislation...

BARTIROMO: Right.

BLUNT: ... that would -- that would violate the constitutional separation of powers.

If we wanted to have somebody the president couldn't fire, there's a way to do that. It was called the independent counsel. And that didn't turn out to be, in any case that I'm aware of, a very helpful thing.

BARTIROMO: Well, I want to get back to this, because I want to ask you about all of these investigations coming and how are you going to deal with it.

But let me stay on the judiciary for a moment. Do you expect the president will have an opportunity to name a third Supreme Court justice before Election Day 2020?

BLUNT: Well, you don't know. You never know.

I do know that having that actual vacancy in 2016 was much more focusing than the idea that there could be a vacancy. Of course, there always could be a vacancy. I think you would think that there's some likely opportunity that that could happen.

But having the chance to put two judges on the court, two judges that, with the good health, are likely to serve for three decades, is the real long- term impact that a president has to make on the country.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: A lot of things can be reversed. Who you put on the court that can serve for a -- that has a lifetime appointment can make a big difference for decades after you leave the White House or decades after you leave the Senate.

BARTIROMO: Yes. Yes.

BLUNT: This is now clearly -- it's just as important who's in the Senate, who controls the Senate, as who controls the White House.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

Senator, stay with us. I want to ask you about 2020 coming up...

BLUNT: OK.

BARTIROMO: ... and whether or not the president's tone may change going into the new election.

We will be right back with more from Senator Roy Blunt.

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BARTIROMO: Welcome back to "Sunday Morning Futures."

And I am back with Senator Roy Blunt.

And, we were just having a discussion with Congresswoman Liz Cheney about this incredible divisiveness going on really on both sides, whether it's divisiveness in terms of what's happening within the government and their approach to President Trump, or, on the Democratic side, this lurch all the way to the left.

Look at Claire McCaskill in your state losing to Josh Hawley and basically saying, look, I'm not a crazy Democrat, and calling out her colleagues for going so left. Your reaction to Claire McCaskill's loss?

BLUNT: Well, in a state like ours, where I think the voters have gotten more conservative as a group over time, but still a lot of voters in the middle, they think -- I think Claire's message was pretty important for our voters to hear.

But it was with a backdrop of a state where the president is probably as popular as he is anywhere ,his approval ratings much higher in Missouri on Election Day this time than they were when he was elected president in 2016.

And his efforts for Attorney General Hawley, his efforts in Senate races around the country exceeded anything that I think any president has ever done as a campaign or for a ticket that their name wasn't on. And it made a difference in Missouri. It made a difference in these other states as well.

It's one of the reasons that, while we lost seats in the House, our margin in the Senate is going to go up. And that gives us some ability in the Senate that we wouldn't have had otherwise to do things that let the president have the team he needs to put his agenda in place.

BARTIROMO: Do you expect the president's tone to change or shift in any way?

BLUNT: I really don't. I really don't.

I think the American people got exactly the person they elected as president of the United States. I think that's going to continue. I think, Maria, what Democrats in the House are going to find surprising and probably a lot of people in the media are going to find surprising is, while the other people who've been president would hate the idea of investigations, I'm sure the president would rather have a Republican House, but I think he will vigorously engage in a public way in these investigations if the Democrats try to pursue them.

Probably, the best thing Democrats could do in the House would be legislate, rather than investigate. But if they investigate, they're going to have an active participant talking about how those -- those investigations are being conducted in the White House, and that participant is going to be the president of the United States.

BARTIROMO: Right.

And will those -- will those claims or lawsuits fall flat in the Senate?

BLUNT: Well, if there's -- there has to be House and Senate cooperation these investigations. Clearly, that's not likely to happen.

And I -- again, I think you're just going to see a level of engagement. In past White Houses, if the Senate -- the Congress is investigating something, generally, the White House message was, fully cooperate, don't have much to say about this.

I don't see the president not having much to say if there's an investigation going on.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: Frankly, I think it just gives him a different thing to talk about every day of the week. And he will continue to dominate that discussion in the next two years, the news discussion, just like he has in the last two years.

BARTIROMO: Well, what about -- what about the discussion around what took place during the 2016 election, where we know that a cabal of people at the top of the FBI and the Department of Justice, like Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe and Bruce Ohr and Jim Comey, tried to put their finger on the scale and stop Donald Trump from winning?

Will Senate Republicans pick up where House Republicans left off in terms of the investigation into the DOJ and the FBI's actions ahead of the election?

BLUNT: Well, you know, I'm on the House Intel Committee. We have been dealing with the Russian issues from the 2016 election, the Russian issues.

But I think the answer is, yes, the Judiciary Committee is almost certain to look more vigorously now at what happened in the -- in the Justice Department and the FBI during 2016. There is clearly a story to be told there.

Part of that story is things that have been classified that, if you get to see that classified material, you wonder, what in the world about this is classified in a way that the American people couldn't know about it?

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: I think, before this is over, they're likely to know what's in those so-called classified documents, and they will be surprised.

BARTIROMO: Yes, we're going to talk with Devin Nunes coming up about that in terms of that investigation.

BLUNT: Right.

BARTIROMO: Real quick, let me get back to business and appropriations.

We spoke -- I spoke with the chairman and CEO of Boeing, who had some important comments certainly about the Lion Air crash, but also about defense spending, and what he's expecting in the next couple of years.

Want to see if you agree with this. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENNIS MUILENBURG, CEO, BOEING: We see the defense budget here in the U.S. being sustained. And if you look back a couple of years, when we were in the middle of sequestration, we feel like we're in a stronger budget position now on both sides of the aisle. So, we -- we look to the U.S. defense budget to remain strong, but we also see growth around the world.

Today, about a third of our defense backlog is outside of the U.S.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BARTIROMO: Interesting that a third of the backlog is outside the United States.

But what are the priorities, from your standpoint, in terms of defense spending?

BLUNT: Well, you know, the headquarters for the Boeing defense operations is in Saint Louis. We're proud of the workers there and proud of what happens there in our state and in our neighboring states.

Certainly, we do see more of a commitment to long-term planning in terms of defense, where you not only have some orders for this year, but also orders in future years, so you can keep that line open in a more efficient way.

We got way behind in the previous decade, the Obama decade, in our defense capacity. It's showing. And everybody who understands the military knows we have got some significant catching up to do. And I think we began that in a significant way this year.

But we are committed to maintain that as a Senate and I believe as a country, and look forward to the importance of doing that, and also being sure that we're doing what we need to have the kind of investments to protect the military advantage we have.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: What the Chinese particularly are doing with their efforts to try to get inside our systems more effectively, and we can defend our systems, would lose our significant military advantage if we let that happen.

And we can't let it happen. Again, we never want Americans to be in a fair fight.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: We want them to be in an unfair fight, with every advantage on their side.

And what we do in the next couple of years is likely to determine whether that continues to be the case or not.

BARTIROMO: Yes, important story in The L.A. Times today titled "China has taken the gloves off in its thefts of U.S. technology secrets."

And that's impacting the military as well. We're going to get into that coming up next with Devin Nunes.

But real quick on that, do you think China's behavior is going to change anytime soon?

BLUNT: I don't -- I have no reason to believe it's going to change anytime soon.

And what -- where the president's talked about our trade relationship with China generally, also, that discussion goes into what's happening with the military...

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: ... what's happening with the military where all of our investment in technology, all our investment in new defense systems has, in so many cases, been stolen by the Chinese.

BARTIROMO: Wow.

BLUNT: And then they take their money and try to build on top of what we have already done...

BARTIROMO: Yes.

BLUNT: ... to figure out how to impact in a negative way the advantages we have.

BARTIROMO: That's incredible.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it.

BLUNT: Great to be with you.

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