Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Kevin McCarthy
Interview
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BARTIROMO: Peter Navarro at the White House.
Meanwhile, a partial government shutdown averted for now, after President Trump signed a two-week extension of current federal funding. Now the stage is set for a high-stakes meeting between the president and top Democrat leaders on Tuesday of this upcoming week, as border wall funding remains the major sticking point.
Joining me right now, in an exclusive interview, is the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy.
Congressman, it's great to see you.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, R-CALIF., HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER: Oh, great to have me back. Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Thank you so much for joining us.
So, what -- what about this continuing resolution and the funding? Is this all about getting the money for the president's border wall? Is that is what this fight is about?
MCCARTHY: Well, remember where we are.
You only had a continuing resolution because of the unfortunate passing of President Bush. So we were supposed to finish all of our work. And we have done 75 percent of all government funding. It's just these seven appropriation bills that need to be done. And the only reason why they're not, because it takes 60 votes in the Senate.
Now, the challenge here is, we know the problem with border security. We need our borders stronger, strong, secure, especially with the caravan and others.
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: In the House version, we have $5 billion. The Senate version has 1.6.
And what the president is saying is, I want a deal. That's why Schumer has a process in this, he's going to have Schumer come in.
Now, Nancy Pelosi is in a different position. She's having a battle to become speaker.
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: You have to have 218 votes on the floor. So that's January.
But we have to get this all done in the next two weeks. You know the type of new members she has coming in. They're much more socialist, progressive.
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: Where they don't go to her office to visit her. They go to her office to join in the protests.
So she has a challenge that she doesn't want to vote for anything.
BARTIROMO: She doesn't want anything done.
MCCARTHY: No. But we need to get this done.
BARTIROMO: She wants to be speaker.
(LAUGHTER)
MCCARTHY: Exactly.
So it's more her personal politics than putting the American public first.
BARTIROMO: What about this meeting on Tuesday? What comes out of it?
MCCARTHY: Well, I'm hopeful an agreement comes out, exactly what the president, the art of the deal, what he's looking for.
He wants an agreement. But remember what happened last time we got here, when Schumer shut the government down.
(CROSSTALK)
BARTIROMO: Yes. Then we saw the crocodile tears.
MCCARTHY: Oh, yes. He threw a big argument that he wanted just his way.
This is a place where we can find common ground. The president -- I wanted to fully fund it at $25 billion. The president said, give me $5 billion. That's compromise.
I think, from a standpoint of what we see happening along the border, it is a real challenge. We need border security.
BARTIROMO: She says she's not going to do it, Nancy Pelosi, under any circumstances.
So what -- where are we once your next deadline comes, the 21st?
MCCARTHY: We have got two more weeks.
BARTIROMO: Partial government shutdown?
MCCARTHY: Well, yes, because we have funded 75 percent of the government.
This is not something the president wants to do. The president wants to get to an agreement, solve the border, fund the 25 percent rest of the government, and let's move forward on places that we can agree and keep moving this country in the right direction.
BARTIROMO: Let me ask you about another issue that's been real important to you.
And that is, these technology companies out there, bigger than we have ever seen, more powerful than we have ever seen. There have been breaches. There's obviously speculation that they're censoring conservative conversation.
You have got the CEO of Google coming in to testify. What are you looking to get out of that?
MCCARTHY: Well, this is something -- you have too -- that we have looked at this for quite some time, because technology affects so much of our lives.
Two-thirds of every adult American gets their news from the Internet.
BARTIROMO: That's incredible, yes.
MCCARTHY: But there's no other company that has a greater control over the Internet on searches than Google.
And Google has not been coming to any of our hearing, whereas Twitter, Facebook, and others -- 90 percent of all Internet searches goes through Google.
BARTIROMO: That's a monopoly.
MCCARTHY: This is an argument, competitiveness, bias. We saw -- we know the story, what they did to the California Republican Party before the primary, calling our ideology Nazism.
BARTIROMO: Oh, right, Nazism, right.
MCCARTHY: We looked at what happened in that video right after the election, when President Trump won, how depressed they were. And then they gave that silent donation, trying to influence.
And think about -- I gave Google credit in 2010 when they pulled out of China, what China was asking them to do in their searches. But now there's talk of them coming back, this Dragonfly. But then Google pulled out of working with the armed forces of America because they disagreed with the A.I. platform which our armed services want.
BARTIROMO: And we know that China has a national system, whereas everybody gets a score.
MCCARTHY: Everybody gets a score.
BARTIROMO: They're spying on you, and at the end of the year, you get a score. And if they don't like the way you behave, if you smoke cigarettes, if you -- whatever it is, you may not be able to get a train ticket. You might not be able to get on the plane -- a plane, you -- whatever it is.
And is Google helping China with that?
MCCARTHY: Well, these are the questions we have to ask.
And I give Sundar credit. Their CEO came in to see me after I put out a tweet. He promised he would come to a hearing.
BARTIROMO: Yes, but he blew it off so many times before that, right?
MCCARTHY: To the Senate and others, he did. But to myself, he promised.
BARTIROMO: OK.
MCCARTHY: And he's coming.
We postponed it a week because of the president's death.
But these are questions that have to be answered. Then -- that's about China, but what about the privacy of Americans? How long do they keep those searches that are supposed to be private that you go through?
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: How do you get the -- what is it that you doing with the data that you're finding?
Because they know almost everything about us.
BARTIROMO: These are -- these are media companies now. Let's face it, Congressman.
Are you going to see different legislation overseeing these companies, since they're media companies, and now they didn't think they were media companies just a year ago?
MCCARTHY: And they don't -- they don't get treated the same way.
BARTIROMO: Exactly.
MCCARTHY: They get treated differently, where they get like almost self- policed.
And let's see, what have they been doing to that process? And what is the bias? I know it's an algorithm. But a human writes this algorithm. If you go into Google and you search something, they give you the four queries before you go through.
If you put something negative there, you will pick on that. It's 95 percent of people drop off by the time they go to the second page of Google, where your search comes up.
BARTIROMO: Right.
MCCARTHY: And when they put up news, they're beginning to put up opinions that are news. That's not news.
BARTIROMO: Are we going to see regulation? Are we going to see a bill come to the floor about bigger power?
MCCARTHY: This is why we're having the hearings.
BARTIROMO: OK.
MCCARTHY: What do we need to protect? What do we need to stop the bias? What do we need for competition?
(CROSSTALK)
BARTIROMO: What else is on your agenda going into 2019? Give us your agenda, real quick.
MCCARTHY: Well, we have to finish off this.
We have got to get the farm bill done. We have got to get the funding done. We have got to have border security. I'm a person that believes in legal immigration. And our immigration system is broken, and I would like to solve that problem.
BARTIROMO: Working with the Democrats in 2019, it's going to be what they say is going to be the agenda, no?
MCCARTHY: No, let's -- let's not give the Democrats more power than they have.
The Republicans still control the Senate, and President Trump is still in office and needs to sign the bill.
BARTIROMO: True.
MCCARTHY: The Democrats that got elected did not get elected on an agenda. The only thing they talked about are investigations in the process.
BARTIROMO: Yes.
MCCARTHY: And I think America is too great for such a small idea.
BARTIROMO: Congressman, it's great to have you on the show.
MCCARTHY: Thank you.
BARTIROMO: Thank you so much, Congressman Kevin McCarthy.
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