Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Matt Cartwright

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Congressman, thanks for joining us.

REP. MATT CARTWRIGHT, D-PENN.: Oh, my pleasure, Charles.

And I want to echo Mike McCaul's sentiments, wish everybody a happy Father's Day.

And I want to -- if you will indulge me, I want to mention that Mike was with me on that trip to Normandy last weekend. And we -- my own father volunteered for Army duty after Pearl Harbor. And we remember the Greatest Generation.

I want to say, a week ago today, Mike and I were standing on a great open field at Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where they reenacted the 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne paratroopers' jump. Over 1,000 jumpers in the current Army jumped out.

PAYNE: Right. Yes.

CARTWRIGHT: It was awesome. It was unbelievable.

And I ran into a Pennsylvanian from Punxsutawney named Wally Herd (ph), who was 19 years old, 94 now. He was there for the reenactment. Amazing people.

PAYNE: It was wonderful. And I saw the video of that. It was just absolutely wonderful.

In the meantime, you know, America has its own new battle, and it's going - - going through next year. And that's for the next president, the next president in the White House.

What do you make of Joe Biden's lead here? It feels like he's becoming something of a Teflon candidate in the Democratic Party, with the soul focus on the general election. Not many hits from his rivals. How long can that go on? Or is everyone else now just vying for the V.P. slot?

CARTWRIGHT: Well, Charles, I have to say you're asking the wrong guy, because I'm way biased. I endorsed Joe Biden, I think, before he got to the end of the sentence where he announced for president.

And it's because I have been pretty friendly with Vice President Biden for a long time. He's from Scranton. He's a person of great humility. I think that's what people like about him. Here is a man who has known sorrow and pain as much as any other American, starting when he was a little kid, and his father lost his job, and they had to move from Scranton down to Delaware in search of other work.

But you know the personal sorrow and pain that he's gone through.

PAYNE: Sure. Sure.

CARTWRIGHT: And it gives him a humility that enables him to connect to everyday Americans. And I think it serves him well.

PAYNE: Now, setting up this election, right now, the Democrats are grappling with what to do with respect to impeachment. I want to share with you and the audience a new FOX poll on whether President Trump should be impeached and removed from office.

Right now, according to the poll, impeachment and remove is at 43 percent, impeach, but not remove just 7 percent, not impeach, 48 percent.

And by the same token, we have another poll that says, should Congress -- congressional Democrats spend more or less time investigating President Trump? Only 22 percent say more time, 48 percent say less time, and the rest say it's about right.

So it's interesting, because, in one of these polls, what I guess will reflect the Democrats in the polls saying, yes, let's impeach and remove. But when you get to the idea of these investigations and relitigating things after the Mueller report, it feels like America is tired of this.

Where are the Democrats going to go with this? Because you have got a very vocal part of your party that wants to see this done.

CARTWRIGHT: Well, I think you touched on it, Charles.

It's about the Mueller report. If you took a poll to see how many Americans read through the whole Mueller report, you would find a very low percentage. So, I think...

PAYNE: Same thing with the Constitution. Same thing with the Bill of Rights. You know what? You're absolutely right.

But the poll is out there, sir. And, with all due respect, it feels like America wants to move on.

CARTWRIGHT: And I respect you too, Charles.

And I want to say this, that what we want to do is make sure all Americans know what was in the Mueller report. And, you know, Republicans can walk and chew gum at the same time, and so can Democrats.

So while we do have those hearings to explain what was in the Mueller report, we're passing legislation that helps Americans with health care and infrastructure and bringing down the cost of pharmaceutical medications. We can walk and chew gum. And we're doing that.

PAYNE: Are you for or against impeachment?

CARTWRIGHT: So, when people get polled, well, are the Democrats doing enough on other things, maybe it's because we haven't been thumping our chests enough about all of the great bills that we have been passing.

PAYNE: Although this Congress overall has passed a partial -- it's just like you can count them on one hand, right, compared to the last Congress.

But I don't want to diverge too much from the topic here. Are you for or against impeachment yourself?

CARTWRIGHT: Oh, I'm against it at this point.

Clearly, there's not enough groundswell of support for that in this country. And why would we want to go through that? Why would we want to put the country through that if they don't want to see that happen? There's an election next year.

PAYNE: Thank you very much.

I want to say thanks to your father and the Greatest Generation. And you're right. It's been an amazing scene. And, for a while, all of us really were galvanized by that as Americans. It was refreshing and wonderful.

Sir, thank you so much for your time this morning.

CARTWRIGHT: My pleasure, Charles. Be good.


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