Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript Interview with Kevin McCarthy

Interview

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Joining us now for reaction, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Welcome to you, Leader McCarthy.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Thank you, Trey. I'm excited for your show tonight.

GOWDY: Thank you.

If you were the speaker of the House and you may be one day, how would you handle these negotiations?

MCCARTHY: Well, the first thing, why do we think Nancy Pelosi would do anything different? From the very first bill any time we dealt with COVID, she has always tried to stop it. From our first bill, when we tried to get liability protection for 3M to sell its masks, she said no and gave us shortage when it came to personal equipment.

Then when we try to make the COVID bill go through, she held it up for a CARES Acts so the Kennedy Center could have more money. Then when the small businesses were starving for money for PPP that was so successful to pay their employees, she proudly stood in front of her refrigerator and ate ice cream and told America, no, she wouldn't do it.

The first thing I would do is take the trillion dollars that's already been appropriated but is sitting there with $100 billion more for the states, with more than $100 billion for small business, and I would use that instead of hurting, the hardworking taxpayers to borrow more money, because it's already appropriated and could be used.

Luckily, we have a president that cares about people's paychecks and he's getting them out but he's also able to do a peace plan at the same time.

GOWDY: Kevin, what's it going to take for the Republicans to retake the House and do you judge success as retaking the House or just picking up seats?

MCCARTHY: I take success by retiring Nancy Pelosi. It only takes 17 seats. And, Trey, you know, just a short time ago when we were sworn in, it was 19 seats. We got a Democrat to flip and we just won a seat in California that Hillary carried by a majority in the Democrats won by nine points. We just won it by ten.

But we really need to challenge. Democrats have more money than we do, but we've got better candidates.

So, if you want to make a difference, we'll make it all the difference.

GOWDY: Well, Kevin, my memory may be suspect, but when you were the majority leader, we would pass bills and the media narrative, even though we pass bills was, well, you can't do that because the Senate isn't going to take it up.

I don't hear the same criticism when the Democrats pass a bill that has no chance of passing the Senate, it just seems like a lot of duplicity or is it just me with the media in D.C.?

MCCARTHY: Well, no, I don't think it's just in D.C. But think about it -- Nancy Pelosi's version of solving the coronavirus was $3 trillion. But you know what it did? It mentioned pot more than it mentioned research or jobs.

How does that do anything for anyone? What she has done, just think, what has she been able to do with San Francisco? She made it a sanctuary city. She has high taxes. She has sidewalks nobody wants to walk on.

This is what she wants to do for the rest of America and now, Joe Biden, just picked the other person that's dealing with San Francisco -- Kamala Harris. That's a recipe for failure.

GOWDY: OK, man, thank you for putting on a tie for us. Good weekend to you and Judy. Thank you for joining us.

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