McConnell on Fox News Radio’s ‘The Guy Benson Show’
‘Well the first thing we need to do is deal with the humanitarian crisis [at the border]. Here you have the New York Times editorial page and Donald Trump on the same side. We've got a humanitarian crisis… Believe it or not there are headlines that said, “Give Trump the money.” They're talking about this rush of folks coming to the border that we don't have the capacity to take care of. That is the short-term problem that needs to be addressed through a supplemental appropriation.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sat down with Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson during the inaugural week of “The Guy Benson Show” to discuss reshaping the federal judiciary, fighting socialism on the left, and other upcoming items on the Senate agenda. See below for highlights or click here to listen to the full interview.
On filling a potential Supreme Court vacancy:
“They're [Democrats] conveniently cherry picking what I said in 2016. What I pointed out was that you'd have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a Senate controlled by a different party than the president filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court created in the middle of a presidential election. I said it then. I've said it repeatedly, and I was shocked that this seemed like news. And next year there will be a Republican Senate, and a Republican president.”
On fighting the Democrats’ socialist agenda:
“I think [court packing] is another thing, in addition to things like the Green New Deal and Medicare for all, that they will do the next time they get a handle. It's important to remind people that the number of Supreme Court justices is set by statute. The last time it changed was 1869. So that could be done by a simple statute. And oh, by the way, they plan to make D.C. a state and Puerto Rico a state. That's four new Democratic senators. They plan long term to take over this government, take us far to the left and turn us into a socialist country. They've got to be stopped. And that's why I call myself the Grim Reaper. As long as I'm in charge of the Senate, as long as I am the Majority Leader of the Senate this stuff is not going to pass.”
On the humanitarian crisis at the border:
“Well the first thing we need to do is deal with the humanitarian crisis. Here you have the New York Times editorial page and Donald Trump on the same side. We've got a humanitarian crisis… Believe it or not there are headlines that said, ‘Give Trump the money.’ They're talking about this rush of folks coming to the border that we don't have the capacity to take care of. That is the short-term problem that needs to be addressed through a supplemental appropriation. They stripped that part out of the supplemental that we passed just last week to deal with storms in Puerto Rico and Florida, Georgia and Alabama and Nebraska and Iowa. That would've been a logical place to add this humanitarian relief. What Lindsay [Graham] is trying to do is to get some legal changes that we absolutely need to make. I hope he can get some Democratic support in Committee and if he can, put something together on a bipartisan basis that helps us solve the legal problems we're confronted with, such as how long can you detain people. That would be a good subject to bring up.”
On House Democrat Investigations:
“I think the Attorney General is doing a great job. The Democrats just can't let it go. You know the case is closed. The only objective investigation was the Mueller Report. You know the public knows there's not going to be an objective investigation in Congress. Each side will try to politicize it. They need to let it go. I mean, I think that the reason the Speaker is so reluctant to see them go down the impeachment path is that the American people are not interested in it. If you've got a grievance with Donald Trump, you've got a vote coming up next year. Why would we need to, in effect, veto the election the American people conducted in 2016 that legitimately elected him.”
Related Issues: Health Care, Immigration, Homeland Security, Judicial Nominations, Infrastructure, Supreme Court
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