Its something weve said all the time. The weakest, the thinnest, the fastest in u. S. History. Schumer admitted trying to ask for more witnesses that what happened over here was wrong. Now we have the own speaker of the house who is so embarrassed that she add mitsz the failure of this impeachment that she will not even send it to the senate. So embarrassed that i watched in her press conference she wouldnt even take your questions. That is not a good legacy to have. Shes admitting defeat by not sending it, by refusing to send the impeachment over, she knows this outcome is not good. She knows the facts are not there. Theres no basis for it. At the end of the day the American Public needs to move on. So with that, let me open it up for questions. Yes . Pelosis legacy, do you worry about your legacy, defending a man who suggested last night that john dingle might be in hell, attacked a 16yearold girl last week, is it okay to defend a man who talks like this . Am i worried about my legacy, no. Am i worried about my legacy of standing up for the constitution that its not impeachable what the president did. The question before me as a member of congress, is that impeachable . Even which i would consider probably the most respected constitutional scholar, someone not a republican, a democrat, Jonathon Turley said, the only abuse moving forward was the democrats. There was no bribery, there was no obstruction. Thats the job that i have. Will i be addressed the fact that i just served forever a year in congress and the record is more subpoenas than laws . Im embarrassed that this is the congress that did that. Im embarrassed that this congress promised to be different and they havent. Im embarrassed that this congress designed their entire time from selecting of their committee chairs, from the freshman on their first day, to adam schiff with only one goal of impeaching the president. When we move to that impeachment going against everything and every fear that Alexander Hamilton had, that the on mossties would be so great theyd use their own political raw power to do Something Different and they did it and now theyre so embarrassed that they wouldnt send it over to the senate . Yeah im embarrassed about that. John dingle. You have a Record Number of republican retirements over the this congress and the last including mark meadows today. What does that say to you about the health of your party . Health of our party is very strong. Lets talk about that. Last congress when we had triefrmts i was sad about that. I wish we didnt have as many. I wish congressman po did not retire. Id never met a man named dan crenshaw before, but this new Young Navy Seal whos now probably the strongest republican talk about policies, its healedy. For those afraid of republican retirements i would not be. If you take the average of the retirements based upon if you look at the president s votes and others, its in r. 23. A republican is going to replace mark meadows. Hes been a great member. From the same point when you look back the thing about the Republican Party, we dont believe this should be your entire life. I watched steny hoyer and hes a dear friend, but he said in his speech the other day hes been here 38 years. I dont think thats what our founders designed or thought of. With the Republican Party were health and bring new blood in. Whats happening with a lot of striermts in 2010 i was the recruitment chair. Thats when republicans defeated 63 democrat incouple bepts. If you measure us today where we are as a party on those running for office, we have more than 100 more than then. We had more women republicans running for congress than anytime in the history of the Republican Party. Veterans and others. So were stronger than if you sit today i watched Speaker Pelosi said she had a step in her a jump. Her swing in her step. Her conference is going to be lighter. Republicans is going to be stronger after today. If youre asking about the party and retirements, republicans are going to replace. I think the question, Speaker Pelosi, when she started this impeachment, she promised her own members that the public would be for it. We found that not to be the case. She promised theyd be stronger. Theyre going to be smaller. Were the stronger conference after it. I judge unfortunate dont find that any of this was healthy in any aspect that you measure it. It definitely is not healthy for our government, but its definitely not healthy for america itself around the world. Yes . Question, if you could respond to an earlier question about can you defend trumps remarks about john dingle, but my question would be, this week federal prosecutors revealed that left parnas jowl yoounys associate received 1 million came up during his bail hearing. As you know some of parnass money was sent to your committee, donated it. Can you respond to both the development in the prosecution, what that means for the linking of demeetryo fear taj, the oligarch, to parnas and what that means for the investigation . I dont know. An investigation will continue to go forward. I thought you were going to refer to when you said what happened this week, i thought you were going to refer to the judge based upon what happened with the fisa court and the fbi spying on the campaign. That was a great concern to me as well. Question of john dingle, i knew john dingle and debbie dingle. They are very good individuals. I think they served john served his country very well. Im proud. When john passed away if you watched on the floor and heard my speech on the floor and contribute to him and i find him very strong individual, very bright individual. I think he made a great contribution to america. We may differ philosophically, but i considered him a friend. Yes . Now that the house has voted on articles of impeachment, what will House Republicans role in senate be . Are you planning on having some of your members prep senate as they prepare for eventual trial . We will do anything senators need if they want information, they need it, we have a lot of members that spent a lot of time on this. But thats up to the senate and also up to the president , who he wants to represent him. But anything that we can be helpful, we will. Yes maam . Would you consider last nights House Republicans defeat a failure to the party . Eye defeat . Well, let me first gauge that. I would feel it was a defeat to the constitution. That the rise of impeachment would become so low that you didnt read the constitution. Id consider it a defeat in the idea that we didnt hold the same standard that the speaker asked us to hold in march of this year. At least at that time. That impeachment was so divisive that it would have to be overwhelming, coming pelg and bipartisan. When i watched last night the only bipartisan vote was against impeachment. A democrat whos actually voted for president voted present. So the question you probably wanted to ask was to the speaker. Unfortunately she would not take any questions when it came to impeachment. I would think if nancy pelosi thought impeachment was so important, that she had to put this before the American Public, that she wrote a timeline that she selected committee chairmens based upon in the future that she spent two and a half years working on this, the press conference the day after impeachment, that she has weekly, i thought she would have welcomed questions about impeachment. Unfortunately she told you they were republican talking points and she would not take your questions. I never thought a speaker would act that way. I guess the even thing i could take from that, shes embarrassed of it. She understands how weak ps. And she untss her own criteria was not met constitutionally was not met, probably failed on all parts. I hope i answered your question. Yes, sir . Usmca set to pass today. The speaker argued that democrats deserve some credit for strengthening the product over time for improving the enforcement mechanisms. Do you think that the final product thats going to pass is stronger than what was what initially came out . And how would you summarize the way that the negotiations have taken place over the last several months . Well, you started by saying the speaker believes the democrats need some credit for bringing usmca up. The only reason usmca was brought up was because they impeached the president. If she thinks thats why, ill let her have that credit. But the credit for the bill itself, no. What did she talk about less than one of the overall bill. I dont think its better. It actually put doubt into some people of whether they would vote for it. Usmca talks about United States mexico and canada. Mexico is our number one trader. Canada is number two. A lot of you have been reporting for the last year last year of with china and trying to come to an agreement with china. China happens to be our number three trader. If you were going to go into a negotiation with china, youd want to be the strongest possible ability, right . So would you think passing usmca a year ago when the president came to that agreement would make us a little stronger with our negotiations with china . Yeah, everybody in the world does. But nancy pelosi had the power of speaker not to bring it up. Why . Because it didnt meet the timeline. She wrote a timeline of when she wanted to impeach the president in the last week that we were here, but she didnt want that to be the last vote. So she held usmca up, which only made our negotiations with china put us in a weaker position. So we got our first phase of agreement with china. We probably could have gotten it all if we were stronger with our first and second traders. So i dont know what credit she wants to take, because she only harmed us by holding it. If she wants to try to spin it in some manner, if youre only negotiating 1 of the bill, i dont know how much credit you can take. America will be stronger because of u. Smca. President s have promised they would renegotiate this for 25 years but only one did it, President Trump. Lets see who should get the credit. I took and looked at every time the usmca was brought up on the floor in the last year. You want to know what the percentages are . 91 of the time that usmca was brought up to bring up to a bill and talked about was from the republican side of the aisle, 9 from the democrats. So i think history will tell who gets the credit. Im just very proud of our members for never giving up, for continuing to put pressure. But the greatest pressure to finally change the speakers mind was the impeachment, because she did not want to go home without being the final vote. Shes so embarrassed by it, she wont even send the papers over. She wont even take your questions, why wont she release the papers. I never thought id see a speaker take that position, but i guess thats where we live today. I never thought wed see a house doing the things that Alexander Hamilton feared the most. Yes . Have you spoken any more to congressman Jeff Van Drew about him moving to the Republican Party . How do you feel about welcoming a new member whose record doesnt exactly line up with republicans . Republican is a very big tent. Were excited to have Jeff Van Drew. We welcome anybody who believe this is new Democrat Socialist Party has left them behind. Why is he leaving the Democratic Party . Theres many times in the past that members from either side of the aisle have left their party to go to the other, but i cant remember a time that somebody left from a Majority Party to join the minority party. So that question that you raised to me and the premise of it really should be asked to the democrats. How can you be excited if you started this whole process thinking the outcome would be better and your own conference got smaller because of it. It showed the differences. It shows youre not welcoming. It also shows you cannot have a difference of opinion. When you watch the body language on the floor last night, you watched those 31 democrats who sat in seats. Their shoulders were down, their heads were down. They were not proud of what they were in. It was almost like the pressure was too great for them. In fact the pressure inside their own clahambers greater th the people back home they should listen to. Many of them promised before they got here that they would not vote for nancy pelosi for speaker. They broke that promise right away because that promise of those 2 1 2 years to impeach the president was too great. Many of them would say they did not want to impeach the president , thats not why they came here. But the chairman of the committee on impeachment the judiciary was selected on that fact. The congress they selected to represent the two articles of impeachment inside the rules committee two days before the president was inaugurated said he was going to impeach the president. So i guess that much pressure outweighed to these 31s their own constituents. 11 months from now the constituents will have a voice. For all the frustration i see, this is still the greatest form of government because the people have the power. Second question. Was sandwiched in between two pretty bipartisan major votes this week, the spending bill and usmca today. You know, they say that shows what they have said all along, that they can walk and chew gum at the same time, that they can hold the president accountable while also legislating. Do you think that shows there can be bipartisan support . There can be a lot of bipartisan support. Lets just take your question. We had bipartisan bills on the floor, a spending bill. When was the spending bill do . How many times did you have to do a continuing resolution before the pressure of christmas coming, before the pressure of the troops not getting their pay raise, i dont think thats bipartisan. I think thats a failure on their job. Bipartisan, you become a new majority, you promise youll be different. They never passed the budget. Bipartisanship, we start at the very beginning concerned about prescription drugs. So we had three bills that would lower the price of drugs come out of energy and commerce with every democrat and every republican voting for it. But there was one who had the power to change the bill, not in committee but by herself, the speaker. She changed the bill before it came to the floor to make sure it wasnt bipartisan, to make sure it could not become law. Usmca you say is going to be bipartisan. It will. Weve waited one year for it to come to the floor. Why . Why would they put them all this week . You even used the word sandwich. Could it be they had a timeline . Could it be that they waited for the impeachment . Could it be that they did not have the votes for the usmca unless they promised to impeach the president. Could it be those who sit in the districts that President Trump carried that wanted usmca had to pledge a vote for impeachment to get usmca to come up . I dont know. That would be a question for the speaker. But she doesnt take your questions, only on certain subjects. Its interesting for an elected official to have that answer. The decision to not hand over the articles to the senate right away, does that have any precedent or does it raise any constitutional questions to you . I dont think she has the constitutionality to keep them. We did not use the standards that we used for president nixon or clinton. She changed all that. We did not use the standards that the constitution tells us about impeachment. We changed it for that. We did not use the standards that the speaker laid out to us in march. She changed it after that. Its an embarrassment. And i dont think the American Public will sit back and take it. Thank you for your time. I wish you all a very merry christmas. If you missed any of this live event, it is available for you to view again online at cspan. Org. Just type Kevin Mccarthy in the video search box at the top of our home page. Our cspan campaign 2020 bus team is traveling across the country asking voters what issues should president ial candidates address. I feel like whoever becomes president should focus on the cabinet as a whole. For example, the secretary of education, i feel like whoever will have that position, they should make sure whoevers best for that position and by doing this, then they would make Real Progress as a whole. One of the questions id like to see this Campaign Season is based on the rights enumerated in this book here, where do they believe each of those rights come from. One of the issues i want candidates to address primarily is Mental Health because the main time we see Mental Health in the news its after a terrible gun violence situation. Most Mental Health factors dont contribute to that. I suffer with anxiety and depression. I need candidates to do something more to help people like me. An issue i would like the candidates to address is the involvement of pharmaceutical companies in health care, specifically the advertising of pharmaceuticals on Television Led to a lot of the problems were having now with our Health Care Coverage and that entire issue. So if you could please address that in a specific way, i think it would have probably every american in the United States. Voices from the road on cspan. More Live Programming coming up later today when a House Oversight subcommittee holds a hearing to examine the Economic Impact of climate change. You can see it live this afternoon starting at 3 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan 3, online at cspan. Org or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Now 15 judges of the Fourth Circuit court of appeals hear oral arguments in two lawsuits that claim President Trump violated the emoluments clause of the constitution. That bars president s from receiving gifts from foreign or state governments while in office. The lawsuit alleges that the president illegally profited from foreign dignitaries and officials staying at the trump hotel. They previously found that d. C. And maryland did not have standing to bring these lawsuits. This decision will determine whether the lawsuits can move forward. From earlier this month this is about three hours
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