What are the processes for holding a president accountable . Watch book tv every weekend on cspan2. Today, the chair of the National RepublicanCongressional Committee talked about the 2020 campaign and the chance for President Trumps recent rally in North Carolina tournd her back, directed toward ill on omar. It was discussed at it was hosted by the question signs monitor. It is an hour. Linda its a little after 9 00. Were going to start and im good to talk a little bit and let the congressman eat quickly. Im Linda Feldman from the Christian Science monitor Washington Bureau chief for our guest is congressman tom emmer of minnesota the chairman of the National Republican campaign committee. This is his first appearance at a monitor breakfast so welcome. Now we will give you bennett queue ground. He was born in south bend indiana and grew up in the dina minnesota attended First Boston College and the university of alaska fairbanks and played hockey for both. Then he got his law degree at William Mitchell college in st. Paul. 10 years later, he got into politics verses a city councilman and then a state legislator and after not quite reaching the minnesota governors office, he won a seat in congress. That was in 2014, Michele Bachmanns old seat in the district. Since arriving on the hill, congressman emmer has helped run the congressional hockey challenge for the longtime hockey enthusiast coach has a reputation, im told, for talking trash. I would say being honest. Linda yeah . Ok. That theso add congressman has seven children, so i have to ask, are they all playing for a team . There are six boys and one girl and shes the best athlete out of the whole group. And by the way, shes a sports broadcaster. Linda oh my gosh. Thats fabulous. Mr. Emmer is in his third term of congress and the chair of the nrcc and wants to win back the majority, which brings us to the days breakfast. Please, no live blogging or tweeting. In short, no filing of any kind while the breakfast is underway. And theres no embargo when the session ends at 9 00. We will email you pictures from this breakfast as soon as it ends. As you know, if youd like to ask questions, please send me a signal and i will call on as many of you as time permits. Now, congressman emmer, if you would like to make three for brief opening remarks, the floor is yours. Thank you and thank the Christian Science monitor for inviting me. This is my first time here, but i think most of you might not be surprised to know its my first time pretty much anywhere. I havent done much of this. Thats not been my goal while ive been in congress. Im going to quick show you a picture from the congressional hockey league. And you wont be able to see it from where youre at, but at the congressional hockey game, after we scored the first goal, it did i did something which is called ride the horse down, and im very proud of it. Most everybody in washington, d. C. Who knows me has now seen this photograph because i show them that look, even at 58 years old, i want you to notice the 90degree knee bend. John catskills got nothing on me. Ive got prepared remarks that im going to go through and then i was going to joke with you a little bit. I thought this was all off the record. Thats why we have the cameron camera and the mic. But its whatever you want to talk about. I want to thank you all for having me here. For those i havent had the pleasure of meeting, im tom sopel in the chairman of the Congressional Committee. Our mission is to take back this this election is going to be a choice between socialism and freedom. The socialist democrats have gone all in on a radical far left agenda that throws out the freedom of choice that has made our country the greatest nation on earth and replaces it with a onesizefitsall government knows best philosophy. Its my strong belief that voters want nothing to do with this agenda, this socialist agenda. So day in and day out, its our job at the nrcc to hold the socialist democrats accountable for their dangerous policies and if youve been watching, which i know you folks have, theyve been giving us plenty of material. From pushing for socialist takeover of our economic and Healthcare Systems for advocating for the street criminalization, raising middleclass taxes, and rampant antisemitism, the socialist democrats made clear they have no interest in pushing forward policies that help everyday americans. We saw that just this week where they spent their time calling the president a racist and holding votes on impeachment. We recently released a host of polling data showing how the devastatingly unpopular impeachment is. And yet, every week, more and more of the socialist democrats are doing anything and everything to attack the president who, by the way, is presiding over the greatest economy in history. And their socalled squad which i think thats the wrong term. Quite frankly, if you want to call them the squad, you should call them the leadership squad since they are the speaker in fact and the rest of their conference you can call them the new red army of socialists. They have been garnering plenty of attention these new leaders and its not a small subset as i just pointed out that nancy pelosi would make them out to be. Their entire 235 member caucuses caucus is responsible for the radical socialist policies emerging from their caucus. Voters are going to understand exactly what that means when we get to november of 2020. So, with that, whatever you guys want to talk about. Thank you again for having me. Linda thank you for coming. Ill start with a few questions and well move around the room. I dont know if you watch the president s rally last night. People were chanting send her back about a member of your states congressional delegation and i wonder if the president didnt tell them to stop. How does the uproar over President Trump and racism affect your ability to retake the house . Does it help . Does it hurt . I didnt watch the rally last mr. Emmer i didnt watch the rally last night, but there is no place for that kind of talk. I dont agree with it. What about the larger uproar of the week over racism . What does that do to your quest to retake the house . Mr. Emmer i think thats manufactured. Theres not a racist in this president s body. What he was trying to say, he said wrong, what he was trying to say is if you dont appreciate this country, you dont have to be here. That goes for everyone of us. Every one of us. Has nothing to do with your race, your gender, your family history. It has to do with respecting and loving the country that has given you the opportunities that you have. As for the other stuff, there is no place for whatever you just brought up, send her back. I disagree that completely. The uproar does what to your core . Your core . Who does it energize more democrats or republicans the whole uproar over race . Mr. Emmer i guess i disagree with the premise that you are trying to focus on race. Theres an uproar in this country and its about one party one party, which by the way, is no longer my grandfathers Democratic Party. When i came back from college after i told you from the university of alaska where lived in a cabin in the woods with no Running Water and outdoor plumbing, and if none of you have done it, you should try it. There will be an experience you will never forget. And by the way, prepares you well for congress. We can talk about that later. When i came back to remember my grandfather, who i love dearly, i couldnt be a catholic and be a republican. He said i was the reagan revolution and i was very excited about the new opportunities and being involved in the political process. He said you cant be a catholic and a republican and then he told me he was the only kind loving, compassionate resident of this committee because he was the only democrat. We used to argue or debate and i would lose regularly because he knew his stuff and i was young but we would be debating the size and scope of government versus the right of the individual to self determine and where does the line go in the Constitutional Republic that we live in . And by the way, you cant call on democrats anymore. They have announced proudly after the election they are socialist. The socialists are here. S is the the new socialist this is the new socialist democrat party. Thats what has everybody energized. Im afraid that people want to try, they want to create narratives with different facts. Im not willing to accept it. Jerry from the buffalo news. Im one of the people at the table asking parochial local questions. I want to ask you about new york 27. Senator Chris Collins is under indictment and barely won reelection last fall recently and recently put 500,000 of his own money into the Campaign Fund which signals he may be running again. There are also other republicans who have declared that see. That seat. As the head the nrcc who is charged with bringing the republicans to the majority, would you prefer to not have a candidate who is not under indictment in the district . Mr. Emmer people are human beings. I cant comment. In this country, the beauty is people are presumed innocent whether its Chris Collins or another member who might have a trial date pending. Im not going to comment on those. We will see what it looks like in 2020 after those been resolved. Its a light like a rushing to judgment on t. J. Cox in california, whos got all kinds of things going on with business dealings, past delinquencies, etc. Id expect my counterpart on the other side to say im not going to comment until force its way through the process. Their policy of staying out of the primaries . Mr. Emmer the nrcc should not be involved in primaries. That is not our job. Other people are involved in primaries. In fact, in talking to former chairs and people who have been around this town a lot longer than i have obviously, i think the last time the nrcc may have had anything to do in the primary was the late 90s. Thats just not something we are going to do, at least not while im there. Late 90s is what i was told. John from news box. Thank you very much, mr. Chairman. A question here for you is this. When she spoke to this same breakfast, Speaker Pelosi said the Democratic Party made a conscientious decision to encourage and recruit Democratic Women to run for office, and of course, today, you see the number of women from the democratic caucus. Have you made a similar decision to encourage women, and while you say you are not involved in the primaries, help them in the nomination to office . I see a physician who happens to be a woman lost a primary in North Carolina recently. What is the policy of the nrcc for recruiting and encouraging women candidates . Toward recruiting and encouraging women candidates . First off, i think this is one of the great unwritten stories from the last election. Maybe it goes back to, i dont accept the narrative. First, nobody seems to want to write about the fact that there were a Record Number of women running as republicans in the last election for the u. S. House of representatives. There were 100 women. The real story from the last election is that nancy pelosi and the dccc and a guy named bloomberg dropped millions of dollars specifically on our female candidates whether they were incumbents or they were firsttime candidates. Go ask karen handel how it felt to have millions dropped on her, close to 5 million. From bloomberg. Ask walters. The idea that this narrative that has been set up is a false narrative, at the nrcc since the beginning of the year, again, our job is to recruit candidates and its interesting to me, because ive said our party, but our party are ready does reflect a great crosssection of america. You can go out there and you guys in the press are going to have a lot harder time than i am going into major urban areas and finding republicans, because they are afraid to talk to you. The left has become so aggressive, and whether you are in a Major Corporate setting or you are in your neighborhood, you dont feel comfortable to say, hey, i am a republican. But they will come up to me because they look at me as one of them and they will tell me quietly im the only republican here and i thank you for what you are doing. The same thing with women. After the election how are you going to recruit women to run as republicans . You know what, this radical socialist agenda doing it for us. They dont want this for their kids and the future of the country. Since the beginning of the year, the and rcc has the nrcc has to 450ewed close candidates. Those candidates who have come through our doors, we have we have reached out to because somebody said this is a good candidate. 187 of them i believe as of this week were women, 106 of them were veterans i want to stay close to 90 of them were minority recruits. We have got women that are jumping into races all over the country. You see it in iowa. You see it in georgia. Its all over the country so i think that reflects close to 40 of the total recruits so far this year so i think the great unwritten story is that democrats did a good job targeting and heres the other thing. I would tell you based on the most recent race, because we had two great candidates. Joel perry was a great candidate. The thing thats interesting to me is, i think we have got to start, the nrcc is going to provide any support, there a there are eight people in a primary, and they come to us and say, we need your advice, we need your direction. We will give everybody the same thing. We dont tell them who we are talking to because we want them to run their own race and they are responsible for that, but we will definitely point them and point them to services and vendors and give them information if its available to everybody. One of the things i think we need to do a better job is we need to help them and ive been talking to especially women who come in now and sit down especially this week with the big race last week. We have got to have a better ground game for some of our candidates. Women in particular, and i thought they were shown last week. Somebody asked me on monday where i thought the race was going and they were excited about the energy on john kerrys side. Joan perrys side. Told them i think greg murphys going to win. How do you know that . He said well if you look at the primary where greg murphy was number one and joan perry was number two there were little over 13,000 somewhere between 13 and 14,000 absentee ballots cast in a primary. John had to make up seven points to overcome the frontrunner in the runoff. As of monday before the election, i think there were 11,000 absentees cast which told not doing there job you needed to do on the ground to identify voters to get them out to vote. It wasnt happening with absentees, because you should have seen the absentee count. It was the same as a turnout in the primary if not more if joan perrys operation was going to overcome that. I think the short answer should be what the nrcc can do with all candidates and perhaps maybe with some of our firsttime female candidates is help them with advice about delving that building that ground game and what you need to do to target your voters and get them out to the polls. I talked to a candidate yesterday who is a former executive at a major retailer in this country, and i said to her, you know from Prior Experience it is the same thing as retail marketing. You have to identify your customers. You have to contact your customers and target them, and then you have to give them a Value Proposition which motivates them to go out and buy. In this case, to go out and vote for your. For you. I think thats something we can do at the nrcc for all candidates, not just women. Linda from new jersey advanced media. New jersey lost four of the 5 republican seats. Today, three of four freshmen have 1 million. [inaudible] how do you recruit people . How do he get people to run in a state where the president has a 30 Approval Rating . Mr. Emmer first off, democrats have a much higher birthrate burn rate than republicans for whatever reason. Second, if you look at the last campaign, the average winning democrats than a little over 4 million while the average winning republicans spent a little over 2 million. We lost the u. S. House of representatives by approximately 106,000 votes out of 115,000 cast. 115 million cast in the midterm. That it costs a lot more to sell a lie, but it does the truth. Money isnt the ultimate determinant of an election much like in football. A couple of years back he had the power pole and this is for your benefit the bostonian. You have the powerful patriots who hadnt lost a game and they were supposed to lose the super bowl to the giants. Theres a reason why they play the game. Its going to come down to not just the money. We do need to keep it close. They are going to out racist outraise us, thats clear. The revenue will help us a little bit i believe because we have the single biggest small dollar donor for donald trump. We are way ahead of data. These are things that are going to help us a lot but its about the candidates and its about the message at the end of the day. We are going to have better candidates. Im not going to name specific ones in new jersey because there are going to be primaries in new jersey, but we are going to get the best candidates out of the primaries. I havent personally gone through the primaries. They make you a much better candidate. You learn stuff every time. The other thing is, we are going to have the message. If you look, this is not november of 18. Look at pennsylvania in the special election we just had which was a runaway. At first glance, if you are not into Political Science it was a heavily republican district. Okay, well, hes a newcomer. He didnt cover that district to those districts have recently been redrawn. He didnt cover that district. Those districts have recently been redrawn. Chris keller outperformed tom moreno by four or five poin