Speaking on Fox News Monday night with host Laura Ingraham, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s political agenda, accusing her of withholding a bill designed to deal with the coronavirus so that Democrats could attack GOP candidates.
McCarthy stated, “Look at how much politics they want to play. The dirty little secret; we have a coronavirus; we have government funding that we need to fund this. You know what Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker, did? She withheld the bill last week. You know why? So the D-triple C (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House of Representatives) could run ads against seven Republicans.”
Ingraham asked, “How many people ran ads on the coronavirus, fundraising appeals?”
McCarthy answered, “I don’t know how many ran, but they actually took the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, spent money; went into these seven Republican seats to campaign against them about the coronavirus when she’s the Speaker of the House. Instead of putting America first she put her politics first and held the bill from coming to the floor.”
Ingraham pointed out, “But she said last week that this is a time for the parties to come together, Congressman.”
McCarthy stated, “She is politics all the time. That’s exactly what she did from the power of the House. And think of this: all those Democrats had an opportunity last week to denounce what Bernie (Sanders) said about Cuba? Not one of them voted against what he said.”
Ingraham segued to former President Barack Obama and his reticence to get more involved in the political process, saying, “Obama, he’s smart. He’s not gonna jump on this grenade now, uh-uh. But if his policies were so smart, Hillary would have won in 2016. They like Obama, the man, the personality, because he’s cool, and he’s a great campaigner, great family; I don’t think the policies ended up being as popular as the man.”
McCarthy concluded, “He thought you had to have a magic wand to have this economy; we just needed somebody who understood the economy.”
The political agenda getting in the way of stopping the coronavirus bothered Stephen Morrison, the senior vice president and director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center For Strategic and International Studies, who warned,“Whenever these outbreaks happen in the middle of a political season, [emergency funding] gets delayed. People are going to have to be very, very cautious and careful in trying to protect this response from getting stuck in toxic politics.”
National Review reported on Tuesday, “Congress is close to reaching a bipartisan deal on coronavirus funding, with negotiators for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) close to a $7–$8 billion package which could be unveiled Tuesday. ‘We worked through the weekend on the appropriations measure. Hopefully we can all reach a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on that soon,’ Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters on Monday.”
Video of McCarthy below: