On Friday, House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) appeared on “Special Report with Bret Baier” on Fox News.
During the segment, which revolved around allegations that President Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son, McCarthy urged caution and asked that we wait for more evidence before coming to conclusions.
BAIER: The Wall Street Journal moves this story today: “President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, urging [Volodymyr] Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter.” Do you have a problem with that?
MCCARTHY: Well listen, just as you said last night, we need to know more facts. This is just being written in The Wall Street Journal. What did we see last week with The New York Times writing something before they had all the facts. The Director of National Intelligence … is going to be before the Intel Committee next Thursday in a public hearing, and I think that will be the appropriate time to find the information out.
BAIER: The president seemed to say, “Hey listen, I can talk to world leaders how I want to, but you should look into this.” You seemed, when talking to reporters today, worried about the Joe Biden Ukraine thing a lot more than you were with the whistleblower thing. Is that fair?
MCCARTHY: … the president should be able to talk to every world leader. Tonight, he’s gonna have the prime minister from Australia. It’s important that we have relationships, but think for one moment any conversation that you have, who’s listening, and why are all these other people listening and only selectively trying to put something out? We have watched this pattern before, going after this president because people disagree with how the outcome of the election took place. I think this country’s gone through three years of this – this part has got to stop…
I am concerned about what I saw in a video [in which] Joe Biden himself [is] telling the Ukraine government that they are not going to get money from the United States if they don’t fire a prosecutor – and he said, “You’ve got six hours,” and you know what happened in six hours? They were fired. That’s Joe Biden’s words. That’s concerning to me.
BAIER: If the President did as it’s being reported – The Washington Post has now matched The Wall Street Journal – and mentioned this numerous times that the president of Ukraine, while the U.S. is considering $250 million dollars in lethal aid to Ukraine, is that implicit quid pro quo to get this investigation kick-started?
MCCARTHY: You don’t have any of the facts. Let’s wait till next Thursday, and let’s go through the appropriate channels. Have we not learned this lesson how many times before?
BAIER: I guess my question is, if that, let’s just say, I’m not going to speculate that it happened –
MCCARTHY: But that is speculating.
BAIER: Okay, let me just say, would something like that be a problem for you?
MCCARTHY: You know, what would be a problem for me is for me to speculate without knowing the facts. I want our President of the United States to have relations with every country; I want our president to be able to talk to those leaders; and I think it’s inappropriate that all these people are going to listen to these conversations and selectively put something out…
Let’s not make that mistake again. Have we not learned from the past? Do we not understand that the Democrats did not like this outcome?