Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell joined me this morning:

Audio:

09-03hhs-mcconnell

Transcript:

HH: I am joined by United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, senator from Kentucky. Good morning, Senator. Good to have you back.

MM: Hugh, glad to be with you. Good morning.

HH: How is your shoulder doing?

MM: Oh, I’m on the mend. I’ll be back on the Senate floor next Monday, and we’ll be ready to go to work again.

HH: I’m sorry about Notre Dame 35, Louisville 17. Were you at the game?

MM: I watched it on TV. And actually, given the Louisville team we had last year, it was an improvement, believe it or not.

HH: All right. Always an optimist. Always an optimist.

MM: They were 2-10 last year.

HH: So you’ve got to get better before you, you’ve got to improve over that.

MM: Yes.

HH: Senator, let me begin by talking to you about nicknames. I played the Cocaine song, because Cocaine Mitch is a popular hashtag among people like me. Grim Reaper is as well. But Moscow Mitch is McCarthyism. That’s absolutely despicable. What do you think of the last one?

MM: Yeah, I mean, it’s modern day McCarthyism. Unbelievable for a Cold Warrior like me who spent a career standing up to the Russians to be given a moniker like that. It’s an effort to smear me. You know, I can laugh about things like the Grim Reaper, but calling me Moscow Mitch is over the top.

HH: It is simply an assertion that you’re doing the bidding of Moscow, which is, of course, pure McCarthyism. I thought we were past that in this country. I really did, and especially if you’ve overseen the biggest Defense spending hikes out of the Congress in a decade.

MM: Yeah, no question about it. And going back even to the breakup of the Soviet Union, I was one of those leading the charge for expanding NATO up to the Russian border over and over again over the years. So they’ll say anything and do anything. This is what we’re up against with the hard left today in America.

HH: Does it help or hurt them when they feed this outrage factory? I had Jason Chaffetz on last hour talking about Power Grab, and he says they have monetized anger. And I believe that is true about media has monetized anger. But have the Democrats monetized anger and slander?

MM: Well, we’ll find out. That’s what the election’s about next year, and the American people somehow are going to have to sort out all of this. And what I hope they’ll do is tune a good bit of this out and focus on the facts, which are that if the Democrats get power again, they’re going to turn us into a socialist country. The Green New Deal, Medicare for all, add it all up, and you have fundamentally changed America into a country it’s never been before. That’s what’s really at stake next year, not all of this hot rhetoric, but the cold, hard reality of what they’ll do if they get power.

HH: Your colleague from Vermont, Senator Sanders, has proposed a $15 trillion dollar new Green Deal. Elizabeth Warren is much more modest. She’s proposed a $2 trillion dollar new Green Deal and a 2% wealth tax. Are any of these proposals at all workable or have a prayer of a chance of passing the Senate?

MM: No, I don’t think so, nor should they. This is not the direction we ought to go. We’re making great strides on the economy through technology. Climate change is real, but the way to deal with it is with technological innovation, not having the government clamp down on the economy.

HH: Climate change is real, and I have got a column in the Washington Post today urging the President follow through on his July 12th memo about restarting the nuclear enrichment cycle here in the United States from mining and production to conversion and enrichment.

MM: Yeah.

HH: Why did the Paducah, Kentucky enrichment plant close? We didn’t have, that was our last one.

MM: Well, there wasn’t much of a market for it, unfortunately. It was a reflection of the anti-nuclear sentiment in this country. And as you point out, nuclear power is one of the great ways to address climate change. And so it was the lack of a domestic market, Hugh. That was the problem.

HH: Well, let me switch over now to the source of the greatest amount of criticism of you right now is that you will not bring forward the Democratic bill from the House. This was not usually a criticism of Harry Reid when he would not bring forward Paul Ryan’s bills or John Boehner’s bills, but it is now. Why won’t you bring forward their background check bill?

MM: Well, we’re in a discussion about what to do on the gun issue in the wake of these horrendous shootings. I said several weeks ago that if the President took a position on a bill so that we knew we would actually be making a law and not just having serial votes, I’d be happy to put it on the floor. And the administration is in the process of studying what they are prepared to support, if anything. And I expect to get an answer to that next week. If the President is in favor of a number of things that he has discussed openly and publicly, and I know that if we pass it it’ll become law, I’ll put it on the floor.

HH: Now if I can switch to judges, Leader McConnell, because it wouldn’t be my show if I didn’t. Over the past week, the President nominated two 2nd Circuit nominees and a 9th Circuit nominee. We still have two 9th Circuit nominees to go. So they haven’t caught up, yet. Any doubt in your mind these three and then the 100 or so district court judges will get a vote?

MM: Oh, yeah. We’re not going to leave a single vacancy behind by the end of next year. And it’s noteworthy that the Democrats are now trying to intimidate the Supreme Court. I wonder if you saw the letter.

HH: I did.

MM: Signed by a number of them threatening the Supreme Court by claiming it is not well, which is utter nonsense, and also threatening to pack the Court if the Democrat signers of the letter didn’t get a particular outcome in a case that they filed an amicus brief in. Look, there’s nothing wrong with filing an amicus brief. I’ve done that. Never in one did it cross my mind that it was a good idea to threaten the Court that if they didn’t decide the way I wanted to, we’d expand the number. All 53 of my members, every single one of them, wrote a letter to the Court telling them not to be intimidated by these kinds of suggestions, and that we supported judicial independence.

HH: Yeah, amicus briefs are usually referred to as friends of the court brief.

MM: Yes.

HH: This was actually an enemy of the court brief.

MM: It was.

HH: And so it was unusual to say the least. I had a conversation over the weekend with a critic of the decision to hold open the Scalia vacancy, and it was very spirited, because I thought that was the best decision you’ve made, or anyone could have made, not to hold a hearing and not to hold a vote. It wasn’t about Mr. Garland, Judge Garland. However, you’ve said you will fill a SCOTUS vacancy if one occurs in an election year this year, and he said that’s hypocritical. And I said no, it’s not. Senator McConnell said last, when the vacancy occurred, that the Senate is a majoritarian institution that Harry Reid created when it comes to nominations. The majority didn’t want to fill that vacancy in 2016. The majority would want to fill a vacancy in 2020. Is that a fair characterization of your position?

MM: Absolutely. You’re absolutely correct. In fact, you have to go back to 1880 to find the last time, back to 1880s to find the last time a Senate of a different party from the president filled a Supreme Court vacancy created in the middle of a presidential election. That was entirely the precedent. That was confirmed again by Joe Biden in ’92, by Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer in 2007. There were not vacancies existing at the time, but that was the time when the other party controlled the Senate. There was a Republican in the White House. They were quite forthcoming about that. There was nothing I did that was, would not have been done had the shoe been on the other foot had there been a Democratic president, I mean a Republican president and a Democratic Senate. So look, they can whine about this all day long. But under the Constitution, there is co-responsibility for appointments. The President makes the nomination, and the Senate confirms. We are partners in the personnel business up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court.

HH: I remember very well when Abe Fortas was nominated to replace, I don’t remember, but I know very well that when Abe Fortas was nominated to replace Earl Warren, that occurred late in an election year. It was an attempt by LBJ to make sure he controlled the Chief Justice. It did not work, because Abe Fortas was crooked. But there is no doubt in your mind that your caucus would support filling any vacancy whether by retirement or illness or death in the next year and a half?

MM: Absolutely.

HH: All right. Let me turn, if I can, Senator, you’ve been clear. I just wanted to get that on the record on my show. Hong Kong, the source of more disruption. Last week on this show, Senator Cotton said if the People’s Republic moved in a military way against Hong Kong demonstrators, it would be a grievous mistake of historic proportion. Do you agree?

MM: I do. In fact, I passed the Hong Kong Policy Act way back in 1992, which requires an annual report from the State Department on whether or not the Chinese are keeping the agreement they made with the British prior to the handover. And in the last few years, those reports have been very critical. I’m going to be supporting legislation to enhance those requirements. And I think this is a pivotal moment for the Chinese. Are they, what they’re worried about is that the rest of China becomes more like Hong Kong, or like, you know, people believing prosperity is not enough, I’d like to have more freedom of speech. I’d like to be able to elect my own officials. This is a seminal moment, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Chinese manage it. I think it’s…

HH: What would you recommend to the president if they “manage it” with the use of violence and a Tiananmen Square-style response?

MM: Well, I think it requires a significant response from us, in my opinion. I think that if the Chinese do crush this what I would call peaceful attempt to maintain their rights, it requires, it seems to me, America, which is known internationally for standing up for human rights, to speak up and to take more forceful action. That’s what I would recommend to the President. Obviously, that’s his decision in the end.

HH: There are 450,000 PRC students in the United States. Would part of that forceful action include the expulsion of many, if not all, of them?

MM: I would look at all the options. You know, we have 75,000 Americans who live and work in Hong Kong as well. That’s truly an international city that has enjoyed a Western-style freedom for a very long time. I think the Chinese are playing with fire here, and hopefully they will not go too far.

HH: Now I want to turn to the 2020 Senate elections. I was very confident about the map. Some in the media are trying to talk that the map is bad for you. Have you persuaded Secretary Pompeo to run?

MM: Well, he’s my first choice. I know the President probably likes him where he is, and he’s done an outstanding job as Secretary of State. But should he decide to go in a different direction, he would obviously be our number one choice. He’d be, I think, a cod lock to win the Kansas Senate race, and we’d love to have him in the Senate, somebody of his stature and background.

HH: Have you heard a Shermanesque statement from him saying if nominated, I will not run, if elected, I will not serve, I’m staying as Secretary of State?

MM: I suppose I’d better let him speak for himself, but I’ve made it clear that he’s my first choice.

HH: All right, now have we forgotten the lessons of 2012? I remember you and I spent a lot of time on the air moaning about nominees who were dead before the race began, elections that were over before the general campaign began because primaries produced unacceptable extreme candidates. Is that happening again, in your view?

MM: I don’t think it’ll happen again. We’ve only had one malfunction after 2012, and that was the Roy Moore nomination in Alabama. I’m confident Roy Moore will not be the nominee this time in Alabama. And it will not have any unelectable nominees for the U.S. Senate anywhere in the country.

HH: That is great news, and it would be even better news if that were the case that Secretary Pompeo got in. But I don’t you that you’re going to be that persuasive. Senator McConnell, thank you for joining me this morning.

MM: Thank you, Hugh.

End of interview.