NBC "Meet the Press" - TRANSCRIPT Meet the Press - January 8, 2023
Interview
[BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT]
CHUCK TODD:
And even on the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection -- a fight even nearly got physical on the House floor at the very end. This was supposed to be the easy part for the House Republicans. Legislating is what's hard -- and it is going to be harder. Among McCarthy's concessions: a provision that would enable any one member to oust him from the job. So imagine going through these roll call votes at random times throughout the year because one Republican House member is upset at leadership. This was not exactly how the Republican Party wanted to showcase itself to the American public as a future governing party. Among the questions now: Can these House Republicans avoid the fate of the House Republicans of "94 whose actions helped re-elect Bill Clinton in "96? Or the House Republicans of "10 whose actions helped re-elect Barack Obama two years later? Can the government keep the lights on? Both of those Republican Houses helped orchestrate government shutdowns, will this Republican House do the same? The first big test is going to be the debt ceiling: McCarthy has already pledged not to raise the debt limit without major cuts. It's a promise that raises the specter of government default. Will Congress even be able to fund the Defense Department, especially in the middle of Ukraine's war with Russia that is largely being funded by the United States? Will House Republican investigations be more professional or simply be personal attacks for political gain? And is this the beginning of more chaos that will define the Republican Party over the next two years? We are looking at a Republican Party that has a lot of leaders who have no followers and a lot of followers who aren't interested in having leaders. Even conservative media icons couldn't persuade these holdouts. Donald Trump's influence this week was minimal at best. While Trump couldn't close the deal for McCarthy and save him, he did have the power to harm him, which explains McCarthy's attempt to give him some credit. Perhaps the only good news to come from all this for Kevin McCarthy, the bar for success for his speakership couldn't be much lower right now. Joining me now is Republican Congressman Dan Bishop of North Carolina. After opposing Kevin McCarthy on 11 ballots, Bishop did flip his vote and started to support him on the twelfth ballot after the deal that Chip Roy helped negotiate with Kevin McCarthy. And congressman Bishop is here now. Welcome to Meet the Press, sir.
REP. DAN BISHOP:
Thank you, Chuck. Thank you, Chuck, glad to be with you.
CHUCK TODD:
Let me start this. You were a holdout for quite a long time, and in fact you said, "We're going to hold Kevin McCarthy accountable to his promises," after you decided to support him. What are those promises, in the spirit of transparency? You guys wanted to do this in public, so tell me the deal in public that you agreed to.
REP. DAN BISHOP:
Well, there's no hesitancy about that. The terms are out, Chuck. Twenty courageous members of the House Republican conference made sure that we've, quite contrary to your intro, nailed down a vision for a Republican majority so that we know what we're doing together. We have restored genuine parliamentary participation to the body, rather than have it run in a Pelosi style, backroom deal-making. We have agreed to specific and achievable fiscal commitments to prevent the Democrats from winning every negotiation. And there's several other details, but the big one, or a big one for me and that I worked on personally, we have nailed down in complete detail the terms of a select committee to investigate the weaponization of the federal government against Americans and to make sure that it is sufficiently vested with authority to get the job done.
CHUCK TODD:
Let me ask you this: Do you feel, in the words of Matt Gaetz, that Kevin McCarthy is in a "straight jacket?"
REP. DAN BISHOP:
Not in the -- not in the slightest. What we've done by doing the hard work up front, and again, this work began with proposals for rules, changes that those of us who worked on this began back in July, and it took a long time before the dialogue could begin, but members throughout the conference have celebrated those proposals in the main. Now you mentioned one, the motion to vacate the chair. You suggest that we demanded something new. No, that's been in the rules, that's been in parliamentary law in the United States since the country began until Pelosi eliminated it at the beginning of the last Congress. We simply undid the trammeling upon tradition in the House that Nancy Pelosi had engaged in. So I just take a different view I think, Chuck, than you about whether this is good or bad. It's positive, not negative. It's not weakening Kevin McCarthy. It's providing the speaker with the tools he needs for Republicans to go to the mat for the American people.
CHUCK TODD:
Has it dawned on you you wouldn't have gotten any of this had Republicans won 10 or 15 more House seats in November?
REP. DAN BISHOP:
It has dawned on me, and I think that's true. I think that's a good moment for introspection. People seem to believe -- you know, Hakeem Jeffries in his speech that was supposed to be introducing Kevin McCarthy but it lasted about an hour, he celebrated the unanimity of the Democrats. President Xi likes unanimity in China as well. That's not the nature of American democracy in my view. By having an opportunity for a group to raise questions and to make sure that we address them, we actually have advanced the ball. We're not going to be having very elemental disagreements pop up over and over across the course of this Congress because we didn't get the job done ahead of time. We have. Now we're going to work for the American people.
CHUCK TODD:
Do you accept the premise of majority rule? And I say that because 91% of the House Republicans wanted to elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker for three days. Nine percent of you were holding it back. 91 to nine. And I ask that because you guys have control of 1/6 essentially of government right now. If Democrats have majority in the Senate and Democrats have the White House, why shouldn't they have the lion's share of winning most negotiations?
REP. DAN BISHOP:
Do you believe, Chuck, that by majority rule you mean that when a majority has decided something or the plurality of the Republican conference, for example, the others should be told what to do? Is that what you're saying?
CHUCK TODD:
You get a vote. And you vote no, but, you know, if there are --
REP. DAN BISHOP:
Exactly--
CHUCK TODD:
-- 218 --
REP. DAN BISHOP:
-- you get a vote --
CHUCK TODD:
-- members of Congress that want to raise the debt ceiling you can object, but there might be 218 that want to raise the debt ceiling without trying to tank the government, without doing these spending cuts, want to do it cleanly. Will you respect that?
REP. DAN BISHOP:
Oh, absolutely. If a majority decides to do something that becomes the law. That's the -- but the notion that people are going to be ordered what to do in order to get to that majority doesn't seem like the right play. If you're saying, on the other hand, should Republicans turn to Democrats or act as if Democrats are the majority and accede to their priorities for government in the House, no. That's exactly the opposite of what we should do. Republicans should make sure we fulfill our responsibilities to voters who elected a majority of Republicans. And I think what you've seen is that Democrats have shown greater will in previous times when we had divided government. That can't be the case. We've got to show will also on behalf of the voters that sent us to Washington to fight for them.
CHUCK TODD:
You know, there were a lot of Republicans arguing what you were arguing on the campaign trail. And particularly in Senate races, but in many House races, they got rejected at the ballot box. Does the fact that voters rejected many members that share your point of view at all impact on the fact that maybe you just need to go out there and campaign more, that you can't sort of hold a chamber hostage because you're not getting your way?
REP. DAN BISHOP:
I think Democrats have gotten their way with great success. And I don't think your read of the election is right, Chuck. I think what people were looking for is they were -- Republican voters in particular, is they were looking for -- they wanted to be convinced that Republicans had conviction about what was being sold to them. They were uncertain about that. Now, I also don't disagree that at the margin people want to have elected officials. They want their candidates, including Republican candidates, to exercise mature and reasoned judgment. But that doesn't mean to lie down and be rolled over by Democrats, whether they're in the majority or the minority. And so my view is we've had an opportunity to take a hard look at each other in the Republican conference over the course of this past week. Folks in the media constantly said, "Oh, it's dysfunction and chaos." No, it was deciding the most important questions about how this Congress is going to proceed, and we accomplished an enormous amount. As one very sophisticated person in this area observed, this agreement we received is transformational for Congress, and we're going to have a great and productive Congress.
CHUCK TODD:
Bottom line, do you trust Kevin McCarthy, or do you simply trust what you've seen on paper?
REP. DAN BISHOP:
I think Kevin McCarthy is an extraordinarily talented leader. He will -- with all of this having been laid down, I'm confident that we're going to, under his leadership, accomplish a great deal for the American people.
CHUCK TODD:
Congressman Dan Bishop, Republican in North Carolina, who was a McCarthy detractor for 12 ballots, after negotiating a deal he supported him. Appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective with us. Thank you, sir. In his first speech as Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy previewed part of the Republican agenda.
[BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT]
Source