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This is a rush transcript from “Fox News Sunday” January 10, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I’m Chris Wallace.
Calls grow to remove President Trump from office with just ten days left in
his administration.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (voice-over): The president facing accusations his words helped
set that deadly assault on the Capitol in motion.
With his inner circle shrinking, a push is underway to remove him from
power.
REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): It’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment and to
end this nightmare.
WALLACE: And Democrats discuss an alternative.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: If the vice president and
cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with
impeachment.
WALLACE: But the president tries to head off calls for removal by finally
admitting he lost.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A new administration will be
inaugurated on January 20th. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth,
orderly, and seamless transition of power.
WALLACE: We’ll discuss the final turbulent days of the Trump presidency
with former White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, who resigned from an
administration post this week. And the possibility of a second impeachment
with House Majority Whip James Clyburn.
Plus, Twitter bans President Trump from its platform, saying his recent
tweets glorified violence. We’ll ask our Sunday panel about the power of
big tech to restrict free speech.
All, right now, on “FOX News Sunday”.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE (on camera): And hello again from FOX News in Washington.
This is a week that has shaken the nation’s capital to its core, a week
that brought a direct assault on our democracy. We saw the president of the
United States urged tens of thousands of people not to accept the results
of the election, to march on Congress and demand they stop the steal.
We saw senators, self-proclaimed adherence to the text of the Constitution,
ignore the 155 million Americans who voted and say Congress should decide
who the next president is.
We saw a mob of insurrectionist storm the capital, lay waste to the offices
of elected leaders, invade the Senate chamber, and even sit in the chair
the vice president occupied moments before. And now this — we saw a non-
scalable 7-foot fence go up around the capitol grounds. For all the talk
about the barrier on our southern border, this is the wall many will
remember is the true mark of Donald Trump’s presidency.
This hour, we’ll discuss it all — the resignations, the calls to remove
the president, and the search to find some way to put the pieces of our
government back together.
In a moment, we’ll speak with former White House Chief of Staff Mick
Mulvaney and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.
But first, let’s turn to David Spunt at the White House with the latest on
demands for the president to step down or be forced out — David.
DAVID SPUNT, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Chris, there was a very real
possibility Donald Trump could become the first president in American
history to be impeached twice. It just takes the majority of the House to
do so and Democrats are chomping at the bit.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TRUMP: I want to thank you all.
SPUNT (voice-over): Minutes after President Trump spoke to the crowd,
melee inside and outside of the United States Capitol. Five people,
including a Capitol police officer, died.
Trump administration officials continue to submit resignations, including
cabinet secretaries Elaine Chao and Betsy DeVos.
A second impeachment could happen in just days.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), SENATE MINORITY LEADER: We don’t need a lengthy
debate. The president’s abuse of power, his incitement of a mob against a
duly elected representative body of the United States is a manifestly
impeachable offense.
SPUNT: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will move forward with
impeachment if Vice President Mike Pence decides against invoking the 25th
Amendment and the president refuses to resign. If the House impeaches,
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Senate won’t get involved
until January 19th at the soonest, the day before Trump leaves office.
Some Republicans don’t want to wait.
“I want him to resign, I want him out. He has caused enough damage”, Alaska
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told her hometown newspaper.
Late Friday, Twitter bans the president’s accounts permanently. A Twitter
spokesperson says his tweets incited violence.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SPUNT (on camera): I’m told Vice President Pence will attend President-
elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20th. President Trump said he
will not — making him the first president to skip an inauguration since
Andrew Johnson did so to General Ulysses Grant in 1869 — Chris.
WALLACE: David Spunt reporting from the White House — David, thank you.
And joining us now, Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s former chief of staff
who resigned this week as the administration’s special envoy to Northern
Ireland.
Mick, after all of the controversial things that Donald Trump did over the
last four years, why was this week the final straw? Why now, say, that you
could no longer be part of his administration?
MICK MULVANEY, FORMER TRUMP CHIEF OF STAFF: Chris, good morning. Thanks
for having me. I think everybody recognizes that what happened on Wednesday
is different. You can go down the long litany of things that people
complained about with Donald Trump. And I could probably defend almost all
of them. Many of them were policy differences, many of them were stylistic
differences. But Wednesday was different. Wednesday was existential.
Wednesday is one of those things that struck to the very heart of what it
means to be an American.
And it was wrong. And I think it was important for those of us who used to
be on the inner circle. I mean, look, you and I have been doing this for
years. I came in in 2010, you know, the Tea Party. I started the Freedom
Caucus with Mark Meadows. I was in the cabinet. I was the chief of staff. I
thought it was important for somebody who is not establishment, who is not
a Trump — a never-Trumper to come out and say that, that was wrong. It
needs to be said again and again and again by as many people as possible.
WALLACE: Should President Trump be removed from office in these final 10
days? If you were a member of the cabinet, would you vote to invoke the
25th Amendment? If you were still a member of Congress, would you vote to
impeach?
MULVANEY: Yes, I think the 25th Amendment is a very clumsy tool. We’ve
never used it under these circumstances. We typically used it when a
president goes for a medical procedure. We don’t really know how to do it.
And it’s slow. It’s not unusual we’re talking about it. Again, this was
such an extreme event on Wednesday it’s not surprising we’re looking at
extreme possible reactions to what happened on Wednesday.
Regarding impeachment, I think it depends. I know the Democrats are going
to introduce articles of impeachment on Monday. If it’s just related to
Wednesday, that’s one thing. If it’s the type of impeachment that just
becomes a list of complaints of why they don’t like Donald Trump, that’s
something else. But I think it’s different now than the impeachment was
last year.
Last year the impeachment was a witch hunt. It was a political thing. They
were looking for an excuse to impeach the president forever. Now it’s
different and I think it will be looked at very differently by members of
both the House and the Senate.
WALLACE: So directly, if you were still a member of Congress and it was
impeachment for incitement to violence, which is what this article of
impeachment is, specifically over the events this last week, would you vote
to impeach this president?
MULVANEY: Yes, (INAUDIBLE) sort of sit here and say yes or no, but I would
take it really, really seriously, Chris. I’m not trying to dodge your
question. But that’s probably the most serious question you can ask any
member of Congress. And to sort of give a flip answer based on sitting here
talking about it.
You want to sit down, you want to hear the arguments, want to parse out the
speeches that the president made, that his son made, that Rudy Giuliani
made. Look at what actually happened that day, look at what happened during
the day. What did the president say while it was going on, what did the
president say afterwards. All of that would be evidence that needs to be
taken into consideration.
But I can assure you, there will be members of both parties who look at it
very differently than they did last year in the previous impeachment.
WALLACE: Mick, when you announced your resignation this week, you said
that you felt, quote, “embarrassment and shame.” Do you feel any
responsibility — you were chief of staff for more than a year — do you
feel any responsibility for Donald Trump?
MULVANEY: I feel a emotions this week. I was shocked, I was angered, I was
sad, I was embarrassed, I was frustrated. And I still am trying to figure
out what I could have done differently, if anything. I’ve been out of the
White House now for eight months.
What I do know, Chris, is there are things that are different. When we saw
the president — I wrote a piece in the “Wall Street Journal” six weeks ago
saying that I thought the president would leave in a presidential manner. I
really did believe that at the time.
The stories I told to back that up were true.
I’ve seen the president be presidential before and I know that he has the
ability to do it, he did it every single day. I don’t know what’s
different; if it’s different now, if it’s different about his advisors.
He used to love vigorous debate from all sides of a particular issue. I
don’t know if he still has that in the White House. I don’t know if now
he’s surrounded himself with people like Rudy Giuliani and Peter Navarro
that simply tell him what he wants to hear and reaffirm exactly what they
think he wants them to say.
That’s a very dangerous position for any president to be in. I think the
president, either he’s different, the people around him are different or
both, but something is very different now that we saw when I worked there
more than eight months ago.
WALLACE: Mick, respectfully, there are people who say he isn’t different,
this is the Donald Trump you worked for. (Inaudible) John Kelly who was
your predecessor as White House chief of staff says he gave this advice to
the president when he left in December of 2018. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
JOHN KELLY, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF (Voice Over): I said please don’t hire a
boot licker or a yes man because you will be impeached. And towards the end
of my time there, all I ever heard from some of the real devotees in the
White House was you got to let Trump be Trump, let Trump be Trump.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
WALLACE: Kelly says specifically that you and others didn’t have the spine
to tell the president, “no.”
MULVANEY: That’s not true and I’m sorry to hear John say that — not going
to pick a fight with John Kelly. The advice is good advice, not to surround
yourself with yes men.
Look, we saw the president be presidential. I remember circumstances —
WALLACE: But he says you were one of the yes men, Mick.
MULVANEY: No, that — well, he’s just — listen, John should know more
than anyone else that what happens when the doors close in the Oval Office
is not the stuff you see on TV. It’s easy now, Chris, for people who don’t
like the president, who never liked the president, who always thought the
president was a monster, wanted him to be that. People who saw them through
the filter of the media to say, oh, look, we told you so, we knew it was
always going to be like this.
But those of us who worked with him every single day knew that the exact
opposite was true. Knew that he was into the policy, he was excited about
what we had done for the country. Unemployment was down, we didn’t have any
new foreign wars; we had a lot of successes to point to despite all of
those sort of stylistic things that people like John Kelly just really
didn’t like.
But we had those successes and we were very proud of the work that we were
doing, very proud of letting the president be the president because he was
elected as the president. But again, all of that changed —
WALLACE: But — but —
MULVANEY: — on Wednesday. And I don’t know why.
WALLACE: But again, Mick, a lot of people say it didn’t change on
Wednesday. Kelly was right. The president was impeached when you were Chief
of Staff for cutting of aid to Ukraine, allegedly, unless they dug up dirt
on Joe Biden. And here you were at that time defending the president. Take
a look.
(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)
UNKNOWN: This is (inaudible) is a quid pro quo. It is funding will not flow
unless the investigation is in (ph) — if a Democratic server (ph) happened
as well.
MULVANEY: We do that all the time with foreign policy.
(END VIDEOCLIP)
WALLACE: Whether the president should have been impeached or not, I don’t
want to get into that argument, why didn’t you resign over that?
MULVANEY: Because I simply misspoke. And I’ve had that conversation with
John Koe (ph) who was the gentlemen asking that question. A friend of mine
many, many times. But it’s actually really a —
WALLACE: I’m not talking about —
MULVANEY: — good example —
WALLACE: I’m not talking about your statement, Mick. I’m talking about why
not resign over what I’m — I know you don’t think was a proper thing for
the president to do, cut off aid to Ukraine —
MULVANEY: No, no. No, no. Chris —
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: — digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
MULVANEY: No, no, no. But, Chris — no, no. (Inaudible). That original
impeachment — and I don’t (ph) realize we were going to get into this
today, had absolutely nothing to do with anything that was actually wrong.
It was the Democrats looking for an excuse and they found one line in a
transcript with Zelensky saying, do us a favor, that allowed them — gave
them the political excuse they needed to do an impeachment.
We all know, or at least many of us know and expect that that was — that
was an impeachment looking for an excuse. It was a political event. It was
a show trial. And, again, I don’t want to get into this too heavily today.
But that has nothing to do with what we’re —
WALLACE: OK.
MULVANEY: — doing today. The reason I didn’t — the reason I didn’t resign
right then (ph) is the president did nothing wrong. The president did
nothing wrong back then.
WALLACE: Well, OK. Let me —
MULVANEY: Nothing (ph) —
WALLACE: Let me ask you about some other things. You were a top member of
the administration when the president defended the White supremacists at
Charlottesville. You were a top (ph) member of the administration, not
Chief of Staff, when the Trump administration separated parents coming
across the border from their children.
Why not resign over those?
MULVANEY: Because it — the — I remember the kids in cages thing, which
was — which a lot of folks gave a lot of attention to and we seem to have
forgotten, including you Chris, that those pictures — many of the pictures
of the kids in cages were taken during the Obama administration. They were
Obama caged —
WALLACE: Nothing —
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: — nothing like with (ph) the policy under Donald Trump.
MULVANEY: Chris, these are policy differences, OK? These are things that
you think the country should look one way, we think it should look another.
These are differences of style, the way the president speaks. Did he
misspeak at Charlottesville? Yes. Should he have corrected it? Yes. Did he
handle it poorly? Yes. But it was not something that people resign over.
If you talk as a living, as you and I do, you’re going to misspeak from
time to time. It’s inevitable. Those are not the type of things to give
rise to resignations. In fact, I don’t think anybody including John Kelly
resigned during any of those. As I recall, John Kelly got fired and didn’t
resign.
Wednesday was different. And I hope that we focus on why Wednesday was
different than something about a policy over immigration or a policy on how
to handle this or that. This is different and I think it’s important that
people recognize the differentiations between differences of policy and
what happened on Wednesday.
WALLACE: Finally, on November 7th, you pointed this out and I want to — I
want to ask you specifically about it. On November 7th, four days after the
election, as you point out, you wrote an article for The Wall Street
Journal. I want to put some of it up.
You said, the U.S. needs to know that the winner is actually the winner.
And once Americans know that, I have every expectation that Mr. Trump will
be, act, and speak like a great president should, win or lose.
Mick, how could someone who worked with the president so closely for three
years be so wrong about who Donald Trump was?
MULVANEY: Then clearly, something is different now than it was when you saw
it.
I wrote that article for a reason, because I’ve seen the examples. I think
if you read the piece, I give a couple of examples. In there, I told (ph),
this one is another example that I’ve never talked about publicly, which is
that during the impeachment, the president tweeted something during the
testimony and there was concern that it might rise to level of tampering
with witnesses.
I know a little bit about the law. I practiced law a long time ago. It
wasn’t that, but I was worried about the political impact of that.
So, I went to the president, privately, said, Mr. President, there’s going
to be a political problem. We need to fix this.
He looked at me, and said, OK, brought the lawyers down, talked to them,
picked up the phone, called Kevin McCarthy. Brought Ivanka in, talked to
them, talked to some of his friends in New York. Got a bunch of different
opinions, and then fixed it, reversed course and did the right thing.
That was the president that we saw time and again. You saw him through the
media, you saw him the light that you wanted to see him.
We saw the real President Trump who had that ability to pivot when he knew
something had gone off the rails.
That didn’t happen on Wednesday. It hasn’t much since the election, and
that’s what I think the difference is and that’s why I got that piece so
wrong six weeks ago.
WALLACE: Mick, thank you. Thanks for your time. Always good to talk with
you, sir.
MULVANEY: Thanks, Chris.
WALLACE: Up next, House Speaker Pelosi moves to impeach President Trump
for the second time. We’ll ask Majority Whip Jim Clyburn about that, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: House Democrats have drafted a new article of impeachment against
President Trump, if members of the Trump cabinet do not take action to
remove him. The resolution could be introduced as soon as tomorrow.
Joining us now, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.
And, Congressman, welcome back to “FOX News Sunday”.
REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC), HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: Thank you very much for
having me.
WALLACE: Have Speaker Pelosi and you and the Democratic leadership — have
you made a firm, final decision whether or not to vote on impeachment of
President Trump this week?
CLYBURN: I think so. I think that will come probably Tuesday and maybe
Wednesday, but it will happen this week. The articles have been drawn up.
Jamie Raskin and the leadership have been working very hard to make sure
that it is exactly what is required to demonstrate to the Senate, well,
maybe the House first, that this president has rendered himself duly
unqualified to be president.
WALLACE: Congressman, if the House does vote to impeach, will you hold off
delay sending it over to the Senate until those two Democrats who won in
Georgia are certified and Chuck Schumer becomes the majority leader? Which
also raises the question, does it make sense for the Senate to have a trial
even after President Trump leaves office?
CLYBURN: Well, I don’t know that that’s the House’s business. Our business
is to — to impeach which is basically an indictment. And then time and
circumstances will determine when it will go over to the Senate.
You may recall, that the first time that the president was impeached that
Nancy Pelosi worked with the managers to make a determination as to when to
deliver those articles to the Senate. They were not delivered the next day.
They were delivered at a time that was most appropriate.
And so, we’ll do the same thing that — in this instance.
But remember, Chris, we tell voters all the time that your vote is your
voice and I believe we have to practice the same thing. Our vote is our
voice and we want to voice disapproval of the actions taken by this
president last Wednesday and the week before down in — the vote in
Georgia.
WALLACE: Congressman, there are — I — I understand the reasons to vote
to impeach. There are some practical arguments against impeachment. It
further divides the country. It mobilizes the Trump base.
Perhaps most importantly, it could interfere with Joe Biden beginning his
administration, confirming his nominees, getting to work.
Do you find any of those arguments persuasive?
CLYBURN: Yes. I find all of them to be persuasive. But that doesn’t mean
that the House should not do its work.
Remember the Senate determines guilt or innocence and that has to do with
the Senate’s schedule.
Now, the House has to do its business. We call ourselves the people house.
The vast majority of the American people — I saw the full results this
morning say this man should be removed from office. So if we are the
people’s house, let’s do the people’s work and let’s vote to impeach this
president and then we’ll decide later or the Senate will decide later what
to do with that — an impeachment.
WALLACE: Let’s go back to the events of Wednesday afternoon, as a veteran
of the civil rights movement you have seen plenty of violence before, but
honestly, how worried were you about the safety of your colleagues in the
House and yourself?
CLYBURN: Well, Chris, I’ve been telling my friends and relatives that I’m
a little bit concerned with the fact that on Wednesday I never got afraid.
I was not afraid at all.
The police that were assigned to me, the Capitol police did a remarkable
job. They got me off the floor. In fact, I turn around and a so-called
undisclosed secure location, Nancy Pelosi and I arrived there at the exact
same time.
So I want to thank the Capitol police that were in charge of my safety.
They did a great job. I just wish they had the leadership at the top that
they’re deserving of.
WALLACE: Well, let me ask you, though, because you have an unmarked office
inside the Capitol. And you say that although it doesn’t say “Jim Clyburn”
on it, doesn’t say “House Majority Whip” on it, that the mob found it on
Wednesday.
Do you think that there is the possibility that they had some inside help
from people inside the Capitol or even perhaps at some level of the Capitol
police?
CLYBURN: Well, I don’t know that, and I was not making the accusation. I
was just telling you what the facts are.
There is a marked office, got my name on the door. But they didn’t bother
that office. They went to the office where I usually work and where I
usually am. And for some reason they found that office. I have no idea
whether or not they were up there before, whether they got some other
schemes. Somebody may have just talked about it.
So I’m not going to make that accusation. I do know this, my staff was in
my office. They were — had all the furniture and stuff at the door. And
there were people trying to get in.
WALLACE: President-elect Biden this week had this to say about the events
on Wednesday, the riot and the assault on the Capitol on Wednesday. Take a
look, sir.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: No one can tell me had it been a group of
Black Lives Matter protesting yesterday there wouldn’t have been — they
wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Congressman, do you think that there was a race component to the
police response on Wednesday as compared to some demonstrations — well,
over the years but specifically the Black Lives Matter protests this
summer?
CLYBURN: Absolutely. And I think that everybody in the country,
irrespective of what side of that question you’d be maybe on, you know
there was a difference in the way they treated these, you may call them
protesters, I call them insurrectionists, and the way they treated the
peaceful protesters of Black Lives Matter.
And we saw what the president — that’s where they get their signals from,
the president went out and ordered the removal of demonstrators near the
White House so he could stand up with an upside-down Bible in front of St.
John’s Church. These people got their signals from him. That’s the kind of
leadership that this president has been portraying. And there are a lot of
people who saw in that leadership how they should conduct themselves.
That’s why I said, and I’ll say it again, that it’s a shame that the hard
working rank-and-file Capitol police did not have better leadership.
WALLACE: Finally Congressman, Democrats are going to have a majority this
— in this session of Congress but not much of one. A one vote majority in
the Senate, a razor thin majority in the House.
As a matter of practical politics, won’t President Biden have to scale back
his agenda just to get anything passed through this Congress when it’s so
tightly divided?
CLYBURN: I do not think so. I don’t think that’s President Biden’s agenda
should be scaled back at all. He needs to be robust with it, simply because
the people voted for it and everybody in the House and the Senate know
that.
I think he has to be careful how he makes these presentations. I think he
has to inform people as to what it is he’s trying to do and hopefully get
bipartisan support for it. I’ve said this before as well. If he doesn’t get
the bipartisan support, do as Truman did. When he could not get the
Congress to move to integrate the Armed Services, he issued an Executive
Order.
The Emancipation Proclamation was an Executive Order. I can go down through
history and show you how many times significant decisions have been made by
Executive Order.
And so I think that Biden should make every effort to reach out to both
sides of the aisle to get common sense legislation passed. But if they’re
not going to be cooperative, then he should use his executive authority and
get it done.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Congressman Clyburn, thank you. Thanks for
joining us this Sunday and please come back, sir.
CLYBURN: Thank you very much for having me.
WALLACE: Up next, we’ll bring in our Sunday group to discuss Twitter’s
decision to ban President Trump from its platform. A reasonable effort to
prevent violence, or a restriction of free speech?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: Coming up, Democrats clinch control of the Senate after two
historic wins in Georgia.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): For the first time in six years, Democrats will
operate a majority in the United States Senate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: We’ll ask our Sunday panel what the new majority means for the
Biden agenda.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MADISON CAWTHORN (R-NC): When you rip the tongue out of somebody who
would speak against you, you don’t prove them to be a liar, rather you just
prove that you’re paralyzed with fear on the altar of oppression.
REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): The reality is that Donald Trump committed
sedition. He incited a violent group of domestic terrorists, and
insurrectionists, to go to the Capitol.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Two members of Congress, Republican Madison Cawthorn and Democrat
Pramila Jayapal, reacting to Twitter’s decision to ban President Trump.
And it’s time now for our Sunday group.
Senator Mitch McConnell’s former chief of staff and president of Cavalry
Consultants, Josh Holmes. Marie Harf, executive director of the Serve
America PAC. And Jonathan Swan from “Axios.”
Jonathan, Donald Trump says that he doubts he ever would have been elected
president without Twitter. How is he taking the Twitter ban at this point?
And, more generally, what do you since is — or what are you hearing is his
mood in his final days in the White House?
JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, “AXIOS”: Well, I’ve had a
number of conversations with President Trump over the last few years about
Twitter and FaceBook and he said to me on several occasions that it’s his
most powerful weapon, it’s his most powerful tool, and he believes that.
He may not be wrong, by the way. I mean he — it’s the way that he
communicates directly with the American people. He goes around the
mainstream media. He can speak to — I think he’s combined audiences at
least 150 million, may be more than that. His Twitter audience was
something like 88 million and it’s an incredibly intense following. There’s
people who just are addicted his Twitter feed. So he will see this is a
huge blow to him.
I spoke to two people who have talked to the president in the last 24
hours. They told me he wasn’t yelling or raging. He’s, obviously, very
angry about it. I know inside the White House right now they’re trying to
turn their attention for the next few days on how they can fight back
against these social media companies. So I wouldn’t be surprised — I know
that — I mean one person last night said to me, everything’s on the table.
I don’t what that means policy wise. I said are we talking executive
orders? They said, everything’s on the table.
I don’t know what’s achievable and what’s realistic and what they can
actually do in terms of executive action. But I can tell you, they are
looking very, very hard at that and Dan Scavino, the president’s social
media guy, is heavily involved in that.
WALLACE: Josh, Twitter is not a public utility, it’s a private company. If
it says, as it does, that there is continuing talk about insurrection on
its platform, doesn’t it have, one could argue, an obligation to police
that even if that rises up to the tweets of the president of the United
States?
JOSH HOLMES, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF TO MITCH MCCONNELL, PRESIDENT AND
FOUNDING PARTNER, CAVALRY: Well, they certainly have the ability as a
private company to do anything that they’d like to do, and that includes
platforming every conservative if they’d like to. I think the larger
problem here is any effort, historically-speaking, to stifle free speech
ultimately has resulted in making the problem that you’re trying to cure
much, much worse because ultimately all of this speech gets funneled down
into smaller silos, to more extreme sects, to further radicalize and push
away sort of mainstream thought. And I think you can see that already
happening here.
I’m less concerned about this in terms of what it means for Donald Trump’s
Twitter account. I’m more concerned about the precedent that it sets for
conservative speech going forward. And I think that is what most
Republicans and conservatives are looking at as a real problem for what
Twitter has done here.
WALLACE: Some of the blowback to the Twitter ban is based on how Twitter
explained, justified cutting off the president. I want to put up a couple
of explanations.
Twitter said the president talking about American patriots is being
interpreted on Twitter as support for the mob that attacked the Capitol.
Twitter says the president announcing he won’t attend the inauguration may
encourage people to attack on January 20th because he won’t be there.
Marie, is there some tortured reasoning there to ban President Trump from
Twitter and what about the decision of Amazon and other big tech companies
now to basically shut down Parler, which is a social media platform that
conservatives have chosen instead of Twitter and FaceBook?
MARIE HARF, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, SERVE AMERICA PAC AND FOX NEWS
CONTRIBUTOR:
Well, Chris, Donald Trump has arguably violated Twitter’s rules that they
have for their platform for years now. So while these last tweets that he
posted may not have been his worst, certainly he has done worse things on
Twitter. They were, I think, probably the last straw.
And the most interesting part of Twitter’s statement, actually, I think,
was the last statement, how they have information both from their platform
and from other sources that Donald Trump was encouraging violence around
the inauguration to come. So not just punishing him for violence that
already happened that left five people that on Wednesday, but that they
were looking forward and concerned about preventing further violence.
And when it comes to Parler, I mean Parler is an even worse version of
Twitter where we’ve see multiple people calling for Vice President Pence to
be killed, including people that have been on President Trump’s legal team.
So I think these social media companies have always been drinking from a
fire hose when it comes to hate on their platforms. But when they saw and
insurrection jump from the pages of, you know, of Twitter from the posts of
Twitter to real life on Wednesday, it was different for them.
WALLACE: Right.
HARF: It became reality and not just words on a platform. And I think
that’s why they took such drastic action.
WALLACE: Meanwhile, there are growing calls to remove President Trump
either through the 25th Amendment or through impeachment and trial in the
Senate.
Here is Republican Senator Pat Toomey. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. PAT TOOMEY (R-PA): I do think the president’s behavior this week does
disqualify him from serving. I do think the president committed impeachable
offenses.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: I don’t think you can overstate how bitter feelings are in the
Republican Party towards President Trump. Just this morning, Pat Toomey,
that senator you just saw, has escalated and now says he believes that
Donald Trump should resign immediately.
And, over the weekend, a source close to Vice President Pence tells me that
when Pence, the mob had broken through and Pence had been taken down to a
bunker in the basement of the U.S. Capitol, that President Trump — this is
coming from a source close to Pence — President Trump never reached out to
inquire about Pence’s safety and to this day has never condemned the people
that were in the Capitol on Wednesday calling to hang Vice President Pence.
All of this leads to the question, Josh, as the former chief of staff to
Mitch McConnell, what do you think are the prospects that the Senate, if
there’s an impeachment, will vote to remove Donald Trump as president,
either — either to convict him and remove him while he’s still president
or even after he leaves, to convict him and say he can never run for office
again?
HOLMES: Well, I mean the behavior that you described just now, Chris, is
obviously abhorrent and I think that there is a much stronger case for
impeachment now than there certainly was a year ago when I strongly
disagreed with the case that was made.
I thought the interesting part of your interview with Representative
Clyburn was his suggestion that they would move to impeach in the House and
then hold the paperwork, essentially not giving it over to the Senate,
because it’s important to note that once the Senate receives articles of
impeachment, they have to proceed expeditiously. It’s not an option. They
actually have to do it.
You saw a memo over the weekend saying that they wouldn’t move until the
19th, that they couldn’t move until the 19th. If the papers were delivered
at that point, it would be literally right on top of the Biden
inauguration. Clearly Democrats don’t want to do that. And so the
suggestion that Clyburn made there was that they would hold it for a period
of time.
Now, once it gets to the Senate, that’s Chuck Schumer’s Senate. Obviously
he’s the new majority leader at that point and they’re going to have to
proceed with a case and a trial. The Senate doesn’t convict without hearing
evidence from both sides. I don’t know ultimately where the votes lead. I
do know that their case is much stronger than it was a year ago.
WALLACE: All right, panel, we have to take a break. We’ll leave it there.
When we come back, Joe Biden’s agenda. With Democrats now in control of
Congress, what can he get through and what can Republicans still block?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT FOR THE UNITED STATES: I am focused now on us
taking control as president and vice president on the 20th and to get our
agenda moving as quickly as we can.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: President-elect Biden ducking questions about impeachment as he
prepares to take office in just ten days.
And we’re back now with the panel.
Josh, Joe Biden will have majorities in the House and Senate, but pretty
small ones, razor-thin, really, in both houses. Given the fact that he’ll
have just 51 votes in the Senate, but that is enough for budget
reconciliation, it is enough to confirm your nominees if the Democrats all
line up behind him, what do you think that he can get through in the Senate
and what do you think Republicans will still be able to block?
HOLMES: Well, I think the first biggest decision he needs to make with
Democratic leaders is whether they want the first hundred days to be mired
in an impeachment trial about his predecessor, which, you know, it clearly
would have an impact on everything that — from his legislative agenda to
his nominees.
The only thing that really changed on Tuesday with the two wins in Georgia
where the nominations and confirmations. He can clearly go through a
Democratic majority and work through those pretty quickly. But he’s going
to need a substantial bipartisan effort to get any sort of legislation
across the finish line because of that 60 vote threshold. They do not have
the votes to try to limit the filibuster. So there’s going to need to be
some bipartisanship.
The one caveat to that is the budget. If they can pass a budget, they can
then operate in this sort of arcane reconciliation rules that ultimately
allow them to change tax policy with a simple majority. That’s a big thing
to watch in the first quarter and I think something that this
administration will focus on.
WALLACE: Marie, what’s your sense of Biden’s legislative calendar schedule?
What do you get the sense he’s going to push first? What do you think he’ll
put off until later in the year? And given the fact that, you know, it’s
now just a few votes in the House and one vote in the Senate, do you think
there’s some parts of the agenda that he campaigned on that are just going
to go on the back burner?
HARF: Well, Chris, I think, number one has to be getting his team in place.
And that involves dealing with everything from COVID to the economy and
jobs to national security. And so I do think that there’s a strong sense
that confirmations have to happen immediately. And then paired with that is
the question of additional COVID relief for Americans. He has talked about
the $2,000 checks, getting more relief to small businesses, getting
unemployment relief to people. I think that will be a first priority as
well.
Obviously, the vaccination program isn’t really legislative. I think
they’ll probably be more focused on that through executive action and the
executive branch.
But I actually think that this is an opportunity for senators like Joe
Manchin, Chris Coons, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, the folks clustered
around the middle of both parties, to come together to help Biden get
things passed like infrastructure for example, things passed like tweaks to
our health care system. You know, Joe Biden did not campaign on huge,
radical change, he campaigned on working across the aisle to address things
like prescription drugs. And so I think that once we get through this
initial period of time where he gets his team in place and works to really
attack the coronavirus issue, those are the kinds of things he’s going to
look at.
WALLACE: Wednesday afternoon, when the insurrectionist were still inside
the Capitol, President Trump put out this video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This was a fraudulent
election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have
peace.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Jonathan, from what your sources are telling you, does Donald
Trump think that after January 20th he still has a role to play in national
politics and that he still has a base that will follow and support him?
SWAN: Well, he does have a base that will follow and support him. It will
be the height of naivety to think that he doesn’t. And, in fact, I think
people drastically overstating the extent to which Donald Trump is a
diminished figure after this. Yes, he’s a — of course he’s a — he —
there’s no doubt he’s lost some — and Josh probably has a better read on
this than I do, some number of Republicans. He’s certainly lost quite a few
elected Republicans.
But I don’t — I haven’t seen any evidence yet that he’s lost a huge
proportion of the Republican base who, you have to remember, was — and we
know this both from data, like hard, quantitative data, but also from focus
groups and from anecdote and from activists in the field, that he had an
incredible bond with the Republican base. A very intense bond that I’ve
seen firsthand at many Trump rallies and there are some things — I’m not
convinced that goes away at all.
So I think people should be very wary of dismissing Trump as somebody who
has serious power, his own type of power outside of Washington going far
beyond January 20th.
WALLACE: Josh, let’s change and pivot more to the official party, the
elected officials, the party infrastructure. How much support has Donald
Trump lost over this last week inside that part of the GOP? Does he still
have support? Does he still have clout? Or to what degree has that
diminished?
HOLMES: Well, I mean, Chris, there’s been a seismic change this week and I
think it’s a combination of factors, obviously ending with what happened on
Wednesday. But there was a fatigue everything post-election of the
president focusing entirely on this, you know, fraudulent election message
that, you know, wasn’t true. And most everybody knew it. But instead of
sort of getting behind what was ultimately going to be the future of the
party in two Georgia Senate races, the president continued to focus on how
we would be president ultimately. That began to chip away. And as the
rhetoric began to be more and more pointed, more and more away from the
future of the party, I think there has been a significant slide.
Where that ends with Wednesday, as you saw a number Republican senators
speaking very directly to this for the first time on the Senate floor. You
had senators like Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, Tim Scott representing sort of the
next stage of conservatism in Washington, D.C., begin to open a new lane
there.
Jonathan Swan is quite right that there is still a huge bases of support
within the Republican Party throughout this country, but we’re beginning to
see the slow turn here.
WALLACE: All right, panel, thank you. See you next Sunday.
Up next, our “Power Player of the week.” You’re going to want to watch this
one. The gift of a chemistry kit unlocked one girl’s imagination and she
has gone on to solve some of the world’s problems.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WALLACE: She is just a teenager, but she’s already accomplished more in a
few short years than most of us could even imagine doing in a lifetime. And
now she’s earned a new title. Here’s our “Power Player of the Week.”
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GITANJALI RAO, “TIME” MAGAZINE KID OF THE YEAR: Every day of my life I
spend using science and technology for kindness.
WALLACE (voice over): Gitanjali Rao, scientist, inventor and “Time”
magazines’ first ever Kid of the Year.
Chosen from 5,000 candidates, she was honored for her body of work at the
age of 15.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are Kid of the Year!
RAO: I’m hoping that I can prove that anyone can be an innovator if they
have the passion to do so.
WALLACE (on camera): You certainly don’t act like a kid.
Any problem being called the Kid of the Year?
RAO: The reason I can do all of this is because I’m a kid. Kids come up
with better ideas than adults because we’re not restricted by a box over
our head.
WALLACE (voice over): And think outside the box she does.
RAO: This fully functional device can help with —
WALLACE: She invented a device called Tethys, a quick, inexpensive tool to
detect lead in drinking water.
WALLACE (on camera): Is it true that the genesis, the impetus for this came
from seeing the lead contamination in Flint, Michigan?
RAO: Yes, that’s totally true. It’s just so unfair that so many kids my age
are essentially drinking poison every day.
WALLACE (voice over): She also developed Kindly, which uses artificial
intelligence to flag cyberbullying.
RAO: Kindly basically lets the user know that this might not be the nicest
thing to say. Helping the bully basically make a learning experience out of
it.
WALLACE: And there is Epione, the diagnosis opioid addiction at an early
stage.
RAO: The even cooler part is it gives you action items and a map of the
nearest addition centers and physician locations.
WALLACE: Inventions aside, Gitanjali reminded us she is still a kid.
RAO: Epione uses the protein expression from (INAUDIBLE) called — my phone
(INAUDIBLE). OK.
WALLACE (on camera): That seems like a 15-year-old there.
RAO: Yes, that’s a 15-year-old thing.
Good morning, everyone!
WALLACE (voice over): She’s also helping other young people become
innovators.
RAO: So excited to be with you guys today.
WALLACE: Running workshops for tens of thousands of students.
RAO: That’s what makes me so excited is knowing that I am playing a part in
a global movement and I am playing a part towards making global change.
WALLACE: And when she’s not changing the world, she makes time for hobbies.
WALLACE (on camera): At age 15, you can’t drive, but you can do what?
RAO: I can fly a plane!
WALLACE (voice over): Whether in a plane or a lab, Gitanjali Rao is flying
high.
WALLACE (on camera): If you can do all of this in your first 15 years on
earth, what do you think you’re going to be able to accomplish over the
next 60 years?
RAO: I think that I’m just going to try and see what the world brings me
and continue making a positive difference with whatever I’m doing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALLACE: Gitanjali’s next project? Exploring how we can prevent future
pandemics. And let’s say this, don’t bet against her.
And that’s it for today. Have a great week and we’ll see you next FOX NEWS
SUNDAY.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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