Fox News "Fox News Sunday" - Transcript: McConnell on Marshalling the Votes to Confirm Kavanaugh

Interview

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WALLACE: Kevin Corke reporting from the White House -- Kevin, thanks for that.

Joining me now from Louisville, Kentucky, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Senator, you have called putting conservative justices on the court, conservative judges at all levels of the court, the most consequential action that you can take in your role. I want to put up with the record is under President Trump with you as majority leader, two Supreme Court justices have been confirmed and 26 judges have been put on the circuit courts. That's the fastest pace in history.

Question, sir, is your proudest moment as a senator?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, R--K.Y., SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: I think so. I think the most important thing the Senate is involved in is the personnel business. The House is not in the personnel business. And of the various 1200 appointments who come to us for confirmation, obviously the most important are the lifetime appointments to the courts and we prioritize handling President Trump's outstanding nominees for the Supreme Court as well as the circuit courts and we've done 26 so far as you indicated, record, and they'll be more before the end of the year.

WALLACE: Some hard right conservatives have criticized you over the year as to establishment, but now they are lining up to praise you for ramming through the Kavanaugh nomination and even the likes of Steve Bannon has praised what he called strong leadership.

Are you happy to have his approval, sir?

MCCONNELL: It's almost an out-of-body experience, I must say.

(LAUGHTER)

WALLACE: But how do take this criticism that the Tea Party, the far right of the Republican Party has had a view over the years has he been trying to do your business up on Capitol Hill?

MCCONNELL: Well, it's pretty hard to be the majority leader of Senate without getting some criticism. I'd rather be judged about my record, and I think this has been an extraordinarily accomplished Congress, in fact, the most productive two year period in the time I've been in the Senate, whether it's taxes, regulations. We've got the economy booming, and we are making long-term systemic changes in the courts that will serve future generations of Americans in a very good way.

WALLACE: I know there have been some bipartisan accomplishments as well. You voted on an FAA bill in this last week. You also did a big bill to fight the opioid crisis.

But there's no question that this Kavanaugh confirmation battle has come at a cost that just the relations between Republican senators and Democratic senators seem to have taken a downturn. Here is Democratic senator -- Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on the floor this week talking about and criticizing you for delaying them after what he said was your ten-month delay in blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland from President Obama.

Here is Schumer

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WALLACE: Senator, how broken is the Senate?

MCCONNELL: The Senate is not broken. We didn't attack Merrick Garland's background and try to destroy him. We didn't go on a search and destroy mission.

We simply followed the tradition in America, which is if you have a party of a different -- a different Senate of a different party than the president, you don't fill a vacancy created in the presidential year. That went all the way back to 1888.

Schumer himself said 18 months before the end of the Bush tenure that if a vacancy occurred, they would fill it.

So what we did was follow tradition. But we didn't attack the nominee. We didn't go on a search and destroy mission.

I agree with Chuck Schumer, this has been a low point in the Senate. I have a different view about who caused the low point. Senate Judiciary Democrats linking Dr. Ford's name against apparently her desires, then trying to lower the standard and say that the presumption of innocence no longer applies in the United States of America and then the mob descended on Capitol Hill and tried to intimidate our members into opposing this good man nomination.

We stood up to the mob. We established the presumption of innocence is so important. I'm proud of my colleagues. This is an important day for the United States Senate.

WALLACE: I have to pick up on something that you said because -- maybe I have this wrong, but when you blocked Merrick Garland's nomination from president Obama, you basically said that we don't do this in a presidential election year and that we wait until the election and then whoever the people choose, they get to pick the Supreme Court nominee. But what you just said now was it's a question of whether or not it's the party in control of the Senate is different than the president.

The question I guess I'm getting to here is, if Donald Trump were to name somebody in the final year of his first term in 2020, are you saying that you would go ahead with that nomination?

MCCONNELL: Well, I understand your question of what I told you is what the history of the Senate has been. You have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a vacancy created in a presidential election year on the Supreme Court was confirmed by a Senate of a different party than the president. That's the history -

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: So, if you can answer my direct question. Are you saying that if Donald Trump --

MCCONNELL: The answer to your question is, we'll see if there's a vacancy in 2020.

WALLACE: But you're not ruling out the possibility since you're the Republican majority leader and there's a Republican president that you would go for and push the nomination of a Trump nominee in the election year.

MCCONNELL: What I'm telling you is, the history is, you have to go back to 1880 to find the last time a Senate controlled party different from the president filled a vacancy on the Supreme Court that was created in the middle of a presidential election year. That's been the history.

WALLACE: Final question, sir.

In the Alabama Senate race last year, you very quickly said after Judge Roy Moore was accused of inappropriate conduct towards teenagers many years ago, you immediately said that you believe the women. Why didn't you believe Christine Ford?

MCCONNELL: I can't imagine comparing Brett Kavanaugh to Roy Moore.

WALLACE: Well, but there -- the comparison -- I'm not comparing them. I'm comparing the fact --

MCCONNELL: Well, multiple witnesses come over and over kept popping up. Here we had an FBI investigation and three members of our conference who were undecided, took a look at the FBI investigation and two of the three decided to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.

WALLACE: The only point I'd make, sir, not trying to get into an argument with you, is you oppose the FBI investigation.

MCCONNELL: No, I didn't. It was negotiated in my office. We agreed on the parameters of the FBI investigation in a meeting in my office Friday a week ago, Senator Murkowski, Senator Collins, Senator Flake, that was the scope of the FBI investigation.

We agreed it would go on for a week and we agreed we would talk to the people that Dr. Ford had mentioned and the people that Ramirez had mentioned. And that the investigation that was done and our members who were undecided took a look at the report and two out of three of them decided to support the nominee.

WALLACE: Senator McConnell, thank you.

MCCONNELL: But, Chris, I think it's outrageous to compare Brett Kavanaugh to Roy Moore.

WALLACE: I didn't do so. I was simply comparing the fact that in one case, you believe the accusers and in other case, you didn't. I'm not comparing Judge Roy Moore and Brett Kavanaugh.

MCCONNELL: Good, because there is no comparison.

WALLACE: OK. On that, we agreed. Thank you for your time today, sir, and congratulations.

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