Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript Interview with Steve Scalise and Andy Biggs
Interview
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Joining me now with reaction, House minority whip, Congressman Steve Scalise, and House Freedom Caucus chairman, Congressman Andy Biggs.
Gentlemen, welcome aboard.
REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA): Thank you.
REP. ANDY BIGGS (R-AZ): Welcome. Good to be with you, Tammy.
BRUCE: Now, Congressman Scalise, I have to say that, you know, Americans understand, we know Americans care about the coronavirus, and we are concerned about it, we remain concerned about our health and the health of our family. We -- a super majority of us want people to wear masks and that is what we've been guided to do. There is guidance and suggestions.
And there's Democrats moving to mandates, to enforcing something. What are your thoughts on that?
SCALISE: Well, first, when Joe Biden says that he would listen to the scientists -- look, he was the first one to criticize Donald Trump when President Trump took decisive action to block flights coming in from China. When Dr. Fauci and others testified under oath that President Trump made the right decision, and in fact, that President Trump's decision saved American lives, not just blocking flights from China, blocking flights from Europe, those are all things that Joe Biden criticized, and it was scientists that actually said President Trump saves lives.
So, Joe Biden has been all over the board on this, but what he's really been is wrong on this from the very beginning. He just wants to criticize the president when he talks about -- you know, he's now saying he's not for defunding the police, he was just on video a few weeks ago saying he wants to reallocate money away from the police. That's defunding police.
BRUCE: Exactly.
SCALISE: And, of course, we know Kamala Harris wants to defund police as well.
Whatever position he says he's going to take today, he's been all over the board. What he's done is embrace the radical left agenda on all of these items and if Joe Biden was running things, more Americans would have died.
And again, Dr. Fauci himself testified under oath that President Trump's decision to ban flights from China saved American lives. Joe Biden would not have done that.
BRUCE: Yeah, thank you.
You know, Congressman Biggs, I mean, what's interesting too is that if you listen to the science early on, they told you don't wear masks. They said that's like a problem, you don't need to -- stop it.
So, you're going to get whiplash if you're making decisions every now and then based on what scientists are going to be saying -- the Europeans science, the American science. But Americans agree our instinct is -- we understand the situation, we tend to agree.
But Joe Biden seems to be pandering in a certain way, he wants to say he'd do something differently but with President Trump being successful, he doesn't quite know where to go with this.
BIGGS: That's exactly right, Tammy. President Trump has been strong proactive leader on this right from everything from the flight bans to reducing regulation, et cetera, and allowing public-private partnerships to develop cures and prophylaxis as well.
But here's the thing, Joe Biden wants control. That's what the mask mandate is.
And President Trump understands very clearly while he -- while he's the president, he doesn't have authority to issue a nationwide mask mandate. And so, he has respected state sovereignty on some of those issues like masks.
And that's really part of the key to all of this that I don't think Joe Biden gets and I don't think the Democrats get. They just want the power. They just want the control and I think if they are going to start shutting down over flu every year as well, you're going to have a big problem going forward with centralized power.
BRUCE: Yeah, these are knee-jerk reactions without the thought about the cure being worse than what's been going on. In addition, we do have history with the Obama-Biden administration with the H1N1 flu, and their own health experts saying that had been really just luck that that didn't turn into worse than what it was because they had no idea what they were doing.
So, we do have a history. That is good news.
Thank you, gentlemen, for joining me and I appreciate it. Obviously, this conversation is going to continue.
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