Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript Interview with Josh Hawley
Floor Speech
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Here to respond is Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. Senator, you just heard the CEO of Pfizer essentially threatening to move manufacturing overseas because of these executive orders. What does this tell you?
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY, R-MO.: It tells you that they are very interested in their profits and the gravy train that they've had going for years. Listen, I have no sympathy for big pharma whatsoever. They routinely charge Americans two and three and four times more for the same drugs that they charge patients in, say, Europe, France. And I know this is true because we have studies them. My home state of Missouri, they are charging people of Missouri three and four and five times more than they're charging folks in France or Germany and Canada. And I'm glad that the president is standing up to them.
INGRAHAM: And I think, again, the money that is given by the drug companies to both political parties, it's astronomical. They are among the biggest donors to politics in the United States. And that's fine. That's what they do. But let's not all think this is all just charitable endeavors. It's a business, it's a company, but they have gotten a free ride.
And I wanted to ask you, senator, about the president's decision, the administration's decision to give Kodak a boost in order to keep some medical manufacturing in the United States. There are a lot of conservatives out there, free marketeers, who would say we are playing favorites. And to that you say?
HAWLEY: Well, I say, listen, it is important we manufacture as many pharmaceutical products as we can in this country. The fact that we manufacture so few drugs any longer, particularly drugs like insulin, we manufactured zero percent in this country. Major pharmaceutical products we've found because of the COVID-19 crisis that we are deeply dependent on foreign supply chains. So I think it is incumbent to look at all the options for bringing those supply chains back, for getting medical production back in this country.
And to go back to big pharma, again, I don't have any sympathies for these guys. This big pharma, big government alliance has been great for big pharma. They have made a killing these last few years, really for decades. And it's time they start putting patients first.
INGRAHAM: And Senator, a couple of weeks back, speaking of Biden, he said we should re-examine Trump's tariffs on China. Of course, that's the whole reason China came to the bargaining table in these trade deals. But today, Biden came out and pretended that he was going to be the one after four decades plus in Washington to put America first. Watch.
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JOE BIDEN, D-PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Using federal dollars that have already been appropriated, to focus them on building things that make us and increase our independence, so we don't have to rely on anyone else for, whether it's cyber security, cyber information. We have the capacity to do it at home. Do them at home.
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INGRAHAM: OK, Senator, is it my mistake or not, am I remembering this incorrectly -- wasn't he vice president in an administration for eight years? I must have missed all that work on these issues of bringing manufacturing back to the United States.
HAWLEY: The problem with Joe Biden is that he is a classic China appeaser, and he has been his whole political career. He certainly was as vice president. Heck, even earlier this year he was questioning whether China was really a geostrategic threat. That turned out to be a little bit of a problem for him as we have seen with COVID-19, which is why he doesn't want to talk about those past statements now.
But this is a guy who has never stood up to China. In fact, he has been all too eager to roll out the red carpet for China, give them whatever they want, sell out our jobs, sell out our workers. That's the problem. We're still cleaning up from his mess of years ago.
And why would we go back to those failed policies? We don't need more appeasement. We need to get tough on China. This president started to do it. We need even more of that.
INGRAHAM: Senator, I wouldn't let you get away without like you said this past weekend where you said, quite candidly, that you wouldn't support a Supreme Court nominee unless he or she had publicly stated before the nomination that Roe versus Wade was wrongly decided. Now, is that a litmus test that even some Republicans will back away from? What is your response?
HAWLEY: You can call it whatever you want, Laura. I call it asking some basic questions about judicial philosophy. And I also call it the end of the trust us approach. For years conservatives, especially religious conservatives, let's be honest, have been told by the D.C. establishment just trust us. We'll pick good judges, just trust us. Don't ask too many questions, certainly don't ask about Roe. Just trust us.
I'm through with that. I want to know, because Roe is absolutely central, Roe is an unbridled act of judicial imperialism. And if a nominee thinks that Roe was rightly decided, then he or she is a judicial imperialist and I'm not going to vote for him.
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