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Coming up, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell holding a press conference with reporters after Republicans won a majority in the Senate.
From Capitol Hill, this is about 20 minutes.
Let's make some space, please.
Well, good morning, everyone.
This is certainly a happy day for the GOP.
And let me start by congratulating President Trump.
What he's accomplished has not been done, as all of you know, since Grover, Cleveland, which was a while back.
I also want to commend the Trump campaign for running a sharper operation this time.
And I think Chris LaSabita and Susie Wiles deserve a lot of credit.
They ran a spectacular race.
With regard to the Senate, you guys know how long I've been around.
I had really hoped I'd be able to hand over to my successor, the majority.
I've been the majority leader, I've been the minority leader.
Majority is a lot better.
And I think based on the fact that we haven't got all the results in, we certainly already know we're going to be in the majority.
We're hopeful that that might actually grow some.
And I want to give particular credit to Steve Daines.
I had that job at the NRSC a few years back.
I've never seen a better performance.
He focused on getting quality candidates, making sure they actually got the nomination.
And as I said, to some criticism, candidate quality is absolutely essential.
I also am proud of the job the Senate Leadership Fund and its related groups did.
Overall, they were able to raise $425 million.
And they made decisions to invest in, I think, all the right places.
I'll just run it down for you.
They spent $29 million in Maryland, $42 million in Michigan, $60 million in Montana, 3.3 million in Nebraska, 12.8 million in Nevada, 133 million in Ohio,
82.7 million in Pennsylvania, 30 million in Wisconsin, and 3 million in West Virginia.
So clearly what they were doing over there is focusing on the places where we had the best chance to win.
And I think the results pretty much prove they made a lot of wise decisions.
So with that, I'll be happy to see what you want to talk about.
Good morning, Mr. Lee.
Thank you.
Senate Republicans will have 54, 55, maybe even 56 seats before this is done.
You have been an advocate of maintaining the filibuster, the former president, now the president-elect.
You know, I'm glad you raised that.
And what will you do outside of the leadership now to continue to advocate on that if there are forces here who try to get rid of it?
I'm really glad you raised that.
I should have covered that before.
I think one of the most gratifying results of the Senate becoming Republican, the filibuster will stand.
There won't be any new states admitted that give a partisan advantage to the other side.
And we'll quit beating up the Supreme Court every time we don't like a decision they make.
So I think this shifting to a Republican Senate majority helps control the guardrails to keep people who want to change the rules in order to achieve something they think is worthwhile is not successful.
And so I think the filibuster is very secure.
Leader McConnell, practically speaking, what does having a 52 or 53 seat majority mean for getting Trump's agenda through the Senate compared to a 50 or 51 seat?
And does this mean maybe you expand the agenda beyond the Trump tax cuts to explore other things and what might those things be?
Well, we hear optimistic reports of what may have happened in the House.
And obviously, if you were going to legitimately work around the filibuster, it would be through reconciliation.
And so I think we'd be obviously more successful if we flipped the House.
And Speaker, I think, put out a statement saying he's optimistic.
I hope that's the case.
Leader McConnell.
In March, you blamed former President Trump, President-elect Trump, and his inner circle on the delay to Ukraine aid.
Are you confident that he is the best person to deter our adversaries?
Yeah, look, I'm here this morning to talk about the election, and I think I'm going to largely confine it to that.
Let's talk a little bit about what you expect your role to be next year when you're not in leadership.
I know you've talked about foreign policy.
You've got JD Vance as the vice president.
He's obviously got diverging views from you on foreign policy.
What is your role going to be over the next two years?
Okay.
I'm not going to speculate about what anybody else may be doing.
I thought your question was what I was going to be doing.
I'm going to concentrate on defense and foreign policy.
I think this is the most dangerous time since right before World War II.
Our adversaries, North Koreans, Chinese, Russians, Iran, and Iran's proxies are all talking to each other.
They have one thing in common.
They hate us and they want to diminish our role in the world.
It may seem old-fashioned to some, but I'm still a Reagan Republican who thinks that America's role in the world is absolutely indispensable.
Even if you're concerned about cost, it'd be interesting to know that at the height of World War II, 37% of our gross domestic product was being spent on the war.
37%.
And we lost over 400,000 Americans.
The Reagan buildup, without a shot being fired, was about 6% of GDP.
We're currently spending 2.7%.
We need to ramp up defense spending in order to prevent a direct conflict with our adversaries.
It's a lot cheaper to prevent war than it is to have one.
And so that's the focus I'm going to have for the next couple of years.
Senator Leader McConnell, will you do you plan to chair the Appropriations Subcommittee of the Defense Subcommittee?
I haven't made a decision.
I'm hoping as former leader, you guys will care what I think anyway, and I don't think it'll have anything to do with committee assignments.
Are you anticipating any moves from the Democrats in the lame duck weeks coming up here?
Well, we are going to have to finish, figure out how to finish up the year, and that always involves a conversation between Senator Schumer and myself as to how we wrap it up, but those conversations haven't started yet.
Just a week before this election, your biography was released.
Your biography was released, and it included a lot of sharp criticisms of President Trump.
Do you stand by those criticisms?
Yeah, I'm not here to do a book review this morning.
Next week, your colleagues will choose the next majority leader.
What should they take away from last night when they vote for the next leader?
What can I take from last night?
What should your colleagues take from last night when they choose the next leader?
Candidate quality is essential.
Absolutely essential.
And I think we had the best candidates everywhere yesterday.
You've been the majority leader in this situation with narrow majorities in the House and Senate.
How challenging do you think it's going to be to keep the Republican Party together if you end up with full control?
Well, you're a bit of a student of history, Burgess.
Since senators became popularly elected in 1914, my party's never had more than 55.
Democrats had massive majorities during the 30s, during LBJ, during Barack Obama.
So obviously the higher we get, the better, but this is not 60 votes, which is what they had at the beginning of President Obama.
So I think we did pretty well with narrow majorities during the previous administration.
Three new Supreme Court justices, 54 new circuit judges, comprehensive 30-year overdue tax reform.
Yeah, I mean, it's harder, but I think we were successful before with a narrow majority, and I think we will be again.
Senator, looking at the results from last night, what do you take away from the mood of the country, where it is now, where it is headed, and how it lands according your expectations?
Well, if you're looking for a simple answer, I think it was a referendum on the current administration in part.
People were just not happy with this administration, and the Democratic nominee obviously was a part of it.
Thank you, Mr. McConnell.
In your role as former leader moving forward, what do you think your level of engagement is going to be directly with the new Trump administration?
Again, given your criticisms of the former president?
I'm going to do everything I can to help the new administration be successful.
Torrance, banks.
Would you be in support of Elon Musk and RFK Jr. having positions in the cabinet for the next presidential?
I'm sorry, say that again.
Would you be in support of RFK Jr. and Elon Musk having positions in the cabinet, presidential cabinet, considering that Elon Musk has been reported to be in contact with Valentine Lee Putin and RFK Jr. has been accused of sexual assault?
One of the things about advancing age, if you all live as long as I do, you're going to have hearing aids on and have a hard time hearing a question like that.
Why don't you come up here?
Torrance Banks, notice.
Would you be in support of Elon Musk and RFK Jr. having cabinet positions, considering that Elon Musk has been reported to be in contact?
Yeah, I'm not going to get into that subject.
Anything else related to what happened yesterday?
Yeah.
I'm wondering, President Trump and Senate Republicans sometimes butted heads in the first administration.
Do you think the relationship will be smoother this time?
What advice would you have to President Trump to dealing with the new majority in Congress in general?
You know, I had a lot of dealings with him during the previous administration.
I think we did a lot for the American people.
Yeah.
Do you expect any clashes with President Trump over nominees in case he goes more towards the economic populist route?
I think it's way too early to tell who the nominees are going to be, and I think the Senate will treat them fairly.
Carl?
A lame duck question.
Democrats have a lot of judges in the channel here that they could try and push through in these last few weeks.
Do you think, what do you think Republicans should do if that would happen?
One advantage of being the majority leader is you get to decide what to bring up.
And I think if that's what the majority leader wants to do, that's what we'll do, and each one will be voted on.
Now that Republicans have control of the Senate and the presidency, how do you expect some lame duck priorities like appropriations to be handled?
Is that going to be punted into the new year?
I don't expect one.
Appropriations and other big lame duck priorities to be handled.
Well, I mean, I think getting our work done, which no matter who's been in the majority, we've not been able to do that very well for quite a while.
Deciding how to spend the discretionary money that we have, which is not a very big part of what we spend every year anymore, is really important.
And I would hope we would put a greater priority than the current Senate has on doing the basic work of government, which is getting it, deciding how much to spend and getting it done as close to regular order as possible.
Thank you, sir.
I was hoping you could compare the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extension that Republicans are pursuing now to the Bush tax cut extension that we saw.
Are these comparable periods in policy now, and what does the Republican position mean for that?
Well, I can speak for most Senate Republicans.
We're going to want, we thought it was a huge success.
It produced more revenue than less.
And I'm sure virtually all of us would like to see most of that extended.
Okay, I think we're through.
Good luck to you all.
I enjoyed talking to you, and it was a hell of a good day.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
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