rare. >> hi. >> but friends don't have to be. when you are connected, you know . ♪ >> cox supports c-span as a public service along with these other television providers, giving you a front row seat into democracy. ♪ >> and now retiring republican congressman kevin mccarthy discusses supporting former president trump's 2024 campaign despite the january 6 attack on the u.s. capitol. he touches on his removal as house speaker and the decision to retire from congress. this conversation took place during the wall street journal ceo council summit. >> thank you very much for being here. i wanted to ask you straight off, two months ago you were speaker of the house of representatives. second in line of succession to the presidency.

two heartbeats from the oval office. how do you feel -- is this a liberation for you or are you grieving a sense of loss? >> you one and you did get some

important things done. i'm sure you want to talk about that. historically, you are ousted. the first speaker to be ousted. the house republicans went through another 3, 4, potential successors until they landed on mike johnson. the question i have for you, given what we've seen in the last year and given the divisions in the republican party, the fact that a relatively small number of people can hold the party hostage, is the republican party in the house ungovernable? >> we have a small majority. you have these crazy eight and probably a few more you could add to it. let me give you my perspective. it's going to be a tight majority for redistricting on either side. i look at it from the aspect of, why did i become leader? in my leaving it better or worse off? if i think about that, i was leader during the last two

election cycles. if i look at my party from that perspective, we lost the white house. we lost the senate. we lost one cycle of governors and we lost the legislature. you know the one place we didn't lose? the house. i get to be the only leader to get thrown out but i'm the only leader who's never lost. it was this turning point for me when i became leader. paul had left. trump was still president. we have the state of the union. one side stands up and one side sits down. we had just lost the majority. they wiped out a big portion of the swing numbers. i look over to the democrats. they stand up. they look like america. we look like the most restrictive country club in america. i make this point. either i was going to be the leader of a declining party or i was going to expand our party. we elected the most women, the most minorities.

below see and i come from the same state. do you know how many seats she one? zero. i 15. we won five in new york. the republicans lost the governor stitt -- governorship. we won in oregon. the question is, why did we win in the same climate as all the other republicans lost? the quality of the candidate. that matters. we would also lay out a commitment to america, what we would do. that would play into what we accomplish. before we went on august rate, -- break, this congress was more productive than the congress before. more bills signed into law. we had a path and mission. are we disruptive now? yes. do we have a few people that can disrupt all of it? yeah. we have to get back. there has to be consequences for a few people if we are ever

going to find our path again. >> the question that people have as they look at the events of the last year, they look at donald trump and the republican party and the other candidates, they look at the people who caused so much trouble for you. what does the republican party stand for? what unites the republican party right now? >> the republican party is going through the same thing the democratic party went through. if you are honest with your own party, the reason we are going through this is because we haven't solved problems on both sides. why is the rise of a bernie sanders? why is the socialist movement rising? why of the populist movement rising? it didn't start yesterday. ross perot and others. part of the challenge and part of the frustration is what americans currently feel. compounded upon all of that is 2008. it's not the financial crisis. it's the ability to raise money online.

it's the internet itself, the ability to react. twitter and x can have a lot of bots and members would react to it. the drawing of the lines. there's less competitiveness. it's more within the primary. all that compounded on itself, i would say, internally for a party, a party usually has a party usually has ahead to it. the only person to become the head of the party is when someone gets elected president. the outside party drives to see who that person is. the last two presidential elections were not one by america voting for aspirational of what they wanted their president to be. it was voting against somebody. anytime a country elects somebody based on someone they do not want, you are leaderless in a way. it's like putting your hand in a bucket of water. we are in the mixed of filling it right now. >> i don't want to get into the weeds on this. it was the appropriations

budget, that led to your ousting. >> no. it's one person that's afraid of an ethics complaint that was filed about him from two years ago that had a severe problem, afraid of it ever coming forward. >> that's another way of looking at it. [laughter] there were at least eight people who had the power to do it. we are once again waiting for the outcome of the appropriations process. your successor has pushed off to two sets of deadlines for appropriations bills to be passed. what is your sense? are we going to be able to avoid a government shutdown? will the government be able to finance without endless continuing resolutions? >> i do believe what winston churchill said. americans do what's right when they've extent -- exhausted

every other option. they moved it because i kept government open and i -- i didn't shut it down. i would do it all again. can you imagine not paying our troops right now? we have this one group called the freedom caucus. i'm conservative but i believe in governing. that's the difference between the party today and the party of reagan. if you want to govern and be a conservative like reagan and govern, it's one thing. if you want to be part of the freedom caucus and disrupt everything and not govern, that's not being a conservative. the freedom caucus that fought us in the appropriation process now thinks the number i agreed to, which is less than what we are spending today -- had we not continue this fight, we would spend less money and the military would get more. when you continue this on, all the things that conservatives complain about the democrats, the woke-ism, you are sustaining

all the democrat policies. what's going on by the freedom proctored -- freedom caucus is protecting the democrats. we have some challenges that we have to face. we have to have a topline number. we are only supposed to be in for the rest of the week. we are going to solve this in two weeks? if you are not negotiating now, you are not going to get there. things have to change. >> a couple of things. you said the biden impeachment inquiry -- you did that in september. that's now advancing. where is that going? we keep hearing more, more keeps coming out of the committees about joe biden and what role he may have played in financial activities. where is not going to go? is this going to lead to a formal impeachment process? >> i don't predetermine where it ends up. you have to remember, impeachment inquiry is not impeachment. the whole reason i moved for

impeachment and craig, all that does is give you the legal ability to win in court when you take that next step. when you think about this, we've never gone to get hunter biden's bank statements. we've never asked for all the llcs credit card statements. when you make that next ask, when you are asking hunter to answer questions, he says no. you have to have impeachment inquiry. it only means that you can get evidence or information and ask questions. that's an impeachment increase. >> do you think biden should be impeached? >> the process of where we go right now, i wouldn't raise the impeachment where it is. i would follow through with what we are doing. >> but what you've seen so far -- >> you haven't seen anything. the only reason people start

saying that is because of the last administration. people used impeachment for political purposes. i said, never do that. it damages our country and everything else. i think what the information layout there, that's exactly what we did. i believe the president when he told me he had nothing to do with it. now i know that he lied. he got 16 out of 17 payments when he was vice president from romania. i know that we have all these pseudonyms. he said he never talked to his son about his business. now we have all these emails and we haven't been able to collect them yet. he did talk to his son about ukraine. he did talk to his son. you have to get all those facts. it's just going through the inquiry. to answer that question would be wrong from this statement because you are not walking through all the process to get the information. >> let's talk about a president who has been impeached twice, donald trump. you endorsed him for president.

why? >> the question is, trump will become the nominee. >> is that why you've endorsed him >> no. from the aspect of where we are, i've watched america's policies under trump and biden. it's not easy -- it's not hard to make that determination of which way is best to go. the other thing, if you just take every name out of it and look at sheer data, no one has sat in a stronger position right now than trump to win. no one has sat in a weaker position than biden since jimmy carter. but there's this underlying issue. i served with both individuals and i served with biden. biden can fix his problem, his age. what's going to happen here is, in the 1960's, america made this decision that we wanted to elect people who were younger. you are all ceos, right?

there is not one of you in here that is 81 years old and asking to be signed up again from your board of directors for another four years, are you? because why? they would get sued. the exact probability of you being able to carry out those other four years, no. there's a greater probability that you will be alive. if we are the leader of the free world, and collectively we don't want to ask that question internally, are we being honest with ourselves? >> one thing every ceo in the room would say, if they were facing criminal indictments and if they were convicted in a federal or state court, there's no conceivable way any company in the country would keep that man on the -- as ceo. that's a situation we may be facing with the united states in the next year. [applause] >> that's all fair. in america, you get your due process. did you think anybody in here as

ceo, the court is going to bring you win because of how you evaluate your real estate? do you think anybody else is going to be brought in based upon a d.a. that gets elected? there's politics and everything we play. if you want to look, the democrats have come after trump from an aspect they thought they would take him out of the running by some of these indictments. all it's done is elevate him to get elected. it played the other way around. i think that frustrates people. >> let's talk about trump. the ceos in the room will also -- trump looks like he may win right now. he's well ahead in the republican nomination. we are less than a year away from the election. what do you think a second trump term would look like? a lot of ceos in the room probably didn't like some of the things he did. there was a taxcutting program. he took a hard-line on china.

he was broadly in favor of the regulation. let's talk about those issues. on trade, where there would be concern about -- among some of the ceos in the room, trump did impose tariffs on china, renegotiated nafta to get usmca. what a second trump term -- would it be good for free-trade, international trade? or would it be more tariffs, protection as we saw in the first term? >> whoever becomes president, my concern is that the president's are taking more authority away from the house and senate because the house and senate is not doing their job. the more you allow that to happen, it's bad for america in the long run. what i try to invite president trump is, if you want to become president, it has to be about rebuilding, restoring, and renewing america. if it's revenge, you want get the opportunity. i find that if you focus on a few small things, energy, make

us be competitive. you have to deal with the border , regardless of who you are and where you're sitting in the office today. trade. prior to him becoming president, i think most of the country had a different opinion of what china was doing. when people look back, even if they didn't like him at the time, they say, he was there. if he enters president again, the world has changed. it looks more like the 1930's. you have the axis of evil. europe is watched much different and not prepared as much. was trump right about questioning? you've got a challenge were around the world, they are changing leadership in places to

be a little bit more conservative. you've got ukraine on the front of where it's at. you've got israel in a challenge. you can say what you want about the president though. when he went in and took out the greatest threat in around, most people would not have done that. i was having dinner with him that night when it transpired. i've watched him make some really tough decisions. there's a couple things people don't quite know about him. i've watched his decision-making on foreign policy and watched president biden. i remember biden in 2015, i came back from ukraine, took a group to see him. to ask to sell them javelins. javelins is an antitank. he said, no, can't do that. he called me and said, i know i had this really tough talk with boudin, i threatened him with sanctions. i said, this man has lived with sanctions for more than a decade and he's the wealthiest person

in the world. i think he looks at the world like a mafia boss. everything is black-and-white. i think he will only respect, move some weapons in there. it's a 100 anniversary of the creation of the soviet union. once he invaded i remember president biden called me back and says, these sanctions take a long time to work. i remember calling him when he made his first decision in afghanistan. i had to call the wedding hundred number to get to the president. i said, you have to change this deadline. you have to remember, the taliban is going to need us. i watched every action on ukraine be too late. it's not a hard decision here. >> is on a question of not liking him.

let me take you back. a lot of people would agree that there were a lot of good -- donald trump was able to achieve a lot of things in his administration. let's talk about january 6. you are in the capital that day. you were in a room which was under siege by a mob. famously, it's been reported that you called the president and said, using some colorful language, get these people out of here. the president sat in the oval office for hours and did nothing while a mob was trying to stop a constitutional process, did succeed in deferring the constitutional process going on. and yet you wear there. you saw what happened. you experienced it. you urged him to intervene and he didn't. yet you are still prepared to support him for president. >> i can change a lot of races in the house. i can't change the outcome in the presidential race. the people get to make that decision.

you are asking me, the nominee is going to be selected by march 15. that's my prediction. you will have enough. i also see the future of the country and i see the future of the world. at the same time, i see this being the 1930's. i get to be here when edison invents electricity. ai is here. i'm watching a congress argue over the small things that automatically should be done on a 12 appropriation bill that doesn't matter as much. the big spending levels are somewhere else. i can get into the weeds and worry about the little things or i can see what the world is going to do and try to affect it in the right direction and make a difference. i'm prepared to try to be speaker long before i was there. i took 10 members to m.i.t. because they have a course for our generals in the military in ai and quantum. whoever captures that has a victory. the first thing i did when i became speaker, i change the intel committee. he intel

committee, and everybody in the intel committee goes to m.i.t.. m.i.t. developed a course to teach everybody in congress. i've done small things in congress, tried to teach people. you just have to walk through a magnetometer to get into the chambers. you didn't have to show up to work. bills to have to go through committee. you had an entire structure to trust each other. i create movie night trying to get people to work together. we can worry and pick little things apart or we can decide, america has to look at problems further along and figure out how we do this in a collective way together. >> i wish we had more time. we don't. thank you for joining us. [applause]