Fox News "The Ingraham Angle" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Steve Scalise
Interview
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INGRAHAM: Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on new gun-control legislation that they hope to push on the American people. The top Republican on the committee asked Democrats if Congressman Steve Scalise, himself a victim of gun violence, and a proponent of Second Amendment rights, could testify about his unique perspective.
Democrats denied him the opportunity. We reached out to the Senate Judiciary Committee because it sounded like it can't be true, and we got a comment back tonight. To their credit, they did respond, saying "The Republicans chose two other witnesses other than Scalise, but Scalise's testimony is going to be entered into the record." Steve Scalise wants to testify. We can't spend 10 minutes and let them testify?
Here now is Steve Scalise. So how do you respond to their pushback on the narrative tonight, Congressman?
REP. STEVE SCALISE, R-LA, HOUSE MINORITY WHIP: Laura, it was pretty bizarre. Historically, when Republicans were in charge, even when Democrats were in charge prior to this more radical leftist majority, if a member of Congress wanted to testify on a committee, they always provided a venue for that to happen. In this case, they were having a hearing in the Judiciary on reducing gun violence. And I've got a perspective. Clearly mine dealt with something that happened to me, and I saw how guns were used to save people's lives. And it should have been able to be part of the testimony. They wanted to focus on taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens, which their bill ultimately does. And so because my presentation would have been --
INGRAHAM: It would have been extremely dramatic. But my question is, again, everyone watching, they don't care about House procedures, bogged down there. But why didn't Doug Collins, the ranking member, insist that you go first? If I'm the ranking member of Judiciary, no one is stopping you from testifying. And I don't get what Doug Collins did there. Who are these other people testifying better than you? No one is better than you. Sorry, I'm biased. I'm biased.
SCALISE: Ultimately, he wanted me to be able to testify as well, but in the end, if the Democrats want to --
INGRAHAM: Be sticklers about this.
SCALISE: I will tell you about this, Nancy Pelosi tried to rescind the president's ability to go give the State of the Union.
INGRAHAM: This is petty. You are saying this is patty. This is not necessary.
SCALISE: This is how they are playing. They think they can silence conservative voices. But you know what, they can't silence our voices. We're going to get this message out anyway. Go read their bill, by the way, HR8. If you loan your shotgun to a friend of yours to go hunting, under certain circumstances in their you could actually go to jail for a year and have a $100,000 fine.
INGRAHAM: If you loan a shotgun to a friend --
SCALISE: If you loan your shotgun to a friend to go hunting, you go read their bill, their bill would under certain circumstances actually allow that to be a felony where you could get a year in prison and $100,000 fine.
INGRAHAM: What are the circumstances?
SCALISE: Basically, if they think it was part of a gun transaction, if you selling your gun or loaning your gun to somebody else. The gun-control is what they are trying to get at. They want full-grown registration, they want to take away your rights.
By the way, if their bill would have passed, it would have done nothing to stop the shooting that happened in my case, the shooting that happened in Parkland, a lot of these other tragedies.
INGRAHAM: But they want --
SCALISE: They want to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens to have a gun. So they are trying to hide behind, we don't want rights taken away, we want to limit gun violence.
INGRAHAM: Bit by bit, chip it away.
SCALISE: It's about taking away your rights to have a gun. We're going to call them out on it. They're not going to be able to silence these voices. So let them play these charades and have kangaroo courts, but in the end the American people are watching.
INGRAHAM: This is a loser issue. I know they think it's a winner. It's never a winner for them.
All right, the "under God," explain this very quickly. We only have about a minute. Now Nadler went with the, was it the resource council, Natural Resources Committee, and Democrats who wanted the "so help me God" taken out of swearing someone in to testify?
SCALISE: So this is something new that Democrats are doing in their majority. Every House committee sets their own rules and the rules for swearing a person in. The Committee on Natural Resources last week literally tried to change their swearing in oath that you take to remove the phrase "so help me God."
INGRAHAM: What are they worried about?
SCALISE: Republicans on the communications, Garret Graves on the others, objected and they put it back in. But they tried to sneak it through. So then in the Judiciary Committee today, they tried to do the same thing that the Natural Resources Committee did. They literally tried to take away the phrase "so help me God."
INGRAHAM: So help them, God.
SCALISE: Republicans called them out on it, Mike Johnson in this case, called them out on it. But these are Democrats that are now chairing committees, this is Pelosi's majority. So all those Democrats who won saying they are pro-life, pro-gun, and they're against Pelosi, they elected Nancy Pelosi as speaker, and now they are trying to take away God, they're trying to silence voices, they're trying to take away your gun rights. This is only in their first month, Laura.
Everybody pay close attention. What Donald Trump did last night to lay the foundation for what we need to do to get our country back and to reject socialism, and they wouldn't even stand up to reject socialism. That is where they are going. If they want to own socialism, let them own it.
INGRAHAM: Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
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