Rep James Comer: We Shouldn’t Be Surprised by This

Democrats also plan to look into ICE, Tom Holman and Elon Musk. Well, joining us now for tonight's big close-up is House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer. Chairman, it's great to have you. Listen, we knew Democrats were going to be fired up for investigations, impeachments. We know that, you know, for many of them, that's what they've had their hearts set on for the past two years. What can Republicans do to limit the damage, if anything, and what do you expect for the next two years? Well, I fear it's going to be a bad time for the American taxpayers. And what we've done on the House Oversight Committee, much like what Jason Chaffetz did when he was chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is we focused on waste, fraud, and abuse of tax dollars. And we were having great success identifying and exposing massive amounts of welfare fraud in Minnesota, California. We were well into Ohio and New York. And the whole time, not a single Democrat ever tried to participate or help. In any type of taxpayer fraud, their whole focus over the past two years has been on the Trump administration. So we shouldn't be surprised because the Democrats, especially the far left wing socialist Democrats and that are kind of the voice of the Democrat Party, they've been campaigning this whole election cycle. On going after Trump and impeaching Trump and I think that that's probably what you're going to see the House Oversight Committee become when it goes from Republican majority to a Democrat majority. It's going to be 100% focused on investigating the Trump administration and going after anyone and everyone that's involved in the Trump administration. You know, there's this memo that went out, I guess, from leadership telling you all here Here are some priorities on how to respond to Democrats. Bringing in, I guess, impeachment going after certain members of the cabinet. The scuttle is that Pete Hegseth is at the top of their list. Obviously, there's at least one Republican outgoing that is drafting articles or trying to get that started even before Congress switches over. My question to you is, are your Republican colleagues going to stand behind this president and his cabinet as this weaponization turns into impeachment? Well, I'll speak for myself. I want to see this president be successful. And I think that there have been some great policies that this president has advocated for, that the House has passed, and even a few that the Senate passed, like the big, beautiful bill. The president was successful in securing the border. We've seen a massive reduction in crime all across the United States because of... This administration. So I want to see that continue moving forward. President Trump inherited massive inflation that was that was amplified during the Biden years. It takes a long time to reduce inflation. I don't think the voters were satisfied with the reduction in inflation. It's tough out there. Gas prices are too high. We have an unpopular war. But at the end of the day, I want to see this administration be successful because I believe in the ideology that. President Trump campaigned on. He campaigned on an America First agenda. That's what I want to focus on. I hope that we can go back over the last two months in the lame duck session, and I hope the Senate will pass a bunch of the good government bills that we passed out of the House, including the Save America Act that the Senate hasn't passed out. But at the end of the day, I'm going to do everything I can to see that the policies of this administration We'll continue to be successful and help. Reduce crime and help try to put America first and bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Just to follow up with that, do you fear there's a group, no matter how small, of your Republican colleagues that align with Thomas Massie and want to see someone like Pete Hegseth impeached that would work with the Democrats for something like that? Yeah, I don't think there are. I think most Republicans realize there's a process for impeachment. You've got to have investigations. You've got to have hearings. You're not just supposed to make a motion on the floor to impeach someone. Having said that, I think there's a there's a lot of discomfort with you with the the. The effort in Iran with the public relations, there are a lot of questions as to how much we've spent, what are the goals and objectives moving forward. And I think that if the Secretary of Defense will come out quickly and address those, I think that every Republican should be solid in that. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean we want to continue down the same path in Iran. I think everyone knows Iran is a bad country. This president had the guts to step up. And try to do something to Iran. Every president talked about it. No other president had the guts to do it until President Trump. But having said that, we just heard from the voters, and I was out there on the campaign trail, they're not happy with Iran. So I think that what needs to happen moving forward. Is the Secretary of Defense and the President need to be transparent with the American people? I think the Secretary of War, Ed Smith, needs to come to Capitol Hill, answer questions, be transparent. And I'm confident that the Republicans will stick with an administration that's transparent, that has an objective that we all agree on moving forward. Chairman, hey, this is Jason Chaffetz. Look, you've been an exceptional chairman of the Oversight Committee, but it used to be the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, one of the first things Democrats did is got rid of the government reform, because in their mind, government can do nothing wrong. And the concern is, and I want to get your perspective on this concern, that people like Senator Slotkin are out there saying, look, we're going to punish people. If you had proximity to the president, if you're a young person, if you were a donor, business with the Trump family or the Trump administration. We're coming after you instead of actually having a proper predicate or a foundation that would justify an investigation. They're already signaling that they're going to use the power of that gavel to try to go after people, to just embarrass them, rack up big legal bills. Tell us what the effect I think is going to have a chilling effect that it's going to have in their approach thus far. Well, that's what they did the last time, Jason. They weaponized the government. They weaponized every area of the government. And when they had subpoena power, they weaponized that. They want to go after and punish and embarrass anyone that was involved in the Trump administration. I'm all about oversight. And I think that if there's evidence of wrongdoing, then we need to proceed with that. I did that. A lot over the four years I was chairman of the House Oversight Committee. But at the end of the day, the Democrats showed no, no, not one example of trying to work with Republicans to root out fraud in the welfare programs because they love the welfare programs. You can't go wrong. As you said, Jason, they want. More government. They want to spend more money. They think the government is perfect and can do no wrong. Now we're going to see what they did the last time. A repeat of that. They're going to go after everybody in the Trump administration and try to ruin them and try to make it to where nobody will want to go in and work for the Trump administration. Because unless you're a billionaire and can afford endless legal fees, you're not going to be able to withstand the harassment from this weaponized. Democrat Oversight Committee, if they do what they did the last time, and all indications are that they will. Yeah, there are a lot of promises being made out there, many of them very public and on X and on social media. Chairman, I want to turn now to the Alaska Senate race. It remains uncalled. Your committee now investigating whether decoy Dan Sullivan was put on the ballot to confuse voters and influence the outcome here. Where is this headed? Well, we're going to try to bring in the two staff members that were mentioned in The New York Times. The evidence that The New York Times presented showed that there was a coordinated effort to deceive the voters of Alaska. And look how close this race is. And look at the votes that decoy Dan got. I don't think any American will defend this type of behavior. We would like to know where all who all was involved in this conspiracy. I think that's something that when the Democrats take over, you can forget about it. So we know we're on a timeline and we're trying to get those people in to get answers because this can't be a habit. Of people going out recruiting candidates. If Jason Chaffetz is running for governor of Utah, you can't have two or three Jason Chaffetz on the ballot because they might have been successful in Alaska and doing that. That doesn't need to happen again. And we need to hold people accountable for any type of conspiracy. I think the people of Utah would love to see a governor Jason Chaffetz. You can't find any other Chaffetz's to go recruit. Well, they're going to work on it, Jason. All right. Chairman James Comer, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. We covered a lot there, Joey. I want to go back to your question. I think we got a very honest answer and I want to dig into it a little bit. It sounded like what the chairman was saying is there perhaps will be Republicans that will perhaps, I wouldn't say turn on administration or cabinet officials, but. Might not stick their necks out to protect them. That's kind of what I'm hearing from him. And also, this is the first time, you know, obviously being back on air after the midterms, the chairman himself saying we've got an unpopular war. We need Secretary Hegseth to go speak to us about it. It was a very interesting response. Wondering your take on it. Yeah, I think but I think Chairman Comer knows there's a there's a risk here of knives out. For self-survival, Jason, there's a reason why you're at this desk now and not out there. There is a tendency among those who want to have long political careers to jump whatever ship may be sinking, like the rats that scurry on the rope. And any member of Congress that wants to stick around and believes, not saying it's the truth, that President Trump's popularity will lack or is the turn in his popularity at the moment may hurt them, may turn on anyone in President Trump's administration. That's the fear I have, is that you'll see the same faces that have. They've embraced America First, MAGA, whatever movement of President Trump that you agree with, and because they don't like every decision he made or they don't like the fact that they're catching heat now that the midterm election is over with. They want to see themselves there in 28 and 30 and 32 and President Trump isn't. And so the worst of that could be something like making a deal with Democrats and impeachment. I think there are also some Republican members that are old establishment mentality when it comes to the Department of Defense. And if anything, Pete Hegseth has done, he's turned the old way of doing things on its head. And some people have their feelings hurt about it. There are some people that are still very bitter, that were never Trumpers, that decided to write the coattails of MAGA into election victories. That's exactly right. And we may find out exactly who those people are. And I want to say also just to that point, because I think it's an important one for our audience, it's okay to disagree with policies. It's okay to disagree with the war, the conflict. It's okay to have disagreements with the president or his cabinet officials. What to me is not okay is to ride the wave of MAGA, and then the second it becomes convenient... Turn your back on President Trump and his cabinet officials for reasons of just self-preservation. I've said on the show a hundred times, President Trump decided to take the arrows on some issues he thinks will make this country better in the long run, and we're going to find out how deep those arrows went in the next few months. We certainly are. All right, Jason, coming to you as well on many of these things. We know that for Democrats and just voters in general, this... Past Tuesday, corruption was a big deal to them. It's actually surprising how high it ranked on their list of priorities. Of course, the economy for most people being number one, but corruption being right there in the number one or number two position. What I found was interesting on voter priorities, voters age 65 and older prioritize a state of democracy. So again, corruption, democracy over the economy, whereas younger voters prioritize economic concerns. What do you make of that? And what do you make of them running on corruption and what they're going to do about it over the next two years Well, again, I go back to why did the Democrats take out government reform? Because I think what you've seen the Trump administration try to do is realign things, particularly with all the waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, Medicare. I mean, we've seen Dr. Oz, you've seen RFK Jr., you've seen Secretary Besant routinely go out and talk about what ends up being hundreds of billions of dollars and trying to get it out of the system. So there's an opportunity to do that. But Democrats thus far have never joined Republicans in trying to institute those reforms and hold those people accountable. Instead, it's a political shell game for them to try to say, oh, well, you're a Trump person and you have proximity to Trump. And so I'm going to just go after you, not even with the proper predicate. And you'll hear me say this for the next 26 months. If you don't have the proper predicate, you can't just issue a subpoena. You can't just go after somebody. And the Democrats have made a very. A fundamental mistake in saying, oh no, we're going to go after you just because we don't like Donald Trump. That is not a justification. There is no obligation by the federal government to provide documents or compel testimony from somebody because you just think it showed up in the newspaper. That's not the way that thing works. And I've been there and I could go through that for hours. That is not the way it works. There's there's one of the risks that I want to bring up here, and that's the crying wolf. Essentially, we already saw the Russia hoax, the amount of time that the Democrats spent on that promising there was evidence that was going to be revealed at any moment where there's smoke, there's fire. It turns out they bought and paid for the smoke. And now here we are on the cusp of another mound of investigations being promised. And these hearings tend to be frustrating to the American people that would like to think their economic concerns and all of their concerns are being addressed. And no matter whose whole. holding the hearings and who's having them. They go back and forth and they tend to be pretty ineffective where one side praises the witness, the next side tries to tear the witness down. And I just don't know that that ultimately will pay off in the long run for Democrats. It may pay off in the short run because there does seem to be a certain amount of hunger. And the polling shows that regarding those corruption numbers. They're going to spend all this time going after President Trump and his family over business dealings or what have you. And then come 2028, the Trump factor will likely be removed in that President Trump will not be running again. So they're going to take all of this time. I don't know how they show to voters anything other than their vengeance against President Trump and their Trump derangement syndrome. For some, that's going to work. But when he's not going to be on the ballot again, I don't know. I guess it's your own peril. BE SURE TO LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE FOR ALL THE FOX NEWS LATEST ON YOUTUBE AND CATCH FULL SHOWS STREAMING NOW ON FOX 1.