Senator Shelley Moore Capito: Moving In The Right Direction
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This week on Live in the Ream, somebody who is going to have a major role in the coming weeks in deciding historic things of importance in this country. We have West Virginia GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito with us, and she does so many things outside the Beltway that we're going to talk about as well. But Senator, let's start there. Welcome to Live in the Ream. Thanks. Great to be on, Shannon. Thank you. Okay, so as you and I are talking, the House is getting ready to send over the articles, we believe, and possibly launching this

within days officially over in the Senate. What do you make of the Democrats' continued insistence, and primarily the Speaker in holding the articles back, saying that there's no way there's going to be a fair trial, that the Senate Majority Leader's already signaled that he would sign on to a resolution to dismiss this whole thing, and it's just not going to be fair and transparent for the American people? First of all, I cannot figure out Speaker Pelosi's strategy. In my view, holding these articles for months

34 days or however many they have. It's been at least that many, I believe, sort of belies the political argument that this is a partisan exercise because they are saying, oh, it's so urgent. And the president is a national concern for everybody. And that's why we need to move forward with this urgency. And then she holds them. I can't figure that out.

I don't think that – I know that Leader McConnell is absolutely not going to offer articles to dismiss right away. He's never said that. He's never said that in private.

And he's never said that in public. And that sort of grinds me that she is trying to portray him as being not trying to be fair. And so I think what you see now is I think she had pressures from her caucus. I don't know exactly, but I would imagine to move forward. She still won't tell you who the managers are. She's still pressing to get the Senate to do the process that she wants.

And so in the end, I think she's gotten nowhere and probably has less attention from the public than she had when she started. The interesting thing is there are plenty of headlines out there. I'm sure you've seen them. I've read them over the last few days saying this was a masterful stroke and that she has won important victories along the way.

And she has also said the Senate will be held accountable if this thing is not fair. I don't know what leverage she has. I don't know if by accountable she means at the ballot box, if it appears that the Republicans in the Senate haven't been fair, whether they pay with their Senate seats. But she continues to speak as if she is the one who has the upper hand here. And I think that's been baffling for a lot of people, but not for the mainstream media.

Well, no, but I mean, I think, you know, politically for her and for her caucus, she almost has to, whether it's real or imagined. And I think it's imagined. I think that she thought that she could prevail upon at least three or four members of our Republican caucus to buck Leader McConnell when he said we're going to do the procedures that were done under the Clinton administration. She was unsuccessful there.

And I think now you see them using and she and others. I saw this on the Sunday shows, this terminology of cover up like we are covering something up. And I think it's because the substance of where of where they're where they've gone.

They feel that it's weak and their case is weak. And so I think that's a problem. I mean, I don't want to prejudge. I'm going to be a juror. I'm going to listen to everything. But I don't think that she's created any kind of momentum for her to be able to change the process or refine the process through the Senate rules. This is not going to happen.

Where are you on the issue of witnesses? Because people say, OK, well, then why shouldn't John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney and others who were close to this, possibly Don McGahn, that's tied up in a court battle right now. But why shouldn't they come forward and testify if they have information and the president says he's done nothing wrong? Why shouldn't they? Well, I think there's some disagreement within the Republican caucus. There are people that are very much.

and I think have been outspoken to say they want witnesses. But I think mostly all 53 of us are united behind the process that the leader has spelled out, and that is we're going to hear the House managers talk about the articles of impeachment. We're going to hear the president for the first time through his lawyers defend himself. Nobody's had a chance to hear that. Then we're going to be able to question as senators whether

through writing, not verbally, through writing through the chief justice. And then we're going to have a vote as to whether we should have more witnesses. So when I have the press asks me in the hall, are you going to vote for witnesses? I'm going to wait until I hear these two sides of the story as a juror and then make that determination, much like was done with President Clinton. Well, I imagine there could potentially be, the president has said he would exert executive privilege if it comes to someone like John Bolton.

which kicks it right back to the courts. And the Democrats had said on the House side they couldn't afford to wait for the courts to make a decision on things like the McGahn subpoena and others, which are, you know, we could get a decision during this process, which may impact the potential witnesses that may or may not be called.

by the Senate, but it sounds like there's the potential for this thing to really drag out. And most polls show us the American people are pretty evenly split on this, but in key swing states and other places, people have almost a little bit of scandal fatigue. We see that among independent voters that they have

They just can't even distinguish where Mueller runs into Ukraine, runs into impeachment. And maybe Democrats had thought this would play better with the public. But what's your assessment if this thing goes five, six, seven weeks, you know, tied up in court battles and beyond? Well, first of all, I don't I hope it doesn't go that long, because what I hear at home is maybe fatigue, but more frustration that we're not doing things that we should be doing now.

We are going to be doing a trade agreement hopefully in the next several days, but also things like transportation bill with opioid problems. I mean, I could name a lot of things that we could and should be working on, drug prices, etc. And so there's a frustration from the general public on that. And I think that sort of grinds. So if you get into a grinding process of seven and eight weeks with stops and starts, because if it has to go to the courts, it's going to have to stop and then resume.

And I don't think anybody wants, well, I don't know, I don't think I want that. I know I don't want that. I'll speak for myself here. You're a no vote on that. I am a no vote on dragging it out. And at the other, you have to look at what this is. I mean, what this is, is it's like the grand jury is presenting their case. The case has already been formulated. You can't keep

adding on and, well, if I talk to John Bolton, then I might want to talk to Susie Bolton, and then I might want to talk to another person that might be related in some way to the case, but not to the actual articles of impeachment. And you can see where that could go. So I think we have to be very careful here that we stick with the parameters that the House set out. And

and that we listen openly and that we hear what the president's folks are saying, but also what the House managers are saying, and then try to get to questions that are going to be important to us. But to drag it out, I think that just even dissipates even more. I think that strengthens the president, quite frankly. Okay, so you mentioned a couple of other things. There's so many other things that are potentially brewing up there. I heard today, I think it was Senator Thune, I'm not sure, that said possibly

trying to get USMCA, the big trade deal done, and the War Powers Act potentially before a Senate trial formally kicks off. That's a tight timeline. Do you think either of those or both of those are possible? Well, what we see right now, I serve on appropriations, EPW, Environment and Public Works, and also on the Commerce Committee, which has to ratify the USMCA. So we already did that in Environment and Public Works.

Tomorrow we're going to be ratifying it through commerce and through appropriations. And the reason I know it's going to be successful is because you can't amend it. So it's just a straight up-down vote. And in environmental and public works, we only lost four people. So it was pretty overwhelming votes there. I think we feel that we will have a chance to consider that. And I think it will be a bipartisan victory for the president and really for our American workers. And I think that's most important.

Even one of the Democrats that voted against it in committee said this is much, much better than what NAFTA was. But he still voted no because of other considerations. So on the War Powers Act, the latest I heard at lunch today, so several hours ago, was that Senator Kaine is going to withdraw his first War Powers Act bill.

in favor of his second resolution, which will have more broad-based support. And he won't be able to actually bring that up probably until next week. So I don't think that's going to be on the agenda this week.

We expect to be sworn in as jurors with the Supreme Court justice being sworn in either late Wednesday or Thursday morning. Yeah, once this thing gets going, there's really a schedule that dictates what you do and how the Senate moves through this. But on the war powers issue, there was something passed over in the House. You know, the speaker was not thrilled when people explained it as having not teeth. I mean, that it wouldn't get to the president. It's not going to get to his desk. It doesn't have the force of law. Right.

How is what you're hearing in the Senate different or the same as that? Well, the resolution that Senator Kaine has put forward actually does have the force of law if it's passed through both houses, both through the Senate and the House and to the president's desk, where the president would probably in all likelihood veto that and it would come back to us.

So it's called a joint resolution. What the Speaker did was a concurrent resolution. This is in the weeds, but a concurrent resolution is sort of a sense of the House. It doesn't really have... It makes a statement. It makes a statement. It's a messaging... Right. It's a messaging instrument. And so what we're working on now in the Senate is much more... is deeper and much more... has much more teeth in it. Mm-hmm.

What is your sense? There are a number of Republican senators who have come forward publicly to say, with some tweaks, they could sign on to what Senator Kaine has done. And this is a congressional obligation and duty to weigh in on these things and that it's proper. It's the proper role for Congress to be getting involved. I think this is a debate that we should have ongoing. When we consider that our presence in Iraq was established in the early 2000s and we're still there and in –

in a military format. And so I think there's been a lot of question as to what kind of powers Congress has to either cease or what the president has to do to come forward. But I'm going to vote against the World Powers Act that Senator Kaine has forward because I feel like, number one, we're not at war with Iran. We do not have a military presence in the state or in the country. We are not...

you know, shooting missiles into Iran or anything of that nature. But we know it's a tenuous situation. And so I don't want to do anything that would tie any chief executive's hands to be able to react, to be able to defend Americans that are in danger or to be able to

retaliate when our American soldiers or civilians are killed or harmed. And so I view this as that, as a tying of the hands of the president. Plus, I think you have to look at what it does externally when you go around Iran and you say to yourself, if you're in Iran, well, look, the Americans are split on all this. We're having an effect. And I think that that could be detrimental to us and to the president.

We'll have more live in the bream in a moment. I'm Guy Benson. Join me weekdays at 3 p.m. Eastern as we break down the biggest stories of the day with some of the biggest newsmakers and guests. Listen live on the Fox News app or get the free podcast at Guy Benson show dot com. OK, I want to talk to you as well, because in West Virginia, you've been battleground for a really tough time with the opioid epidemic. What is going on in that front?

You know, things are getting better. They're not solved because I think it's such a tough problem to even begin to think you could solve it. But we've attacked this problem at the federal level by law enforcement, by health care, by –

Job training, drug courts, medical assistant treatment. I mean, I could go on and on with all the different facets of how do you get a handle on this. But what I'm most proud of in my state, because we have the highest mortality from drug overdoses per capita than any other state, sadly. Very sad statistic for me to say about my home state. But...

The solutions that are coming forward are coming from our local community health organizations, our fire chief, our educational institutions, our city governments. And we're really coming together with some real good community responses, crisis response teams where you go, somebody has an overdose in the emergency room. They want out right away. Well, you just send them back out. What are they going to do? Overdose again, come back. Instead, this crisis response team goes out and says, we're here to help.

whenever you're ready. We also have active programs with babies, with our children. We have 7,000 more children in foster care. We have grandparents raising children all over the state. And we also just built in some flexibility in this last appropriations bill because the medication-assisted treatment program

doesn't have the flexibility to treat meth because a meth overdose is different than a heroin or fentanyl. So we are being very active along with the research to do diversion treatment for pain, smaller prescriptions, all kinds of things are going on at NIH that I've been very supportive. So I mean, I'm optimistic.

But it's just a long haul, and you don't know what the overall damage is going to be to that five- or six-year-old that's been raised in a household of continual overdoses or mom and dad don't even care if I get food, et cetera. So I think those are problems that we still have yet to face. Plus, we've got prevention things that we're doing as well to try to – and the First Lady's been very active with that, particularly with the babies. Okay, and as we're getting ready to move toward a Phase I –

Part of a China deal, trade deal. Do you think we're doing enough when it comes to cracking down on them with regard to fentanyl and their role in this whole thing? Well, they have agreed to declare fentanyl a Category 1 or whatever their equivalent would be and have pledged to crack down because that's where a lot of it's coming. It's coming through our mail system, too, which is really scary.

I'm satisfied that they've moved in the right direction, but I also know enough to know that you can't really trust what they're telling you. You have to see the action. And I think that we're just going to keep the pressure on. And I think that's part of the stage one agreement that the president is to keep maximum pressure on that, on the Chinese. Yeah, he's brought that up quite a bit.

I had the chance to go out and join you with something you've been doing for a long time. You have this program, Girls Rise Up. I had so much fun just the day with you with these young women, middle school, such a critical age, and to see them, even in just a couple of hours that we were there with them, to see them kind of open up and start to talk about their dreams a little bit and self-confidence and all the things that you emphasize for them. Tell us a little bit about this program.

Well, I decided as the first woman senator from my state that I wanted to have a more lasting effect on some of the young girls and young women in my state. And one way to do that would be to inspire the next generation of leaders, whether it's in the journalism business or whether it's in public service or whatever. And so you were great to come. And I want to tell all your listeners...

I thought, well, somebody's going to drive us. No, Shannon drove us into the little parts of West Virginia. The curvy roads of West Virginia. So I was totally impressed with that. And they loved you because you and I talked about, well, when you were in sixth grade, what

What bothered you? Confidence is a lot at that age for girls. And we know. We went through it. To get your confidence, to get your feet under, you realize you can make mistakes. You can rebound from mistakes. You can find your passions. You can find your support groups. And I was afraid of things then that I now do every day. So I think it really makes an impression on them. They seem to really enjoy it. And maybe someday one of them will come up to my daughter and say, you know, I saw your mom...

I saw your mom. She's a senator, and now I'm president of the United States or something like that. That's right. Who knows in the group that we talk to? Yeah, it's fun. And we've had – lucky to have you. We had Nikki Haley. We've had some of the sports teams around West Virginia, and then I go out by myself. But I always like to take somebody with me who's younger because –

I think they look at me like, oh, grandma, there she is. Well, I mean, I luckily have the wonderful and talented Anna as my assistant, who is 23 years old. And everything about social media that I don't know, I learned from her. So when I said to the girls at this thing in West Virginia, I asked them about TikTok as if I know anything about how that works. But thanks to Anna, I know that it exists at least. So we try to seem like we know something that these kids are going through. We got a lot of hands with that. They were definitely into that.

They were. It's a different way than you and I grew up. I know. With social media, different pressures and different stresses. By the way, one of the ways I deal with stress, and I have heard this about you too, is that you are a runner. Yes. And I was so impressed to find out that you recently did your first marathon. I did. Because I did one years ago, and that was it. I'm one and done. That's not happening again for me. But the fact that that was your first one, do you think you'll do others? No. No.

You're like me. I am totally one and done. And I've always wanted to do it because I'll run three or four miles several times a week. And I'd done a half marathon. And I thought, well, I can do this. I'm exercising. I had no idea. I was so sore when I got out of there. I mean, I was 66 years old. I'm finished. Yeah, but Senator Barrasso, who's an orthopedist, I had problems with one of my knees in training. And I said, do you think I should really do this? And he goes...

If you can run through the pain, do it. Well, I got to mile 19 and I was hurting. I did the Marine Marathon. It was pouring the rain that day. It was terrible weather. My shoes were like soaked in through my socks. And then it got to be 78 degrees and the sun's bearing down. And you're soaking wet. And I was so afraid I was going to get cut off for being too slow. But I didn't. Good for you. And I made it. But boy, I paid for it. But my knee's fine now. Oh, good.

Good. Well, good. So no lasting damage. This is how slow I was when I ran the Pittsburgh Marathon, which unfortunately is a very hilly course. I should have checked that out before I did it. There was a guy who was doing it for charity and he was jumping rope the entire way. And I stayed with him the entire time. That's how slow I was going. But by that day, you just sort of feel like, I don't care what it takes. Unless I have two broken legs, day of, I am finishing this thing. Right. And I actually looked around at about mile 19 when I started breaking down and I thought...

All these people are walking. They're walking as fast as I'm running. That's how my other knee broke down then, probably because I was favoring it. So I ended up a little bit of walk. But I guess that's not so unusual of people walking. And I think that I learned so much just sheer perseverance through it. When people say, what's the most tough thing you've done physically? Honestly, to spend months and going out for 18-mile runs and 20-mile runs, it's pretty grueling. But it's...

It's one of those things, again, I would say to a young woman, like, listen, if I can run a marathon, anyone can do it. And that's all I wanted, really, was to complete. And I did. And my fellow colleagues were pretty impressed, I think. They're still talking about it. How many of them have done it? I don't know. A couple, but not very many. Yeah. I like it. Well, you can add it to your badge of honor with all the other things that you've done.

you are doing inside and outside the Capitol. Thank you for making time to come talk to us. It's such a busy, important time. It's going to change every minute, minute to minute. It will. So who knows from what we've said today, by the time someone's listening to this podcast, who knows at what point in history we'll be. But we thank you for dropping in. Senator Capito, always good to see you. Thank you. Thank you.

from the Fox News Podcast Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.