House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says he does not want the endorsement of the United States Chamber of Commerce after its recent endorsement of a number of swing district House Democrats.
This week, the Chamber of Commerce endorsed 23 House Democrats — in swing districts that the GOP must retake come November — after years of pressuring lawmakers to oppose President Trump’s economic nationalist agenda and suing the administration for seeking to tighten the labor market.
In an interview with Fox Business Channel’s Lou Dobbs, McCarthy confirmed he does not want the Chamber’s endorsement, saying, “I don’t want the U.S. Chamber’s endorsement, because they have sold out.”
The exchange went as follows:
DOBBS: What do you make of the Chamber of Commerce deciding to fund Democratic — left-wing Democrats, in point of fact, along with all the RINO Republicans?
Big business in this country has basically said to this president, go to hell, told the American working man and the family to go to hell. So … how will the Republican Party respond to a Chamber of Commerce that thinks, somehow, they’re superior to the president of the United States and the national interests, working men and women and their families, our middle class?
MCCARTHY: Well, I will tell you this. I don’t want the U.S. Chamber’s endorsement, because they have sold out. You listen to your local chambers, those small businesses, when I used to own a business. You had Oklahoma, the city of Oklahoma, their endorsement. They wanted to endorse Stephanie Bice, not Kendra Horn that’s sitting and backing Pelosi or the Green New Deal or the others. I mean, it is just exactly what Nancy Pelosi did.
It is hypocrisy that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would endorse these Democrats that are part of this socialist agenda that is driving this country out and is fighting this president. Remember, these are the people who voted for impeachment, when this president has done so much for this nation. You know it, Lou. You show it every single day, built us the strongest economy ever, rebuilt our military, got criminal justice reform. And he’s going to do all of this again.
And then you got Joe Biden out there that’s hiding in Delaware, not willing to campaign to be the leader of the free world. And this president goes someplace every single day, be it North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin … and he is standing up for the safety and security of this nation.
McCarthy’s rebuke of the Chamber is a major turn for the Republican Party — which lost the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections on a business-centric, economic libertarian platform that has little-to-no support among the American electorate, research has shown.
Trump’s agenda, grounded in an “America First” mantra, has been at odds with the Chamber’s longtime goals for globalization of the U.S. economy, outsourcing, and an inflated domestic labor market.
Huge majorities across the political spectrum have recently told pollsters that they support more tariffs on foreign imports, mandatory country-of-origin labeling, and a requirement that goods be made in the U.S. About 94 percent, for instance, of voters said they want companies to be required to disclose where a product was designed, manufactured, and assembled.
The Chamber’s latest strike against Trump’s agenda has been lobbying against reshoring overseas manufacturing to the U.S. in the midst of the Chinese coronavirus crisis.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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