I think we need to start listening to each other and talking to each other more and we will go live now to a discussion with steve scalise, political reporter robert costa will ask about Convention Coverage and president ial politics. Robert good afternoon. I am a national reppo knuckle a National Political reporter. Afternoon iss representative steve scalise, House Minority whip, part of the Republican Leadership, republican from louisiana. Good to be with you. Rep. Scalise good to be with you. Is a lot going on in your state, some tough news with hurricane laura. What is the latest in your district and how is Congress Going to respond . Rep. Scalise we saw two storms last week, what ended up being Tropical Storm arco which was projected to hit the west end of my district, then you had hurricane laura, which was projected to hit the east side of my district. Storms change over the days and laurafizzled out but now is a category three, potentially category for when it hits ground. It is going to come at the texaslouisiana border. My prayers are out for my friends in lake charles. There is going to be a lot of storm surge. Some storm surge where that water levels are rising but they are not projecting house flooding or anything right now. We say our prayers. You are going to see a lot of damage, wind and rain, and southwest louisiana and southeast texas. It is a fastmoving storm. It should move in and out quickly so it limits the damage, but a lot of rain, a lot of flooding. President to fema, the issued an Emergency Declaration that our governor requested on sunday. I know fema has been on the ground ready to go and shelters are set up your a lot of people have evacuated. The president is ready to help in fema is ready to help and has been working well with our governor. I have been in touch with our local officials and they are taking the necessary precautions and making sure people are taking the storm seriously. Robert beyond executive actions, what about congress . Are there discussions among Republican Leaders about a relief bill for louisiana and texas before the election . A Disaster Relief fund, there will be at least 25 billion in the fund, which is the first place you go to when fema Needs Resources to help local governments prepare and evacuate people. If there is damage, there will be damage in this storm, then fema is ready to step in and they have the money they need. If they need more, we will have that conversation and move legislation, but right now, there is 25 billion in the relief fund. Robert speaking of negotiations, what about covid relief discussions . It was reported earlier by politico that chief of staff meadows has made some overture to house democrats. What it is, it is not clear. Is there behind the scenes activity that you can share with us this afternoon . Rep. Scalise there has been a lot of negotiations for weeks on different components. What i would like to see is helping families that are struggling, helping Small Businesses, the Paycheck Protection Program was one of the most effective programs congress has put in place that i have ever seen. Millions of Small Businesses are still alive today because of that. Of thoseok, a lot businesses, restaurants in new orleans, customers are not back like everyone was expecting. A lot of Retail Stores are still experiencing because you might be at stage two in many states, even stage three. They are struggling as well. Grocery stores might get 30 , but storms might be down 50 . What i would like to see us do is look at the money out there. I have identified 500 billion in belief package money that we passed in the cares act that are not spent yet. Paycheck protection program, there is 130 billion in that fund that cant be spent because the program expired. I would like to see us work on making that money flexible so you could have a second round for certain businesses. Ofbe if you are under 75 your revenue, you could go back and get another round of paycheck protection relief. That would help a lot of Small Businesses that are trying to figure out if they will reopen because that question is being asked by a lot of businesses and we have heard many of them say they are not coming back. I would like to see us focus on the money that is out there. States have a lot of the 150 billion we sent. Over half of that money is unspent. Lets make sure it is flexible enough to be open schools. Masks,ols need a and there is money for those needs and if they need more, lets make that more flexible. Those are the kinds of things i would like to see us do. We put money into vaccine development. Speed, operation warp putting the fda working with Companies Working on the vaccine. This is revolutionary research being done because the president got redtape out of the way. They are not cutting corners on safety, they are testing on 250,000 americans who signed up. Because itolutionary is a new virus that has affected so many people, it spread so widely that you have all that want to be part of the test. The president decided we are going to take federal money, help these at stage iii, but also start making the vials of the vaccine today for those who have made stage iii. If they dont get approved, those would get thrown in the trash. However, if you got a drug approved today that actually stops the virus, you dont want to wait and say, now thats start producing it, two months later, people could get it. The day after approval, there will be vaccine available the next day for people who want to take it. Your doctor would have that conversation with you. That is the work being done, federal money out there to get us to this point and i hope we are able to see an approved vaccine or multiple vaccines in the next few weeks. Rep. Scalise lets robert lets turn back to the convention. You offered a personal story, reflecting on the time you were shot. Why did you choose to have that message at the convention . Rep. Scalise i wanted people to see the side of donald trump that a lot of people dont see. I work with him on policy, but when you are in a meeting on policy, tax cuts and jobs act, a Foreign Policy initiative, he is engaged, he seeks input from everybody, you better come prepared because he is going to challenge if you have an idea, if you can make the case, he is open to those ideas. He will engage with you. Him, you human side of get to see how much he cares about people and how much he fights for those forgotten men and women that washington has left behind. When you see his rallies, why are there more people outside who cant get in who just want to see him . He has fought for those people. I get to see it and i shared a story, and i was in the hospital, maybe the lowest moment in my life, my family did not know if i was going to make it, and on his birthday, President Trump showed up to see how i was doing and to console my wife. She did not know if i was going to make it in if our kids were going to have to roll up without a dad. He would call in randomly check on me throughout those months i was in the hospital. It is that side of the present a lot of people dont get to see and i wanted to share that. Robert when you talk to House Republicans or gop candidates, are you encouraging them to embrace President Trump as a symbol in their own campaigns in terms of their literature and message . Should they run as trump republican . Rep. Scalise when you are talking to candidates, you want to make sure they identify what they stand for. You have to run for a reason and you are seeing these candidates, some of them have military backgrounds, some have that is later backgrounds, there are people that know what is at stake. This is a fight for the direction of our country. Will we believe in individual freedom and fight for freemarket principles where you control your own destiny or are we going to move toward socialism where government makes those decisions . The first thing you have to do is identify why you are running and what you are going to do to fight to make this country stronger and more secure. Is ournt trump president , the leader of our party, and his agenda and the things he is talking about are things you are going to have to have an answer for, whether you support everything or not, you have to answer and if you look at our candidates, they support what this president has done, they want to fight with President Trump to rebuild this economy, he built it back once, we had the hottest economy in the world, and it was because of President Trumps policies. If we get through these and these next few months, we will have to rebuild that again and there is nobody better suited than President Trump and these candidates want to be part of that. I dont see anybody running away from President Trump, i see them embracing the idea that we can make this country even stronger. Robert where do you stand on this he went on issue qanon issue, if a candidate has is felt support for it, should the party do . Rep. Scalise this is one of those issues where i had never heard of it before the last few weeks when some people started asking about it. I looked it up. I dont engage in these conspiracy theories. You get stuff emailed all the time and i am focused on addressing the problems in front of us today and dealing with covid, getting businesses backup , helping families. I dont get called to my office on that. Whenever whatever somebody believes in, it is 435 districts, i serve with a lot of people with different philosophies, even republicans, we dont all agree on the same things and you can see how that plays out on the democrat side. They dont agree with each other on a lot of things. Took threeents, aoc sitting democrats out in their primaries because she does not agree with her own members. Just because we are the same party does not mean we agree but you have to work with everybody to achieve what you want. Some days, it is the person on the opposite side is going to be your ally on the next issue. When i try to focus on is lets talk about the policies that are important to the family to elect us. Conspiracyage in theories, idea with the real world things. Asking you tonot engage, it is a challenge for leaders in both parties if you have candidates that are going to an extreme or a fringe idea. I was curious about how you think the party should handle that. Rep. Scalise when you talk about specific things, somebody says something inflammatory, something racist, something bigoted, the antisemitic views, those are the times i speak out on both sides, if they are republican or democrat, i will speak out. Everybody ought to speak out. If somebody has a different philosophy then you, i try to respect peoples differences, i try to work with people where i can solve booms and get this country back on track and there are a lot of problems we need to solve and i enjoy working with this president on those problems and frankly, he has laid out a lot of important things he wants to deal with. He has done a lot to create jobs, bringing back jobs from china will be a big challenge. It has been tough. Previous president s let china do their own thing and they were taking our jobs and steal intellectual property. We are working to create a vaccine, they are working to steal our vaccine. And youto confront that saw what they did with ppe, they hoarded the ppe when they were lying to the world saying it is not contagious. Why should we be relying on them . They make almost all of the ppe so it hurt our doctors and nurses that we did not have that capability. President trump said, lets bring those jobs back here. Lets make those products in america so we dont have to rely on china for things like generic drugs, 90 of the beans and generic drugs are made in china. We need to bring those to america. You will see a focus on that. Whoever wants to work with me and the president to do that, that will solve a major problem for our country. Robert what is the first issue republicans would want to tackle in 2021, whether you win the house majority, is a trade . Voters are hearing a lot about President Trumps character but on policy, what is the number one thing they should expect republicans to do in 2021 . Rep. Scalise jobs. Winou look at, lets say we the house back, which i think we well, President Trump gets reelected and we hold the senate, we have to strengthen our economy. We built the hottest economy and the world in the world, we have the highest tax rate in the world and we were losing some of the best companies in america who were leaving. Why would we want to give our jobs away . Lets lower taxes. We came down to one of the most competitive tax rates in the world, the best place to do business, and we are bringing jobs back to america. Covid has interrupted the world, Global Demand is down for everything. That is because there are shutins all across the world. We are going to start getting back out, we will have a vaccine, we will eat this beat this. Then we have to rebuild the economy. We will have at least one if not two vaccines approved. You will continue to work on global pandemics but you need to rebuild the economy that we had and rebuild our military. President trump we were losing men and women in uniform more to deaths and training them in combat. When President Trump took office, you have a higher likelihood of Service Members dying while training than if you are if you were in iraq or afghanistan. President trump said, we are going to fix that, and we started to. We made tremendous progress, we raised the pay for men and women in uniform. We cant lose that either. Continue to strengthen america on trade, confronting our enemies like china. Then you look at what he is doing in the middle east. We got an agreement that President Trump helped broker between the United Arab Emirates and israel, the first time in 20 years a Muslim Country said we want to have normalized relations with israel. There are other countries as well. Ambassador,the uae other ambassadors and other countries that want to sign on. This is something President Trump has brought leadership on and because he stood up to iran. In the release, they do not want a nuclear iced iran but asked a nuclear iced nuclearized iran. Is revolutionary that President Trump got us in a position, but there are a lot more of those victories we can achieve in Foreign Policy. I think you will see all of those, but clearly jobs, tackling covid will be front and center. Robert what about the Postal Service . House republicans have been reluctant to work with democrats on their package to provide additional funds. Why is that and is there any chance republicans get behind more money for the Postal Service in the coming weeks . The postmaster general himself testified, they have more than enough money to operate for the middle of next year. If we dont give them another dime we will have a process in october they have more than enough money to run through the middle of next year and they will have all the capabilities to carry out a fair election. Whatever the percentage is, maybe 25 of votes will be cask by mail, we should not just be mailing to anyone unable anyone on a role. They have everything they need today to make sure those pallets ballotivered on time s are delivered on time. Even the terms, they cant get the money until they drop below 8 billion. They have 12 billion in the bank. I know a lot a business it today who are about to fold and Speaker Pelosi would not bring us back to solve that problem so she is trying to create this issue. The idea that the post office has problems, that is the first time President Trump has been trying to make reforms but they have said they have more than enough money to do the job. This idea that they are going to broke that they are going broke as he hopes and they have a hoax themselves is and they have said so themselves. If they get the money, they can even use it because they have enough money to run through the middle of next year. Those are the facts. Have faith in this election process, that it will have integrity . Rep. Scalise if we stick to the rules of the game, yes, the idea that we should change the rules into block States Nancy Pelosi musty block states from allowing picture id. Can vote earlyou for two weeks prior to the election. I think fourth or more of all ballots will be cask before election day. The integrity is important. If i vote legally and someone else is allowed to vote illegally because they required you to do same day Voter Registration and they take away the ability to have picture id requirements, that is ripe for voter fraud. We put an election commissioner in jail in louisiana because he still elections and went to jail. We should not go back to those days. For people that dont think there is voter fraud, i will show you where it was and i will give you of the name of the guy who went to jail. Lets have a fair and free election. This idea that you should change the law to make ballots just out there on the streets, mailed to people who moved or who are not on the roles, then tell a stated they cannot require picture id, that is not the direction we ought to go. Robert the Washington Post has had reporting on mailin voting, i would encourage you to look at our reporting on voter fraud and we have reported that there is not evidence of widespread rotor fraud. Rep. Scalise i will show you what happened in louisiana. When you look at the map, you said you could win back