INTERVIEW: Rep. Darrell Issa on how "Schumer is putting us into an economic slowdown" and on Trump's foreign policy wins
Rep. Darrell Issa explains how the Schumer Shutdown may slow the global economy and takes on Gavin Newsom's California power grab.
While Senate Democrats hold the American government hostage, the economy suffers. And Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) told the Washington Reporter in an interview that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) “might well be edging us into a recession that is otherwise avoidable.”
“Schumer is putting us into an economic slowdown that we’re going to have to recover from, and it’s going to be on his shoulder,” Issa said.
“If you look at the market being jittery, it was doing its upward movement almost without even a pause, until Schumer shut down the government, and since that time, the ups and downs and the VIX, as they call it, have shown the concern to any indication,” the California lawmaker added.
Issa rattled off several economic developments that should send the economy to the next level, and yet due to the Schumer Shutdown, the economy is leveling off. “Taiwan’s semiconductor just announced that if they get no more orders, they’re fully booked for at least 48 months, and that includes that they’re increasing capacity during those 48 months, and they’re still fully booked,” he said. “If we get that kind of an announcement that AI is off to the races that everyone, including AMD and so on, that are making these investments that they weren’t making under Biden, the market should have gone up dramatically the last few days, and not with the fits and starts.”
“But that didn’t happen,” Issa noted. “It didn’t happen because, quite frankly, the Schumer Shutdown is a situation that makes it harder for investors not to go back and forth, sort of in a sequential kind of panic, don’t panic, worry about everything mode.”
The contrast between Schumer and President Donald Trump could hardly be clearer, Issa said. “For my constituents, they’re aware that not since Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon has there been a president who was able to focus on both fighting wars and making peace at the same time, and that includes, obviously, what’s going on in Ukraine,” he said.
“It includes the trade wars that we’ve been losing for a generation that we’re now in the process of winning,” Issa added. “But I think it particularly is insightful when you look at how he was able to support our ally Israel, including with the the effort to put Iran and Hezbollah back on their backsides, but then at the same time, be constantly working with and dispatching his representatives, making personal phone calls with the relationships he’s developed with these world leaders, particularly in the Arab Gulf. And it has paid off, but it’s paid off with more than just a hostage release. It’s so important for us to recognize that what we’re really talking about is the first time we’re seeing any credible direction toward a potential lasting peace since Oslo.”
The successes from the Trump administration come despite the president and his Cabinet working with a press corps that, Issa said, uses CIA-style tactics to try and press for officials to leak information. Issa made the comparison when explaining why he supports Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s new media policy for the Pentagon.
Issa also told the Reporter that he didn’t see anywhere near this level of journalistic pearl clutching during the Biden administration, when Hegseth’s predecessor Lloyd Austin vanished on the job.
“When Pete arrived, he said the obvious, which is that we are no longer going to tolerate a press that is, in fact, leaking sensitive and classified information,” Issa said. If you’re going to have access to the Oval Office, or if you’re going to have access to the White House, or the Pentagon, you’re going to have a certain expectation of behavior. That’s something that is long overdue. I’m glad the Secretary took that step….I can tell you that many press people think it’s cute to sit right outside for five minutes and endlessly try to get a slip of some disclosure, or to talk to people off the record and encourage them to say things and tell them things that shouldn’t be told. That’s, by definition, what the CIA’s job is: to get others to betray their country, not that of the journalistic press.”
Issa, the Vice Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), has also spent decades combatting the weaponization of the government closer to home, and he told the Reporter that the Trump administration’s investigations against some of Trump’s political enemies “falls [well] short” of the scandals he exposed while Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in power.
“Here’s the reason,” he said. “The IRS may have had a wink and a nod somewhere high up in office, but Lois Lerner had the opportunity to get away with it, just because she had been allowed for years to be an adverse rogue and still stay popular with Democrats. In this case, the situation we have where it goes right to the top, right to the White House, right to the Oval Office. There’s no question at all that the decisions to prosecute and persecute President Trump repeatedly through the special prosecutor and other agencies, the famous raids and so on, those things happened with not in a little bit of a shadow, not with some deniability by the administration, but with the clear command and control of President Biden’s staff and his administration.”
“This is much worse than Watergate,” Issa continued, “where Nixon was guilty of a cover up, but not of masterminding the plan or overseeing it. In this case, there’s no question at all. Biden repeatedly had opportunities to stop the insanity of persecuting President Trump, getting him tried for crimes that aren’t even crimes, and he chose not to.”
Issa also addressed the elephant in the room: that despite decades in office which he has spent as one of the GOP’s top congressional investigators, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) is spending hundreds of millions on a ballot measure that could blow up Issa’s seat next year, all while California fails to rebuild Los Angeles in the wake of fires that were reportedly set by a Biden for President donor.
“The last poll I heard [about Prop 50], which is very distressing, says that there’s a 54 percent yes vote,” Issa said. But he is hopeful. “This is a 60-plus percent vote for ‘anyone but a Republican’ state. This is a state where [Newsom] should be well over 60 percent and be undeniably going to win….My sincere hope and belief is that the polls are just as wrong this time as they were with Prop 36 and that the voters are having to do something they don’t want to do, which is to vote other than their natural instinct.”
“This is a deep blue state,” Issa said. “And yet it’s not voting nearly as blue as you would think it would under the circumstances.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with Rep. Darrell Issa, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Congressman Issa, let’s start with the contrast between what we’ve seen from President Trump and with Democrats in D.C. Trump just worked to secure the final release of the 20 living Israeli hostages who were in Gaza. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer is continuing to shut the government down. You’re back home in California. How does this contrast play out as your constituents think about what’s going on over here?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
For my constituents, they’re aware that not since Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon has there been a president who was able to focus on both fighting wars and making peace at the same time, and that includes, obviously, what’s going on in Ukraine. It includes the trade wars that we’ve been losing for a generation that we’re now in the process of winning. But I think it particularly is insightful when you look at how he was able to support our ally Israel, including with the the effort to put Iran and Hezbollah back on their backsides, but then at the same time, be constantly working with and dispatching his representatives, making personal phone calls with the relationships he’s developed with these world leaders, particularly in the Arab Gulf. And it has paid off, but it’s paid off with more than just a hostage release. It’s so important for us to recognize that what we’re really talking about is the first time we’re seeing any credible direction toward a potential lasting peace since Oslo.
Washington Reporter:
One of the things we saw after this announcement was that some of Biden’s controversial Cabinet members like Antony Blinken said that President Trump just carried out the foreign policy legacy of Joe Biden. You worked with some of these people, or tried to work with some of these people, up close and personal. I take it that you probably don’t agree with that.
Rep. Darrell Issa:
Antony Blinken and the Biden administration believe that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was perfect. If that’s the credibility that they’re standing on, they’re standing on uneven soil, to say the least. But having said that, I think the important thing is that when we look at Tony Blinken, for him to be loyal to the Biden administration after being part of covering up the absence of any cognitive capability by the president, covering up the failures that ultimately led to many of the things that President Trump inherited, that’s just adding insult to injury to continue to cover up, because what part of the Biden legacy includes any proof that Biden actually was doing it? Tony Blinken could well be speaking only of his own fine efforts, his own building block that he believes he put down, because I don’t see one that you can say, ‘these phone calls and these efforts were made by the President.’ Rather, I think we all are well aware that others were using his name and autopen to do a great many nefarious things. You asked me initially about hostage release, and I think it’s important to understand that those hostages did get released, but many of the bodies that have not yet been returned, and some that were returned died in captivity, and the absence of a President Trump for the first year plus, is part of the reason that, quite frankly, we’re dealing with what we’re dealing with, which is that not everyone came home, because not everyone survived.
Washington Reporter:
You were talking about the cover up of Biden’s age and mental acuity, but that, as you know more than most, was not even the only cover up that we saw in the Biden administration. Another one was with Lloyd Austin vanishing while on the job, and we’re seeing a lot of pearl clutching from the Pentagon press corps now about new rules that are being implemented by Pete Hegseth. You were the lead watchdog, in your parlance, on the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan. Did you notice that yearning for journalism from the Pentagon press corps as people were falling out of airplanes in August 2021?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
No, I certainly didn’t see the same level of concern. And the thing that I think is most important to make sure that we point out is that you mentioned Lloyd Austin versus Pete Hegseth. When Pete arrived, he said the obvious, which is that we are no longer going to tolerate a press that is, in fact, leaking sensitive and classified information. If you’re going to have access to the Oval Office, or if you’re going to have access to the White House, or the Pentagon, you’re going to have a certain expectation of behavior. That’s something that is long overdue. I’m glad the Secretary took that step. I believe that there’ll come a time when many of those individuals can return, but they can return when they’re ready to play by sensible rules, and those rules are that American secrets at the Pentagon are what keeps Americans alive when they go in harm’s way. Having served on the Select Intelligence Committee for many years, I can tell you that many press people think it’s cute to sit right outside for five minutes and endlessly try to get a slip of some disclosure, or to talk to people off the record and encourage them to say things and tell them things that shouldn’t be told. That’s, by definition, what the CIA’s job is: to get others to betray their country, not that of the journalistic press.
Washington Reporter:
One of the other kind of ways in which lives were in danger, just to go back to Afghanistan for a second, which is always inevitable with you since August 2021, is with the State Department led by Tony Blinken, but also the White House with Jen Psaki telling you and your office and your staff that there were about 100 Americans stranded in Afghanistan when that ended up being a complete bald face lie. Both HFAC and the Pentagon are both working on ongoing accountability for that debacle so that something like that doesn’t happen again, regardless of who’s president. What do you think that looks like as we head into year five, since this disastrous withdrawal?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
Well, Matthew, I’m gonna be candid to a fault. It will happen again. The nature and the history of my time, and the book I wrote, called Watchdog, is that it does take eternal vigilance. These kinds of things will happen again. An administration will come in and it will be unwilling to live up high standards that the Trump administration is living up to. It will be unwilling to hold people accountable. When you look at the obesity, morbid obesity in some cases, that we see among even senior officers, they seemed to be incredibly shocked when the Secretary said, ‘I’m not going to take that anymore. Lose weight or retire or leave.’ A generation ago, people would have said, ‘of course, somebody who’s not in good physical shape endangers themselves and those around them. Of course, we have to hold people to those high standards,’ but that fell out of favor and now it’s back.
Washington Reporter:
I want to turn to California in a second, but President Trump announced today that he’ll be going to Hungary to meet with Vladimir Putin to try and get to a resolution in the war in Ukraine. Obviously, no one really thought he could bring at least a temporary peace to the Middle East. Do you think that there may be relief on the way? What would you want that conversation to lead to, even invoking what you were talking about at the onset with Nixon and Kissinger?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
We’re dealing with a Putin who is now leashed. The president gave him plenty of opportunity, treated him in a way that encouraged him to do the right thing, and now that it’s become clear that Putin does not want to bring this to an amicable solution, the president has begun using the powers that we have, like no other president, to create an environment in which President Putin’s ability to continue doing what he’s doing is running out. President Trump is working on his oil supply and other things like that. He’s made it clear that the time for Putin to get away with this is now coming to a close.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve spent years working on foreign policy. How do you contrast what we saw from Joe Biden, who spent 90 minutes on the phone with Putin days before Putin invaded Ukraine, and as well as how he famously whispered to Iran, ‘don’t,’ with what we see from President Trump?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
Unfortunately, when you’re the president, you have to you have to carry a big stick, and people have to know you’re going to use it. Teddy Roosevelt used that famous expression about walking softly and carrying a big stick. There’s a style, and Teddy’s idea of walking softly was actually really reminiscent of President Trump’s. Teddy Roosevelt was a bigger than life figure, who, even though he didn’t live very long, he lived big, and he did things that others, quite frankly, didn’t do, whether it was hunting in Africa or making bold decisions in office. Roosevelt did not really walk softly, and neither does President Trump, but he does understand the value of the stick. The value of the stick is the president doesn’t idly threaten the stick, which is what Biden and others keep doing. They draw red lines. Apparently red fades over time. And so what would happen is, when it came time for the ‘red line,’ nobody could spot it anymore. And that’s the problem. You have to the be willing to use the stick. It has to mean something. And with President Trump, he doesn’t draw red lines and say, ‘it’s this, or else,’ idly; just the opposite. You have to think he will use the power of the office and the power of our military and the power of our economy, if that’s what it takes to bring about peace at any time, and that’s what he will do with with Putin. I can’t say that it’s an easy timeline or that I’m optimistic at this moment, but I do know that unlike the dealings with Biden and Blinken, Putin knows that his leash has run out, and that the president is not going to simply let him continue to get away with murder in the literal sense.
Washington Reporter:
You’ve exposed endless weaponization of government when Obama was president, when Biden was president, and beyond. It’s been a bad recent couple of weeks for some of Trump’s critics. James Comey, Tish James, your senator, Adam Schiff, for example. Do you think that what Trump is doing is comparable to the IRS scandal, to what we learned in the Twitter files, and things like that? Or is that not an apt comparison?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
It falls short, and here’s the reason. It’s bigger than that; the IRS may have had a wink and a nod somewhere high up in office, but Lois Lerner had the opportunity to get away with it, just because she had been allowed for years to be an adverse rogue and still stay popular with Democrats. In this case, the situation we have where it goes right to the top, right to the White House, right to the Oval Office. There’s no question at all that the decisions to prosecute and persecute President Trump repeatedly through the special prosecutor and other agencies, the famous raids and so on, those things happened with not in a little bit of a shadow, not with some deniability by the administration, but with the clear command and control of President Biden’s staff and his administration. I would say this is much worse than Watergate, where Nixon was guilty of a cover up, but not of masterminding the plan or overseeing it. In this case, there’s no question at all. Biden repeatedly had opportunities to stop the insanity of persecuting President Trump, getting him tried for crimes that aren’t even crimes, and he chose not to.
Washington Reporter:
I want to end closer to home for you; you’re far closer to the border than Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are. And maybe it’s the border. Maybe it’s something else. But as you hear from your constituents, as we head into week three and potentially month two of the Schumer Shutdown, how is what the Democrats are doing with the historic obstruction that they’re putting up impacting the lives of your constituents in ways that is not being covered in the New York City media echo chamber?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
One of the things that people can’t imagine is how busy my staff is when we go into these shutdowns.
Washington Reporter:
I can attest to that, by the way.
Rep. Darrell Issa:
My staff is, by my orders, determined to be all essential, and the reason they’re essential is now more than ever, even though the legislative part of the job is halted, they’re actually busier dealing with the victims of this. The case work, the calls, the people who can’t get basic services, my staff are dealing with it. We are now calling for banks and other institutions, knowing that we will eventually pay these people were furloughed, to please honor their checks. But it’s a big ask, and we’ve spent time making those asks because I think it’s really important to make it clear that we will pay them. This will end like every other one, but this has already gone on longer than most, and if we get to that 38 day mark, it will be 38 days of tremendous adverse effect to the economy. And Schumer knows that. Schumer knows that, in fact, when we get done with this, the adverse impact might well be edging us into a recession that is otherwise avoidable. I’m not being idle. If you look at the market being jittery, it was doing its upward movement almost without even a pause, until Schumer shut down the government, and since that time, the ups and downs and the VIX, as they call it, have shown the concern to any indication. Taiwan’s semiconductor just announced that if they get no more orders, they’re fully booked for at least 48 months, and that includes that they’re increasing capacity during those 48 months, and they’re still fully booked. If we get that kind of an announcement that AI is off to the races that everyone, including AMD and so on, that are making these investments that they weren’t making under Biden, the market should have gone up dramatically the last few days, and not with the fits and starts. But that didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because, quite frankly, the Schumer Shutdown is a situation that makes it harder for investors not to go back and forth, sort of in a sequential kind of panic, don’t panic, worry about everything mode. And again, Schumer is putting us into an economic slowdown that we’re going to have to recover from, and it’s going to be on his shoulder.
Washington Reporter:
Californians are heading to the polls soon to vote on Prop 50, which is Gavin Newsom’s $282 million, I believe, power grab that would completely blow up your state’s congressional representation. What do you hear as you travel the state about people thinking about this? Meanwhile, LA has still not been rebuilt one iota.
Rep. Darrell Issa:
You’re hitting a nail on the head. The last poll I heard, which is very distressing, says that there’s a 54 percent yes vote, but this is a 60-plus percent vote for ‘anyone but a Republican’ state. This is a state where he should be well over 60 percent and be undeniably going to win. And one of the reasons there’s reluctance is that people are looking and saying, ‘Newsom has failed. Why are we doing what he wanted us to do? After all, this is a man who told us not to vote on Prop 36 to make stealing a crime again.’ My sincere hope and belief is that the polls are just as wrong this time as they were with Prop 36 and that the voters are having to do something they don’t want to do, which is to vote other than their natural instinct. This is a deep blue state, and yet it’s not voting nearly as blue as you would think it would under the circumstances.
Washington Reporter:
Are you going to work out with Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of the campaign against this?
Rep. Darrell Issa:
Yes, actually, he and I, and I have been arm wrestling regularly.
Washington Reporter:
Congressman Issa, thank you for your time as always.