House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., holds a press conference on Capitol Hill, June 13, 2019. The House Minority Leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, who spoke after Pelosi, struggled to defend the president’s remarks on election interference, alleging Democrats took actions that undermined the presidential election and resulted in the Mueller report and crediting Trump with acting “properly all along the way.”
McCarthy dismissed a question from ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Mary Bruce about whether he’d accept help from a foreign entity as “a hypothetical.”
“You’re talking about a hypothetical,” McCarthy said. “We do not want to have a foreign government interfere in any of our elections and we should all stand united on that."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, on the Senate floor Thursday morning, denounced the president’s comments as “un-American.”
“It’s as if the president has learned absolutely nothing,” Schumer said. “The president’s comments again are undemocratic, un-American, and disgraceful.”
Even one of the president’s closest allies on Capitol Hill did not come to his defense. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, said the president’s response was “not the right answer.”
“If a foreign government comes to you as a public official, and offers to help your campaign giving you anything of value, whether it be money or information on your opponent, the right answer is no,” he said.
When pressed again, Graham called the president’s answer "a mistake. "
“I think it's a mistake. I think I think it's a mistake of law. I don't want to send a signal to encourage this,” Graham said.
Republican Sen. John Kennedy said if a foreign adversary approached him with information he would call the FBI.
“I can’t speak for the president I can only speak for me, if a foreign agent approached me with anything including but not limited to dirt on my opponent, I’d call the FBI. And I think most people would, and frankly, I think the president would,” Kennedy said.
As the president did in the interview, Graham pivoted to attacking Democrats and pointed a finger at information gathered against Trump in the Steele dossier.
“I'm hoping some of my Democratic colleagues will take more seriously the fact that Christopher Steele was a foreign agent paid for by the Democratic Party, to gather dirt on Trump,” he added.
Schumer said that later Thursday Democratic Sen. Mark Warner will ask the Senate to pass a bill introduced in May called the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act, or FIRE.
The bill would require political campaigns to report attempts to influence elections by foreign powers. Campaign officials would have to report within one week any outreach by foreign nationals who attempt to make any donations or offer assistance in any way.
ABC News' Trish Turner and Mariam Khan contributed to this report.
Kaynak:Abcnews