'Special Report' All-Star panel on Pelosi denying GOP picks, critical race theory

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Pelosi denying GOP picks for Jan. 6 committee a 'gift' to McCarthy: Benson

Fox News Radio host Guy Benson, National Public Radio's Mara Liasson and The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway discuss partisan efforts in the investigation of Capitol riots

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," July 21, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you concerned that they may pull out entirely, the Republicans may pull out entirely?

NANCY PELOSI, (D-CA) HOUSE SPEAKER: We have a bipartisan quorum, so we can proceed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was it about Jordan and Banks in particular, because Nehls also voted to overturn the election?

PELOSI: That was the not the criteria.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What was the criteria?

PELOSI: Read my statement.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, (R-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: Why are you allowing a lame duck speaker to destroy this institution? This is the people's House, not Pelosi's house.

Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republicans, we will not participate. We will run our own investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: And things were going so well before the January 6th commission up on Capitol Hill. No. Speaker Pelosi saying two of the members that were appointed by Minority Leader McCarthy just don't cut it because they protested the election, basically.

What about this and where this goes, plus the other things happening on Capitol Hill? Let's bring in our panel, Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at "The Federalist," Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and Guy Benson, political editor at Townhall.com and host of "The Guy Benson Show" on FOX News Radio. Guy, first to you it. Boy, it seemed to devolve midday here.

GUY BENSON, POLITICAL EDITOR, TOWNHALL.COM: I think this is a gift to Kevin McCarthy because he was never terribly excited about Republicans participating in this panel to begin with, and Pelosi has served up a really easy excuse for him to say OK, we're walking away from this.

I always was a supporter personally of the bipartisan commission. I know many Republicans and conservatives disagree. That was my position. Once Republicans killed that on Capitol Hill, it was always going to be an argument from the GOP that the Democrats' version of this run by Pelosi was a partisan witch-hunt or biased or something, and Pelosi just gave Republicans a lot more ammo to make that case on substance I think quite a bit easier.

BAIER: Mara, the response is that maybe they will pull all the Republicans out. That does not preclude the commission from calling, for example, House Minority Leader McCarthy to testify in front of that hearing.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Right, that's right, or Jim Jordan, or whoever they want to call.

Look, this whole enterprise has he ill-fated from the beginning. I agree with Guy. As soon as the Republicans decided they didn't want a truly bipartisan commission where there would be equal numbers of Republicans and Democratic experts, they didn't want this select committee either. And so it doesn't look like there was ever going to be a truly bipartisan effort to find out what happened on January 6th because the Republicans don't want to. They have said out loud it's bad for their 2022 prospects. Former President Trump doesn't want an investigation into January 6th.

And I agree that at least what Nancy Pelosi did today allows Kevin McCarthy to say, see, it was always going to be partisan. But I think we will have hearings. The Democrats will go forward. There will be a couple Republicans that Nancy Pelosi has chosen or approved on this committee, and we will see what they come up with.

BAIER: One Republican definitely wants it to go forward, that's Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney. She was out in front of cameras today. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY, (R-WY): The rhetoric around this from the minority leader and from those two members has been disgraceful. This must be an investigation that is focused on facts. And the idea that any of this has become politicized is really unworthy of the office that we all hold, and unworthy of our republic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Mollie?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE FEDERALIST": It's worth comparing Liz Cheney's rhetoric with the rhetoric of the woman who replaced her, Elise Stefanik, who after Nancy Pelosi kicked off two members that the Republicans had picked said that Nancy Pelosi was acting like a radical authoritarian, that she would go down in history as the least well-liked speaker of the House, that the House of Representatives has ever had, versus Liz Cheney saying that it was OK for Nancy Pelosi it kick off the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee as well as Representative Jim Banks who is widely regarded as a very thoughtful member, while keeping Adam Schiff, the man who perpetrated the Russian collusion hoax, the lie that Donald Trump had won the 2016 election only by being a traitor who colluded with Russia, a lie that he kept going for years and claimed he had personal knowledge of, which was not true, and Jamie Raskin, a man who objected to the 2016 election on the grounds of Russia and Trump being illegitimate.

So Pelosi really made it clear that she doesn't even intend to have this commission being taken seriously. What's really interesting is that Republicans are fighting back so hard. They're showing why they gained seats in the House in the 2020 election when they were predicted to lose some seats, and why they'll win a lot of seats in the midterms as well. And having them push back and having that be so popular, I think, surprising that Nancy Pelosi made this mistake, but also interesting that Republicans did such a good job of capitalizing on that mistake she made.

BAIER: Guy, whether it was a mistake or not, the effort to get to 60 votes to start the debate on infrastructure bipartisan proposal, a bill, fell short today. Republicans said, listen, it wasn't us. The bill wasn't there. Senator John Thune talking to Neil Cavuto today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN THUNE, (R-SD) SENATE MINORITY WHIP: There's a framework, but it's not done. And let me reiterate, there is no final text. There was no bill to vote on. And so Republicans were perfectly right, in my view, all 50 of us, to vote against the motion to proceed to the bill today, which we haven't seen because it hasn't been written. When we have something written to review, then I think this process can begin to move forward. But in the meantime, the negotiator are working through some of the final issues, and we'll see what they come up with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: When I go around the country, this is the thing people hate. They just hate the show votes. They hate the vote that's not -- they know is not going to pass. They hate that about Washington.

BENSON: Yes. So my last answer was about a misstep from the Speaker of the House. This was a misstep from Leader Schumer in the Senate. This was the easiest argument for every Republican in the Senate to come together and make, and we just heard it there from Thune. Of course, we are not going to vote to proceed to debate a bill that doesn't exist based on some completely phony, made up deadline from the Democrats and Chuck Schumer. It looks like they missed another one of their deadlines on the reconciliation package, $3.5 trillion.

So this was the easy one for Republicans. The harder question for Republican senators, they should think hard about this, even if they support this bipartisan infrastructure package or agreement that's almost finalized, and I think it's relatively good in isolation, do they want to go along with it and give the patina of bipartisan if what the Democrats and the White House are doing is to put those to issues together, the reconciliation bill and the infrastructure bill in this shocking, totally reckless orgy of spending, do they want to validate that on the Republican side? And I think that's an active debate within the caucus.

BAIER: Where is that debate, Mara? Because obviously some Republicans want to go home and say, listen, I hate this administration, I hate what they are doing on big spending, but I got this bridge done.

LIASSON: Yes, I'm actually surprised that the bipartisan infrastructure framework, sometimes it's called BIF, has survived as long as it has. And even today, members of the negotiating group, including Republicans, are saying we're almost there. We only need until Monday. We just weren't ready to do it today, but we can take this vote on Monday. I think something like 21 Republicans signed a letter saying that. So this has a lot of support among Republicans, more than I would think because of what Guy just laid out. If you support, this you are definitely giving President Biden the opportunity to say, see, I made Congress work again, bipartisan compromise is possible. That's what he ran on. So it's still alive, and we'll know a lot more next week if it's going to go forward.

BAIER: All right, I want to turn to this story that FOX News did exclusively, and that is this teaching network, the abolitionist teaching network that the Department of Education linked to schools. Take a listen to this, and I will read the Department of Education response.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BETTINA LOVE, ABOLITIONIST TEACHING NETWORK: Abolitionist Teaching Network -- the network that is dedicated to not creating new schools or reimaging schools, but destroying schools that do nothing bur harm black and brown children.

REP. BYRON DONALDS, (R-FL): I fully believe in diversity and inclusion. But what I do not believe and I do not stand for is this thought process that the country is irreparably racist and that white people are irreparably racist and there's nothing they could do address except become anti-racist and address their white fragility. That is insane. It is divisive. It is not going to help our country become the more perfect union, which we, frankly, already are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: And again, this is different than Critical Race Theory, which obviously we have been covering as well. But the Department of Education statement on ATN reporting says "The Department does not endorse the recommendations of this group, nor do they reflect our policy positions. It was an error in a lengthy document to include this citation."

Mollie, the document went out to schools.

LIASSON: Yes, the document went out to schools.

BAIER: Mollie. Mollie.

LIASSON: Oh, go ahead.

HEMINGWAY: The reason why Republicans in the House think they are going to have a very good year next year isn't just because of some of the political missteps that Democrats are making, but also their embrace of these ideas, that America is an irreparably racist and evil nation, that white people are oppressors, that black people are victims. Nobody -- no average American likes this rhetoric. Nobody, whether they're black or white, likes to view people in this very racist way.

But the left has been putting forth a lot of these racist ideas, and they are using the administrative state and the bureaucracy to push them forward. I think the fact that the Department of Education pulled back a little bit -- it's not much, because they have so many other of these racist ideologies that they are trying to push through at the school level at local schools -- it is an indication that probably Democrats are getting a feel for just how toxic this new racism of the left is and how un- American it is and how people don't like it, and they don't like it being foisted on their children.

BAIER: Mara, quickly, even an election coming up in Virginia, all of that is factoring in to a governor's race there.

LIASSON: Sure, but what we don't know is whether any school actually picked up on this, used it. This is a link in a report that now the Department of Education says was a mistake. I agree, the political damage has been done, and Republicans will make this out to be this huge thing, but it's something Democrats have to watch for.

BAIER: Panel, stand by. When we come back, tomorrow's headlines with you all.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, a look at tomorrow's headlines with the panel. Mara?

LIASSON: My headline is hopes for bipartisanship dashed in fight over January 6th panel but still alive in infrastructure talks.

BAIER: Guy?

BENSON: The Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gave a press conference today on COVID and the vaccine, very strong on both issues, and I think he put on a clinic in terms of messaging on those tough issues.

BAIER: Mollie?

HEMINGWAY: The Department of Justice seeks to bar the release of grand jury information for 50 years, protecting Mueller documents from being released until 2069.

BAIER: Wow. And where is John Durham? We'll check that out. Thank you, panel.

Thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. That's it for this SPECIAL REPORT, fair, balanced, and still unafraid. FOX NEWS PRIMETIME hosted by Brian Kilmeade this week starts right now. Hey, Brian.

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