WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s America’s Newsroom to discuss President Trump’s North Korea Summit and the progress being made towards North Korean denuclearization. He also expressed his continued support for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes in his quest for full transparency in the Department of Justice investigation regarding the 2016 election. Additionally, he shared his excitement for the Congressional Baseball Game this Thursday; a year after his near-fatal shooting, Whip Scalise plans to join his teammates at the game.

Click here or on the image above to watch the interview.

 

On the progress towards denuclearizing North Korea: 

“Mike Pompeo is doing a great job as Secretary of State. I served with him here in the House. We were both on the House Energy and Commerce Committee together and I’m so proud of the work he’s doing to represent our country and to represent our President in negotiating these deals. He got the release of the three hostages when he had that first meeting with Kim Jong-Un and is helping negotiate a denuclearization of North Korea, which is historic. The fact that President Trump led this, embarked upon this, which no president had done before. I think it’s remarkable because we don’t want North Korea or Iran to have nuclear weapons and at least he’s taking steps to address both of those threats to the United States and our allies.”

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“There are still strong sanctions against North Korea that are still in place even after this meeting. Obviously, all of that is on the table because what we want to see is a denuclearization and that’s what really isolated North Korea and there are other things. They talked about human rights abuses as well, but denuclearization is the top priority. Secretary of State Pompeo talked about the tools we have to include in a negotiation to make sure both parties get something really important out of it.”

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“First of all, we have imposed those sanctions that President Trump has been using. Congress has already passed and gotten signed into law sanctions that are being used to pressure and increase leverage against North Korea that hopefully have helped lead to this. But if there is a resolution as President Trump alluded to, I think it would be important for Congress to play a role in that and have this presented as a treaty, not an agreement as President Obama did with Iran, something that’s reversible. In fact, it was a bad deal anyway, but at least because it wasn’t a treaty it could be reversed. Let’s do this as a treaty, if we’re able to get this kind of a major agreement, so that it’s permanent.”

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“I would hope we would get bipartisan support. If there’s an agreement that allows for verifiable denuclearization of North Korea, I think that would be historic and it ought to be bipartisan. It would be important to the United States’ national security and for other countries like South Korea, Japan and so many others that are allies of America.”

On his continued support of Chairman Nunes’s investigation:

“I’ve been supportive of Chairman Nunes and his entire committee pushing to get the facts out. Look, the Department of Justice and the FBI, I think in this area, have been incredibly slow in giving Congress the tools that we’ve asked for, being transparent, letting us know what they know, and what the American people ought to know. We’re going to continue to push to make sure this isn’t a witch hunt, that this is something where we can actually get the facts that the public deserves and I commend Chairman Nunes for the work he’s done.”

On joining his teammates at the Congressional Baseball Game on the anniversary of the shooting:

“It’s going to be wonderful to be able to go back a year later. I was going play in the game. I was going to start at second base and then with the shooting. It’s been just a tumultuous ride the last year, but so many positives have come out of it to see the warmth and support and prayers from so many of my colleagues and people all around the country. It’s helped me get through this recovery. I’ve been through a lot and my family’s been through a lot, but we’ve seen so much of the good in the American people. Being able to walk out onto that field again on Thursday night with my uniform is going to be a special, special moment.”

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“I still need crutches to walk around. I practiced fielding. I can actually field a ball if it comes right to me, so maybe we need to get more practice with the batters to hit it directly to me. I can still make the throw to first, but I hope they don’t need to use me a lot. It’s going to be a great moment to be able to go back out there in uniform after the last year that we’ve been through.”