Citation
From the October 4 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom
BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): Do you see a smoking gun lurking, whether obvious or not? If you're the president watching all this, what would concern you the most?
ANDREW MCCARTHY (FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR): Well, I’d be most concerned about the way Americans are consuming the coverage, you know. There’s a lot of reporting that’s simply inaccurate about what’s going on. For example, this whole idea that there is an impeachment inquiry. There’s not. The idea that there are subpoenas. There aren't. The whole thing -- this is all kabuki theater at this point. And I think a lot of people are, you know, consuming it as if it were true on face value. And I really think if I were the White House, what I would be worried about is breaking through that.
HEMMER: I'm not quite sure I'm entirely clear on what you're saying there. If you're the White House, you're concerned about what, specifically?
MCCARTHY: Well, I'm concerned, for example -- let's take one thing. The term “quid pro quo,” right? There’s always quid pro quo when foreign countries deal with each other. The issue is not whether there was a quid pro quo. It would be bizarre if two countries were dealing with each other and it wasn't an exchange. They’re always pursuing their interests. The question here is, was there a corrupt quid pro quo? That is, was the president leveraging his power over foreign affairs exclusively to get the Ukrainians basically to work on the Trump 2020 campaign.
On the other hand, if what the president was actually doing was trying to leverage the Ukrainians to assist in Attorney General [William] Barr's legitimate Justice Department investigation into the investigations that were attendant to the 2016 campaign, that's not only normal, it’s entirely appropriate. But if it's pitched to the public as if “was there a quid pro quo about 2016,” what the public is taking from that is that -- the suggestion that there was a corrupt, improper deal. And that is brought to them in the context of being told that there is an impeachment inquiry over it, and that there are subpoenas pending demanding that the executive branch turn over information that it's withholding about this.