During an appearance on Friday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who has recently been diagnosed with blood cancer, said his doctors had cleared him to run for the Speaker of the House vacancy left by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
Scalise alluded to his recovery from the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice.
“Steve, speaking of fights — I know that you were having a personal fight,” “Fox & Friends” co-host Steve Doocy said. “You were diagnosed with multiple myeloma a while back. You’re going through treatment right now. I’ve heard some people say, you know, maybe he’s not healthy enough. We had a conversation during the commercial preceding this. It sounds like your treatment is going well.”
“Yeah, thank God they caught it early,” Scalise replied. “I have a great team of doctors that are the best in the world. And, you know, they were able to put me on some drugs really quickly. I mean, it’s a blood cancer. You know, there’s other forms of cancer, too, but there were really good treatments available, and we got them quickly, aggressively. And then my doctors, weeks ago, looked and said it’s going phenomenally well. You’re ready to go back to work and get in the fight. You know, if the doctors didn’t sign off, I wouldn’t be doing this. The doctors are happy.”
“So, they cleared you,” Doocy said. “They cleared you. They said you’re OK?
“They said you’re ready to go back in the fight,” Scalise replied. “Look, I’ve been through tougher fights. You saw me when I was in the hospital. You know, I almost didn’t make it through in 2017 after the shooting. You know, by the way, President Trump was right there lifting my family up at the lowest times. People don’t even see that side of him. How wonderful he was at my lowest moments in 2017. They didn’t know if I would make it through those days. I did. I’m a fighter. Look, I’ve been proven through a lot of battles. God has given me a lot of strength. I’ve asked God for a lot. He’s delivered. But there’s families that are struggling every single day.
“We’re going to lose 150 young people today from opioids because of the open southern border,” he continued. “The president doesn’t want to confront that challenge. We as House Republicans do. You know, again, we passed bills to do it. That action needs to happen in the White House and the Senate. We need to continue fighting in the House to go and fight for the things that pass through the House already and keep passing more bills to put pressure in the places where it’s not. But we’ve got to come together first. I get that. We’re working through that, the last few days, the days ahead. I’m going to continue having those conversations. The conversations are going well.”
“We’ve got to come together, though,” Scalise added. “And then the other folks in Washington need to confront the same problems we are confronting and go — not talk about them, go do ’em with us. We’re going to lay out a plan. We’re going to be very aggressive. That’s why I’m running for speaker,r and that’s why I’m getting wide support through every element of our conference. But we’ve got a lot of work to do. I’m ready to do this job. I’ve got the background to do this job. But, you know, there’s a lot of people struggling in this country that are counting on us. We’ve got to go back to work for them. That’s where our members have been in these conversations I’ve had with them.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
