Sen. Grassley says McConnell is aiming to ‘wake people up’ with threat that GOP might lose Senate

EXCLUSIVE: Sen. Chuck Grassley is backing up Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after he made remarks stating that the Republican Party may lose the Senate over an issue of having “qualified candidates.”

During a Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Thursday afternoon, McConnell, R-Ky., said he thinks that Republicans have a lukewarm chance of flipping the Senate in November.

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” the minority leader anticipated. “Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

Fox News Digital asked Grassley, R-Iowa, for his reaction to McConnell’s remarks during an exclusive interview at the Iowa State Fair Friday.

He replied: “We are going to take back the majority because of the fact that the president’s approval rating is under 40 [percent] and all these problems with the economy, people’s pocket books are being robbed every day because of Biden inflation.”

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“Many people’s pocketbooks are being robbed every day because of Biden’s inflation. And, I think that the motive that McConnell would have would be that he wants to wake people up to the fact that this is an important election coming up and that you better be on your toes, both as a candidate, and people are supporting Republicans, or maybe we wouldn’t want to win control of the United States Senate,” Grassley continued.

“But he needs to have people help by voting, help by getting votes out and help by contributing to the candidates, and most importantly, the candidates working just as hard as they can. If there’s any of these candidates in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Arizona that are working harder than anybody that’s on their campaign staff, they’re not working hard enough,” the Iowa senator told Fox News Digital.

Grassley also said that inflation is the No. 1 issue for Iowans heading into November’s midterm elections.

“It won’t only be what I hear at the state fair, but what I’ve heard in my county meetings that I hold regularly. Inflation is number one. Some people call it cost of living, saying gas prices. And the fact is, the president is not enforcing law at the border. It just irritates people. You can’t come to America without our permission. And we’ve had 2 million people just willy-nilly cross the border,” Grassley told Fox News Digital.

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In regard to the FBI’s recent raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, Grassley urged that the affidavit and the search warrant should be made public. 

“I think that would solve a lot of the public relations problem, if they would [make it public],” Grassley said.

He explained the historical significance of the invasion of a former president’s home.

“Well, I think, historically, it’s a big issue because this is the first time a former president’s home has ever been invaded. Secondly, it’s important because it looks like there’s political bias, and the people, in the people that decided to do it. Because you have a whole opposite of what they did with Hillary Clinton, with her e-mails, and they were compromised, and she destroyed some property, and nothing was done, and they negotiated with her, but they didn’t invade her home. So what’s different now?” said Grassley. 

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“I’m not making a judgment about the culpability of somebody that was involved in this. The information we’re after. But I do believe because of the great historical significance of this invasion of the home, that we need total transparency. And I believe particularly Director Wray of the FBI needs to make very clear that he understands, and I know to some extent he understands because I had whistleblowers tell me about the political bias that some people that are high up making decisions to investigate or not investigate. And he moved that person out of it. So he knows he has a problem. How big the problem is, I don’t really know how big it is,” Grassley told Fox News Digital.

Grassley has warned to the FBI that new whistleblower allegations reveal a “deeply rooted political infection” within the FBI in a series of recent letters and is demanding an accounting for alleged political bias influencing high-level investigations, particularly out of the FBI’s Washington, D.C., office. 

“But [Wray has] got to get on top of it because you as a citizen should have extraordinary confidence in the FBI. And I think they’re losing this confidence because of the political bias, not just because Trump’s house was invaded, but generally over a long period of time. Russiagate, those kinds of things, those things are evidence of political bias. You got to get on top of it,” he concluded, noting that this doesn’t affect local Iowan FBI agents and that it “comes from the top.”

Fox News’ Andrea Vacchiano contributed to this report.