OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke out following a meeting on border security at the White House, telling Fox News that he has confronted President Joe Biden and will not allow anyone to “strong-arm” him into offering weak border reforms.
“No one is strong-arming me. I told the president – I looked right across the table from in the cabinet officials’ room and I said, ‘Mr. President, you have the authority right now to end this catastrophe. It’s your actions that created it,'” Johnson said during his interview on FOX when asked about Democrats reluctance to secure the southern border.
The Speaker went on to mention that he informed Biden that he had evidence of 64 separate incidents where actions taken by the White House or agencies contributed to the border crisis. He went on to say that Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, can address the border crisis by enforcing existing laws, so there’s no real need for new legislation.
“I’ve cited to [Biden] – I read him the legal authority on the phone on Thursday of last week that he could take,” he said.
“Given the fact that many in the House of Representatives believe Alejandro Mayorkas should be impeached for failing to do his job, do you believe, whatever is agreed to in this so-called border deal, would in any way be implemented on the enforcement side by a man who has allowed our border to be open on the direction of the Biden team?” Ingraham asked Johnson.
“Absolutely not. Laura, Mayorkas is responsible for this. He engineered the open border. He is the one that has done that. So to your point, it doesn’t matter what laws we pass. If the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is unable or unwilling to enforce them, I think is he unwilling in this case, then it makes no difference,” Johnson said.
“That’s the point. I think the White House and the president himself has to take executive action. He has to do what he has, the authority under existing law, to solve this mess, to end the catastrophe that he and his agencies, including Mayorkas, have created. We’re going to insist upon that. We have been every single day. We will continue to because we owe that to the American people,” Johnson added.
Ingraham then asked: “Does the fact that President Trump — that he stands so strongly against this deal, is that important to you?”
“Well, I mean, again, President Trump and I talked about this. We don’t know what the deal is. We haven’t seen it yet,” Johnson replied.
Ingraham went on to ask: “I mean, we all know what it is. It’s a fig leaf — it’s a promise of enforcement with millions of people in the next decade coming into the country across the border. That’s the deal. That’s the nutshell. That’s the deal. Two lines.”
“I just told everybody at the White House, everybody sitting around that room, that we need the elements of H.R. 2, the functional equivalent thereof. I don’t care what they call it, but you have to make these changes to solve the problem,” Johnson said.
He concluded: “The deputy secretary of Border Patrol, U.S. Border Patrol, a 33-year veteran of the agency, told us at Eagle Pass two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago, brought 64 House Republicans down there, he said, ‘It’s as if I’m administering an open fire hydrant. I don’t need more buckets. I need to turn down the flow.’ That’s what we have to do to save the country, to help save the country, is turn down the flow and get all these illegals out.”
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