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Johnson Says GOP Will Win ‘Decisive Victory’ Against Harris-Walz Ticket

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Speaker Mike Johnson is confident about the GOP’s chances up and down the ballot after Vice President Harris selected Minnesota Democrat Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.

During an interview with The Hill, Johnson predicted that former President Donald Trump would win the presidential race and Republicans would perform well.

“I like the matchup now,” Johnson said when asked how the GOP conference will fare against the ticket. “I’m pleased, for our purposes, that she chose Walz, because they can’t hide from their record and I don’t think it’s going to resonate with the people.”

“We were on trajectory, prior to all of the developments of the last few weeks, to have a decisive victory in both the House and the Senate for the Republican Party,” Johnson continued. “I believe that we still are on that trajectory.”

“I’m very bullish about November,” he added.

In August, Johnson is going on a 20-state blitz that will take him to battleground districts and Democratic bases to keep the gavel and grow the majority. Johnson said that so far he has held campaign events in 32 states and 147 towns. Eight of the 20 states he will visit in August will be his first time there.

The Speaker said from the 79th floor of a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper with a view of New York City that every Republican incumbent candidate will win reelection to the House in November. This was a very optimistic prediction, especially in New York, which is a stronghold for Democrats and home to five of the 17 Republicans in Biden’s district.

“New York is critical to our majority, as is California and some of the other swing states. We have extraordinary incumbents in these districts, and they’re running fantastic reelection campaigns. That has been very rewarding to see,” Johnson said. “They’re outworking their opponents, and in many cases they’re raising more money. And this has been encouraging, because they have the right message and they have the right tone and they know their communities, they know their districts, they’re presenting a very compelling case for why they need to be reelected.”

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Johnson was cautious not to forecast how many seats the conference will pick up in November — “I don’t want to handicap it” — but he predicted House Republicans “will have a dramatic improvement in our numbers” after the group grappled with a one-seat majority for part of this Congress.

“I think we’ll have a sizable majority,” the Speaker said. “I do not expect — nor does anyone, I don’t think, who’s paying attention — a 35- or 40-seat majority. It’s not possible anymore, because the number of swing districts has been reduced dramatically due to gerrymandering and redistricting. But I think we can have an exponential increase in our majority, and I think that’ll be very helpful.”

“I expect that we’ll have a Republican majority in the Senate, and I expect to have Donald Trump back in the White House,” he continued. “So if we have unified government, what we’re also planning in the midst of all this is a very aggressive first 100 days agenda for the Congress.”

Harris, who was put in charge of solving the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border a few months after she and President Biden took office—leading her to be dubbed “border czar”—is about to get put on the spot over her epic failure.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) announced plans to visit the southwestern border in the vice president’s home state of California to promote his party’s election integrity legislation and speak about the failed border policies of the Biden-Harris administration, the Washington Examiner reported.

“Johnson will speak at a press conference at 8:15 p.m. EDT with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) at the ‘Whiskey 8’ border fence in San Ysidro, California. He will also tour the U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities at the San Ysidro Port of Entry and Imperial Beach locations,” the report said.

“California has been a hot spot for border crossings, particularly in San Diego, which is south of San Ysidro,” it said.

Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a battle over the term “border czar” as it applies to Harris as Democrats have correctly stated that she was never officially given that title, though her duties did include work on root causes of the migration crisis.

“She was never assigned the position of ‘border czar,’” House Minority Leader and New York Democrat Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said Thursday during his weekly press conference. “They are making that up because extreme MAGA Republicans are in full meltdown. They don’t really know what to do, and they lack an affirmative agenda.”

Democratic Caucus Chairman and California Rep. Pete Aguilar said the resolution was an example of Republicans “playing politics.”

“It’s not surprising to anybody what they’re doing. It’s almost laughable,” he said to the Washington Examiner. “But there was no ‘border czar’ position … this is Republicans carrying water for Donald Trump.”

“If they can’t pass appropriations bills, and they’re going to try to distract, divert and play some politics, and that should be expected,” he said.

But Speaker Johnson said on Tuesday that Harris is the “co-owner, co-author, and co-conspirator in all the policies that got us into the mess.”

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After the president gave the vice president the responsibility of addressing the crisis’s root causes, Republicans and several media outlets dubbed her the “border czar.”

“There’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border,” the president said.

“[Trump] can make up whatever lies he wants, but the fact is there’s only one candidate in this race who will fight for real solutions to help secure our nation’s border, and that’s Vice President Harris,” her campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said.

The former Border Patrol union head claims that since President Joe Biden gave Vice President Kamala Harris the responsibility to address the underlying causes of illegal immigration in 2021, Harris has fallen short.

“It’s very disappointing,” Brandon Judd, who recently retired as president of the Border Patrol Union, told Fox News. “We gave her the policies that she needed to implement. She refused to implement those.”

The recently retired head of the Border Patrol Union, Brandon Judd, told Fox News Digital, “It’s very disappointing.” “We provided her with the policies she had to put into effect. She declined to put those into practice.”

Judd’s remarks coincide with heightened scrutiny of Harris’s immigration and border security record in the days following Biden’s announcement that he would not be running for president and would instead support his vice president to succeed him. Critics claim Harris has fallen short on a key topic that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election.