In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, House Speaker and Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson flatly rejected the prospect of a massive funding package covering border initiatives that’s been proposed by the White House. He expressly rejected the idea that anything from the proposed $14 billion should be passed, though as Tapper pointed out, there are specific, operational proposals contained within the plan to address threats like the dangerous drug fentanyl.
“There also would be 1,300 more Border Patrol agents to work alongside the 20,200. And also, funding to hire 1,000 Customs and Border Protection officers with a focus on counter fentanyl,” Tapper said, discussing the White House agenda. “So it’s not all — in fact most of it is not related to processing asylum-seekers. A lot of it has to do with what you’re talking about.”
Johnson replied by immediately launching into the following: “The president should come to the border. What an idea that would be. He should talk to the Border Patrol agents who are down here.” Those remarks completely ignore the substance of what was asked. Tapper noted that Biden had been to the southern border — which Johnson pivoted to acknowledging but calling a photo op.
The Louisiana Republican subsequently referred to the situation there as a “war,” again using the inaccurate, incendiary language to which Republicans have stuck for so long and that precedent suggests they’d abandon under a GOP president even if the situation was roughly similar. Johnson later repeated alleged sentiments from a figure local to the border making the facially absurd suggestion that Biden’s administration had somehow undone an entire century of progress. Similarly, Johnson used statistics about enforcement operations at the border to make vague insinuations about the scope of what’s being missed — a line of reasoning for which he had little specific evidence beyond cultivated vibes.
Watch the full interview below:
