President Joe Biden and Democrats want an open border, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, laying out the evidence.
Host Mike Slater asked Johnson to respond to a conversation on The View featuring New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), which featured the governor asserting that the border is now squarely a Republican problem.
WATCH — Gov. Hochul: Republicans Are Now to Blame for Migrant Crisis:
“President Biden and Democrats, they want an open border. It’s obvious this is what they want,” Johnson said, explaining that even with weakened authority due to court decisions, former President Donald Trump secured the border.
Johnson said Biden used executive authority — dozens of executive actions — to “reverse all those successful policies” of the Trump administration.
“And then for three years, he and his Secretary of Homeland Security denied that there was a crisis. They only admitted it once. Mayor Adams and Mayor Johnson, in Chicago in New York, started looking at their sanctuary city and realize this doesn’t work too good. We can’t handle this. … They started making noise and all sudden the mainstream media had to start covering it,” Johnson explained.
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“That started putting pressure on the Democrats … all the Democrats were looking for was political cover. And unfortunately, Leader McConnell entered secret negotiations on a subject where the American people agree with us that were all we were looking for, in any kind of legislation was the enforcement mechanism to force President Biden to use the authority has to secure the border,” Johnson continued.
“We weren’t looking for an immigration bill. And that’s what McConnell apparently negotiated for us. I think the quote from Schumer in Politico was priceless. He said they were — referring to himself and Democrats — were playing chess. They were playing checkers. And we’re in a lot better position on the border than we were three weeks ago. I mean, that speaks volumes,” he said, adding that Leader Mitch McConnell “gave them the poker cover they’re looking for.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks during a press conference following the Republicans weekly policy luncheon on January 23, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Describing the immigration bill as “awful,” Johnson added that it only saw some support from Border Patrol because they are “drowning” and anything lower than 10,000 illegals a day would be a “win for them.”
“They just weren’t looking at how that bill weakened a president’s authority by not giving him the discretion that he already had,” Johnson said, adding, “That bill was so awful, beyond comprehension that our negotiators didn’t realize what an awful bill they had delivered into our midst.”
And it was McConnell, Johnson said, who was there crafting the bill “every step of the way.”
“He wrote the bill. … This was stage-managed by Mitch McConnell. He’s the political genius that crafted that awful, awful bill. It was worse than doing nothing, giving Democrats some political cover again,” he added.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.