The border bill that Vice President Kamala Harris continues to tout did not secure the border, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily, debunking the Democrat nominee’s claims.
“First of all, let’s go malpractice on an epic scale by Mitch McConnell to take issue that the public supports us 80 percent on securing the border, and go into deep negotiations, not even tell the conference what he was negotiating,” Johnson began, noting that they did not find out about it until one week before they dropped the bill. Once they found out what was in the bill, “our jaws dropped.”
“It basically codified 40 to 50 percent of Joe Biden’s open border policy — actually higher percentage than that. It’s been about 9,000 people a day. You know you can count getaways that have entered this country under Joe Biden … 9,000. … Obama declared a crisis at 2,000 a day, right? So what this bill did is it said, ‘Well, if you hit 4,000 a day encounters, the President has discretion to stop processing asylum claims.’ … So that’s the question, right there. You codify 4,000 to 5,000 people a day. When Obama called it — 2,000 was a crisis,” he explained.
“By Congress passing the law, you would actually weaken the authority the President had,” he said, citing a 2018 Supreme Court ruling and noting that “President Trump used that executive authority” to close the border.
“Biden used that executive [order to] open it up, so he had the authority. We would have been happy to strengthen the authority, to change the credible fear standard closer to what actual asylum requirements are, which are very tough, by the way” he said, noting that less than ten percent of the people coming into the United States have valid asylum claims.
“They’re just afraid of going back. I’m afraid to go back. Ok, come on. And you’re in. … I mean, you’re never going to go get sent home by and large. And that’s just the reality situation. So again, it was an awful, awful bill,” he said.
Perhaps what is more, despite claims from Harris, Johnson said former President Donald Trump never called him to tell him not to support the bill. Further, he said, “I’m not aware of any Republican senator that Donald Trump called.”
“He obviously spoke out against the bill, because it was so awful,” he said, noting it was dead on arrival.
LISTEN:
Johnson said House Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is trying to deflect blame from himself to Trump.
“Trump was happy to take credit for tanking that awful bill, of course, that has been used against him,” he said. “I just laid out the truth. There’s an awful bill negotiated by McConnell. It was dead on arrival. I’m not aware of any Republican senator, and nobody, I’ve said this repeatedly. Nobody’s come up to me and said, ‘Hey, Ron, I did a get call from Trump.’ So I don’t think Trump called anybody, [he] spoke out against it, but we were all speaking out against it” except for some RINOs, he added.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.