Scalise Slams Biden's Border Chaos

Interview

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"Well, you saw very different contrasts. You saw a photo op by President Biden. He created this mess; everybody recognizes that. He came in day one, remember, ended the Remain in Mexico protocols that President Trump had in place that were negotiated between our two countries that were working to stop illegals from coming in. Joe Biden mandated catch and release. So if you come in, even if you were caught by our border patrol agents, you were released into the country. We don't even know where they're going. Governors don't even know if a busload of 50 people or a plane full of illegals show up in a state – the governor or the mayor doesn't even know about that.

So Joe Biden created this mess. And then you have Donald Trump showed up at Eagle Pass with Governor Abbott, which, by the way, when Joe Biden says he wants to solve this problem, ask him this question: Why is Joe Biden suing the governor of Texas right now when Abbot put up the razor wire to at least try to stop the flow of illegals coming into the state of Texas? Right now, Joe Biden's in court to take the razor wire down because Joe Biden wants more illegals coming into the country. And he won't work with us in the House.

We passed a bill to actually stop the flow of illegals. Joe Biden issued a veto threat on that bill. Joe Biden wants opened borders. Donald Trump secured the border, and he will secure it again when he's President. But our country shouldn't have to wait until January to solve this problem because, as you pointed out with Laken Riley, with other examples, unfortunately, every week, people are dying because of illegals coming into our country who have horrible criminal backgrounds and want to do people harm and are doing people harm in America.

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You know, and you've seen the weaponization of government. In fact, we set up a committee just to look into the weaponization of government. There are a lot of lawsuits. When Joe Biden said, 'hey, we're going to waive student loan debt,' that was taken to court. Ultimately, the court said, no, he can't do that. He's going to continue to push the envelope. And look, if the election was held today, we would win. I think we'd run the table. The election's not today. It's eight months from now. And as you pointed out, I think they're going to pull out every stop. We need to be pulling out every stop as well, and we're going to do that, but I think the country is fed up.

The country really doesn't like the direction under Joe Biden, under this failed administration; higher taxes, which yields to the higher spending, higher inflation, people are paying more for everything. They're sick of it. They don't want an open border. They're watching chaos all around the world, all of our allies under attack by enemies. And Joe Biden's only made it worse.

Donald Trump, you didn't have these problems: You had a thriving economy. You had a secure border. You had peace around the world. You didn't have conflicts like this. And I think that contrast is going to continue to shine through. It's why President Trump is leading in a lot of swing states like Pennsylvania, like Michigan, like Wisconsin.

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A lot of that's being challenged and will be challenged in the courts. One of the things, Maria, we've got to do and look, this is something that I think everybody recognizes this year. We have got to push our voters wherever the laws – and every state has laws that say you can vote early – we've got to push our voters to vote early because the other side's doing it. And if we just sit back and say, no, we're only going to vote on Election Day. I wish every state had only Election Day except for our military that were serving overseas, and you had to show picture ID. That's not the law in most states.

And so wherever the law says you can vote three weeks early, we need to be encouraging our voters to vote early as well. Because if they're banking 40% of the Democrat vote before Election Day, and we're all waiting to Election Day and it might rain, you might have other issues, you don't want to take that risk. And in fact, we won't win if we don't play by the rules. And that means maximizing the rules just like they're going to do. We better be doing the same thing.

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I think you're going to see us get out of that in the next two weeks. Negotiations are still going on. But about half of the bill – six of the twelve appropriations bills – there's been agreement on, and the other six, there is still pretty intense negotiation. We did break the cycle of the omnibus bills. If you remember, under Speaker Pelosi, you would have these 3000-page bills. It would be the entire government funding: All twelve appropriations bills packed into one big 3000-page omnibus monstrosity. It was brought before everybody in Congress to vote on literally the day after it was filed, so nobody had an opportunity to read it.

We've changed that. We're also going to have a 72-hour rule for any of the bills that are brought before the House for these appropriations bills so that everybody can read them. And that's a different approach. But at the end of the day, we've got to just continue to move the needle in lower spending and get our economy back on track. Joe Biden's not helping in that regard. I mean, you look at his policies, you highlight his policies all the time. He's continuing to move a far radical left agenda. That's not where the country is. And I think that's going to be his biggest achilles heel come November when voters have a real say in the direction of our country moving forward.

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My response to Chuck Schumer is exactly that: The border is America's number one priority. It's surely House Republicans and Speaker Johnson was in that meeting. It might have been five against one in some cases, but Speaker Johnson held the line and made it clear that we're fighting to secure America's border. We want to help our allies around the world, but we need to start with America first, and we've got a major crisis, and all of that needs to be on the table at the same time.

There's been over $100 billion approved for Ukraine, and it's important that Putin get defeated. But at the same time, it's even more important we secure America's border. And we've laid out to President Biden how to do it. He can do it on his own. And let's keep that in mind first. Joe Biden started this crisis on his first day when he undid all the policies that were working under Donald Trump. He can fix it, but he won't. So we've passed a bill through the House that'll fix it. We need a negotiation on that – how to secure America's border.”

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