Meet the Press - February 4, 2024 Steve Kornacki, Jake Sullivan, Rep. Mike Johnson (R) Speaker of the House, Hallie Jackson, Sam Jacobs, Symone Sanders-Townsend and Ramesh Ponnuru
Interview
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Hey, Kristen, glad to be with you.
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Well, I do take issue with a little bit of what Jake Sullivan just said. I listened to that interview. It was interesting. We need to make absolutely clear to Iran that nothing is off the table. You know, we maintain peace through strength. That was the Reagan Doctrine. That's what President Trump continued. And that's what we have to do right now. We should not be appeasing Iran. That's what the Biden administration has been doing for the last three years.
We are projecting weakness on the world stage. And frankly, Kristen, that is why our adversaries are acting so provocatively. What we need to be doing right now is turning up the heat on Iran. We need to act to decimate the Iran Central Bank, the assets that they've held there. We need to lean on international banks to seize the assets of Iranian proxies. We need to – to put big time pressure, maximum pressure, on their oil exports. There's a lot that we could do to Iran to send a message instead of this appeasement strategy. It's just simply –
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– not working.
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It should not – it should not be off the table. Let me –
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– give you just a quick example. You know, in the Trump administration we used a drone and three missiles to take out Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad. That sent a strong message. And it quelled all of the activity there. What we're doing right now, we're using potentially hundreds of munitions to strike close to 100 targets so far. But we're not going right to the heart of the matter. I think that's a real problem.
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Well, let's make a couple of things clear here, Kristen. You know, we passed the support for Iran many months ago, three months ago. Immediately after I became Speaker, we sent the necessary resources there. We passed our bill on border security nine months ago. It's been sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk collecting dust ever since. The H.R. 2, which is our signature bill right out of the beginning, right out of the block, for the House Republican Conference and our Republican majority, would have solved this problem.
We would resolve the broken asylum system and the broken parole system. We would re-institute Remain in Mexico which would stem the flow by probably 70%. We would end the ‘catch and release,’ the mass releases of illegals into our country that's happened.This border is out of control. All these problems have mounted. And the Senate has been dithering ever since. We cannot wait anymore. The reason we are going to send the new Israel package over is because the time is urgent. And we have to take care of that responsibility.
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No. We made very clear what the requirements of the House were. And that is to solve the problem at the border. Apparently the Senate has not been able to come to an agreement. They've been suggesting texts should be filed maybe today. But we've been told the same thing for months now. We've been awaiting their action. We cannot wait any longer. The House is willing to lead. And the reason we have to take care of this Israel situation right now is because the situation has escalated, of course.
I mean, the Hamas terrorists have not relented in their attacks on Israel. We're now having of course U.S. personnel being fired upon there. And, of course, with the retaliatory strikes that are taking place, the heat has been turned up there. Israel has never been in greater need of our support. And the House is serious about that. I believe we'll pass this with a wide margin and take care of that responsibility.
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Well, you're addressing some of the rumors about what are in this text. It's been negotiated behind closed doors by a small handful of persons, and even most of the members of the Senate don't know what's in it. What we've also heard is in it is that there might be limits of thousands per day before retaliatory measures or any measures that have been taken place to shut down the border. But here's the essential point. The president of the United States opened the border. We documented 64 specific actions that Joe Biden and his agencies have taken to create this catastrophe.
They did it intentionally. That's why his approval rating is in the tank. 60% of the people disapprove by your latest poll. The reason the presidency is imperiled as your opening monologue stated, is because this is an abject failure of leadership. The American people are done with this. The border has to be secured. The president has the authority right now. He doesn't need another act of Congress. He could do it right now. But he's unwilling to do it.
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Well, when they began to do the negotiation, I suggested immediately after taking the gavel, I suggested to the Senate leadership that the House should be involved. We should be in the room. I wanted to send the chairman of our committees of jurisdiction to be a part of that negotiation. And they said, "No, no. Let the Senate take care of it. We'll send you something –
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– that's palatable."
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What we're hearing right now is not.
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No. I have not been. No, I've had individual senators call and give me tips and offered things that are going on in the room. But we've not been a part of that negotiation. And I have been absolutely clear from day one, since literally the next morning after being handed the gavel in late October, what the functional equivalence of H.R. 2, what those are, and why that was necessary to solve the problem. I took 64 House Republicans to the border in January. We heard from the people in charge, the border patrol agents, the people there. And they said, "These are the things that you must do to stem the flow. And the reason we have the biggest immigration catastrophe, border catastrophe in U.S. history is because President Biden took these actions." I can name them for you.
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He does have executive authority right now.
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Of course not. He's not calling the shot. I am calling the shots for the House. That's our responsibility. And I have been saying this far longer than President Trump has. I have been saying what the requirements are to fix the problem. I don't care if they call the legislation H.R. 2 or not. What we're saying is you have to stem the flow. The president has executive authority right now. As Congress does this negotiation and the debate and the discussion, the president could stop it. Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Supreme Court has already acknowledged gives the president broad executive authority –
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He could – he could close the border literally overnight –
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– but he refuses to do it.
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Kristen, we did that. We did that nine months ago. And since we passed our measure in the House to solve this problem, and the reason we had to do it, is because we saw that President Biden was not fulfilling his obligation under the law. That's why this is such a failure of leadership. But we did our part. And by the way, since then in the nine months since that bill has sat on Chuck Schumer's desk collecting dust, 1.8 million illegals have been allowed into this country, welcomed into the country, sent around the nation into every community, communities near everyone listening and watching this morning. And that is a catastrophe.
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And the American people know it. And that's part of the reason that Joe Biden has –
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– the lowest approval rating of any president facing re-election.
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We are willing to work – we are willing to work with the Senate. I am not disclosing that. And I've been very consistent for the hundred days that I've had the gavel. We're willing to work. But they have to be serious about it. If you only do a few of those components, you are not going to solve the problem. And Kristen, that's not a Republican talking point. That's what the sheriffs at the border, the border patrol agents, the deputy chief of U.S. Border Patrol, a 33-year veteran of the agency told us. He said, "It's as though we're administering an open fire hydrant." He said, "I don't need more buckets, like the president proposed. I need to stop the flow. And we know how to do that. But Joe Biden is unwilling to do it."
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Jonathan Turley is a friend and a former colleague. I was a constitutional law attorney, a practitioner/litigator myself. And I also worked on the impeachment defense team for President Trump twice, so I'm very familiar with the law. What we're suggesting here is that Secretary Mayorkas has openly defied federal law: openly, repeatedly engaged in a practice of defying the law that Congress has put on the books and previous presidents have signed. He has also lied to Congress; he has misrepresented facts over and over. And because of that, he's obstructed congressional oversight. All of these are constitutional responsibilities that we are unable to fulfill because this Cabinet secretary has decided to defy federal law. Extreme times, desperate times call for desperate measures, and that's where we are.
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Kristen, for that matter, how does passing a new law by Congress do anything to solve the catastrophe that they have intentionally designed and created? If we pass a new law, he won't follow that law either.
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The problem is you have an abject failure of leadership.
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But the president is not using –
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– the authorities he has right now.
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Now, Kristen, the president and Mayorkas are not using the authority they have right now.
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The founders of this country warned against single-party impeachments. The founders of this country warned against single-party impeachments. The founders of this country warned against single-party impeachments. You know why? You guys know why. Because they feared it would bitterly and perhaps irreparably divide our nation.
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Nothing. Nothing's changed. I would repeat the same refrain over and over because facts are stubborn things and they do not change. The Constitution does not change. Impeachment power is probably the heaviest power that the House of Representatives is given in the Constitution. Next to the declaration of war, you can argue it's the most serious power we have. And it's not to be used for partisan political purposes. That is exactly what they did for Donald Trump. They telegraphed –
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– they were going to impeach Donald Trump –
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– before he even took his oath of office.
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It's very different. Kristen, in many ways. Let me explain the many ways. For one, the House has methodically, slowly, deliberately gone through the impeachment process, impeachment inquiry, impeachment investigation on Mayorkas and – and President Biden himself. We've involved three different committees of jurisdiction: Judiciary, Oversight, Ways and Means. We –we have followed the facts where they have led. Not for political purposes. Not because we take pleasure in this. It's, again, a heavy thing to look at the impeachment of a president or a Cabinet secretary. But these facts require it.
The House of Representatives has the constitutional responsibility of impeachment, and that begins with the investigation. And it must be very carefully, methodically done in a nonpartisan manner. That's exactly what the House Republican majority has done here. And it is exactly the opposite of what the House Democrats did in the previous administration. That is a fact, and we can follow those facts and understand them for what they are.
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