U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, is not willing to let thousands of migrants illegally enter the country just to “own” President Joe Biden.
In an interview on NewsNation’s “Cuomo” Wednesday, the Texas Republican said American voters “know what happened” at the southern U.S. border and that Biden is to blame for dismantling the policies of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, even as he now mulls an executive order to handle the crisis.
Crenshaw discussed the so-called bipartisan border deal that lawmakers rejected and said he believes Democrats are finally in a place where the GOP can “force their hand” on border security.
“The question for Republicans now is do we want to go back to the drawing board? And I think we should I think there’s an increasingly small window to do that,” he told host Chris Cuomo.
He responded to criticism of a border bill including aid to Ukraine and other nations while the U.S. border is not being addressed.
“I’m pro aid to Ukraine, I think we should stop Russia from plowing through Europe. But people have a valid question, ‘why can we help their border but not our border?’” Crenshaw said.
“And so we finally have an opportunity to put these two things together and say, look, let’s, let’s secure both borders. And Republicans can’t give up on this. This is the one time that we finally got Democrats in a place where they feel the political pressure to finally do something about border security. I want to force their hand,” he added.
The former Navy SEAL reasoned that “we’re probably gonna get Ukraine aid anyway…might as well do something for our own border as well. I still haven’t given up hope on that.”
Cuomo questioned what the lawmaker would say to those who are hoping to delay any border measures until Trump possibly gets elected in November, leaving it to him to return sweeping security policies.
“I say that’s an unethical stance to take,” Crenshaw responded.
“You know, I’m not willing to let in tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands more illegal immigrants, just to own Biden, right? That is a bad stance to take,” he added.”We can put things into law that force Biden’s hand.”
Speaking to those who claim new laws are not necessary because Biden already has the authority he needs, the congressman contended “two things can be true at once.”
“Biden has screwed this up a lot. He rescinded all of Trump’s executive orders. He put new executive orders in. He screwed this up a lot. But another thing is also true. You still need new laws. That’s why we passed HR2. Under Trump, he still couldn’t do what he needed to do, because he needed changes in law. Eventually, the way he more or less fixed the problem was with a deal with a foreign country, Mexico and other Northern Triangle countries,” Crenshaw recounted. “Good on him for the initiative. I appreciate it what Trump did, but in the end, he had to rely on Mexico doing it for us.”
He argued that new laws are, in fact, needed and they need to be “clear enough” for Biden to follow and not so vague that lawmakers do not understand them.
Cuomo presented the lawmaker with another mock scenario.
“Former President calls you up, says, ‘Hey, Crenshaw, thank you for your service. Look forward to having you in there when I win again. Shut up about the border for now. We’ll do it when I get in there,’” he said.
“I would say, ‘Look, Mr., Mr. President, you can win, you can win on other merits,'” Crenshaw responded. “I think this political fear that somehow Biden’s gonna get all this credit if we pass laws that forced him to say shut down the border, that’s not true. The electorate knows what happens. Yeah, voters know what happened. They know what’s been going on for the last three years. They still feel that Trump was better on the border than Biden.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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