You
The issue of immigration reform has exploded in the U.S. with a crush of migrants entering
at the Southwest border.
Securing the border is the most important issue according to Republicans in Congress.
But this week the bipartisan deal that included aid to Ukraine and Israel paired with immigration
reform measures collapsed in the U.S. Senate.
Among leading Republicans opposed to the foreign aid border security package,
Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, who joins us now.
And Senator, thanks very much for being here.
Oh, Frederica, thanks for having me on.
What is your opposition to the bipartisan border security deal that is now effectively dead?
It made matters worse.
And let me explain that.
When we went into these negotiations, which I don't think ever should have been secret,
should have been public, what we were asking for is let's use the Biden administration's
desire for Ukraine funding has leveraged to force President Biden to secure the border.
He opened it up.
He wants an open border.
His Democratic colleagues in Congress want an open border.
And I don't believe they're negotiating good faith.
But we weren't looking for a massive Rube Goldberg-like immigration bill.
We were just looking for simple metrics.
For example, tying Ukraine funding specifically to benchmarks that he would have to meet to
have the money flow.
And I think we're all shocked at what was produced, but again, many, many problems with
this bill.
But the biggest one was, presidents already have the authority to secure the border.
President Trump did it with a great deal of resistance from open border groups.
President Biden used that same executive authority to open up the border.
So he has the executive authority.
He certainly has Republicans in Congress that it's courts intervened that we'll do anything
we can to pass measures to overrule those courts.
But the fact the matter is, is this bill by creating, for example, discretionary authority
to stop processing asylum claims at 4,000.
Now, all of a sudden, you are saying that the president really doesn't have that authority
because we're going to codify that discretion and that ability would run out after three
years.
So you would actually hamper a future president's ability to secure the border before thousands
of people a day on average would come into the border.
But this would normalize thousands of people a day, which is simply unacceptable.
Isn't something better than nothing in this regard?
Not in this case.
No, because it would actually take away presidential authority from a president who wants to secure
the border.
It would codify an awful lot of the open border policies and administration.
So again, I'm sorry to say that.
I was telling my colleagues, I would now vote for it.
I would promote a bill that's secure the border and provided support for the Ukrainian people.
But that's not what we got.
Can there be no negotiation?
Well, it should have been a pretty simple negotiation that the president now realizes because Mayor
Adams, the mayor of Chicago are talking about how a fraction of the 6 million people that
the Biden administration have led in and destroyed their cities.
So now they're finding out that maybe from just standpoint of politics, we better do something.
So now they're saying they want a secure border.
We're happy to work with them, but it's to secure the border.
It's not about providing billions of dollars for sanctuary cities.
It's not about providing more levels of visas and work permits and pretty well legalizing
the abuse of the pro authority.
Again, there's so many problems with this bill.
You know, beefing up customs and border patrol so they can handle thousands of data.
The better solution there is let's bring it down to a trickle.
You want to shut down the border effectively?
Yes, so we can establish a legal immigration system, which is what I was working with,
the Trump White House in the in 2020.
Unfortunately, he lost the election.
President Biden opened up the border, set back legal immigration reform for quite some time,
I fear.
What do you say to critics who say Republican opposition to the border deal is because
former President Donald Trump weighed in against it?
I completely disagree.
I certainly never got a call.
This wasn't our concern.
We looked at the actual components of the bill and and so did a lot of other people, too.
I mean, the fact that this bill collapsed in under 24 hours tells you all you really need
to know.
Plus, Senator Murphy, one of the Democrats chief negotiator said this never close to the
border.
We had a slight increase in the asylum standard.
Yeah, that just I mean, that's the Democrat negotiator.
This bill would have been worse than doing nothing.
It actually would have harmed a future president's ability to secure the border.
That's why we had to reject it.
Meanwhile, here we are now, and you did not vote to advance a now separate funding bill
for emergency foreign aid.
Why not?
Well, first of all, our top priority should be to secure our own border before we spend
money to secure Ukraine's or any other nations.
So we still want to make that point.
But I've got real questions about the Ukraine war.
The only way this thing ends is in a negotiated settlement.
Every day that goes by and I'm going to hate the settlement, but every day that goes by
and more Ukrainians die, more Russian conscripts die.
I take no joy in that.
These are people that yanked out of villages.
More of Ukraine gets destroyed.
So what our actions ought to be directed toward is bringing Putin to the negotiating
table rather than set, you know, feeling the flames of war, a bloody stalemate to the
student of the $60 billion.
So again, I have just fundamental disagreement with people who want to, you know, fuel those
flames.
So, so again, you oppose giving this emergency aid to Ukraine?
Certainly without securing our border first, yes.
Speaking of the border, migrants are relocating to cities, as you know, but including the
small city here in Wisconsin of white water.
White water is asking the federal government for financial help.
What is your message to white water officials seeking that assistance?
By met with those officials, I'm completely sympathetic with the plight they are in caused
by President Biden as Democrat allies in Congress.
They're open border policy.
If there's federal funds going to be flowing to make up for their losses, it should come
out of other spending.
I would suggest to some of the green energy boondoggles the $400 billion that are going
to really cost about $1.2 trillion and repurpose those funds.
I'd be fully supportive of that.
Senator Ron Johnson, we leave it there.
Thanks very much.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
It didn't have enough time to get into the intricacies of all that business.
You know, Title 42 and all of that.
No, you never do.
And that's, you know, it's a problem.
And, again, I'm not blaming me.
It's the way it is.
I mean, you really need to sit down here for like an hour or two, some of these long format
interviews.
You know, like Tucker had with Putin, which, by the way, was a very interesting interview.
Did he get the journalist out?
I thought that was interesting that he, right in the moment, I think, asked President Putin
to release Evan.
Yeah.
So Putin said, well, release one of our assassins.
Hmm.
Putin's a very smart, very recognizable guy.
Obviously left out the bad stuff.
You know, he is a war criminal.
But what he said was probably about 90% true.
And he is pointing out some real flaws in the US policy.
I mean, for example, weakening our own dollar, trying to harm him.
We're not harming him.
It's, I mean, if you haven't listened to the interview, it's very interesting to listen
to.
Yeah, I have not.
I have not.
Yeah.
But you really think that Putin would negotiate this war to.
Well, I've got to look into this.
You know, apparently they were doing negotiation in Istanbul.
I do know when I went to Zelensky's inauguration, as well as two months later, returned with
Chris Murphy.
Zelensky, at that point in time, wanted to do a peace deal with Putin.
This is Putin had already illegally invaded Crimea and was in firm control of Eastern
Ukraine.
Zelensky knew he couldn't dislodge Russia at that point in time.
You can't dislodge him now.
Putin's not going to lose this war.
Four times the population, the average age of Ukrainian soldiers, 43.
Or reports from their inner circle saying, send us more weapons, but we don't even
have personnel to fire them.
Again, this is a disaster.
As soon as we end this disaster, the better.
And as much as we're going to hate the result.
Indeed.
All right, Senator, thanks very much.
Sir, I'm not very uplifting for a great guy.
Have a good day.
Thank you.
Take care.
Bye.