It Seems Mike Johnson May Have Lied Just So He Could Kill the Border Deal
The House speaker was never all that interested in a border compromise.

Republican Senator James Lankford is calling B.S. on House Speaker Mike Johnsonâs newest excuse for killing the border deal.
After months of brutal negotiations, the Senate on Sunday unveiled a $118 billion bipartisan agreement to address security at the U.S.-Mexico border. The deal would tighten standards for asylum, send billions in long-awaited aid to U.S. allies like Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, and would create a standard for shutting down the southern border if daily benchmarks for illegal crossings are reached. So, in other words, it does exactly what a lot of Republicans wanted.
Johnson, who declared the bill âdead on arrival,â seems keen to continue to drag out the ordealâthis time, apparently, because he felt uninvolved.
âWell, 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,â Johnson said on NBCâs Meet the Press on Sunday.
âWe should be in the room. I wanted to send the chairmen of our committees of jurisdiction to be a part of that negotiation. And they said, âNo, no. Let the Senate take care of it. Weâll send you something ⌠thatâs palatable.â What weâre hearing right now is not,â he continued.
But Lankford, who served as the lead GOP negotiator on the bill, claims thatâs completely made up.
According to Lankford, Johnson was asked âearly onâ if he wanted to be âengaged on this,â reported CNNâs Manu Raju.
âHe said the House has already spoken,â Lankford said, referring to House Republican bill H.R. 2, an extreme asylum-limiting immigration bill that has effectively zero chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Since then, Johnson has been âloosely briefedâ on the Senate talks, according to Lankford, who added that if the Senate deal were already law, âthe border would have literally been closed every day for the last four months.â
Johnsonâs reluctance to meaningfully act on the border can be traced back to recent Republican confessions that dragging out the border crisis actively helps Donald Trump and hurts President Joe Biden in their race for the White House.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had his own two cents for Johnson on Monday, urging the leader of the lower chamber to âdo the right thing.â
âI say to Speaker Johnson: Donât let the 30 hard-right people in the House who are extreme â they wanted us to default, they wanted the government not to pay its debts, they wanted ⌠the government to shut down. Theyâre extremists, and theyâre running your show,â Schumer said on MSNBCâs Morning Joe.
âYou know what the right thing to do is. You know we need to fix our border. You know that it has to be bipartisan,â he added.
Schumer has promised to hold a procedural vote to advance the package on Wednesday. Itâs currently unclear if the deal has the 60 votes it needs to pass, however. A couple dozen Republican senators are expected to vote against the deal, according to Lankford, and several Democrats are also expected to torpedo the package.
âIf you believe, as I do, that we must secure the border now, doing nothing is not an option,â Biden said on Sunday, throwing his weight behind the deal.