WASHINGTON, D.C.—House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends to discuss House Republicans’ efforts on immigration reform legislation that would build the wall, secure the border, close loopholes like the the visa lottery system, and solve DACA. Following Scalise’s appearance, President Trumptweeted support for the bill, encouraging all Republicans to vote for the legislation.
Whip Scalise then discussed the danger of the left advocating for harassment against fellow Americans with conservative political viewpoints.
Click here or on the image above to watch the interview.
“There is still a divide and you could see it in the vote last week, and this week there’s probably a little bit more of a divide. But members over the weekend spent a lot of time trying to figure out if they could come together as Republicans. Look, we have seen the Democrats walk away from this. The Democrats do not want to build the wall. This bill is even stronger than the last bill at building the wall. Front-loading the money so that President Trump can have the money he needs to build the wall. Close loopholes, reunite families, it does all of those things, but, clearly, we haven’t been able, as Republicans to get an agreement on how best to do this. And that’s where the divide is.”
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“…What the Democrats want is amnesty and open borders. And that’s really what it’s come down to, and they don’t want to build the wall. Let’s be clear, I fully support what President Trump is doing to try to secure our border, which includes building the wall–not the only thing to do but it’s one of the things you should be doing. And so, you know, you have a president who wants to actually secure America’s border. That should not be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, here in Washington, Democrats here don’t want to secure the border working with this President. So we’re going to keep trying to get it done. But, you know, today is going to be another effort. We’re going to keep at it.”
On the importance of practicing civility in politics:
“First of all, I think that what she said there is no place for any kind of call to violence or harassment of anybody based on your political viewpoints of all things. This is America. Even Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor said it’s not American to engage in that kind of behavior. So I think everybody needs to tone it down and recognize, we are a country of divided political viewpoints and that’s what makes America great. But, you should express those viewpoints civilly and where you have your disagreements, you solve them at the ballot box. That’s the greatest thing of America. When we have our differences we can actually go and vote people in or out of office based on their political views and you can express them freely, but you don’t have the right to go and try to harass or incite violence against them.”
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“You know, I have seen that kind of vitriol on the left. There is no place for it. Frankly, you should see more Democratic leaders calling those statements out. They shouldn’t be sitting on the sidelines letting those kind of statements by their own supporters be made. We didn’t do that when Barack Obama was President. There were a lot of things we didn’t agree with him on in terms of his policies, but we never tried to incite violence against him or his supporters. There is no place for that on either side of the political aisle.”