Scalise: Senate Needs to Take Mayorkas Impeachment Seriously
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"I did see this classified briefing yesterday, and it's alarming. But I agree with [Speaker Johnson's] comments: There's no reason for the American people to be concerned, but I do think that it would be helpful if the President declassified this. Not only to engage our allies, but there are countries that are not necessarily our allies that also, I think, would want to know this information, that would also be alarmed by this information and would help us in addressing it.
I can't get into specifics about the classified information, but at the same time, again, I do think it would be helpful if it was declassified so that we could engage not only, again, not only our allies but other countries as well.
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Well, unfortunately, you see this every now and then, and in our majority, we actually limit our chairmen to six years. The Democrats don't limit their chairmen, and that's just a choice we made a long time ago.
When Newt Gingrich took the majority in 1994, they put term limits in place for committee chairs. And I think that's been helpful because it allows younger members the ability to say, look, 'I don't have to wait around for 30 years to be a chairman because ultimately I'm going to have an opportunity to hold a gavel someday.'
And so what that means is when a chairman gets to their six years, a lot of them leave. And I don't blame them because there's going to be other opportunities that they're going to have after their tenure as a chairman. But the Democrats don't do that; we do. And frankly, I think it's healthy that we limit our chairman to six years. But we lose some good people, and we're going to lose a few good folks. And I'm sorry to see that.
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The environment is definitely more toxic, Stuart. Social media even elevates that higher. But I think the country is so divided right now, you see it in elections. I mean, look at how close our majority is: That's a reflection of where the country is, because in every district in America, whether it's a deep red district or a deep blue district or a swing district, you're seeing a very divided nation right now over a lot of key issues.
And so this is going to play out this year. This is a major election year -- we got a presidential election. Congress is all up. There's a good chance the Senate can flip to Republican. But, I mean, it's going to be razor thin no matter what that margin is, because we have a nation that's divided and that's reflected surely here in the House.
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Well, first of all, we laid out the case. And Chairman Green, while he's going to be leaving at the end of this year, he and his committee did an incredible job over months laying out the case for why Secretary Mayorkas failed in his mission to protect the American people and should be impeached. And then ultimately that came to the floor and passed. Whether the Senate takes that seriously or not, I don't know. That's not my job; that's the Senate's job. But I would urge the Senate to take this seriously because most Americans do. Most Americans are disgusted by the open southern border, Stuart.
The fact that you've got thousands of people every day coming across our border, including people on the terrorist watch list, people from hostile nations who want to do America harm that are just strolling right across the Rio Grande, coming into America, and we don't know where they are. I can't tell you where they are. The White House won't tell you which states they're going to. They won't even tell governors how many people are going to be showing up at three in the morning by busload to their community.
But I'll tell you this: Whether it's Democrat mayors in major cities or Republicans, it doesn't matter the party -- people don't want an open southern border, and it's affecting every community in America, and it's got to be stopped. And we take it seriously, even if the Secretary of Homeland Security and the President of the United States don't."
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