In case you missed ’em—here’s what the newsmakers said on the Sunday morning talk shows.
House GOP #3: Border Was Secure When Trump Was in Charge
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third-ranking House Republican, was asked on FOX News Sunday about several GOP governors’ recent practice of transporting migrants from border states to blue-leaning jurisdictions.
When anchor Shannon Bream told her a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found only one-third of those surveyed agreed with the policy, Stefanik countered, “We have this border crisis because of the amnesty policies and the wide-open border that’s happened under a Democrat government under Joe Biden,” adding, “We had the most secure border in our nation’s history under President Trump.”
She went on to point to an NBC News poll that found Republicans beating Democrats on border and immigration issues by wide margins, and insisted Republicans “know the policies that work. It’s build the wall. It’s end catch-and-release. And it’s to make sure that we have a rule of law in this country.”
Republican Rep: Pressure to Impeach Biden If We Win
NBC’s Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd asked another GOP House member about suspicions that Republicans plan to hold an impeachment vote against President Biden if their party takes the majority in November.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) answered, “There’s a lot of pressure on Republicans to have that vote, to put that legislation forward…I think that is something that some folks are considering.”
When asked how she, herself, would vote, Mace said she’d have to look at the evidence before deciding, adding, “I didn’t vote to impeach the former President of the United States because I felt like due process was stripped away. I will not vote for impeachment of any President if I feel that due process has been stripped away for anyone.”
January 6 Committee Looking at Secret Service Comms
Meanwhile, several members of the January 6 Committee to investigate the plot to overturn the 2020 election appeared on the Sunday shows ahead of this week’s hearing.
Both Adam Schiff (D-CA) on CNN’s State of the Union and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) on Meet the Press said they expect this to be the final hearing on investigations—but there could possibly be one more hearing where the Committee lays out its legislative recommendations.
Raskin said he’s hopeful that a future hearing would suggest how to prevent coups, insurrections, political violence, and electoral sabotage in the future, “because this is a clear and present danger that’s continuing up right to this day.”
While they wouldn’t go into the details of what Wednesday’s hearing would cover, both members confirmed that the Committee is looking at some 800,000 Secret Service communications it has obtained from the period surrounding January 6, 2021.
Schiff says the Committee is still going through the “voluminous” data, adding, “I will say they are not a substitute for having the text messages that were apparently erased from those devices. And we are still investigating how that came about and why that came about. And I hope and believe that the Justice Department, on that issue, is looking at whether laws were broken in the destruction of evidence.”
Both Schiff and Raskin were somewhat dismissive of an interview the CBS News program 60 Minutes had teased with former Congressman and former Committee staffer Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who said a call from the White House connected directly with a rioter on January 6.
“To me, it’s interesting, but much less interesting than the fact that Donald Trump told the crowd in public, ‘You’ve got to fight like hell. And if you don’t, you’re not going to have a country anymore.'” said Raskin.
Zelensky: Putin Engaging in “Nuclear Blackmail”
After Russian President Vladimir Putin alluded to possibly using nuclear weapons in Ukraine while speaking before the UN General Assembly last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused him of engaging in “nuclear blackmail.”
Speaking on CBS’ Face the Nation, Zelensky further warned that while “maybe yesterday it was bluff, [n]ow, it could be a reality.” And he pointed to Russians shooting at Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who made the rounds on several Sunday shows, said on Face the Nation that the power plant Zelensky is referring to “has been put into cold shutdown to make it less likely that there’s some kind of catastrophic incident at the plant. It is actually still being operated by the Ukrainian operators who are essentially at gunpoint from the Russian occupying forces.”
