House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defends GOP effort to impeach DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

By Melanie Zanona, Kristin Wilson and Jeremy Herb, CNN

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise defended Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to hold last week’s failed vote on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, telling CNN in an interview the vote was a “tough judgement call” and that it may have helped lock in GOP lawmakers on the fence.

“They felt it was important, there were some members that you know, might have been going back and forth, and to lock them in,” Scalise said ahead of a second vote to impeach Mayorkas scheduled for Tuesday evening.

“I know these are all tough judgment calls, but to make sure that you lock everybody into who’s a ‘yes,’ and now we know we’re one vote short, and let’s go get that done,” Scalise added.

Scalise missed last week’s impeachment vote – which failed in an embarrassing defeat, 214-216, with three House Republicans voting against it – but he’s back in Washington on Tuesday and in “complete remission” following successful stem cell treatment for a form of blood cancer.

So long as there are no more unforeseen absences, Scalise’s return will make him the decisive vote allowing Republicans to impeach Mayorkas.

The vote is occurring the same night that New York is holding a special election to replace expelled former Republican Rep. George Santos, giving Democrats the opportunity to make the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the House even tighter.

While Republicans won the district in 2022 with Santos, Scalise sought to downplay expectations, noting that Republican candidate Mazi Pilip is going up against former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi in a congressional district that President Joe Biden carried in 2020.

“The whole Democratic apparatus of the state of New York is supporting Suozzi in a Democrat-leaning seat,” Scalise said. “So, if we’re able to pull this off, it would be a real kind of shock-the-world moment and show that the Republicans can win in tough places.”

If Democrats win Tuesday night, Scalise would not say whether Republicans would regret that Santos, who is facing federal charges, was kicked out of Congress.

“At the end of the day, that happened, the House did its will, you can’t undo that. So, the real question is, can we still hold the seat?” Scalise asked. “Santos was a surprise when he flipped that seat. So you know, we’re going to be working hard to hold it. And the Democrats are surely pulling out every stop to try to get it as well.”

Scalise backed Johnson’s vow not to take up the Senate’s $95.3 billion foreign aid bill that passed 70-29 early Tuesday morning. While GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell called on Johnson to hold a vote on the measure, which includes aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, the House speaker has said that the package must also include border security – even though House Republicans swiftly rejected a border compromise struck by the Senate earlier this month.

Scalise said that the Senate deal did not have any key policies from the Republican immigration bill that passed the House last year.

“That bill is still sitting over in the Senate, but those policies have to be part of any kind of deal,” Scalise said. “We’ve been clear from the beginning that you’ve got to actually focus on securing America’s border, especially when you’re talking about Ukraine.”

Scalise said that Johnson had requested a meeting with Biden on the border, but that the president had rejected it. “If the President really does want Ukraine funding, shouldn’t he be sitting down with the speaker now?” Scalise said.

Scalise said that an immigration bill was “not just about getting, you know, a few people in a room together and saying let’s pass a bill that we can all agree on” – a reference to the Senate’s negotiations, which included Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.

Asked what message it would send to allies around the world not to pass an aid package to Ukraine, Scalise argued that the US has already provided billions.

“We already passed billions of dollars in funding for Ukraine, so we clearly support their efforts to push back on the Russians’ aggression,” Scalise said. “The question is right now, can we also get an agreement on securing America’s border? And shouldn’t that be the front-and-center debate right now? Shouldn’t the president be engaged in that debate with the House Republican majority?”

Scalise defended former President Donald Trump’s comments on NATO over the weekend – when the former president said that he once told a NATO country’s leader he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” if the country didn’t pay their fair share in defense – saying that when he ran in 2016, Trump successfully prodded European countries to spend more on defense.

NATO members are supposed to commit 2% of their GDP to defense spending, though many countries in the alliance do not meet that goal.

“President Trump was good in pointing out that if this is about America helping protect Europe, shouldn’t Europe be paying their fair share more than anybody?” Scalise asked.

“So you’ve even seen countries like Poland that are approaching 2% because they recognize now how important this relationship is, and that you can’t just count on the US to fund the whole thing when the agreement was every country pays their fair share,” Scalise said. “That, I think, is what President Trump continues to talk about. President Biden hadn’t pushed those countries to pay their fair share.”

Scalise declined to weigh in on a symbolic resolution from Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz and other Trump allies declaring that Trump never incited an insurrection or rebellion on January 6.

Scalise said that he hadn’t read the resolution – another example of Trump’s allies seeking to rewrite the narrative about January 6 – and that it would go through the committee process.

The House majority leader was critical of the legal cases against Trump blending into the presidential election, saying there shouldn’t be efforts to kick Trump off the ballot or trials right before Election Day.

Asked about the GOP impeachment inquiry into Biden, Scalise said that process was continuing.

“We have a process that’s playing out with President Biden, it’s an impeachment inquiry that we’re in the middle of right now,” Scalise said, noting Republicans continued to collect testimony this week.

Scalise said that the stem cell treatment he received for his blood cancer forced him to isolate for six weeks while his immune system recovered, but he’s happy to be back in Washington.

“I feel great,” Scalise said. “Being out for six weeks was tough, but it’s really good to be back.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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