White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was pressed Friday by CNN’s Chris Cuomo to explain the thinking behind President Obama’s executive action on immigration, a course of action the chief executive repeatedly promised before Thursday he would never take.
“Republicans have had more than a year and a half to act on a compromise piece of legislation that passed the Senate in bipartisan fashion,” Earnest said. “So we certainly are hopeful that Congress is going to view this as, as a motivation you might say, to try to take action finally on common-sense comprehensive immigration reform that would be good for border security.”
“It would be good for national security to finally bring some accountability to our immigration system. That’s what’s been missing for too long. And we’re hopeful that Congress is going to take those steps,” Earnest said.
Cuomo, who is the brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, questioned this line of thought, pushing the White House press secretary to explain what appears to be a pretty obvious “flip-flop.”
“[T]he president promised not to do this,” he said. “He kept saying, ‘I won’t take executive action.’ Everybody keeps showing the tapes of him doing it … And they said if you care about working with us, don’t do this. And then he did it. What’s the calculation?”
Earnest’s response? Blame House Republicans, saying “He wasn’t going to allow House Republican obstruction as an excuse to not fix the obvious problems in our immigration system that everybody acknowledges exist.”
