After this, Jonathan Karl is likely no longer the “most consistently delightful reporter” with whom Josh Earnest deals on a regular basis.
During the White House press briefing Tuesday, ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl pressed press secretary Josh Earnest on President Obama’s promise to use executive action to move forward on the immigration reform issue without Congress.
In particular, Karl pointed out that in February 2013, Obama had said in response to a question about using executive action to delay deportations, “I’m not the emperor of the United States. My job is to execute laws that are passed.”
“Does the president still stand by what he said last year?” inquired Karl.
Earnest answered, “Absolutely.”
But Karl continued to push, referencing a Telemundo interview during which Obama had addressed the idea of expanding the executive action that allowed “Dreamers” to avoid deportation to their parents.
“If we start broadening that,” Obama had said of the 2012 executive order, “then essentially I’ll be ignoring the law in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally. So that’s not an option.”
“Is that still operative?” Karl asked Earnest.
“I don’t want to get ahead of any sort of announcements that the president may make before the end of the year about executive actions that he may take to fix our broken immigration system,” Earnest explained, launching into a tangent about a “review” of the immigration law being conducted by the attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security.
Watch Karl try to nail down Earnest to a yes or no answer below:
