Mark Meadows: Democrats Are Trying To Hold Our Military Hostage over DACA

‘They’re using it as leverage to help them negotiate a deal that perhaps helps illegal immigrants to our country’

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Let's bring that to the chair of the House Freedom Caucus, Mark Meadows.

You just heard Congressman Gutierrez right there. Congressman Meadows, thank you for joining us this morning. Willing to trade...

REP. MARK MEADOWS (R-NC), CHAIRMAN, FREEDOM CAUCUS: Great to be with you, George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: … what he calls an idiotic wall in return for freeing the DACA, is that good enough?

MEADOWS: You know, really right now, George, what this is all about is we're in the middle of a shutdown but yet we're talking about immigration. And so is this an amnesty shutdown? You know, I find it just really interesting that Schumer would have said what he did in your lead-up to this particular show about immigration and the fact that shutting it down over immigration is chaotic, and yet here we are on that very subject today.

But let me answer specifically your question, is, the president has been very clear, it is about border security. But border security is not just what we do at the southern border. It's also about visa overstays, it's also about chain migration, it's also about interior enforcement. And he put forth three things that he would do in exchange for making sure that those DACA recipients do not have to face deportation. And we were making good progress.

I can tell you, the president has called me a number of times saying that he wants to find a solution for those DACA recipients. And yet here we are today trying to use some kind of a tactic to force the president's hand. And I can tell you that the offers that have been made to date, whether there's the ones that you have reported or others, are not serious offers in terms of really stopping the genesis of what has created this problem in the first place.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, in fact, The New York Times reported that the president spoke to you right after his meeting with Senator Schumer. We heard Senator Durbin earlier in the program saying, boy, at 2:00 the president seemed to agree, but Senator Schumer, by 4:00 they had called the Senate and said the deal is off.

Did you convince the president to reject that Schumer deal? MEADOWS: No, you know, listen, the president is the president of the United States. He makes his own decisions. And any suggestion that I'm going to convince the president to go one way or another greatly exaggerates my influence. And I will say this, there was no deal. There is no deal. And even the way that it was reported, George, you were talking about Schumer offering $20 billion over seven years. He can't do that.

You can't obligate a future Congress. So even if he made that offer he can't even deliver on the very offer that he's putting forth. So when we look at this, let's call it what it is. This is a tactic. My good friend Luis was talking about holding people hostage. This is the Democrats trying to hold our military hostage for an issue that has been with us for decades.

I think we need to resolve it. The president wants to resolve it. But you don't do that in the middle of a shutdown.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You sure you're not being overly modest about your influence, Congressman? Has the president promised you that he wouldn't agree to an immigration deal that you don't sign on to?

MEADOWS: No. He hasn't promised that. I know that was reported. I can tell you that what he has consistently said is that he wants to deal with this particular issue. He wants to get a deal that, yes, Tom Cotton and I can fully support. But it's not just the two of us, it's a broad spectrum across our conference, a bipartisan deal, indeed, he wants to do that.

In fact, when I was in the Oval Office with him a week or so ago, he said he wanted to make sure that the Tom Cottons and the Mark Meadows of the world can work with the Lindsey Grahams and the Dick Durbins of the world. Now that's before Dick Durbin went out and soured the negotiation a week or so ago. But I can tell you that he is committed to getting this done.

We need to go back to the negotiations. We can do that if the Democrats -- the Senate Democrats here in the next 24 hours will vote to open the government back up. The negotiations will start again. And so your viewers, you know, if they're DACA recipients and they're concerned about being deported, there's a deal that can be made, but we have to open the government first.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But opening the government, the deal that moderate senators on both sides are talking about right now is extend the government until February 8 in return for a hard commitment in both the House and the Senate to vote on their bipartisan deal. Are you willing to go along with that?

MEADOWS: Well, I'm not willing to go along with it. It's not in this particular deal. And when you start to look at that, to suggest -- listen, I wanted a whole lot of things in this continuing resolution. The president called me from Air Force One and said, you know, I'm asking you to stand down on two of your requests that you are wanting to put in here.

I guess the question I have for Senator Schumer is, is, you know, the whole Cadillac tax that actually is penalizing union workers, does he want that out of there? You know, the CHIP reauthorization that helps 9 million children, does he want that out of there? There is nothing in this bill that they oppose. They're using it as leverage to help them negotiate a deal that perhaps helps illegal immigrants to our country.

And we've got to find a deal. I'm willing to engage even with my good friend Luis. We'll sit down as soon as the government opens and try to find a solution. But today, this is about funding our government, our military men and women, our veterans, our border security agents. And I find it is a tactic that we should not be using to truly provide that leverage.

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