Sen. Johnson slams border talks as ‘negotiating with the arsonist’

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) slammed border talks as “negotiating with the arsonist” Tuesday.

“I don’t like government shutdowns,” Johnson said in an interview on “The Hill on NewsNation” on Tuesday. “I would say the main problem we have in [these] negotiations is, in effect, we’re negotiating with the arsonist and trying to negotiate how to put out the fire he started.”

“It’s a big problem,” Johnson continued. “I mean, we have an administration, we have a president of the United States who want[s] an open border, that caused this problem.”

On Monday, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), the lead Republican negotiator on a border deal, said the legislative text of it was unlikely to come this week. 

“We have made a lot of progress. As we’re ticking through every area, going through [and] trying to write, trying to make sure everybody’s on board takes a long time … I was hoping that. That’s not going to happen,” Lankford said in response to being asked about the chance of text being released by a Wednesday special conference meeting of Senate Republicans on border talks. “There’s too many unanswered issues that are still there. There are too many unresolved parts.” 

Lankford said that the text would “more likely” come next week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently said the House GOP won’t shut down the government over border spending, following a threat by fellow member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

Johnson appeared to try to cool fears over Roy’s recent threat to withhold government funding legislation until Democrats and President Biden agree to border security and asylum reforms in H.R. 2.

When asked about Roy’s threat, Johnson responded that Roy wasn’t threatening to shut down the government.

“Chip’s one of my closest friends and colleagues. I talked to him last night, that’s not what he intended to say,” Johnson said Friday in a clip of CBS’s “Face the Nation” posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The Hill is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns NewsNation.