Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" - Transcript: Interview with Greg Abbott

Interview

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BARTIROMO: Joining me right now is the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.

Governor, good to see you.

Two House Democrats have returned to Texas at this point. They are back at work. When do you expect the rest to return home? And will you apprehend them if they don't cooperate and do their jobs?

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Well, first, as you talk about, I think there's a fraying of the Democrats in Washington, D.C., because they're realizing they're accomplishing absolutely nothing up there in Washington.

They were hoping to coax the Democrats in Washington, D.C., to change their position and to vote out H.R.1 or some other election integrity bill in Washington, D.C. And they have met with a stone wall with regard to that. And so they will have gone up there for their mission and done nothing, while all the same -- at the same time spending Texas taxpayer money to pay for the special session, to pay for their salaries, to pay for the salaries of their staff, et cetera.

But also, at the same time, the Democrats who did remain in the state of Texas, they were able to work on a bill in the Texas Senate that did accommodate some of the requests by the Democrats. And so, as opposed to trying to negotiate with people in Washington, D.C., these members of the Texas House of Representatives, who were elected to hammer out details of bills in the state of Texas, they need to get back to the Texas Capitol to do their job.

With regard to arresting them, listen, this is a protocol that is established by the Texas Constitution that empowers the House of Representatives to put a call on the House that will send out Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to escort them to the Texas House chamber, where they will be kept in the Texas House chamber, subject only to a permission slip by the speaker of the House, to make sure that they stay there and get the job done.

BARTIROMO: Governor, this is partly because of misinformation about the voting bill in Texas and the 14 or 16 states that have come up with their new voting laws and approach to voting after trying to clean up what they saw to be irregularities in 2020.

So, let's go through the Texas voting bill, if you would, please, so that people can understand the facts here. You are looking to increase hours to vote during early voting, give people time off from work to vote during early voting, create uniform voting laws for the entire state, preventing rogue counties from creating their own rules, which certainly happened in 2020.

You want to ban drive-through and 24 voting and prevent voter fraud in mail-in ballots and applications.

There is some speculation now that the Democrats are going to create more of a lockdown going into the 2022 Senate and congressional races, so that the mail-in ballot situation can be the standard once again. Tell me about that and the ability to use your I.D. to vote.

ABBOTT: So the word you chose to say that what they were saying about it was a misrepresentation is pretty much the nicest thing that you can say.

The fact of the matter, Maria, is they're just flat-out lying about what's going on, and that lie has been perpetuated by the mainstream media. The fact of the matter is, as you kind of pointed out, what Texas is doing, we're actually adding hours to vote, not subtracting hours to vote.

And if you look at all -- for two weeks, or for 12 days, there are early voting with early voting hours. Compare that to Biden's home state that has exactly zero early voting hours. If there's any state engaged in voter suppression, it would be the state of Delaware, not the state of Texas.

So, in Texas, we truly have made it easier to vote and harder to cheat. The one thing that you pointed out that we are cracking down on is mail-in ballots. But a judge appointed by Barack Obama in the state of Texas said that, as it concerns mail-in ballots, now, there is an abundance of voter fraud with mail-in ballots.

Some of the Democrats who are in Washington, D.C., as we speak right now have said from the floor of the Texas House of Representatives that mail-in ballot is one of the easiest way to engage in fraud.

So Republicans and Democrats have both been clear on the record that mail- in ballots is a way that cheating does take place. We all have to agree that, if there's cheating in the election process, we need to stop that cheating. And the best way to stop that cheating is to tighten up restrictions concerning mail-in ballots.

BARTIROMO: But, Governor, this misrepresentation, this lying, bold-faced lying, is starting at the top.

It is President Biden who keeps coming out calling all of these laws Jim Crow laws. Should the president come out and show some honesty on all of these voting bills, rather than trying to push the Democrat party H.R.1 bill through, which, of course, tries to do the opposite, no I.D. and making mail-in ballots the standard?

ABBOTT: So, this is the same president who called me a Neanderthal. Now he's invoking Jim Crow two.

And I got to tell you what. That's diminishing to the people in the United States of America who did have to suffer through Jim Crow. Anybody who says this is a Jim Crow law, they don't either know Jim Crow laws or they don't know what's going on in the state of Texas, because there is no segregation. There is no attempt to make it harder on people of color.

And, in fact, Texas passed a voter I.D. law a few years ago, and ever since -- and they said the same thing: Oh, this is voter suppression. It will deny people of color the ability to vote.

Ever since we passed that law, there's been more people vote than ever before, including people of color. It is easier today than it's ever been for people of color and for all Texans to be able to cast a vote.

And so these aspersions that are being cast by the president of the United States are completely reprehensible. And it shows the American people that the president of the United States is willing to lie about what's going on to try to get his way. And that's one reason why you're seeing President Biden's polling numbers continue to plummet.

BARTIROMO: Yes, what an extraordinary state of affairs. You hit it right on the nose.

Meanwhile, these Democrats who are avoiding doing their job are testing positive for COVID. We see that COVID numbers are up at the border, illegals bring in not just human trafficking and narcotics, illicit narcotics killing Americans, but also COVID.

We have got a report here that says COVID cases are up 900 percent in the month of June year over year. Give me an assessment of where we are with these dangerously wide open borders. You say you're going to be arresting illegal trespassers. Have you done so?

ABBOTT: I have.

First of all, I will tell you that, listen, this is the -- one of the most rare reprehensible actions by the Biden administration. First, if you recall, under the Trump administration, they pretty much had cross-border illegal immigration shut down.

All that Biden had to do was to continue the Trump policies, and we would have no problem on the border whatsoever. But now it's getting worse because Biden is opening the floodgates for people who are coming from countries where there's an extremely low vaccination rate, and there's an extremely high number of people coming across the border who do have COVID.

But, second, so what Texas is doing, we're not playing games anymore. I have deployed the National Guard, as well as the Texas Department of Public Safety. And we have a new program in place, because the Biden administration plan is to catch and release.

The Texas plan is to catch and to jail. So we are arresting and jailing. The program has already begun. It took a few weeks to set up, because we actually had to set up an entire new booking system. And we had to get judges involved in the process, magistrates to -- who would magistrate these people.

We had to open up a former prison that has now 1,000 jail beds that we're starting to fill up. We are arresting people every single day, and we're arresting for trespass. When you come across the river, you're typically coming into private property or county property or state property. You are trespassing.

And because I declared it an emergency, the punishment for the crime has been doubled. So it's either a Class B or Class A misdemeanor that can put them in jail for a half-a-year or a year. And our goal is to continue to arrest people coming across the border, but, at the same time, surge more National Guard, more Texas Department of Public Safety officers to make sure that we're doing everything that we can as a state to secure the border.

BARTIROMO: Well, it's an incredible situation, and incredible to me that this administration refuses to see this realistically.

It's not just illegals coming into our country, more than a million so far. We're looking at potentially two million people apprehended in 2021, if, in fact, these numbers keep up at this pace. And you have got the fentanyl, 93,000 overdoses in America in the last year. We know that fentanyl comes over the border. And it is made in Mexico.

You have got the criminal cartels of Mexico and the criminal cartels of China working together to get these illicit narcotics into our country. What is the impact?

I haven't even spoken about the got-aways, Governor. What can you tell us about the number of people that your -- that your enforcement sees on surveillance video? They come into the country. They don't want to get apprehended. And they go where? To Tucson? Where?

ABBOTT: So, let me...

BARTIROMO: I know that Tucson is one of the havens.

ABBOTT: So you mentioned two topics. I will address them both.

One is what's going on with fentanyl. Understand this. And that is, fentanyl is one of the most deadly drugs that exists. It's almost 100 times more potent than morphine, almost 50 times more potent than heroin. And it's laced onto other drugs like ecstasy, Valium, Xanax, and other things that people are taking. And people are losing their lives.

There was a tragic story in Austin, Texas, about a young man who lost his life because he bought a pill off the street that was laced with fentanyl, and he died. This is happening over and over again.

But here's the important mathematical fact, Maria. And that is, when you put all law enforcement agencies together, they have seized more fentanyl to kill, to kill every man, woman and child in the United States of America. All it takes is two milligrams for it to be a lethal dose.

BARTIROMO: Wow.

ABBOTT: And, once again, the Biden administration is doing nothing to stop this.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

ABBOTT: And so Texas once again is stepping up. And we are going after the cartels, seizing this.

There was a video that was on FOX News just yesterday about how Texas DPS officers are tracking down these people coming across the border. And it was showing they were dealing with the drug cartels themselves. And so there's -- these aren't unaccompanied minors coming across the border. This has been an escalation of the drug cartels coming across the border.

So, Texas is engaged in a massive law enforcement effort to crack down on some of the most dangerous criminals in the United States.

BARTIROMO: Yes.

Governor, thanks very much for your leadership on this. You stand tall in the face of really this breaking of laws and ignorance as it relates to the impact here.

Thanks very much for being here this morning, Governor Greg Abbott in Texas. Thank you, sir.

ABBOTT: Thank you, Maria.

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