AUSTIN, Texas – Governor Greg Abbott spoke bluntly when asked about President Joe Biden’s performance at the concert. State of the Union address.
“I give an ‘F’ for failure,” he said in an interview Friday at the governor’s mansion. “There is a number one issue in America and that is border security. … It is an issue [Biden] failed, and he waited 40 minutes to even bring it up,” the Texas Republican said in a speech Thursday.
Although recent polls show the American electorate is increasingly worried about illegal immigration, Abbott has been beating the drum before. He has been a The Biden administration has a thorn in its side For years — and now her national profile has been raised amid widespread speculation that she intends to become former President Donald Trump’s running mate or attorney general if he wins in November.
“I have only one goal — and that’s to be the leader of the great state of Texas,” Abbott told NBC News.
Despite being pressed about whether he planned to run for president in 2028, he demurred.
“I plan to run for governor again in Texas,” he said. “I’m taking a step.”
Abbott will be up for re-election in 2026.
He is currently defending House Republicans’ decision to kill a bipartisan border security bill — at Trump’s insistence — that the president touted during a speech at the Capitol Thursday night.
“If Joe Biden really believed in compromise,” Abbott said, “he would work with the House.”
Before being elected governor in 2014, Abbott was the longest-serving attorney general in Texas history and was also a Texas Supreme Court justice. Born in Wichita Falls and raised in Duncanville, Texas. Not long after law school, he was paralyzed by a falling tree while running.
Now he is among the people most responsible for creating divisions among Democrats over the immigration policies of the Biden administration, in turn pushing them to the right. His decision to bus migrants into the nation’s major cities prompted Democratic mayors to reach out to Biden over the record migrant influx.
The White House has repeatedly called the busing program a “political gimmick,” but it cemented Abbott’s lead among the Republican base. Just this week, he and his attorney general, Ken Paxton, led a decisive victory in their home state: a number of Republican candidates they endorsed ousted many GOP members of the Texas House in what appeared to be purely political revenge. Losing Republican lawmakers passed the governor on a legislative priority — school vouchers — and tried to impeach Paxton.
The message was clear: Don’t mess with the governor of Texas.
Abbott, 66, is also pushing ahead with court battles over buoys on the Rio Grande, razor wire at Eagle Pass and a new law that would fundamentally change the relationship between local and federal government immigration enforcement. The law, which was originally supposed to take effect on Sunday, was temporarily suspended by the Supreme Court.
During the legal battle over the statute, a judge who sided with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department wrote that “an increase in immigration does not constitute an ‘occupation’.”
Abbott on Friday rejected that characterization.
“These are not migrants crossing the border,” he said. “These are people crossing the border in violation of federal law.”