Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill.
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00:00Okay, good morning.
00:02How are you doing?
00:03I'm good.
00:04Well, thanks for coming.
00:06I'm delighted to meet the President's nominee for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
00:12He's got a great experience, including down in Columbia,
00:16which has been the primary success story for the U.S. counter-drug mission with Plan Colombia.
00:22But he's held virtually every position within the DEA,
00:26and obviously the single biggest challenge DEA faces is the flood of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids across the border.
00:37I look forward to visiting with him and our new ambassador down in Mexico City in the coming weeks
00:43to try to figure out what we can do more to try to help deal with this challenge,
00:50which has taken the lives of so many Americans here on this side of the border.
00:56I'm the chairman of the International Narcotics Caucus this session,
01:02and we will be holding a variety of hearings about policy changes that we can do,
01:07additional resources, better authorities to not only go after the threat
01:13and to stop it before it gets to our neighborhoods and communities across Texas and across the country,
01:19but what additional resources they might need.
01:24DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, is a rather small agency under the federal government,
01:30about 10,000 people, which when you consider a country of 330 million
01:36and the countries that they have to deal with, like everything from South America to Central America and Mexico,
01:43so we're going to be looking at what additional resources they might need as well.
01:48But I look forward to introducing the nominee and supporting his confirmation.
01:56Do you say it's any opposition to him?
01:58I'm not aware of any.
02:00It would be hard to oppose him because he's got such incredible credentials, so I'm optimistic.
02:09With the drop in the flow of migrants coming across the border,
02:12do we see the fentanyl flow also drying up, or what's the current situation?
02:17I'm not sure exactly what the numbers are now, but some of this comes smuggled across the ports of entry,
02:25and the part that I'm confident has dried up is the so-called gotaways,
02:30the million-and-a-half-plus people who came across the border and simply evaded law enforcement.
02:35I know there's a narrative that all the hard drugs come across the ports of entry.
02:42Certainly many of them do, but I think it's just a fantasy to think that the people who were evading law enforcement
02:50during the Biden administration's so-called gotaways weren't also involved in illegal activity
02:56like running drugs in the United States.
02:58So obviously we need to deal with all of those.
03:01Senator, are you comfortable with how aggressive the administration's been on deportation specifically?
03:08We've seen situations where young children have been sent to countries after their mothers were deported.
03:14Is that the kind of thing you're hearing back home is the kind of tactics that they should be employing here?
03:19Well, I think there's a lot of my constituents who are delighted that President Trump has finally gotten serious
03:25about enforcing the law and removing people who should not be in the United States
03:30because they came illegally to their countries of origin.
03:34I think that's the primary reaction I'm hearing.
03:38And as far as the children who have gone back presumably with their parents
03:42who were illegally in the United States on a voluntary basis,
03:45I think to me that's understandable that mothers, the parents would want to take those children back with them.
03:56And then there's about a half a million unaccompanied minors
04:00who I understand are being reunited with their families and being removed from the United States.
04:06So this has gotten to be sort of of epic proportions,
04:10the number of people in the country who came in during the last four years.
04:13And I think this is a necessary part of restoring the rule of law
04:18and security to our border and logic to our immigration system.
04:24There's legal channels for people to come into the United States,
04:27and we naturalize about a million people a year.
04:30That's the right way to do it.
04:31Do you have any concern that Ed Martin and his acting interim capacity
04:36has waited a little too far into the political realm?
04:40Well, he's still pending.
04:42His nomination is still pending in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
04:45so we'll be dealing with that soon, I imagine.
04:50But so far, he's serving merely in an acting capacity,
04:55and we'll deal with his nomination very soon.
04:58Senator, over the recess, there was a controversy involving the Defense Secretary,
05:03Pete Hexeth, and his use of signal.
05:05You guys were very critical of Hillary Clinton and her use of classified information.
05:10Do you have similar concerns about Pete Hexeth,
05:13talking about military plans over signal?
05:16Well, I support the Inspector General investigation
05:20that Chairman Wicker and Ranking Member Reed have had at the Department of Defense
05:28to look into all of these commercial apps, like Signal.
05:32There's a number that advertise their security, end-to-end encryption,
05:39and indeed, we learned during some of the hearings in the Intelligence Committee
05:43that some of these had already been preloaded onto government equipment,
05:48government computers and cell phones and the like.
05:53I think we need to get a good handle on this
05:55because we know our adversaries are relentless
05:57in terms of trying to steal any information they can about our national security,
06:04and we need to make sure that all of that information is protected as much as possible.
06:12Right now, it's a little confusing to know what is and what is not authorized.
06:15I understand why the Department of Defense
06:18or some of the intelligence community don't really know what the rules are.
06:23We need to firm that up and make that absolutely clear
06:26so that our confidential, secure information should remain secure.
06:33Do you think it was responsible for him, though, to talk to his wife about this over Signal?
06:38Well, I hope we're not trying to prevent people from talking to their spouses.
06:44What about military plans?
06:46Well, I don't think we know exactly what the facts are.
06:50So far, we've been told that none of this was classified information,
06:54and I'll have to await the results of the inspector general investigation.
06:59Do you still have confidence in him at this point?
07:02Yes.
07:02What did you hear from Texas businesses on tariffs over this recess?
07:07Well, they're concerned about the disruptive nature of this change in U.S. policy,
07:13but they're optimistic that with the 90-day pause
07:16that hopefully a zero-tariff negotiation will occur.
07:21I have confidence in Secretary Besant, who's leading the administration's efforts in that area.
07:27I mean, the truth is, for example, that you can't export a pound of American or Texas ground beef
07:34to countries like Australia because they have non-tariff barriers to trade,
07:40and they export billions of dollars here to the United States.
07:44So clearly, the trading system is imbalanced, and it needs to reset.
07:49And it's understandable there's going to be some temporary disruption while that occurs.
07:55But I'm hoping that Secretary Besant will expedite those negotiations,
08:00which I know are currently underway,
08:02and get to the goal of zero tariffs and open and trade, free trade, with a level playing field.
08:09One more question?
08:10The President's concern about the higher prices.
08:12How much concern are you hearing about high prices back home?
08:15Well, for four years, we've suffered from 40-year high inflation,
08:18so the price of everything went up about 20 percent during the Biden years.
08:23And, yes, there's been some temporary increase in prices because of the tariffs.
08:29But, again, my hope is that that can go back to those prices will go down along with negotiated zero tariffs
08:37that are the administration's goal.
08:42Thank you, guys.
08:43Appreciate it.
08:43Thank you, sir.
08:43Nothing else going on today, huh?
08:47Still early.
08:48Yeah.