Republican Congressman Finally Admits Reason Behind Trump's "National Emergency" And It Has Nothing To Do With An Emergency

I bet you know who Rep. Jim Jordan is, but in case you need a refresher, he’s the Ohio “Freedom Caucus” Congressman who was accused last year by a startling number of former Ohio State University wrestlers of ignoring and even helping to cover up their sexual abuse at the hands of the team doctor while Jordan was an assistant coach at the school.

Amazingly, Jim is still a member of Congress, because Republicans only care when elected officials are accused of something if there’s a D after their name on the news chyrons.

But whether it’s because he’s a moron or because he’s just too used to saying things by accident on the news now, Rep. Jordan did manage to come clean about one thing recently, and we’re guessing the entire Republican establishment wishes they’d have booted him back when the worst thing about him was the multiple accusations.

Jordan appeared on ABC’s This Week with host Martha Raddatz, where she asked him if there were other examples of a President having made a request of Congress, having the request rejected, then deciding to use an “emergency declaration” to go ahead and do what they want anyway.

Initially, Jordan insisted that “it wasn’t a rejection” because there was “some money for a wall” in the compromise they just passed. But that’s incorrect — border security money allocated in the budget compromise was specified for “fencing,” and very specifically not for a “wall.”

But then Jordan took it a step further and admitted why Trump wanted the wall to begin with, and why Trump was using the “emergency” end-around to bypass Congress:

So Congress said it’s okay for some, but the President said ‘this is such a grave problem, I need more money to build more wall, and to fulfill the campaign promise that I told the American people I was gonna do, and that’s exactly what he’s pushing for.”

And that’s the root of it all right there, isn’t it — there is no national emergency. This is simply Trump demanding money to fulfill a campaign promise.

Watch the exchange here:

.@Jim_Jordan: Trump declared a national emergency “to fulfill the campaign promise that [he] told the American people [he] was going to do.” pic.twitter.com/zlm4Vmg44f

— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) February 17, 2019