House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) ripped into President Biden on Tuesday, calling him the “worst president in the history of the country” in a discussion about Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) floating an effort to impeach Biden.
Greene told reporters Monday she would move to force a vote that night on impeaching Biden over the situation at the U.S. southern border, but said she would hold off until speaking with Johnson first. The two met late Tuesday morning, shortly after Johnson said he was making “no commitment” on Greene’s impeachment effort.
“In general, the impeachment power is one that we wield very carefully here, as I’ve said so many times. Next to the declaration of war, it’s the heaviest power that Congress has,” Johnson said during a Tuesday press conference ahead of his meeting with Greene. “It … needs to be very methodical.
“Look, there’s no question President Biden, I think, is the worst president … I think President Biden’s the worst president in the history of the country, and there may well be impeachable offenses,” he added. “There is an investigation process that’s gone about that has been looked at [by] our committees of jurisdiction, and the process continues, so I’m not making any commitment on that this morning. We have to let the constitutional process and our constitutional responsibility play out.”
The Hill reached out to the White House for comment.
Greene said Monday she may trigger the resolution later this week.
During Greene and Johnson’s meeting, Biden announced his long-expected executive action that will turn away migrants seeking asylum who cross the southern border illegally when there is a high volume of daily encounters.
The order would be enforced when the seven-day average of daily border crossings exceeds 2,500 between ports of entry, senior administration officials said, meaning it will go into effect immediately. Biden issued a proclamation announcing the change under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Johnson, prior to the order’s announcement, called it “weak” and “window dressing.” He argued Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have taken a series of actions and “engineered the open border” over the past three and a half years.
“The evidence is so clear, and now suddenly he wants to issue some weak executive order — one, by the way, one executive order — supposedly to try to address the issue. It’s window dressing. Everybody knows that if he was concerned about the border, he would have done this a long time ago,” he said.
It is likely the chamber would vote on a motion to table Greene’s impeachment resolution or refer it to committee, as was the case in June 2023, when Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) forced a vote on her resolution to impeach Biden over the border.
House Republicans have long demanded Biden take executive action on the border, and Johnson said Sunday the order is “too little too late.”