WATCH: Trump says FBI ‘may have to’ help Texas round up AWOL Dem lawmakers
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President Donald Trump saidTuesday evening that the FBI “may have to” round up a group of Democratic lawmakers who fled Texas to avoid voting on the state’s proposed redistricting map.
This comes as Texas Governor Greg Abbott and several Texas leaders, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, have demanded that the 50 Democratic members of the state legislature who fled the state return or face consequences.
The Democrats fled the state in an effort to deny Republicans the necessary two-thirds quorum required to vote on the redistricting map, which would likely give the GOP an edge in elections and potentially add five House seats to the Texas Republican congressional delegation.
National Democrats have praised the stunt. During a press conference on Sunday, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a leading Democratic figure, shared his support for the Texas Democrats, describing their departure as a “righteous act of courage,” while claiming Republicans want to silence “millions of voices, especially Black and Latino voters.”
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Abbott said the lawmakers’ commitment to voting as elected state officials is a duty and is “not optional.” The governor also said a legislator determined to have “forfeited his or her office due to abandonment” can be removed from office under the Texas Constitution, thereby creating a vacancy, which the governor can “swiftly fill” under Article III, Section 13.
After the Democrats failed to meet Abbott’s 4 p.m. CT Monday deadline to return, Texas Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows announced he would sign arrest warrants against any absent Democrat lawmakers if authorized by a vote of the chamber. Shortly thereafter, the House did approve the warrants and Gov. Greg Abbott then swiftly called on the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest the “delinquent Texas House Democrats.”
The attorney general has stated that the lawmakers “should be found and arrested no matter where they go.”
Trump weighed in on the political intrigue Tuesday at the White House when he was asked by a reporter, “Do you want the federal government and the FBI to help locate and arrest these Texas Democrats who have left the state?”
The president responded that it is a bad look for Democrats to “abandon” the state rather than fight it out in the legislature.
“Well, I think they’ve abandoned the state,” he said. “Nobody’s seen anything like it, even though they’ve done it twice before. And, in a certain way, it almost looks like they’ve abandoned the state. Looks very bad.”
Pressed further on whether the FBI should get involved, Trump answered, “Well, they may have to.”
“They may have to,” he repeated. “No, I know they want them back. Not only the attorney general, the governor wants them back. If you look, I mean the governor of Texas is demanding they come back. So, a lot of people are demanding they come back. You can’t just sit it out. You have to go back. You have to fight it out. That’s what elections are all about.”
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Asked by Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy whether he thought Texas’ redistricting plans were worth risking blue states similarly retaliating, Trump answered, “They’ll do it anyway.”
“Why, if we stop over there, they would have done it anyway,” he said. “Look, a lot of these states, you know, I watched this morning as Democrats are complaining and they’re complaining from states where they’ve done it, like in Illinois, like in Massachusetts.”
“The Democrats have done it long before we started. They’ve done it all over the place. They did it in New York. They did it in a lot of different states,” Trump went on.
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The president went on to praise Texas’ redistricting plans, saying, “There’s tremendous support for it.” He also praised Abbott, saying the future of the plans depends on him.
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“Texas is a place that’s done very well with a free enterprise kind of an attitude, with the exact opposite of what’s happening in New York with a communist mayor. And they know what they’re doing. And they’re doing the right thing,” he said. “So, we’ll see what happens. We have a wonderful governor in Texas. He feels strongly about it. It’s going to be up to him.”
Fox News Digital’s Elizabeth Pritchett and Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.