Texas: The Issue Is: Gov. Greg Abbott on political aftermath of Hurricane Beryl
AUSTIN, Texas - Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is back home from his economic development trip in Asia taking on criticism regarding the response to Hurricane Beryl and several other hot topics waiting for him.
Abbott spoke with FOX 7 Austin's Rudy Koski on Wednesday to talk about the political aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, including President Joe Biden's accusation that he couldn't reach Abbott or other state leaders after the storm hit Houston.
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GOV. GREG ABBOTT: President Biden has actually called me multiple times after disasters, from our calling to my same phone number every single time. Also, an aide who works under the president, the FEMA director, called me on that very same phone number. There has been no call from Joe Biden to that phone number at all during the entirety of this entire disaster. It just seemed like a bizarre attack, probably by his political people. But I think what it really reveals is the struggles of a failing campaign and a failing presidency.
RUDY KOSKI: When the storm hit, you were out of the country on an economic development trip. Before you left, the storm was tracking to Mexico. Do you regret doing this trip regardless?
GOV. GREG ABBOTT: My mind has never moved away from the state of Texas. I've been getting up early in the morning to make phone calls to Texas, working through the day, and then in the evening making phone calls to Texas again. And so I may have remained actively involved in a hurricane response that I know has been very well handled. At the same time, we cannot lose sight of what the issue is. And that is we have to be able to face hurricanes, face disasters, and not lose power for days on end. Texans deserve better. We will get to the bottom of this.
RUDY KOSKI: Not only you're managing this crisis, but you're doing an economic development trip and you've actually made some really substantial deals. Temple getting the announcement of a major manufacturing location coming up there. Is that why you really needed to be in that part of the world? To sign these deals, to nail these deals down?
GOV. GREG ABBOTT: But it goes much broader than that. So the first stop that we had was in Taiwan. Texas before this trip had only one foreign office, and that was in Mexico. Now we have a foreign office in Taiwan. Second, the deal that you announced was in Korea. Also in Korea was my visit to Samsung. You're there in the Austin area. What Samsung has done…they more than doubled their initial investment. And that massive facility up in Taylor, Texas. Now we're working on all of the related businesses that will be suppliers or service providers, for Samsung to make sure that we can attract them to the greater Taylor and Austin area. And we are working on some expansion issues involving not just Toyota, but also with service providers in the San Antonio area. Then we'll be going up to Tokyo working on more broad-based issues that will be very helpful to the entire Texas economy, adding, again, thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of investment.
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RUDY KOSKI: The numbers on the border continue to drop here in Texas. Are you pleased with that?
GOV. GREG ABBOTT: If you look at the entire state of Texas and the states of New Mexico, California, and Arizona, in the three other states, illegal immigration continues to increase. In Texas, in the past year since we put up all of these structural barriers, illegal immigration has decreased 74%. You'll see news coming out about increased efforts to build even more barriers.
RUDY KOSKI: You know, everybody's talking about Biden's age. Biden's age. Are people fixating too much on his age and not about the policy when there are clear differences?
GOV. GREG ABBOTT: So Americans are angry about the policies imposed by the Biden administration. But second, when you see his bumbling on national TV on international trips, his inability to complete sentences is baffling to Americans and disconcerting to those. And they see someone who's not going to be able to fulfill four more years in office.