Texas Lt. Governor Says Everywhere Joe Biden Moves 'Death Comes With Him'

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on Monday claimed that "death comes with" President Joe Biden everywhere he goes.

The Republican lawmaker made the comment during an appearance on Fox News with host Martha MacCallum in which he discussed his state's recent decision to defy a Supreme Court ruling and not allow federal agents to remove physical barricades, like razor wire, from the southern border. The decision, announced in a statement from Governor Greg Abbott, has since been signed off on by 25 other Republican governors and has been decried as a constitutional crisis by others.

Patrick's comment also came as a direct response to the news of three American soldiers being killed in a drone strike in Jordan, carried out by a group backed by Iran.

"Everywhere the president, this President Biden moves, death comes with him," Patrick said. "Fentanyl across the border, people drowning in the river, people killed here by MS-13, soldiers killed afar."

Patrick went on to call Biden "weak" and predicted that would lose reelection in November.

Newsweek reached out to the White House via email on Monday afternoon for comment.

Despite the lieutenant governor's mention of migrants dying while attempting to cross the Rio Grande River into Texas, such instances in recent months have been widely blamed on Abbott and the Texas government.

On January 12, federal agents were blocked from entering a migrant processing site in Shelby Park near Eagle Pass, where they were attempting to help a group of six that were struggling to cross the river. A woman and two children drowned.

"Last night a woman and two children drowned crossing the Rio Grande River near Shelby Park—land recently seized by the Texas National Guard, who blocked Border Patrol from accessing the land," Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic strategist and an appointee of President Barack Obama, wrote in a post about the incident. "Greg Abbott is responsible for these deaths. And he should be tried accordingly."

Republican lawmakers have recently intensified their criticisms of Biden and the Democratic Party over the border, characterizing the influx of migrants as a "crisis" and an "invasion." Many GOP members in Congress have refused to support new funding bills without stricter border security laws.

The same Republicans have also been criticized and accused of using border issues solely as a campaign platform against Democrats, after saying they would refuse to support a bipartisan border bill being negotiated in the Senate after former President Donald Trump, the 2024 front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, said that anything less than a perfect deal should not be accepted until he is potentially reelected in November.

"It's interesting, Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, Israel, and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy," James Lankford of Oklahoma, the leading GOP senator working on the bill, said in a recent appearance on Fox News Sunday.

"So we actually locked arms together and said, we're not going to give you money for this, we want a change in law. And now it's interesting, a few months later, when we're finally getting to the end, they're like, 'Oh, just kidding, I actually don't want a change in law because of the presidential election year.'"