REVEALED: Sen. Ron Johnson says Mitch McConnell took border security ‘off the table’ for negotiations

During the Spaces and after several others spoke on the topic, Johnson explained how McConnell "breached" his position of leadership in the Republican conference.

Johnson said, "When we entered this thing, McConnell — his top priority was funding for Ukraine. But public opinion and the very strong political rhetoric that we ought to secure our own border before we spend $60 billion to secure Ukraine's was effective. And so McConnell finally switched."

The Wisconsin senator continued, saying McConnell was "gonna demand the border security is attached to funding for Ukraine."

"Then secret negotiations occurred on a issue that the public supports Republicans on and we ended up with this monstrosity of a bill. It's an immigration bill, not a border security bill," Johnson said of the previous funding bill that would have directed funding to immigrant processing as well as funding for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific.

Johnson said that during the time of the bill's negotiations, the Republican conference repeatedly talked about making Ukraine funding contingent on border security. It had "a great deal support in our conference" and Republicans had "laid out at a proposal" to get border security through.

Senator Lankford, who helped to negotiate with the Democrats on the border bill, waS told by McConnell that border security was not going to be an option in the bill, according to Johnson.

"McConnell just took that off the table," Johnson said. "And that moment of leverage we had, where we could use Biden's desire for Ukraine funding to actually force him to use his executive authority to secure the border has been lost. And that is why so many of us are speaking out against McConnell. It was such a breach of his leadership position," the Senator concluded.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) who stood on the Senate floor filibustering the bill on Saturday for four hours made similar points about McConnell's leadership in the spaces. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) focused on what he wrote about in the American Conservative, called, "The Republican Plot Against Trump" where he also said that "the [border] deal, as envisioned by conservatives, was apparently never on the table."