House GOP nominates Steve Scalise to replace McCarthy as speaker

After being named the House GOP's nominee to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker, Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise thanked his colleagues for their support and vowed immediate action to support Israel and strengthen security on the U.S.-Mexico border if elected.

Video Transcript

STEVE SCALISE: First, I want to thank my House Republican colleagues for just designating me as the speaker. Obviously, we still have work to do. We're going to have to go upstairs on the House floor and resolve this and then get the House opened again. We have a lot of work to do, not just in the House for the people of this country, but we see how dangerous of a world it is and how things can change so quickly.

We need to make sure we're sending a message to people all throughout the world that the House is open and doing the people's business, making sure that we're unequivocally standing. And our first resolution that we pass under Speaker Steve Scalise will be to make it clear that we stand with Israel. The McCaul-Meeks resolution will be our first order of business.

I'm also going to be calling on President Biden to sit down and talk about the crisis at the border, as we have an open Southern border. And we've seen millions come in, in the last few years, including people on the terrorist watch list from all over the world. If he doesn't know now after what happened, we cannot have an unsecure border. We've got to secure America's border. We've passed legislation to do that. It's time we sit down and have a conversation about how to secure America's border.

And it's not a Republican or a Democrat issue. There are Democrat mayors all over the country who've been calling on the president to do this too. That's a conversation we need to have today. There's a lot of busy work to do, a lot of important work to do on behalf of people who are struggling, not only here in America, but who are concerned all around the world. And we're going to provide that vision. We have a lot of work to do. Obviously, I've got some more conversations to have.

[REPORTERS CLAMORING]