Abbott: ‘Easy choice’ to decline Biden’s invite

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he was all too happy to snub President Joe Biden after being invited to the White House with other governors over the weekend.

Speaking to the Young Americas Foundation in North Texas on Saturday, Abbott told the crowd that he had a choice to make.

“I was invited to spend a day and tonight at a black-tie event in the White House with President Biden,” Abbott said. “I could be with Biden in Washington, D.C. or I could be with you in Grapevine, Texas.”

“It was an easy choice,” he said, to applause from the conservative group.

The White House invited all members of the National Governors Association to a meeting in the East Room of the White House, where Biden listened to both Democratic and Republican governors and touted his own efforts at bipartisanship.

“Seventy-five percent of what we did would not have happened without flat bipartisan,” Biden told the 33 governors at that event.

Abbott wasn’t the only Republican governor missing from the meeting. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, both considered potential GOP White House contenders in 2024, were also absent, as was Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders who delivered a sharp rebuke of Biden after the State of the Union address last week.

But plenty of other Republican governors made the trek. Governors of Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Utah were among those at the event, according to the White House.

Besides being greeted by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the group of governors met with Cabinet members and other senior administration officials.

Abbott on Saturday told members of the Young Americas Foundation in Grapevine about, among other things, his fight against the Biden administration over border security.

“Texas has done more than any state in the history of our country to step up and fight back against the Biden administration,” Abbott said.

While Abbott skipped out on the trip to D.C. this year, he recently met with Biden when he arrived in El Paso last month to tour part of the Texas border. At that time, Abbott handed Biden a list of steps he wanted Biden to take to secure the border.