White House spokesman Josh Earnest appeared on CNN this morning to defend the president's plan to promote executive action on immigration as "legally unassailable" even though he is bypassing Congress to promote his legislation.
"He asked the team to look at the law and figure out what he could do."
Earnest admitted to CNN's Chris Cuomo that the President did try to find a way around not only Congress, but around the law in order to move forward on his immigration agenda.
"What the President was challenged to do by many advocates of reforming the immigration system was challenged because they were frustrated that the House hadn't acted on Senate legislation," Earnest said. "They were pushing the president to unilaterally employ that legislation."
Earnest's defense mostly rallied around whether or not Obama could please immigration activists who wanted to reform the immigration system.
"The president says then and he says now he doesn't have the authority to do that. So when he did ask the team to do that, he asked to the team to look at the law and figure out what he could do."
In the interview, Earnest decided to place the blame on "House Republican obstruction" instead of admitting that the solution to the problem may not be the most popular choice among the American people.
"He wasn't going to allow House Republican obstruction to not fix the obvious problems of our immigration system that everybody acknowledges exists," Earnest said.
Later in the interview, CNN's Chris Cuomo asked whether the Obama Administration could tolerate this executive order of questionable legality.
CUOMO: "So you think you can tolerate Constitutional and legal scrutiny of the efficiency of this executive order?"
EARNEST: "What the president announced last night is legally unassailable. It's entirely consistent with the way that President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President George W. Bush used their executive authority to try to make changes to the broken immigration system."