'Times change': GOP leader awkwardly explains why the border wasn't a 'national emergency' until he lost power

For two full years, the Republican Party held the House, the Senate and the White House, and yet still managed to not fund President Donald Trump's long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Tuesday was asked by a reporter why the situation at the southern border only became a "national emergency" once his party lost control of the House of Representatives last fall, and he paused awkwardly before answering.

"Well, times change as you move forward," McCarthy said. "When you get more reporting about the amount of drugs coming across, reports of the human trafficking and others, 60,000 people arrested each month, uhm... you have the experts telling you the challenge."

Despite McCarthy's spin, however, Trump has been talking about the border in apocalyptic terms for the past three-and-a-half years now. In his speech announcing his run for the presidency in June 2015, for instance, Trump said that Mexican immigrants are "bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists."

Additionally, Trump made building the wall his top priority on the campaign trail, and chants of "Build that wall!" were regular features at his 2016 campaign rallies.

After becoming president, however, Congressional Republicans punted on funding the wall and instead plowed ahead on a failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act and passing a massive tax cut.

Watch the video below.