Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley wants to be the next President of the United States, and he’s just brazenly hypocritical enough for the job.

O’Malley recently won praise from the left with a bleeding heart speech before a group of reporters over the scale of the humanitarian crisis at the southern border. “We are not a country that should send children away and send them back to certain death,” O’Malley said to reporters attending a National Governors Association conference last week.

“I believe that we should be guided by the greatest power we have as a people, and that is the power of our principles,” he continued. “Through all of our great world religions, we are told that hospitality to strangers is an essential human dignity.”

The Maryland governor was seen as criticizing the White House and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who have both insisted that the vast majority of those crossing the border should be deported back to their home countries.

But when O’Malley’s rhetoric needed to be met with actions beyond passing wildly popular DREAM legislation in his state, Maryland’s governor is a bit more cautious. When the White House asked the presidential aspirant to house some of the unaccompanied minors crossing the border in a Western Maryland facility, O’Malley balked.

Hours after making that speech which was well-received by the left-of-center media, he received a call from White House in which he was asked curtly why he was actively trying to block some immigrant children from being warehoused in his state.

“O’Malley told [Domestic Policy Director Cecilia] Muñoz not to send any of the children to the facility in Westminster, Md., that the White House was looking at,” Politico reported. “It’s a conservative part of the state, he warned. The children were at risk of getting harassed, or worse, he said.”

What a noble display of faith in the public O’Malley governs.

CNN described the conversation between O’Malley and the White House as “heated.”

“A senior O’Malley administration official acknowledged the governor’s comments last Friday irritated senior White House officials, prompting the call from Munoz to O’Malley,” CNN reported.