America's Talking - Biden Blames Republicans for Border Crisis

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, March 1st. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump held separate news conferences near the border in Texas on Thursday, where their vastly differing views on the surge and illegal immigration were on display. Trump called the Porter Crisis a, quote, Joe Biden invasion, while Biden blamed Republicans for not passing the U.S. the Senate's immigration bill. Joining me today to discuss this is Casey Harper, the center square is Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, recent polling shows that the border crisis is now

Starting point is 00:00:39 among the top one or two issues for voters heading into November's presidential election. The two likely nominees, Trump and Biden, couldn't be farther apart on the situation there. What are your takeaways from the dueling news conferences from Thursday? I did not see Trump or Biden down there, but of course, it's all televised, it's all campaigned, it's all trying to reach Americans. The reason for that is I'll point to a recent Gallup poll, Dan, which just came out this week, which found that for the first time since 2019, immigration is now the single most important problem to voters, not the economy, which is kind incredible. Particularly with inflation, yeah. Right. I mean, the economy and inflation was dominating

Starting point is 00:01:22 in the early part of Biden's term, which really is not good for him in his reelection because it was The first half was inflation, which is terrible, and the second half, which is immigration, which he's being blamed for. Biden is really in a pinch here, and he's trying to fix it. And I think it might be too little, too late. He's running against a very, a candidate, former President Donald Trump, who really built his campaign on immigration. I mean, all the biggest attacks against Trump, if you remember the first time around

Starting point is 00:01:49 were his support for the wall, some of his controversial comments about migrants. And so trying to convince voters. Biden trying to convince voters that Republicans and Trump aren't, you know, actually trying to fix the border, I think is a tough sell for them because, you know, all the polling shows that there are certain parties that own certain issues and voters trust certain parties more on certain issues. So when it comes to health care, voters trust Democrats more. It's just the polling shows that when it comes to the environment and climate change, voters trust Democrats. But when it comes to the economy and when it comes to immigration, voters think Republicans have the answers to those issues. And so so much. much of what determines who wins an election besides the individual candidates is what issues are most important to voters and then which party has a reputation for taking those issues more seriously. And so that's the backdrop of these visits, which are clearly, you know, campaign stops, not just to win votes in Texas, but to win them nationwide because immigration has become such a big issue. As far as what was said at these different stops, I think Biden, I think Biden made

Starting point is 00:02:54 some strategic mistakes. He really asked former President Donald Trump to speak to Congress on his behalf and to say, hey, let's work on this together to get Congress to do something. I think that was a show of weakness. Most people say, hey, you're the president. Why are you reaching out to Trump? It just kind of reinforces this idea that Republicans are the answer to the immigration problem. Now, Biden's strongest point is, hey, Congress is gridlocked and they need to do something about this. It's a strong point because there's no trouble convincing Republicans that something could be Congress's fault because Congress polls very poorly and, you know, most Americans believe that Congress is pretty dysfunctional right now and they can barely keep the government open. So it's not a hard sell to say that they

Starting point is 00:03:34 haven't fixed a border crisis. Now, from Republicans' perspective, they're being very clear on their messaging on this and their argument, which is, and that argument is this, hey, Biden, you've been in office four years and you haven't fixed this problem. You can't show up in an election year. and blame Congress. And by the way, all these problems were created by your administrative changes. You know, this is not a Congress issue. You know, you stop deporting people. You change the way that asylum claims are handled so that it's easy for people to come in. You basically created this reputation that anyone can walk across the border. And when, you know, when voters see these pictures and videos online, for instance, of border patrol agents lifting up barbed wire so that migrants

Starting point is 00:04:18 can walk under it. It's really hard to sell the American people that Biden is the one trying to fix the problem because he's overcoming the reputation of the Democrat Party and just years of his own policies being at work and helping create the crisis. Let's talk briefly about President Biden's stance. He's consistently said Republicans are blocking immigration reform in Congress. He got behind this bill that was filed in the Democrat-controlled Senate that he says would fix the issues at the border. But with the center square at the center square.com, we fact-checked that his comments about that border bill.

Starting point is 00:05:01 And one of the things they've been touting is that if there's a surge in migration where there's more than 5,000 border crossers a day, they could close the border. But that's not really true because there's all kinds of exceptions. in that. Family units don't count against the 5,000, for example. They're no longer doing DNA testing at the border. What Border Patrol agents have told us, the Center Square, is that the cartels lump non-family member units together when they get them to cross the border. and if they say they're a part of a family, even though they're not, border patrol agents are forced to accept them and allow them into the country. Another part of the bill would give Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas,

Starting point is 00:05:59 who, of course, Republicans have already impeached. He's still awaiting trial in the Senate, and that's a whole other story there. It's looking like the Senate, Democrat-controlled Senate, is holding up any impeachment trial of Mayorkas, Anyway, this bill would give Mayorkas tons of discretion when it comes to deciding whether there is a surge, there isn't a surge, who should be allowed into the country, who shouldn't be allowed into the country. Republicans say that's already codified in law. We've impeached Secretary Mayorkas. We don't want to hand more power or more authority over to him. So Biden deflecting saying it's a Republican problem at the border, that's a campaign thing. But in reality, it's just it doesn't seem to be true because we know that there's been huge surgery. It seems like every single month breaks a previous month's record for the amount of illegal border crossers.

Starting point is 00:06:55 And of course, we also know that this isn't just a border state issue. It's a national issue because these migrants are ending up in New York City, in Chicago, in Denver, and Washington, D.C., etc. Go ahead, Casey. Yeah, I was just agreeing with you. And the way I would put it is the Democratic bill, which they're trying to work on with Republicans, one version already failed. It seems like they're working

Starting point is 00:07:18 on another. It seems to try to solve the problem by giving a lot more leeway and power to DHS, Department of Homeland Security. And Democrats say, see, this will fix the problem. But Republicans say, no, DHS is the problem. They don't enforce. They already have plenty of money

Starting point is 00:07:33 and plenty of rules. in place to enforce the border and they just don't have the political will. So giving them more leeway and more power actually can make the problem worse because they don't actually want to enforce the border. And we've seen that. They've changed for whatever they say, they've turned many border agents into really paperwork processing agents for migrants who wanted to come into the country. And so there's no trust on the issue and they don't, Republicans don't think that this bill is being done in good faith when it comes down to it. And then there's a secondary or maybe primary a political motive, which is Republicans don't want Democrats to get a sort of a bill that doesn't

Starting point is 00:08:09 actually solve the problem passed so that they can neutralize this border crisis question. So every time the border comes up, they can say, that's why we passed this bill, give it time to work. How much time? Well, how about just past November? That'll be enough time. So there is a political consideration in there as well. Casey, as usual, thanks for your analysis.

Starting point is 00:08:27 And thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square. Now.

America's Talking - Biden Blames Republicans for Border Crisis

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