America's Talking - Biden Blasts GOP on Border, Is Called Out Over Laken Riley Murder by Illegal Immigrant

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

President Joe Biden delivered a wide-ranging State of the Union address Thursday evening, touching on the economy, Ukraine, the border and more while attacking Republicans during his remarks, possibly his last time to give the address as president. “Good evening, if I were smart I’d go home now,” Biden said to begin, drawing laughs from the assembly. Biden quickly turned serious, though, saying that freedom and Democracy have not been under such great threat since the Civil War, making reference to the Jan. 6 riots. He said that the same threat is abroad, beginning his speech focusing not on domestic issues, but on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 8th. President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address Thursday night before a joint session of Congress. With November's presidential election looming and a likely rematch of 2020 between Biden and former President Donald Trump, many said Biden sounded like he was giving a campaign speech rather than a state of the union. Joining me today to discuss this is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am well. Thank you. Casey, you and I both covered the State of the Union address last night. What are you some of your top takeaways? That's right, the A team and the B team checking in last night. Thanks, Dan. Just make sure you get the order right there. Oh, right. Absolutely. No, I mean, and there's a reason it took a village because there's so much going on, as you said. We're in a lot. an election year, tensions are very high. We have two wars overseas. You know, the economy is facing its own issues. We have a border crisis. I mean, the president was late to the speech, in part because protesters, pro-Palestinian protesters had blocked, you know, blocked the streets outside and gathered

outside the capital. So that's just kind of a picture of how tense of time we're in where, you know, the president was late because of protesters. And so, you know, I found it interesting. I'd love to hear what you thought was interesting, Dan, but I found it interesting that he started not talking about some of the big domestic issues that are facing Americans, not talking about inflation, not talking about the border. He started by talking about Ukraine and Putin, NATO, and then January 6th, which, you know, I found that, 2021, right? Right, yeah, he said talking about, right, and he immediately, he told a joke to kind of start off. He said, you know, I'd probably be better off if I stopped talking right now, which was funny and everyone laughed at. But then he immediately took a very serious turn

and essentially said that we're facing the biggest threat to democracy that we've seen since the civil war. And he didn't leave it vague. He was clearly pointed to January 6th and Trump and his supporters and said we're in a civil war moment and that Trump is a threat to democracy. And so it's interesting to see that because this, you know, you said this was a campaign speech. Well, this was Biden's best opportunity to frame this election year. And based on last night, he wants this election year to be about Ukraine funding and January 6th. Yeah, Biden was definitely aggressive. Some might say hostile during much of his speech. Leading with what you said, more international issues was an interesting choice. We've had a number of primaries, Casey, where, you know,

media outlets do exit polling. And the border crisis, really in most in most people's minds, has surpassed the economy and inflation as the top issue facing Americans. But Biden didn't start talking about the border until what, like 45 minutes into the speech. And, you know, the border crisis essentially began on day one of the president's administration when he just unilaterally changed what were some of Donald Trump's, his predecessor, which he used a lot, border policies. And that started leading to mass, mass illegal border crossings that have continued to this day.

He blamed Republicans for the border crisis, saying they had this Senate border bill that they refused to pass. Tell us some of your takeaways about the border part of this. Yeah, it was interesting. He referenced Trump 13 times, I think, about a dozen times using that phrase, my predecessor. So interesting that he did it, name him. But without naming him, he definitely attacked him on the border and Republicans on the border. And I think, you know, my take on this is that Biden is in a difficult spot because he does not want the border to be a defining election issue because that will play very much in Trump's favor. But at the same time, he has to have a good answer to this question. question, and it's a very hard question for him, because whenever there is a crisis in the fourth year of your term, it's really hard to blame anyone else because you've been in office for three years and going into your fourth. And so it also is hard for Biden because it's kind of common knowledge that Democrats are more lax on immigration. And so without really digging into the

details, a voter can say, oh, a Democrat's in office and immigration's bad figures, right? And they don't have to do a lot of homework. they're just going to put two and two together on that. So Biden is fighting an uphill battle. So I think the reason he pushed immigration back into the speech is because he doesn't want that to be what we talk about for the next six months leading into November. He wants to talk about anything. He wants to talk about how Republicans are bowing, you know, bowing down to Putin. And I think what Biden pulled out was kind of a 2020 playbook, which is Russia and, you know, and then he added on the democracy stuff. So I think the reason that Biden plays so much in Ukraine is because in the Democratic mind,

the tying Trump to Russia, saying he's a plant, Russian collusion was their best strategy against him. And so just continuing the Russian narrative, I think that's what he's trying to do is create this narrative there. But I mean, on the border, he's in such a tough spot because he has blamed Republicans. And it's not a terrible argument. But it's an uphill battle. I think people know that he changed so many border policies. And Senator Katie Britt, who gave the response in Alabama, right? She's Alabama Senator.

She gave the response on behalf of Republicans to, you know, say, this is what we think. She called them out on this. And she said, you know, on day, in the first 100 days in office, Biden passed a slew or enacted a slew of executive actions to basically open the border. One is basically essentially, not entirely, but essentially stopping deportations. Right. And so Republicans hit that in their response. the border was the first, second, and third priority. And so you can see the different tactics. Biden has to have a response, but it's not what he wants to talk about.

Briefly, Casey, there was an interesting moment when Biden was talking about the border. U.S. Representative Margie Taylor Green, Republican from Georgia, you know, yelled out to him. It's about Lake and Riley, the young woman from Georgia who was killed in Athens by an illegal immigrant. and Biden went off script and actually responded to that, say, misstating Lakin Riley's name calling her Lincoln Riley, but conceded that this innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal, which is a term that the Biden administration is trying to avoid, but he called her illegal. Any thoughts on that moment? A lot of the media coverage and Twitter response has been about how that was a cringe moment for Biden to say, an illegal, calling him an illegal, that's something they've really tried to get away from.

They basically, if Trump did that, they would call him racist. And so it put them in a tough spot to defend Biden when he did something that they would normally call a candidate racist for. So it was not a good look. It was also interesting to see that the one moment where Biden got off script, it absolutely crumbled and fell apart. And he created a scandal. He was clearly on script the rest of the speech.

And he did well. He seemed vibrant. He was pretty articulate. But as soon as he deviated for a second when Marjor Taylor got him off. He fell apart and he created a little gaff for himself. Well, there's plenty more we could talk about the state of the union address, Casey, but we are out of time. We will be following, have plenty of new story follow-ups to the state of the union. Listeners can read those stories at the center square.com.

Thank you for listening.