Former President Trump toured the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. He criticized the Biden administration’s border policies.
Summary
Former President Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas yesterday, with two dozen Republican members of the House of Representatives in tow, to criticize the Biden administration and tout his own achievements.
- Trump’s trip comes after Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to El Paso, Texas last week and the latest figures were released showing the most border arrests in more than 2 decades.
- Politico calls immigration and the border situation a political rallying cry for Republican politicians using it as “a political weapon.”
- But it’s not just a “political weapon”: On top of the 21-year high of arrests and illegal crossings, bodies have been found mutilated and riddled with bullets along the border.
- Seizures of the synthetic opioid fentanyl have seen a 4,000 percent increase in seizures at the border over the last three years.
- The Nation disparaged and insulted anyone right-of-center politically by calling the desire for border security “border fascism” built on “racism, sexism, and xenophobia among the working classes” in their review of a similarly insulting book creating a wild conspiracy theory that “wealthy conservatives” banded together to manufacture the right’s “anti-immigration fanaticism.”
- In their coverage of Trump’s border visit, areas on the U.S. side of the border that have traditionally elected Democrats have “baffled” political observers by voting for and electing Republicans recently.
- The New York Times focused on a different aspect of the border story: Highlighting the “ethical questions” of governors of non-border states sending law enforcement and National Guard assets to Arizona and Texas (at the request of those states’ Republican governors) in the wake of the federal government’s inability to get a handle on the border crisis.
- “ended many of the restrictive immigration policies” enacted by the Trump administration and emphasized the two-decade record of arrests at the border recently.
- OANN’s coverage gave Texas Gov. Greg Abbott nearly equal billing to Trump, who participated in a roundtable with the former president and a group of local law enforcement officials.
- Newsmax underscored Trump having “lamented” the Biden administration’s reversals of his more effective border security policies and highlighted Trump’s revelation that Biden officials are “not dumb people” but are simply incompetent.
- RedState delighted in the left’s heartburn over various governors’ decisions to send aid and assistance to Arizona and Texas, quoting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as saying “Where the federal government has failed, the states are stepping up into doing our best to fill the void.”
Author’s Take
The border really has been a disaster for the Biden administration, one of its own making even according to other heads of state. Vice President Harris’ visit to El Paso did very little to help the situation or their handle on it (and seems to be the catalyst of a long Politico article filled with anonymous sources complaining about the VP and the way her office is run).
Whether he’s running in 2024 or not, former President Trump will be doing the Republican Party and the country a great service by focusing like a laser on the border, continuing to make it his pet project, highlight what he’s now calling the “gross incompetence” of the Biden administration.
The changing election results in formerly democrat-strongholds in Texas are proof that this concern about border security is real, that mainstream media diversions are not working. The dynamics of the political environment suggest Trump can cement his political legacy better from outside the White House than from inside. But it will take discipline from the former president.
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© Dallas Gerber, 2021
