As the political controversy surrounding the disastrous situation at the southern border continues to build, particularly in the wake of the murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley, some of the Democrats are attempting to foist the blame for the border situation on the right. Amongst those doing so was Senate Majority Leder Sen. Chuck Schumer, who appeared on “The View” to do so on Friday, March 8.
During his appearance, Sen. Schumer argued that the border problems are not due to President Joe Biden reversing Trump-era border policies once he took power, but rather are due to the GOP torpedoing the Senate border deal. He argued that Democrats were trying to start “moving in a tough, strong direction” on the border issue.
His comments on the matter came when “The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked him whether it is time for Democrats to start recognizing the scope of the border crisis given that voters have indicated that it is their top issue for this election cycle, at least for now.
Doing so, she asked, “Well, Senator, Biden was right last night to bring up the strong bipartisan border bill that Trump essentially killed that Sen. Lankford (R-OK) had worked on. But do you think that Democrats need to acknowledge that the immigration crisis we’re now in, which is a top issue for voters, is a result of a number of Trump-era policies that President Biden decided to reverse?”
Sen. Schumer, in response, said that Democrats don’t need to shift their messaging. Beginning, he defended the “really tough” border deal, saying, “No, I don’t think so. I think the contrast was amazing. President Biden has a real plan on immigration. I know, because we worked on it with the Senate. We put a bipartisan group, Sen. Lankford, Sen. Murphy (D-CT), Sen. Sinema (I-AZ), and they put together a really tough immigration proposal that could pass in a bipartisan way.”
Continuing, he went on to tout what Establishment GOP support the border deal garnered, telling Griffin, “The plan was so tough that it was supported by The Wall Street Journal editorial page, the fount of hard-right conservatism in America. It was supported by the Border Patrol union. They’ve been right-wing and pro-Trump. It was supported by the Chambers of Commerce because it was tough and strong. It stopped fentanyl — if we enacted it — from coming over our borders by using these fentanyl detection machines, it increased the number of people who would apprehend people crossing the border, and it even had a cap on any immigration if too many people came across the border.”
He then noted that the GOP soured on the bill, blaming their refusal to pass it on Trump supposedly wanting the situation to worsen to make the election go better for him. Schumer said, “So, it was tough and strong. A lot of Republicans liked it at the beginning. When they were shown it, they said, I’m amazed, the Democrats are really moving in a tough, strong direction on [the] border. And then, Donald Trump, their leader, said, I don’t want them to do anything on the border, I want it to stay a crisis for a whole year so I can win the election.”
Using that to launch into a lengthy attack on Trump. He said, “Can you imagine the nerve, the chutzpah of this guy? Here they say, the border’s an emergency, we better fix it. Here we have a plan that fixes it in a bipartisan way, and Trump says, hold it out for political advantage and let this so-called crisis fester for another year. Trump’s the loser on this.”
He then claimed the Democrats have recovered their momentum on the border issue, saying, “And I’ll say one more thing, before we came up with this plan — and I was very proud to help put it together and push it — Democrats were on their back foot on immigration. Now, we are on our front foot. We are saying, we have a bipartisan plan, they don’t want to solve the problem, they just want rhetoric. And guess what, there’s a poll in The Wall Street Journal…today that said Americans side with what we’re doing. So, we have totally reversed this border issue. We still have to answer some questions. But now, we’re on our front foot, not our back foot.”
Watch him here:
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