Why is Donald Trump trying to blow up a bipartisan border deal that would have slowed the flow of illegal aliens into the United States?
Make no mistake. Not only would this border deal have given Biden (and then Trump) the extraordinary power to shut down the border, but the massive changes to asylum rules and vast curtailing of “immigration parole” would have revolutionized border control beyond anything even Trump could have imagined when he was in office.
Trump put the kibosh on the border deal because 1) it wasn’t perfect, and 2) he believed it would hand Biden a policy victory in an election year. The fact that it would have addressed a crisis that both Democrats and Republicans believe needs addressing didn’t appear to matter to the former president.
With more than 10 months to election day, it’s doubtful voters would remember anything about the crisis except it being Biden’s fault. Any deal made by the Democrats would so clearly be a Republican slam dunk that Biden would be forced on the defensive for the remainder of the campaign.
Instead, he and the Democrats are going on offense. And Trump and the Republicans are going to have a hard time explaining why they blew up a deal that contained almost everything they were complaining that Biden and the Democrats weren’t doing about the border.
Democrats are “undertaking a campaign to upend public opinion in the coming weeks by casting Republicans as being more interested in theatrics than solutions.”
And they’ve got a great case to make, largely by taking the words right out of the mouths of Republicans.
“There’s a real opportunity here, where Dems around the country can raise their hand and be like: ‘It turns out they were bluffing. They weren’t serious. It was a sound bite for them,’” one plugged-in Democratic campaign operative told Playbook last night. “They’ve been talking about it, highlighting it and freaking everyone out — then when there’s a bipartisan deal, with a lot of Dem compromises in it, they went running for the hills.”
You can’t talk about border security for a year and then bail when an actual bill with 75% of what you were asking for comes to the floor — not without consequences.
A Dem-affiliated polling outfit, Navigator Research, recently tested border-related messaging in battleground House districts and shared the results with Playbook. After quoting Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) to respondents admitting that he’s “not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” 66% said they had “serious concerns” that the GOP was putting politics over solutions.
In short, Democrats believe they can make the case to voters that, despite years of shouting about the crisis at the border, Republicans are the ones sitting on their hands as the migrant influx strains law enforcement and social services — all because they are beholden to Trump.
Trump, on the other hand, thinks that the border deal is a plot to put the blame for the migrant fiasco on the GOP’s shoulders.
“I had the safest and most secure Border in U.S. History,” Trump said. “I didn’t need a ‘Bill!’ They are using this horrific Senate Bill as a way of being able to put the BORDER DISASTER onto the shoulders of the Republicans. The Democrats BROKE THE BORDER, they should fix it. NO LEGISLATION IS NEEDED, IT’S ALREADY THERE!!!”
Related: The National Security Breaches at the Border the Left Doesn’t Want You to Know About
The legislation takes away many tools Biden was using to bring illegals into the country. Ridiculously high asylum claims are based on current law. Anyone who shows up at the border and claims they’re oppressed is able to get a hearing on their asylum claim. The border bill would stop that nonsense and allow the border patrol to turn back economic refugees. That one section of the bill would reduce asylum claims by one-half or more.
Republicans better begin to pay attention to what the Democrats are going to do to them. Two can play politics with the border, and the Democrats are about to flip the script on Republicans and turn what was going to be an election loser of an issue into an election winner.