Biden and Trump race to the border
On Thursday, President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will be about 325 miles apart at the southern border, though they are much farther apart ideologically. Both will be contending on the Republican position on the border, with Biden to assail Republicans for blocking legislation, a stance urged on by Trump.
Biden will be in Brownsville, Texas, where a meeting is planned with border patrol agents, a White House official told the press. Trump will visit Eagle Pass, west of Brownsville. The president has begun adding a little more heat to his rhetoric by blaming Republicans for killing the legislation earlier this month.
“Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends,” Biden promised.
Debate on the border crisis has not been a key element in the Democrat’s playbook, but Biden is taking a different tack on the issue as part of his re-election campaign. This will be Biden’s second visit to the border. Last January, he was in El Paso on his way to meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The Trump campaign’s national press secretary, Karolin Leavitt, stated that Biden “is losing terribly,” and that “he’s not going to solve the border problem.”
She said Biden’s last-minute “insincere attempt to chase Trump to the border won’t cut it. Americans know Biden is single-handedly responsible for the worst immigration crisis in history.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the president “will reiterate his calls for congressional Republicans to stop playing politics and to provide the funding needed for additional U.S. Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, fentanyl detection technology, and more.”
According to the Associated Press, Biden is exploring potential executive action on the border under federal immigration powers once used by Trump to achieve some of the policies in the legislation, though such a move is sure to anger progressives and advocates of immigration.
Moreover, the House Congressional Hispanic Caucus has noted that its members oppose unilateral attempts by the White House to overhaul the asylum system. An NBC poll this month found more voters view Trump, by 57 to 22 percent, as the better candidate than Biden to secure the border and control immigration.
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