On Friday’s broadcast of ABC’s “The View,” Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that the problems on the border are not due to President Joe Biden reversing several Trump-era policies, cited Republicans who saw the Senate border bill as Democrats “moving in a tough, strong direction” on the issue, and stated that by opposing the Senate bill, Trump said, “hold it out for political advantage and let this so-called crisis fester for another year.”
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin 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?”
Schumer responded, “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. 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. 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.”
He continued, “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, 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.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett