Former President Donald Trump responded to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address Tuesday night, focusing on the mass illegal immigration taking place at the southern border, crime, drops in real wages, and “corruption.”
“Here’s the real State of the Union: Over the past two years under Biden, millions and millions of illegal aliens from 160 different countries have stormed across our southern border,” said Trump, the lone GOP candidate officially in the 2024 primary field.
Since Biden assumed office in January 2021, 4.2 million migrants have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents along the southern border, marking a record high, as Breitbart News reported. At his first official campaign trail event in South Carolina on January 28, Trump asserted his administration would undertake rapid deportation efforts if he were reelected.
Another border issue Trump highlighted in his response to Biden Tuesday is the fentanyl epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 71,238 U.S. deaths from “synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl)” alone in 2021, marking a major jump from 57,834 in 2020.
“Drug cartels are now raking in billions of dollars from smuggling poison to kill our people and to kill our children,” said Trump.
More than 1,000 migrants cross the border from Mexico to El Paso in December 2022. (Video Screenshot/El Paso Matters)
Production of fentanyl typically starts in China, where precursor chemicals are manufactured, and then Mexican cartels synthesize the drugs before they are trafficked across the border, the New York Post has reported.
Trump then turned his attention to crime, asserting that “[s]avage killers, rapists, and violent criminals are being released from jail to continue their crime wave.”
“Biden and the radical Democrats have wasted trillions of dollars and caused the worst inflation in half a century,” Trump continued.
“Real wages are down 21 months in a row, gas prices have soared and are now going much higher than even before, and the typical American family is paying $2,200 in increased energy and food costs each year,” he added.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that real wages, including both average hourly earnings and average weekly earnings, have been down every month since March 2021.
The 45th president, whose Mar-a-Lago residence was raided in August as part of a classified documents probe, then called out Biden’s “weaponized Justice Department” for “persecuting his political opponents,” and he asserted the “administration is waging war on free speech.”
In fact, Trump put forth a comprehensive policy platform in December to “shatter the left-wing censorship regime and reclaim the right to free speech for all Americans.”
“They’re trying to indoctrinate and mutilate our children,” Trump said Tuesday. “[Biden is] leading us to the brink of World War III, and on top of all of that, he’s the most corrupt President in American history, and it’s not even close.”
Trump then pledged he would “reverse every single crisis, calamity, and disaster that Joe Biden has created” if elected president, vowing he will “complete the unfinished business of Making America Great Again.”
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