BRETT: “Border Crisis Torches Kamala Harris’ Presidential Prospects.” This is a piece running in The Hill from Liz Peek, whose an opinion contributor, and Liz Peek — who many of you know from appearances on Fox and Fox Business and other channels like that. Liz Peek says in this column, starting it out this way: “The odds of Kamala Harris ever being elected president are shrinking faster than a Creamsicle in August.
“As she likely anticipated, tying her to the border disaster was almost sure to be a losing proposition for the vice president.” We all know what’s happening. We’ll be getting new numbers for April crossings just in the next day or so, so we’ll find out what’s going on. Remember, it started out with 70,000 crossing in February, and then it was 160,000 who crossed the border in March.
Now we’re gonna get those April numbers, and I guarantee you those numbers are gonna be through the roof. These could easily, easily be north of 300,000 migrants coming up from Central America — and every one of them brought to auxiliaries border by the executive order signed on day one of the administration by one Joseph R. Biden, president of the United States.
I mean, they came up pre-prepared with the Biden T-shirts. They had the Biden T-shirts and they had the signs preprinted that said, “Biden, Let Us In!” So what happens? Once this crisis gets underway, you have a situation in which the Biden inner circle decides, “We’re gonna give Kamala Harris the border. We’re gonna give her the border as her portfolio.”
Liz Peek writes, “Saddling her with the border fiasco not only put her at risk politically (and especially in a toss-up border state like Arizona) but added insult to injury, since her boss denied her the job she reportedly wanted.” What was that job? “[O]verseeing the monster $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. After all, she apparently argued, managing the $800 billion stimulus plan is what then-Vice President Biden did in 2009 for President Obama.
“Why didn’t she get to star in the Greatest Democratic Giveaway of all time? Imagine the glory of handing out,” this is Liz Peek, “$123 billion to K-12 schools (aka the teacher unions), no strings attached, or sending tens of millions of dollars to ‘environmental justice grants,’ which will surely be guided by wildly discretionary assessments, or $362 billion to fiscally parched cities and states, all of which will come knocking on [her] door?
“Imagine being on the giving end of $1,400 checks going to 85% of all Americans, employed or unemployed. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a dream job.” Now she’s in charge of chaos at the border. She hasn’t gone to the border. She won’t go to the border. She says now — because it’s been cosigned last night by President Biden — that she’s gonna do “diplomacy” at the border instead.
She’s in charge of “border diplomacy” now. Not the border, border diplomacy. Meaning she’s gonna get to meet with leaders of other countries — Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras. She had a conversation with the president of Mexico, Lopez Obrador (they call him AMLO) to talk about planting trees (laughs) to help fight climate change. I mean, it’s really incredible, but this thing doesn’t turn out well.
This doesn’t turn out well at all for Kamala Harris because the damage is done. She will forever be tied to this. If she decides she wants to go out and run on her own, she’s gonna have to face the uncomfortable questions from the press. Oh, who am I kidding. The press isn’t gonna ask her any uncomfortable questions.
But she’s gonna be asked the uncomfortable questions along those border states, because as the polling indicates where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are most underwater when it comes to Hispanic voters — to Latino and Hispanic voters — it’s border security. They don’t like seeing this influx of people coming in to the country, and then you have the administration being sneaky about where they’re putting them.
They’re putting them on buses. They’re putting them on planes. They’re sending them into the interior of the United States, and how many are bringing covid? All of that will be pointed right back to the vice president of the United States. She wanted to be in the money-distribution business. Instead, she’s gonna be in the border-blame business, on the receiving end.
Rush talked about how it was Trump was quietly winning big at the border when he was president.
RUSH: From the RCP Issues & Insights website, editorial board. “Trump Is Quietly Winning Big at the Border,” and it’s true. I don’t know if you’ve noticed with so many other things going on, but have you seen there aren’t any caravans?
There aren’t any massive numbers anymore of people traveling from El Salvador and Guatemala up to Mexico demanding asylum, demanding amnesty, demanding to be educated. They’re just down. The caravans didn’t work, and I’m certain they were put-up jobs. They were bought and paid for by Democrat donors. I have no doubt about this. But the administration has been very quiet in beating its chest over this success, because the number of people trying to get into the country illegally is way, way down — and it’s fascinating because Trump made a big deal out of building the wall.
Mexico was gonna pay for the wall. But there was gonna be a wall. Well, there isn’t a wall, and yet there may as well be one. There may as well be a virtual wall because something is preventing massive illegal immigration. It has really dipped. So the Democrats blocked Trump from doing the wall. He finds a work-around that’s probably more effective and costs less, and it’s called enforcing the law.
The one thing people do not understand about those of us who oppose illegal immigration is that it has nothing to do with race, it has nothing to do with skin color, it has nothing to do with economics, nothing whatsoever to do with any of that. It has to do with two things, maybe three. One, the rule of law. It’s simply illegal.
Well, the second thing is the damage to the culture. There is no assimilation on the part of most people coming into the country illegally. As such, it represents an assault on a distinct and unique American culture, which is fundamentally responsible for America’s status in the world and the greatness of the American experiment, the American standard of living, American lifestyles.
Preserving this distinct American culture, there’s nothing racist about it, there’s nothing bigoted about it, it’s based on love. And, of course, the third thing is, the Democrats see this as a massive voter registration drive. And that’s another reason why we oppose it. It has nothing to do with the left’s usual assaults. “You just don’t like brown skin people. You just don’t like people that don’t speak English.”
It has nothing to do with any of that. That’s not why illegal immigration is opposed. It’s again the law, number one. The rule of law counts for something. If we’re not gonna enforce that law, then what other laws are we not gonna enforce down the road? Anyway, it is a big story, details of which will come up, but Trump is quietly winning big at the border, and I’ll tell you something else is health care.
You know how health care has revitalized this country, not just in terms of health care, but the way the administration is dealing with the health care industry as a job creator. You realize that health care companies, many of them are causing revitalizations of American urban areas?
And it’s a big secret. Nobody much talking about it. But it’s a big deal. And a lot of this stuff is going on under the radar because impeachment and the coup and other things are occupying everybody’s attention. While all that’s going on, the Trump administration is busy accomplishing serious things.
BRETT: And let’s not forget, you have from the prior administration, the Trump administration to now with President Biden, you have a direct A-B comparison on the border. For 30 years, right, that’s the narrative you get. from Joe Biden. For 30 years, “They can’t control. Nobody can fix the border. The border can’t be fixed. It can’t be done!”
No, the border could have gotten fixed when Ronald Reagan did the deal in 1986 (when Joe Biden was in the Senate, by the way), the Simpson-Mazzoli bill. But the Democrats refused to actually do enforcement on that sort of stuff. They just wanted the amnesty; the rest of it could go pound sand. So what do you have now? What’s the situation happening now at the border?
The border now is chaotic. Right? You’re gonna have a million people in here by end of the year, right? The border is chaotic. What was it under Trump? It was managed. It was controlled. You had agreements with the Mexican government. The Mexican government does not want migrants coming up through their country. Not during a covid crisis.
That’s what they’ve got right now, courtesy of the Biden-Harris administration. Let me posit one other thing very quickly before we head into the break. Did you find it curious last night, as you were listening to the speech from the president, that he seemed to turn more ire on the Republicans than he did on Xi Jinping?
He seemed to just once again dismiss the leader of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping — the guy who aggressively prevented us from getting the full story on coronavirus, at a minimum — and he still calls him just, “Well, you guys are just a competitor.” Who are the other competitors in the world for the United States?
If China’s a competitor, who are the other competitors? North Korea? Iran? Who are the other competitors? He reserves the softest language for Xi Jinping for some reason. I can’t quite figure out why that is. He just says, “Hey, they’re competition for us. That’s all we are,” and he allows the border to continue to be bedraggled. It’s unbelievable.