Crouere: Biden is too busy for border, not too busy for ice cream

Published 2:02 pm Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Our sad excuse of a president, Joe Biden, appeared in another gaffe filled town hall event Thursday night on CNN, his favorite network. The moderator, Anderson Cooper, tried mightily to assist Biden as often as possible, finishing his thoughts, and answering his softball questions. Luckily for Biden, mostly sympathetic Democrats asked the questions, and his supporters filled the audience and cheered his ludicrous answers.

Even in this type of encouraging atmosphere, Biden’s performance was embarrassing. His worst moments came in response to a question about the border. One of the few Republicans in the audience, Megan Crawford, a law student from Towson Maryland, asked Biden, “Throughout your campaign, you’ve criticized former President Trump for his treatment of illegal immigrants and the southern border. Given that it’s nearly been a year into your campaign, why haven’t you been to the southern border of our country? And why did your stance on allowing immigrants suddenly revert to Trump-era policies?”

Biden answered by discussing how his administration is fighting the “Remain in Mexico” policy and providing additional funding for Central American nations. He later touted his administration’s success in keeping children who cross the border in this country and sending COVID-19 vaccines “to a significant portion of Latin and Central America.”

Finally, Cooper followed up about the border, for Biden ignored that part of the question. In response, Biden claimed, “I have been there before, and I haven’t — I mean, I know it well. I guess I should go down. But the — but the whole point of it is, I haven’t had a whole hell of lot of time to get down. I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion worth of damage done by — by hurricanes and floods and — and weather and traveling around the world.”

In just this short response, Biden packed in a multitude of lies. At least he realized that he “should go down” to the border but declared that his packed schedule prevented him from such a visit. He insisted that he had not “had a whole hell of lot of time to get down” to the border. Let us see, in his first nine months as President, he has had time for golf, bike riding, regular vacations to his beach home in Delaware and Camp David, video games, ice cream outings and other nonsense, such as CNN town hall televised events.

He also maintained that visiting hurricane damage and traveling around the world has kept him from the border. For the record, he has only taken one international trip and the time he has spent in hurricane-ravaged Louisiana has been minimal.

It is outrageous that Biden has skipped his obligations at the border. He pathetically tried to evade personal responsibility by noting that his wife had visited the border in 2019. Her stop was related to a campaign event and unconnected to his duty to visit the border.

His negligence is an impeachable offense. Millions of individuals are invading the country by illegally crossing our border. The Mexican drug cartels are leading the operation and smuggling people, including young children, and drugs into our country. These criminals have fired automatic weapons at our border patrol while taunting these brave, but overwhelmed, law enforcement officials.

The open border is the most critical issue facing the country, whether Biden wants to admit it or not. This invasion is very costly to the American taxpayers in innumerable ways. An open border is a multiple threat to the country involving public health, national security, illegal drugs, illegal weapons, gangs, and the economy.

The numbers of people apprehended at the border are so vast that the Biden administration has resorted to transporting people, including children, to cities across the country. Too many of these flights landed in the middle of the night, without the knowledge or approval of local or state officials.

Regarding his assertion that he had “been there (border) before,” the evidence is shaky at best. The White House presented one example of Biden being near the border. During the 2008 presidential campaign, he flew into the El Paso airport, as he traveled to a scheduled event, the route briefly passed along the border.

Thus, for Biden going to the border involves viewing it from a car window speeding along a highway. He never exited the vehicle to visit any ports of entry or discuss the problem with border patrol agents. Without inspecting the situation, he has no understanding of the crisis or the horror that our country is facing from his administration’s policies.

The scant attention that Biden has given this issue is infuriating since the problem has exploded during his administration. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, during the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, 2021, there were 1.66 million arrests of individuals illegally entering the country from Mexico. This represents the highest total in over 20 years and a significant increase from the numbers recorded during the Trump administration.

In September, border patrol apprehended 192,000 individuals at the southern border. This is a slight decrease from October, but 40,000 more than the highest total of any month during the Trump administration. The minor improvement was nothing to celebrate since the number of individuals who evaded border patrol and entered the country illegally increased in September.

One of the reasons that the border is out of control is that Biden stopped construction of the wall, which started during the Trump administration, immediately upon taking office. The president did not act because walls are ineffective. In fact, Biden believes in the effectiveness of walls. While halting the border wall, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security authorized the expenditure of $456,548 for the purchase and installation of “security fencing” at Biden’s beachfront home in Delaware.

Obviously, President Biden believes he needs “security fencing” at his home, but the country does not need it at the border. For this administration, the hypocrisy never ends.

Jeff Crouere is the host of “Ringside Politics,” which airs at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 10 p.m. Sunday on WLAE-TV 32, a PBS station, and 7 a.m. till 11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans and the Northshore. He is the political analyst for WGNO-TV ABC 26 and a columnist for selected publications. For more information, visit his web site at RingsidePolitics.com. E-mail him at jeff@ringsidepolitics.com.