President Joe Biden and Republican front-runner Donald Trump treated the country to a split-screen lesson in presidential politicking as they both descended on Texas to address the vexing issue of immigration.
For Biden, the trip to the border town of Brownsville was an opportunity to combat Republican criticism that he hasn't done enough to stop the flow of migrants into the U.S. Biden used his platform to both educate voters about the bipartisan border deal that Republicans tanked and revive a call to pass it.
Biden said he wanted people to understand "clearly" what happened to that bipartisan border deal. The bill, he said, was on its way to passage when it was "derailed" by partisan politics.
“The U.S. Senate needs to reconsider this bill," Biden said, "and those senators who oppose it need to set politics aside and pass it on the merits—not on whether it's going to benefit one party or benefit the other party."
Biden chided congressional Republicans to "show a little spine."
"Let’s remember who we work for, for God's sake," he added, "We work for the American people."
Biden also took particular issue with Trump for telling his Republican allies in Congress to reject the border measure, which Biden hailed as "the toughest, most efficient, most effective border security bill this country has ever seen."
"So here's what I would say to Mr. Trump," Biden said. "Instead of playing politics with this issue, instead of telling members of Congress to block this legislation, join me—or I’ll join you—in telling the Congress to pass this bipartisan border security bill. We can do it together."
Biden reiterated that instead of politicizing the issue, "why don't we just get together and get it done."
Trump, for his part, chose to go down the rabbit hole less taken.
He dubbed California Gov. Gavin Newsom, "Newscum"—repeating it twice because he found it so clever.
He assailed letting immigrants into the country "who don't speak languages."
"Nobody can explain to me how letting in people from places unknown, from countries unknown—who don't speak languages," Trump said. "We have languages coming into our country, we have nobody that even speaks those languages—they're truly foreign languages, no one even speaks them."
They’re foreign—get it? They're people who don't speak languages, and there are languages nobody speaks. Solid.
Trump had more to say about the migrants.
"They're coming from jails, and they're coming from prisons, and they're coming from mental institutions, and they're coming from insane asylums, and they're terrorists."
But it was the split screen that was truly priceless.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Polling shows many Americans still don't know about the border deal and its Trump-engineered failure. Biden went on offense Thursday to talk about the bipartisan deal, the GOP’s intransigence toward actually addressing the border problem, and to offer solutions.
But Trump did his part too—giving Team Biden a jarring contrast that most candidates only dream off.
Simon Rosenberg from the Hopium Chronicles Substack is back to talk about the facts of the 2024 election cycle. The facts are: Things look bad for Donald Trump—and even worse for the Republican Party.
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