(WatchDogReport.org) – Former President Donald Trump has called out President Joe Biden for his misleading claims in his State of the Union Address about the bipartisan Senate immigration plan that was voted against earlier in 2024. Biden claimed that the Senate deal, negotiated by Republican Oklahoma Senator James Lankford and others, would have eased the border crisis.
In the interview with Breitbart News, the 2024 presidential candidate commented that the plan would have made the problem worse, noting that daily border crossings reached unprecedented levels under the Biden administration. In his speech, Biden claimed the bill would have addressed issues caused by the 64 executive actions he took as president to open the country’s borders.
When Republicans booed Biden’s speech after he claimed the bipartisan bill proposed included the toughest security reforms the country had seen yet, the president claimed that “conservatives” got together to support the bill. In 2023, House Republicans were warned that a change of speaker would not make it any easier to “muscle through” conservative reforms when the Senate and White House were “liberal”-run. When the $118 billion bill on the border and Ukraine was rejected, however, only four Republicans supported it, along with 45 Democrats. 50 senators voted against the bill in total.
Republicans opposing the bill felt it did not invest enough in border security. In contrast, Democrats opposed to the bill expressed concerns about the “severity” of border control measures and proposed funding for Israel’s military.
Biden blamed Trump for “sinking” the bill and suggested its passing would have been a political win for him but a loss for Trump. In response to this claim, Trump highlighted the HR2 border security bill passed by the Republican-led House of Representatives that the Democrats did not support. He claimed that this would actually solve the problem and accused the incumbent president of shifting blame away from his government for causing the crisis. He suggested Lankford had damaged his reputation by taking part in the negotiations.
Speaker Mike Johnson vowed the bill would be “dead on arrival.” With the border crisis being one of the major talking points of the presidential election, Trump referred to Biden as “the worst border president” in US history. He claimed that border control had been at its best three years ago and that the country would be much better off if Biden had just gone to the beach and done nothing.
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