Trump say “Good,” me hate; Trump say “Bad,” me love.
Posted by Ed Folsom, January 27, 2024.
Andy McCarthy has written a good column about the deal that Senate Republicans are pushing to place limits on the number of people allowed to cross illegally into the U.S. each day. Along with their Democrat colleagues who favor the deal, these Republicans are complaining that Trump is trying to blow it up. You see, Trump has said that the massive illegal entry crisis that Biden has created is his best campaign issue against Biden, so he doesn’t want this deal. He thinks it will take wind out of his sails.
And, it does in fact look like the deal that’s being worked on might take some wind out of Trump’s sails. According to McCarthy, the Republicans want to strike a deal that would cap illegal entries at 3,000 per day. That rate would allow one million and ninety-five thousand illegal entries per year. Since Senate Democrats want to allow 5,000 to 7,000 illegal entries per day (1,825,000 to 2,555,000 per year), Senate Republicans think they can sell a limit of 3,000 as a triumph of responsible bipartisan governance. Trump apparently sees it as a sellout that would make Republicans complicit in Biden’s policy of disregarding the rule of law on immigration, which takes wind out of his sails.
The Republicans pushing the deal fear that Trump’s influence will cause other Republican Senators who lack their reverence for responsible bipartisan governance to kill it. But then again, if the deal dies they will surely bray along with the Democrats that Trump killed border security for his own personal gain. And that will serve their interests, because those who are pushing the deal are never-Trumpers who relish every chance to try to push Trump off the stage.
Of course, we all know (ad nauseam) that whenever Trump tries to do something, all the good and righteous people must work with all their might to do exactly the opposite. Like Pavlov’s dogs salivating at the sound of a bell, all right-thinking sophisticates have internalized: “Trump say ‘Good,’ me hate; Trump say ‘Bad,’ me love!”
Because Trump is once again ego-driven enough to have come right out and said the quiet part out loud, Democrats seem to figure that Trump has turned the Senate border deal issue into a “Heads we win, tails you lose” proposition. Either the Democrats manage to roll a bunch of squishy Republicans into accepting over 1,000,000 illegal entries per year, or they get to bash Trump for killing a bipartisan effort to do something about the border crisis that Republicans have complained about throughout Biden’s term.
Such is the state of our national political class.
Andy McCarthy is no fan of Donald Trump. He’s also no fan of Biden’s flagrant disregard for the rule of immigration law. In sum, here’s how he sees it:
“Here’s a thought: Support Texas because it’s the right thing to do. Oppose the Senate scheme because passing it would be the wrong thing to do. And for once, forget about what Trump thinks because we’re in a crisis at the moment and what he thinks doesn’t matter.”
The crisis stems from Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration law. While Biden claims he needs more money for border enforcement, he applies the resources he has not to defend the border but to process more illegal entrants. Here’s McCarthy on that score:
“And please, stop with the additional-funding drivel. Biden uses border-security funding not to secure the border but to ‘process’ illegal aliens into the country, so that eight or ten years from now, they can have court dates they’ll ignore. If Congress gives Biden more funding, he will use it to process more illegal aliens.”
As McCarthy pointed out in a previous piece, quoting a pertinent portion of the immigration code, Title 8 U.S. Code, section 1225(b)(1)(B)(IV):
“Any alien subject to the procedures under this clause shall be detained pending a final determination of credible fear of persecution and, if found not to have such a fear, until removed.” [Emphasis added].
That is the rule of law. But instead, Biden’s policy is to release illegal entrants into the U.S. – to process and release them. He also purports to “parole” illegal entrants. But only Congress has the authority to set the conditions for the parole of illegal entrants, and the people Biden claims to parole don’t meet Congress’s conditions. Such is Biden’s reverence for the rule of immigration law.
As for the magnitude of the crisis at the border, McCarthy uses a figure of six million people entering the U.S. illegally since Biden took office. Others place the number at something closer to ten million, using official Border Patrol statistics (8,396,199 official apprehensions) and “preliminary gotaway data solely reported by Border Patrol agents at the southwest border.” Ten million people are more people than the populations of 41 individual U.S. states.
The situation is as it is because Biden encouraged it from day one. Let’s not forget that in the 2020 Democrat debates, he encouraged people to “surge the border.” And so they did.
And now, the State of Texas, which has borne the brunt of the influx, is doing something about it. So Biden, offended by Texas’s failure to capitulate to his disregard of the rule of law, sues them. That’s where Biden is coming from. But as McCarthy points out, the U.S. Constitution “Article I, Section 10, Clause 3, states in pertinent part:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress . . . enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State . . . or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” [my emphasis on “unless”].
In December of 2023, arrests of people illegally crossing the U.S. border with Mexico reached a monthly record of 249,785. The sanctuary cities of New York and Chicago cry under the strain when a comparatively small trickle of illegal entrants arrive there. Texas, ground zero, sees the flood of illegal entrants as an “imminent Danger” that will not admit of delay. Twenty-five states have announced support for Texas. Biden sues to continue the surge.
At this moment, what Trump thinks about it doesn’t matter. But do you still salivate every time they ring that bell?
