Here’s one for the ages: during the 2024 presidential campaign, Democrats told the American people that the border couldn’t be closed without legislation and that candidate Donald Trump had directed the Republicans in Congress not to vote for a bill that purported to shut the border. Was that claim stupid or evil? It was certainly nonsense. What was going on?
Two things, of course. First, the Democrats were simply lying to the American people (claiming that any bill was necessary)—but there was nothing new in that. They had lied repeatedly:
- They lied during Trump’s first term about the Russia collusion connection with the Trump campaign. It was a complete lie, and they all knew it. The goal was to paralyze the duly elected president of the United States.
- They lied about the Hunter Biden laptop during the 2020 campaign. We know that now—there’s no guessing involved. They knew the laptop was real, but they lied about it, and lied, and lied in order to bamboozle the voters into voting against Trump.
- They lied for years about President Biden’s mental capabilities. According to the AP, “a former White House insider has admitted that officials ‘gaslit’ [i.e., deliberately attempted to fool] the public over concerns about Joe Biden’s age and cognitive function.” They stopped only after the Trump-Biden debate, when the American people saw with their own eyes how feeble and mentally incompetent Biden actually was.
And then they had the nerve to lecture America on the danger Trump presented to the country! You can’t make this stuff up.
But back to the border, which is now essentially closed (in case you’ve been secluded in a monastery for the last six weeks praying . . . for a secure border).
Remember: It couldn’t be done without legislation!
Joe Biden said in January 2024, “I’ve done all I can do. Just give me the power I’ve asked for from the very day I got into office. Give me the Border Patrol. Give me the people, the judges. Give me the people who can stop this and make it work right.”
He’s the one person whom we may be able to forgive: he was so demented by then, he may (emphasis on “may”) actually have thought he needed legislation to close the border. Other Democrats don’t have that excuse.
Here’s Kamala Harris in December 2022: “Reform of our immigration system can only happen through Congress in terms of the passage of an immigration bill that allows for a legal pathway to citizenship and a legal presence in the country.” Actually, she is thought to be so stupid, she may even have believed that—reason enough, of course, why she should not be president.
But what excuse do the rest of the Democrats have? Here are comments from a gaggle of either ignorant or dissembling Democrats.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said in June 2024: “My belief from the beginning has been that you need legislation in order to shut down the border absent a public health emergency, and I think that’s probably what the courts will conclude.”
Here’s Karine Jean-Pierre (Biden’s White House press secretary) in January 2024: “Congress needs to act. They must act. Speaker Johnson and House Republicans should provide the administration with the policy changes and funding needed.”
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), February 2023: “If you listen to my Republican colleagues, you’d believe Joe Biden single-handedly broke our immigration system and refuses to fix it. They keep this lie alive by perpetuating a series of myths about Democrats and the border.”
Alberto Benitez (professor, director of George Washington University Law School’s “Immigration Clinic”), February 2024: “A president doesn’t have the unilateral authority to shut down the border. If a president did, the prior president would have done it. Even the prior president, who had a particular perspective on immigration, never shut down the border. There needs to be buy-in from Congress that a border shutdown is necessary, which there never has been.”
Kathleen Bush-Joseph (policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute think tank), February 2024: “President Biden needs Congress to be able to address the situation at the border. That is the simplest way to put it.”
Taylor Levy, immigration attorney, February 2024 (AP News): “Just point blank, that Biden could do this on his own is just not true. There’s simply not enough asylum officers.”
And finally, for now, CBS News, February 2024: “After the Title 42 pandemic-related border restrictions ended last spring, the Biden administration enacted a regulation that presumes migrants are ineligible for asylum if they enter the U.S. without using any of the legal immigration pathways it created and have passed through a third country without seeking asylum. But the administration has not been able to implement the asylum restriction at scale because it does not have the necessary officers, detention facilities and money. . . . Only Congress can change U.S. asylum law.”
But—surprise, surprise—the border is now essentially closed, without the help of Congress. According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, only 200 illegals were encountered at the southern border on February 22, down from nearly 30,000(!) in January.
And the American people are happy with the result of Trump’s policy. On immigration, 56 percent approve of Trump, while Biden was at only 34 percent. Eighty-one percent support “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes.” Seventy-six percent support “closing the border with added security and policies that discourage illegal crossings.”
So which was it? Were the Democrats who said it couldn’t be done without legislation stupid or evil?
Don’t rule out both.
***
Daniel Oliver is Chairman Emeritus of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.
Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.
The wise man and woman always reserve their judgments (final judgement) regarding others characters and motivation, if time isn’t pressing and resist making snap judgements. After all “Assumption IS the mother of all fuckups.”
But, there does come a time when - you no longer need to heed the caution of “Trust but verify” because you have verified and know beyond a shadow of a shade of a single doubt that you do see them for exactly what they are - what the LEFT is - the embodiment - of pure evil - all that is wanton and desiring of undermining and perverting anything that stands in the way of their unquenchable thirst for unbridled power.
Why are they like that? My personal opinion is that it is because they like to think of themselves as ersatz “gods” unto themselves, the tin pot dictators of all that their jaundiced, evil eyes can see and over which? They want absolute, dicatorial power so that no one can, or ever does think anything they don’t think is okay to think.
And so, when you are dealing with such as this? It behooves one - to not be so foolish as to “turn the other cheek”, reach across the aisle (unless being less a hand you fancy). And deal with them as they deserve to be treated as mortal enemies.
The LEFT as we have come to know it and have suffered through these past four years and the 100 leading up to them throwing away their Picture of Dorian Gray masks - thinking with Obama’s election and their theft of the 2020 election - that “their day had come” is that evil.
That’s both the good and the bad news - now the enemy has revealed themselves and no one who wasn’t born yesterday doesn’t realize that? That the only practical course of action now is to destroy their grip on society and culture, which is now in the process of happening.
But - buckle up - because it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
What drives me nuts, and to tears, is how so much of the electorate has morphed to become the irrational recipients of the deranged thinking needed to give credence to these lies.
I suspect money and education goes a long way to successfully indoctrinating not just the susceptible but a large portion of what should otherwise be thinkers. Too many are on the dole, feeding at a provided trough, and even more think that they are entitled because, after tasting the forbidden fruit, believe that they are deserved victims.
A simplistic answer to your angst would be the IQ Bell curve but as we both know, there are many quite intelligent, very educated people who are decidedly to the RIGHT of the IQ Bell curve. And yet, they are “irrational recipients of deranged thinking”.
I have long held that political beliefs are less an intellectual pursuit and more of an emotional experience. And as we know with emotions, they can be fickle, easily manipulated, subject to wild swings of intense passion, and mostly immune to logic and reason.
What’s the old refrain: you can’t reason someone out of an opinion they have not reasoned themselves into.