In remarks delivered at the White House on Tuesday, President Joe Biden acknowledged his efforts to pressure the Senate to pass the Ukraine aid and U.S. border security supplemental funding bill have likely failed. Biden credited former President Donald Trump for rallying Senate Republicans to oppose the legislation, which Congressional Democrats largely backed.
“All indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor,” President Biden said before continuing: “Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump.” Biden repeatedly tried to spin his defeat by claiming Trump scuttled the deal to keep the border crisis in play as a 2024 presidential campaign issue.
“Because Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically, therefore … even if it helps the country, he’s not for it, he’d rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it,” the 81-year-old Democrat said, continuing: “So for the last 24 hours, he’s done nothing, I’m told, than reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal. It looks like they’re caving. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.”
House and Senate Republican opponents of the Biden-backed legislation have argued the President already has the statutory authority to restrict the flow of immigrants at the southern border. They have also sharply criticized it for prioritizing Democrat proposals to expand guest worker programs and empower Biden government bureaucrats to make asylum decisions instead of immigration courts. Additionally, as The National Pulse reported last week, a provision that Democrats claim would allow Biden to close the border would actually limit the executive authority to do so.
