During a Friday appearance on MSNBC, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) explained that he was holding back his endorsement of President Joe Biden until he moves closer to the center and takes action to deal with the border crisis.
Speaking with MSNBC host Katy Tur on her show, “Katy Tur Reports,” Manchin explained that Biden has made “a big mistake at the border” that is entirely “his fault” — but claimed that the president’s failure to secure the border, enforce immigration laws and protect Americans from criminal illegal aliens was a decision made out of empathy for the illegal aliens. Manchin also stated that he has been “begging” the president to “declare a national emergency,” and claimed that Biden was “willing to fix” his border crisis.
The discussion began when Tur questioned whether Manchin was “waiting” for Biden to shift his political leanings, asking, “Is that what you’re holding your endorsement for?”
“I think he needs to move. I really do,” the Democrat senator replied. “I think the people want [him] to say, we made a mistake at the border, a big mistake at the border, but he’s willing to fix it.”
Manchin then praised the Senate’s widely-panned immigration bill, which was marketed as a border security bill but in reality was designed to codify Biden’s disastrous open borders policies.
Tur responded by asking Manchin “what more do you want Joe Biden to do” about the immigration problem.
“Well, first of all, if you want to blame Joe Biden, it’s his fault for what happened, but he did it [in] a sympathetic way, basically empathetic towards what was happening after a pandemic,” he claimed. “He tried, and he saw we were getting overrun, we should have shut it down.”
Manchin went on to push the Democrats’ favorite talking point — blame former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. The Democrat senator falsely claimed that the reason the disastrous “bipartisan” border bill was shut down by House Republicans was because Trump thought it was bad for his campaign.
The Democrat senator claimed: “So, now he comes to an agreement…a border security bill, that would work, and Donald Trump moves in and says, oh, I’m sorry, I can’t do that, because it’s not good for my campaign or my politics, let’s wait.”
This is far from the truth, even from Manchin’s perspective — as the bill would allow thousands of illegal aliens to enter the U.S. per day before the government can even consider shutting down the border. This means that the bill would only help Trump’s campaign, giving him more ammunition to blame Biden for the ongoing crisis.
Not only does this bill codify 1.5 million illegal border crossings into law, but the "border emergency" that automatically gets implemented at 5,000 crossings per day in a week can be overturned by Joe Biden.
And in case 1.5 million illegals isn't enough, it also locks in green… pic.twitter.com/pZRV4iymph
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 5, 2024
Manchin then claimed that Trump’s efforts to help stop the terrible border bill from passing is actually “as bad” or “worse” than Biden’s actions that caused the entire border crisis from the beginning.
“That’s as bad, if not worse, than making a mistake [in] the beginning,” he falsely claimed, adding that he is “begging” Biden that “if this can’t be fixed in Congress, to basically do and declare a national emergency, because the border is of a national concern and a national emergency.”
