Buttigieg spars with ‘Squawk Box’ host over Biden’s border policies

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday debated President Biden’s border policies with the hosts of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” and blamed former President Trump for the breakdown of a bipartisan border agreement.

“It was particularly unfortunate to see what happened at the border. You’d think Congressional Republicans would be interested in addressing border issues because they talk about it all the time,” Buttigieg said. told CNBC’s Joe Kernan.

“Just when it looked like we had a chance to do something real with real resources at the border, Donald Trump, who’s not even an elected official, comes along and crushes it with the cold air he gave us. “It was only when,” he added.

Kernan rejected Buttigieg’s comments, saying the Biden administration was not interested in resolving the border issue “until it became clear that it was going to be a major campaign issue.”

“Every time you hear about this, all of a sudden it’s the Republicans who destroyed the border. That’s why people get so frustrated. We know what President Biden said about inviting people; I know that President Trump took away everything that kept the border closed, and I know that he took away all of that,” Kernan said before Buttigieg interjected. . .

“That’s literally not true,” Buttigieg said.

The two sides engaged in dialogue, and Kernan noted that more people are crossing the border under President Biden’s administration than under the Trump administration. Buttigieg shot back that Biden “repeated the policy of separating children from their parents’ arms.”

“There’s been a bipartisan effort to get something done here. But I think a lot of Republicans find this issue very useful as a cudgel and continue to perpetuate the issue for political use.” “I really believe we’ve gotten to the point where we’re going to let that happen and then resolve the issue and jeopardize the president’s ability to share in the credit,” Buttigieg said.

Mr. Kernan responded by pointing to Mr. Biden’s poll numbers.

“The reason some of these numbers are the way they are is that instead of actually owning some of the problems we have, instead of acknowledging that the president may have taken a step too far, the administration ‘Because it seems like he keeps saying, ‘Dong-dong.”’ “Trust your lying eyes,” he said.

The two sides continued to spar, with Buttigieg again criticizing Republicans for not addressing the border issue.

Buttigieg said the “common sense position” is that “we should have more legal immigration and less illegal immigration.”

“Yet, even if there was an opportunity to actually do it, it didn’t happen. The previous administration cut legal immigration, but at the same time as the terrible conditions in Latin America are pushing people , our economy is also attracting people,” he said.

President Trump had voiced opposition to the bipartisan agreement on the border, but Senate Republicans scrapped it last month after backlash from conservatives.