CLAIM: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) claimed former President Donald Trump sabotaged a “bipartisan” immigration and border bill because of politics.
Verdict: Mostly wrong. This bill was so bad that it would never have passed as is.
Walz made a familiar argument Tuesday evening during the vice presidential debate on CBS News in New York, saying Trump is the only reason a “bipartisan” immigration bill that would have secured the border failed. He claimed that.
This bill was never passed, not because of President Trump, but because it would have legalized immigration at massive levels of up to 5,000 immigrants per day, leading to the current immigration crisis at the southern border. It would have been.
Republican Sen. James Lankford (R-Ohio), who negotiated the bill, worked with Democrats to hide details of the bill. When this bill was introduced, the details were so shocking that it likely would have failed even if President Trump had supported it.
Senate bills require a simple majority to pass. A supermajority of 60 votes is required to proceed to the final vote. And there's no way Lankford could have gotten eight more Republican votes in a 51-49 Senate.
The fact is that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the so-called “border czars” (though she now denies it), already have the necessary authority to enforce border and immigration laws. They simply rejected it, reversing President Trump's most successful immigration policies upon taking office. And immigration bills consistently fail for the simple reason that they don't prioritize border security before legalization. This was true under Democratic administrations, in Republican-run Congresses, and in Democratic Congresses.
To be sure, President Trump did not want Biden to “win” politically and be able to falsely claim that he had solved the border crisis by passing the bill. That's one of the reasons he opposed it. But he also opposed it substantively, and it was so bad that even President Trump couldn't save it.
Joel B. Pollack is a senior editor at Breitbart News. Breitbart News Sunday Sunday nights from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. he is the author of Agenda: What should President Trump do in his first 100 days?available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of Trumpian Virtues: Lessons and Legacy of the Donald Trump Presidencynow available on Audible. He is the recipient of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter @joelpolak.
