By Eddie Scarry
Now the entire nation knows that congressional Democrats’ main contribution to the debate over illegal immigration is to call President Trump names.
If you didn’t see it live, you might not believe me that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on national television — carried by NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN — that Trump is currently having a “temper tantrum.” And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., literally said Trump has been mean.
Another line from Schumer: “No president should pound the table and demand he get his way.”
Fully grown adults around the country undeniably experienced flashbacks to being placed in time out.
Trump had just delivered a nearly 10-minute address laying out not his case, but the border patrol’s case for additional funding from Congress that would go toward enhanced border technology, medical resources to handle the obscene influx of children migrants
He said that the rich and powerful don’t erect gates and walls around their homes because they “hate” everyone outside them, “but because they love the people on the inside.”
He said that the border is under siege by drug smugglers, gang members, human traffickers, all of which is true.
If you hate Trump but have at least read reports on the illegal border crossers overwhelming the U.S. authorities and our resources, you might think, okay, Democrats, I’m ready to hear you prove him wrong.
But that’s not what Pelosi and Schumer did. They instead insisted, scowlingly, that the current government shutdown was Trump’s fault and that he’s been naughty.
Pelosi responded by accusing Trump of spreading “misinformation and even malice.” Schumer said Trump has used the current government shutdown “to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear, and divert attention from turmoil” in his administration.
Okay, fine but what about the border? The subject was a footnote in the rebuttal. Pelosi must have thought she knocked it out of the park by mentioning Trump’s gag about Mexico paying for the wall, a burn so good that Schumer repeated it later.
Okay, fine but what about the illegal immigrants flooding into the country, clogging up our court systems, and straining the little protection our border currently has?
Pelosi repeated the trope about Democrats believing in “border security” while at the same time “honoring our values” (a code for: Give illegal aliens healthcare and we’ll deal with the rest later). The closest either of them got to proposing a real solution to illegal immigration was when Pelosi encouraged “innovation” that would “detect unauthorized crossings.”
Yes, and I encourage more innovation that will cure AIDS but that doesn’t really help the next person at risk of infection right now.
It’s a good thing Democrats demanded equal time to rebut Trump’s immigration address. Now everyone knows they’re not serious about the problem.