President Joe Biden conceded during a CNN town hall event on Thursday night that he should visit the U.S.-Mexico border to see the crisis that has erupted under his leadership, but claimed that he just has not had enough time to do it.
Biden made the remarks in response to a question from CNN’s Anderson Cooper on whether he had plans to visit the border.
“I’ve been there before, and I haven’t — I mean, I know it well,” Biden claimed. “I guess I should go down. But the — but the whole point of it is: I haven’t had a whole hell of lot of time to get down. I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion worth of damage done by — by hurricanes and floods and — and weather, and traveling around the world.”
“But I plan on — now, my wife, Jill, has been down. She’s been on both sides of the river,” he said. “She’s seen the circumstances there. She’s looked into those places. You notice you’re not seeing a lot of pictures of kids lying on top of one another with — you know, with — with bla- — with, you know, looks like tarps on top of them.”
RNC Deputy Communications Director Nathan Brand called out Biden over his remarks, saying that while Biden claims to not have time to go to the border, he “spends time every weekend at his beach home.”
Biden: "I have not had a whole hell lot of time to get down" to the Southern border
Reality: spends time every weekend at his beach home
(Also, he hasn't been to the border in at least 10+ years, if ever)pic.twitter.com/TETduqGUDq
— Nathan Brand (@NathanBrandWA) October 22, 2021
TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED VIA THE WHITE HOUSE:
MR. COOPER: Do you have plans to visit the southern border?
THE PRESIDENT: I’ve been there before, and I haven’t — I mean, I know it well. I guess I should go down. But the — but the whole point of it is: I haven’t had a whole hell of lot of time to get down. I’ve been spending time going around looking at the $900 billion worth of damage done by — by hurricanes and floods and — and weather, and traveling around the world.
But I plan on — now, my wife, Jill, has been down. She’s been on both sides of the river. She’s seen the circumstances there. She’s looked into those places. You notice you’re not seeing a lot of pictures of kids lying on top of one another with — you know, with — with bla- — with, you know, looks like tarps on top of them.
We’ve been able to deal that — we’ve been able to significantly increase funding through the HHS — Health and Human Services — to provide shelter for these kids and people. But there’s much more to be done.
And — and I realize — I — I think it is — it’s the thing that concerns me the most about being able to get control of it. Because I got to, number one, get enough funding to provide for immediate determination of whether or not someone that is, in fact, legitimately claiming a right to stay in the country because of legitimate fears. And it’s purely for economic reasons to get in line but not get in the country.
So, what we’re doing is bringing a lot of folks who are coming in and they’re doing ankle bracelets instead of people being sent back, depending on whether or not their claim appears to be legitimate.
Story cited here.
