A panel of CNN commentators gave former President Donald Trump credit Tuesday for identifying the border crisis as an issue, emphasizing that the United States does “have a problem.”
Republican strategist Brad Todd told fellow panelists that the “out of control” southern border will be the “pull and push” of the 2024 election, stating that the Biden administration “made the problem worse.”
“I think the fact that the border’s out of control and the Biden administration has made the problem worse is what’s the bigger problem,” Todd said. “The key portion of this electorate, I mean people who may not always like the way Trump talks or his choice of words, that they don’t like the way Joe Biden’s policies acted. Immigration is gonna be number one on that. Immigration and crisis both. And that’s gonna be the pull and push of this campaign.”
“Can the Biden campaign demonstrate that in fact they’re gonna take a new direction on immigration and on the economy? They’re gonna move more to the center. Or can Trump convince voters to look past some of the rhetoric they don’t like?” Todd asked.
“You can make the case that the immigration system is broken, I don’t think many people will argue about that,” one CNN anchor interjected. “But talking about poisoning the blood of the country, that’s —”
“The numbers of illegal immigrants, encounters on the border is what’s gonna drive the election. It’s not gonna end up being about Donald Trump’s rhetoric. It’s gonna end up being about the numbers under Joe Biden and the realities American citizens are seeing in cities across the country,” Todd said.
CNN senior political commentator Ana Navarro described Trump’s focus on the border as “a golden oldie,” mentioning that “it worked for him in 2016.” The former president heavily campaigned on the immigration crisis before winning the 2016 election, promising to build a border wall and conduct mass deportations. (RELATED: ‘¿Qué Pasa?’: Joe Scarborough Comes Unglued Over Trump’s Remarks On Foreign Languages)
“He goes to this over and over again. It’s funny because you know, what he’s talking about, there’s zero evidence that countries are opening up their insane asylums and their jails and letting these people go to the border. That did happen once. You and I remember that. It happened in Cuba when Castro opened up the insane asylums and the jails, and a lot of good people and a lot of crazy people came at the same time. And I actually think he’s kinda, like, taking a page from that, from that historical occurrence, Mariel in 1980, and using it with zero evidence.”
“And we do have a problem,” Navarro continued. “And the problem is that there’s countries like Cuba, like Venezuela — which he can’t pronounce — like Nicaragua, and Haiti. Three of those are ruled by left-wing dictators who are anti-American. Haiti is a complete basket case right now and getting worse by the minute. And there’s, you know, there’s no controlling of that. And there’s no cooperation from those countries. They don’t even want to take deportees back.”
There were more than 2.4 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2023 alone under the Biden administration, up from roughly 2.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and 1.7 million in fiscal year 2021, according to federal data.