OPINION:
The news media are always on the hunt for disinformation, if you believe their proclamations.
If they mean something other than forcing conformity to leftist orthodoxy, they should expose the obvious lies President Biden is telling these days about his own record on illegal immigration.
Mr. Biden has radically reinvented his history to grasp for political survival, because every poll shows illegal immigration is at the top of the list of voter concerns. People are alarmed at the 300,000 “migrant encounters” reported along the southern border in December — a record monthly high. And those are just the ones that the Border Patrol knows about.
There’s no telling how many illegal aliens have gotten away and how many are here with intent to commit terrorism.
How did we get here?
Well, remember that Mr. Biden openly pledged to go soft on illegal immigration while racing to the left in a crowded and competitive Democratic primary cycle leading up to the 2020 election.
He promised amnesty for illegal aliens already present, health care on the taxpayer dime, work permits, support for sanctuary cities, and a halt to deportations. Once president, he did all those things and more, so it’s little wonder that foreign nationals began arriving at our southern border wearing Biden for President T-shirts and telling reporters that they came because they heard Mr. Biden would let them stay.
It is undeniable that Mr. Biden ran on loosening immigration controls, used it as a key contrast in his campaign against former President Donald Trump, and began implementing his lax policies immediately upon taking office.
To keep up the charade that all was well, the Biden administration has insisted for three years that everything was airtight along the line between the U.S. and Mexico. Vice President Kamala Harris made repeated claims that the border is secure, a sentiment echoed many times by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and parroted by two White House press secretaries: Jen Psaki and now Karine Jean-Pierre. Famously, Mr. Biden himself had never visited the border until deep into his term.
But as Republican governors in border states began sending planes and busloads of illegal immigrants to cities run by Democrats, and as the crisis began to pop up in opinion polls, it became a problem the president could no longer ignore. It became a political problem, so he cooked up a political response.
It’s all the Republicans’ fault, he said.
Yes, those same Republicans he had continuously lambasted as xenophobic and racist for wanting to secure the border, build a wall and enforce immigration laws. Now, according to the demented worldview embraced by this administration, it’s the Republicans who have caused the problem, even though Mr. Biden himself laid out the welcome mat and turned on the neon “VACANCY” sign as if the country were a roadside motel where no one is ever charged for a room.
Gallingly, Mr. Biden now claims that he’s long been pleading for better tools to fight illegal immigration (“I’ve asked from the very day I went into office,” he said), a lie that fools no one. He could easily undo his own actions, which would go a long way toward solving the problem.
House Republicans are the only ones in Washington who have actually passed legislation that addresses the border, yet they’re the ones who have drawn most of Mr. Biden’s scorn. If the media sees themselves as defenders of the truth, this is where they should step in. They could also work on getting some of the current stories right.
For example, despite widespread reporting to the contrary, Texas is not “defying the Supreme Court” over razor wire along the Rio Grande. What happened is that the court ruled that the administration could move or cut the razor wire, but it didn’t address what Texas could or couldn’t do at all. As a result, there wasn’t anything for Texas to defy, and it’s clear that the state can continue to place wire along the river.
The truth is that Mr. Biden won the right to cut through a barrier that the state erected to prevent illegal immigration, because he won’t. He is literally clearing a path for people to enter the country illegally, working against one of our 50 states and on behalf of illegal aliens.
The president has sided with foreign lawbreakers over his own law-abiding fellow citizens while lying about his role in causing the crisis in the first place. It would be nice if the media reported it that way, because that is disinformation happening, and they used to claim to care about that.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist, founder and principal of Line Drive Public Affairs LLC, and co-host of the “Line Drive Podcast.”
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