The Senate’s terrible border deal is dead. Realizing House Republicans would never vote for the sellout, their Senate colleagues accepted a bill that would fund Ukraine and Israel without any border security measures to stop President Joe Biden’s illegal-alien invasion [Ukraine-Israel Aid Bill Clears Critical Hurdle in the Senate, by Karoun Demirjian, New York Times, February 12, 2024]. Several Republican senators caved on their promise that they would only support such funding if it included measures to stop the deluge of illegals. But that’s still better than cementing the invasion as a permanent public policy. Biden and the Democrats know that he is responsible for more than 3 million encounters at the border since the beginning of fiscal 2023, and that it could cost them the 2024 election. So they hope to blame Republicans for the crisis because the GOP rejected what amounted to an Amnesty. But most Americans have too much common sense to fall for this, and the polls show it.

Speaking at the White House, Biden claimed the failed bill included “the most fair, humane reforms in our immigration system in a long time and the toughest set of reforms to secure the border ever,” but “Donald Trump thinks it’s bad for him politically, even though it helps the country.” Trump, he said, would “rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it. So for the last 24 hours, he’s done nothing, I’m told, but reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal. And looks like they’re caving” [Remarks by President Biden Urging Congress to Pass the Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, WhiteHouse.gov, February 6, 2024].

Biden’s message: “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other congressional Democrats launched the same attack on Republicans, claiming they betrayed the negotiations [Senate GOP blocks border bill, Democrats shift focus to Israel and Ukraine aid, by Deirdre Walsh, NPR, February 7, 2024].

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre hammered the talking point at a news conference. Biden tried to secure the border “from day one,” she said, falsely claiming the president’s Amnesty would have secured the border. In fact, it would simply legalize all illegal aliens without any real enforcement provisions. This revisionism was deployed to browbeat Republicans as the real culprit for the border invasion.

[I]n those three years, it is true that Republicans have gotten in the way… They have

 [consistently] used immigration—the immigration system, the broken system—as a political stunt.  That’s what they’ve done.

They’ve gotten in the way in trying to get more Border Patrol agents.  They’ve gotten in the way in actually trying to fix what’s happening—the challenges at the border.  They did.

The lesbian Martiniquan/Haitian immigrant also touted the failed border deal, claiming it’s truly bipartisan and very “strong”:

The Border Patrol union supports it.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce supports it.  Republicans—governor—a Republican governor ad a—and—and Democratic governors have put a letter to—together—an op-ed supporting this bill.  It could not be stronger or more fairer.

Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, White House, February 6, 2024

But the bill was, of course, awful. The government would have “shut down” the border (meaning direct illegals to the ports of entry) only if the daily average of illegals were 5,000 encounters, making it official government policy to allow at least 100,000 illegals in every month. It would have increased legal immigration through more green cards and work visas. It also would have worked to legalize the illegals already here by hiring “asylum officers” to hear cases and approving applications. It would have been worse than doing nothing at all because it would have acted as a backdoor to greatly increase immigration and legalize the illegal aliens already here.

But the Regime Media, serving as Biden’s public relations machine, pretended it was a tough bill, and blamed Trump and Republicans. Leading the charge: the New York Times. It published two alleged news articles that claimed the GOP now stands against border security. One was headlined Republicans Against Border Enforcement. In the other article—posted on Twitter by the White House—Times chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse wrote:

But Democrats tripped [Republicans] up by offering substantial—almost unheard-of—concessions on immigration policy without insisting on much in return. Now it is Republicans who are rapidly abandoning a compromise that gave them much of what they wanted, leaving aid to Ukraine in deep jeopardy, border policy in turmoil and Congress again flailing as multiple crises at home and abroad go without attention because of a legislative stalemate.

On the Border, Republicans Set a Trap, Then Fell Into It, February 6, 2024

NYT: On the Border, Republicans Set a Trap, Then Fell Into It https://t.co/UqI1GVIrI0

— Ben LaBolt (@WHCommsDir) February 6, 2024

Hulse permitted duplicitous Democrats to insist that Republicans got exactly what they wanted and then abandoned the deal. Both articles falsely claimed the bill would have strengthened the border and reduced illegal immigration. The New York Times even insinuated Republicans, by rejecting the Senate deal, might lose their polling advantage on this issue. [Republicans Against Border Enforcement, by David Leonhardt, New York Times, February 7, 2024].

But perhaps more galling than that propaganda is that Republicans, Ohio GOP Senator J.D. Vance wrote in The American Conservative, went along with this to sink Trump:

This is a fairytale that makes conservative senators and Donald Trump look bad, perhaps by design. In truth, the demands conservative senators made at the beginning of the negotiation went like this: Joe Biden can fix this problem, but he refuses, so we must make him do his job.

         The Republican Plot Against Donald Trump, February 12, 2024

But, Vance wrote, that isn’t what happened. GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell was never serious about the border and the deal that conservatives wanted “was never on the table” because McConnell and GOP leaders didn’t press for it.

Furthermore, Vance wrote, “most Republicans opposed the deal well before [Trump] weighed in—publicly or privately.”

So the line that Trump wrecked the deal isn’t true.

Still, Democrats hope that’s what Americans believe. And if Vance is right, so do some of his GOP colleagues.

That’s unlikely to be the case.

The primary reason for this is that immigration enforcement is not the responsibility of Congressional Republicans. It’s the duty of the president to enforce the law.

Biden has overseen immigration for three years—and we’ve seen a flood of illegal immigrants  for the entire time. His policies are why so many have come into this country. His administration is the one catching and releasing them. His administration is the one that froze deportations when he assumed office and ended Remain in Mexico. His administration is the one granting parole to tens of thousands of would-be illegals every month.

Illegals are not coming because Republicans opened the borders despite being a minority party in DC for the first two years of Biden’s administration. They came because of who is in the White House.

This is another example of Biden refusing to take responsibility for his actions. He has so much contempt for the American people and his media allies that he expects them to believe his malarkey about the border.

He’s right to bet on the media swallowing it. Journalists are lapdogs for the liberal establishment. Most will do whatever Biden tells them to do, as can be seen by the Times’ articles. But this is too much a lie for some to ignore.

Axios recently published a devastating exposé of Biden’s immigration policies [How Biden botched the border, by Alex Thompson and Stef W. Knight, Axios, February 12, 2024].

It detailed what it portrayed as incompetence and mismanagement and his deference to Leftist activists. (Of course, neither Biden nor his lieutenants are incompetent. They know exactly what they’re doing.)

Axios placed the blame squarely on the commander in chief, particularly in noting that he “signed several immigration-related executive orders in his first weeks in office, undoing many of Trump’s border restrictions.” The article shows how the administration’s line might not even work on its most dutiful allies.

Polling should also deflate Biden’s hope that Americans will blame Trump and the GOP for the failed border deal. A January poll found that 61 percent of swing state voters blame Biden for the invasion [6 in 10 swing-state voters say Biden bears responsibility for migrant surge: Survey, by Alex Gangitano, The Hill, January 31, 2024]. A more recent poll found that nearly 50 percent of Americans blame Biden for the failure of the border bill. Only 39 percent blame Trump. More than half blame both congressional Democrats and Republicans for the poor measure. Additionally, far more Americans trust Trump on this issue than the current president—44 percent versus 26 percent [Overwhelming majority of Americans think Biden is too old for another term: POLL, by Meredith Deliso, ABC, February 11, 2024].

The memory of the bad border deal will eventually fade from most voters’ memory. What won’t fade is the continuing invasion. Even Biden (or his handlers) recognize this. There are reports he might issue executive orders to start cracking down on the border. What those orders might look like are unclear, but it is a sign that he knows his current talking points won’t make the situation go away [The Biden administration is considering executive action to deter illegal migration at the southern border, by Julia Ainsley and Monica Alba, NBC, February 7, 2024].

Despite years of claiming the border is secure, Biden and the Democrats now claim, preposterously, that the invasion he invited is the fault of Republicans The problem for them is that few Americans will buy it. This is Biden’s own disaster.