President Biden lost patience with former President Trump’s falsehoods on immigration in Thursday’s debate after trying to steer the issue toward the failed bipartisan border agreement in the Senate.
“Everything he says is a lie,” Biden said during the event hosted by CNN in Atlanta.
Biden’s pivot came as Trump repeated a litany of falsehoods about immigration, based on the idea that the Biden administration purposefully opened the border.
“He decided to open our border, open our country to people who come from prisons, people who come from mental institutions, mental institutions, terrorists,” Trump said.
Trump also leaned into drawing a link between crime and immigration – a key demand of Republicans ahead of the November elections – making a blanket assessment of immigration based on isolated crimes.
Most research has shown that the presence of immigrants tends to reduce crime rates because immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens.
A Cato Institute paper published Wednesday confirmed previous research that immigrants commit, on average, fewer murders than native-born citizens.
The article analyzed data from the Texas Department of Public Safety and found that the conviction rate for undocumented immigrants in the state was lower than the rate for natural-born citizens every year from 2013 to 2022.
Trump said the United States has become a “rat’s nest” and added that “we have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now, all terrorists, all over the world, not just in South America, all over the world.” ”. Trump said.
He belittled Biden’s claim that Congress should act to give the executive branch greater powers and resources to control the border, arguing that “he didn’t need legislation, because I didn’t have legislation, I said close the border.”
Trump also compared the living conditions of migrants — which he falsely labeled “luxury hotels” — to the conditions of homeless veterans.
“He killed so many people at our border by allowing all these people in, and it’s a very sad day in America,” Trump said.
It was then that Biden lost his patience, delivering one of his strongest speeches in a debate that began shakily for the president.
“Everything he says is a lie. Every one of them,” Biden said.
But Biden responded to Trump’s joke about veterans by dropping the immigration issue.
Trump, however, did not let the matter go. He raised the issue of immigration or the border in response to most other issues.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
