Biden’s Other Disaster: The Southern Border

CLAY: We haven’t talked about yet what is an unmitigated disaster —

BUCK: Another one!

CLAY: …the border. Another one! (chuckles) The border, Buck Sexton. While the Biden administration may be talking about trying — which was a story earlier today. The AP reported that the Biden administration is considering restricting travel between states over covid vaccines, Buck, the situation on the border in July, 220,000, I think it was, nearly people came across. It’s basically a sieve.

There’s no protection there at all. For all of the talk about the concern surrounding covid, you’ve got people pouring across the border in numbers that haven’t been seen in 20 or more years. And now we’ve got people in the Biden administration finally acknowledging that it’s broke and it’s a disaster.

BUCK: Well, behind closed doors. Not acknowledging it in a way where we could say, “Oh, you mean you guys are starting to wake up to the reality?” Let’s just be clear, Clay. I was down in the Rio Grande sector of the U.S.-Mexico border either in March or April. It’s a few months now. But I was down there doing essentially ride-along with Border Patrol going to see what they’re seeing.

And every Border Patrol agent I talked to without exception when I posed the very straightforward question to them, “Is the border open right now?” they say “yes.” Every single member of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement that I spoke to — who are willing to speak to me of course; the Biden administration dissents want them speaking to anybody — when I asked them, “Is the border the worst right now in terms of lawlessness, illegal crossings, human struggling, drugs transiting,” including the fentanyl that was largely responsible for killing over 90,000 Americans last year —

CLAY: It’s 30,000 more than ever before.

BUCK: — they said, “It’s the worst that it has ever been,” and as you just teed this up, the DHS secretary, Mayorkas, is — in a leaked audio to Fox News — saying that it’s “unsustainable.” No surprise.

MAYORKAS: This is unsustainable. Uh, these numbers cannot continue. We cannot get to a point, ummm, where we were a couple weeks ago, and we’re gonna make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re looking at the policy options.

BUCK: Clay, I know the audio wasn’t great. So for everyone listening, he said (summarized), “It’s unsustainable. We cannot keep having these numbers. We’re looking at all policy options.” This is a guy in charge of DHS who — behind closed doors when he’s not in front of cameras — is saying all those things those right-wingers have been saying about our border is true. It is unsustainable.

CLAY: The numbers speak for themselves, Buck. So much of this is about narrative versus data. You and I focus on the data to make arguments, for the most part. I don’t know if — and this is something I’ve been talking about for years now. I don’t know if the average person in the media is too dumb to look at data and glean lessons from it — which is one option, and I think it probably applies to some people — or, two, they are so committed to whatever narrative they’re being told to push that they don’t even recognize or are unwilling to discuss when the data clearly demonstrates that whatever narrative they’re pushing is untrue.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: “How much is too much?” is the question that you want to start to ask about this Biden team. What have they done well? Remember how they were doing all the victory dances about covid and vaccination and, oh, they’re so much better at distributing shots. Trump did Operation Warp Speed, but the distribution which they already had in place (after pretending they didn’t when the Biden team took over), that was their big calling card, Clay, that and the economy, which, by the way, they said won’t have really bad inflation but actually looks like it is gonna have some really bad inflation.|

CLAY: Every choice they’re making is failing.

BUCK: The border: Awful choices leading to awful outcomes. Crime: Awful choices about defund police leading to awful outcomes. Afghanistan, the evacuation, the drawdowns: Awful choices leading to awful outcomes. You really have to think… I guess they’re better about preferred pronoun usage in this White House, so, yaaaay! We can all be happy with that.

CLAY: It’s really a funny thing to think about. Unfortunately, we’re all bearing the brunt of the failures. What have they actually done well?

BUCK: (silence)

CLAY: It’s just crickets. And not only not done well, what has not blown up in their faces in a disastrous fashion? And I really think, Buck, if Alex Berenson’s right — which is why I would encourage everybody to go listen to that interview we did with him at the beginning of the second hour — this covid implosion is going to be impossible to ignore and covid is going to become a metaphor for failures everywhere.

BUCK: Just remember, their failures, unfortunately, only report in more authoritarianism.

CLAY: Well, that’s the fear.

BUCK: We all have to be ready for that.

CLAY: That’s the fear.

BUCK: And that’s what I would expect going forward.