Sen. Marco Rubio Thursday slammed President Joe Biden for refusing to address the border situation as a national security issue during his speech before Congress, saying that it’s “not surprising” that “one of the biggest failures of the first 100 days is something that they’ve ignored.”
“I don’t think there’s any dispute that it’s a crisis,” said Rubio on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.” “I don’t think there’s any dispute that it was something that was caused by the decisions that (the Biden administration) made.”
When Biden became president, he announced that he was “going to do everything the opposite of the previous president” and that was a “signal to people that it’s going to be easier to get in, almost permissive. And whether that’s true in law or not is irrelevant; that’s the perception. And that perception leads to actions.”
Biden spoke about immigration, but not until the end of the speech, when he said he sent a comprehensive immigration bill to Congress on the first day of his presidency and urged lawmakers to approve it.
“If you believe we need a secure border, pass it, because it has a lot of money for high-tech border security,” he told lawmakers. “If you actually want to solve the problem, I have sent a bill to you, take a close look at it.”
Biden also said that when he was vice president, then-President Barack Obama asked him to focus on addressing the root causes of migration.
“The plan was working, but the last administration decided it was not worth it,” said Biden. “I’m restoring the program and asked Vice President (Kamala) Harris to lead our diplomatic effort to take care of this.”
Rubio agreed that migrants are coming from Central America to the United States because they are fleeing “horrible conditions.”
“We sympathize with them, we really do, but we can’t have an uncontrolled situation on the border, which is what it’s become,” said Rubio. “He didn’t highlight it. He kind of glosses over it, and it doesn’t surprise me that he’s passed it onto the vice president too, by the way. It’s something he doesn’t want to be associated or identified with directly.”
Rubio on Thursday also said Biden has shifted from being a moderate Democrat to embracing the left’s progressive agenda.
“That’s where the energy in the Democratic Party is,” he said. “The energy, the activism, the money all comes from the far left of the Democratic Party; that’s their base. And so that’s where he needs to move to. Now, maybe he’s not a natural in that spot, but it’s irrelevant because he’s become a vessel for them to do things.”
However, Rubio said that while many Americans agree that change is needed, spending more money is not the answer.
“There’s going to be a lot of spending involved no matter what we do, but it should be on the right things and it should be measured,” he said.
The senator also spoke out against the backlash against Sen. Tim Scott’s GOP rebuttal to Biden’s speech, after the racist slur “Uncle Tim” was allowed to remain as a trending topic on Twitter before the website took it down.
“There is no doubt there is a double standard,” said Rubio. “I’ve seen Sen. Scott go through this a number of times already. It’s ugly. The problem here is not that Twitter doesn’t take it down. The problem here is that they take it down when it’s against Democrats or the left, but they don’t do it or are slower to do it when it’s against conservatives or the right. That’s the problem and that’s the hypocrisy here. It’s unfortunate; I’ve seen it.”
The left, he added, demands tolerance, “except for tolerance of anyone who disagrees with them or doesn’t say what they want. Then they’re intolerant. That’s not tolerance.”
Source: Newmax
