Biden Dismisses Need To Visit Border, Says ‘There’s More Important Things Going On’
While leaving for a trip to Arizona on Tuesday, President Joe Biden was asked why he would visit the state without going to the southern border. In response, the president dismissed the issue, saying that there were “more important things going on.”
Biden made the comment while speaking with reporters as he was departing the White House to head to Arizona, where the president plans to visit a new computer chip plant for Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC.
“Why go to a border state and not visit the border?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked.
“Because there are more important things going on. They’re going to invest billions of dollars in a new enterprise,” the president said about the state, claiming that the factory opening was more important than visiting the southern border.
The New York Post noted in their report that “A border stop would have required a Marine One helicopter flight of about 45 minutes — roughly the same distance as between the White House and Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home, where he regularly returns for weekends.”
Compared to the 2,000-mile journey from the White House to Arizona, the 45-minute flight to visit the border would not have been a long trip — especially if it would have helped Biden see the problem firsthand, and helped him alleviate some of the criticism being levied against him.
The president’s refusal to visit the southern border is shocking to many, as Biden has never actually been to the U.S.-Mexico border during the 36 years he was a senator, nor the 8 years he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, nor in his time as president.
According to the Washington Post, the closest Biden has come to the southern border is when he “briefly drove past the border while on a campaign swing in 2008.”
“On Oct. 17, he held a rally in Mesilla, N.M,” the outlet wrote. “The press officer on the trip, David E. Wade, told The Fact Checker that the plane landed at the El Paso airport and then the motorcade took the nearly one-hour drive to the suburb of Las Cruces. The drive took Biden along a route that for a few minutes hugs the border of the United States and Mexico.”
Biden’s dismissal of the issue comes as Customs and Border Protection has reported a record high of 230,000 border encounters in October. The president’s open-border policies and the flood of illegal immigration through the porous border has had significant consequences for Americans.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) — whose state has been at the center of the border crisis — spoke out about the president’s comments, saying that “Joe Biden doesn’t give a damn” about the border.
“Kids are being raped by cartel members. Tons of drugs are flooding across the border that will kill Americans. Millions of illegal aliens are flooding across the border,” the Texas senator tweeted.
