CT Sen. Chris Murphy Trots Out Multiple Falsehoods in Defense of Awful Border Bill

I can’t say I’ve spent a lot of time listening to what Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has to say, but he appeared on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe" Monday to deliver a truly ludicrous defense of the bloated, ineffective border bill unveiled Sunday night by a bipartisan group of senators.

The bill is a non-starter, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) almost immediately proclaimed it DOA.

See:

The 'Border Security' Deal Is Utter Trash, but There's One Provision That Is Just Infuriating

Speaker Mike Johnson Declares So-Called 'Border Security' Bill Dead on Arrival

Murphy started by saying that the president doesn’t have enough authority to solve the problem despite the fact that there are laws already on the books that Biden simply ignores.

The president can't do this by himself. The president doesn't have the legal authority without additional legislation to control the border and fix the broken asylum system in the way that needs to be done.

And this is part of the fiction that gets perpetuated on the American public by Republicans.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more disingenuous one-minute clip on the internet right now:

This morning on @Morning_Joe I talked about how the border cannot be controlled without new legislation. The President does not have the unilateral power to fix broken laws or reduce backlogs. Blaming Biden is just a tactic for those who want to preserve chaos at the border. pic.twitter.com/u3KUpz0xq3
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 5, 2024

It’s true that the president can’t fix the problem by himself – but if he and his inept Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had any interest in stemming the flow of illegals, they’ve yet to show it. And if the president doesn’t have the legal authority to make a dent in the tsunami, as Murphy contends, then why did Biden in his very first few days in office completely dismantle former President Donald Trump’s policies, such as Remain in Mexico and the border wall, which were clearly having a positive effect?

Biden could restore those policies tomorrow, but he doesn’t care.

Murphy wasn’t done and continued to try to gaslight Americans by claiming the border under Trump was just as bad as it is under Biden.

Now they wanted to pass border legislation last year. In fact, it was so important to them in the House of Representatives that they named it HR two. It was the second bill they introduced, but as soon as it became clear that bipartisan border reform legislation might pass, Republicans in the House started screaming No the president doesn't need any new laws. He has all the authority he needs.

That's just not true. We know that because Donald Trump couldn't do a much better job of controlling the border; presentations were at a 10 year high before COVID and we also know that without legislative reform to the asylum system, without an infusion of resources [meaning more money, money, money], trying to clear the backlog, it's still gonna take 10 years to process an asylum claim.

Trump did see a large number of border encounters in 2019, but look what happened in 2020, according to Pew Research. The COVID pandemic lowered the numbers of border crossers – but so did Trump’s policies [emphasis mine]:

Border Patrol agents apprehended about half as many migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2020 as they did the year before, according to newly released federal data. The sharp drop in the number of apprehended migrants follows a virtual shutdown of the border and new restrictions in the way asylum cases are handled in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

But even in 2018-2019, when border crossing surged under Trump, the number at year-end was 851,508 apprehensions. Under the Biden regime, a staggering 371,036 illegals were caught trying to enter the country in just December 2023 alone. Estimates on the total number let into this country since he entered the Oval Office are anywhere from 6.5 to more than 10 million. Pretty sure Trump’s got him beat on that one.

Murphy just wants more and more legislation—and more and more money—and then and only then, supposedly, will Biden magically spring into action.

So no, we need legislation. Republicans know we need legislation and many of them are trying to stop this legislation because they know the president can't fix it on his own and they know that the border will still be chaotic without us passing the bill.

One can argue that we do, in fact, need legislation—just not the loophole-ridden behemoth negotiated in secret. Nice try, Sen. Murphy, but as of now it appears that this bill will have trouble getting past the starting block.

What it looks like in real life to sell America a bad deal:

what it looks like in real life to sell a landmark bipartisan compromise pic.twitter.com/0QUAHLnlTp
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 5, 2024