Saying White House press secretary Jen Psaki told a whopper during a press briefing is the equivalent of a “dog bites man” report, but the more egregious ones still need to be called out for the record, especially considering the predictably inconsistent, unreliable, highly biased nature of the various official media “fact-checking” units out there.
On more than one occasion, Psaki has straight-up lied about various elements of the Biden border crisis, most notably about the fact that there even is a crisis. The gaslighting has simply been off the charts with this administration on this issue, and they should not be allowed to get away with it.
As per the norm, it happened earlier today during the daily press briefing. Psaki started things off by declaring that the rush of migrants to the border started under the Trump administration, and claimed the Biden administration was working hard to solve the problem Trump allegedly “exacerbated.” Here’s what she said:
“I wanted to provide a brief update on the situation at our Southern border. After four years of an immigration system rooted in destructive and chaotic policies, President Biden is taking the challenge head-on and is building a fair, orderly, and humane immigration system. That’s our objective. After coming into office, our administration immediately jumped into action to address the influx of migrants at the border, something that began during and was exacerbated by the Trump administration…”
Watch the masterful gaslighting performance below:
Except no. Even the Biden apologists at the Washington Post acknowledge that the surge numbers at the border this year were at the “highest levels in at least 15 years”:
Preliminary enforcement data for March confirms what border officials have been saying for weeks: The number of migrants crossing into the United States has skyrocketed to the highest levels in at least 15 years, and record numbers of teenagers and children arriving without parents have overwhelmed the government’s ability to care for them.
[…]
Last month, CBP took in more than 18,800 unaccompanied minors, a 99 percent increase from February and a figure far above the previous one-month high of 11,861 in May 2019. The jump in the number of migrants arriving as part of family groups was even steeper last month, soaring to more than 53,000, up from 19,246 in February and 7,294 in January, the preliminary figures show.
Though the Biden administration has tried to claim that the influx is part of a “seasonal” change, that’s not true, either, as the Post also noted last month and as the USA Today also pointed out in a similar report:
Last month, in a news briefing, Biden attributed the increase of migrants as part of a cyclical rise of migrants who come to the United States in early spring. But this year’s number of migrants coming to the United States is much higher than in 2019, when the country saw its last surge.
What caused the rapid rise? A number of things, chief among them the knowledge of what then-presidential candidate Joe Biden said on the campaign trail about welcoming a surge of migrants at the border. Flashback:
As further proof, there have also been a number of interviews done with illegal immigrants at the border who have pointed to Biden’s prior comments about welcoming migrants to the United States.
As I’ve said before, it’s just an insult to the intelligence of the American people at this point for the administration to continue to play word and blame games with what’s happening at the border. It’s an obvious attempt at trying to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that the open borders declarations Biden made during his presidential campaign and his rollback of Trump border policies have been directly responsible for the surge in illegal immigration and the crisis we’re watching unfold on the Texas/Mexico border and elsewhere.
Democrats cannot have it both ways on this issue. Saying Trump’s policies made migrants feel unwelcomed and too scared to try and cross the border and then turning around and saying the influx started under Trump does not make sense.
This is a crisis of Biden’s own making, and no amount of dodging, weaving, and spinning like a top from Psaki or any other official in this administration is going to change that very inconvenient fact.
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