Joe Biden’s border order and his son’s gun have put Donald Trump’s pet topics in the spotlight
For much of his presidency, Joe Biden painstakingly avoided using the “C” word.
“Crisis.”
Now it’s five months until Americans vote and Joe Biden is desperately trying to neutralise one of the trickiest issues for his administration.
The crisis at the border.
Joe Biden has struggled during his time in the Oval Office both to control migration at the US southern border and to control the narrative.
Millions have crossed into the US since he took power in early 2021. They’re coming from all over the world, seeking a better life. Video of migrants making the dangerous journey by scaling fences or traversing rivers is a staple on right-wing news channels.
Biden has been willing to describe a “broken immigration system” that needed an overhaul but wasn’t keen to adopt the language of his critics.
“Crisis.”
But when he issued his sweeping presidential edict on Tuesday, local time, which would effectively close off the border to most migrants, he adopted his opponents’ terminology with a slight adjustment.
“The simple truth is, there is a worldwide migrant crisis,” he said. “And if the United States doesn’t secure our border, there is no limit to the number of people who may try to come here.”
Once the average number of unauthorised arrivals hits 2,500 a day, over a week, the border is basically shut to other asylum seekers. They’ll instead be sent back to either their home country, or to Mexico.
There are exceptions for unaccompanied minors and those facing serious medical or safety threats, but it’s a much harder line than anything we’d previously seen from Biden, and one that’s put him at odds with the progressive wing of his own party.
But it’s clear he’s recognised that he needs to be seen as doing more to deal with the situation.
He’s right that this is not just an issue in the States; unauthorised or illegal migration is shaping up to be a major political issue across much of the Anglosphere.
Biden knows that the more attention there is on illegal migration, the better it is for his political opponents. Polls show Americans think the Republicans are better at handling border security. Former president Donald Trump hammers the points at almost every opportunity.
Trump calls it an “invasion” and describes Biden as “weak”. He says other countries are taking advantage of America’s lack of border security to expel their own criminals.
It’s been a consistent theme for Trump since he came down the golden escalators at Trump Tower almost nine years ago to announce his candidacy for president.
His perhaps most memorable lines were when he accused Mexico of “sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They are bringing drugs, and bringing crime, and their rapists”.
At the time, the language shocked the political establishment. It’s a sign of how much Trump has reshaped American political discourse since that these accusations no longer seem extraordinary.
Despite his new hardline policy echoing what his predecessor did in office, Biden was at pains to differentiate himself.
“I will never refer to immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood’ of a country. And further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs.”
But he also says, “Doing nothing is not an option.”
Earlier this year, a bipartisan deal that would have changed the law was scuttled after Trump intervened. He didn’t want to give Biden a win on this issue. Trump wants immigration to be front and centre of this campaign.
Biden recognises there’s a crisis that needs to be solved. He would have preferred that Congress had acted to resolve it. They didn’t and now he’s hoping his unilateral action will both stem the flow of migrants crossing the border and deprive his political opponents of one of their most effective attacks.
Political meets personal in another courtroom drama
If Trump’s criminal trial was a crash course in the dark arts of tabloid journalism, Hunter Biden’s is a masterclass in crack cocaine addiction.
The jury has heard of the president’s son’s wild ride into drug dependency which took him into dangerous and unpredictable underworlds where he sought out dealers in seedy back alleys and had guns held to his head.
You can see why Hunter Biden thought the material would make a good book, and much of what the court heard this week is already detailed in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things.
But to hear long sections of the audiobook, which he narrated, played in the Delaware court was a truly surreal experience.
One juror, who appeared to be slumped and struggling to stay awake during opening arguments, visibly sat up, the slightest smile detectable on his lips as he listened to the rollicking tale.
Three women who were romantically involved with the president’s son during the darkest days of his addiction have been called as witnesses for the prosecution — his ex-wife, a woman he met in a strip club, and the widow of his brother Beau, who died of a brain tumour in 2015.
His current wife, a woman he married in 2019 after knowing her for less than a week, sits in the stands and listens to it all.
You really couldn’t make it up.
The first lady, Jill Biden, has also been in court to support Hunter Biden, whom she raised after his mother died in a car crash, which also killed his baby sister and left a young Hunter and Beau injured just as their father’s political career was taking off.
This would all be remarkable on its own, but the fact that this trial is taking place just days after Trump was criminally convicted just up the road in New York is hard to get your head around – even in America in 2024.
It complicates the Biden campaign’s response to Trump’s conviction.
If they are seen to gloat and Hunter Biden is convicted, could that backfire, even if the president’s son is not running for office himself?
Trump delights in homing in on Hunter Biden’s legal troubles, and frequently riffs, without evidence, on “the Biden crime family”.
A guilty verdict in the Hunter Biden case could in some voters’ eyes cancel out the Trump conviction.
If the president’s son on the other hand is not convicted, does it add fuel to Trump’s claims that the justice system is being weaponised against him as he seeks to defeat Joe Biden in November’s election?
Then there’s the personal tragedy of it all.
As Joe Biden said as the trial began, “I am the President, but I am also a dad”.
The man sometimes known as the “empathiser-in-chief” has lost his first wife, baby daughter and oldest son.
The president holds his surviving son tight and is known to call him every day.
A conviction and possible jail time would be a huge blow.
First, the prosecution will have to convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt that Hunter Biden knowingly lied when he said he wasn’t addicted to drugs when purchasing a Colt Cobra revolver in a Wilmington gun store on October 12, 2018.
The defence’s case, to some extent an exercise in semantics, is that there’s no clear evidence that at that moment, on that day, he was using and considered himself an active addict.
As in New York, it’s once again up to 12 ordinary Americans to decide on a case with potentially huge ramifications for a family and the nation.
In case you missed it: Kidding around in Congress
The son of another politician also made waves this week.
The six-year-old was captured on camera making goofy faces as his dad, Congressman John Rose, addressed the House floor.
As the clip went viral, the Tennessee Republican explained his son was “job shadowing” him after recently finishing kindergarten.
“This is what I get for telling my son Guy to smile at the camera for his little brother.”
John and Guy were soon being interviewed about the moment, with junior proving just as cheeky on Fox News as he was in the House.
The antics eclipsed the Republican’s speech, in which he was defending Trump’s trial as a “politically driven prosecution”.
It seems you just can’t escape the courtroom this week in American politics.
SOURCE: ABCNEWS
