Biden defends border wall construction amid liberal backlash
FOX News White House correspondent Peter Doocy has the latest on the administration's response to the border crisis on 'Special Report.'
"Real Time" host Bill Maher roasted President Biden's drastic policy reversal at the border as a "disaster" for Democrats.
The Biden administration shocked the nation this week after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited an "acute and immediate need" to waive 26 federal laws, including the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act to begin new border wall construction in the Starr County area of the Rio Grande Valley Sector.
This breaks one of the president's biggest campaign promises of not adding any more border wall, a structure former President Donald Trump had long championed.
During Friday night's panel discussion, Maher sounded the alarm.
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"Real Time" host Bill Maher sounded the alarm about President Biden's about-face on the border during a panel discussion. (Screenshot/HBO)
"I feel like this is a disaster for the Democrats," Maher began. "Trump today said he wants Biden to apologize because it looks like Biden was adopting his policy. This does not look good for the Democrats."
He continued: "Also they look like sanctuary city hypocrites. They were the ones who said, 'Look, we're the compassionate people. Everybody should get a shot here.' And then when they started sending — I mean the quotes from Eric Adams, this is the mayor of liberal New York, ‘This issue will destroy our city.’ The governor [Kathy Hochul], 'If you're going to leave your country, go somewhere else.' Keep walking is from the governor of New York? They put out a flyer in New York City now, says, ‘New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world. You are better off going to a more affordable city'… I understand there's a little ‘I told you so’ on the border."
President Biden's administration shocked the country this week when it revealed it was moving forward with building a wall, breaking one of his biggest campaign promises. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur responded by telling Maher it's "even worse" than what he described since Democrats would accuse Texas of being "racist" for decrying the migrant crisis.
She also pointed out that there were "2 million" border crossings in 2022 and that New York City received just a fraction of that. Estimates are about 110,000 migrants.
"They need to apologize to Texas," Isgur said.
Reason Magazine editor-at-large Matt Welch took New York City Mayor Eric Adams to task for his claim that his city is "full."
"New York City has lost half-a-million residents in four years. New York City is not full. It is the shelters where they promise everyone that you have a right to, those are full and they're full of migrants right now. And so you have zero-sum contests for whatever resources are there," Welch said. "Because of the way New York is governed, which is very badly — I say this as a resident of New York, then they're unable to absorb people."
He continued: "We're talking about numbers that pale in comparison to numbers that were coming into this country in the ‘70s and ’80s. The Mariel boatlift was 110,000 people in a week-and-a-half or whatever it was. Miami survived. Not only that, but kind of thrive from it too, but we're not in a place right now where we have that same kind of capacity to deal with people."
"And it's a damn shame because it's the biggest crisis — the biggest refugee crisis in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Seven million people are an advertisement for why socialism doesn't work in Venezuela right now, and we need to come up with a bigger-hearted and smarter way of dealing with it, and right now our politics are incapable of coming up with it."
Maher complained: "I feel like we can never do anything just in the middle. There's nothing between ‘bomb Mexico’ and ‘come one, come all.'"
Segments of the new border wall are seen in front of the older border wall in Del Rio, Texas on March 5, 2023. (Veronica G. Cardenas/AFP via Getty Images)
The HBO star then took a moment to call out Trump's "scary" rhetoric, citing his recent comments saying the wave of illegal migrants is "poisoning the blood of our country."
"I know you're not supposed to compare to Hitler, but I gotta compare to Hitler," Maher said. "I mean, that's Hitler-y."
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