Former President Barack Obama deconstructed some of Donald Trump’s playbook attacks while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Nevada on Saturday.
Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas, Obama accused the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), of leaning on scaremongering about immigration as an answer to any issue.
“If you challenge them, they’ll fall back on one answer. It does not matter what it is — housing, health care, education, paying for the bills — one answer: blame the immigrants,” he said.
“He wants you to believe that if you elect him, he will just round up whoever he wants and ship them out and all your problems will be solved,” he added.
He acknowledged that there’s a “real issue” at the border and elements of the system are “broken,” but criticized Trump’s approach.
“When I hear Donald Trump talk … he’s very quick to say to Kamala, ‘Well, you were vice president for four years,’” he added. “Dude, you were president for four years!”
Democrats have proposed a path to citizenship. They have proposed improving the process of immigrating to the United States by adding judges and streamlining the process. They support a strong social safety net. They support improving working conditions. All things that help with the root causes for a lot of the problems in our immigration system. And all of which have been shut down by the GOP.
Hell, the only reason the Democrats are mainly talking about enforcement and not fixing the system in its entirety right now is because that’s literally the only thing the GOP would entertain when they negotiated the deal Trump tanked.
I don’t think it’s fair to claim the Democrats are using the issue as a political football when they’re actually operating in good faith. We need to stop allowing Republicans to get elected and sabotage the process.