In a distributing and revealing exchange between President Biden and Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy, the president revealed that not only did he believe stories about $450,000 payments to families of illegal aliens separated at the border was wrong, but he also called it “garbage” and “not true.” How absurd, according to Biden, that his administration would be paying families money for crossing the border illegally and getting caught in U.S. immigration law.
Watch as Biden describes the question and premise as a “garbage report”:
Pretty clear, right? No such payments are being made according to the President.
Except, payments are about to be made, and Biden’s Justice Department is in the middle of negotiating it.
Biden’s answer and seeming ignorance of the actions being taken by his own administration reveal a clear disconnect between what Biden is being told or made aware of by the people around him and what’s actually happening. The total of the potential settlement could reach over $1 billion in taxpayer money, how would the President not be aware of such an immense payout under such specious terms?
According to reports, the White House has now briefed the President, and he’s “perfectly comfortable” with it, or at least his advisors told him he is:
On Thursday, while declining to speak to specifics and deferring to the Justice Department, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to clarify Biden’s comments.
She said Biden “is perfectly comfortable” with a settlement agreement between migrant families and the government and was simply responding to the reported price tag.
Jean-Pierre then confirmed reports that DOJ officials relayed to lawyers representing families that a reported figure of $450,000 per person was higher than what the government could agree to. She also suggested that a settlement with the families could save taxpayer dollars by avoiding the costs of litigation.
Episodes like this demonstrate why Biden’s handlers do not want him answering questions or speaking to the press. It’s possible that Biden learns more about what his administration is doing from the media than he does from his own advisors who clearly keep him in the dark for a reason. Remember when President Obama used to claim ignorance to his administration’s scandals by saying he just learned about them on the news? With Biden, it’s probably true, he actually doesn’t know what’s going on around him.
The ACLU attacked Biden’s answer after the press conference as “breaking a campaign promise” since the group is actively involved in extorting taxpayers out of a billion dollars on behalf of migrant lawbreakers:
“President Biden may not have been fully briefed about the actions of his very own Justice Department as it carefully deliberated and considered the crimes committed against thousands of families separated from their children as an intentional governmental policy,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in a statement. “But if he follows through on what he said, the president is abandoning a core campaign promise to do justice for the thousands of separated families.”
So the question remains, why did Biden respond in the way that he did? He called reports of payments to families separated at the border “garbage.” Does he disagree with the payments? Does he accept the premise of Doocy’s question that tossing money around will only encourage more illegal migration? Clearly, Biden’s gut reaction was to shoot the report down as some kind of “fake news” when in fact it was very real.
Read more of the exchange in context and it gives us some clues about why Biden thinks these reports can’t possibly be true:
The reporter asked Biden if such payments — which the Journal said “could amount to close to $1 million a family” — could serve as an incentive for additional undocumented people to try to enter the US. Biden responded, “If you guys keep sending that garbage out, yeah. But it’s not true.”
When the reporter asked Biden directly if “this is a garbage report,” Biden replied, “Yeah.” Then, offering the first inkling of what specifically he was denying, Biden disputed the “$450,000” figure the Wall Street Journal used.
Biden asked, “Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars per person. Is that what you’re saying?” When the reporter confirmed, Biden said, “That’s not gonna happen.”
Biden’s issue was with the accurate figure–$450,000 per person–saying “that’s not gonna happen.” The optics of such a move are already causing pushback from lawmakers pointing out that these family separations taking place at the time in 2018, which have been happening for years at the border, were done in accordance with U.S. immigration law and the direct result of the actions taken by these individuals and families choosing to break the law and make an illegal border crossing. It’s like breaking into a house and then asking for compensation when you get arrested because you had to go to jail and your children couldn’t come with you.
How we went from “that’s not gonna happen” to being “perfectly comfortable” with paying out a billion-dollar settlement to lawbreakers remains unclear. For the moment, however, it’s a demonstration of the serious rot that is occurring within this administration and how Biden himself sits outside the orbit of what’s going on around him being perpetrated in his name.
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