"I've done all I can do, just give me the power." That's what Joe Biden had to say this week to questions about taking action to stem the flow of illegal immigrants and address the accompanying crisis along the southwestern border. The president, along with his press secretary and most Democrats on Capitol Hill, have hammered their claims that former President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are to blame for the chaos at the border, but Americans — and specifically voters in key 2024 swing states — aren't buying the patently false claims from Team Biden.
In fact, Biden is losing badly when it comes to his administration's efforts to avoid blame or accountability for what its policies have done. On day one, Biden began gutting America's border security with executive orders. He used his authority to end Trump-era policies that kept asylum seekers outside the U.S. until their claims were adjudicated, extended the border wall, and gave extra power to authorities along the border to enforce the international boundary. Biden did away with all of them, and now he claims that he lacks the authority to do anything reinstating border security — the very authority that Biden used to create the crisis in the first place.
President Biden continues to lie — he has the authority to end the border crisis because it's the same authority he used to create it. More on that and what I saw at the border on @foxnewsnight w/ @tracegallagher. pic.twitter.com/DTx8PW2Sa9
— Spencer Brown (@itsSpencerBrown) January 31, 2024
Much like Americans haven't bought the Biden White House's claims that his "Bidenomics" policies have caused prosperity and success, a clear majority of swing state voters place the blame for the record-setting number of illegal immigrants streaming into the country squarely on Biden's shoulders.
According to a new Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll, slightly more than 6-in-10 voters residing in swing states "blame Biden for the increase in migrants [read: illegal immigrants] crossing the US-Mexico border." That increase, as Townhall reported, saw another new monthly record set for the number of illegal immigrant encounters with more than 300,000 in December 2023.
Notably, the 61 percent of voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin who blame Biden is twice the number who blame Trump (30 percent) and is also greater than the 38 percent who say Congress is responsible — and its primarily members of Biden's party these voters blamed.
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It turns out that the White House's failures are something of a millstone around the collective neck of congressional Democrats. The same 2024 swing state residents set to decide Biden's fate will also be choosing their representatives to Congress and, according to the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult survey, voters are "more than twice as likely to say Democrats in Congress are 'very responsible' for the situation as their Republican counterparts."
This damning reality for Biden comes, as previously mentioned, after months of attempts from the White House to avoid blame, deny the existence of a crisis, then acknowledge a "challenge" before claiming that addressing the border has been a priority for Biden since "day one."
Despite Biden having the bully pulpit of the Oval Office and he, as a Democrat, enjoying the support from mainstream media outlets in advancing his preferred narrative, the president's messaging strategy has clearly and decisively failed to sway Americans' minds.
Increasingly, the border crisis has become the dominant concern on voters' minds, as demonstrated in exit polls conducted during Iowa and New Hampshire's early-state contests. That's devastating for Biden. If 1) swing state voters overwhelmingly blame the president for the crisis and 2) the border is their top priority, they are — in theory at least — not going to support the incumbent, especially up against the former president whose border policies worked.
This "trust gap," as the survey notes, "between the two presidential candidates is growing." Up from 17 points in December's Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll, swing state voters now "say they trust Trump over Biden to handle immigration" by a 22-point margin.
Biden's attempts to lay blame for the border chaos created by his policies on Republicans have failed. Americans know who to blame — Biden for his executive actions, and Democrats in Congress for failing to do anything but block GOP attempts to legislate a more secure border.
