Trump, Abbott visit a border in South Texas
Former president sees only 2 possible answers to question
PHARR, Texas – Former President Donald Trump returned to Texas on Wednesday for the first time since leaving office in January for a look at an unfinished section of the border wall near the Rio Grande, using the opportunity to fire broadsides at his successor and congressional Democrats.
“Now we have an open, more dangerous border,” Trump said to a crowd that included a long list of Republican elected officials from Texas and elsewhere. “More dangerous than it has ever been in the history of our country.
“I mean the real question is, do they really want open borders or are they incompetent? That’s the only two.”
Gov. Greg Abbott invited the former president to listen to the concerns of Texas law enforcement officials, then to speak.
In off-the-cuff remarks, Trump touched on several themes, including an assertion that the investigation into Russian interference in his election in 2016 was sparked by a hoax and that there’s reason to doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.
Abbott, a Republican who will seek a third term next year, vowed to use state resources to continue work on the wall halted by Biden. The governor has been harshly critical of the Democratic administration’s reversal of Trump’s policies for the border. At the events in South Texas, the governor drove that theme as he lavished praise upon the former president.
“You see an unfinished border,” Abbott said, gesturing to the wall behind him. “This is Biden’s fault, because President Biden is not continuing what President Trump began.
“Apprehensions have shot up, leading to an increase in criminals entering the country,” he said. “It is time we seal this border and close it down.”
Texas Democrats in Congress and in the state Legislature denounced the border visit. They accused Trump and the governor of playing politics with the issue as more pressing issues go unnoticed.
“The state of Texas has gone through so much this past year,” said Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela of Brownsville. “The pandemic, the massive power outages that resulted in so many lives lost and now an unemployment rate that is double what we saw before the virus.
“Instead of prioritizing Texans and making sure we grow our economy and get people back to work, Gov. Abbott is creating a distracting media circus with a failed former president.”
As Trump made his way to the border wall in Pharr, a group of Texas Democrats gathered outside the Capitol in Austin to criticize Abbott and other state leaders for what they described as a publicity stunt.
State Rep. John Bucy, DAustin, said the event at the border was an example of Abbott “placating to the extreme edges of his party with a defunct president focusing on issues that are not state issues.”
Illegal border crossings lulled during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since February, federal immigration authorities have apprehended as many as 100,000 migrants at the southern border each month.
Abbott’s office said more than 140 journalists – including the cable news networks, several Spanish-speaking outlets and one from France – were credentialed for the events at the border. A halfdozen motor coaches were chartered to shuttle reporters from the Texas Department of Public Safety regional headquarters in Weslaco to the wall.
The Republican officials who joined the briefing in Weslaco included Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, state Attorney General Ken Paxton and several Texas members of Congress.
“Now we have an open, more dangerous border. More dangerous than it has ever been in the history of our country. I mean the real question is, do they really want open borders or are they incompetent? That’s the only two.” Donald Trump Former U.S. president