On CNN, Nikki Haley Regurgitates McConnell’s ‘But Trump’ Talking Points On Border Invasion Bill
Former South Carolina governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has yet to explicitly endorse the Senate’s “atrocious” Ukraine and illegal border invasion bill, but that hasn’t stopped her from regurgitating talking points from some of the legislation’s biggest proponents.
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Haley during her “State of the Union” show on Sunday whether Trump is “playing politics with the border” for opposing any border deal that doesn’t include “EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people.”
“Nobody should be playing politics with the border,” Haley replied. “First of all, he shouldn’t be getting involved telling Republicans that ‘Wait until the election, because we don’t want this to help Biden’ when we can’t wait one more day.”
Haley dodged giving a verdict on the Democrat bill that would send billions more U.S. tax dollars to Ukraine while allowing millions to keep illegally crossing the U.S. border. Instead, she claimed Trump was “absolutely playing politics by telling them not to do anything.”
“This is not a time to play politics. What I do think is they need to get something out,” Haley said.
Haley’s spokeswoman did not respond to The Federalist’s question about whether Haley supports or opposes the Senate’s latest bill sending tax dollars to Ukraine and codifying mass illegal immigration.
The presidential candidate’s comments, however, almost word-for-word echo the “but Trump” excuses wielded by the legislation’s key negotiator and proponent, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who tried to do damage control on the legislation before it was even introduced. Her suggestion that current “asylum laws are not strong enough” also mirrors the establishment GOP’s arguments in favor of passing the Democrat legislation.
In a closed-door meeting before the text of the bill was released, McConnell blamed Trump for senators’ failure to curry favor on the Ukraine/open border legislative package. He suggested that Trump’s opposition to any bill that doesn’t shut down the border immediately would be the package’s downfall.
Outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney was more than happy to go on the record to join McConnell’s elbowing of the former leader of the Republican party.
“The fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling,” Romney said. “But the reality is that we have a crisis at the border, the American people are suffering as a result of what’s happening at the border, and someone running for president ought to try to get the problem solved as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem. Don’t solve it. Let me take credit for solving it later.’”
McConnell and Romney’s complaints were also echoed by several Democrats and their allies in the corporate media who are pushing for “American Last, Ukraine First” policies to pass Congress.
“I am hopeful that we will still have enough Republicans in the Senate who want to fix the problem at the border, rather than just do Donald Trump’s bidding, but we will see over the next 24 to 48 hours whether that’s true,” bill author Sen. Chris Murphy, who admitted that under this legislation, “the border never closes.”
Haley’s copycat talking points did not stop with the establishment GOP. She also repeated President Joe Biden’s false claim that he alone could not stop the border crisis.
“I hear some Republicans saying, ‘Oh, but we don’t need a law at all, because Biden could do this already.’ Well, there’s some truth to that and then some of that is false,” Haley said.
Voters’ top concern heading into the 2024 election is the lawlessness at the southern border, which is why Democrats’ and some Republicans’ insistence on rubberstamping legislation that allows for mass illegal immigration faces so much scrutiny.
“This Bill is a great gift to the Democrats, and a Death Wish for The Republican Party. It takes the HORRIBLE JOB the Democrats have done on Immigration and the Border, absolves them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “Don’t be STUPID!!! We need a separate Border and Immigration bill. It should not be tied to foreign aid in any way, shape or form!”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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