Trump and Abbott Spend The Day Bashing Biden At The Texas Border

DALLAS, TX —So much more heat than light.

That's actually what's happening at the Texas border these days. Today's optics brought the deposed former president together with his most willing acolyte, Gov. Greg Abbott, to vent about the Biden administration and the all-too porous Texas/Mexico border.

Abbott was first to serve up the red meat, telling those assembled opposite the Rio Grande that it's "time to make sure we seal this border and close it down," and asserting that most of those trying to illegally cross the border are hellbent on committing crimes of one kind or another. “The people coming across the border," he said, "are cartels and gangs and smugglers and human traffickers.”

Some of them are, to be sure. But some are fleeing economies ravaged by the pandemic, their country's inadequate response to the COVID-19 crisis, or reacting to how much more difficult it became (under the Trump administration) to emigrate legally.

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Currying favor, Abbott told the sparse crowd in Pharr that Trump has done "more than any other president" to secure the border. Perhaps, but the former chief executive's policies also led to children in cages, and, at the height of the crisis, more than 500 families who couldn't locate their loved ones.

There's no question that the problem is real, and that creative minds need to come together to propose solutions. But that is not what today was about.

Today was about posturing and puffery, about elections, about xenophobia, about fear-mongering, dog-whistle racism and playing to a conservative base who has been lied to so consistently that they have no idea what's true anymore, and that's what made even the parched soil at the Texas border so politically fertile.

Once Abbott handed off to Trump, saying " Look at this border... You see an unfinished border. This is Biden's fault," the blame game shifted into high gear and linear logic was gone with the wind.

Trump bemoaned that America is "a sick country in many ways. It’s sick in elections, and it’s sick at the border.” It was a shambolic rant on Democrats in general, Biden and Hillary Clinton in particular and even roped in references to the ex-president's troubles with Russia and the mayoral election in New York City.

That today's duet was nothing more than political theater would be fine except that lives remain in the balance. And no one is contributing much of anything worthwhile to the conversation. Yes, the Biden Administration has stopped the whole "kids in cages" policy Trump put in place and has set about trying to reunite families. But as for a smart plan to curb illegal immigration? Not much has been done.

Republicans don't seem to care about a solution so long as the problem continues to be a great fund-raising gimmick. No one believes a wall – which can be driven around, flown over or dug under —is going to solve the crisis. And, as a wise man once said, "when you have an invisible cure for a non-existent illness, then you really have something you can sell."

So the Dems aren't getting what they want — a more just and less prolonged process for immigrants to become citizens. And the GOP isn't getting what it wants — a wall impervious to what they believe are invading hordes of societies' refuse from elsewhere.

And while it's indisputable that some criminal elements do seek to take advantage of the border and should be prosecuted and/or deported, the remaining illegals who are crossing aren't getting what they want, either — access to the better quality of life they have always heard is here.

And, until all the interested parties can spend as much time pitching proposals as they are trying to score political points, America's border policy is going to remain a national nightmare.

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