The Biden administration has had a love hate relationship with media outlets. If they don’t shower him with glowing praise, he spirals into a total meltdown.
And Joe Biden’s heart stopped when a reporter asked him this one question.
Earlier this week, the White House announced Joe Biden would make a trip to Arizona on Tuesday, December 6th to visit a semi-conductor plant.
Reporters immediately flooded the administration with questions on whether President Biden would visit the border while he was down there.
Asked by FOX Business’ Edward Lawrence whether President Biden planned to “see the situation for himself” on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre evaded, saying investments in chip manufacturing will bring major economic opportunities.
“He’ll be visiting TSMC, a company making a major investment to manufacture cutting edge chips in Phoenix. This will bring new jobs and economic opportunity to Arizona,” Jean-Pierre said. “And it’s in large part thanks to the Chips and Science Act.”
She went on to accuse Republicans of indulging in “doing political stunts” rather than cooperating with Democrats on immigration reform.
Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News pressed Jean-Pierre on a possible border visit in 2023, if not on Tuesday. Jean-Pierre dodged once more.
“What are Congressional Republicans going to do to actually deal with this issue instead of doing political stunts?” Jean-Pierre said, claiming that these “political stunts” eventually harm families seeking to flee dictatorships and seek asylum in the United States.
This comes on the heels of Jean-Pierre claiming Biden has visited the border since becoming president, despite no record of him being there even as Vice President under the Obama administration.
Unfortunately for Biden, the questions didn’t stop at the Press Secretary.
Despite the record-breaking surge of migrants illegally entering into the US, President Biden stated Tuesday that he will not visit the US-Mexico border during a day trip to Arizona because he has “more important things” to deal with.
“Why go to a border state and not visit the border?” a reporter asked Biden on the White House lawn as he departed for Arizona.
The president replied, “Because there are more important things going on. They are going to invest billions of dollars in a new enterprise in the state.”
Biden is in Phoenix to promote this year’s bipartisan CHIPS Act, which provides subsidies to US technology companies that manufacture computer chips in the United States.
The visit comes after an all-time high for illegal border crossings was set, with more than 2.3 million people detained after illegally crossing into the US in fiscal 2022, which ended Sept. 30 — an increase from 1.7 million in fiscal 2021, fewer than 500,000 in fiscal 2020, and nearly 1 million in fiscal 2019.
Critics blame Biden’s actions for the border crisis, which include softening a Trump-era policy of promptly deporting border-crossers under a CDC COVID-19 regulation and removing a policy that required migrants to remain in Mexico until a court decision on their asylum claims.
In response to Biden’s inaction, Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida have bused or flown thousands of migrants from the US-Mexico border to Democratic strongholds like New York City and Washington, D.C. this year in an effort to put pressure on Biden to adopt tighter measures.
But Democrats like Chuck Schumer have refused to come to the table, insisting on “citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here.”
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
