President Biden lost his patience with former President Trump’s falsehoods on immigration in Thursday’s debate, after trying to direct the topic toward the failed bipartisan Senate border deal.
“Everything he says is a lie,” Biden said during the event held by CNN in Atlanta. “Every single one.”
Biden’s pivot came as Trump repeated a litany of falsehoods on immigration, based on the idea that the Biden administration purposefully opened the border.
“He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists,” Trump said.
Trump also leaned into making a link between crime and immigration — a key claim for Republicans ahead of November’s election — making a generalized assessment of immigration based on isolated crimes.
Most research has shown the presence of immigrants tends to lower crime rates because immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens.
A Cato Institute paper published Wednesday confirmed prior research that immigrants on average commit fewer murders than natural-born citizens.
The paper analyzed Texas Department of Public Safety data and found the conviction rate for immigrants lacking documentation in the state was lower than the rate for natural-born citizens every year from 2013 to 2022.
Trump said the United States had become a “rat’s nest” and added that “we have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now, all terrorists, all over the world, not just in South America, all over the world,” Trump said.
He disparaged Biden’s claim that Congress should act to give the executive greater powers and resources to control the border, arguing that “he didn’t need legislation, because I didn’t have legislation, I said close the border.”
Trump also compared migrant living conditions — which he falsely labeled as “luxury hotels” — to conditions for unhoused veterans.
“He has killed so many people at our border by allowing all of these people to come in, and it’s a very sad day in America,” Trump said.
That’s when Biden lost his patience, delivering one of his strongest lines in a debate that started shaky for the president.
“Everything he says is a lie. Every single one,” Biden said.
But Biden segued to respond to Trump’s quip about veterans, dropping the immigration topic.
Trump, however, did not let the topic go. He raised immigration or the border in response to most other questions.
Read: Read More