Mitt Romney defends Trump's border security policy, slams Biden in heated exchange with MSNBC host
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, argued Wednesday that former President Trump was far better than President Biden at handling the border crisis.
"People have been screaming about the border for all three and a half years Joe Biden has been president," Romney argued during an exclusive MSNBC interview. "He’s not done anything to solve the problem of the border. That’s a huge issue for President Trump, I can’t understand why President Biden didn’t tackle this from the beginning."
Romney locked horns with Stephanie Ruhle over Biden’s record during the episode of "The Eleventh Hour with Stephanie Ruhle," arguing that Trump may benefit from Biden’s lack of action on the border.
"That’s an issue that has worked for him, it worked for him back in 2016, he expects it will work for him again," said Romney, himself a former GOP presidential nominee. "If I were President Biden, I’d be all over that, and instead he served it to President Trump on a silver platter."
Earlier in the interview, Ruhle had lamented the political polarization in America and asked Romney how Biden would be able to reunify the country, noting "he’s got a lot of policies under his belt that he’s done for the country and worked with you."
"The way to bring people together is not just to give a good speech," Romney said. "Nice as that is, the way to get people together is to tell them the truth. To let them know what the real challenges are that you’re concerned about and how you’re going to honestly deal with them."
"President Biden isn’t just giving a good speech," Ruhle argued. "Infrastructure law is now the law, the CHIPS Act is bringing jobs back, bringing manufacturing back. Those aren’t speeches."
While Romney did not dispute that Biden has achieved a number of accomplishments, he argued that the border and inflation are key issues that remain unsolved.
"The fact that things cost more than they did before, inflation is still there. People somehow think that the prices are going to go down — no, when you beat inflation prices don’t go down. That would be deflation, they just stabilize, and they’re getting stabilized, but the fact that people are paying more is a real concern," he said.
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There has been debate about whose border plan would solve the crisis, but Romney argued "this was not a problem when President Trump was president."
"When he was president he did a lot of things that sounded pretty ugly, but we didn’t have anywhere near the number of people that have come into the country illegally as we have under President Biden, and that’s something he should have done everything in his power, frankly, take some actions that maybe the courts would have stopped, then he’d have a better argument saying, ‘Hey, Congress needed to act,’ but he never did that," Romney said. "As a result the American people are saying, ‘Hey, I want something else.’"
Ruhle argued that "right now, President Biden, with Congress, put together something, and it was Donald Trump who blocked it, so he can say to the American people ‘here’s what I’m doing, now.’"