Former independent West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin told MSNBC host Eugene Daniels on Sunday that he backed President Donald Trump’s second-term moves on immigration, border security, and crime.
The Trump administration has achieved four consecutive months without paroling a single illegal migrant into the nation and the president’s crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital has yielded positive results. On MSNBC’s “The Weekend,” Manchin credited Trump with securing the border and working to tackle crime.
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“I think everyone knows we should have a secure border. I begged the Democrats not to do asylum at the border,” Manchin said. “I think that’s correct. I think the crime in our streets — I don’t have a problem with doing whatever we can, but you just can’t pick people off the street.”
Daniels interrupted Manchin to ask if he supported Trump deploying the National Guard to Democrat-run cities.
“If I was crime-ridden in my state, I’d welcome all the help I could get. Don’t leave me in the lurch,” Manchin said. “Now they’re going to leave sooner or later. Am I going to go back to where I was? Are you going to help me finance this? People want a crime-free area and they want also secured borders.”
“The Democrats should be saying, ‘Mr. President, we made a mistake. We’ll work with you on securing the border. Will you work with us on legal immigration?’ We need legal immigration for this country to continue to be the world power, the economic juggernaut of the world,” he continued. “And also, it’s the right thing to do. My ancestors came here that way.”
President Barack Obama’s former chief campaign strategist David Axelrod also rebuked the Democratic Party for its border policy during a Sept. 12 episode of the “Fast Politics w/ Molly Jong-Fast” podcast.
“It was insane to spend three years before you did something serious about the border,” Axelrod said. “Insane!”
Former President Joe Biden did not sign an executive order to clamp down on the border until the final year of his term, after 6 million southern border encounters. He also asserted for months before signing it that there was no action he could take to tackle the crisis.
Border Patrol agents made 6,319 apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border in August, leading to an average of just 204 arrests per day, according to the latest data published by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Just under 26,200 border encounters were made nationwide throughout the entire month, a number that is 93% lower than the monthly national average under the Biden administration.
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