Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel criticized former President Joe Biden on a Wednesday podcast for quickly walking back his March 2024 comment calling an immigrant “an illegal.”
Biden expressed remorse for referring to Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s murderer as “an illegal” during his final State of the Union address, saying he should have used the term “undocumented” instead after facing liberal backlash. Emanuel, on “The Bulwark,” said Biden should have stood firm on the issue like past Democratic presidents had on other topics, as it would have demonstrated strength.
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“In his last State of the Union, President Biden … when he went off script, and everybody said, ‘Look, watch,’ he said, ‘illegal immigrants,’” Emanuel said. “The next day, because a bunch of Washington 202 area code jerks yelled at him, he said, ‘I meant undocumented.’ That was the slowest pitch over the plate.”
“Had he done his moment like Bill Clinton did, like Barack Obama did on their different issues, or Jack Kennedy did, had he said, ‘Look, man, they’re immigrants, crossed the border illegally — illegal immigrants, you use whatever, undocumented, whatever you want. I’m going to say illegal immigrants. End of story.’ He would have shown what people want from a president,” he continued. “Nobody thinks you deserve to go into the Oval Office if a group in Washington can stare you down because they don’t think you can stare down [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] or [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.”
Republicans demanded Biden say Riley’s name during his address, leading him to call her murderer Jose Antonio Ibarra “an illegal.”
“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden said on “MSNBC Reports” shortly after.
“I’m not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country,” he added. “The reason our economy is growing. We have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don’t share [President Donald Trump’s] view at all.”
Biden had yet to directly address the tragedy publicly before his speech following Riley’s Feb. 22 murder. MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart asked Biden point-blank if he regretted using the term during his address. Biden responded, “Yes.”
During his speech, the former president said Riley was “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” and then butchered her first name, calling her “Lincoln” rather than “Laken.”
Ibarra is an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who was released into the nation after crossing the southern border into El Paso, Texas, during Biden’s tenure. He had an extensive criminal record and was arrested soon after the discovery of Riley’s body on the University of Georgia campus following a mid-afternoon run. Ibarra was given a life sentence in November for the murder.
Emanuel is weighing a 2028 presidential bid and has differentiated himself from his party by criticizing its focus on social issues, including on transgenders.
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