During an appearance on Face The Nation over the weekend, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) shamed ex-President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies for issues including the immigration approach of the Trump era and Congressional Republicans’ more recent resistance towards condemning anti-Asian violence.
Amidst influxes of unaccompanied minors at the southern border, Republicans have freaked out and claimed that the Biden administration is essentially putting American national security at risk, but these spiraling Republicans have systematically ignored the facts of the Trump administration’s own chaotic approach to immigration. Instead of meaningfully expanding U.S. capacity to process asylum-seekers to the point that crowding would be less of a problem, the Trump administration prioritized constructing pointless stretches of wall in the middle of the desert.
As Duckworth pointedly put it:
‘Let’s make it clear. We have a situation at the border and that is as a result of four years of failed policies, inhumane policies, and a systematic dismantling of the asylum system by Donald Trump. We all saw what Donald Trump can do in terms of damages in a single day on January 6, and he’s had four years to basically undermine our nation’s immigration system. [Migrants are coming now] as a result of [Trump] dismantling the asylum system and the pathways for seeking asylum that used to exist.’
Duckworth added that she is certain that Biden “is going to be committed to repairing that system that Donald Trump broke in order to make it not only work better but also to make it humane so that these kids and other migrants can actually apply for asylum in their home countries without coming here.”
Watch below:
Does the Biden administration need to send a stronger message to discourage border crossings? @SenDuckworth says ongoing problems at the U.S.-Mexico border are a result of "four years of failed policies, inhumane policies" under the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/WpGSzN81oX
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 21, 2021
Meanwhile, attacks against individuals with Asian backgrounds have grown in number as the COVID-19 pandemic has unfolded — and throughout the crisis, Trump has personally insisted upon describing the pathogen as the “China Virus,” a crude and racist description that antagonizes Asian families who (obviously) have absolutely nothing to do with the pandemic that has rocked the world. Tying this mind-numbingly ignorant “China Virus” rhetoric to recent attacks against Asians isn’t a stretch.
Republicans in Congress, however, have refused to formally back condemnations of the violence. As the Senator put it:
‘It’s astonishing to me. I mean the House passed… a resolution against hate crimes against Asian-Americans tied to COVID, and we had actually Republicans who voted against it, and Mitch McConnell at the time, because Republicans were in charge, wouldn’t even let us vote on it in the Senate. Where can you be that you would not be willing to vote on a bill that would condemn violence against any group of Americans?’
Check out her comments below:
Tammy Duckworth on no Republicans co-sponsoring the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act: "Where can you be that you would not be willing to vote on a bill that would condemn violence against any group of Americans?" pic.twitter.com/CuJzNpRgoV
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 21, 2021
