Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, was a guest on FNC’ s Special Report with Bret Baier Tuesday evening. Baier took Fulks to task for his defense of the Biden border crisis.
The primetime interview was a thing of beauty to watch. Joe Biden ignores Fox. Surrogates are not often interviewed, unless it is for the Sunday morning political show. Team Biden ignores the cable news network though it is the highest rated in television. Biden officials stick to MSNBC and CNN where they know they are in a safe bubble. Bret Baier’s show is popular on Fox. It is smart for Washington politicians to appear on his show.
The topic of immigration and the open southern border came up. Fulks began regurgitating standard White House talking points and Baier stopped him to correct him. I don’t think that Fulks was prepared for that.
WATCH: @BretBaier dismantles junior Biden campaign spokesman Quentin Fulks' embarrassing and pathetic attempt at defending Biden's open borders policies pic.twitter.com/yVPci3jsUj
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 16, 2024
Bret rightfully says that neither the president nor the DHS secretary are willing to call the situation at the southern border a crisis though independents and Democrats now join Republicans in making illegal immigration a top concern. Bret began by noting the contrast between how Trump handled the border versus how Biden is handling the border. Fulks replied that Trump “did nothing” about the border during his four years in office.
Trump, of course, made securing the southern border a top priority. Trump ran on the issue of illegal immigration in 2015. Working with Congress, Trump got over a billion dollars in funding passed by Congress for a border wall in 2020. He was able to seal up the border as much as it can be. When Fulks began his ridiculous gaslighting, Baier quickly stopped him and inserted some reality into the conversation.
Bret Baier pointed out that Joe Biden reversed successful Trump policies on the southern border. He specifically mentioned Remain in Mexico and catch and release. Fulks brushed that aside and tried to carry on. All Fulks could do was bring up putting families in cages and separating the children from their parents. The problem with that is that Barack Obama began using the cages during his administration. And, during the Biden border crisis, “there are more kids in custody than during the Trump administration,” said Baier. Fulks persisted.
Fulks did what Team Biden does – he brought up the “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation that Biden is said to have presented to Congress when he began his term. Fulks said Republicans did nothing. The truth is that the legislation centers around blanket amnesty for illegal aliens and that isn’t going to fly with Republicans. So, no, Republicans are not going to vote in favor of that. House Republicans have passed their own legislation on immigration and it sits on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s desk.
Baier tried to get Fulks to concede that immigration is a tough issue for the Biden campaign. Fulks simply said that Republicans in the House “are playing political games.” What? Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas won’t even acknowledge the crisis.
“What we concede is that President Biden is working on this issue and that Republicans in the house are playing political games and doing Donald Trump’s bidding so no real results get done,” Fulks claimed. “They are the least effective house since the Great Depression because they are playing political games instead of trying to get real results done and working with this president for the American people.”
Republicans in Congress have taken trip after trip to the southern border to see the crisis up close and hear from Border Patrol and others who are on the ground and dealing with the chaos each and every day. Joe Biden has only made one trip to the southern border in his entire 50 years in elected office. He made a quick visit to El Paso and left after some photo ops walking along the border wall with Border Patrol officials. It was a joke. The city was cleaned up and illegals were moved out to make it look as clean and sterilized as possible for Biden. Problem with illegal immigration? What problem? Kamala Harris, the border czar, has made a couple of quick trips to pretend to look into the border crisis. The issue is not of interest to them. The open border is intentional.
Biden’s deputy campaign manager needs to brush up on his defense of the open border. The other cable outlets won’t push him on it but the Fox viewers are a mix of conservatives and independents and Democrats. It isn’t a Democrat safe place so Democrat guests are asked real questions. Usually the only Democrats brave enough to do Fox interviews in support of Biden’s policies are his economic adviser, Jared Bernstein, who is a master at gaslighting about Bidenomics, and Senator Chris Coons, (D-Delaware), a campaign surrogate and longtime colleague in the Senate. Those two men make Fulks look like a rank amateur.
Immigration is a top issue with voters this election cycle. It is unusual but that is how serious the border crisis has become. Iowa caucus voters put immigration as the top issue, along with the economy. Immigration is a topic often mentioned during presidential elections but it rarely pans out to be a top issue for voters. It’s different this time and Joe Biden’s campaign surrogates are going to have to be better prepared to make excuses for his dereliction of duty.
Fulks did not do a good job for Biden, which is fine by me, but probably caused some heartburn for the campaign. Fulks has a history of making controversial remarks against Republicans. He was the campaign manager for Senator Warnock. He worked for Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker as an operative.
Anne Caprara, Pritzker’s chief of staff and former campaign manager, who hired Fulks as her 2018 deputy, described him as a “soft-spoken” but skilled operative who understands Democrats’ uneasy coalitions, which span from progressive activists and labor unions to establishment billionaires like Pritzker.
“He’s a Black man from rural Georgia who’s also helped run J.B.’s politics in a place like Chicago,” she said. “At this point, there are no uncomfortable spaces for Quentin.”
In an interview earlier this year before Biden formally announced his 2024 campaign, Fulks said he learned to be unapologetic and thick-skinned about forging narrow majorities.
“You don’t compromise what it means to be a Democrat, but there’s a way you do it,” he said.
It’s going to be a close election. Fulks is going to have to rework the talking points on something as obvious to voters as the Biden border crisis. Last November Fulks slammed Trump on his immigration plan. He compared Trump to Hitler and Mussolini, because, of course, he did. Not exactly an original way to criticize Trump.
Is this guy the best the Biden campaign has to offer? As I said, it’s fine by me. Bret Baier left him speechless when he brought the truth into the interview.
