What we have before us today is one of those pot-and-kettle situations. The Biden administration continues to make a mockery of the nation’s southern border, so, obviously, when Ron DeSantis responds with some of the few tools readily available to a governor, he’s the mockery-making one.
“[DeSantis is] not dealing with the problem,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “He’s actually creating a problem. And so that’s what I have to say to that. We’ve talked about Gov. DeSantis and, again, the mockery that he’s making of a process that the president is trying to fix. He’s trying to deal with this issue.”
This, ladies and gents, is projection at its wildest.
For two years, since the moment the newcomer took up his presidential pen, the situation along the nation’s southern border — now including Sunshine State beaches — has taken on the characteristics of your great grandmother’s sieve.
Make no mistake: The post-January-2021 rush to our suddenly porous border and the attendant overwhelming of federal resources was precisely the outcome favored by the Biden administration. None of the surge is remotely the result of some unintended consequence of benign policymaking.
Indeed, when President Biden made his first visit to a beleaguered U.S. border town last week — lovely, sanitized El Paso, Texas — we half-expected him to declare that we should “tear down this wall.”
At least that would have been honest.
But let any of those border-state governors respond in a way that highlights the White House’s failings — bus trips out of Texas to sanctuary cities in the north (nicely done, Gov. Gregg Abbott), or rallying the National Guard to help patrol the Florida Straits (ditto, Gov. DeSantis) — and it’s all political hijinks and base-pandering.
“We have seen Gov. DeSantis do political stunts. That is how he perceives to fix this issue from Florida,” Jean-Pierre said.
“We’re talking about people coming from countries who are dealing with political strife, who are dealing with issues where they’re trying to find asylum. And he treats them like pawns,” Jean-Pierre said. “So we have called that out, over and over again. And we will continue to do that.”
Oh, no! DeSantis has been “called out”! Woe is America’s governor!
Along about the same time the White House was turning up its fume-o-meter, Florida’s cheery prankster-in-chief was sunnily reviewing the record during a news conference in the Villages.
“We’ve been very aggressive, really across the board at mitigating the damage from Biden’s disastrous border policies,” DeSantis said Thursday. “And part of it is just what they’re doing at the border, but part of it is the message that’s gone out to say, ‘The rules don’t matter, just show up and you’re fine.’ … You can’t run a country like that, and it’s caused a lot of problems.”
Among those problems: The surge of illegal crossers aboard rickety, leaky watercraft braving the deep waters separating beleaguered Cubans and Haitians from Florida is overwhelming federal resources. Stretched uncommonly thin by interdictions and rescues, the Coast Guard — Jean-Pierre wants you to believe — implored DeSantis to goof on President Biden by rallying the state’s National Guard.
Because embarrassing the commander-in-chief always works out well for branches of the armed forces.
“We’re basically filling gaps that the federal government should be filling and would be filling if they wanted to do,” DeSantis said.
The role played by the National Guard is one of surveillance, not interdiction, working with federal Homeland Security “to increase coastal vigilance and provide improved situational awareness on migrant activities,” according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
Other state divisions are carrying out the collection of watercraft abandoned on Florida beaches. “Maybe we’ll send the bill to Biden,” DeSantis said.
As Florida resources help fill the gaps, DeSantis noted, “Now the word is going back to people that were thinking about coming illegally, ‘Man, there’s people all over. You’re not gonna be able to get through. It’s not worth doing.’
“So we’ve seen a big decline in the number of vessels that are coming, and so what we’re doing is working. And so I would just tell the White House, not only has the Coast Guard asked us to help, but we have no choice but to help because of your neglect and incompetence.”
If, in the face of the Biden administration’s abject abandonment of coherent immigration and border security policies, DeSantis’ actions — both bold and necessary — are a stunt, well, let the games continue.
