An MSNBC analyst admitted Thursday that the border issue was not President Biden’s “finest moment” after facing record number of border crossings over the years.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” economic analyst and former Obama official Steve Rattner showed a chart comparing border crossings under Biden and President-elect Donald Trump. At one point, the image showed nearly four times as many migrants crossed the border under Biden compared to Trump.
“The border was not Biden’s finest moment, frankly,” Rattner said. “You can see what happened here. Trump is not wrong when he talks about how border crossings were pretty low. They were about 74,000 a month when he left office. They actually went up. Some of that was stuff that Biden said, and some were that they put a moratorium, for example, on deportations, but we actually reached almost 300,000 a month.”
MSNBC analyst Steve Rattner explained a chart showing the number of border crossings under President Biden. (MSNBC screenshot)
However, Rattner added that the Biden administration has since been able to curb illegal immigration despite continuing to face opposition on the issue.
“What people may not fully know is that border crossings are almost back to where they were under Trump,” Rattner said. “Right now they have about 100,000. We’ve been going up and down the hill, but unfortunately it cost Biden dearly during the election.”
Rattner made similar comments in a guest essay for The New York Times where he explained how the border affected the 2024 election.
Immigrants line up at the U.S. Border Patrol remote center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on December 7, 2023, in Lukeville, Arizona. (John Moore/Getty Images)
“A significant factor in the Democrats’ loss in the election was undoubtedly Americans’ fear of migrants invading our southern border. Yes, Mr. Biden made a consequential mistake early in his presidency by at least ostensibly encouraging migrants to try to enter the United States, which resulted in the number of encounters rising to more than 300,000 per month by the end of 2023, compared to 74,000 at the end of Trump’s presidency,” wrote is Rattner.
He continued, “But what Americans don’t seem to recognize — or give Mr. Biden credit for — is that by the fall of 2024, the total has fallen almost all the way back to where it was four years earlier.”
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US Customs and Border Protection reported to Fox News Digital that the number of migrants has reached a record high at more than 302,000 encounters in December 2023. In the months leading up to the election, Biden issued an executive order limiting the number of transfers.
Biden has been criticized for not acting sooner to resolve the border crisis. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta and Fox News)
Although Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insisted the border was “secure” that year, he admitted last month that “in retrospect” the Biden executive action could have happened earlier.
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