A confounding news story broke Wednesday night purporting that Mitch McConnell hit a dead end on negotiating legislation to help secure the southern border and, sadly, Donald Trump was the reason for the failure.
If that makes absolutely zero sense, don’t be alarmed. You’re not having a stroke. That’s the ridiculous narrative pushed in earnest by the national media at the very obvious behest of McConnell’s team.
What actually happened is this: Without ever publicly revealing the details of a supposedly gangbusters border security bill, Senate Republican leadership told their colleagues in both houses of Congress that they definitely needed to get on board, that such a lucky star only shows itself once in a lifetime and that the window to pounce was never or now.
To great relief, some Republicans were smart enough to pass on that golden opportunity.
You mean we get the absolute pleasure of signing onto a bill we’ve never seen and which our constituents know nothing about on the biggest crisis our country has faced in more than 20 years? Tell me more!
Even Terri Schiavo would have sat up to say, “Hold on, something ain’t right here.”
But the media, goaded by McConnell’s team, tried in earnest to make it seem that Trump was the reason for the collapse of what would have been an immaculate deal to solve the catastrophic problems at the border, all of which were either created or exacerbated by Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats.
The line was first carried by Jake Sherman of Punchbowl, which is the actual name of a news site and not some weird sex kink. “We’re in a quandary,” McConnell reportedly told Republicans at a private meeting. He added that with Trump being the GOP “nominee” for president, “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.”
In other words, Trump directed Republicans to drop the unseen legislation because his campaign needed to keep the border issue to his advantage.
A subsequent article at CNN regurgitated that narrative. “Former President Donald Trump’s push to kill a bipartisan immigration deal may now derail a major national security package,” it said, “forcing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to suggest a new course of action…”
Trump’s push to kill!
True, Trump has publicly stated that Republicans shouldn’t accept any deal — a deal that was always supposed to include billions of dollars more to shower on Ukraine — if it didn’t completely seal off the blight at the border. That’s a position that’s neither complicated nor unreasonable because solving the open border problem isn’t difficult. It’s a requirement to maintain a sovereign nation.
Having an America with distinct borders isn’t contingent upon whether Zelensky gets to keep Ukraine in business. It was only as a courtesy that Republicans offered to link the two issues.
What was in that great bipartisan bill anyway? What was the guarantee it contained anything that would halt or even reduce the obscene numbers of destitute migrants hurling themselves across the border into taxpayer care? There was no guarantee, just a pinky swear that all would end well.
I don’t know if you’ve seen McConnell lately, but I wouldn’t trust him to remember to breathe, let alone a promise that he’s fixing the border.
McConnell and Republican leadership in the Senate have it backward. They’re okay with a crippled Southern border while zealously pushing more taxpayer money to Ukraine. That their view is in contrast with a majority of voters regardless of party affiliation isn’t the fault of Trump utilizing it for his campaign.
If McConnell had truly believed it would be a grave mistake for Republicans to walk away from the mysterious legislation he helped craft, he would have released it for the public to see how fabulous it was. He didn’t do that because he knows it would have been unacceptable, not to Trump, but to voters.
