'Wasn’t he president for 4 years?' Obama slams Trump’s 'mean and ugly concept of a plan' on key issue
22 October 2024
Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday slammed Donald Trump over the GOP nominee's refusal to approve the bipartisan Senate border bill earlier this year.
Referencing Trump's declaration last month that he has "concepts of a plan" when it comes to policies on immigration, healthcare, and other key issues, Obama emphasized that unlike Trump, Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz actually have a plan.
"If you challenge Trump or [GOP vice presidential nominee] Vance on these concepts, they'll fall back on one answer: Blame the immigrants," the 44th president said. "He wants you to believe that if you let him round up whoever he wants and ship them out all your problems will be solved. Now, I want to talk about this. This is serious. We have a real issue at the borders. We're a nation of immigrants and we're a nation of laws. We've got to make sure the system works the way it's supposed to, in an orderly fashion."
READ MORE: GOP rep hammered for refusing to denounce Trump’s 'enemy from within' comment
Obama continued, "So there's work to be done there. But when I keep on hearing from these guys — I scratch my head. Because they like to talk about Kamala being vice president for four years. Well, wasn't he president for four years? I know it's shocking. I know there's some PTSD going on and people are blocking it out. He was. So if this concept of a plan of rounding up and deporting millions of desperate people, many of them women and children, was the answer to everything, well, why is it that the number of undocumented immigrants was basically the same when he left office as when he took office? And I'll tell you why. Because he did not have a real plan."
"He had a concept of a plan and it was a mean and ugly concept," the former president emphasized. "You know what would actually help bring order to the border and fix our immigration system? The bipartisan deal that Kamala Harris supported, even though it was written by one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress. And I want you to know, Democrats and Republicans — conservative Republicans — came together with a concrete plan that would have put more enforcement at the border, more judges to process issues, all this stuff. Donald Trump lobbied actively and told Republicans to vote against it because he figured it was better to have an issue that he could run on for his presidential campaign. He was not interested in actually trying to solve the problem."
Watch the video below or at this link.
READ MORE: GOP’s 'bizarre and dangerous' rhetoric masks these 'quieter, more dangerous plans': analysis