The Democrat Mayor of Denver, Colorado, is imposing wartime-like “shared sacrifice” on Americans rather than curbing his welcome for tens of thousands of illegal migrants.
Mayor Mike Johnston (D-CO) — like other Democrat big city mayors — is also hoping his imposed sacrifice on Americans will spur voter turnout against former President Donald Trump.
Johnston spoke at a February 9 press conference, three days after a Republican revolt blocked the more-migration deal pushed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). McConnell’s deal opened Americans’ border to the government-directed mass inflow of migrants and also provided $5 billion to help the migrants settle in a myriad of cities and towns.
“This is a plan for shared sacrifice,” said Johnston — who has already granted aid and support to 35,000 illegal migrants — as he slammed the Republicans’ defense of Americans:
I’m here to talk a little bit about the devastating impact of the failure of Republican leadership in Congress this week to pass regime change, and the impact that will have on both city budgets and on services that we can provide for newcomers in the city … we will start to have to greenlight a set of hard decisions on budget reductions across the city to meet those costs that we know will continue to arrive.
A report by the Congressional Budget Office in February provided more evidence that the establishment’s migration policy shifts family wages and workplace investment toward Wall Street, real estate, coastal states, and government, while also diverting politicians’ focus away from American communities.
In Denver, for example, the 20,000 hospital visits by the Democrats’ wave of poor migrants forced the partial shutdown of a city hospital, Breitbart News reported in January.
In a February 7 speech to Democrat voters, Johnston excluded any criticism by pretending that everyone believes Americans must welcome Biden’s huge flood of illegal migrants, whom he described as neighborly “newcomers … people”:
Today is the day that residents of Denver should be heartbroken and they should be furious because we know we have a humanitarian crisis in this city trying to welcome newcomers to build a new life … We actually had a bipartisan Senate deal that would have addressed the needs that we have …[Trump] intervened with House Republican leadership to kill that bill just so this crisis would continue just because he thinks he has a better chance of reelection.
Johnston portrayed himself as a wartime leader:
Imagine that, folks, an elected official who has taken the oath of office to protect and serve this country, who intentionally damages the country and hurts cities like ours for their own political gain. … It would be like George Bush after 9/11 saying, “Maybe I’ll stand down security so we get one more terrorist attack that would then increase my chances of reelection.”
Johnston slammed the Republicans’ very popular defense of Americans’ borders as “cynical” while pushing a progressive-style defense for the migration that sidelines and impoverishes millions of ordinary Americans:
That kind of cynicism, that kind of mean-spirited intent to make Americans suffer and to make cities struggle, should disqualify you from ever seeking office in this country … If you want a government that serves our cities and our people [including migrants], we have to pay attention to folks that refuse to do that. And we have to remember when it comes time to vote, I know I will. I hope you do the same.
The strategy of blaming Trump and Republicans for President Joe Biden’s mistakes is central to the Democrats’ 2024 turnout plan.
“If the bill fails, I want to be absolutely clear about something,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Tuesday, shortly before poll-watching Republican senators united against McConnell’s giveaway. Biden continued:
The American people are going to know why it fails. I’ll be taking this issue to the country … Every day between now and November, the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.
“We are going to campaign on this and we’re going to remind the American voters that — given a chance to solve the border crisis — Republicans walked away from the table out of subservience to Donald Trump,” Rep. Jacob Auchincloss (D-MA) told a Boston TV station on February 9. “It is shameful that Republicans torpedoed it out of subservience to Donald Trump,” he said.
The Democrats’ blame-transfer strategy is made possible by the establishment media’s effort to blame Trump for unpopular Democratic policies.
David Brooks, a New York Times pro-migration columnist, wrote about McConnell’s pro-migration border bill:
This week’s immigration-Ukraine-Israel package is one of the most one-sided compromises I’ve ever seen. Republicans got most of their long-term priorities, while Democrats got almost none of theirs … And yet Republican after Republican came out against the package, arguing it doesn’t have absolutely everything they want.
Dan Balz, an establishment reporter at the Washington Post wrote:
The effect of the failure of the Senate package, however, is that while Trump and the Republicans bear the blame for sinking a package negotiated over a period of months by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, it is President Biden who stands to be the politician who bears the brunt of public anger for the surge in migrants at the border that has taken place during his time in office.
Johnston, like many other Democrats, has shifted his progressive empathy away from proud Americans and toward poor migrants who will gratefully repay him for his benevolence:
But while Johnston champions migrants, many Americans in Denver have to deal with the resulting rise in housing costs, decline in wages, and spreading drug addiction: