Buttigieg: Biden Didn’t Axe Effective Trump Border Policies, Just Family Separation, ‘Our Economy Is Pulling People’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that President Joe Biden didn’t eliminate the border policies put in place by former President Donald Trump that worked on the border and Biden just “got rid of the policy to tear children out of the arms of their parents, that’s true.” He also stated that “our economy is pulling people, just as much as terrible conditions in Latin America are pushing people.”

After Buttigieg criticized Republicans for opposing the Senate border bill, co-host Joe Kernen stated, “So, the whole move to try to come up with something by the administration, and obviously, bipartisan, that didn’t come until it became clear it was going to be a major campaign issue, and only then did the Biden administration get interested in it. … But every time we hear those talking points, that, suddenly, it was Republicans who ruined the border, that’s why people get so frustrated. We know what President Biden said about inviting people in. We know that he got rid of all the things that were keeping the border closed that President Trump had put in. We know that he got rid of all of those. So, when you say it’s not his fault –.”

Buttigieg then cut in to say, “That’s literally not true. It’s literally not true that he got rid of –.”

Buttigieg and Kernen then talked over each other with Kernen saying the border was much better under Trump and Buttigieg saying, “Okay, he got rid of family separation. … He got rid of the policy to tear children out of the arms of their parents, that’s true. But it is not true, some of the other things that have been suggested.”

Buttigieg then turned to bipartisan efforts on immigration reform, which he said have existed for a long time.

Later, Buttigieg added, “The last administration cut legal immigration. And meanwhile, our economy is pulling people, just as much as terrible conditions in Latin America are pushing people. And when there’s finally a bipartisan compromise that would help address at least some of those issues, congressional Republicans couldn’t get it done, because Donald Trump, who’s not even in elected office, killed it. That is a fact.”

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