Former President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry admitted during an interview on Thursday that President Donald Trump was “right” about the border and Democrats had let it fall under siege.
“The first thing any president should say, any president, or anybody in public life, is, without a border protected, you don’t have a nation — I believe that. If you’re going to define your nation, you have to have a border that means something,” Kerry said during an interview on BBC’s “Reflections” podcast. “We have a system. I wish President Biden had been heard more often saying, ‘I’m going to enforce the law.'”
Kerry served as former President Barack Obama‘s Secretary of State and was also the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, losing to George W. Bush. BBC correspondent James Naughtie said during the discussion that Trump would likely point at Kerry’s remarks and declare he was right about the issue.
“He was right,” Kerry responded. “The problem is we all should have been right. Everybody should have been right, doing the same thing, all moving in the same direction.”
Kerry said earlier in the discussion that he told Biden that the Democratic Party had missed on the issue of immigration.
“They just allowed the border to continue to be sieged, under siege,” Kerry said.
The former secretary of state also noted that Democrats supported an immigration bill that several Republicans and Trump opposed.
Naughtie also asked Kerry if it would have helped if Biden had announced earlier that he wasn’t going to run for re-election rather than under pressure from members of his own party.
“I think in retrospect that’s pretty clear, it answers itself,” Kerry said.
As the BBC correspondent asked if the former president knew that, Kerry said he didn’t want to speculate.
“He’s my friend, and he did a hell of a job. I don’t think he’s gotten enough credit for what a great president he was,” he said of Biden.
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Trump has made cracking down on illegal immigration a focal point of his second term, launching mass deportations across the U.S.
Between June 1 and June 22, there were 5,414 apprehensions at the border, with the busiest sector being El Paso, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. During that same timeframe, there have been 986 known “gotaways.” Both numbers are the lowest ever recorded.
In May, there were just under 9,000 apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the border, compared with roughly 118,000 the year prior under the Biden administration by CBP.
