Even the participants in the overlapping visits of President Biden and Donald J. Trump in Texas on Thursday seemed to sense there was something remarkable about their close encounter along the southern border.
Rarely do current and former leaders take the same stage on the same day to present such starkly different approaches to an issue as intractable as immigration. Even rarer was the reality that the two men are very likely moving toward a rematch in November.
“Today is a day of extraordinary opposition,” said Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who appeared alongside Mr Trump.
But the border duels were about something even more fundamental than immigration policy. They spoke of the competing visions of power and the presidency at stake in 2024 — of autocracy and the value of democracy itself.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the split screen was that Mr Trump and Mr Biden agreed on some of the basic contours of the border problem: that the current situation, with migrant crossings hitting a new monthly record of nearly 250,000 in December, is unsustainable.
“It is long past time to act,” Mr. Biden said.
Where they disagreed, at least in part, was politically on how to fix it. And their mixed responses represent a test of America’s appetite for the systemic messiness of democracy: Mr. Biden’s inherent and institutional faith in legislation versus “Day 1” promises of dictatorial enactment under Mr. Trump.
Mr. Biden says he would close the border if he could. Mr Trump says Mr Biden could close the border if he did.
“A very dangerous border – we’re going to take care of it,” Mr Trump pledged on the tarmac upon his arrival in Texas.
“What’s being proposed is more than just a difference in immigration policy,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth who helped found a group that monitors American democracy. “The difference is between a president trying to address a complex policy issue through our political system and a president promising quasi-authoritarian solutions.”
For his part, Mr. Biden argued Thursday that his hands were tied by the failure of a bipartisan border package he had negotiated on Capitol Hill. The legislation would have increased border costs, made it more difficult to apply for asylum and strengthened fentanyl screening. It was dissolved when Mr Trump claimed defeat.
Mr. Biden, who spent more than 30 years as a senator, has for decades held bipartisan dealmaking as an ideal in itself. “I didn’t get everything I wanted in this bipartisan compromise bill, but neither did anyone else,” Mr. Biden said in Brownsville, Texas. “Compromise is part of the process. This is how democracy works.”
Then he added one more thought: “This is how it should work.”
Immigration as an issue has largely favored Republicans in recent years, and party strategists see it as a top vulnerability for Democrats in 2024. But Democrats hope that Republicans killing the border bill could share some of the blame. .
In a surprise flourish toward the end of his remarks, the president offered an olive branch to Mr. Trump himself.
“Come with me,” Mr. Biden urged, calling on the two to work together to pass the legislation. “Or I’ll come with you.”
Minutes earlier and hundreds of miles away in Eagle Pass, Texas, Mr Trump – whose 2016 convention speech accepting the Republican nomination was defined by the line “Only I can fix this” – had outlined a very different view for the exercise of power. After passing razor wire and military Humvees, and after shaking hands with members of the Texas National Guard in fatigues, Mr. Trump emerged as a seasoned leader ready to fend off an “invasion” by hordes of “fighting-age men” who look like “warriors.” .
“This is like war,” Mr. Trump said, expressing a willingness to use something akin to war powers.
He said Mr. Biden had “blood” on his hands, citing in particular the recent killing of Laken Riley, a student in Georgia, where an immigrant was arrested. He reiterated that the country is experiencing a “Biden immigration crime wave.”
Representative Robert Garcia, D-Calif., said the former president was using dehumanizing rhetoric. “This narrative of immigrant crime is racist,” Mr. Garcia told reporters before Mr. Trump’s event.
Mr. Trump appeared with Mr. Abbott, who has begun building an operational base at Eagle Pass for up to 2,300 troops to curb illegal crossings from Mexico, a move that has clashed with federal officials. A federal court on Thursday blocked a Texas law that allowed state and local police to arrest immigrants.
The thing about Mr. Trump’s lightning-rod pledge to be a “Day 1” dictator was that it wasn’t just a blanket promise of authoritarian rule. It was based on a specific policy. He said he wanted to close the border — government red tape borders be damned.
In December, Fox News host Sean Hannity offered Mr Trump a chance to escape the remark during a town hall. Instead, Mr. Trump fully embraced it.
“He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ Mr. Trump said as he replayed the exchange with Mr. Hannity for dramatic effect. “I said, ‘No, no, no, except for Day 1. We’re closing the border and drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.”
By any means necessary has long been a Trump mantra. He was accused of unconstitutionality in 2015 when he called for a Muslim ban. As president, he enacted a narrower version that focused on seven countries that included those with a Muslim majority.
In a potential second term, Mr Trump has made it clear he wants to be surrounded by enforcers and aides. His allies are looking to a more aggressive law firm that can take on any legal limits or obstacles that might be put in place by what he calls the “deep state.”
“People don’t want to hear anything anymore — they just want the masses to stop coming,” Jerry Patterson, a Republican who is a former Texas land commissioner, said in an interview.
Mr Patterson, who proudly said he was often criticized from the right for supporting guest worker schemes, said the situation now was “really a crisis”, even if Thursday’s visits did not amount to any change on the ground .
He predicted that Mr. Trump’s election would change things — not because of any policy but because of the perception among potential immigrants that he would exclude or deport them.
“Perception,” he said, “is more important than reality.”
Republicans have generally insisted of late that Mr. Biden can solve some of the problems at the border by reimposing some of Mr. Trump’s retroactive enforcement policies. Mr. Biden did not announce new actions on Thursday, but is considering an executive action that could prevent people crossing illegally from seeking asylum. His State of the Union address is next week.
Speaker Mike Johnson, the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, on Thursday called on Mr. Biden to act alone, an unusual level of deference from a legislative leader to the executive branch.
“If President Biden really cared about recognizing the national security crisis on the southern border, he would be sitting at his desk and signing executive orders,” Mr. Johnson wrote in X.
Denying concessions has become the new normal for congressional Republicans, said Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the labor federation. The wrecked immigration deal, he added, was just the latest episode of Republican intransigence, dating back to the massive vote against the economic recovery bill in the early days of former President Barack Obama’s first term.
“No problem is serious enough to compromise to be solved,” Mr. Podhorzer said of the GOP’s philosophy. “The best answer is to just put us in charge.”
Michael Gold contributed to the report.
