OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been fact-checked by Fox News after saying that President Joe Biden had visited the Southern Border. It happened during a press briefing this week when Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked her if the president would RSVP to House Minority Leader and California Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s invitation to visit the Southern border with him.
“Kevin McCarthy says that he invited President Biden down to the border. Has the President RSVPed? Well, we know — we know the President has never been down to the border. The possible next Speaker says that he wants him to go with him. So, is he going to? So, look, he’s been there. He’s been to the border. And since he took office,” Jean-Pierre said before Doocy interrupted her.
“When — when did he go to the border?” he said.
The press secretary responded, but never gave an example of when President Biden had visited the border.
“Since he took office, the — President Biden has been taking action to fix our immigration system and secure our border. And that’s why, on day one, he put forward an immigration — immigration reform — a piece of legislation to deal with what is currently happening at the border,” she said before attacking Republicans.
“But, you know, that — we’re not seeing that from Republicans. We’re not seeing a willingness to work with us on — on, you know, fixing a situation that’s been around for decades now.
“Instead, they’re — they’re doing political stunts. That’s what they want to do. That’s how they want to take care of this situation,” the press secretary said.
“But, in the meantime, you know, the President has secured record levels of funding for the Department of Homeland Security. We have over 23,000 agents working to secure the border. We’ve taken thousands of smugglers off the streets, and we’re cutting down on asylum processing times. And the number of individuals arriving unlawfully from northern Central America and Venezuela is coming down significantly because of the actions that the President has taken,” she said.
Karine Jean-Pierre says Biden has "been to the border.”
THIS IS A LIE. Biden has never visited the southern border. pic.twitter.com/OCJRukCW9a
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 30, 2022
Fox News said in a fact check that “President Biden has not visited the southern border nearly two years into his presidency as the country wrestles with an unprecedented border crisis. Nor did he visit the border while as vice president.”
It is not the first time that Biden was fact-checked about visiting the border.
After Biden was asked at a town hall during the campaign about visiting the border and he said I’ve been there before and I haven’t — I mean, I know it well. I guess I should go down. But the whole point of it is I haven’t had a whole hell of a lot of time to get down.”
The Washington Post fact-checked him on that too.
“We cannot find evidence that Biden at one point made a visit to the southern border,” it said.
Factchck.org explained that the “visit” was a “drive-by.”
“It turns out that Biden was talking about a brief drive by the U.S.-Mexico border in the fall of 2008 when he traveled for a campaign rally in Mesilla, New Mexico,” it said.
When asked about the president’s town hall remarks in an Oct. 22 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “There’s been reporting that he did drive through the border when he was on the campaign trail in 2008, and he is certainly familiar with the fact, and it stuck with him, with the fact that in El Paso, the border goes right through the center of town.”
David E. Wade, who was a traveling press officer for the Obama-Biden campaign at the time, told the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker that Biden’s motorcade took him from the airport in El Paso, Texas, to the New Mexico suburb of Las Cruces. “The drive took Biden along a route that for a few minutes hugs the border of the United States and Mexico,” the Fact Checker reported.
As for Jill Biden, she visited a refugee camp in Mexico for people seeking asylum to the U.S. in December 2019. But that was during her husband’s presidential campaign — not while she was first lady, as the president’s comments may have led people to believe.
