OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump expressed surprise on Thursday after learning that Vice President Kamala Harris told CNN the night before that she believed the Biden administration had managed the border appropriately.
Trump was in Arizona on Thursday evening when he spoke with Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin, who inquired about his thoughts on Harris’s town hall.
Melugin initially asked Trump for his reaction to Harris telling Anderson Cooper that she believes the former president is a “fascist.”
“I have never seen anybody so inept at speaking,” Trump said. “I thought her performance was horrible. I have never seen anything like it for a high-level politician. I can’t even believe it. But she did call me a fascist, and everyone knows that’s not true. They call me everything until, you know, something sticks.”
At that, Melugin then switched to the border, which has been his Fox News beat for most of the Biden-Harris regime:
MELUGIN: She said during that town hall she believes they have handled the border correctly. CNN pressed her on it. “Would you have done anything different? Do you regret anything?” And she said, “I think we did the right thing.”
TRUMP: Wait a minute. That she’s handled it correctly?
MELUGIN: Correct.
TRUMP: She said that?
MELUGIN: She said that. She said, “I think we did the right thing.”
TRUMP: We allowed 21 million people in. We allowed 13,099 murderers. We allowed mental institutions from all over the world. If she said that, look, she is a grossly incompetent person. And if she said that, they had the worst border in history.
WATCH:
President Trump is genuinely stunned: She said that? pic.twitter.com/ljpukerJ0Y
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) October 25, 2024
During her CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper, Harris falsely claimed that Trump “didn’t do anything” on the border.
“I think of what he did and how he did it didn’t make much sense because he didn’t do much of anything,” she claimed.
Trump built more than 400 miles of border wall, and his “Remain In Mexico” policy was responsible for cutting illegal border crossings by the most in a generation — the latter of which has been confirmed by federal statistics and by Border Patrol agents.
Meanwhile, many of those same agents have threatened to leave the essential federal agency in large numbers if Vice President Kamala Harris wins in November, with several agents telling the New York Post that they cannot endure another four years of being undermined and scapegoated.
“I’m not doing this s–t again … four years of hell,” one agent, who isn’t anywhere close to retirement, told the outlet. Another added, “Lots of guys who can retire will go. If Trump wins, they’ll stay.”
Insiders report that the Border Patrol has experienced significant turnover and a sharp decline in morale under the Biden-Harris administration.
The agency has lost more than 4,000 personnel since October 2020, leaving approximately 19,000 employees, according to the Washington Examiner.
Incentives such as raising recruitment bonuses from $10,000 to as much as $30,000 and encouraging retired agents to return have not been enough to close the gap.
Both Trump and Harris have committed to strengthening the Border Patrol, with the Republican nominee announcing on Sunday plans to increase the force by one-third, adding 10,000 new agents. However, multiple agents who spoke to The Post anonymously for fear of repercussions from their superiors indicated that if Harris is elected, she is likely to take office facing a significant staffing crisis at the agency.
“We will have another exodus just because we will have a bunch of 20-year agents saying ‘peace out,’” one agent told the outlet. He also believes that the more experienced agents, with five to 10 years on the job, who do much of the grunt work for the agency, will use their skills to find other jobs.
