A tweet on President Joe Biden’s official Twitter account has blown up, with the president savagely attacked and ratioed after claiming that pro-Trump MAGA House Republicans’ legislative proposals "would slash funding for border security – a move that could allow nearly 900 pounds of fentanyl into our country."
"We need more resources to secure the border. Not less," the tweet read.
Tweet on President Biden's official Twitter account on the crisis at the US' southern border.
© Photo : Twitter / @POTUS
The viral tweet, which has received over 6.4 million views, clearly hit a nerve with Biden’s detractors, with users accusing the president of “lying” through his teeth and distorting MAGA Republicans’ actual plans (pro-Trump GOP lawmakers have traditionally attacked Biden to no end on the border issue, and accused him of "caring more" about Ukraine’s borders than those of the United States).
"Nobody believes that you have reversed course and are trying to secure the border while Republicans have reversed course and are trying to open it up. Do you ever stop lying?" one user asked. “Biden and Democrats blocked Republican efforts to hire 18,000 Border Patrol agents. They hired 87,000 IRS agents instead,” another person suggested. “Do you really think that America believes this? Who shut down the building of the wall? Who’s allowed a border run like we’ve never seen before? Please,” a third wrote. "We had no border issues when Trump was president. This has nothing to do with MAGA Republicans," another person claimed.
Others took a more satirical approach. “Can I get a fact-check on aisle 666?” one person asked. "You're either lying or your dementia is so bad that you reversed your entire ideology," another jested. "This, kids is called 'demagoguery'," a third quipped. "He got the date wrong for April Fools," a fourth person wrote. "This is satire right?" one user asked. “Are you sure you’re not talking about Ukraine’s border?” another wrote. "You know there's an election on the horizon when Democrats start pretending to care about the border crisis," one user suggested.
Others took note of the extent to which Biden’s tweet was ratioed – i.e. when replies to a tweet dramatically outnumber likes and retweets.
Others tried a more optimistic approach, suggesting that whether or not he was telling the truth, at least the president is talking about the situation at the border. "Did @potus just admit the border crisis? Oh please tell me how you intend to fix the issues our border states have had to combat on their own since you have been in the Oval Office," one user wrote. "I must have missed the switch of Republicans being for open borders and Democrats wanting to secure it. As long as it gets secured after what we’ve experienced the last two years that would be great!” another added.
The pro-Trump MAGA wing of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives has been unspoken in its criticism of the Biden administration's border policies, often linking the issue to the attention the administration pays to Ukraine's borders in Washington’s ongoing proxy war against Russia in Ukraine while "ignoring" the southern frontier with Mexico.
House Republicans have floated proposals to impeach Department of Homeland Security chief Alexjandro Mayorkas over his purported failure to tackle the immigration crisis, and have characterized the situation as the worst crisis in American history.
From his first weeks in office, Biden worked to slash nearly a dozen hardline Trump-era immigration-related directives, taking steps to end “harsh and extreme immigration enforcement” and scrapping a 'Remain in Mexico' program which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico until their immigration court dates. Biden also famously halted construction of Trump’s signature border wall in favor of a ‘smart’ wall complete with autonomous surveillance towers, iris scanning, DNA analysis and other high-tech equipment.
These policies have brought Biden heat from Trump, his allies, Border Patrol and other law enforcement agencies, and the presidents of Mexico and Guatemala, who have accused him of encouraging migrants and human smugglers with his rhetoric, and of failing to 'pick up the phone' to discuss the issue with regional leaders.
The Border Patrol reported a record 2.7 million encounters with migrants in fiscal year 2022 (October 1 2021-September 30, 2022), up substantially from the previous record of 1.9 million, set in fiscal year 2021.
The border crisis has been accompanied by a raging drug crisis, with law enforcement struggling to halt the smuggling of the highly addictive opioid, which accounted for the majority of the nearly 108,000 fatal overdoses in the US recorded through August 2022.