It wasn’t just a made-for-TV moment, it was engineered to go viral on social media. Congressional Democrats insolently sitting on their hands after President Donald Trump asked those who believe that the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal immigrants, to stand. When Democrats didn’t, Trump admonished them, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
One can argue that it wasn’t fair for Trump to use Democrats as political props during his State of the Union address, but politics isn’t fair. As Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s (D-VA) response showed minutes later, it was also a fair assessment of the Democratic Party’s continued inability even to pay lip service to what is needed to secure our borders and protect our sovereignty.
Spanberger attacked Trump for sending “poorly trained federal agents into our cities where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans.” One can criticize the daily arrest and deportation quotas that the White House has pressed the Department of Homeland Security to meet, causing some citizens to be detained and subsequently released, but who are these “people who aspire to be Americans” that Spanberger is referring to? Is this the new Democratic Party euphemism for the more than 6 million illegal immigrants former President Joe Biden let into our country?
The words “illegal immigrant” or even “undocumented immigrant” appear nowhere in Spanberger’s speech. Never does she even hint at any acknowledgment that there are literally millions of aliens (the textbook definition) roaming our streets with no legal right to be here. Spanberger does allow that “our broken immigration system is something to be fixed,” but that was Biden’s rhetoric, too, as he opened the doors to a flood of illegal immigrants into the country, leaving our border in a state of crisis. Spanberger’s speech proved, once again, that Democratic leaders are incapable of doing, or simply unwilling to do, the hard work of deportation necessary to make any secure border immigration system credible and functional.
Voters know it.
As CNN’s Harry Enten recently noted, even after all the recent events in Minneapolis, Democrats are in a worse position now on immigration than they were during Trump’s first term. At this point in 2018, voters trusted Democrats by a 6-point margin on immigration. Today, despite all the overhyped headlines on the evils of Trump’s mass deportations, Republicans enjoy a 5-point margin on the issue. As much as many voters may not like how Trump is handling immigration now, they still think Democrats would do an even worse job. The numbers on “border security” are even worse for Democrats, where Republicans now enjoy a 15-point margin on the issue.
THE DEMOCRATS EMPTY AFFORDABILITY PROMISES
Democrats may still have a strong 2026. It would be historically anomalous if they didn’t. Polls show they are poised to take the House. But immigration enforcement isn’t on the ballot this year. No matter what happens this November, Trump will still be in charge of securing America’s borders.
But 2028 will be a different story. Voters will have a choice between a party that prudently and effectively secured the border and a party that is incapable of even uttering the phrase “undocumented immigrant,” let alone “illegal alien.” The last Democratic president’s immigration policies caused a border crisis, overburdening federal, state, and local budgets, while the current appointed party spokesman repeated the past administration’s failed rhetoric. For that, Democrats should be ashamed.