Tucker Carlson tries, and fails, to smear Greg Abbott over the border crisis
Nicole Russell
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The Texas border crisis is many things to many people: An anomaly, a complexity, a crisis, and more. Typically, conservatives are united that securing our southern border and smoothing our immigration process are top priorities, and most acknowledge the southern states are doing all they can, despite President Joe Biden’s policies that have undermined those efforts.
But not former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
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At an event in Michigan on Sunday, Carlson smeared Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), calling him a “liar” who has betrayed his state because he has refused to send the Texas National Guard in to secure the border.
“Has the governor of Texas done anything meaningful to stop it? No,” Carlson said.
He also said if Abbott sent the National Guard to the southern border, the problem would be solved “in a week.”
I’m surprised Carlson could pull himself away from digging into Barack Obama’s sex life for something as pedestrian as our border crisis. The commentator couldn’t be more wrong about his analysis of the Texas border, including what resources Abbott has deployed.
Since the March 2021 launch of Operation Lone Star, the Texas National Guard has been deployed at the border, although it does perform a limited role, not because Abbott restrains it, but because the law does. Texas guardsmen cannot directly participate in law enforcement activities, and any attempt to force them to do that will undoubtedly incur a losing lawsuit. States do not enforce immigration law; the federal government does. In fact, that’s exactly what caused this entire debacle: Biden’s loose federal policies. Abbott is simply trying to use what state resources he has to stem the tide.
Abbott has done a laundry list of things to help secure Texas’s border. He secured $4 billion in funding and deployed thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers to the area, and he hired a border czar to oversee it all. He has bused immigrants to the chagrin of sanctuary cities that initially bragged about having open arms and who now warn their neighborhoods, “They’re coming.”
Abbott has designated Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and demanded local law enforcement arrest and jail criminals trespassing. He has continued to build the border wall in Texas and signed at least 15 laws to make it easier to prosecute human traffickers and another handful that will make it easier to prosecute fentanyl distributors.
While border security is still in crisis, since 2021, law enforcement has stopped 435,700 illegal immigrants from crossing the border, made more than 34,000 criminal arrests, and reported almost 31,000 felony charges. Officials have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl as well.
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Yet Carlson, with his media-heavy pedigree and lack of real-world political experience, thinks sending the Texas National Guard to secure the border, in violation of federal law, will do the trick — when none of the things above, together, have halted the issue entirely. Carlson is a media personality many conservatives have long admired — he has said the truth other outlets haven’t, many times — but here, he shows ignorance, ill-will, and insolence. The border is complicated, and Abbott is doing all he can; Texans like me know this.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a mother of four and an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas.