Mike Pence flirts with Fox News' racist great replacement theory speculation during interview
Pence: “It's operating exactly as those that advocate open borders wanted it to operate. ... I'm somebody that believes that a nation without borders is not a nation.”
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Citation
From the December 19, 2022, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom
MIKE PENCE (FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.): I was down to the border twice over the last year and the most jarring thing that I heard, more than nine months ago, was that the cartels are in operational control of our border today. Literally, I stood in Cochise County, [Arizona,] at a section of the border where, literally, on day one President Biden ended construction of the border wall. And so you see all these girders laid out in the sunshine, rusting in the sunshine. And, a hundred yards across the border, you could see a lookout nest of the cartels. That they literally decide who comes in. And the crisis in El Paso[, Texas] this week tells you all you need to know.
BILL HEMMER (CO-ANCHOR): So, if you go down there and you see that. Other people go down there and see that.
PENCE: Right.
HEMMER: And, Dana and I have been talking about why the rest of the media has not been reporting on this up until really about the last week.
PENCE: About the last week.
HEMMER: And now, when the Biden administration came in, there was thinking they wanted to do the opposite of whatever you and former President Donald Trump did.
PENCE: Right.
HEMMER: And maybe it was; you won't do DACA, so we're going to allow this to happen. Maybe it was; the border policies are separating families, so we're going to do the opposite of that. Can you help us understand why the administration has been so — you could call it inept, or you could call it a refusal to do something.
PENCE: No. Yeah, Bill, I don't call it inept. It's operating exactly as those that advocate open borders wanted it to operate. I mean, look, we ended illegal immigration and asylum abuse by 90 percent under a combination of a border wall, internal enforcement, the remain in Mexico policy that I negotiated on the president's behalf with Mexican officials, and Title 42 that we put into effect in those early days of the COVID pandemic. The combination of those things ended the crisis at our border, but when Joe Biden took office and the open borders crowd was in the saddle in the Congress and in the White House, they got rid of all of that and the crisis happened.
HEMMER: How did they benefit from open borders?
PENCE: I would leave that to — I don't like speculating on people's motives. But I'm somebody that believes that a nation without borders is not a nation. But my hope is seeing 15,000 people come in in a single week in El Paso, having the Democrat mayor of El Paso declare a state of emergency, might just jar this administration into holding off on undoing Title 42, which was incredibly effective under our administration. And for heaven's sakes, the remain in Mexico policy was just common sense. President Trump made it clear there would be consequences if Mexico did not step up and agree to allow people to wait in Mexico when they applied for asylum. We stood firm, we accomplished that. We can secure our border and end this crisis, but it takes leadership.