DeSantis Trolls Biden on the Border

Humiliated in defeat and trying to stay relevant, Ron DeSantis is taking aim at Joe Biden over the president’s failed policies at the US southern border.

Since dropping out of the presidential race, DeSantis has been weighing in on national policy issues through videos on X, including over the weekend when he called the US Senate’s stalled bipartisan border plan a “farce.”

“Joe Biden already has the authority to shut the border down,” DeSantis said. “He could declare it a national emergency. He could stop the invasion cold if he wanted to.”

DeSantis’ comments are similar to those from US House Speaker Mike Johnson, who urged Biden to take executive action rather than wait for Congress. Johnson and DeSantis have said they think the deal that’s coming together allows too many illegal crossings. The text of the bill isn’t out yet, but apparently, one leaked provision would require the Department of Homeland Security to shut down the border if encounters spike to an average of 5,000 migrants a day.

To DeSantis and other conservatives, that level’s unacceptable. “That’s 1.8 million plus over the course of a year, which they’re codifying into law saying that’s an appropriate number of illegal entries,” DeSantis said. “I think the appropriate number of illegal entries is zero, and our policies should reflect that.”

DeSantis also said recently that he would be willing to send the Florida State Guard and the Florida National Guard to the Southern border to assist Texas as the Legislature considers a bill to give him those expanded powers. When DeSantis was campaigning in Iowa, he would often say that while Florida wasn’t a border state like Texas, it was a “maritime border state” since migrants take the dangerous trek by boat to get here, mostly from Cuba or Haiti.

Illegal immigration will be a top issue in the 2024 presidential election, with or without the Florida governor opining on social media. The US hit a monthly record last month of 249,785 illegal crossings, and Biden promised to use the shutdown authority if Congress sends him a bill. As for Trump, he has said he’d be happy to take responsibility for having a “bad” border deal fail, predicting it would otherwise be a political gift to Democrats.

DeSantis is out of the 2024 race, but he’s clearly not letting up on Biden. What he hopes to gain by that remains to be seen. Ultimately, we will never know whether or not DeSantis really ever had a chance to defeat Trump, whose grip over his party appears stronger than ever. 

What we do know, however, is that DeSantis’s campaign will long be a case study in political mismanagement and that by trying to appeal to everyone, DeSantis eventually appealed to little or no one.