To the editor:

Back in March President Biden presented his State of the Union address. The mainstream media and Democrats promoted the address as an opportunity for Biden to showcase his mental state and put to rest the prevailing thought that he (Biden) was lacking in mental capacity to be president another four years.

Whatever his handlers gave him worked. On the upside, he had enough energy to shout and raise his voice virtually the entire speech. On the downside, he spoke fast and at times mumbled and slurred his words. At one point he was shamed into saying the name of the young student killed in Georgia in late February, allegedly by an illegal immigrant. Biden mispronounced the first name of the student then added, “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.” Biden was subsequently roundly criticized by the progressive left and many Democrats for using the word illegal. Biden then apologized for doing so. Notably, he didn’t apologize for mispronouncing the name of the victim.

It didn’t take long for the real Joe Biden and his gaffes to return. The very next day, during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, he asked the voters to “send me to Congress.” Later he said, “We cut the deficit and we added more to the national debt than any president in his term in all of history, than under Donald Trump.” And even later he referred to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots as taking place on July 6.

In his speech Biden blamed Republicans for not approving a border bill. In the Opinion page of The Messenger opinions of something newsworthy at the time are expressed as political cartoons. On Monday, March 4 the political cartoon was of Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, shown to be like Moses holding tablets defining the “Trump Commandments”. The 2nd Commandment was “No Bipartisan Border Security Bill, So it Stays an issue”. The news at the time was that former President Trump had called and asked Johnson and other Republicans in the House to not vote for the border bill passed in the Senate. Because Trump’s actions are worthy of being in the news for weeks at a time, the very same political cartoon was printed in the Opinion page on Monday, March 18.

It should be pointed out the border security bill would have allowed nearly 5,000 “encounters” a day. By my math, 5,000 a day would be over 1,800,00 a year. To put that number in perspective, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection the number of illegal immigrants encountered at the southern border in Trump’s last year in office was 458,088. In Biden’s first three years in office the number is 7,156,660 with known gotaways of over 1,700,000 plus a number of unknown gotaways that run away from the border and evade being counted or stopped.

Trump and Republicans counter the border bill controversy by pointing out that ol’Joe doesn’t need any congressional legislation. Within days of his inauguration in January 2021, Biden signed executive orders reversing many of Trump’s policies that were working (see the numbers above). With the stroke of his pen Biden could restore Trump’s successful border policies to control illegal immigrants at the border, and could have done so years ago. Don’t blame Republicans.

Chuck Peterson

Fort Dodge