The quick pivot, refusal to negotiate another round on border security, and immediate shift to blame Trump confirmed one thing: Republican leadership wasn’t serious about border security. They cared most about Ukraine funding and saw the border negotiations as a distraction. This extinguished any hope of real border security before the negotiation began.
The story our leadership tells is that the “politics of border security” had changed because of Donald Trump. James Lankford dutifully negotiated a bipartisan border product. Conservative Republicans encouraged this negotiation. When the product took shape, Donald Trump demanded conservatives walk. Trump argued that Joe Biden didn’t need a border security package—which was true—so Republicans should ask simply that Joe Biden do his job. This intervention allegedly killed a great piece of border policy.
