Former President Barack Obama had a not-so-subtle dig at current President Joe Biden’s current job performance.
And he wasn’t alone.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-C.T.) also had strong words for the Biden administration this week.
Just after the Biden administration’s mishandling of the Haitian border crisis, where nearly 12,000 illegal immigrants were released into the United States last week, Obama condemned “open borders” as unsustainable.
Talk about the images of the mass of humanity huddles on the U.S.-Mexico border, Obama told ABC News’ “Good Morning American” the scene was “a painful reminder that we don’t have this right yet and we’ve got more work to do.”
Obama said Biden was “big-hearted” but needed to “get serious about dealing with this problem in a systemic way, as opposed to these one-offs where we’re constantly reacting to emergencies.”
“Immigration is tough,” Obama said. “It always has been because, on the one hand, I think we are naturally a people that want to help others. We see tragedy and hardship and families that are desperately trying to get here so that their kids are safe, and they’re in some cases fleeing violence or catastrophe.”
“At the same time, we’re a nation-state. We have borders,” he said. “The idea that we can just have open borders is something that … as a practical matter, it’s unsustainable.”
Blumenthal was more direct with his criticism of the Biden administration’s recent missteps. He complained to MSNBC that “nobody is in charge” at the White House after the recent hearings on Afghanistan on Capitol Hill.
“There really was no clarity” about the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. “The Secretary of Defense provided no real responses to my questions. There are no responses. There’s nobody in charge.”
“He knows there’s a moral imperative here. There are tens of thousands of Afghan allies who went into combat with our troops. Now they have targets on their backs,” Blumenthal complained. “My office turned into a mini-evacuation center.”
“Nobody is in charge,” he said. “It’s a continuing challenge that we need to face — because lives are at stake.”
The Horn editorial team