by Frank Holmes, reporter
Tens of millions of Americans tuned in last week for Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address, but the cameras did not capture one important addition to the architecture: an enormous fence erected around the U.S. Capitol building.
The Biden administration hemmed the entire, 175,000 feet of the Capitol complex behind thick, unscalable security fencing adorned with signs that read: “Area closed by order of the United States Capitol Police Board.”
The officials couldn’t name a security reason for fencing the American people out of the seat of their government: “Multiple federal law enforcement officials tell CBS News they are not aware of any specific nor credible threats to the Capitol,” the news outlet reported.
Yet officials went ahead and fenced off the Capitol “out of an abundance of caution”—just like last year and the year before.
So much for Biden’s 2020 campaign promise that “there will not be another foot of wall construction in my administration.”
It’s not just the Capitol building. When Biden administration officials finally decided to protect the Supreme Court from pro-abortion protesters after the Dobbs decision’s leak last May, they erected a fence around the High Court.
They built two huge security fences to contain left-wing protesters at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
But if you really want to see what liberals think of whether security walls and fences work, look at their homes.
President Joe Biden is building a half-million-dollar security fence around his vacation home in Delaware—and making taxpayers foot the bill.
The wall is well underway at the Bidens’ Rehoboth Beach getaway. The Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract worth $490,324 to pay for the added security—$34,000 more than the contractor, Turnstone Holdings LCC, originally asked for.
Similarly, former President Barack Obama seemed to think the Lord opposes border security, for everyone but him. “In the eyes of God, a child on the other side of the border is no less worthy of love and compassion than my own child,” he droned in 2017 in a speech criticizing President Trump.
But when the Obamas moved just a few miles away from the White House into Washington’s ritzy Kalorama neighborhood, they took the existing mansion and built a wall around it.
The Wall is built. #Obama #Kalorama #DC #home pic.twitter.com/C6AuIOCy8a
— Mangascoloradas (@leopardtwo) May 24, 2017
The same is true of another person who questioned whether Trump would go to Heaven over his support for a border wall: Pope Francis. In 2016, the leader of the Catholic Church seemed to take a swipe at presidential candidate Trump’s pledge to build “a big, beautiful wall” on the border.
“A person who thinks only about building walls… is not Christian,” said Pope Francis, who was immediately met with condemnation.
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro responded by posting a picture of Vatican City, which is surrounded by walls that are 40 feet high and two miles long.
Pope on Trump: "A person who thinks only about building walls…is not Christian." This is Vatican City. pic.twitter.com/ehmsLoljTl
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) February 18, 2016
Trump had no harsher critic than Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly belittled and shamed the idea of a border wall during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Yet even in the heat of the campaign, reporters found the massive security wall-and-fence she built around the Clintons’ estate in Chappaqua.
“It must be at least 10 feet high,” reported Kyle Olson at The American Mirror.
This is the kind of border wall Hillary Clinton can live with ==> pic.twitter.com/UiIy9nzpHI
— Kyle Olson 🇺🇸 (@kyleolson4) August 12, 2016
No one enjoyed poking fun at this hypocrisy — or using it to highlight his agenda — more than President Trump himself.
If building a border wall is “immoral,” Trump asked, “then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences, and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside.”
“The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized,” he said
Some Democrats, including Joe Biden, have quietly agreed with Trump. Biden has authorized the construction of additional barriers on the U.S. border in the Yuma sector, although he says he’s merely reinforcing the “existing” wall.
But he may really be responding to the pleas of law enforcement on the front lines. As The Horn reported, two Border Patrol officials testified before Congress just hours before Biden’s State of the Union that the U.S. border with Mexico “requires barriers,” that “gates are super important for us,” and administration’s continual refusals to build meaningful fences or other physical barriers “leave us vulnerable” for invasion by illegal aliens or attack by Mexican cartels.
Secretly, every Democrat in the country knows that “a fence works,” as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CBS 2 in 2019. “You ask the experts.”
Or look at the politicians.
Watch what they do, not what they say.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”