President Donald Trump has claimed that the Biden administration’s border policies were the result of “treasonous thugs” exploiting what he described as Joe Biden’s declining mental health.
In a rare, if backhanded, defense of his predecessor Tuesday night, Trump posted on Truth Social that Biden was never a true advocate for “open borders” before entering the White House, and implied that others around him must have pushed the agenda.
Trump also repeated a theory, without offering evidence, that Biden’s inner circle were aware he was “cognitively impaired” while in office and used that to “take over the autopen,” a device that replicates a person’s signature, allowing presidents to sign off on multiple bills and pieces of legislation.
“They stole the Presidency of the United States, and put us in Great Danger. This is TREASON at the Highest Level! They did it to destroy our Country,” Trump wrote.
“The Joe Biden that everybody knew would never allow drug dealers, gang members, and the mentally insane to come into our Country totally unchecked and unvetted. All anyone has to do is look up his record. Something very severe should happen to these Treasonous Thugs that wanted to destroy our Country, but couldn’t, because I came along.”
Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
Biden’s time in the White House was marked by years of record-breaking numbers of migrant crossings at the southern border, following his rollback of hardline immigration policies enacted during Trump’s first term.
The debate over Biden’s mental and physical health, and whether he was fit enough to serve a second term as he originally planned, has been reignited in the wake of a series of damning claims revealed in the new book Original Sin by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson.
That discourse intensified on Sunday after Biden’s office revealed that the 82-year-old has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
Trump said Monday he was “surprised” the cancer wasn’t discovered earlier, adding fuel to speculation that Biden’s deteriorating health was being kept from the public, even as he insisted he could serve another four years in the White House.
Earlier on on Tuesday, Trump said there needs to be a probe into Biden’s use of the autopen in light of the former president’s “very sad” cancer diagnosis.
“Who signed this legislation? Who signed legislation opening our border? I don’t think he knew,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. “I said, ‘There’s nobody that could want an open border, nobody.’ And now I find out it wasn’t him. He autopenned it. Who was operating the autopen? This is a very serious thing.”
Trump went on to suggest that “radical left lunatics” more aligned with progressive Vermont Senator and two-time presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders were actually “running the country.”
“They said, ‘Wait a minute, this is a gift. He’ll do anything. We’re going to use the autopen.’ And they used the autopen on everything,” Trump claimed. “He didn’t approve this stuff, because when Joe Biden was with it, he would never have approved it. He would have never approved open borders.”
Trump has previously argued that Biden’s preemptive pardons for those who investigated Trump’s actions around the January 6 Capitol riot in 2021 were “void” because they were allegedly signed using an autopen.
Trump claimed this raised questions about whether Biden personally authorized the pardons.
The post Trump Launches Bizarro Defense of Biden in Wild Online Rant appeared first on The Daily Beast.
