How the border visits between Biden and Trump exposed a deeper rift

Even participants in President Biden and Donald J. Trump’s overlapping visits to Texas on Thursday seemed to sense there was something remarkable about their near-meeting along the southern border.

Rarely do current and former commanders-in-chief arrive on the same stage on the same day to present such sharply different approaches to an issue as intractable as immigration. Even rarer was the reality that the two men are most likely heading for a rematch in November.

“Today is a day of extraordinary contrast,” said Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who appeared alongside Mr Trump.

But the dueling border events were about something even more fundamental than immigration policy. They spoke about the competing visions of power and presidency at stake in 2024 – of autocracy and the value of democracy itself.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the shared display was that Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden agreed on some basic contours of the border problem: that the current situation, with the number of migrants crossing a new monthly record of nearly 250,000 in December, , untenable.

“It is long past time to act,” Biden said.

What they disagreed with, at least in part, was the political question of how to solve this. And their divergent answers provide a test of America’s appetite for the systemic messiness of democracy: Mr. Biden’s intrinsic and institutional faith in lawmaking versus the “Day 1” promises of dictatorial implementation under Mr. Trump.

Mr. Biden says he would close the border if he could. Mr. Trump says Mr. Biden could close the border, if only he would.

“A very dangerous border – we will take care of that,” Trump promised on the tarmac upon his arrival in Texas.

“What is being proposed is more than a difference in immigration policy,” said Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth government professor who helped found a group that monitors American democracy. “The difference is between a president who tries to address a complex policy issue through our political system, and someone who promises quasi-authoritarian solutions.”

For his part, Mr. Biden argued Thursday that his hands were tied by the failure of a bipartisan border package negotiated on Capitol Hill. The legislation would have increased border spending, made asylum applications more difficult and tightened screening for fentanyl. It fell apart when Trump claimed defeat.

Mr. Biden, who served as a senator for more than three decades, has for decades viewed bipartisan dealmaking as an ideal in itself. “I didn’t get everything I wanted in that bipartisan compromise bill, but neither did anyone else,” Biden said in Brownsville, Texas. “Compromising is part of the process. That’s how democracy works.”

Then he added another thought: “This is how it’s supposed to work.”

Immigration as an issue has largely worked to Republicans’ advantage in recent years, and party strategists see it as one of the biggest vulnerabilities for Democrats in 2024. But Democrats are hoping that Republicans sidestepping the border law can share some of the blame .

In a surprising flourish near the end of his speech, the President himself offered Trump an olive branch.

“Join me,” Mr. Biden urged as he called on them to work together to get the legislation passed. “Or I’ll come with you.”

Minutes earlier and hundreds of miles away in Eagle Pass, Texas, Mr. Trump — whose 2016 convention speech accepting the Republican nomination was defined by the phrase “I alone can fix it” — had outlined a starkly different view of wielding power . After passing barbed wire and military Humvees, and after shaking hands with members of the Texas National Guard in fatigues, Trump cast himself as a battle-tested leader, ready to repel an “invasion” by hordes ‘war-time men’ who look like ‘warriors’.

“This is like a war,” Mr. Trump said, expressing his willingness to use anything resembling war powers.

He said Mr. Biden had “blood” on his hands, citing in particular the recent killing of Laken Riley, a student in Georgia, where a migrant was arrested. He reiterated that the country was suffering a wave of “Biden migrant crime.”

Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, said the former president used dehumanizing rhetoric. “This crime story about immigrants is racist,” Mr. Garcia said in a call with reporters ahead of Mr. Trump’s event.

Mr. Trump appeared with Mr. Abbott, who has begun building an operating base in Eagle Pass for up to 2,300 troops to curb illegal crossings from Mexico, a move that has led to clashes with federal officials. A federal court on Thursday blocked a Texas law that would allow state and local police to arrest migrants.

The point of Mr. Trump’s lightning rod promise to be a “Day 1” dictator was that it wasn’t just a blanket promise of authoritarian rule. It was based on a specific policy. He said he wanted to close the border – red tape be damned.

In December, Fox News host Sean Hannity had offered Mr. Trump the opportunity to back away from the comment during a town hall. Instead, Mr. Trump fully embraced it.

“He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’” Mr. Trump said, reenacting the conversation with Mr. Hannity to dramatic effect. “I said, ‘No, no, no, except on Day 1. We close the border and we drill, drill, drill. After that I will no longer be a dictator.”

In one way or another, this has long been a Trump mantra. He was accused of unconstitutionality in 2015 when he called for a Muslim ban. As president, he introduced a more limited version, targeting seven countries, including Muslim-majority ones.

In a possible second term, Mr. Trump has made it clear that he wants to be surrounded by executors and enablers. His allies are eyeing a more aggressive type of lawyer, who can bypass any legal boundaries or barriers that might be erected by what he labels the “deep state.”

“People don’t want to hear anything anymore — they just want the masses to stop coming,” Jerry Patterson, a Republican and former Texas land commissioner, said in an interview.

Mr. Patterson, who proudly said he was often criticized by the right for supporting guest worker programs, said the situation was now “truly a crisis” even if Thursday’s site visits would not bring about change.

He predicted that Mr. Trump’s election would change things — not because of any policies, but because of the perception among potential migrants that he would block or deport them.

“Perception,” he said, “is more important than reality.”

Republicans have broadly insisted lately that Biden can solve some of the border problems by reimposing some of Trump’s reverse executive policies. Mr. Biden announced no new actions on Thursday but is considering an executive action that could prevent people who cross the border illegally from seeking asylum. His State of the Union speech is next week.

Speaker Mike Johnson, the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, on Thursday called on Biden to act on his own, an unusual level of respect from a legislative leader for executive powers.

“If President Biden really wanted to acknowledge the national security crisis at the southern border, he would sit at his desk and sign executive orders,” Mr. Johnson wrote on X.

Refusing to concede has become the new norm for Republicans in Congress, said Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the AFL-CIO union. The collapsed immigration deal, he added, was just the latest episode of Republican intransigence, dating back to the massive vote against the economic recovery bill in the early days of former President Barack Obama’s first term.

“No problem is serious enough to compromise and solve,” Mr. Podhorzer said of the Republican philosophy. “The best answer is to just let us lead.”

Michael Gold reporting contributed.