Bernie Sanders says Trump 'did a better job' than Joe Biden in securing borders

WASHINGTON, DC: Senator Bernie Sanders has praised President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, saying POTUS "did a better job" securing the border than former President Joe Biden, and urged Democrats to return to enforcement-focused policy.

Sanders' remarks, made on 'The Tim Dillon Show' on Wednesday, October 22, and circulated on X and YouTube, mark one of the Vermont independent’s sharpest breaks with his party.

Bernie Sanders says 'you’ve got to have borders'

Bernie Sanders said during the show, "So long as we have nation-states, you’ve got to have borders. If you don’t have any borders, then you don’t have a nation."

"Trump did a better job. I don’t like Trump, you know, but we should have a secure border, and it ain’t that hard to do," he added. 

Sanders also said, "Biden didn’t do it", faulting several administrations for failing to enforce the law.

Interestingly, Sanders, who ran for president twice on a populist economic platform, has earlier broken with his party on immigration enforcement, and warned during the 2020 campaign about the risks of "open borders" rhetoric. 

He stated that the United States has the "technology and manpower" to secure the border, but that leaders of both parties failed to do so.

"I’m not going to sit here and tell you that overall [Biden] did a good job — it was not," Sanders mentioned.

US Customs and Border Protection logged 2.47M migrant encounters in 2023

US Customs and Border Protection logged 2.47 million migrant encounters in 2023, which was an all-time high, up from about 458,000 in Trump’s final year.

Interestingly, Bernie Sanders’ tone marks a shift from his 2020 campaign, where he dismissed talk of a "border crisis" and accused the POTUS of "demonizing immigrants".

He said during a March 2020 Fox News town hall, "I would not close the borders", even amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and called border shutdowns "xenophobic". 

Meanwhile, in January 2019, as Trump made a prime-time case that a border crisis required urgent action, the Senator downplayed the situation, and said at the time "we don’t need to create artificial crises" at the border.

Surprisingly, Sanders’ new tone represents a striking reversal as he said "it ain’t that hard" to secure the border, urging Democrats to "have a border". He seems to be echoing long-standing conservative arguments.

Bernie Sanders says Kamala Harris made Trump win by not focusing on 'working people'

During the podcast, Bernie Sanders also took a sharp jab at former Vice President Kamala Harris' 2024 presidential campaign, and argued that she failed to connect with working-class voters and helped pave the way for Donald Trump’s win.

Speaking on the show, to promote his new book ‘Fighting Oligarchy’, Sanders praised Harris as "an incredibly intelligent, focused person" but added that her campaign was not centered on the needs of working-class Americans.

"I ran against Kamala back in 2020, and I know her, not close, but I know her well, and she’s an incredibly intelligent, focused person," Sanders said.

He added, "I worked as hard as I could. I ran all over the country to try to get her elected." 

The Senator also argued that the failure stemmed from the outsized influence of wealthy donors and corporate interests.

"The reason that she lost that election gets back to... money in politics. Kamala did not run a campaign focused on the needs of the working class, didn’t run a campaign focused on healthcare, on economics, and raising the minimum wage, on paid family and medical leave, on housing, on all of the issues that working people are struggling with right now," Sanders said.