JD Vance Claims Obama’s Rhetoric About Migrants Would Put Him On the ‘MAGA Right’
Can you picture ex-Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in red Make America Great Again hats?
Vice President JD Vance can — with Vance telling reporters at the White House on Wednesday that the former presidents would be branded as Trump-loving right wingers by their fellow Democrats in 2025, based on their previous comments on people who enter the U.S. illegally.
“The political leadership of their party has got it into their heads that the only way to be compassionate is to be compassionate to illegal aliens, rather than American citizens,” Vance said. “If you go back to what Bill Clinton was saying — even Barack Obama in some cases — what he was saying 10, 15, 20 years ago, you would put them on the MAGA right, based purely on their rhetoric around illegal immigration.”
Vance made the comment while taking questions about the government shutdown. The vice president, a little earlier, said the shutdown was due largely to Democratic lawmakers wanting to give billions of dollars to people who are in the U.S. illegally.
Both Clinton and Obama have firmly voiced their concerns about illegal immigration in the past, although their stances have softened in recent years.
“All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country,” Clinton said in his 1995 State of the Union address. “The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants.”
Obama made similar remarks when he was a senator in 2005:
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”
Vance on Wednesday said he believes it was a mistake for Democrats to shift away from those beliefs.
“I don’t know why [Democrats] have gone so far to the left,” Vance said. “I think it’s bad for the country, [and] I think it’s bad for them politically.”
His remarks came shortly after Senate Dems, led by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), voted against a stopgap bill that would have reopened the U.S. government until late November.
You can watch Vance’s comments on Clinton and Obama above, via Fox News.