Dem Rep. John Garamendi Rips Trump Over DACA Tweets: ‘Give Me a Break, Mr. President!’
Democratic Congressman John Garamendi of California tore into Donald Trump for creating the DACA “crisis,” as the lawmaker told the president “give me a break” in response to him using recipients of the program as legislative “leverage.”
Garamendi, who made the comments while appearing on CNN, responded to a Trump tweet this morning in which the president suggested Democrats caused the current controversy over DACA, which is a intuitive designed to give legal status to children of undocumented immigrants.
“DACA is dead because the Democrats didn’t care or act, and now everyone wants to get onto the DACA bandwagon,” tweeted Trump. “No longer works. Must build Wall and secure our borders with proper Border legislation. Democrats want No Borders, hence drugs and crime!”
The California lawmaker then took to cable news to fact check the president:
“Give me a break. What is this guy doing? What is she doing? There are certain facts, certain things that are well-known. The DACA program was in place. There was a question about its legality. That’s a court issue. What did the president do? He promised during his campaign two things––one, he would terminate DACA. He did that. He created this crisis. He created this problem all by himself. It wasn’t something that needed to be done. Maybe the courts would have ruled overtime that it had to be changed. Okay. That could have happened. He terminated the program.”
He continued by pointing to Trump using his border wall idea “as leverage” against DACA recipients: “You won’t get DACA until the president gets his big, beautiful border wall.”
“We got ourselves a real mess here,” Garamendi added. “One that needs to be resolved.”
As for Trump claiming immigrants are crossing the US-Mexican border so they can take advantage of DACA, Garamendi noted “you had to be in the United States before 2007.”
“Give me a break, Mr. President. Could you at least be accurate?” concluded the lawmaker.
Watch above, via CNN.
[image via screengrab]
