“Symbolism over Substance” is a phrase you’ve heard and seen us use here numerous times. It best summarizes the hypocrisy we so often see from those on the Left, especially when it comes to immigration.
The primary policy for which Donald Trump was elected President was the one in which he guaranteed the closing of the southern border to illegal immigrants, sealing the border, and the prosecution of immigration law offenders. He’s done as much of the portions of that promise he was able to do on his own. The rest is totally dependent on the U.S. Congress. Who knows what they’ll do, but they haven’t done anything towards stopping illegal crossings.
The “poster child” of politicians from border states is the governor of New Mexico. And she’s stepped in it. Her doing so illustrates the hypocrisy of the elitist politicians that were emboldened by the former inhabitant of the White House who legitimized governing using political elitism and ignoring the rule of law.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham got busted: on her own!
The “Story”
While there’s little debate over the nature of President Donald Trump’s intense focus on border security and illegal immigration, what is up for question — at least among the Left — are the details of what, exactly, is going on along our nation’s southern border.
Some Democrats seem incapable of even agreeing that there is an ongoing crisis at the southern border.
And even if they do admit there is a state of crisis, it nevertheless remains up for debate whether that crisis is of the humanitarian or national security variety, much less how best to address it.
Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham initially denied there was even a hint of a national security crisis at the border, though it appears she may have changed her tune. Now, she’s asking the federal government for help in dealing with illegal immigrants.
It’s a remarkable shift, especially given that in February, Lujan Grisham dismissed Trump’s repeated claims of a national security crisis at the border. She even went so far as to order National Guard troops from both her state and others to withdraw from the border region, suggesting their presence was an unnecessary “charade” and only the result of the president’s “fear-mongering” about the border.
“I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the Southern border,” she said at the time, according to NPR, characterizing the border region in her state as having “some of the safest communities in the country.”
Lujan Grisham proceeded to order the withdrawal of about 100 National Guard troops that had been deployed to the southern border in her state at Trump’s request to provide desperately needed logistical and other assistance to U.S. Border Patrol agents.
The few National Guard troops that remained in the border region were relegated to just lending a humanitarian hand to the hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal immigrants who had entered her state illegally and were residing in — and overrunning — New Mexico’s small towns in the area.
Fast-forward a little more than three months, and the governor was reported to have recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for an in-person meeting with Kevin McAleenan, acting director of the Department of Homeland Security.
A spokesperson from the governor’s office reported that Lujan Grisham’s visit with McAleenan, which followed weeks of back-and-forth phone calls, involved a discussion of the ongoing situation at New Mexico’s southern border.
The discussion included a request from Lujan Grisham for federal reimbursement for state money spent providing humanitarian assistance to illegal aliens. She also reportedly requested the deployment of additional resources and federal staffing in the region to help address the border situation.
“The governor wants to continue to urge the federal government to increase its personnel on the border as a means of improving the logistical and communications output,” the Lujan Grisham spokesperson, Tripp Stelnicki said.
Now it’s not exactly clear what specific sorts of personnel and resources Lujan Grisham is asking for, and her office did not respond to a request for comment.
That being said, her request for additional federal resources is somewhat ironic in light of her dismissal of Trump’s characterization of the crisis and her removal of National Guard troops just a few months ago.
Steve Pearce, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, summed it up this way:
“She declares there’s no crisis. She removes the National Guard, and now she’s there asking for money,” he said.
“Everything in her actions indicate that she believes there’s a crisis, but yet she will not dedicate the resources or request to her colleagues in Congress to start passing the laws that will change the situation there,” he continued.
The biggest problem for the small New Mexican towns in the border region, if not across the whole state, is that residents and local officials in those towns have no idea how many illegal immigrants have entered their jurisdictions or who exactly those border-crossers are.
Nor is it clear how long they will stay, how much assistance they will require or how many more will soon join them.
This liberal governor trashed the president, dismissed the crisis at the border and further weakened the already weak border security situation via her withdrawal of National Guard troops. Now she wants federal taxpayers to reimburse her state, which is some rather delicious irony icing on her hypocrisy cake.
Summary
My father said this quite often: “Give them enough rope they’ll hang themselves.” I wasn’t certain at the time exactly who and what actions he was referring to. I learned later that it really didn’t matter. People — especially politicians — have become so accustomed to just “going with the flow” of the crowd that they often discover their doing so was a big mistake. Such is the case for Governor Grisham.
Don’t you know when all this happened she was glad to be New Mexico’s governor and not the governor of some big coastal state? There’s not much national press coverage of New Mexico that would have really embarrassed her. Getting busted and having to reach out to the Trump Administration for help is bad enough.
Yep, “Symbolism over Substance” was front and center in New Mexico. Governor Grisham just showed everyone how silly one looks when pontificating about facts that aren’t facts.
What did that great philosopher Forrest Gump have to say about this stuff? “Stupid is as Stupid Does.”
Sometimes others simply know more than we do. But that’s a hard pill to swallow — for Forrest and even for some governors.
