Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said President Trump is either a liar or “completely delusional” for saying Democrats are to blame for negotiators failing to come to an agreement on the fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Kaine, a Democrat, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Trump’s contention that Democrats are responsible for a DACA extension not being included in the government funding bill is totally false.
“That quote of the president, he is either lying or he is completely delusional,” Kaine said. “Why is there DACA? Because a Democratic president, President Obama, supported by Democratic legislators, put it in place in 2012.”
“Why is DACA threatened? Because a Republican president, Donald Trump, supported by Republican legislators, announced in September that the program was going to be ended.”
The DACA program protected 800,000 illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children by their parents from deportation and was ended by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in September. The decision gave lawmakers six months to come up with a solution before the program formally ended in March, but court rulings have allowed the program to continue while legal challenges to Trump’s decision are heard.
Kaine said ultimately the White House killed negotiations over extending DACA before the government funding bill was passed and signed into law last week.
“The deal that we put on the table was [to] protect Dreamers and give President Trump $25 billion, every penny that he asked for, for border security,” Kaine said. “He turned the deal down. Read the deal. President Trump opposes Dreamers or he could protect them in the stroke of the pen in the next five minutes if he wanted to.”
Kaine urged Trump to just use the same executive power to protect DACA recipients that Obama did and reinstate the program.
“If President Trump believes in DACA, all he has to do is retract his executive order from September where he broke a promise to Dreamers and said he was going to end the program,” Kaine said.
