President Trump used the bipartisan success of his prison reform bill, the First Step Act, to lead into his call to Congress to broker a border security deal during his State of the Union speech.
Trump, who invited former prisoners Alice Marie Johnson and Matthew Charles, echoed a remarkably hopeful theme woven throughout his address. Rather than use the mention of Johnson, whom he granted clemency, and Charles, who became the first prisoner freed thanks to the First Step Act, to paint himself as a political victor, Trump used it as evidence that our bicameral Congress can come to a bipartisan deal on border security.
“As we have seen, when we are united, we can make astonishing strides for our country,” Trump declared. “Now, Republicans and Democrats must join forces again to confront an urgent national crisis.”
It’s a wise pivot, one dozens of degrees removed from the Stephen Miller-authored fury of previous addresses from the president. Gone are demands to slash legal immigration and dehumanizing portrayals of foreigners. Instead Trump has gone back to the basics: the enforcement of law and our national sovereignty. And, of course, Trump’s pivot relied on a healthy degree of populism, one that keenly avoided partisanship.
“No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration. Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards,” Trump said. “Meanwhile, working class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal migration: reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools and hospitals, increased crime, and a depleted social safety net.”
Trump’s demand to make a deal would have been greatly enhanced by his reiteration of his three-year Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals/temporary protected status extension offer, but his choice to highlight border security as a matter of enforcing existing law rather than adding new policies was the correct one.
The president’s greatest problem in the last two months of border negotiations hasn’t been his positioning but his inability to stick to the message. Reports that he’s considered declaring a national emergency or tying debt ceiling negotiations to a border security deal have only distracted from the central truth: that Trump has centered on a common sense, Department of Homeland Security-backed border plan, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has rejected every offer from Trump to secure constitutional protection for “Dreamers” and TPS holders just to deny him a political victory.
Prison reform, passed in December, didn’t grant Trump much political capital in border negotiations, but as the president has dialed down his rhetoric and made his willingness to negotiate in good faith clear, the bipartisanship of the First Step Act serves as an instructive parallel to what could be on border security, if only the Democrats would let it.
