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Jaclyn Cashman is the embarrassment, not Joe Biden

Boston Herald columnist Jaclyn Cashman recently wrote an article entitled, "Joe Biden's the real embarrassment, not America," and I'm here to tell her she's wrong, that she's the embarrassment, not Joe Biden.

Cashman began her article by saying this:

"Taking a page from Barack Obama's playbook, Joe Biden - ahead of his presidential announcement - goes to Europe and apologizes for America. Biden calls our country an 'embarrassment' for separating families at the border crossing. Never mind that the Obama administration, in which Biden served as vice president, also ramped up deportation - sending millions of illegal immigrants back where they came from. Biden is actively trying to rewrite his legacy on immigration."

As well-renowned fact-checker FactCheck.org said with regard to the "apology-tour" claim conservatives like to use, "Although it has been a consistent applause line, the claim doesn't hold up when matched with Obama's actual words."

Further elaborating on the matter, they wrote:

"Our fact-checking colleagues at PolitiFact and the Washington Post Fact Checker both pored over those speeches, and others, and wrote detailed analyses of the content of Obama's words. Their conclusion: Obama never apologized.

We've read through the speeches as well. We've come to the same conclusion: Nowhere did we see that the president 'apologized' for America. In some speeches, Obama was drawing a distinction between his policies and those of his predecessor, George W. Bush. In other instances, Obama appeared to be employing a bit of diplomacy, criticizing past actions of both the U.S. and the host nation, and calling for two sides to move forward."

The writers ended their fact-check by saying, "We won't go into all of the other speeches cited by Romney in his book, but suffice to say, we didn't see that any of them rise to the level of an actual apology."

With regard to Ms. Cashman's other claim, fact-checker Salvador Rizzo of the Chicago Tribune has a few things to say. Salvador, take it away...

"There is simply no comparison between Trump's family separation policy and the border enforcement actions taken by Obama and the George W. Bush administrations. (After a public outcry, Trump in late June signed an executive order to end family separations.)

Obama had guidelines that prioritized the deportation of gang members, national security risks and felons. Once he took office, Trump issued an executive order rolling back much of that framework and scrapping the priority list. Trump's January 2017 order refers only to 'criminal offenses,' which is broad enough to encompass serious felonies and misdemeanors. 

But the key difference here is that in April, the Justice Department rolled out a 'zero tolerance' policy of prosecuting all adults caught crossing the border illegally. As a result of this and the Department of Homeland Security's decision in May to refer all illegal-crossing cases to federal prosecutors, families apprehended at the border were systematically separated. The reason is simple: Children can't be prosecuted with their parents.

This is worlds apart from the Obama- and Bush-era policy of separating children from adults at the border only in limited circumstances, such as when officials suspected human trafficking or another kind of danger to the child, or when false claims of parentage were made."

That's strike two, Ms. Cashman. Anything else?

"Leading Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once favored funding for building a wall along the southern border. Now these liberals call it 'immoral.' Some who are running for president even want to dissolve ICE."

FactCheck, do your thing...

"White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney made an apples-to-oranges comparison when he said he couldn't understand why Democrats opposed supplemental funding for a border wall since many of them were for it back in 2006.

Mulvaney is referring to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which called for construction of 700 miles of fencing and enhanced surveillance technology, such as unmanned drones, ground-based sensors, satellites, radar coverage and cameras. Sen. Chuck Schumer and then-Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were among a bipartisan majority that voted in favor of the legislation, and it was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

In a very general sense, the Democrats named by Mulvaney supported a bill to build more border fencing in 2006, and Trump is now asking for money to build a wall and fencing.

But the scope and political context of the two efforts are quite different. ...

At the surface level, it is true in a broad sense that Democrats including Schumer, Obama and Clinton have in the past supported border fencing. All three voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and all three supported the 2013 Senate immigration overhaul that passed the Senate, which called for tougher border security including some additional fencing. But to claim that those measures are the same as what Trump is proposing is a stretch."

That's strike 3, Ms. Cashman. As they say in baseball, you're out! Like I said at the outset, you're the embarrassment, not Joe Biden. :: mic drop ::

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/18/cashman-bidens-the-real-embarrassment-not-america/

https://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/romneys-sorry-apology-tour-dig/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/factcheck/ct-fact-check-trump-immigration-20181127-story.html

https://www.factcheck.org/2017/04/democrats-support-border-wall/

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