(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump exchanged biting, bitter words over the state of the southern border in their CNN debate Thursday night.
“It was bedlam when he left office,” Biden said about the border situation in 2021.
“He allowed millions of people of people to come here from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come into our country and to destroy our country,” Trump said.
The former president brought up the deaths of three young girls in the last few weeks, including 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray. Two illegal migrants from Venezuela are charged with killing the girl.
“I just spoke to the mother,” Trump said. “This is horrible what’s taken place. We are literally an uncivilized country right now.”
Biden tried to focus on the bipartisan Senate immigration bill that was defeated after Trump told Republican senators, some of whom crafted the bill, to vote against it.
“We worked very hard to get a bipartisan agreement,” Biden said. “We (would) significantly increase the number of asylum officers. By the way, the Border Patrol endorsed me — endorsed my position.
“When he (Trump) was president, he was separating babies from their mothers, putting them in cages, making sure the families were separated. That’s not the right way to go.”
Speaking rapidly and forcefully, Trump rattled off many points he’s used over the past months.
“We had the safest border in the history of our country. All he (Biden) had to do was leave it. He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorist. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now. All terrorists, all over the world.”
Biden’s response was quieter, and brief: “Everything he said is a lie. Every single one.”