Bern-ing Biden: ‘Nobody Thinks Illegal Immigration Is Appropriate’

Give Bernie Sanders credit for reading the room, at least … and about 1,000 demerits for gaslighting. 

Yesterday, ABC’s Jon Karl tried to pin down Vermont’s leading socialist on something positive that Donald Trump has done since returning to office. “Nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate,” Sanders tells Karl while praising Trump’s renewed focus on the border. But that flies in the face of four years in which Joe Biden’s administration and his sycophantic media wouldn’t even say the term “illegal immigration.” And Sanders only barely does before falling back to the Approved Euphemism of “undocumented”:

Bernie Sanders Praises Trump On The Border:

“Yeah. I think cracking down
on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger. Look, nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate” pic.twitter.com/kaQEFUoF9V

— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) March 23, 2025

The full answer from ABC’s This Week transcript shows Sanders attempting to damn with faint praise. Yes, Trump is securing the border and deporting criminals, Sanders allows, but who will pick our cotton? Pack our meat? Clean our hotel rooms at the Hays-Adams when we’re stuck in DC?

KARL: Is there anything that you think Trump has done right?

SANDERS: Yeah. I mean, I think cracking down on fentanyl, making sure our borders are stronger. Look, nobody thinks illegal immigration is appropriate, and I happen to think we need comprehensive immigration reform, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for people to be coming across the border illegally. So, we’ve got to work now on comprehensive immigration reform. The idea that Trump has, I don’t know what his latest numbers are.

He wants to deport 20 million people who are in this country who are undocumented. Well, you do that, you destroy the entire country. Because, I got news for you, Trump’s billionaire friends are not going to pick the crops in California that feed us. They’re not going to work in meat packing houses. That’s what undocumented people are doing.

So, we need a variety of programs, guest worker programs, but mostly comprehensive immigration reform.

Ahem. They aren’t “undocumented”” — they are illegal aliens, a term found in the statute for those in the country illegally. Why is that so difficult to say, even when Sanders acknowledges the political reality of Biden’s border crisis? It certainly sounds as though Sanders wants to make illegal immigration more “appropriate” via language manipulation.

The rest of Sanders’ argument is nonsense as well. Again, very few of the “undocumented” work in the fields; most of that work is now being done by machinery. Perhaps more work in meatpacking plants and other such ag-support industries, but that’s largely because those employers are looking for the cheapest labor available. Why would a socialist advocate for labor exploitation?

Karl brings a small glint of reality back to the conversation:

KARL: But you know illegal immigration, it exploded under Biden. And it had been high for times under Trump as well. But it exploded under Biden. And nothing was really done until his last year in office when he was –

SANDERS: Yes, should have done much better. No argument.

That perfectly describes Sanders over the four years of the Biden border crisis: No argument. Did Sanders ever offer a substantive, sustained criticism of Biden’s border policies between 2021 to 2025? Ever? Did Sanders ever attempt to get Biden to enforce the laws that clearly now suffice for Trump to block illegal immigration and stop the flow of fentanyl into the country? Or even suggest that Biden should use his already-inherent authority to deport illegal aliens affiliated with organized-crime syndicates like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua?

Again, credit to Sanders for acknowledging the obvious now. But don’t expect me to stand and cheer when one of the main gaslighters behind the last four years of border disasters suddenly announces he sniffs a bit of methane in the environment. 

For fun, here’s a clip from later in the same interview. Sanders brags about mentoring Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and then gets offended when Karl follows up by asking whether he’d back an AOC challenge to Chuck Schumer in 2028. He should be more embarrassed to be claim that AOC has impressed him with “her work in Congress,” which consists of … what, exactly? And now he’s offended that Karl followed up on his statement? Come on, man.