Former President Trump’s campaign is using a snippet of former President Clinton campaigning in Georgia on Sunday to attack Vice President Harris on immigration.
Clinton, stumping for Harris at a Georgia fish fry event, defended the failed bipartisan Senate border security bill, arguing that, had the bill become law, the federal government would have had more resources to properly vet migrants at the border.
“[Harris is] the only candidate who has actually endorsed a bill that would hold down immigration in any given year to any certain point and then give people a decent place to live, make sure we didn’t divide people from their children and we did total vetting before people came in,” said Clinton.
“Now, Trump killed the bill. The bill was written — being written by senior Republicans in the Senate. And he killed the bill. Why? You got a case in Georgia not very long ago. They made an ad about it, about a young woman who’d been killed by an immigrant. Yeah well, if they’d all been properly vetted, that probably wouldn’t have happened.”
The Trump campaign seized on the remark about Riley, sending out an email statement titled “Bill Clinton Blames Kamala Harris For Laken Riley’s Death.”
“The Trump campaign disingenuously took President Clinton’s comments out of context,” said Angel Ureña, a spokesman for Clinton, in an email to The Hill.
The Trump campaign email linked to video of Clinton’s remarks, beginning where the former Democratic president brought up the Riley killing.
Venezuelan national Jose Ibarra is charged with Riley’s murder and is scheduled to stand trial in November.
The incident was portrayed by Republicans as an example of the link between immigration and crime, though most studies show immigrants commit crimes at lesser rates than natural-born citizens.
But the brutal slaying has proven difficult to handle for Democrats, who have to toe the line between supporting immigration and not appearing insensitive to the facts of the case.
President Biden in March stepped in those treacherous waters in March, when he called Riley’s alleged murderer “an illegal” during his State of the Union address.
Like Clinton, Biden pointed to the failed Senate bill as a tool that would help prevent similar incidents.
In his remarks stumping for Harris, Clinton slammed Trump for keeping “people all torn up and upset” over immigration, while “America is not having enough babies to keep our population up, so we need immigrants who have been vetted to do work.”
“Kamala Harris says, ‘I don’t want you to get upset. If you don’t like me, you can vote against me next time. If you do like me, you can vote for me next time. Meanwhile, what do you say we solve some problems? What do you say we get something done?’” said Clinton.
“And the cynicism of killing a bill that would do exactly A, what we ought to do, and B, what they say they want to do, just so you can keep people all torn up and upset and run another television ad about somebody who gets killed by somebody who wasn’t properly vetted, is unbelievable. This country is too good for that; we gotta put all that behind us and open a new door. A new door to the future.”
Updated at 3:29 p.m.