President Joe Biden used the prestige of his office on Friday to falsely accuse the U.S. Border Patrol of abusing Haitian migrants, and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) did not mince any words on Saturday in castigating him for it. “What he essentially did was act as judge, jury, and executioner for these Customs and Border Patrol agents on horseback.”
Thousands of Haitians have entered the country illegally, largely as a result of their awareness of Biden’s publicly stated policies of not enforcing all of America’s immigration laws. With thousands living under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, the Border Patrol was forced into the Herculean task of dealing with the situation. Enemies of immigration law enforcement chose to demonize the agents, falsely accusing the horseback-riding agents of using whips on the illegal aliens.
This false narrative has been subsequently debunked, but it did not stop Biden from joining in the denunciation of the agents. Biden even vowed to make them “pay” for this supposed abuse of the migrants. “It was horrible [what] you saw,” Biden said from the White House on Friday of last week. “To see people treated like they did. Horses nearly running people over and people being strapped.”
Biden added, “It’s outrageous. I promise you those people will pay. They will be investigated. There will be consequences.”
Biden was apparently absent the day in his law school when they covered the concept that someone who is accused is to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, or he has forgotten it, they did not cover it, or he doesn’t care.
On Saturday, Gabbard told Jesse Watters of Fox News that the facts contradict Biden’s version of events, and he owes the Border Patrol agents and the American people an apology for saying what he said.
“Here’s why,” Gabbard explained. “He’s somebody who’s been very outspoken as being against autocrats, autocracies, dictators. But what he essentially did was act as judge, jury, and executioner for these Customs and Border Patrol agents on horseback. How can they expect to have a fair outcome to an investigation when the president of the United States has already declared they’re guilty and that they will be punished?”
Gabbard continued, “The bigger issue that this points to, which is one that we all need to be concerned about, is that if we are no longer a country of laws, if we are no longer a country where we know we will be presumed innocent unless proven guilty, then we don’t have a democracy. And that’s the increasing feeling that a lot of us have is we are losing our democracy and moving closer and closer to what essentially is an autocracy.”
The saddest part, according to Gabbard, is that it highlights how a “powerful elite” works with the media and the “deep state” to “preserve their power, their position, or money. Who suffers as a result of this? It’s the American people, it’s our democracy, and they don’t care about the cost and the toll that [it] takes.”
It should be noted that this lack of respect for the due process of law did not begin with Biden. When Biden was vice president, President Barack Obama did much the same thing when he publicly opined that if he had a son, “he would look just like Trayvon.” One might recall that Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old black youngster who was killed in 2012 by an Hispanic man, George Zimmerman, in Florida. By making the racially charged comments that he did, Obama basically pronounced Zimmerman guilty of a crime before local authorities had even finished their investigation.
Obama also interjected himself into a case in Massachusetts involving a black professor at Harvard University — Henry Louis Gates — and the Cambridge police. “The Cambridge police acted stupidly,” Obama said, offering his opinion that the police were essentially racist and stupid.
Before Obama, presidents have generally not offered opinions about cases that still needed to be investigated. One exception was when President Richard Nixon made concerning Charles Manson, later convicted of the murders of actress Sharon Tate, and seven others in California. President Nixon asserted that Charles Manson, “was guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders without reason.”
When these remarks were rightly criticized — that, as president, he should not be commenting on a criminal case yet to be adjudicated in court, Nixon issued a statement saying that “the last thing I would do is prejudice the legal ‘rights of any person, in any circumstances.’”
But Biden now, and Obama, when they made similar remarks, the left-leaning media did not castigate them as they had Nixon.
While Gabbard’s remarks were largely on point, in her criticism of Biden, she should also be taken to task for her calling the presumption of innocence, and being a country “of laws,” part of being a “democracy.” Actually, respect for the due process of law, the separation of powers (Biden should leave the determination of guilt to the courts), and the like is what one finds in a republic (a government of law), not a democracy (majority rule).
James Madison, the principal author of the U.S. Constitution, did not believe that the Constitution established a democracy, but rather a republic. In a democracy, the majority rule. But what Madison and other Founders were trying to accomplish was not some unrestricted rule of the majority, but to preserve the “blessings of liberty.” A person is entitled to the presumption of innocence, regardless of what the majority believe or want. If the only criteria for government action was the rule of the majority, then we would just put guilt or innocence of an accused person up to a vote.
