Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on immigration reform and the 2024 election

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• Geoff Bennett:

  A bipartisan group in the Senate continues to negotiate over a border deal, while immigration rhetoric takes center stage in the Republican presidential race.

  It's a good time to check in with our Politics Monday team. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Great to see you both.

  So, we have got Democrats and Republicans trying to strike a deal on changes to U.S. Southern border policy, which, as you both know, is linked to additional funding for Ukraine and Israel. We will see if anything can be done by the end of the year. By all chances, this will push until next year.

  But, Amy, what could both sides do that would ultimately be a win for both Democrats and Republicans?

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Well, this is the challenge, right, because there's the short-term and the long-term piece of this.

  In the short term, it's not just Democrats and Republicans — Democrats versus Republicans. On the issue of Ukraine, yes, it is a Biden priority, but it's the priority of a lot of Republicans too. And we're seeing that divide within the Republican Party, those who would like to see more funding and those who say we have already spent too much, even on the presidential stage between, say, Nikki Haley and Donald Trump on this issue of Ukraine.

  So, if we're talking about winners and losers, what do they want to see? It's not just Biden who'd like to see that. As I said, there are Republicans too. When it comes to the border, that's another issue that both sides can be winners, but it's very hard — or losers. And it's very hard to find that middle ground.

  You're asking to solve a long-term problem to get a short-term bill through, and that is really why this is hitting up against the brick wall. This isn't just — like, with Ukraine or Israel, we're talking about funding. If this were a funding issue, I think that could be negotiated.

  This is about massive policy changes that Republicans want to see, and that many Democrats say goes too far and will not just tie the hands of Biden in the short term, but it will help do things that Democrats do not want to see done by another administration.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, Tam, how can the White House use this as an opportunity to address what both sides say is a real crisis at the Southern border, and perhaps neutralize or at least soften a GOP talking point heading into the election?

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  So I was up in New Hampshire a couple of weeks ago talking to voters, mostly independent voters and Democrats, and you know what they kept bringing up unprompted? Twelve thousand people apprehended at the U.S. border, a record-setting day.

  And the fact that independent and Democratic voters were bringing this up indicates what a challenge this is for President Biden and Democrats going into 2024. Immigration is going to be the thing, whether Donald Trump is the nominee or somebody else, immigration is going to be the thing that they bludgeon the president and his party with.

  And, in fact, there are Democratic governors and mayors in states very far from the border saying, hey, this is an issue, this is a problem, we need to deal with it. So, if, by some chance, and it is not a huge chance, they could come up with some sort of border security agreement that has some policy changes in it, it's a problem for Biden with a key part of his base.

  It is a problem with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and with immigrant advocates and a lot of other people. But it also potentially creates a shield for him to say, look, I got a bipartisan deal. I worked with Republicans on this issue.

  Now, are Republicans going to give them a break and say, oh, that's enough, it's problem solved, we own this? No, of course not. So both parties in some ways have, for more than a generation, had an interest in this as an issue continuing to be out there as an issue as a motivator for voters. And that is one of the many challenges that stands between getting this done and not getting this done.

  The other thing is, Republicans see this as border security. They want to limit immigration. And they aren't even talking about things like addressing dreamers, which have bipartisan support. And so this is not comprehensive immigration reform that they're talking about. Republicans don't even see it as immigration reform.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, speaking of immigration, the former President Donald Trump this past weekend said immigrants coming to the U.S. are — quote — "poisoning the blood of our country."

  This is a remark that drew a quick rebuke from the Biden campaign for echoing the words of Adolf Hitler.

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: They're poisoning the blood of our country. That's what they have done. They poison.

  Mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world, they're coming into our country, from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They're pouring into our country.

• Geoff Bennett:

  So Donald Trump is no stranger to using inflammatory, often racist rhetoric when referring to migrants. In that same speech, we should note, he also praised tyrants and authoritarians.

  But it drew silence and sidestepping from Republicans when asked about it.

  Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Presidential Candidate: Nobody has a right to come to this country. When you come to this country, you have got to be somebody that believes in the values and wants to assimilate into this country. We're going to be very tough on who's able to come into this country, because I think that what's going on now at the border in particular has been a total train wreck.

  Kristen Welker, Moderator, "Meet The Press": You have endorsed former President Trump. Are you comfortable with him using words like that?

• Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC):

  We're talking about language. I could care less what language people use, as long as we get it right. If you're talking about the language Trump uses, rather than trying to fix it, that's a losing strategy for the Biden administration.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Amy, you can argue that you can't separate the language from the policy, that the language leads to the policy and the language in many ways justifies the ultimate policy.

• Amy Walter:

  Right, and that the dehumanizing of people makes it easier to justify policy, right, and to say the people who are coming here are not deserving, they are not like us, we shouldn't accept them.

  So that's clearly where Trump is going on this. Where the Republicans are going, though, is where they have always gone, which is to say, well, I can criticize him for it, like I did on "Access Hollywood," like I did after January 6, or like I did in these other times, and it not only didn't motivate any Republicans to join or to distance themselves from Trump.

  It actually — if you were a Republican who did that, it only isolated you further from the party. And this is really — this is where we get into this place — and we're going to be talking about it a lot during this campaign if Trump's the nominee. Is all of the stuff that Trump says and believes baked into voters' perceptions of him, that they say, well, that's just what Donald Trump does, there's nothing new there, so we're going to move on?

  Or are we to a place where, not yet, but we get into the campaign and voters say, this feels like we know where we're going with this, we have had four years with Donald Trump, and what he's saying now pushes us even further in a direction we don't — we, as a voter could say, don't want to go?

• Geoff Bennett:

  And, Tam, you have been on the road. You were just in New Hampshire. What do Trump supporters say about this? Do they agree?

• Tamara Keith:

  Well, he hadn't said that lately when I was out reporting. And I primarily was around Chris Christie, who was saying this sort of language is bad, and he thought that what Ron DeSantis is saying too about shooting people trying to cross the border if they have a backpack is not — it would be extrajudicial killing.

  So the rhetoric is hot. But, look, Donald Trump had four years 4,000 people in an arena and nobody was, like, booing when he said that. And it wasn't the first time he has said that. He a couple months ago said it, was widely criticized, and very much knew that it echoed language of Hitler.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, thank you both.

• Amy Walter:

  Thank you.

• Tamara Keith:

  You're welcome.