CLAIM: President Joe Biden “has been to the border,” according to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
VERDICT: FALSE. Biden hasn't been to the southern U.S. border during his 50 years in politics, but he was once driven by it near El Paso, TX.
Fox News' Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre on Friday if Biden was willing to accept the invitation from Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who is likely to become the next Speaker of the House, to visit border areas along the southern U.S. border.
According to reports, Jean-Pierre laughed at the idea.
When Doocy claimed—and he was right—that Biden had never visited the border, Jean Pierre replied, “Look, he's been there, he's been to the border.”
She didn't respond when Doocy inquired when precisely Biden had visited the border.
In September 2021, then-Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a similar question from Doocy by declaring that she didn't know if Biden had ever been to the border.
One month later, she corrected herself. “There's been reporting that he did drive through the border when he was on the campaign trail in 2008.” She was apparently referring to an article in the Washington Post that fact-checked Biden's claim of having crossed the border. The article concluded the following: “Biden briefly drove past the border while on a campaign swing in 2008” in El Paso, Texas.
The Post added: “On Oct. 17, he held a rally in Mesilla, N.M. The press officer on the trip, David E. Wade, told The Fact Checker that the plane landed at the El Paso airport and then the motorcade took the nearly one-hour drive to the suburb of Las Cruces. The drive took Biden along a route that for a few minutes hugs the border of the United States and Mexico. ‘For most of us, it was unfamiliar territory,’ Wade said, who recalled that some reporters joked about crossing the border during the event.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is in theory tasked with finding the “root causes” of the continuing migrant problem on the Mexican border, paid one visit to the border in 2021, also in El Paso, after the White House feared being preempted by former President Donald Trump, who had previously announced a visit.
