Joe Biden has admitted he regrets using the word “illegal” to describe nursing student Laken Riley’s alleged murderer and kidnapper, Jose Antonio Ibarra, during his State of the Union speech last week.
The back-track by the President follows significant criticism from Democrats after his address, which saw the House floor descend into chaos over the lightning-rod topic of Riley’s death.
The president was trying to drum up support for a bipartisan border security bill when Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican congresswoman from Georgia and long-time Biden critic, shouted: “It’s about Laken Riley”.
Democratic representatives clamoured for Taylor Greene to “shut up” before the joint session descended into a full-on shouting match.
Biden sparked further outrage with another gaffe, when he mistakenly called the student “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal” – the latest in a line of verbal mix-ups for the Potus.
In an interview with MSNBC, the Potus was asked if he regretted referring to Ibarra as “an illegal”, to which he replied “yes”.
Biden said: “And I shouldn't have used illegal, I should've… It's undocumented.
“And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about on the border was his – the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood.
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“I talked about what I'm not going to do, what I won't do. I'm not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect.
“Look, they built the country. The reason our economy is growing, we have to control the border and more orderly flow. But I don't share his view at all.”
More to follow...
