Reporting From Alaska

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Sullivan's hypocrisy on border policies

Enough already with the hypocrisy of Sen. Dan Sullivan and fellow Trumpists on the border question.

Sullivan has one of his employees assigned to attack President Joe Biden on social media in the voice of Dan Sullivan, pushing a fictional portrayal of Donald Trump as a man with all of his faculties.

Sullivan’s latest claim: “A new, disturbing milestone of Joe Biden’s presidency: 10 million illegal crossings at our southern border since he took office. If President Biden cared about the American communities bearing the brunt of this catastrophe, he would reinstate President Trump’s successful border policies immediately. But he won’t, because he believes in open borders.”

In this fantasy of Trump’s success, Sullivan stops just short of saying that Mexico paid for a great wall.

Yielding to an edict from Trump, Sullivan helped kill a compromise border bill in the U.S. Senate in February. Sullivan never admits to his part in blocking the measure that would have made a difference. He says he opposed the bill because it wouldn’t have done enough to change the status quo.

Sullivan’s core policy is to never criticize Trump.

Trumpism takes many forms. Sullivan was among those saying for months that linking money for the southern border with Ukraine aid and other issues was a great idea.

Sen. Mitch McConnell and other Reublican leaders liked the compromise immigration bill. But they decided they hated the bill after Trump condemned it as a “death wish” for Republicans. The bill would deprive them of a campaign issue.

It’s part of the all-too-familiar situation regarding the divided Alaska delegation in the U.S. Senate.

Sullivan does whatever Trump wants. Murkowski doesn’t.

Sullivan claimed he didn’t know what role Trump’s opposition played in killing the bill. Sure. He had no idea.

Sullivan fell back on one of his favorite excuses—there wasn’t enough time to study the bill.

"Clearly a bill of this magnitude being brought to the floor in 48 hours is really rushing it, so that's another element that we talked in there, which in my view is problematic," Sullivan said.

So instead of doing something about the border, Sullivan and the Senate did nothing. He claims that doing nothing was better than doing something because he doesn’t believe that Biden would do anything.

“The bill didn’t go far enough to stop that and let’s face it, we don’t have trust in the Biden administration enforcing what we would put in there because they want open borders,” Sullivan said last winter, complying with Trump’s directive.

Sullivan will continue to attack Biden on immigration without mentioning that Trump and Senate Republicans really want to preserve this as a campaign issue for the election.


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