
It wasn’t hard to foresee Joe Biden’s attempt to recast himself ahead of the November election as a reluctant but nevertheless ruthlessly effective border hawk. The president has been advertising his intention to pull off something like this throughout the year.
As early as January, the president’s image-makers tried to retail the notion that Joe Biden was a victim of the migrant crisis over which he had presided and about which he did as little as possible. According to NBC News, Biden was all but “out of options” for dealing with the surge at the border — save, you know, wielding his leverage to compel Mexico to police its side of the Rio Grande, which Biden subsequently did.