President Biden's SOTU Call to Action: "Secure the Border" and "Fund the Police"

In the State of the Union address last night, President Biden utilized this time to revert to points taken out of the conservative playbook – securing the border and funding the police. While President Biden took the first few minutes of his speech to address Putin and the Russian invasion into Ukraine, he quickly pivoted to domestic topics.

Despite members of his own party wanting to defund the police, President Biden took the opposite view last night:

We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police. It is to fund the police. Fund them. Fund them. Fund them with resources and training. Resources and training they need to protect their communities.

President Biden also went on to advocate for securing our border when his policies are what created the crisis at the border in the first place:

Folks, if we are to advance liberty and justice, we need to secure our border and fix the immigration system.

The immigration system was on track to being fixed before this Administration. Congressman Darin LaHood (IL-18) joined Sekulow to counter President Biden’s statements in his address to the nation:

I thought, you know, his beginning of the State of the Union talking about Ukraine, I thought was pretty good about being united and supporting Zelensky and supporting the Ukrainian people. I thought that was good. Obviously, 90 percent of the speech was based on domestic policy, and I think it was a lot of empty rhetoric. You know he talked about defunding police, why wasn’t he mentioning that 2 years ago when BLM was burning down federal buildings and . . . committing crimes? So, it’s a little hard to listen to that talking about securing the southern border. You know, his rhetoric hasn’t matched any of that. He tore up President Trump’s Mexico contractual obligation on day one. He has continued to do everything to keep the border open. So listen, I am all for being united on Ukraine, I think there’s many of us that want to be there on that. I thought that was positive. But in terms of the state of our union when it comes to our domestic policy – it is very very weak.

We told you about President Biden imposing sanctions after Russia had already begun invading Ukraine. The sanctions were not a deterrence method, especially when we are still relying on Russia by importing 600,000-800,000 barrels of oil a day.

Congressman LaHood called out this backward strategy:

We are giving Putin [money] every single day on those 600,000 barrels of oil, we are giving him 75 million dollars a day that goes directly into his coffers. But that is going to happen tomorrow, it’s going to happen on Friday, and it’s going to happen on Saturday. We have the ability to shut that off. . . . Now, where are we going to make up those 500,000-600,000 barrels of oil? This should’ve been thought about a year ago or two years ago when Biden came in initially 14 months ago and shut down the Keystone Pipeline on Day 1. It should’ve been thought about when we had energy independence under President Trump. But clearly, that wasn’t thought of. So, Biden has put us in a very tough spot because if we cut off that oil gas prices are going to skyrocket. But in some ways cutting off those 75 million dollars from Putin, I think is worth doing. But because there was not a lot of forethought that went into this and a lot of planning, we are left with decisions made by Biden that put us in a very tough spot.

President Biden also discussed if Russia were to attack a NATO country:

But let me be clear: Our forces are not engaged and will not engage in the conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine. Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO allies in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west. For that purpose, we’ve mobilized American ground forces, air squadrons, ship deployments to protect NATO countries, including Poland, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. And as I have made crystal clear: The United States and our allies will defend every inch of territory that is NATO territory with the full force of our collective power. Every single inch.

If this were to happen, it would mean American troops will be put in harm’s way. ACLJ Senior Military Analyst Wes Smith explained how military force is not automatically included in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty: 

Article 5 of the NATO charter has only been invoked once, that was on September the 13th two days after we were attacked. You go back and you read the article, and what it says is that an attack on one is an attack on all. However, each ally is responsible for determining what it deems necessary to respond in an attack. It does not automatically include military force. Interestingly enough also, the Pew Research did a poll – do you think it should be military force? This was done before Ukraine was invaded – 40% of Germans said yes to military force, 53% of Brits and 53% of the French, only 62% of Americans think you should use military force. The bottom line is it is not a given that military forces would be sent in. It’s not a given that all 30 NATO countries would agree to do that. And it’s certainly not a given that it would be popular in America. 

We hope that it does not get to that. We will continue to monitor this situation and provide you with updates as they come.

Today’s full Sekulow broadcast is complete with even more analysis of President Biden’s State of the Union Address.  

Watch the full broadcast below.

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