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A Democrat Senator Just Said It Out Loud: Trump Was Right on the Border

POLICY & ISSUES

Mark the date. Screenshot the quote. Because what Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont said Sunday is something you will not hear from virtually any other member of his party — and the fact that he said it at all tells you exactly how badly the Democratic Party’s border position has collapsed under the weight of its own consequences.

“The fact is that we have a secure border. President Trump was right, Democrats were wrong on that.”

Twelve words. The entire debate, settled. By a Democrat.

Welch didn’t stop there. He added that there is “broad bipartisan support” for deporting violent criminals — a position that is simultaneously obvious to every normal American and somehow controversial within a Democratic Party that has spent years demonizing ICE, passing sanctuary city laws, and in some cases pardoning convicted murderers specifically to prevent their deportation.

This is not a small concession. For years, the Democratic Party’s official position was that Trump’s border enforcement was racist, cruel, unconstitutional, and ineffective. They called the border wall a “medieval solution.” They called ICE agents storm troopers. They passed legislation in blue cities specifically designed to obstruct federal immigration enforcement. They ran a presidential campaign on dismantling everything Trump built at the border — and then watched the border collapse so catastrophically under Biden that the issue became one of the primary drivers of their historic 2024 defeat.

And now Peter Welch is on television saying Trump was right.

Credit where it’s due — Welch said it. That takes a certain amount of political courage in a party currently being devoured by DSA socialists who think borders themselves are a form of oppression. He probably won’t be getting any dinner invitations from the Squad anytime soon.

But let’s not let the admission become a substitute for accountability. Democrats weren’t just wrong in the way that people are wrong about the weather. They were wrong in ways that got people killed. They were wrong in ways that flooded American communities with fentanyl. They were wrong in ways that allowed convicted criminals — people who had been deported, who had been caught, who had been released back into American communities by sanctuary jurisdictions — to commit violent crimes against American citizens who had every right to expect their government to protect them.

“Wrong” is a charitable description of what happened. Some commenters on social media put it more precisely: “Democrats weren’t ‘wrong.’ They were complicit. None of this was by accident.”

That’s a harder argument to dismiss than Welch’s framing would suggest. The border didn’t open itself. The catch-and-release policies didn’t write themselves. The sanctuary city laws didn’t pass themselves. Democrats made choices — deliberate, sustained, ideologically driven choices — that produced the border catastrophe that Trump inherited and fixed.

Welch gets credit for saying it. His party gets the bill for causing it.

Trump was right. Democrats were wrong. Even they know it now.