Joe Biden has a problem with illegals. He and his party think the real problem is the word “illegals.” The rest of the country knows the actual problem is allowing nine million people to illegally cross his open border over the last three years.

The controversy stems from his use of the word “illegal” in his State of the Union to describe the killer of “Lincoln” Riley. He meant Laken Riley, the 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia brutally murdered last month by an illegal from Venezuela. He only tried to say her name because he was challenged to do so mid-speech when he was busy cynically blaming Republicans for his border dereliction.

Going off-script cost him with fellow Democrats, however, as they predictably howled with outrage that he’d use such a disrespectful term. He folded as quickly as he falls up the stairs while boarding Air Force One. We’ll come back to that dispute in a moment.

First, to our ears, Biden used the word “illegal” twice. The second time, there’s a syllable between “by” and “legals” that sounds suspiciously like “ih.” (Listen for yourself, starting at the 1:28 mark.) But thanks to the Leftmedia “fact-checkers,” we’ve been informed that he used the word “legals” — whatever that means.

“Biden did not say or admit that thousands of Americans are being killed by ‘illegals,’” USA Today insists. “Video of the speech and news reports show that he said [Laken] Riley was ‘killed by an illegal’ before asking, ‘But how many thousands of people being killed by legals?’”

We suppose people can be forgiven for hearing differently how Biden pronounced something in a speech loaded with slurs. Yet even if we give Biden and his army of dishonest “fact-checkers” the benefit of the doubt here, was his point that legal immigrants commit crimes more frequently than illegal aliens do? If so, that goes back to the years-long canard that there’s no correlation between illegally crossing the U.S. border and subsequently committing other crimes.

The “fact-checkers” say Republicans like Donald Trump can’t draw a connection because — get this — there’s no national database tracking crimes committed by illegals. But they circle the wagons for Biden rather than “fact-check” him for the same reason. How can he assert anything about Americans being killed by “legals” when there’s no database tracking the legal status of the murderers?

As Biden would say, “Uh, anyway…”

Many Democrats were quite upset with Biden for using the word “illegal.”

“There was a lot of good in President Biden’s speech [Thursday], but his rhetoric about immigrants was incendiary and wrong,” complained Congressman Joaquin Castro (D-TX). “The rhetoric President Biden used … was dangerously close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the backs of Latinos everywhere. Democrats shouldn’t be taking our cues from MAGA extremism.”

Congressman Chuy García (D-IL) added, “As a proud immigrant, I’m extremely disappointed to hear President Biden use the word ‘illegal.’”

Jew-hating Somalian refugee Ilhan Omar argued, “Let me be clear: No human being is illegal.”

Nancy Pelosi, who literally shredded a copy of Trump’s SOTU speech, tersely noted, “He should have said ‘undocumented,’” though she qualified it by saying, “It’s not a big thing.”

Evidently, it was a big thing because Biden corrected himself over the weekend: “An ‘undocumented person.’ I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal.’ It’s ‘undocumented.’”

Joe Biden apologizes for using the word “illegal” to describe the illegal immigrant who murdered Laken Riley.

“I shouldn’t have used ‘illegal.’”pic.twitter.com/WbkaNJvKnG

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 9, 2024

Well, he is the same president who, in 2021, told his Department of Homeland Security to stop using the correct term “illegal alien” and instead use the more politically acceptable “undocumented individual.”

Then again, his party has shifted significantly to the left. Not only did Democrats at least rhetorically oppose illegal immigration and support a wall, but they cared about words and their meanings.

“When we use phrases like undocumented workers, we convey a message to the American people that their government is not serious about combatting illegal immigration, which the American people overwhelmingly oppose,” opined … [checks notes] Chuck Schumer in 2009. “The American people are fundamentally pro-legal immigration and anti-illegal immigration. … If you don’t think it’s illegal, you’re not going to say it. I think it is illegal and wrong, and we have to change it.”

Remember stuff like that the next time a Beltway journalist like The Washington Post’s Trump-deranged Jen Rubin says it’s Republicans who’ve radicalized.

Biden went on to utterly conflate the idea of legal immigration with the illegal invasion currently taking place.

“When I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about in the border was his, the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I’m not going to do, what I won’t do,” Biden, er, clarified. “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.”

Saying “vermin” and “poisoning the blood,” which is what Trump actually said, is certainly inflammatory, but Trump also knows exactly how to tap into widespread anger over disasters created by The Swamp. Biden’s mad about words. Americans are outraged over the border crisis.

But if he wants to get angry about words, how about this: Illegal aliens “built the country”? They’re “the reason our economy is growing”? Biden just showed gross disrespect to the vast majority of people in this country — American citizens who have lived here for generations and immigrants who came by legal means, millions of whom go through the arduous process to become naturalized citizens. He disrespects the vast majority of Americans who are not anti-immigrant but anti-illegal immigration.

“We have to control the border,” Biden says? It was under control by that Bad Orange Man until Biden came along and undid all of his progress.

Finally, about that supposedly racist former president who doesn’t care about people, he actually met with the family of Laken Riley over the weekend in Georgia. He had just held a rally where he spoke the truth: “I say he was an illegal alien, he was an illegal immigrant, he was an illegal migrant, and he shouldn’t have been in our country, and he never would have been under Trump policies.”

JOE BIDEN SHOULD BE APOLOGIZING FOR APOLOGIZING TO THIS KILLER! pic.twitter.com/wM1kVdHQ03

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 9, 2024

One man meets the family of a murder victim and says her killer never should have been allowed into the country in the first place. The other man mispronounced the murder victim’s name and apologized for using the “illegal” label to describe her killer. We’d call that a pretty clear contrast in the presidential election on the issue Americans care about most.

---

Update 3/12: Now the White House says Biden did not apologize for using the word “illegal.” According to Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton, “The president absolutely did not apologize. There was no apology anywhere in that conversation.” Well okay then.