Border Bill Was Purposely Hidden From Conservative Commentators: Rand Paul

U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said that the bipartisan border deal struck down in the Senate on Wednesday was purposely hidden from the public eye to minimize any criticism against it.

"From the beginning, I think this has been a ruse," Paul said while speaking with Fox News host Laura Ingraham Wednesday evening. "It has never really been about the border. That was a token, that was a bone that was gonna be thrown to conservatives."

"But they were always worried that if conservatives got wind that it was a ruse, that it wasn't a real border reform, if people like Laura Ingraham or [Sean] Hannity somehow got wind of this, that you would discuss the bill ... and that it would be destroyed."

"So the game all along was to keep this in secret from [Republicans], but also in the secret from anybody that might look at it and might criticize it," Paul added.

Newsweek reached out via email on Wednesday to Paul's representatives for comment.

The Context

The border deal, which was hammered out by a group of Senate negotiators for months, was struck down by Senate Republicans on Wednesday. It also received immense backlash from House GOP leaders and former President Donald Trump. Rejecting the bill also denied a foreign aid package that would have included additional assistance for Ukraine and Israel.

The text of the bill was finally released to the public Sunday night. Within hours, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the bill would be "dead on arrival" if it reached the House. Many conservatives were especially upset by the deal's law that would require the Department of Homeland Security to shut down the U.S. border if migrant crossings exceeded a 5,000 daily average in any given week. Republicans said that threshold was way too high.

What We Know

Before the text's public release, multiple sources familiar with negotiations told news outlets about the deal's provisions regarding a border shutdown, which immediately sparked criticism from Republican lawmakers. The leaked reports were also dismissed last month by one of the lawmakers behind the bill, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, a Republican who said that he encouraged "people to read the border security bill before they judge" the deal and advised people "not to believe everything you read on the internet."

Conservative commentators, including Ingraham, propelled leaked details about the bill in the weeks leading up to its release. Speaking with Paul on Wednesday, the Fox News host joked that political commentators eventually "got our hands on" the bill despite it being kept from the public.

"And then they said it was 'internet rumors,'" Ingraham continued. "Lankford kept saying these are internet rumors. But then you open up the bill and it says '5,000 people' ..."

The Views

President Joe Biden slammed Republicans after the border deal was shut down in the Senate, saying Wednesday that he "never thought I'd see something like we are seeing now" in Congress and blamed the failed vote on Trump, who had encouraged Republicans to reject the bill.

Some members of the GOP also warned that the failed bill was another sign of dysfunction within their party. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley told CNN that the "last three months" involving bipartisan negotiations couldn't have been "handled any worse."

"Why would voters look at what goes on over here—the circus—and say, 'Yeah. We want more of this?'" Hawley added, referring to the November election.

What's Next?

CNN reported Wednesday that senators on both sides of the aisle are involved in an "urgent" round of talks to see if an agreement can be reached on a new foreign aid package. That bill would not include any parts of the border bill that was struck down earlier in the day.

Update 2/7/24, 8:30 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information and background.