New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is very much opposed to President Donald Trump’s border wall. And despite being the governor of a border state, has taken a far-left approach to illegal immigration, petitioning against the White House’s plan to stiffen control at the United States’ southern border.
Grisham decided early on to offer her own “rebuttal” to Trump’s State of the Union speech, specifically addressing Trump’s call for greater border security and an extended border wall between the United States and Mexico that would stretch across the lower border of her state.
It was a tough call given the competitors — Sen. Kamala Harris’ (D-CA) awkward pre-buttal, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ speech in front of the motionless mannequins from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” and Bernie Sanders’ stuttering Facebook live — but Grisham may have released the most bizarre “rebuttal” of the night.
WATCH:
All of this talk about walls tonight… #SOTU pic.twitter.com/QFLAYHor0t
— MichelleLujanGrisham (@Michelle4NM) February 6, 2019
That’s right. Grisham is certainly “breaking down walls,” but less in a policy sense and more in a “Kool Aid man” sense. Her “rebuttal” ad is a solid 30 seconds of Grisham literally running through walls.
On Wednesday, Grisham took a more concrete approach to the president’s plan, signaling that she no longer intends to allow New Mexico’s National Guard troops to protect the southern border, and that she will recall the National Guard immediately.
NPR reports that “Grisham has ordered the majority of National Guard troops deployed at her state’s Southern border to withdraw, condemning what she called a ‘charade of border fear-mongering’ by President Trump, who has warned of an immigration emergency in the region.”
Grisham’s order not only covers troops from her own state, but any troops from National Guard companies in other states who were deployed to serve at the New Mexico border, including troops from “Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wisconsin.”
“I reject the federal contention that there exists an overwhelming national security crisis at the Southern border,” Grisham said.
President Donald Trump noted in his State of the Union speech last night that he believes immigration issues at the border do constitute a national emergency, and that he will declare one if Democrats do not approve around $5 billion in border wall funding when they reconvene with Congressional Republicans to discuss a long-term federal budget. On Wednesday, the U.S. government also announced that the number of U.S. military personnel at the border would increase by several hundred.