President Joe Biden addressed his reference to an “illegal” murder suspect during his State of the Union speech.
Biden admitted he should have used the term “undocumented” instead during an interview with MSNBC that aired Saturday. The president was in the middle of his annual address Thursday when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) interrupted and shouted out Laken Riley’s name, the college student in Georgia who was allegedly killed by an illegal immigrant. In response, the president went off script and responded, “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal.”
“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden said. “And look, when I spoke about the difference between [former President Donald] 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.”
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Biden was referring to a quote from one of Trump’s speeches made along the campaign trail. The former president was in Durham, New Hampshire, last month when he attacked Biden for the over 10 million immigrants who reportedly have entered the country illegally since he took office. That was a repeated instance of Trump using the “poisoning the blood of our country” phrase, which critics say echoes the writings of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“I talked about what I’m not going to do, what I won’t do,” Biden went on. “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.”
At a rally on Saturday in Rome, Georgia, Trump attacked Biden for walking back the use of “illegal,” drawing boos from the crowd as he explained his successor’s remarks.
“Biden should be apologizing for apologizing to this killer,” Trump said to cheers.
Greene credited Biden for speaking the “truth” in an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network’s Vanessa Broussard. Greene was in Rome, which is in her district, for the rally.
“In that moment, you know what it was, Vanessa, he told the truth,” Greene said. “He wasn’t on script. He wasn’t reading the teleprompter. There weren’t notecards in his hand.”
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Greene acknowledged that the term made Democratic lawmakers angry. Reps. Chuy Garcia (D-IL), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Delia Ramirez (D-IL), and Joaquin Castro (D-TX) all issued statements condemning the president’s use of the term.
Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) extended an invitation to the State of the Union to Riley’s parents, but they declined. His guest’s seat was left empty in her memory.
