Did Bill Clinton endorse Trump's views on Lanken Riley? Here's the entire truth
Bill Clinton addressed the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, suggesting her death could have been avoided with better immigration vetting.
Former President Bill Clinton addressed the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley during a speech on Sunday, claiming that her death could have been avoided if the alleged immigrant killer had been properly vetted, but former President Donald Trump “killed the bill.” He made these remarks while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris in Georgia.
“You had a case in Georgia not very long ago, didn’t you? They made an ad about it, a young woman who had been killed by an immigrant. Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted, that probably wouldn’t have happened,” Clinton said.
The murder of Laken Riley has been widely covered, and the accused killer, a Venezuelan national, had already been vetted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) upon entry into the country. He was encountered by CBP in September 2022 after crossing the border near El Paso, Texas, and was paroled and released for further processing.
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Clinton pointed to immigration vetting as a key issue, arguing that better policies could have prevented Riley’s death. He emphasized,“America isn’t having enough babies to keep our populations up, so we need immigrants that have been vetted to do work – there wouldn’t be a problem.”
Clinton then took aim at Trump, accusing him of sabotaging a potential bipartisan immigration deal in Congress. He said Trump turned immigration into a campaign issue, which hindered progress on effective border reform. “She’s [Harris] the only candidate who has actually endorsed a bill that would hold down immigration any given year to a certain point and then made sure we gave people a decent place to live, didn’t divide people from their children. And we did total vetting before people got in. Now, Trump killed the bill,” Clinton claimed.
Clinton also praised the Biden-Harris administration for its efforts to handle border control. “For the last three years, the Biden-Harris administration has done increasingly tough things, trying to control the border. And illegal crossings have gone down every year for three years. Our friends in the other party don’t want to talk about that,” he stated.
“They want to attack Kamala Harris and blame her for anything they managed to keep from happening. Like they claim she was the ‘border czar,’ that's not what her jobs are.”
