Trump Wins Praise From Far-Left Senator On Key Issue
In a stunning moment of candor, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) conceded last week that President Donald Trump handled border security better than President Joe Biden — a rare acknowledgment from one of the Senate’s most left-wing lawmakers.
Appearing on The Tim Dillon Show, Sanders openly criticized Biden’s border failures and said Democrats need to start taking enforcement seriously.
“So long as we have nation-states, you’ve got to have borders,” Sanders said. “If you don’t have any borders, then you don’t have a nation.”
The self-described democratic socialist didn’t mince words when asked who did a better job managing America’s southern border.
“Trump did a better job,” Sanders admitted. “I don’t like Trump, you know, but we should have a secure border, and it ain’t that hard to do.”
The remarks — which aired Wednesday and quickly spread across X and YouTube — represent one of the sharpest public breaks between Sanders and the Democratic establishment he typically votes with.
“Biden didn’t do it,” Sanders said bluntly, faulting multiple administrations for ignoring immigration law and failing to enforce the border.
The Republican National Committee’s research division wasted no time amplifying the viral clip, sharing it within hours of the episode’s release.
Sanders’ acknowledgment marks a sharp departure from his past rhetoric. During the 2020 campaign, he dismissed concerns about a “border crisis” and accused then-President Trump of “demonizing immigrants.” In 2019, as Trump warned about a humanitarian and security emergency at the southern border, Sanders brushed it off, saying, “We don’t need to create artificial crises.”
But the reality on the ground has changed dramatically since Biden took office. U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded a record-breaking 2.47 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2023, compared to roughly 458,000 in President Trump’s final year — a figure Fox News noted in its coverage of Sanders’ remarks.
During his appearance, Sanders said the United States “has the technology and manpower” to secure its borders, but blamed politicians in both parties for lacking the courage to act.
“I’m not going to sit here and tell you that overall [Biden] did a good job — it was not,” Sanders said.
Sanders made the comments while promoting his new book, Fight Oligarchy, but his blunt praise for Trump’s immigration record has reignited debate over the Democrats’ border stance heading into 2026.
Meanwhile, President Trump continues to emphasize border enforcement as a cornerstone of his second-term agenda. He recently appointed longtime immigration hardliner Tom Homan as his “border czar,” tasking him with restoring order and ending cartel-driven chaos at the border.
In an interview on The Alex Marlow Show, Homan described the devastating human toll of Biden’s open-border policies — stories that, he said, the media refuses to tell.
“If they held the dead children I’ve held, talked to little girls as young as 9 who were raped multiple times by handlers from the cartel… standing on the back of a tractor-trailer when 19 people are at your feet because they baked to death — including a 5-year-old boy… you’d understand why this matters,” Homan said.
He added that cartel violence and human trafficking have spiraled under Biden’s lax enforcement, noting:
“When someone couldn’t pay their smuggling fees, they’d torture them and call their relatives and let them listen while they torture them and kill them because they couldn’t pay the fees. These are just a few things.”
Sanders’ admission underscores what many Americans already believe: Trump’s America First border policies worked, and Biden’s have turned into a humanitarian and national security disaster.