MONTGOMERY — Former Auburn University head football coach and current GOP U.S. Senate candidate Tommy Tuberville attended Tuesday’s meeting of the River Region Republican Club at the Farmers Market Cafe in the state’s capital city, visiting with local conservatives one-on-one and delivering a 22-minute variant of his fiery stump speech.
One of the topics he touched on was immigration, an issue he has made headlines on before.
While reaffirming his stance as being tough against illegal immigration, Tuberville this time around was sure to highlight his firm support of coming to the United States “the right way.”
Saying he knows people currently working on the U.S.-Mexico border and has been himself over a dozen times in his lifetime, Tuberville told the crowd that the situation at the border is “a mess.”
He said people from Central America and South America have “stormed the borders” since 2016 because they are worried that a wall will soon be built to increase security.
“They have stormed us,” Tuberville added. “We’ve taken in 890,000 illegal immigrants since last October. More people than in Orlando, Florida, okay? The Democrats say we don’t have a problem.”
He advised that it takes approximately $200 billion annually for the federal government to care for all of these illegal aliens and asylum seekers.
“And I’m not against people coming here,” Tuberville remarked. “We’re all immigrants, we are immigrants. We all came here — and here for a reason. … But most everybody came the right way.”
That has changed, Tuberville decried.
“This group’s not coming the right way,” he said. “The Democrats want them to come, not because they’re kind and nice… [but for] power and money. They have no sympathy for the people here in Alabama… We have lost control of our borders and they’re coming right and left.”
Tuberville sarcastically credited longtime Democratic elected officials like former Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for somehow spinning the nation’s problems, like the border crisis, into being President Donald Trump’s fault, as he has only been in office for two and a half years compared to their lifetimes in politics.
“They own the media. And that’s the reason our country’s in the shape it’s in today, because our media will not call a spade a spade,” Tuberville lamented. “They won’t call it out. They’re going to side with the socialist Democratic Party and push that narrative as far as they can, because they want for some reason, I don’t understand it, for some reason they want to go that direction. They want free for everybody, and we know that doesn’t work. It’s really a sad situation.”
During his remarks, Tuberville also identified fixing the rural healthcare crisis, workforce development, industry recruitment and growing Alabama’s high-tech sector as priorities if elected.
Of course, his stump speech also included a heavy dose on what he views as one of the main reasons for American society’s decline.
“I’m a Christian conservative,” Tuberville emphasized.
“We ought to be ashamed of ourselves. We took prayer out of the schools in the ’60s and not one person has fought to get it back — not one. … You know what? Other religions can pray in our schools. They can. They can pray in our schools. And I’m not against any religion. Hey, you come here, as long as you go by our laws and our constitution you can pray to any god you want to. I’m all for that. That’s what this country’s about. But by gosh, don’t tell us we can’t say the Lord’s Prayer in school and send our kids home,” he said.
Tuberville said that Trump can get the country turned around with enough support from conservatives across the country and in Congress. However, he decried that the president is having to fight members of the establishment from both parties in trying to effect change.
“[W]e’ve got to put Jesus and God before everything else,” he stressed. “And if we don’t do that, we’re going to be brought down to our knees again.”
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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