The Senate Leadership Fund is backing incumbent Republican senator Luther Strange, who was appointed to his position when his predecessor, Jeff Sessions, became attorney general. Congressman Mo Brooks, one of the most conservative members of the House, is challenging Strange. The SLF just sent out a press release titled, “FACT CHECK: Mo Brooks Opposed Trump’s Border Wall, Now Claims to Support it.” Its spokesman Chris Pack adds, “Like the typical Washington politician that he is, Mo Brooks is trying to erase his record of stridently opposing Donald Trump by embracing the very border wall that he mocked just last year.”
I’ve got no dog in this fight, but the SLF doesn’t deliver the goods here. It cites two articles. Here’s the first one, from September 2015. The SLF, to its credit, provides the full quote about immigration in its release. To its discredit, it doesn’t realize the quote doesn’t back up the release. “In speaking on Trump’s immigration plan to build a wall and deport millions of illegal immigrants, Brooks described it as ‘economically nonsense.’ He added that U.S. immigration and border security should be first and foremost in the minds of the candidates as the top issue facing the country.” It seems entirely possible that Brooks was talking about the deportation of nearly all illegal immigrants or about Trump’s overall plan as “nonsense,” not the wall itself.
The second article is from February 2016. Here the SLF again provides the full quote, which more clearly does not fit its indictment.
Brooks also described Trump’s immigration position on border security as being worse than Obama’s.
“He says he wants to build this great big wall with a great big door and deport all these illegal aliens, costing taxpayers billions of dollars in deportation costs, and then he wants to let them all back in legally,” he said. “The only difference between Obama’s border policy and Trump’s amnesty policy is Trump wants to to spend billions on a fruitless exercise. If he wants to deport them, that’s good, but to let them come back in legally and take jobs from Americans, that’s bad.”
That’s not a criticism of the wall. That’s a criticism of Trump’s then-plan to deport almost all illegal immigrants and then let most of them return. Trump has abandoned both halves of that plan.
The SLF hasn’t provided evidence that Brooks opposed a border wall or has flip-flopped on anything. It has merely provided evidence that he has been more sensible about immigration than Trump was.