National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, said that, when it comes to border issues, Biden has had “the authority to act” but “has decided not to right from the beginning.”

Cooke noted that he defended former president Donald Trump “a few months ago for making the case privately to Republicans that what was needed to fix this was a change in president. For once, that’s correct. For once, this is not Congress’s fault.

“Joe Biden,” Cooke said, “has been able to do this all along. It was always a lie that he needed Congress to act, that his hands were bound. They weren’t. . . . It’s not a matter of Congress telling him to do this or that, passing this or that law. It’s a matter of Joe Biden deciding to act.”

Biden, with a new executive order, is now trying to “reverse himself, because what he said was never true in the first place,” Cooke said. “All of that political hay he tried to make [blaming Republicans] . . . was a lie. He was lying. Now he is telling the truth.

“But it won’t work. Politically, it won’t work. Legally, it will because he does have the authority. Politically, it won’t work. People know what has happened here.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.