Vice President Kamala Harris continues to demonstrate why she was one of the first Democratic presidential contenders in 2020 to drop out of the race: She’s unlikeable, and decidedly so.
She demonstrated that again on Friday during her non-fact-finding trip to the U.S. border, arriving in El Paso, Texas, where there isn’t much new that is happening because the real illegal migrant crossing action is about 1,000 miles to the southeast, in the Rio Grande Valley.
Nevertheless, there she was actually at the border some 93 days after President Joe Biden assigned her the task of solving the border crisis he created with an early series of executive orders reversing nearly all of former President Donald Trump’s very effective border policies.
The big elephant in the room — literally, the big GOP elephant, Donald Trump — loomed large in everyone’s minds since the former prez had already announced a border trip of his own, as an invited guest of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), for June 30.
And no doubt that’s what one reporter had on his mind when he asked Harris the obvious question after she has been pressured for months come down Texas way: Why wait until now to make that first visit?
Wrong question to ask the very unlikable Kamala Harris.
“Well, it’s not my first trip. I’ve been to the border many times,” she clapped back at the reporter, Fox News’ Steve Doocy, wagging a finger as she is prone to do.
Okay, fine then, “as vice president,” Doocy clarified.
“So, the important aspect of this visit is leading this visit after the work that we did in Guatemala. … I’ve said back in March I’m going to come to the border,” she said. “This is not a new plan, but the reality of it is that we have to deal with causes, and we have to deal with the effects.”
“Being in Guatemala, being in Mexico, talking with Mexico, frankly, as a partner on the issue, was about addressing the causes and then coming to the border, at the advice and the indication of the congresswoman, is about looking at the effects of what we have seen happening in Central America,” Harris said, noting further that she’s “glad to be” at the border and that “it was always the plan” to arrive.
@VP Harris going to El Paso to 'solve' the illegal migrant crisis is like going to Lowe's to pick up dinner for the fam.
— Dr. Jonny Republic If You Can Keep It 🇺🇸 (@JonDougherty10) June 25, 2021
Sure.
The Washington Examiner provided an additional example of Her Pleasantness, in reviewing the now-iconic bristling border exchange she had a few weeks ago:
Harris has faced similar questions about her reluctance to see the unprecedented surge of migrants firsthand. In an interview on June 8 in Guatemala City, Harris said that she “hasn’t been to Europe” either when asked why she was yet to step foot at the border.
“We’re going to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris told NBC News’s Lester Holt.
“And I haven’t been to Europe,” she said. “I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”
Harris had acknowledged the need for a response amid a surge in the number of people attempting to cross the border illegally, but she said the scope of her focus was on the drivers of the influx of migrants.
“We have to deal with what’s happening on the border,” she said. “There’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point, but we have to understand that there’s a reason people are arriving at our border.”
