Jim Geraghty of National Review Online dissects the vice president’s latest round of indefensible comments.
In the span of about 30 seconds, Vice President Kamala Harris offered an absurdity, a long-since outdated talking point, a contention that undermined her argument instead of strengthening it, and a knee-jerk demonization of those who disagree with the administration.
CHUCK TODD: We’re going to have two million people cross this border for the first time ever. You’re confident this border’s secure?
VICE PRES. KAMALA HARRIS: We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration. But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years. We also have to put into place a law and a plan for a pathway for citizenship for the millions of people who are here and are prepared to do what is legally required to gain citizenship. We don’t have that in place because people are playing politics in a state like this and in Congress.
First, Harris contends that the administration’s decision to make a secure border a priority means the border is now secure, which is akin to asserting that wanting to have something means you have it. If the border were secure, U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not bre regularly experiencing more thn 200,000 encounters per month.
Second, Harris perhaps lapses into 2020 campaign-trail autopilot, lamenting, “there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years.” Harris and the rest of the Biden administration have been on the job for 600 days, or one year and almost eight months. If the problem really has gotten worse over the past four years, almost half of that has been on Harris’s watch.
