CNN: VP Harris 'Dismayed' by Criticism, Trying to Distance Herself from Border Crisis
Vice President Kamala Harris wants you to know that she isn’t really in charge of the border, because if she was, she would have to be held accountable for it.
CNN was forced to report this week that Harris’ team is working hard to distance the vice president from the ongoing border crisis, primarily due to the fact that she is receiving a heck of a lot of bad press for not doing anything to help the situation.
President Joe Biden washed his hands of the border crisis and placed Harris in charge back in March, at which time he blamed former President Donald Trump for not continuing Obama-era payments to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in a pay-to-stay scheme that previously saw the U.S. hand out hundreds of millions of dollars to get central Americans to stay in their home countries.
Conservative commentator Tom Elliott shared a clip on Twitter in which CNN White House reporter Natasha Bertrand explained that Harris’ team was dedicated to ensuring everyone knows that the vice president does not actually have any power or responsibility regarding the border crisis.
CNN’s @NatashaBertrand: @VP Harris distancing herself from Biden’s border crisis
“She’s focused on [‘root causes,’] from governance to climate change to tackling food insecurity … but … her team has come out and said publicly, ‘We do not own the issues at the border.'” pic.twitter.com/iABeDEo1Y8
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 1, 2021
“So [it is a] very politically fraught situation for the vice president and this is why now [her team is] emphasizing, and they have emphasized, that she is going to be focused more on diplomatic efforts,” Bertrand said, “on dealing with the leaders of those [Northern Triangle] countries, and trying to really get at the causes of why people are leaving these countries to begin with.”
“Her team has come out and said publicly, ‘Look, we do not own the issues at the border. We are not managing the issues at the border. This is for the secretary of — defense of — secretary of homeland security,'” Bertrand added.
You read that right. The vice president and her team want you to know that they are in no way managing the crisis at the border or owning the total humanitarian catastrophe happening there, and that Harris’ position in addressing the border crisis has been completely “mischaracterized.”
“When her team kind of saw this being mischaracterized by some media outlets and by Republicans and questions swirling about whether she herself was going to visit the border in her new capacity, they kind of were dismayed by this,” Bertrand said.
The vice president’s role in this whole affair is to have an impressive title, rub shoulders with foreign dignitaries and, at all costs, avoid doing anything useful. Harris herself admitted to CBS This Morning that she was feeling “frustrated” with the events happening at the border — one can only assume because of the mounds of bad feedback she has received after being put in charge of a crisis she never intended to fix.
“Look, we’ve been in office less than 100 days,” the vice president told CBS journalist Anthony Mason. “We’re addressing it, we’re dealing with it but it’s gonna take some time. And are we frustrated? Are you frustrated? Yes, we are.”
There are two key points that need to be further explicated from this whole sad scenario.
First, Harris has no intention of accomplishing anything of substance when it comes to the border crisis.
That means no solution to the 33,000 migrants who traveled from 160 different countries last month into Mexico and Central America, all seeking to take advantage of Biden’s come-one-and-all circus at the southern border.
That means no protection for Americans from the record-breaking amount of fentanyl flooding over the southern border, which has already surpassed the entirety of last year’s haul and almost the amount seized in both 2020 and 2019 combined.
That means no stopping the brutal cartels bringing millions and millions of dollars worth of drugs into the country, no stop to the widespread and horrific child abuse stemming from Biden’s total lack of meaningful border security legislation and no end to the human smuggling and terrorism suspects attempting to blend into the crowd.
Needless to say, many are not pleased with the total absence of accountability in the executive office.
“71 days ago border crisis czar Kamala Harris laughed when asked about visiting the border,” Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel tweeted. “71 days later and it seems border security is still a joke to a Biden administration that has not stemmed the record-breaking flow of migrants.”
71 days ago border crisis czar Kamala Harris laughed when asked about visiting the border.
71 days later and it seems border security is still a joke to a Biden administration that has not stemmed the record-breaking flow of migrants.
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) June 1, 2021
Perhaps Republican Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert said it best, however.
“The situation at the southern border is a dumpster fire,” Boebert tweeted.
The situation at the southern border is a dumpster fire.
— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) June 1, 2021
The second point that bears pointing out is the fact that CNN is obviously running cover for the administration, serving as a soft-balling lapdog content to republish White House media releases rather than a watchdog intent on doing any serious reporting.
It is, unfortunately, to be expected at this point. CNN is, after all, the network whose technical director described it as a pro-Biden propaganda machine and, if recent experience tells us anything, it is that likeminded outlets would prefer to launch brave exposes about Biden’s rich history of eating ice cream than cover anything even tangentially related to the horrors of Biden’s border crisis.
Neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris has visited the border. Neither President Biden nor Vice President Harris has made any plans to do so.
This administration is, in nearly every way, less effective and less humane than its predecessor. Alas, it appears that the struggle to force the VP to do her job will fall to the American people.
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