A performance worthy of a standing ovation—or perhaps a swift exit—unfolded Monday night as Vice President Kamala Harris faced a barrage of questions about the surge in illegal border crossings. This crisis has supposedly quadrupled during her tenure. The Vice President appeared to channel her inner contortionist, attempting to twist and reposition the narrative in a way that left more than a few viewers scratching their heads and wondering if she was really cut out for the spotlight.
As CBS reporter Bill Whitaker bravely took up the challenge, he didn’t let Harris waltz around tough questions. He pressed her to explain why it has taken her administration more than three years to take decisive action against what many see as open-border policies. While Whitaker pushed for clarity, Harris engaged in a two-and-a-half-minute exercise in historical revisionism that could make even the most skilled historian cringe. Rather than own up to the current state of affairs, she quickly shifted blame to former President Trump, as if he were still in office pulling strings from afar.
Omg – CBS EDITED Kamala’s pitiful answers on her 60 Minute Interview! pic.twitter.com/c43w3RV4Dg
— 🇺🇸The REAL Lady De’Plorable🇺🇸 (@LadyRedWave) October 9, 2024
The Vice President pointed to her recent border visit and lauded President Biden’s sudden “crackdown” on asylum seekers, arguing that it led to immediate results. The obvious question, though, is why these measures came so late in the game—only after an overwhelming surge in illegal crossings had taken place. Harris waved away this concern, recounting tales of legislative proposals that fell flat in Congress due to, yes, you guessed it, Trump’s alleged meddling. In her story, Trump is the villain orchestrating chaos behind the scenes, ensuring that effective legislation never sees the light of day.
Among the things left unaddressed during the exchange was Harris’s role in the administration’s immigration policies. While she claimed that solutions were “at hand” and progress had been made, one could argue that the “solutions” had more to do with finger-pointing than any concrete actions that have yielded results. Whitaker seemed to cut through the fog—reminding Harris that her administration had presided over a “historic flood” of undocumented immigrants. Instead of taking responsibility, she once again ducked and dodged like a seasoned political boxer, insisting that her policies targeted fixing the immigration system, not creating chaos.
In the duel of wits, Whitaker’s insistence on the facts and Harris’s evasions made for a spectacle less akin to a severe news interview and more like a game of political ping-pong, where neither player was willing to concede ground. Harris maintained that crossings had decreased, yet many watching from home likely found it hard to reconcile those claims with the reality of the ongoing situation at the border. The belief that her administration has effectively halved illegal immigration seems less a statement of fact and more a line crafted for campaign speeches.
The night, they were capped off with the Vice President sticking to her talking points, which many conservatives might find disingenuous, given current border trends. As one can quickly glean, the message appears to be: if anything’s going wrong at the southern border, it’s clearly someone else’s fault—preferably a particular former president—rather than the responsibility of the current administration, which, after months of inaction, is still actively trying to score points rather than delivering solutions. While the nation grapples with a significant border crisis, Harris’s narrative seems less about resolution and more about the age-old political tactic of blame-shifting.