CLAY: One thing I bet that a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook and certainly many of you listening out there are ready for is — you know what happened with Kamala Harris, Buck. She’s been saying she didn’t need to go to the border. She hadn’t been to Europe, either. But now all of a sudden, Donald Trump is scheduled to be at the border in five days, and what has happened, Buck Sexton?
BUCK: Oh, she’s going, Clay. She’s going down. In fact, Trump effectively shamed the border czar into going to said border, which is a remarkable thing when you think about it. Ninety-one days, friends, after she was named immigration czar, she has finally come out or her spokespersons or whatever have said that she will go down on Friday, just in time to beat former President Trump.
He’ll be down there just a few days after that with Governor Abbott of Texas, and one thing about Texas on this one — and, yes, there’s going to be jealousy. We don’t ever want to make any of the other states jealous. There’s a fair amount of Florida high-fiving on the show. There’s also some Texas high-fiving that goes on here because, you know, the state of Texas, Clay, has decided to take border matters into its own hands at some level.
They are building some sections of wall themselves. They’re bringing in additional law enforcement officers from Florida among other states to help with the surge and help with the issues at the border. And having been down there just a couple of months ago myself, we were talking about law enforcement being overwhelmed.
The Border Patrol is completely overwhelmed with, let’s all be very clear, the worst numbers of apprehensions and illegal crossings — and got-aways who are people who just made it into the U.S., never got taken into custody at all — really ever. It’s at least 20 years. But based on the trend and the trajectory, you could pretty much say this is the worst the border has ever been.
CLAY: Which is not a good thing I think no matter what your politics might be. Kamala Harris, I think this is significant that she’s going, but also don’t miss what she’s trying to do, Buck. She’s going in on a Friday, hoping that her friends in the media will bury this story rolling into a summer weekend, right? Going on Friday you hope, “Hey, Saturday, Sunday, everybody’s going out to the pool, everybody’s on vacation, everything else.”
BUCK: Well, this goes to show you that there really was a belief, I think, in the Harris camp that she could get away with saying that it’s not a big deal. “Why do I have to go to the border as the border czar?” and then when all the criticisms got piled on and all the folks out there were saying hold on a second. And we should actually play if we have it —
CLAY: It’s a classic.
BUCK: Oh, yes. You remember it. Let’s play for everybody just a trip down memory lane with our border czar.
HOLT: Do you have any plans to visit the border?
HARRIS: I… At some point… Eh… (sputters) Y’know…. I… (deep breath) We are going to the border.
HOLT: You haven’t.
HARRIS: We’ve been to the border. So, this whole… This whole thing about the border… We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border!
HOLT: You haven’t been to the border.
HARRIS: (sputters) Uh, I… And I haven’t been to Europe. (pause)
HOLT: (silence)
HARRIS: (fake laughter) I mean, I don’t… I don’t understand the point that you’re making!
BUCK: This was one of those awesome moments where you just… This is Lester Holt. I mean, he’s trying to just do his interview thing, and he’s like, “Look, you’re the vice president. I’m not trying to cause issues here, but you have not been to the border. You can’t look me in the eyes in an interview on my show when we all know it.” The whole point is you haven’t been! You don’t get to say, “Oh, yes, we have,” Clay. “We’ve been to the border.” Who’s we? Have you, Kamala Harris, the border czar been to the border?
CLAY: What I think is so interesting about Kamala Harris in general, she’s got a Cruella De Vil about her personality, like, where she tries to kind of laugh her way and smile her way through answers to questions like these. But, Buck, she’s been in prime time, in theory, for a long time. She ran for president. She was a a senator from California.
She was attorney general. She’s dealt with the media for a long time. I think certainly they’ve used kid gloves with her. But how is it that she wasn’t prepared for a question like this? I still… Every time I hear that, I cringe because it’s almost a veep moment. I think about her staff when they were watching that and seeing it.
I’m not quizzing you about NATO. I’m not quizzing you about Brussels. I’m quizzing you about the border. Why would you focus and even try to pivot in such a stupid way? Listen to this again, because I think it is an emblematic moment with Kamala Harris where you really get the sense that she’s not very good on her feet.
And also that she’s expecting for Lester Holt to just accept her lie and move on. This is… Sometimes you hear a 30-sec clip, and I think it’s an important window into the larger media universe both for the candidate and/or the vice president in this case, but also the media environment in general. Let’s listen to it one more time.
HOLT: Do you have any plans to visit the border?
HARRIS: I… At some point… Eh… (sputters) Y’know…. I… (deep breath) We are going to the border. We’ve been to the border.
HOLT: You haven’t.
HARRIS: So, this whole… This whole thing about the border… We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border!
HOLT: You haven’t been to the border.
HARRIS: (sputters) Uh, I… And I haven’t been to Europe. (pause)
HOLT: (silence)
HARRIS: (fake laughter) I mean, I don’t… I don’t understand the point that you’re making!
BUCK: Well, we all understand the point, right?
CLAY: Everyone understands the point!
BUCK: Everybody knew exactly what it was. I can see, without being there, the looks on the faces of her staffers just all —
CLAY: That’s what I’m saying, the veep moment.
BUCK: That could have been… But let’s go into the why. Why would she…? I mean, now we know it’s because Trump look Trump gets results once again. He’s getting results on this. She has to go down, because otherwise Trump going down creates a photo-op that’s even more damaging than the photo-op she was trying to avoid, which was Kamala Harris at the U.S.-Mexico border as a border czar as the numbers keep coming out, and it continues to get worse.
So many commentators get that wrong. Even if you surrender at the border and say, “Here I am! I want to claim asylum,” when you enter onto U.S. soil to do that, not at a port of entry, that is a violation of statute. And then they’ve so overwhelmed the system and the cartels are making hundreds of millions of dollars on this now, on top of all the drugs that they’re running by having Border Patrol have to deal with all the people that are coming across.
So this, then, becomes an issue of, “How do Democrats stop something, Clay, that they actually think in the long run benefits them politically?” Because they still want an amnesty, and they feel like this is… First of all, the virtue signaling on this is great, “Yeah, open borders. Let’s give away free health care,” as they said on the debate stage in the Democrat primary to illegal immigrants.
So the party, the Democratic Party has moved so far left that they can’t even pretend to want to stop illegal immigration from occurring. That’s where we really are and so Kamala Harris doesn’t want to go down because she’s not gonna fix this problem ’cause she doesn’t really want to fix this problem.
CLAY: And she’s going on Friday because she hopes it gets buried into weekend, and to your point because she knows when Donald Trump with other Republican congressmen goes next week, they were going to be able to wield a massive attack on her and the Biden administration in general by saying, “Hey, I’m not even president right now.
“But I can make it down to check to see what’s going on at the border. Your current administration hasn’t still not managed that.” So what she’s trying to do is blunt that attack by going down on Friday, hoping a lot of people aren’t gonna pay attention and then she can say, “Well, I’ve now been to the border.”
BUCK: And it’s amazing that this is the first real thing that has been put on the Kamala Harris ledger, so to speak, and yet we all know — and we’ll be talking about this a lot — there’s a widespread believe that she will be the next Democrat nominee. I don’t know if it’s incumbent, but the next Democrat president of the United States.
BUCK: And yet what has she shown us so far of actual ability and results in my office? I’ll never forget, back during the primary, the Democrat primary when she said in a very nonchalant and arrogant fashion, “I mean, it’s clear I’m a top-tier candidate.”
CLAY: (laughing)
BUCK: Actually, the voters, the Democrat voters had a very different feeling about that.
CLAY: Well, she’s not likable. That’s the essence, and this is why I hope she’s the nominee in 2024, because Kamala Harris, if you put here on a stage, ultimately this is a TV contest. Kamala Harris has no children. She is married to a dorky white dude lawyer — and I can say ’cause I’m kind of a dorky white dude lawyer. She doesn’t have a history of being particularly likable.
And depending on who the nominee is for the Republican Party in 2024, I believe that what Kamala Harris is going to lean on is the same thing that Hillary Clinton leaned on, which is, “I’m a woman; I deserve this,” and she’s also gonna add in, “I’m a minority woman. I deserve this.” And I don’t think America responds to “I deserve to be elected because of my identity.” I really don’t.
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