The Trump campaign on Tuesday pushed back against a narrative within the media that Vice President Harris is taking a more positive approach to border wall construction, calling such a claim “preposterous.”
“How much longer will the mainstream media allow Kamala Harris to hide and use staff to speak on her behalf?” Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
“It’s DAY 37 of ZERO interviews and Kamala’s anonymous campaign sources are now claiming she supports President Trump’s border wall — this is a preposterous and false claim.”
Axios ran a headline on Tuesday morning that accused Harris of a “flip-flop” on border wall construction. It noted Harris’ support of a bipartisan border security bill introduced in January. The bill pushes funding to the border while also authorizing limits on asylum entries.
The package, which has the support of the Biden administration but has so far failed to drum up enough Republican support to pass the chamber, also includes a limited amount of funding for additional border wall construction, but it is just a fraction of the $25 billion former President Trump eyed for the project.
While Harris, along with President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, has consistently backed the bill, Axios said her recent speech at the Democratic National Convention in which she said she would sign the bill was a sign of her embracing a more hawkish immigration policy.
“Last year, Joe and I brought together Democrats and conservative Republicans to write the strongest border bill in decades. The Border Patrol endorsed it. But Donald Trump believes a border deal would hurt his campaign, so he ordered his allies in Congress to kill the deal. Well, I refuse to play politics with our security, and here is my pledge to you: As president, I will bring back the bipartisan border security bill that he killed, and I will sign it into law. I know … we can live up to our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can create an earned pathway to citizenship and secure our border,” she said.
New ads, in which the Harris campaign portrays the former California senator as tough on the border, show images of the Trump-era border wall.
But the Trump campaign noted that despite that limited support, Harris has a history of opposing the wall at the border. The Trump administration built more than 400 miles of border wall, and it was abruptly halted by the Biden-Harris administration in 2021.
While there have been some gaps filled and some limited extra construction due to already appropriated congressional funds, the administration has consistently said it opposes border wall construction and there have been no indications of plans for significant extra construction.
Dreamers should not be pitted against their families or traded away like some commodity in exchange for a un-American, $25 billion wall.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 26, 2018
Harris has also long been a critic of the wall construction that took place in the Trump era. In 2018, Harris called the wall “un-American.” That came a year after she joined Democrats in introducing a bill to block border wall construction.
During her campaign launch in 2019, she dismissed the wall’s effectiveness.
“On the subject of transnational gangs, let’s be perfectly clear. The president’s medieval vanity project is not going to stop them,” she said.
In 2020, she called it “a complete waste of taxpayer money and won’t make us any safer.”
The Trump campaign also sought to link her to the decision to halt border wall construction in her role “as border czar,” although that role was limited to international diplomacy related to root causes.
“As Border Czar, Kamala Harris halted construction of the border wall. Kamala’s ACTIONS speak much louder than the WORDS of the anonymous staff she is cowering behind,” Leavitt said.
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller described the report as “total bulls—” and said Harris “hasn’t flip-flopped on anything.”
“Harris opposes the wall, has always opposed the wall and stopped wall construction as VP,” he said.
Harris is like a chicken running around in circles. She has done so many flip-flops and mostly has leaned toward the Trump programs and saying that those are her ideas, not Trump’s. The big problem for Harris is that everyone can refer back to Trump’s time in office and people can plainly see that his programs were put in place or in the works for his second term. What in the world is Harris thinking when she does these flip-flops? Does she really think that WE THE PEOPLE are so stupid that we cannot see her flip-flops plainly?
How in the world can the dems vote for someone who changes her mind every few days depending on which way the political winds are blowing?!?!
WAKE UP AMERICA AND VOTE TRUMP BACK IN OFFICE SO WE CAN GET THESE PROBLEMS FIXED AND GET OUR GREAT ECONOMY BACK!!!
Kamalama, when the wall is finished, I hope you’re on the other side.
I have said it before many times that Kamala is a liar, and she is a far-left idiot She couldn’t lead a group of Brownies They would have to lead her How was she at 28% as a VP and all of the sudden she is 50%, however, as the days come closer to 11/05/2024 She has always been a prude and a moron on top of it I believe that is why she became so promiscuous to get some attention So then she found she could use this to get where she wants to be So now she is left to deal with this on her own and she can’t lie her way out of this I mean how can you tell the people that everything is going great and the economy is booming The problem with this is that we have been served up with what Biden and Harris economic policies, when you have just lost your job because the business is closing The worry after is what inflation has done to grocery prices She lies and said that inflation is going down It went down .5% for the month but is as a whole is 16% This is the average some are lower and some are much higher They have no plan to confront inflation I don’t believe the taxpayers should have to pay for Biden and Harris’s fuck ups This is a real world and not some bullshit session So Kamala Harris running our country , she is so stupid she would have to have directions to find her head All of these Journalists saying it would be terrible to have a scandal to over shadow all of their accomplishments They have fucked up our country and they have accomplished that but nothing positive for our citizens If they have done anything positive please let me know