Even liberal media cannot ignore the border wall-sized problem with Harris campaign ad
For lack of a detailed platform indicating what she might finally get around to doing if elected president, Kamala Harris has instead been campaigning on what she would like American voters to think she has accomplished.
Harris posted a campaign ad earlier this month touting her record on the border. On closer inspection, critics and even some elements of the liberal media noticed something amiss about the 30-second video: President Donald Trump's border wall.
Whilst insinuating that Harris has been strong on the border, the campaign ad repeatedly shows off the same border wall Harris spent years criticizing and then joined President Joe Biden in defunding upon taking power.
Omitting any mention of the tens of millions of illegal aliens who have stolen into the country under Harris' watch, the narrator for the campaign ad claims, "As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and guns across the border."
"As vice president, she backed the toughest border-control bill in decades," says the narrator. "And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris."
Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Foundation's government watchdog Oversight Project, highlighted the Trump border wall's cameos in the video Friday, tweeting, "What is that in this ad? Looks like the @realDonaldTrump BORDER WALL to me!"
Peter Hasson, editor of the Washington Free Beacon, noted in reply, "Not only is Kamala featuring border wall in her campaign ad, it appears that she's featuring *Trump-era* additions to the border wall. The campaign footage (left image) matches VOA footage (right image) identified as Sasabe, Arizona. CBP website shows the wall in Sasabe was built under Trump."
ABC News' Jonathan Karl played the video Sunday for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) and asked, "What do you make of her transformation on this issue?"
Sanders offered a diplomatic response, attributing a potential border policy to Harris.
'Trump's border wall is just a stupid use of money.'
Karl, ostensibly hoping for Sanders to acknowledge the vice president's radical about-face on the issue, said, "If you take a look at that ad, and one thing that I found striking, is if you look — and I think we have the images here — there are at least three points in that ad that show the border wall. Donald Trump's border wall."
"Is it now the position of the Democrats that they favor the border wall?" asked Karl.
"You can ask the Harris campaign about that ad," said Sanders.
Harris' use of Trump's accomplishment to visually imply it to be her own might be less controversial if it were not for the Democrat's years-long rhetorical and administrative campaign against the wall.
In 2017, Harris wrote, "Trump's border wall is just a stupid use of money."
Bloomberg reported that in February 2018, congressional Democrats expressed an unwillingness to grant Trump $25 billion to build a border wall in exchange for those illegal aliens deemed "Dreamers" to gain a path to citizenship. Harris was one of three Senate Democrats who rejected the deal.
Harris' spokeswoman at the time suggested, "With any vote she takes in the Senate, she looks at all the evidence, does her homework, and does what she believes is the right thing to do. This one was no different."
Harris made clear in a statement that funding should not "be used to implement this administration's anti-immigrant agenda."
While peddling her book, "The Truths We Hold: An American Journey," in 2019, Harris reportedly suggested the wall was Trump's "vanity project" and threatened litigation should he move forward with it.
During a CNN town hall just weeks later, Harris called the border wall Trump's "medieval vanity project," emphasizing that she would "not vote for a wall under any circumstances."
Prior to being run out of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary with no delegates to her name, Harris tweeted, "Trump's border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer money and won't make us any safer."
Shortly after taking power, the Biden-Harris administration halted the flow of government funds toward the construction of the wall and in subsequent months took additional steps to axe construction contracts.
Harris appears keen to gloss over her track record of keeping the border porous, especially in light of polling data indicating that Americans are tired of illegal aliens stealing into the country.
Gallup revealed last month that 53% of respondents signaled a desire to expand the construction of walls along the U.S. border. 63% said they favored allowing the president and the secretary of Homeland Security to bar entry to asylum-seekers when the southern border is overwhelmed.
Earlier this year, a Monmouth University poll found that over 8 in 10 Americans recognized illegal immigration to be either a very serious (61%) or a somewhat serious (23%) problem.
The poll also found that 53% of respondents supported the border wall.
The Harris campaign ad starring Trump's border wall drew heat earlier this month for a different reason: The law enforcement members shown standing next to her wanted it known that their images were used without permission and that she did not have their support.
Blaze News previously reported that Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux and District Attorney Tim Ward expressed outrage over their inclusion in the video.
"In light of a recent political ad put out by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff Boudreaux, as well as other local law enforcement, the Sheriff wants to make it abundantly clear that his image is being used without his permission, and he does NOT endorse Harris for President or any other political office," Sheriff Boudreaux said in a statement.
"Just as Sheriff Boudreaux said, I do not in any way want the use of that photo to be construed as support of [Harris] either in her candidacy, current candidacy, or even in her tenure as attorney general of the State of California," said Ward.
Tulare County officials also contradicted Harris' characterization as a "border state prosecutor."
According to Boudreaux, "The truth is, Harris never cared about the cartels and did nothing to stop people from illegally crossing the border."
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