Kamala’s Still Searching for the Root Cause of Illegal Immigration

CLAY: Kamala Harris may be the worst vice president in the history of the last 50 or 60 years of presidencies. It’s worth thinking about. She is in charge of the border. She is the border czar. Well, Jen Psaki was asked, as part of this discussion, “You are the border czar, after all, Kamala Harris. You are responsible for many of the different things that are going on there,” and border czar Kamala Harris… Well, just listen to this. Jen Psaki gets set up, led across the middle (if you’re a sports fan), and absolutely wrecked here on this question as she tries to defend Kamala. Let’s play cut 12. Listen to this.

DOOCY: Is Vice President Harris still in charge of addressing the “root causes” of migration from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatamala?

PSAKI: She is, and I just announced a commitment that she’s announcing this afternoon!

DOOCY: Well, then why is it she has not spoken to the president of Guatemala since June? That’s six months.

PSAKI: Well, I know that… (sputtering) I — I did see this kind of strange report from the president of Guatemala saying that he’s had no contact with the White House, which is inaccurate.

DOOCY: He said, Vice President Harris, he has not spoken to her, and if she’s in charge, why is that?

PSAKI: Well, we have had a range of conversations, Peter. I think that’s reflected in our readout we put out last week with our national security adviser; with the vice president’s national security adviser; with our NSC senior director, Juan Gonzalez. We put out an extensive readout of that just last week, and we’ll continue that high level of engagement.

BUCK: Clay?

CLAY: High level.

BUCK: I gotta tell you, man, everybody who… There are people who follow the border issue pretty closely. They tend not to be Democrats. (laughs) But anyone who follows and says the notion that it was a serious plan to begin with… Remember, Kamala was flying — I just want to take everyone down a trip down memory lane — over Mexico to get to Central America, basically.

She wouldn’t go to the border; then said, “We’ve been to the border,” to which Lester Holt (I guess to his credit) was like, “Look, Madam Vice President, you gotta actually go if you say you’ve been. You can’t get away with that.” But the notion that this root cause issue was serious? You’re gonna fly down and come up with some agreement that make people want to be in America instead of certain Central American countries because it’s America?

CLAY: That is the root cause.

BUCK: That’s exactly it. That’s the root cause.

CLAY: We know.

BUCK: So as much as the commies are running around trying to tear this place down and all the rest of it, it’s still per capita a very wealthy place and a place where a lot of people want to be, and the way that you can actually deal with the border crisis is to change the calculation for people who want to come to the border. But there’s also now what you could call the Kamala crisis for this White House, which is how do they make this vice president seem like she’s ready for the big job?

Because that’s always… Especially in a situation like this, right, you have Joe Biden who, I mean, to be charitable… I know Mrs. Biden just waved off the whole, “He looks to be declining,” but I think we all recognize the notion this guy might run and be president for another seven years from now.

CLAY: ‘Til his 86?

BUCK: Yeah, ’til he’s 86 years old. Democrats are just being reckless, and we all know it. So Kamala’s supposed to be up for the big job. But I think that they realize, Clay, they can’t even have a coherent set of talking points to make it seem like that’s something the American people — enough of the American people — will go for. The San Francisco Chronicle just did some puff piece — I saw this and didn’t read it — on the decorations in Kamala’s office.

And, yeah, they control… Imagine if the media was 50-50, what the coverage of Kamala would be like. They’ve got 95% of journos in their back pocket. You might as well have the White House sending checks to CNN and MSNBC and all these other channels and yet Kamala’s poll numbers are still tanking. How do they turn that around? I don’t know if they can turn that around is what they’re realizing.

CLAY: On some level, your poll numbers become a reflection of your perceptions and there’s no way the perception of Kamala Harris is suddenly going to become, “Oh, she’s really on the ball,” because when she went to those Central American countries, Buck, she said the phrase “root cause” five times, I believe it was, in her limited interaction with the media.

And it’s funny and embarrassing simultaneously because as every single person there knows, the root cause of why people leave Guatemala for the United States is ’cause the United States is way better than Guatemala, right? The root cause of why somebody decides to go to become — I don’t know — a lawyer as opposed to a mechanic in general is probably because lawyers make more money, right?

Some situations are not particularly difficult to analyze. The “root cause” why people come from Central American countries is because America’s better. The reason why the overall number of people has skyrocketed, Buck, is also really clear. It’s because Joe Biden has welcomed those people, and many of them are showing up and saying that they believe the United States is encouraging them to come across the border illegally.