Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy burned Vice President Kamala Harris — and her failure to address the crisis at the southern border — during a testy exchange with Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
Doocy’s questions came after 24 hours of breathless legacy media coverage in which multiple outlets tried to help Harris put distance between herself and the ongoing disaster at the U.S.-Mexico border — with some even going so far as to discredit their own previous coverage of President Joe Biden’s decision to name her the Border Czar.
Doocy began by holding up a card that has reportedly been circulated to Democrats on Capitol Hill and to media that outlines the new talking points on Harris and her “official” job with regard to the southern border.
“Democrats on Capitol Hill are being handed this card with talking points about the Vice President and the border. Do you know who’s handing this out?” Doocy asked.
“I have no idea,” Jean-Pierre replied, suggesting, “You probably should ask her campaign.”
“So, the first one says, ‘Vice President Harris was never appointed border czar. There’s never been such a position. It doesn’t exist,” Doocy pressed. “Why are Democrats so sensitive about the Vice President and the border?”
Jean-Pierre attempted to throw the question back to Doocy, blaming Republicans for the recently scrapped bipartisan border legislation.
“Why are Republicans so sensitive about actually not owning up to them getting in the way of a border deal? Why?” she asked, blaming former President Donald Trump for its failure. “Why are they so sensitive to moving forward and actually dealing on an issue that majority of Americans care about is dealing with what’s going on at the border?”
WATCH:
Doocy: “Do you think that the border would be less of a talking point now if there was less migration to the border, say, if somebody had addressed root causes of migration sooner?”
KJP: “Well, wait, hold on a second. Did you not hear the beginning of my — it was — I know there… pic.twitter.com/GMQSFScHMK
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 25, 2024
Doocy pushed back, making use of the fact that even the newly-issued talking points conceded that Harris had been tasked with addressing the “root causes” of migration: “Do you think that the border would be less of a talking point now if there was less migration to the border, say, if somebody had addressed root causes of migration sooner?”
Jean-Pierre responded by claiming that all progress at the border had been made by President Biden and Vice President Harris — although she failed to mention that some of their more recent improvements were potentially the result of quietly reimplementing policies from the previous administration.
“They sought — they — he moved forward and took actions to deal with what’s on at the border. Republicans continue — continue to block getting resources to the Border Patrol agents. They continue to block actually dealing with an immigration system. So, yes, we are going to debunk the false — the false, you know, characterization of the Vice President. She was not a border czar, and it’s not just us. Independent fact-checkers have said the same thing that that did not exist and that is not true,” she insisted.
