Kamala Harris backtracks on controversial issue she once labeled ‘medieval’ and a ‘waste of taxpayer money’
Kamala Harris has repeatedly said she would stop Donald Trump’s border wall project.
Now that she is the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris has pledged to sign a bill that would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to continue construction of a wall along the southern border.
Materials for Trump’s wall have been rotting in border states since construction came to an abrupt halt when President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris took office in 2021.
The reversal came during her speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, where the vice president indicated on Thursday that she would sign the border security bill that was rejected by Republicans.
“That’s what we need the Trump border wall for,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). told Axios.
Vice President Kamala Harris now appears to be in favor of Donald Trump’s border wall, after saying in her speech at the DNC last week that she would introduce a bill to free up hundreds of millions of dollars for further construction of the wall.
“It’s in the law itself that it sets the standards that were set during the Trump administration: Here’s where it’s going to be built. Here’s how it’s going to be built, the height, the type, everything during the Trump build.”
Trump’s campaign responded to the latest reports of Harris’ withdrawal from border policy by claiming that she has never been in favor of securing the country from illegal immigration.
“As a senator, she tried to block President Trump from building the border wall,” a campaign email said. “And as border czar, Kamala Harris stopped the construction of the border wall.”
“If Kamala Harris were to sit down for an interview, she might be able to explain her views on the border wall. Until then, all we can look at is her support for open borders,” it concluded.
Lankford negotiated the bill with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
However, Trump was concerned that if the bill passed, it would help Democrats in the November elections, so he worked with his allies in Congress to thwart it.
Before her speech last week, Harris had already spoken out strongly against the border wall initiative.
When Harris announced her candidacy for president in 2019, she called Trump’s wall a “medieval vanity project,” insisting it wouldn’t work to block drug and human traffickers working for gangs from entering the U.S.
In February 2020, she wrote on Facebook: “Trump’s border wall is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars and will not make us any safer.”
She also said when she first ran for president, “An illegal immigrant is not a criminal,” and has repeatedly voiced support for decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
Millions of migrants have illegally crossed the southern border since President Joe Biden signed an executive order halting construction of the border wall
Harris indicated in 2020 that he supported free health care for migrants and illegal immigrants, which would significantly burden the US health care system with higher costs.
In April 2017, shortly after becoming a senator, she also attacked the wall project, calling it a “dumb use of money.”
“I will block its funding,” she said at the time.
Harris also appears to be ramping up her cross-border rhetoric in a TV ad that has been airing for weeks, featuring footage of the border wall.
Trump supporters recently noticed the footage and took to social media to fiercely criticize the vice president for using the former president’s project to give the impression that she is addressing the border crisis.
Harris’ turn comes as millions of dollars worth of wall material continues to rot along the southern border after the Biden-Harris administration halted construction three and a half years ago
Former President Donald Trump visited the Arizona border on August 22 to inspect rusty materials his administration sent there that now sit unused.
The ad portrays Harris as a “border state prosecutor” and features an image of the border wall, and claims the vice president has prosecuted gangs.
Mike Howell, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, screenshotted the ad’s mural and criticized its perceived hypocrisy.
“What does this ad say?” he wrote in a post on X. “It looks like @realDonaldTrump’s BORDER WALL to me!”
One user responded to the post by saying, “I was told walls don’t work… Have Democrats lied to me again?”