As the full meeting transcript makes clear, he was simply tapping Harris to work with foreign governments, businesses and local organizations on the "root causes" of migration from the "Northern Triangle" countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

"She was not in charge of what happened at the U.S.-Mexico border. She was not a border czar," Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told HuffPost.

That doesn't mean Harris can - or should - avoid questions about Biden administration immigration policy. She has been a voice in the room. And given the positions she took before becoming vice president, it's entirely possible she would have taken a similar approach to the border had she, not Biden, been the ultimate decision maker.

A Harris win would keep a proponent of reform legislation in the White House, though her ability to deliver it would obviously depend on her negotiating skills and which party controls Congress. In the meantime, it's safe to assume Harris would likely use her executive authority over border enforcement by trying - as Biden did - to find some sort of middle path that blends tighter border controls with new methods for processing migrants. And she'd probably keep paying attention to root causes, in Central America and maybe beyond.

Such an approach certainly wouldn't solve the problems associated with immigration in a single year, or even a single presidential term. But considering immigration's complexity, and what's actually feasible as policy and politics today, Harris could make a credible case there's no better alternative.

But whenever talking about immigration, everyone should remember this:

For most Democrats and at least some Republicans, the best policy response would be legislation simultaneously increasing security and increasing the capacity for processing migrants trying to enter legally -- and, in some fashion, dealing with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

Twice in the last decade, Congress has come close to passing such legislation on a bipartisan basis. Both times, anti-immigration Republicans killed it.

#2

'Rewriting' means facts, evidence, and expert analysis that undermines the right wing-created narrative.

Her resume prior to being VP was pretty thin.

Yeah, she only won 5 different elections, four in California: Two times for San Francisco District Attorney leading that office; one which was for State Attorney General (- where she helmed the largest justice department this side of DC and the DOJ -); another for US Senator and her last election as Vice President of the United States.

Real thin resume, eh?

Now do Trump and Vance.

.@POTUS asked me to lead our diplomatic work with Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. To address the situation at the southern border, we have to address the root causes of migration. It won't be easy work-
but it's necessary.

There's no gaslighting going on here as it regards Kamala's established record. The above statement is almost verbatim what Corky first posted:

It's silly to focus on trying to rewrite the past and not on the terrible performance of Kamala. It doesn't matter what she was called so why erase that part of history? How did she perform?

False framing. First and foremost, Kamala did not perform "terribly" in her role. Her role was not to immediately fix the flow of border traffic, it was to find a long term solution for immigration through the "root cause" strategy articulated in detail in this thread's article.

Ignorant righties, like yourself, keep viewing the crisis as something Kamala alone was tasked to repair unilaterally, which was never her charge. But in no reality was the work Harris did in any way a failure.

Jason Marczak, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said it's unrealistic to expect quicker progress from the root-causes effort, as Harris herself warned when she took on the task. "The factors leading up to the migration from these three countries, they didn't start last year, two years ago, five or even 10 years ago -- they go back decades," Marczak said.

There's also the inherent difficulty of trying to work on root causes in countries where the government is not a particularly helpful partner, because of corruption, incompetence or both.

If it's too early to assess the effects of the root-causes strategy, it's not too early to see where Harris' efforts have made a mark, several advocates and analysts said.

Cecilia Muoz, a veteran political leader in the Latino political community, cited the establishment of "safe mobility centers" in Central and South America, starting in Guatemala, so that potential migrants can seek permission to enter the U.S. without making the treacherous, smuggler-led journey to the Mexico border.

"Setting up migration offices that involve multiple countries and multiple international organizations is an enormously complex exercise," said Muoz, who worked on immigration while serving as a domestic policy adviser in the Obama White House. "It is tremendously important to have a principal of the vice president's caliber leading the charge, engaging with heads of state, and managing the collaboration between the many federal agencies in the United States who need to be involved in that process."

That kind of high-level negotiation also helped secure more than $5 billion in regional investment from multinational companies like Apple and Starbucks, Muoz and some of the other analysts said. And while Harris' speech and the NBC interview got the most public scrutiny during her 2021 Guatemala trip, what some regional experts noticed was the vice president's itinerary there -- and how it reflected the expertise, if not the experience, she brought to the job.

"She made sure that she wasn't just meeting with the corrupt administration there," Marshall Fitz, managing director of immigration at the Emerson Collective, said of her trip. "She was also meeting directly with Indigenous women, engaging them, making sure she heard them and saw them. One of her niches is women's empowerment generally, and her understanding of migration is very much rooted in an understanding that if you've going to solve these migration challenges, women are going to be a big part of that because they're the backbones of these families."

This entire topic is representative of the lack of intellectual depth and understanding exhibited daily by Trump and his supporters.

If a complicated problem isn't solved during a single news cycle, those addressing the problem have failed, even though the same people now complaining were unable to solve the problem when they were in charge and left things demonstrably worse for those succeeding them.

So what you are actually saying is that due to the DEI nature of Kamala's selection as VP she wasn't given a critical role. Her role was fluffed by the media with a meaningless label of 'czar'. The administration merely gave her busy work, the kind typically given to DEI hires when there is a low expectation of positive results.

Confirmation of just how blissfully ignorant you choose to remain when confronted with evidence of the truth. Kamala Harris has run in 5 elections and won each of them. She was twice elected to run the San Francisco DA's office and elected State Attorney General. Then she was elected as a US Senator from our most populous state, California, and finally elected Vice President along with Joe Biden. If you see any DEI in this equation, then you're ignoring that whites make up the majority of each electorate where she's won.

And to those like you, no person of color or non-male gender can ever be qualified if you can first point to whichever demonized group of American citizens they belong to by birth in order to demean and ostracize - without evidence - their accomplishments of being far superior to the mediocre white men who fear being replaced by more capable and noteworthy minorities.

Kamala wants you to imagine what she could be clearly see who she actually is and what she fights for, unburdened by what she has been others knowingly misrepresent her as, while ignoring her success at both winning elections and helming vital elected government offices over the last 20 years.

FTFY

She had no problem accepting that label until Republicans rightfully associated her with the failed policy of her administration.

Another lie. Post one quote from Kamala where she utters the phrase of "border czar." You morons continue to refuse to believe what's been put right before you from the time Biden stated her role and targets regarding immigration.

Kamala was never directed to deal with affecting the current influx of border crossers through any other method than engaging the very countries listed during the announcement of Biden's policy. She was never tasked with going to our physical border with Mexico - which is why the question thrown her by NBC about whether she was heading to the border led to her halting, disjointed answer.

The policy she was in charge of was based on keeping future immigrants from leaving their nations, then heading to the US, keeping them there by addressing local problems and issues that drive them to immigrate in the first place and setting up in-country US immigration offices where locals can apply for asylum/entry through the legal process without leaving their countries.

But keep spewing the right wing created false narratives. It's all your intellect allows you to do, reality be damned.

She didn't rebuke the label when it was first applied, did she?

Why is it her role to rebuke something others placed on her? Have you rebuked the fact that I've used your insolence to educate others to the ignorance and deceit of your false framing?

This is the problem with Trumpers. They make up something to fit their view of an issue and then become apoplectic when the actual record of quotes and documents prove them to be fabulists of the highest order, arguing incessantly that the fantasy they created - to denigrate those actually addressing a long neglected problem - was in fact real.

Tony Roma's gasighting is so easy to expose.

No your use of hearsay is what's being exposed. We've posted the official statements from Biden and the Administration in full. All you're proving is that the media publishes the right wing's spin on things as a matter of daily business. Here is the official fact sheet delineating what Harris' role was to be and what Biden hoped to accomplish in stemming the flow of mass immigration.

It doesn't matter what Biden officially called it, he DID and ON RECORD say she is responsible for the border problem.

Just another illiterate liar who refuses to understand that the very quotes he posted don't say what he alleges above.

Harris failed the entire scope of border problems, so regardless of what Biden tasked her with, nothing within the realm of root causes of border security was realized. So she failed. Plain and simple.

So much lying. I guess they can't help it.

You people act like we don't have memories. Her role at the border has been very recent.

Until this thread, you had ZERO idea what her role even was. All you're doing is continuing in delusion, regurgitating the right wing's created version of her role. Most importantly, the term "border" was never used - outside of a descriptor - in laying out Harris' role. The term used was immigration. (See 87, 91, and 93)

And when Kamala - in her own words - actually starts reciting all the work she was involved in - and what positive changes occurred because of the Biden Administration efforts - and THEN contrasts it with direct quotes from Trump and other GOP politicians on his selfish call to vote down the border security legislation Republicans and Democrats negotiated in good faith, it will become clear which candidate and party wants to and has tried to legislatively address the border crisis and which candidate simply wants immigration as a campaign issue to rail against.

And if you think Kamala is unable to articulate her role in a positive light, just wait. The facts and actions - yet again - are on her side, not Trump's.

What exactly were those efforts?

See post 93. It lists them while explaining both their purpose and effectiveness in addressing the issues causing people to flee their home countries to begin with.

You idiots are analogous to those who criticize the medical profession when they fail to resuscitate an ill person whose sickness took years of neglect and bad habits to manifest in disease. The Root Cause strategy is like preventative healthcare practices. It's addressing the issue from multiple fronts with the goal of reducing the desires and needs of aggrieved people to seek immigration as an answer to their problems - thereby trying to eliminate the need at the source, not just our borders.

All those news media outlets that called her the border czar are right wing?

And herein lies the problem with trying to discuss anything of substance with right wing fools, safely ensconced in their own bubble, oblivious to the truth even when it's spoon fed to them.

I have never stated that the news media was "right wing," I correctly noted that the right wing invented the frame of "border czar" out of thin air based on proven knowledge that their audience doesn't have the intellectual sophistication to discern a more complicated truth.

And repeating ad nauseam the same discredited non sequitur throwaway line also shows a severe lack in both reading comprehension and applied rebuttal abilities. Be better.

Again more gaslighting ...

AGAIN more FACTS! Aren't you dizzy from repeatedly running head first into my fists? Axios is the media repeating what the GOP created.

And what she accomplished in the role Biden gave her is listed in detail in post 93.

And nothing will change THAT reality either.

Trust me, you'll be hearing this straight from Kamala's mouth very soon as she continues to speak to the electorate. Don't believe me? Just watch.

Kamala waited three years to correct them.

To my knowledge, Kamala has never said ---- about what the right wing created to call her to this day. It's the RECORD that's correcting you, not the Vice President. If you could find a comment from Biden or Harris to support your assertions you would have posted it.

You've yet to post one quote from either Biden or Harris acknowledging the framing you claim wasn't complained about. If Democrats spent every waking moment trying to "correct" GOP falsehoods they'd never have a free second to get anything else done.

That's why you never win an argument with them or ever see a concession. Cursing a troll with profanity or getting personal with them is what they want.

Countering their lies with documented truths is all I want. My messages are geared toward readers who don't know the actual truth by providing both the context and links to support what I claim. I have no disagreement with anything you note, but the more time they spend getting their heads bashed-in by me means less time to spew other lies and misinformation elsewhere.

I consider this a win-win by that metric alone.

If the border and immigration were a success is there any doubt she would embrace the title?

Zero analytical ability whatsoever. No, she'd never embrace such a title because that wasn't the task she was charged with doing! How many times does this need to be said? I'm not posting it like your discredited tag lines.

And there have been successes, just not the ones it takes legislation to actually ameliorate, and not just by one individual.

Trumpers refuse to see the 4 dimensions of reality, clamoring instead for simplistic 2 dimensional solutions that they weren't able to achieve when they controlled the policy. People are not stupid: Immigration will remain a hot button issue as long as the GOP leads in stoking the bonfire with recriminations and accusations while making sure bipartisan political compromises never see the light of day.

This my friend is gaslighting. Saying you want something on one hand, and when given that thing, killing it before it can defuse the problem, lest you lose a political talking point seen as a useful weapon to attack your opponents with.

#129

See post 93. Educate yourself because you'll never be exposed to the documented truth on the sites you frequent. They're allergic to the truth, as are you evidently based on your ignorance of what the Root Strategy actually achieved and is still achieving by addressing the issues causing people to flee their countries in the first place.

Right wingers simply cannot continence that by addressing corrupt governments, by placing US immigration offices in foreign countries, by supporting the cessation of gang and criminal violence, by creating resources for women and children where they live will help stop many from fleeing their homes and trekking thousands of miles, finally landing upon our borders as refugees and immigrants under extreme duress.

What I posted is straight from NBC sport

Exactly! NBC operating in the frame created by the GOP. The facts are given by the participants, not the reporters. No one has challenged a single document on this topic published by the US Government. And idiots like you didn't even know nor understand what exactly VP Harris was charged with doing, nor the actual long term goals of the effort.

All you regurgitate like a sick puppy is the spin. You can't even correctly comprehend what you post yourself.

Biden said during an immigration meeting at the White House that he had asked Harris to lead the administration's efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle - El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, countries that will "need help stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border."

The idea to send VP Harris to the border to explore the "root causes" was novel and encouraging. I don't recall hearing much about the results of that initiative. Now might be a good time to bring that to the forefront.

Many in the vice president's circle fume that she's not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she's able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden's team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president. "

This is the norm view for President/Vice President relationships since this nation was born. Every VP feels like the above statements because there is rarely anything of real substance that Presidents task their VP's with responsibility for.

If the above was indeed correct, then is it representative of what we're seeing and experiencing with our own eyes and ears this week? Does Kamala look unprepared for this moment or somehow preeternally comfortable inside the crucible she's now thrust into? Kamala has been on the road for a substantial part of Biden's tenure in the White House while looking and sounding wholly different than she did in 2020 during her aborted campaign due to what's she's learned and the experiences she's gained. For the last 3 weeks, Harris has been on the trail nearly solo and during this time she remained faithfully loyal to Joe and never gave any public hints that she was now in a better position for being elected than he was.

And I believe that loyalty was the final tipping point in allowing Joe to gracefully exit the race in an unprecedented time and manner. The candidate Kamala Harris we see in this moment is a far cry from the one described in the opening quoted paragraph. Somehow, someway Kamala certainly knows how to project presidential readiness in ways her 2020 self could never imagine.

As she gears up to secure the Democratic presidential nomination in Chicago this August, we examine some of Harris' most significant accomplishments and policy initiatives.

Just for esses and gees, can anyone hear recall any "significant accomplishments or policy initiatives" from former VPs Pence, Biden, or Quayle? (I left out Gore and Cheney because the answers for them are obvious: Gore - climate change; Cheney: War in Iraq, Global War on Terror)

In most cases, our VPs are like appendixes: Attached to the President, but almost always unused and unneeded outside of a crisis. Every VP has basically two standing orders: Golden Rule: Don't ever upstage the President; and Know Your Role - Universally support the President 24/7/365, but do it in a much more dignified manner than the over-the-top, butt-barnicle Mike Pence.

it's absolutely laughable that anyone can try and claim that for the past 4 years the tacit understanding of the Dems, the R's, the media, and the public of Harris being in charge of the border issue is now somehow not the case.

In a sentence K-tool was able to articulate exactly why VP Harris is seeing a wave of unprecedented support lift her candidacy in a way Biden never could after these last few weeks and months. It will be too late when the intentionally deluded like K-Tool and their fellow Trumpers realize that the Vice President Kamala Harris the right wing media promoted - inarticulate, gaff-prone, unsure, not intelligent, too 'other'/not like me, and definitely a complete failure in the job given her to address migration - isn't the type of political leader the world is seeing right now coming out of their video screens and earbuds.

Make no mistake about it, Kamala Harris owes the right wing distortion machine for making the phoenix-like resurrection of Harris' popularity we're watching take place. Sloppy people like K-Tool buy into created narratives hook, line and sinker, never bothering to read and comprehend nuance - the bedrock of what's real and what's invented.

And every now and then, a facade that was created comes crashing down and that which emerges is so different than expected - stronger, more confident, more determined, more prepared, and perhaps most importantly, preeternally comfortable in her own skin - ready to take the reigns of leadership with a grace and compassion totally bereft in her opposition.

Trust me, in the coming days everything conventional wisdom supposedly taught you about Kamala will run smack dab into her 2 decades of political leadership experiences - first locally, then statewide, and finally nationally as our Vice President. The same Vice President that visited 21 different countries and personally engaged scores of world leaders in all sectors of life. There is currently no American politician with more broad experience for the Presidency than Kamala Harris. And these last almost 4 years? You're going to hear about all she was doing as it regarded the 'migration' crisis and the long term programs and policies outlined in this thread that were never intended to immediately impact the cluster on our southern border. The most salient part of this is that what I'm saying is right there in the official record. The fact so many think that record says something completely different stands as testament to the power of distortion and partisan framing that the GOP excels at.

187-188,

You're lack of reading comprehension skills is glaring. You can't understand simple english sentences at a 6th grade level. Go back and reread what I've written and you'll see the issue here is one of truth over invention.

Right this second, border crossings are LOWER than they were when Donald Trump left the presidency after spiking under Biden. Why are they lower? Could it have something to do with the policies enacted during Harris' work on the migration crisis? So feel free to pin this on her all you want. Things currently are BETTER than they were under Trump. The goal of any policy is to positively affect the problem, right? Mission Accomplished for the moment. Can migration worsen again based on factors far outside any American administration's ability to handle them? Of course they can. Perhaps this is why there's no football's being spiked in the end zone. The migration crisis has been with us for decades and will stay with us until the people feeling physically threatened in their own countries or unable to support their families in the manner they believe afforded them in the US see a meaningful way forward in their lives by staying instead of fleeing to the US or other countries. This was how Harris was charged with affecting migration from the Triangle countries. She wasn't told to go visit the US/Mexico border, she was told to go visit the countries where these people are leaving or traveling through and try to ameliorate the conditions there causing them to eventually end up on our border as refugees.

You keep arguing about how the media misframed Harris' job and objective - and the actual contemporaneous quotes betray your wanton ignorance in continuing to force the false narrative that things that never happened did, and things that did happen and were said and recorded at that time are somehow "gaslighting."

I can't keep repeating enough, the Harris campaign is not being led by fools. If you think the actual truth and facts won't be loudly articulated in due time during these last 100 or so days before the election, then you're woefully naive or drunk on the Kool-Aid being doled out by a convicted felon lying to everyone in saying that only he can solve this nation's problems when he is the root cause himself of so many of them - due to his constant use of fear and division to attract his following.

And lastly, I've not seen Harris disavow her work on migration, have you? Until this thread you would have sworn that Harris was given the job to immediately stop the flow of migrants at our border in the early days of the Biden Administration where the reality was far more long-term than that. People like you fall for taglines without ever stopping to consider simple phrases and slogans often do tell the complete story about any particular issue. The way the media and opposition research frame persons and issues into their own narratives is an ongoing process as is the proliferation of intentionally misleading disinformation.

It's hard to claim someone "failed" at something when the problem at this very moment has improved from the last day Trump was President after it worsened first. Not a single word of the past sentence is untrue. And it's why I'm me and you are you - gullible and ignorant until the end.

Whoops! Sorry about the over-bolding.

why does the media suddenly want to reverse it's direction. It's a fair question.

This whole thread is an answer to your question. And first, let me say that I don't see the larger "media" changing it's direction, it's only those who've know the right direction from the get go who are bringing this topic up to pre-butal the inevitably wrong perceptions such as yours. I find it hilarious to think that those of us living in reality are obliged to correct intentional misperceptions created from the right if they become repeated tropes in the broader zeitgeist.

It's basically text book gaslighting, we all were there and had the same understanding but now looking back you're trying to say well technically that isn't true

No, you did have that understanding, I've never denied it. However, it was wrong then - as all the WH papers written THEN conclusively prove - and it's wrong now to say that what you want to call conventional wisdom is only now being challenged. The fact that is wasn't challenged enough for the truth to become common is how our media system works. The entire Trump mantra of "fake news" only applies when something - often based on a nuanced truth about a given policy - comes from critics on the left?

Sorry, but I'm not taking responsibility for anything the media does to serve its own ends when those ends are being an honest portrayer of the events and people they cover. However, I don't take anything for granted and when faced with an option on what is truth, I look it up myself.

The media isn't self-correcting. It's being forced to be people like me and discussions like this, pointing out that what they've been saying for years actually is a mischaracterization of what they were told and given examples of that is the factual truth.

...when those ends aren't being an honest portrayer...