Fox & Friends Hosts Rage at ‘Flat Out Lies’ and Democrat’s ‘Border Czar’ Talking Points — Before Airing Old Clips That Defeat Their Point

The hosts of Fox & Friends expressed unanimous disgust with those arguing Vice President Kamala Harris was never officially named “Border Czar” by President Joe Biden. Yet the archival news clips they aired, designed to prove their point, only undermined their argument.

At issue is the role Harris played in what many say is a failed immigration policy under the Biden administration, one that led to record millions of undocumented immigrants flooding the Southern border with next to no social safety net or structure in place to deal with the more than 10 million undocumented arrivals.

Yes, the Republicans blocked a bipartisan immigration bill. But the fact that Biden waited until his fourth year in office to address this crisis at the border — and only recently signed an executive order that he had long argued he could not or would not sign — entirely undermines any Democratic arguments that the crisis is a GOP invention.

Whether or not Harris was named the “Border Czar” with an official title or put in charge of immigration policies writ large has become just the latest debate that plays on the ephemeral nature of meaning itself.

Fox & Friends obtained a copy of “talking points” that explain, among other things, that “Vice President Harris was never appointed “border czar,”” which is objectively true. It goes on to say that this title was given to her by Republicans & press reports, which is also true.

Lawrence Jones said, “We weren’t supposed to get a copy of these talking points. This was just supposed to be for the legislators and the surrogate. And as you can see at the top of the list, they’re saying she was never the border czar.”

Again, she was never given that title. Former President Donald Trump had an official Border Czar: frequent Fox News guest, and former ICE Director, Tom Homan. Biden did not. That said, it’s not entirely unfair to use the term “border czar” as shorthand to describe the role that Biden gave to Harris, especially seeing as it came with an official statement at an on-camera press event, clearly designed to memorialize the vital role bestowed on his vice president.

Mediaite’s Isaac Schorr wrote a thoughtful column that takes a critical view of how many in the media appear to be rushing to defend Biden and Harris with word games, ignoring their abject failure on immigration, writing:

There are layers to this delusional attempt to deceive the public.

First, it’s obvious that Republicans are using “border czar” now — just as the media happily used it three years ago — as a shorthand, not a proper noun. “Border czar” is an informal label denoting that the head of the executive branch tasked Harris with addressing the issue, not that she was confirmed by the Senate as such.

Second, the defense of Harris being offered by much of the Fourth Estate — that she was actually only supposed to worry about the diplomatic solutions to the problem — is perfectly reflective of the folly of her and Biden’s approach to the issue. They believed that they could fix the problem while discarding of effective enforcement mechanisms by addressing “root causes.”

And third, even if her mandate was only to stop people from fleeing their countries to come to the border, she failed miserably. People have continued to flock to the border, bringing with them the maladies — drugs, human trafficking, and death — that have radicalized the American public on this issue. In some ways, to accept the media’s narrative now is to endorse an even more scathing indictment of Harris’s performance. Evidently, she couldn’t even manage this much more limited task.

Perhaps the producers of Fox & Friends read Isaac’s piece, because the curvy couch was flat-out riled up at personalities in the political media arena who have (correctly) pointed out Harris never had that title. They then ran a number of clips of various talking heads, along with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre, all insisting — again, correctly — that Harris never had that title.

“This is just another area in which they don’t want you to believe your ears or your eyes,” Brian Kilmeade said, coming out of the clips. “They told us Joe Biden was fine. They told us he was going to finish the race. We watched the debate and it all fell apart. Now they want us to say that even though the borders collapsed, it’s an absolute mess.” He then said that the immigration failure was, along with Afghanistan, “the biggest blight in their administration.”

“So we have to remove it from Kamala Harris’s portfolio by telling everyone we never said it,” Kilmeade archly mocked whoever was behind the talking points that claimed Harris was never named Border czar.  “The problem is, you did,” before cueing up a montage of soundbites designed to show Harris as border czar.

The clips include Biden saying “As to, the VP today because she’s most qualified first to do it, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help out, we’re going to need help in stemming the movement of, so many folks, stemming into migration to our southern border.” 

In other words, Harris was assigned the task of stopping the root causes leading to the massive increase of immigration, just as the talking points described.

This was followed by a series of clips of Vice President Harris talking about the border. “Well, we are going to the border. We have to deal with what’s happening at the border. There’s no question about that. That’s not a debatable point,” she said to Lester Holt.  “Well, it’s not my first trip” to the border, she is seen telling Peter Doocy who followed up with, “As the person in charge of this spot.” Harris replied, “So the important aspect of this is leading this visit after the work that we did in Guatemala…in Mexico.”

Gotcha! Oh, wait…

Fox & Friends viewers must have been understandably confused because they were told they were going to see evidence that she was the border czar, and instead, they saw clips of Biden and Harris discussing the border.

The reliably reasonable Steve Doocy stepped in to clean this up. “Clearly, this is a big liability for her because she is tied to Joe Biden. So let’s just get let’s all get on the same page. She was in charge only of the root causes” of the failed immigration policy, Doocy said.

This is absolutely correct, but it does nothing to push back on this moronic border czar title controversy, on which everyone — across the political spectrum — seems guilty of playing silly word games.

The segment continued to go down a rabbit hole of cheapfakes, deep fakes, and how the media lies to the American public. They did not bring up how many Fox News programs, including their own, mischaracterized a clip of Joe Biden “wandering off” during a G7 press event, suggesting he didn’t know where he was when, in fact, he was intentionally addressing just-landed parachutists, but I digress.

“It’s the flat-out lies,” Lawrence Jones said. “It’s like this: Gaslight. Gaslight. Nothing. Nothing to see here. And then when the American people see it for themselves, it becomes the issue, and they pivot to the next issue.”

Summing up, Republicans and their media surrogates are making a strategic mistake by continuing to argue about something as minute as the border czar title. Democrats are disingenuously trying to distract from the substance of a failed border policy with the “what’s a czar?” word game. As a result? Everyone loses.

Harris is certainly open to and should receive a good deal of reasonable criticism about the Biden administration’s failure at the border. A debate about an official title that she never received does not serve the American public well and ends up making us all a little dumber in the process.

Watch above via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.