NBC’s Holt Challenges Kamala Harris’ Claim that ‘We’ve Been to the Border’ — ‘You Haven’t’

NBC’s Lester Holt pushed back against Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim that the Biden administration has been visiting the border to solve the crisis.

During a sit-down interview with Holt in Guatemala that aired Tuesday on NBC’s “Today,” Harris emphasized she is working to “identify the problem” at the border to solve it.

Holt asked the vice president, who was put in charge of solving the border crisis by President Joe Biden, about her plans to visit the country’s southern border.

Harris said the Biden administration has been to the border, which Holt pointed out that she hasn’t.

“[T]he question that has come up, and you heard it here, and you’ll hear it again, I’m sure, is, ‘Why not visit the border? Why not see what Americans are seeing in this crisis?'” Holt asked Harris.

“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. But we have to understand that there’s a reason people are arriving at our border and ask what is that reason, and then identify the problem so we can fix it,” Harris replied.

Holt later followed up, “Do you have any plans to visit the border?”

“At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We’ve been to the border. So this whole … thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border,” Harris claimed.

Holt stated, “You haven’t been to the border.”

“And I haven’t been to Europe,” Harris said with a laugh. “And I mean, I don’t understand the point that you’re making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border.”

“I care about what’s happening at the border,” she added. “I’m in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration. There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what’s happening at the border, we better care about the root causes and address them. And so, that’s what I’m doing.”

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