Rick Scott trolls Kamala Harris over avoiding Mexican border crisis

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U.S. Sen. Rick Scott continues to ask why Vice President Kamala Harris has not personally surveyed the crisis at the U.S./Mexican border.

On Monday, Scott’s Senate office issued a statement characterizing Harris’ “avoidance” of the border as “getting extreme.”

“Flying over the border at 35,000 feet doesn’t count as a visit. Now, 123 days since taking office, it’s shocking to see the lengths to which President Biden and Vice President Harris will go to avoid seeing the border crisis for themselves. Apprehensions at the border rose above 178,000 in April alone, nearly 6,000 a day. This is about the safety of American families. We must secure the border now,” Scott urged.

The Joe Biden administration has framed the migrant crisis as the consequence of security issues throughout Latin America, and Scott frames that as a dodge of the larger question.

“While I welcome cooperation with Guatemala and Mexico, Biden and Harris have still not acknowledged the humanitarian and national security chaos their policies have created here in America. They still refuse to actually go to the U.S. southern border, hear from our brave Customs and Border Protection agents and see the U.S. side of this crisis that their failed amnesty and open borders policies have created. It’s time for Harris and Biden to get down to the U.S. border and provide answers to the American people,” Scott urged.

Scott and Republican colleagues have forced the White House to defend an approach to the situation that seems largely ineffective thus far, decrying the partisan criticisms as “political games.” A press conference earlier this month from Scott and other Republican Senators led to an inconclusive response from Jen Psaki, the White House Press Secretary.

“The President’s focus, and the Vice President’s focus, is on solutions,” Psaki said. “What we’ve seen over the past several months is, we came in and there was little preparation for what was going to be a surge of migrants at the border. What we’ve done since then is massively reduced the number of children who are at Border Patrol facilities from over 5,000 to under 1,000. The number is probably even lower than that now.”

Successes notwithstanding, until Biden or Harris visit the border and hazard the optics of that show up, expect Scott and other Republicans to continue hammering the message.