Old social media posts by Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris are recirculating after Harris announced she’d sign a border security bill that would provide $650 million in funding to a wall on the United States Southern border.
Harris, who is now campaigning as a border state prosecutor who can reduce immigration, said she’d sign the bill during her Democratic National Convention speech last week.
That bill, which Harris described in a campaign video as the “toughest border control bill in decades,” gives the president the authority to shut down the border if more than 5,000 people cross it per day.
The bill also allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to build a border wall—a signature policy of former President Donald Trump since the beginning of his political career.
But Harris’ new stance faces accusations of political posturing after an old post of hers resurfaced.
“Trump’s border wall is just a stupid use of money. I will block any funding for it,” Harris wrote in April 2017 when she was a senator for California.
That post has been flooded with new comments after Axios linked to it in a piece Tuesday highlighting Harris’ flip-flop.
“Funny how they change and leave shit up,” posted @Fuctupmind.
“Screenshot and save this before they delete it,” added @obiopiah, while plenty of other posters just quote-tweeted the post with screenshots from the Axios piece.
Harris’ social media is filled with posts denouncing Trump’s wall over the years and throughout her political campaigns.
“It’s been three years since Trump signed an executive order to start his multi-billion dollar vanity wall project. Three years later and it’s still a complete waste of taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars,” Harris posted on Facebook on Jan. 25.
“Donald Trump launched his campaign with hateful attacks against immigrants,” Harris posted the same year on Facebook again, pointing to his Muslim ban and child separating policies. “This is who he is. He must be voted out.”
Harris also made posts condemning the border wall on Facebook while she was in the Senate.
On April 27, 2017, she posted a graphic listing all the policies she’d put in place instead of the border wall, which she claimed would cost $66.9 billion (a 2020 article from NPR reported that U.S. Customs and Border Protection anticipated the project would cost $11 billion).
Instead of spending that money on a wall, she said it could go to resurfacing 138,000 miles of roads, treating 14 million people for opioid addiction, replacing 12 million lead service water lines, and providing medical care for veterans.
“Trump is committed as ever to his border wall,” Harris wrote at the time, “but there are many better uses for those taxpayer dollars.”
Since taking over for President Joe Biden as the 2024 nominee, Harris sought to reassert herself as a border hawk. Immigration became a hot-button issue during Biden as border crossings surged.
Harris served as Biden’s border envoy during the crisis, but as public backlash to immigration grew, the party adopted more stringent policies, despite its professed aversion to Trump’s wall.
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