Vice President Kamala Harris conceded in a televised interview this week that her 'biggest failure' since taking office last Janua...
Vice President Kamala Harris conceded in a televised interview this week that her 'biggest failure' since taking office last January has been 'not getting out of DC more,' as she continues to face criticism for making just one visit to the southern border despite the worsening migrant crisis.
Speaking to CBS News' Margaret Brennan for a weekend edition of Face the Nation set to air Sunday, Harris made the remarks after interviewer Brennan asked the former California senator an open-ended, introspective question concerning her own perceived shortcomings.
'What do you think, as you come to the end of this first year, what do you think your biggest failure has been at this point?' Brennan asks in a preview clip for the White House-set interview.
In the clip, Harris, 57, seems to laugh off the question at first, before admitting: 'To not get out of DC more.'
Vice President Kamala Harris conceded in a televised interview this week that her 'biggest failure' since taking office last January has been 'not getting out of DC more,' as the politician continues to face criticism for her handling of the migrant crisis at the US-Mexican border
Harris, who had a COVID scare earlier in the week after coming into contact with an infected staffer, went on: 'I mean, and I actually mean that sincerely for a number of reasons.
'You know, I, we, the president and I came in, you know, COVID had already started,' she continued. 'The pandemic had started. And when we came in we really couldn't travel.'
'You know, a large part of the relationship that he and I have built has been being in this, you know, together in the same office for hours on end, doing Zooms or whatever because we couldn't get out of D.C., and on issues that are about fighting for anything from voting rights to child care, to one of the issues that I care deeply about, maternal health.
'Being with the people who are directly impacted by this work, listening to them so that they, not some pundit, tells us what their priorities are. I think it's critically important.'
'People are, people have a right to know and believe that their government actually sees and hears them.
'My biggest concern is, I don't ever want to be in a bubble when it comes to being aware of and in touch with what people need at any given moment in time.'
Harris' comments come as she continues to face rampant criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike for being largely withdrawn from the ongoing migrant crisis at the country's southern border - a predicament that the president asked her to solve.
Since being named as the US' point person on the migrant crisis in March, Harris has visited the border region just once, more than six months ago in June, when she spent a few hours in El Paso, Texas, before jetting off to her $5million Los Angeles mansion, where she spent the rest of that weekend.
Since being named as the US' point person on the migrant crisis in March, Harris has visited the border region just once, more than six months ago in June, when she spent a few hours at the the El Paso US Customs and Border Protection Central Processing Center
Harris is pictured making her one and only visit to the southern border since becoming VP, during a June 2021 trip to El Paso in Texas
The vice president then returned to her posh digs the very next weekend to celebrate July 4, and has since made several other visits to her home state - including a unexplained, non-public visit to Palm Springs in October - but has yet to make a second excursion to the border.
Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar said that he's done trying to work with the vice president on border issues, as Border Patrol agents continue to record a rise in encounters between illegal immigrants and their officers.
'I say this very respectfully to her: I moved on,' Cuellar told The New York Times earlier in the week. 'She was tasked with that job, it doesn't look like she's very interested in this, so we are going to move on to other folks that work on this issue.'
Cuellar's gripes originated when Harris said she'd be visiting the border in June and a phone call from his office to hers went unreturned.
Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (left) said that he's done trying to work with Vice President Kamala Harris (right) on border issues
On immigration, Harris had been charged by President Joe Biden to deal with the root causes of migration
The politician has also come under fire from other progressives after she declared publicly that undocumented migrants were not welcome in the US.
With that said, the crisis is still pressing, with nearly 6,000 undocumented immigrants being apprehended by agents stationed along the border daily.
During Harris' sole, brief visit to the region, the politician was not brought to the actual border line, but to nearby immigration facilities where she met with migrant girls aged 9-16.
Harris' other trips out of DC have included visits to Guatemala and Mexico in June, to discuss the 'root causes' of the migrant crisis, as well as stops in Vietnam, Singapore, and Japan in August, in a show of solidarity with the Asian countries against China.
Harris visited Vietnam over the summer, where spoke with the country's Vice President Vo Thi Anh Xuan at the Presidential Palace in capital Hanoi
The politician also took a trip to France last month in an effort to mend the US' recently tarnished relationship with its longtime European ally, after the country was left out of the U.S.-U.K.-Australia deal on submarine technology that was spawned earlier this year.
The politician also took a trip to France last month, where she met with President Emmanuel Macron, in an effort to mend the US' recently tarnished relationship with its longtime ally, after the country was left out of the U.S.-U.K.-Australia submarine deal spawned earlier this year
In the White House-set CBS interview set to air Sunday, Harris told Teller that her proudest accomplishment as vice president is her empowering of today's youth
Harris' domestic trips, meanwhile, have included trips to Las Vegas, Chicago, Charlotte, the San Francisco Bay Area and Newark, New Jersey - which she visited in October the same day that other top Biden administration officials were in Mexico City to attend a high-level meeting about border issues.
Harris, meanwhile, was advocating for people in the urban, northeastern city to get vaccinated amid the then surging Delta variant.
In her upcoming Face the Nation interview, Harris touted what she sees as her 'biggest accomplishment' since taking office.
'When I go to an event, whatever it is, and some dad or some mom brings their kids -- daughters, sons - and says "That's your vice president," and challenges their kids to think about who does what, as a way, I think, of empowering their kids to know they can do anything they want – not be confined by who has traditionally done what – I think that is, that's one of the things I, that gives me joy, is to know that, that might be a possible impact.'
On Christmas Eve, Harris visited with first responders and other first-line workers in Los Angeles along with her husband, Doug Emhoff.
On Christmas Eve, Harris visited with first responders and other first-line workers in Los Angeles along with her husband, Doug Emhoff
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