(The Center Square) – Future North Carolina congressman Addison McDowell and a sheriff from the district say voters should pay attention to what they won’t hear as Vice President Kamala Harris visits on Thursday.
Harris was to be in Greensboro, the third visit from the big three of the Democrats’ presidential election campaign. President Joe Biden came to Raleigh the day after he debated former President Donald Trump, and his wife Jill was in Wilmington last Friday as part of a three-stop tour in the South.
The first lady's trip and topic – promoting efforts toward veterans – was a bit awkward given her husband's words the previous night. Equally awkward, McDowell and Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page say it is the border and fentanyl that voters won't hear about but should from the vice president.
In the June 26 debate, Biden falsely said, “The truth is, I’m the only president this century, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world like he did.”
Thirteen service members died in August 2021 during the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, an event etched forever by video images of people trying to hang onto aircraft leaving. This year in January, three service members were killed in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border in a drone attack.
Harris, say McDowell and Page, “is unfit to be president or vice president. And North Carolinians know it.” Specifically, they pointed to the impact of fentanyl coming into the country through “Joe Biden’s open border.”
“Joe Biden’s open border – and his border czar Kamala Harris – could stop this border crisis today if they wanted to. But they won’t,” said McDowell, the Republican without a Democratic opponent who needs the formality of the general election to advance into Congress. “They opened the border on Day 1 and they’ve endangered every family in North Carolina.”
McDowell lost his brother to fentanyl poisoning in 2016, when Biden was vice president in the Obama administration. He said it was one pill, manufactured in China, smuggled through an open border.
“President Trump did a phenomenal job undoing years of terrible policy, we were headed in the right direction,” McDowell said. “However, when Biden and Kamala Harris took office, their policies created an unmitigated disaster and drove me off the sidelines and into a run for office.”
Trump backed the lobbyist for BlueCross and BlueShield. As a result, paster Mark Walker declined to ask for a runoff following his Super Tuesday loss to McDowell. Walker said he accepted a place within Trump’s team.
Page, speaking with McDowell at a Republican press conference timed for Harris’ visit, said he did what Harris has not – he went to the border. The first time was in 2010, and he’s returned multiple times on his dime in order to meet with sheriffs and know how to advocate for legislation.
“You don’t hear a lot in this administration about the fentanyl deaths in America,” Page said. “Over a hundred thousand people died last year due to fentanyl deaths and opioid deaths in this country. We take it back to North Carolina, we lose about 11 people a day. We’ll lose 4,000 North Carolinians this coming year to fentanyl deaths.
“The sad thing is she’s never been to the border. She never engaged with the Border Patrol agents. She never talked to them to find out what was actually going on, to see what she could do to help our country and protect our communities.”
In a March 24, 2021, announcement , Biden said of Harris, "I’ve asked her, the VP, today – because she’s the most qualified person to do it – to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help – are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border."
Since January 2021, an estimated 12 million people have entered the country illegally , coming from more than 150 countries. Federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, have acknowledged they can’t locate millions of them, The Center Square previously reported .
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