Inventing Kamala

By Becket Adams

Sunday, July 28, 2024

 

In case you haven’t heard, Vice President Kamala Harris is the presumptive 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.

 

Yes, through some combination of backroom political machinations and plain dumb luck, the woman who dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary a full eight weeks before the Iowa caucuses — and without a single pledged delegate! — may become the next president of the United States.

 

Even crazier than Harris’s political ascent, however, are the press’s efforts to reinvent her for the general election, fashioning her into a completely unrecognizable version of the woman who first came to Congress in 2017. To this end, journalists are going beyond merely bending the facts or misrepresenting truths for the vice president’s general-election glow-up. Some have resorted to outright lying, pumping out political disinformation that’d make even the North Koreans blush.

 

A Minnesota CBS News affiliate, for example, published a fact check last week titled, “Trump falsely accuses Harris of donating to Minnesota Freedom Fund, bailing out ‘dangerous criminals.’”

 

In 2020, then-senator Harris’s official Twitter account said, “If you’re able to, chip in now to the [Minnesota Freedom Fund] to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The CBS News affiliate even asked her about her support. Harris’s tweet, which includes a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund’s donation page, has been shared more than 15,000 times.

 

Yes, really. CBS’s point is that Harris didn’t donate to the group that posted bail for dangerous criminals but merely fundraised for it. Oh, okay. Thank you for that clarity.

 

In a media narrative far more egregious than the rewriting of Harris’s support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, major newsrooms now dispute that President Biden appointed Harris in 2021 to lead the administration’s response to the immigration crisis. He did, though. Biden tasked Harris explicitly with tackling the situation at the southern border, including addressing “root causes” and leading diplomatic efforts in Central and South American countries. It was a monumental undertaking involving several approaches, strategies, and responsibilities, which is why the vice president bore the “border czar” moniker.

 

The trouble for the press is that, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there have been an estimated 7 million southwest land border encounters since Biden was inaugurated in 2021. Considering that Harris was supposed to lead the charge on this long-running disaster, newsrooms are scrambling now to absolve the vice president of an obvious electoral weakness.

 

But Harris was appointed border czar, an informal title that entails real duties.

 

I remember it, you remember it, and the White House remembers it. Members of the press remember it. They wish you wouldn’t.

 

“Harris border confusion haunts her new campaign,” reads the headline to an Axios report by Stef W. Kight. Its subhead reads, “Her opponents labeled her with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.”

 

“In early 2021,” the article continues, “President Biden enlisted Vice President Kamala Harris to help with a slice of the migration issue. . . . Confusion around the VP’s exact role, early media misfires and the rapidly changing regional migration crisis has made the issue a top target for the GOP trying to define their new opponent.”

 

In 2021, however, Axios’s Shawna Chen reported that Harris, “appointed by Biden as border czar,” would examine the “root causes” driving migration.

 

Also, do you know what Kight herself reported in 2021? She authored an article titled “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.”

 

From “in charge of border crisis” to “enlisted . . . to help with a slice of the migration issue,” and all that changed in between was Harris’s presidential prospects.

 

After Axios realized last week that it is one of many news organizations that used the phrase “border czar” to describe Harris’s immigration gig, the newsgroup affixed an editor’s note to Kight’s story: “This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.”

 

Remember that Axios saw no problem with the term until it became a political liability for the brand-new presumptive Democratic nominee. It’s probably all coincidence that Axios has come around at this exact moment to this point of view.

 

There’s more.

 

PolitiFact published a risible “fact check” last week, arguing, “Joe Biden didn’t name Kamala Harris ‘border czar.’ He tasked her with addressing the issues driving migration from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. U.S. Border security is the Homeland Security Secretary’s responsibility.”

 

Ah, so never mind all those people streaming across the border from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala — she was merely tasked with handling “issues.” Don’t get it twisted.

 

Then there’s the New York Times, which informed readers last week that “border czar” is a “misleading phrase” insofar as it involves Harris’s work on immigration.

 

“Ms. Harris was not, in fact, appointed border czar,” the paper declared, “nor was she tasked with addressing the broader problems plaguing the border itself, where minors have at times slept on the floors of overcrowded facilities for days beyond the legal limit.”

 

Is that right? In 2021, the Times also reported, “Ms. Harris will . . . soon be taking over work from a departing official with years of experience. Last week, Roberta S. Jacobson, the former ambassador to Mexico chosen as Mr. Biden’s ‘border czar,’ said that she would retire from government. She said she was happy to see Ms. Harris assume the work of stemming migration from Central America.” The Times also claimed at the time that Harris would serve as “the face of President Biden’s plan to bolster the region and deter migration.”

 

“Stemming migration from Central America” sounds more involved than merely “addressing the broader problems plaguing the border.”

 

Also, what do you call someone who takes over for an outgoing “border czar”?

 

USA Today ran a fact check last week: “Harris’ border work was on ‘root causes’ of immigration; she wasn’t in charge.” Let’s review the tape. In 2021, USA Today reported Harris “will lead a federal effort to deter migrants from coming to the U.S. border seeking asylum.” The same paper also said that in 2021, Harris “will lead U.S. efforts to stem migration.”

 

Politico this week reported, “Harris was tapped by Biden to address the root causes of migration in 2021 — not the border — but the GOP has frequently used the vice president in their attacks about the White House’s handling of the border crisis.”

 

Yet Politico said in 2021, “Biden makes Harris the point person on immigration amid border surge.”

 

This supercut by the folks at the Media Research Center drives home the absurdity of the press’s “border czar” gaslighting:

“[Harris] was never put in charge of the border,” claimed CNN “fact-checker” Daniel Dale. “She was given a much more limited assignment to lead a so-called root causes diplomatic effort trying to address the reasons in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras that people choose to migrate.” In 2022, CNN reported Harris’s “tough task of addressing migration to the southern border is not getting any easier one year later.”

 

Dale further commented, “Now, many Republicans scoff at this kind of fact-check. They’re like, ‘there were a bunch of articles back in 2021 that called her borders czar!’ Frankly, those articles were wrong.”

 

Wait. Journalists say they were incorrect then, but they are correct now. Who’s to say they aren’t incorrect now and had it correct back then? Somewhere down the road, we may very well be told that what is being reported today is wrong, while the future narrative revives the original as the correct one.

 

If this sounds ridiculous, it is. This is straight revisionism. Harris’s task as border czar was so difficult that it was only weeks before she and her team tried to put distance between her and the gig. Perhaps Dale forgot the CNN article published in 2021, “Vice President Harris’ team tries to distance her from fraught situation at the border.” The subhead read, “In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border.”

 

This astonishingly clumsy media revisionism is absurd, insulting, and dangerous. Decent propaganda is usually subtler than this. Then again, these weasels have only a few months to sell Harris to general-election voters. They have little choice but to rush their efforts. You can have good, fast, or cheap, but not all three.

 

That brief period in which the Biden administration faced an adversarial press already seems like a lifetime ago.