The media are already hard at work to mislead about VP Kamala Harris.
The latest is an effort to memoryhole Harris’s role leading Biden’s disastrous immigration policy as “border czar.”
Who’s up for some side-by-sides, lest we forget? ⤵️
There’s no better place to start than with @axios, who made waves today when they claimed that Harris was never the “border czar.”
The problem?
Axios had called her exactly that back in 2021.
They added a truly Orwellian editors note after the backlash, claiming that they had misreported initially.
Really.
Oh and this headline from @axios.
“Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis”
How can @axios believe both of these things?
I feel like I’m losing my mind.
But it wasn’t just Axios.
One of my favorite was @nytimes, who tried to explain why Republicans were “misleading” in tying Harris to Biden’s immigration policies.
In 2021, they called Harris “the face of President Biden’s plan to bolster the region and deter migration”
I mean, @nytimes even said the old “border czar” stepped down because Harris’s new “role as one of the administration’s top border officials” had “eclipsed” the position!
@USAToday “fact checked” the claim that Harris was “in charge” on immigration despite a previous “fact check” where they said that Biden had tapped Harris to “lead a federal effort to deter migrants.”
@USAToday also said that “Harris will lead U.S. efforts to stem migration.”
Hello?!
I feel like whatever little is holding me to this temporal plane is fraying.
@CNN should probably get their talking points in order.
Particularly rich is this from @politico, who claimed tying Harris to the border was misleading despite a headline from 2021 that called her “the point person on immigration issues amid border surge.”
To be clear: The idea that Harris was in charge on the border isn’t some figment of your imagination.
Look at these headlines from 2021. The facts were so damning that CNN reported that Harris was trying to distance herself from the mess at the border.
Now why would that be?
But, no, that hasn’t stopped outlets from pretending that Harris’s role had nothing to do with the border and immigration.
Here’s @CBSNews
@PolitiFact on another planet as usual.
@VOANews continues to disappoint me after I once went to the mat to defend them.
“Experts”!
@MotherJones called it a “myth” that Harris was tasked with doing what Biden told her to do.
Methinks it isn’t Republicans who aren’t interested in the “facts” here, @voxdotcom
Look I’m not waiting on @TIME to be honest, but cmon guys.
What the coverage quite deliberately elides is that Harris was, unequivocally, tasked with leading Biden’s immigration policy to combat the surge at the border.
Biden’s own remarks say so.
Whether she accepted the title of “border czar” is totally irrelevant.
But get used to this. I suspect the media’s efforts to paper over VP Harris’s shortcomings—in office and otherwise—are only just beginning.
I’m sure I’ll be covering the topic frequently at my newsletter, @Holden_Court.
@Holden_Court If you’d like to support the beer fund that gives me the mental and emotional fortitude to do these threads as yeoman’s work, I’ve added a tip jar to my newsletter: paypal.com/donate/?busine…
@Holden_Court Sometimes what can be is, in fact, burdened by what has been.
@Holden_Court The press is still going. @ddale8 is the latest to join the circus. (H/t @CurtisHouck)
In honor of my securing the top spot on @StuDoesAmerica’s most frequent guests list, I wanted to highlight perhaps my favorite appearance: breaking down the media’s lovefest with former Gov Andrew Cuomo as he was killing countless New Yorkers.
The biggest media story of Biden’s time in office is how the press covered up his cognitive decline…right up until he became a disastrous political liability for Democrats.
Wanna know why people don’t trust the corporate press? Look at these side by sides ⤵️
It’s stunning the pace with which the media narrative shifted.
In 3 weeks time, @washingtonpost went from blaming “cheapfake” videos misleading audiences as the cause of concern around Biden to a headline that even foreign officials were alarmed by Biden’s “accelerating” aging.
Where was the @washingtonpost for those three weeks between ‘four Pinocchios for this lie, we all know Biden doesn’t dance!’ to “Biden has slowed considerably over the last several months.”
The gov’t finally released pictures of Biden with his son Hunter’s business partners.
You may remember the corporate press alleging for years that there’s no evidence Biden had any contact with Hunter’s shady businesses.
I think some corrections are in order. ⤵️
For years, the corporate press ran cover for claims that President Biden wasn’t involved in Hunter’s unsavory business dealings, particularly with foreign governments.
That was all a sham.
I think @nytimes should correct the record now that we know their reporting is false.
If this story is worth reporting on — and it appears that @washingtonpost thought it was, at least when the narrative helped Democrats — then it should be worth following up when we get new information that makes clear the Post reported in error.
Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter says an enormous amount about the president’s views of justice.
But it also says a lot about the willingness of the mainstream media—the nation’s noble fact checking corps—to repeat bogus claims that suit Democrats.
Remember? ⤵️
For starters, let’s revisit the coverage of how Biden wouldn’t do what he just did.
Biden said he wouldn’t pardon his son, no way. He would trust our legal system.
The media repeated it at every turn, without a shred of incredulity.
Here’s @washingtonpost
Seemingly every outlet did the same. @CNN had a couple of my favorites.
Look at the lede in on this first one.
The media’s job isn’t to simply repeat what politicians tell them. Whatever happened to “defenders of our democracy” and all that?
The news that MSNBC may soon have a new owner (and that it might be a certain X power user) compelled me to finally open my “MSNBC conspiracy theories” screenshot folder and, woo boy, there are a lot.
If you’d like to revisit them, buckle up, and follow along. ⤵️
There’s nowhere better to start than with Russiagate.
Do you remember the promotion from @chrislhayes, @MalcolmNance, @maddow and others at @MSNBC that perhaps Donald Trump was a Russian agent?
I, for one, will not be forgetting.
But there was plenty of other insanity from the gang at MSNBC about Russiagate.
Here are just a couple.
The first seems apropos with Trump again picking a cabinet.