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)
I know there’s a lot going on but we just had a media conspiracy implode that I think captures something important about the corporate press.
Did you hear about how Trump was allegedly going after John Bolton as retribution for his criticism?
Well…follow along ⤵️
We saw a week straight of media suggestions that Trump was abusing the powers of the state to deal out “retribution” to John Bolton following the news that the FBI (“Trump’s DOJ!” headlines rang out) raided his house.
We were in “unsettling” times, to hear @nytimes tell it.
The *Editorial Board* at @nytimes put out an even more dramatic statement, asking who Trump’s next payback victim after Bolton would be.
A single poll has bootstrapped a media narrative that DC residents are outraged by Trump’s takeover.
I poked around the cross tabs of the poll — of 600 or so of DC’s more comfortable residents — and I think it’s pretty suspect.
How come? Follow along: ⤵️
Let’s start with the poll. The @washingtonpost talked to 604 people, of whom 90% — 90%! — self-described as living in “very good” or “good” neighborhoods.
So, fine. 80% of people who like where they live in DC are upset.
But even beyond that, it’s worth asking whether this poll really captures DC’s opinion.
In the poll, only 31% describe crime as a “serious” or “very serious” problem in DC.
When @washingtonpost asked this same question in May, *50%* said it was a serious problem.
I feel like I’m losing my mind about the Biden autopen pardons.
The former president said he made every decision. His staff says that he didn’t actually make the final call on thousands of them.
We’re supposed to treat this as normal?
I try to unpack. ⤵️
This got new life from a Biden interview w/ @nytimes.
NYT leads by repeating Biden’s claim that he made the calls…burying the admissions that 1) he really didn’t & 2) where he allegedly did, the aids sending details to the autopen weren’t in the room when the call was made…
…instead, they relied on what senior staff had allegedly heard, which was then passed along.
The piece ends with the revelation that Biden’s then-chief of staff gave the final sign off.
Given what the former admin has lied about, why should we trust this reporting of events?
The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.
Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.
Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.
You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.
Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate.
As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.
The new book “Original Sin” from Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson recounts the effort to cover up Biden’s cognitive decline ahead of the election. The authors point to many guilty parties.
The one glaring omission? Their colleagues in the corporate press. Follow along ⤵️
There are numerous dramatic reveals. The Biden team considered condoning him to a wheelchair? Maybe in his fog he forgot about the border?
But as I worked on a review for @commonplc, the one thought that I kept coming back to was that you can’t tell this story without the press.
Perhaps no one was more vital to the continued fiction that Biden had it together than the media.
Tapper and Thompson even highlight some of the telling moments.
Biden’s cancer diagnosis is a tragedy I know first-hand.
But our sympathy can’t silence questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, clarified just days ago by the Hur tape.
The media tried to bury the story then. They’re trying again now.
I’ve got the receipts. ⤵️
When the report first came out in 2024, outlets rushed to demean Hur, accusing him of serving as a Republican hatchet man.
Just look at this take from @USATODAY, who assembled sympathetic voices to make the case that Hur “crossed the line.” They found an expert to call it a “disgrace” and then featured the obviously unbiased Eric Holder to lead a section titled “Way too many gratuitous remarks.”
The audio makes clear that Hur, if anything, played down how alarming the claims were.
(If you haven’t listened to the Hur audio yet, you should.)