The media haven’t been interested in providing voters with much of a picture of Kamala Harris beyond “vibes.”
So I did the work for them and went back through what she’s actually said and done on policy and beyond.
It isn’t a pretty picture. Follow along ⤵️
There’s nowhere better to start than on immigration. Back in 2020, Harris was among the Dem candidates who supported decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
Now @politico claims she “promised to go tough on border security.”
Color me skeptical.
Especially considering she supported eliminating ICE, tried to stop production on the border wall, and otherwise unwind the Trump policies that actually reduced illegal immigration.
And yet, Biden made her the top U.S. voice on immigration, much as she may now deny it.
Lots has been said on her
fracking stance. @EENewsUpdates said she had “flipped the script” on the policy.
When asked in 2020, she was unequivocal: “there’s no question, I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
Seems an unlikely change!
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg on climate.
In that same 2020 @CNN “climate emergency town hall,” she pushed to pass the Green New Deal by nuking the filibuster, attacking oil and gas companies for supposed sins against the climate, and advocated plastic straws.
Then, tied to climate, there’s her support for offshoring our manufacturing, as @JDVance calls out.
While shipping jobs overseas, she’s pushed mandates for electric vehicles and used your tax dollars to support them.
This is the same Harris who wanted to defund the police.
She’ll try to pretend otherwise, but she endorsed the movement, as well as “reimagining” and otherwise diverting police resources.
Is this someone you want to elect?
I mean. She endorsed the bail fund that supported violent rioters in the Summer of 2020.
Remember this tweet? Remember the American cities that burned?
The press endeavored to make you forget. I hope you didn’t.
Harris is much tougher on law-abiding citizens, though.
Don’t forget, she said should take take executive action to ban so-called assault weapons and pushed for a gun seizure (“mandatory buyback”)
And what about her health care policy?
Allegedly she now supports “an array of moderate alternatives” to Medicare For All.
Which is interesting, because she wrote the book on Medicare For All.
The post is still up!
And then there are the areas where the public might be interested to know about her failures and deceptions. One clear one is her role covering up Biden’s cognitive decline.
After the debate, when the world could see Biden’s clear state, she was there to combat your lyin’ eyes.
She’s frequently made a point of hyping her own efforts at “defending democracy.”
Yet she was seized the Dem presidential nomination without receiving a single primary vote.
Her numbers for the non-Democratic roll call vote among party insiders would make Hugo Chavez blush.
And her supposed commitment to democracy makes her consistent attacks on one of the three branches of it—the Supreme Court—curious at best.
That includes plans to pack it, which she’s on the record saying she’s open to.
I wrote more about this point on The Commons at @AmerCompass if you’re interested in my full take on Harris and Democrats contra democracy. americancompass.org/democrats-disd…
And she was a longtime advocate of “Russian collusion,” the effort to tar Trump as a Russian Manchurian candidate to get him out of office.
Lying to overturn an election doesn’t sound particularly democracy-defending, either.
And she’s bought in on plenty of other conspiracy theories—what I believe are now termed “misinformation”—too, from the alleged “Russian bounties” on U.S. soldiers to Trump supposedly tear gassing protestors (he didn’t) to the “whipping” story.
It’s all particularly rich coming from Harris, who was just revealed to be producing her own misinformation on a massive scale by stealth-editing headlines from stories about her for her ads.
@amuse with the details.
But my all-time favorite is her defense of Jussie Smollett.
Just take it in.
The media has been claiming that Harris has pivoted despite the fact she hasn’t given a public appearance in three weeks since taking the top spot.
As @BlueBoxDave explains, that’s decidedly irresponsible.
Is the media interested in this? No, apparently not.
Instead they’re talking about what they deem the most important element of the election: joy.
Give me a break.
As ever, there’s more to this story than I could fit in a thread. Full piece at my newsletter, @Holden_Court: open.substack.com/pub/drewholden…
@Holden_Court And if you want to support my reporting, sign up as a paid subscriber to the newsletter (link in bio) or feel free to kick me a couple bucks in the beer fund.
With the news that Walz’s reelection campaign won’t survive the spiraling child care center fraud scandal in his state, I wanted to reup some of the worst legacy media efforts to put lipstick on this particular pig.
Follow along: ⤵️
I have to start with @nytimes, who seemed positively incensed that a video from @nickshirleyy caught fire, accusing him of being “in search of politically charged footage,” while burying whether there were any kids at these child care centers in the first place.
This from the same @nytimes who a few weeks ago wrote an extensive piece about “how fraud swamped Minnesota’s social services system on Tim Walz’s watch.”
The legacy media didn’t miss the Minnesota Somalian fraud story.
They actively dismissed it as made up, racist, or xenophobic.
Before the stories are quietly edited, I’ve got screenshots. ⤵️
I can’t believe this is real, but @AP basically did the Somalians-founding-America meme as a straight reported piece on how beneficial the community has been in Minnesota.
“Minnesota Somalis are as Minnesotan as tater-tot hotdish,” @CNN (Dec 7)
With the news that Trump freed the hostages and brokered an Israel/Hamas ceasefire, I thought it would be a good time to check in on the folks who compared the president to Hitler over the last few years, for reasons that I hope are obvious to you.
Remember? ⤵️
You may think the “Trump is literally Hitler” phrase is just a silly joke.
But for years, media outlets and left-wing voices on the internet have insisted that, no, really, Trump is just like Hitler.
Few have done so with as much gusto as @CNN.
Back in 2016, @CNN alleged that Trump rallies were just like Hitler rallies because…Trump had attendees raise their right hands.
A newly declassified CIA report on Joe Biden & Ukraine blows the doors off claims from the legacy press, in the lead up to the 2020 election and beyond, that Trump was pushing a “conspiracy theory” about Biden’s corruption.
Remember how the press buried Burisma? ⤵️
First, the facts. The report unearths how Biden blocked the release of intel from Ukrainian sources validating allegations of bribery tied to Biden’s diplomatic push to oust a prosecutor there in 2015, tied to his son Hunter’s work with the gas company Burisma.
You may remember this story because Biden’s having helped oust a prosecutor in a foreign country to allegedly protect his family’s corruption came up in the 2020 election.
To hear @ABC tell it, that was a “debunked Ukraine conspiracy theory.”
The media are melting down about former FBI director Jim Comey’s indictment, calling it Trump’s “retribution.”
But if prosecuting a political rival is such an outrage, why’d they cheer along when Biden went after Trump, Bannon & Navarro?
Some side-by-sides ⤵️
I want you to help me spot the difference in tone.
With Comey, @CNN put five — five! — reporters on the byline to declare the indictment was an “escalation” in “Trump’s effort to prosecute his political enemies.”
Where was that when Biden’s DOJ indicted Bannon? “A victory”
And @CNN wasn’t any better on Peter Navarro, another Trump aide indicted under Biden.
Rather than an “effort to prosecute…political enemies,” CNN quoted the prosecutor to tell the story.
Why is the claim of the government the framing of the piece under Biden? I have a guess.
The outrage over Kimmel’s canning is incredibly stupid, but it’s also enormously rich coming from the same media outlets who have cheered the government actually censoring people, particularly during COVID.
Let me know if you can spot the difference in tone? ⤵️
This @CNN headline made me think this story needed a thread.
Kimmel’s suspension is “straight from a European strongman’s playbook,” per @CNN’s @brianstelter.
When Biden cracked down on free speech during Covid, CNN hyped up the effort.
Few promoted the government’s actual attack on free speech more aggressively than the same @brianstelter now calling a comedian’s shelving evidence of autocracy, or something.