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.
I know it’s been a few days, but the entire legacy media ran with the claim that Don Lemon was arrested for doing journalism, when he was actually indicted because a grand jury found he violated worshippers’ freedom of expression.
Quick live🧵thread🧵, starting with @nytimes. ⤵️
Same thing at @NBCNews.
Omitted from the headline is what the actual charges are: interfering with these churchgoers rights.
Predictably, @CNN has gone to bat for Lemon.
What’s at issue isn’t “reporting” of a “protest,” and claiming to the contrary is pretty obviously misleading.
There’s another media hoax from Minnesota. Legacy outlets churned out headlines about a 5-year-old child used as “bait” by ICE.
The reality? The kid’s father, an illegal immigrant, abandoned him when he saw the agents. As even these outlets later concede.
Look ⤵️
Here’s how these hoaxes start. @washingtonpost alleges ICE used a 5-year-old kid as “bait” to arrest his father.
Not until five paragraphs into the piece do they acknowledge what really happened: the child’s father, an illegal immigrant, abandoned him when he saw ICE.
But this allegation was everywhere. We saw the same thing from @AP.
Explosive claim in the headline: “used as ‘bait’” (from the school, no less)
Reality: six paragraphs down, father abandoned child.
Do you remember, all of four weeks ago, when democracy was imperiled by CBS News, under new management, delaying a 60 Minutes segment about a prison in El Salvador?
The segment aired last weekend.
Democracy survived. The takes haven’t.
Just look. Screenshots ⤵️
I usually start with the media but I’ve gotta flip that here, because the dumbest voices came from the halls of Congress.
@ChrisMurphyCT, as someone “warning about democracy’s potential disintegration” (his words) called it proof that the media has been “coopted by the regime.”
For @SenMarkey, delaying a segment was “what government censorship looks like.”
With an ambitious new health care plan proposed by the Trump administration, you should read some of the recent pieces on the subject at @commonplc. Quick 🧵👇
And out this week is @Chris_Griz on why market concentration looms over the health care industry, undercutting more a more hands-off approach: commonplace.org/p/chris-griswo…
For a real and much-needed alternative to Obamacare, dive into @ChrisEmper’s explanation of community health centers, and why they could unlock better outcomes for patients: commonplace.org/p/chris-emper-…
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.”