CV NEWS FEED // A chorus of critics took to X (formerly Twitter) to point out several examples of a variety of mainstream media sources contradicting their previous reporting in order to benefit new presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
As it became clear that Harris would likely replace President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s 2024 candidate, former President Donald Trump and others highlighted the fact that Biden put her in charge of dealing with the surging number of migrants crossing the country’s southern border.
In the years since the president gave Harris this responsibility, the border crisis has intensified even further to unprecedented levels.
However, on Wednesday, AXIOS published a piece claiming that Biden had in fact never made Harris his so-called “border czar.”
“In the past few days, the Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had,” the AXIOS article stated.
Following the piece’s publication, critics charged AXIOS with biased reporting intended to boost Harris.
The Federalist CEO and co-founder Sean Davis posted to X a screenshot of a 2021 piece also from AXIOS that clearly stated Harris was “appointed by Biden as border czar.”
Furthermore, popular X account End Wokeness followed up by posting a 2021 video of a masked Biden announcing his decision to put Harris in charge of combatting the border crisis.
“I’ve asked her, the VP, today, because she’s the most qualified person to do it, to lead our efforts with Mexico and the northern triangle … in stemming the migration to our southern border,” said Biden in the video, who was sitting next to Harris, also wearing a mask.
AXIOS was not the only media outlet this week to claim that Biden never made Harris his “border czar.”
Another popular X account, Libs of TikTok, posted a screenshot of a TIME article headlined, “Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar.’”
“The media is working overtime trying to remove the border responsibility from Kamala,” Libs of TikTok wrote. “It’s too bad Biden is on video saying he put her in charge of the border.”
In another video posted by Libs of TikTok, Harris thanked Biden for being given the job of solving the border crisis.
Bill D’Agostino of the Media Research Center later posted a video compilation of major networks’ previous segments matter-of-factly referring to Harris as Biden’s “border czar” over the past few years – contrasted with newer segments from the same networks denying that she ever served in that role:
The border crisis was not the only area in which critics charged corporate media outlets of covering for Harris.
X user Western Lensman accused a well-known website that tracks lawmakers of deleting the words “ranked most liberal” from its 2019 entry for then-Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA.
“The media [has] entered hyperdrive on their Orwellian effort to scrub inconvenient information about Kamala Harris from existence. GovTrack is the latest,” the user wrote:
Here is the original entry 2019 for Harris, the new editor’s note for scrubbing the title “Most Liberal” Senator from the original entry, and a video where CBS confirmed the original assessment from GovTrack in a question to Harris.
“This may be the most overt memory-holing operation ever witnessed, and it’s playing out in real time,” the user added.
The terms “Orwellian” and “memory-holing” are references to the popular dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, which centers on a totalitarian regime that maintains power by heavily censoring media.
