Since Vice President Kamala Harris was severely lacking in actual accomplishments from her time in the Biden administration, and was now the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president, the liberal media were frantically trying to gaslight Americans on her abysmal record as President Biden’s border czar and sterilize it. In this effort, media outlets such as ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Time, TIME magazine and Axios have taken to lying about Harris’s role in failing to get the crisis at the border under control.
The New York Times was one of the earliest. In an article published on July 17, during the Republican National Convention, titled “Why Republicans Keep Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar’” reporters Jazmine Ulloa and Nicholas Nehamas huffed, “Republicans at their national convention this week have trained some of their most intense criticism on Vice President Kamala Harris…But perhaps no phrase has been deployed more than this one: ‘border czar.’”
“But Ms. Harris was not, in fact, appointed border czar, nor was she tasked with addressing the broader problems plaguing the border itself,” they falsely suggested. They tried to split hairs by adding: “Rather she was deputized by President Biden with the diplomatic mission of solving the ‘root causes’ of migration from countries like Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, tackling the issues that spur people to flee in the first place, like drug violence and lack of economic opportunity.”
Axios’s framing was arguably the most ridiculous. In a Wednesday article lamenting how “Harris border confusion haunts her new campaign,” reporter Stef W. Kight proclaimed: “The Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the ‘border czar’ title — which she never actually had.” She also suggested Harris’s duties didn’t pertain to the border directly and only the “root causes” in Central and South American countries.
But Kight’s own reporting contradicts that framing. “President Biden is putting Vice President Harris in charge of addressing the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border, senior administration officials announced on Wednesday,” she reported in an article simply titled: “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.”
Axios was majorly bodied on X as the Community Notes called them out for referring to Harris as the “border czar” in their own articles. “The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the ‘root causes’ that drive migration,” wrote Shawma Chen in 2021.
So embarrassing was the shellacking Axios took on social media, that they had to issue an editor’s note on Kight’s denial article, which said: “Editor's note: This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ back in 2021.”
TIME magazine got in on the action with an article from Vera Bergengruen, brazenly titled: “Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar.’ Here’s What She Really Did.” She lamented the infamous soundbite of Harris telling Guatemalans “do not come,” and decried the border czar title as “a misleading label they applied after she was charged with helming diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from Central America to the U.S.”
In June of 2021, CNN senior national correspondent Ed Lavandera repeated the framing of Harris as border czar: “The Vice President is expected to in El Paso in about an hour and a half… and this will be her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border region since she was appointed as the border czar by President Biden.”
Journalists were using this same language as recently as last week. During the ABC News Live coverage of the RNC, anchor Kanya Whitworth remarked that the speakers “were very critical of Kamala Harris, especially in her role as border czar.”
Politico’s whining about the border czar label dates back to when Harris was appointed border czar. In fresher gripes about Republicans from over the weekend, they reported: “Despite insisting that she not be made the face of the administration’s border policies, Harris was tasked with stemming migration from Central American countries. That prompted GOP attacks on her as ‘border czar,’ a narrative the White House did little to combat.” Along with: “During the Republican convention last week, many speakers labeled Harris as the “border czar,” since Biden appointed her to take the lead on working with Central America to deter migration at the southern border.”
But Politico had no problem with unilaterally labeling then-Vice President Mike Pence the “coronavirus czar.” “In the end, President Donald Trump got a coronavirus czar — without having to call it a czar,” they said at the time. They suggested Trump was “installing a czar-like figure under him.”
A czar-like figure without calling it a czar, you say? That sure sounds familiar. But if the liberal media had their way, the fact that Harris was the border czar would be purged the record like an Orwellian nightmare.
