Media

Corporate Media Goes Into Overdrive To Memory-Hole Kamala’s Border Record

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PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Robert McGreevy Reporter
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The corporate press is in full spin mode Wednesday as they work to erase their own reporting on Vice President Kamala Harris’ border record in the wake of her newfound candidacy for the presidency.

Axios reporter Stef W. Kight, contradicting her own outlet’s reporting on the matter, wrote an article with the headline “Harris border confusion haunts her new campaign.” Axios then tweeted the story with the caption “The Trump campaign and Republicans have tagged Harris repeatedly with the “border czar” title — which she never actually had.” This sentence also appears in the article.

But Axios used that very title to describe Kamala in a 2021 article. In the April 2021 piece, Axios reporter Shawna Chen wrote “Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the ‘root causes’ that drive migration.”

Axios’ latest story also tries to downplay the responsibilities Biden placed on Harris in 2021. Kight opens her article with the lede “In early 2021, President Biden enlisted Vice President Kamala Harris to help with a slice of the migration issue.”

The characterization of her owning just a “slice” of the issue is a far cry from a March 2021 article, written by Kight, which ran with the headline “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.”

The article’s lede appeared to place a significantly higher emphasis on Harris’ role than Wednesday’s piece. “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,” Kight wrote in 2021.

Axios updated their story Wednesday with an editors note reading “This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labelled Harris a ‘border czar’ back in 2021.”


Axios is not the only outlet attempting to shift the narrative. The Associated Press (AP), CBS, Time Magazine and other outlets all produced pushback pieces rejecting the claim that Harris was called the “border czar” by labeling it a Republican talking point. But the AP, for their part, did outline Harris’ responsibilities in a 2021 article, describing the role as “to lead response to border challenges.” Other outlets challenging the label published similar stories at the time.

It’s unclear if the synchronized timing of the media’s leap to her defense is organic, or a coordinated effort between the Harris campaign and sympathetic newsrooms.

While Biden never officially bestowed the title of border czar upon Harris, corporate and Democrat-aligned press used the term to refer to her role dealing with Mexico and Central American countries, a role Biden handed to her in 2021. (RELATED: Kamala Harris Claims The Border Is ‘Secure’)

Biden announced Harris’ new responsibilities in the White House’s State Dining Room on March 24, 2021.

“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 and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border,” Biden announced.

Harris and her team immediately tried to make clear that her role was specific to the root causes of the immigration crisis stemming from Central America and Mexico, and that she was not in charge of the entire southern border, CNN reported.

“After the announcement, Harris’ aides appeared to ‘panic,’ according to one of the officials, out of concern that her assignment was being mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked to the border, which at the time was facing a growing number of arrivals,” CNN wrote in June 2021.

“Harris and her staff have made it clear that they want to focus narrowly on diplomatic efforts in Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where they believe they are more likely to achieve tangible results in addressing the root causes of migration, like economic despair,” officials told the outlet.

Despite Harris’ efforts to compartmentalize her role, a former official told CNN it’s difficult to separate her outlined tasks with the overall security of the border.

“You can’t divorce the border from Mexico or Central America or the interior of the US,” Obama-era senior Homeland Security official John Sandweg told the outlet. “It is all one system.”

Harris held numerous roundtables and bilateral meetings with leaders of the countries within the “northern triangle” — Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — which produced an outsized number of migrants travelling to the U.S., but she only actually visited the border once.

Former President Trump slammed her inaction on the job Biden tasked her with during a Tuesday call with reporters.

“She visited the border a single time, far away from the epicenter of the invasion. You don’t even call it a visit,” he said, according to the New York Post.

“She went to a place that has no problem, and was there for a very short period of time. So essentially, she never visited the border as we know it,” Trump reportedly added.

Harris did visit the border in El Paso, Texas in June 2021. However, border patrol agents criticized the Veep for what they described as a “show” visit.

“They rented out a ton of hotels and we spent hours moving out bodies. The kids that remained, we had to braid their hair,” a border patrol agent told the New York Post’s Jennie Taer. He also reportedly claimed agents “made jokes about how the building was more secure than the whole border was.”


“She had zero interest in really seeing anything. It was rushed,” a former official present during Harris’ trip told the outlet.