To prove fealty to Kamala Harris, the media gaslights voters by rewriting her past

I had thought that after the liberal media was exposed for its shameless attempts to cover for President Joe Biden’s deteriorating mental and physical condition, mainstream outlets would maybe take a moment for a collective mea culpa.

Fat chance.

Instead, Biden’s allies on the left quickly turned their cheerleading efforts from the president (once it became blatantly obvious he was in bad shape) to Vice President Kamala Harris, now that it looks like she will be the Democratic Party's replacement on the presidential ticket.

Some of the media’s largest players are proving their newfound devotion to Harris by attempting to rewrite her past – and some of their own coverage.

Yes, it’s as Orwellian as it sounds. And it’s a little too close to the tactics used by the Soviets to simply “erase” opponents from photographs. Don’t like someone – or something that happened? Hit delete.

Let’s take a look at a few examples from the past few days.

Was Harris in charge of the border – or wasn't she?

Shortly after Biden took office in 2021, the president appointed Harris to “lead the White House effort to tackle the migration challenge at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the problem.”

At least that’s how The Associated Press reported the story at the time.

Biden made the announcement following a surge of migrants at the southern border after he had become president. He also said of Harris in this new role: “When she speaks, she speaks for me.”

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Sounds like a pretty darn important job to me.

That’s why many in the news media started referring to Harris’ big task as “border czar,” including me, even though that technically wasn’t her official title. Anyone in Washington knows that people put in positions of power like this are commonly referred to as “czars.”  It's a phrase that dates at least to 1989, when President George H.W. Bush appointed William Bennett to be his "drug czar."

Yet now, accurately referring to Harris’ vital undertaking has become a huge no-no.

Since Harris failed to address anything to do with immigration (the number of illegal border crossings continued to skyrocket during the Biden administration until recently), she quietly was removed from that position and has turned to other things like visiting abortion clinics and fighting Islamophobia.

Harris bothered to visit the border only once – and only after being shamed in an interview for not having done so.

To cover for her shortfalls, the news media is now desperately seeking to rewrite history.

One glaring example is from Axios. In 2021, the outlet reported that “Biden puts Harris in charge of border crisis.” Another story used the phrase “border czar.”

Fast-forward to this week, and Axios is acting shocked that anyone would refer to Harris in this way, claiming that she was given only a “slice” of the crisis to combat. To make matters worse, Axios added an editor’s note to the recent article, stating: “This article has been updated and clarified to note that Axios was among the news outlets that incorrectly labeled Harris a ‘border czar’ in 2021.’ ”

While no “correction” was deemed necessary for three years, suddenly it’s a matter of incredible importance.

Many others in digital and television media are trying the same tactic.

It’s insulting.

In 2019, Harris was the 'most liberal senator.' Not anymore.

This may be even more alarming.

A supposedly nonpartisan organization that tracks congressional voting records, GovTrack, has simply waved its wand and made a 2019 page on its site dedicated to Harris’ voting record go “poof.”

It no longer exists on its main site. (Well, actually it does, thanks to the Internet Archive).

Why?

Biden bows out: America needs a leader, and Biden isn't acting like one. His Oval Office speech didn't help.

That page accurately referred to Harris’ record that year as the most liberal in the Senate – beating out even self-declared democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Apparently, that could be seen as unhelpful to Harris’ crowning as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.

GovTrack doubled down on its disappearing act, by adding an editor’s note of its own this week on an article it published in 2020, detailing Harris’ record: "On July 23, 2024, this article was updated. The text ', especially given our ranking her as the most left-leaning senator in 2019 based on cosponsorship. But looking at the legislation she’s introduced tells a different story ? judge for yourself' was removed. Once the 2019–2020 session of Congress was complete, the statistics for the entire session and for Harris’s entire tenure in the senate showed a different story."

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It’s kind of funny (scary?) that the editor’s note includes a link to the 2019 page that the group has erased. The GovTrack founder told Fox News that the page no longer exists because it had stopped single-year ratings of lawmakers a few years ago.

And while 2019 report cards have disappeared for other lawmakers, too, GovTrack was inspired to make that call to take down these pages, including Harris' page, "sometime in the last two weeks."

Interesting timing.

Expect a lot more of these shenanigans to continue in the coming months. Don’t let the media get away with it.

Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected] or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Was Harris Biden's border czar? Left rewrites her VP, Senate record