Media outlets, Democratic lawmakers and White House officials defended Vice President Harris this week over her work on the border crisis, her previous support for the controversial Minnesota Freedom Fund and her title as the “most liberal” U.S. senator by a government accountability site.
Controversy surfaced this week over whether Harris acted as the “border czar” earlier in the Biden administration despite her statements that she would take the lead on the border and immigration early in the Biden administration.
Harris announced in 2021 that she would be taking the lead on diplomatic negotiations with El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries that send migrants to the U.S.
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Liberal outlets, Democratic lawmakers and White House officials defended Vice President Harris this week over her work on the border crisis, her previous support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund and her title as the “most liberal” U.S. senator by a government accountability site. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)
White House staff and Democratic lawmakers reject Harris being called ‘border czar’
“Border czar” is an informal title widely granted to Harris in 2021 when President Biden appointed her to handle the “root causes” of illegal immigration.
But White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and other members of the president’s staff have repeatedly rejected the claim that Harris was ever asked to lead on the border crisis. The media got in on the action in a big way this week, with a flood of reports going out of their way to separate Harris from the border crisis.
“We are going to debunk the false characterization of the vice president. She was not a border czar. And it’s not just us. Independent fact-checkers have said the same thing — that that did not exist, and that is not true,” Jean-Pierre said.
Axios was grilled Wednesday over a piece insisting Harris wasn’t the “border czar” in a story that seemed to contradict its previous reporting. The outlet later updated the story by admitting it had “incorrectly” called her a “border czar” in the past.
Numerous other outlets also reported it was incorrect to call Harris the “border czar,” including fact-checker PolitiFact. Fox News Digital asked several news organizations, including CNN, MSNBC, CBS, The New York Times and Axios, about their vocal rejection of the “border czar” label in recent days, pressing why all of a sudden they were doing so and whether the Harris campaign pressured them into resisting the label. Most did not respond.
PolitiFact and USA Today both responded to Fox News Digital’s requests and said there was no pressure from the Harris campaign and they were independent news organizations.
A viral video from NewsBusters showed news organizations going back and forth on using the term before and after Harris’ 2024 presidential candidacy.
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Controversy over Harris’ previous support for Minnesota Freedom Fund
Journalists also pushed back on Harris’ support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund in June 2020 amid Black Lives Matter riots following the death of George Floyd.
During her 2020 campaign for president, Harris posted on X, then Twitter, in support of the fund that helped convicted criminals get out of prison: “If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”
CBS News attempted to refute the story in an article from Thursday, headlined, “Despite Trump claim and 2020 tweet showing support, Harris never donated to Minnesota Freedom Fund.”
“One of the dangerous criminals Kamala helped bail out of jail was Shawn Michael Tillman,” Trump at a North Carolina rally, per CBS. “You know that name. A repeat offender who, with Harris’s help, was set free. He then went on to murder a man on a train platform in St. Paul, Minnesota, shooting him in cold blood six times, lying on the ground.”
“While parts of Trump’s statement are true — Shawn Michael Tillman did murder a man in St. Paul after being released from jail — other parts of the former president’s statement are misleading,” CBS reported.
A local CBS affiliate in Minnesota was also hit with a Commnunity Note on X after claiming Trump “falsely” accused Harris of supporting the bail fund. Harris, according to the organization, did not send any donations herself, but her post urging donations remains live from 2020.
Site naming Harris the ‘most liberal’ U.S. senator in 2019 disappears
GovTrack, an organization that tracks congressional voting records, confirmed to Fox News Digital it had removed a 2019 web page that ranked Kamala Harris as that year’s “most liberal” U.S. senator sometime within the last two weeks. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
GovTrack, an organization that tracks congressional voting records, confirmed to Fox News Digital it had removed a 2019 web page that ranked Kamala Harris as that year’s “most liberal” U.S. senator sometime within the last two weeks.
The self-described “government transparency website” scored Harris as the “most liberal compared to all senators” in 2019, outranking Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren at the time. But the web page with the ranking, which was widely covered in news reports during the 2020 election, was recently deactivated.
In response to that report, a New York Intelligencer columnist advised Harris on how she could best “fight the ‘too liberal’ label.”
Some media hosts are pitching Harris as a moderate candidate ahead of November.
“The View” host Alyssa Farah Griffin said Friday that Harris ran as a liberal in 2020 but now has a “centrist” message.
The White House has not yet responded to a request for comment.
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Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom, Chris Pandolfo, Hugh Hewitt, Kyle Morris and Yael Halon contributed to this report.