Steven Sinofsky and Peter Savodnik:
Politics reporter Stef W. Kight informed us that the vice president would be “addressing the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border” and that Harris would “lead efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) to manage the flow of unaccompanied children and migrant families arriving at the border in numbers not seen since a surge in 2019.”
Lest anyone wonder whether this was a big job with a great deal of responsibility, a White House official told reporters: “President Biden said during the transition, whatever the most urgent need, he would turn to the vice president, and today he is turning to the vice president.”
Today—July 24, 2024—the same reporter at the same outlet has a story headlined“Harris Border Confusion Haunts Her New Campaign.”
Kight now reports: “In early 2021, President Biden enlisted Vice President Kamala Harris to help with a slice of the migration issue.” (Emphasis mine.)
We are told that there is “confusion around the VP’s exact role” and that “early media misfires and the rapidly changing regional migration crisis has made the issue a top target for the GOP trying to define their new opponent. And it has become even more critical for Harris to find a clear border message, fast.” The story also quotes former Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson: “She is not the border czar.”
Just to make sure readers understand that Axios, in 2021, in no way intended to provide Republicans, in 2024, with a talking point that might help Donald Trump, Axioshas added an editor’s note at the bottom of the new piece: “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.”
——
More.
And:
In April 2021, Axios itself published multiple articles referring to Harris as Biden’s “border czar”.
Here is the White House memo putting Kamala Harris in charge of the Border.
Wikipedia completely scrubbed Kamala from its executive branch czar page. The Axios article is no longer even listed in the citations.
Keeping up with the changing party line is exhausting. Not long ago, remember, it was considered a slur to suggest that Joe Biden was too old and infirm to be reelected president.