Kamala Harris manipulating the press? Sure looks like it, from an altered Axios tweet
Is Kamala Harris manipulating the press?
Sure looks like it, based on this altered tweet:
Axios deleted the tweet on the left which pointed out that Kamala’s claim seemed to be contradicted by what Fauci has said, and Axios replaced it with the Kamala tweet on the right which no longer includes the context from Fauci. pic.twitter.com/Wws9XX92Ip
— Jerry Dunleavy (@JerryDunleavy) February 15, 2021
The first tweet came from an interview with Axios big Mike Allen. Kamala spewed spin about the Biden administration arriving into the White House and learning there was "no plan" for vaccine distribution and developing one "from scratch," which was accompanied by a contradictory statement from de facto COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci, who certainly hasn't been sitting on his hands all these past months in trying to get vaccines distributed to the public. Harris was trying to blame Trump but ended up hitting Fauci. Fauci, as National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director through multiple administrations left and right, knew a hell of a lot more about the whole thing, no matter what you think about him. Harris, though, was trying to spin, taking some heat off Biden for the ongoing slow vaccine distribution, seen as central to ending the pandemic.
Then, all of a sudden, Axios deleted its tweet. It reposted the tweet, with just the phony "narrative" from Harris, as shown above.
Could that have been because Kamala called and didn't like the tweet? It's anyone's guess, but unlike her misadventure at Vogue, where the editors ran a picture of her in scungy tennis shoes she hadn't "agreed" on, might she have the clout at Axios to do it?
Well, just recall that up until this past week, Joe Biden's White House deputy press secretary, T.J. Ducklo, was lovebirding with an Axios reporter and vowing to "destroy" a Politico writer for reporting on it, which didn't stop her. Ducklo ended up "resigning" over the weekend. The Axios reporter, by the wildest of coincidences, covers Kamala Harris.
Which, as Stephen Miller notes, sounds kind of funny:
Axios deleting this tweet seems suspicious given the revelations that a reporter for them who covers Kamala Harris is head over heels in love with a now former Biden Administration member. See the problem now guys? @mikeallen pic.twitter.com/U8v28h2kug
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 15, 2021
Conclusion here is that House Biden will do anything to spin themselves into something good on COVID, no matter how they perform. More to the point, Kamala is manipulating the press, which seems to be her forte. She has no other talents.
Ari Fleischer, no slouch on the field of how the public relations game is played, thinks Harris might have thrown out some the same lying "talking points" about starting from "scratch," by leaking such words to CNN to repeat:
This makes me wonder if VP Harris was the original leaker to CNN, making up the line about “starting from scratch”.
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) February 16, 2021
Axios deletes tweet fact-checking Harris claim Biden admin 'starting from scratch' with vaccine rollouthttps://t.co/uDYGEZ4eJ2
That brings up a curious parallel: Harris's manipulation of the press (and politics) that began just before the 2019 Jussie Smollett hoax unfolded. Harris campaigned a lot with Smollett ahead of the claimed (now proven phony) attack, and in news published by the Chicago press, announced that she's the one who "fixes problems." A couple months before the "attack," she created an anti-lynching law, inserting some additional language at the last minute to say it includes gay people. Then the attack happened, with Smollett just happening to be black and gay, touching every hot button of her law. Voilà: Kamala was set to bill herself as the problem-solver. Until the thing fell apart. I wrote about that here.
Manipulating press coverage? You decide.
Harris is known to be overly cozy with the press in general, starting with this gem from New York magazine, emphasis mine:
Lots of eyes rolled around the political chattering classes when Politico brandished a trophy obtained by its crack reporting team:
A briefing memo accidentally left behind at a restaurant here showed Kamala Harris' staff expected her to be grilled on her lack of presence in the state as well as her campaign's "summer slump."
The document, obtained exclusively by POLITICO, detailed intricacies of her campaign's relationships with Granite Staters she was set to meet last weekend — from how much her campaign has donated to local politicians to advice she received from a local TV reporter. It included talking points to rebut expected criticisms from voters or reporters, such as the limited number of visits she's made to the first-in-the-nation primary state and her lackluster poll results.
Or remember this one, with Harris trying on clothes with a gaggle of giggling reporters while on the campaign trail?
Or this one, with Harris accused of planting negative stories about her rivals to ensure that Joe Biden picked her for vice president?
She's doing it, and what is bad is that she's getting away with it — all with the willing complicity of the press.
Image: Screen shot from a shareable YouTube video.
Correction: Fauci is the director of the NIAID, not the NIH. American Thinker apologizes for the error.