The nitpickers, who style themselves as fact-checkers at PolitiFact and USA Today, have rushed to Vice President Kamala Harris’s defense by slapping “false” labels on those who seek to label her as the Biden Administration’s “border czar” in order to claim that her failure to stem illegal immigration proves she is unqualified to be president.
On Wednesday, PolitiFact’s Maria Ramirez Uribe gave the Republican National Committee a “mostly-false” rating.
For Uribe, calling Harris the border czar is wrong because “Biden didn’t put Harris in charge of overseeing border security.” Rather, he “said Harris would lead U.S. diplomatic efforts and work with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to stem migration to the U.S.”
Uribe also objected to the "czar" title because "Managing the border 'has always been' the Homeland Security secretary’s role, [Migration Policy Institute communications director Michelle] Mittelstadt said."
Previously, USA Today’s Andre Byik claimed on Tuesday that it is “false” to say “Kamala Harris was ‘put in charge of the border.’”
Byik wrote, “The post exaggerates the vice president's role in addressing migration at the southern border. Harris was never put in charge of the border or made 'border czar,' immigration experts said. President Joe Biden tasked Harris with leading the administration's diplomatic efforts addressing the ‘root causes’ of migration in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”
Both Uribe and Byik are trying too hard to be clever. Sure, Harris was never formally appointed border czar, but “czar” has also come to mean “someone in charge of something.” The media, including USA Today, called Mike Pence Donald Trump’s COVID czar despite Pence never formally being given the position and Trump rejecting the idea. Other media outlets even used the term for Harris at the time.
Second, Uribe and Byik want to claim that Harris wasn’t in charge of the border, but the administration’s diplomatic push to address the border surge’s “root causes,” but that is like saying it is false to say a sports general manager is to blame for his team’s bad season because he’s not the coach or the players, he just selects them.
By labeling Harris the “border czar,” conservatives and Republicans are just using the media’s Mike Pence standard, but thanks to PolitiFact and USA Today, such terms could lead to your Facebook post’s getting throttled.
