On Monday night, CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront had a devastating segment for the Kamala Harris campaign as KFILE editor Andrew Kaczynski revealed the details of a 2019 questionnaire then-Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) completed for the ACLU that included support for defunding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and providing taxpayer funding for transgender mutilation surgeries for illegal immigrants.
For a deeply researched crucial act of journalism, one would think CNN would promote this more than a CNN.com story and a single TV segment?
Well, turns out that’s exactly what CNN thought should happen to this as, unlike a piece critical of a Republican candidate’s history, they buried this with no additional segments (as of this blog’s publication) and only three direct mentions in passing by conservative panelists.
Following two teases, Burnett began the lone segment by revealing “[a] KFILE investigation has uncovered meantime a 2019 questionnaire, and in this questionnaire, Harris laid out some much more liberal stances, among them on immigration.”
🧵So, remember that CNN segment from KFILE about Kamala Harris's radical views on a 2019 ACLU questionnaire where she said ICE should be defunded and taxpayer dollars should go to transgender surgies for illegal aliens?
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 10, 2024
Turns out, this was the ONLY full segment on CNN about it. pic.twitter.com/pHLDcpLzxA
She shared more of Kaczynski’s findings:
So, 2019 in what KFILE found, she said she would cut funding to ICE, writing, “our immigrant attention system is out of control and I believe we must end the unfair incarceration of thousands of individuals, families, and children. I was one of the first senators after President Trump was elected to advocate for a decrease in funding to ICE.” Well, now, of course, he’s touting the Biden administration’s executive order to crack down on the border.
After Burnett called Kaczynski’s work “pretty incredible”, he chimed in and explained the answers on this form came at a time when she “was trying to get to the left of Bernie Sanders” and Elizabeth Warren.
Kaczynski went point-by-point on her immigration answers, including that “she supported taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants” as well as anyone in the federal prison system, “slash immigration detention by 50 percent, close all family and private facilities and decreased funding for ICE, and then the end ICE detainers with local law enforcement.”
He moved to Harris’s answers on drugs, which included a “yes” answer to whether “all drug possession for personal use” should be “decriminaliz[ed]”.
Prodded by Burnett, Kaczynski emphasized this would mean not only marijuana decriminalized, but drugs like cocaine and fentanyl.
Asked finally how the campaign was responding to being presented with this information, Kaczynski noted they “didn’t answer any questions from CNN” or “elaborate”, but “[i]nstead...provided a statement from an unnamed Harris campaign adviser that just said, the vice president’s positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden/Harris administration.”
Since that report at the 7:44 p.m. Eastern mark Monday, only three mentions and two were from CNN conservative commentator David Urban.
First, much to the chagrin of liberal commentator Keith Boykin, Urban noted on Monday’s CNN NewsNight that Harris will “have to engage in some real political gymnastics” at the debate, as evidence by “[o]ur own KFILE” reporting “her responses to an ACLU questionnaire that were written and — and for this last presidential election.”
This, he explained, illustrated that “she is in so many different places and so many different positions”.
Urban rolled up again Tuesday morning on CNN Newsroom (click “expand”):
URBAN: I think the Harris campaign will go back and lament the fact that they weren’t out doing more interviews, that the current Vice President wasn’t out talking to people like Jackie and Jim yourself and others and informing everybody what she stands for because otherwise, we’re left to divine what she stands for from pieces like our own Andrew Kaczynski’s KFILE interview with — with Erin Burnett the other night where he goes through her ACLU report. There are all these other positions from 2019. We’re left to divine what she stands for rather than hear what she stands for and I think her being a holed up for all these days has not do in a campaign any good whatsoever. So, you know, people don’t know who she is. They’re left to go back and listen to what she said in her past campaigns —
JIM ACOSTA: Yeah. Well, she didn’t beam past down from another planet.
JACKIE KUCINICH: Right!
ACOSTA: I mean, she has been the vice president for four years.
URBAN: — yeah, but —
ACOSTA: Yeah.
Fast-forward to just after 3:00 p.m. Eastern and former Bergum campaign communications director Lance Trover noted Trump “cannot let her own this lane of trying to pretend that she's a moderate when clearly she's not been for the for her entire career” as documented by “the KFILE...story just yesterday about some of the position she took on an ACLU position, like talking about his taxpayer funding of sexual changes for migrants and — and decriminalizing things like heroin.”
During The Lead, host Jake Tapper took the wimpy way out which we won’t even count as he predicted Harris “has a challenge” of “trying to present herself as more centrist than some of the positions she took, for instance, in 2019.”
Kaczynski has respect across the aisle for stories that hit both sides. But the question is: Does CNN act that way when it comes to stories going after liberals?
To see the relevant transcript from September 9, click “expand.”
CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront
September 9, 2024
7:01 p.m. Eastern [TEASE][ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: OutFront Next; KFILE Investigation]
ERIN BURNETT: And a KFILE investigation revealing Harris wrote in a 2019 questionnaire about taking funding away from ICE and ending migrant detention. It is not, of course, what Harris is saying today and there’s a lot more where that came from.
(....)
7:44 p.m. Eastern [TEASE]
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: OutFront Next]
BURNETT: All right. And next, a KFILE investigation into a questionnaire that Vice President Harris filled out during the last election. It was a questionnaire where she supported defunding ICE. And there’s more.
(....)
7:48 p.m. Eastern
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: KFILE Investigation; Harris Shares Policy Details as She’s Forced to Face Past Positions]
BURNETT: Tonight, Kamala Harris releasing details of her policy positions for the first time on her campaign website. A KFILE investigation has uncovered meantime a 2019 questionnaire, and in this questionnaire, Harris laid out some much more liberal stances, among them on immigration. So, 2019 in what KFILE found, she said she would cut funding to ICE, writing, quote, our immigrant attention system is out of control and I believe we must end the unfair incarceration of thousands of individuals, families, and children. I was one of the first senators after President Trump was elected to advocate for a decrease in funding to ICE. Well, now, of course, he’s touting the Biden administration’s executive order to crack down on the border. KFILE’s Andrew Kaczynski joins me now. Andrew, that’s pretty incredible on its own when you’re talking about what you found here on ICE. What else did you find?
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: KFILE Investigation; Harris Pivots to Center, But Faces Questions About More Liberal Past]
ANDREW KACZYNSKI: Yeah. And this was a questionnaire that she filled out for the ACLU, and this questionnaire is really an interesting snap shot in time of that 2019 Democratic primary. Kamala Harris was trying to get to the left of Bernie Sanders. She was trying to get to the left of Elizabeth Warren and you really see that in a lot of these answers and I want to walk our viewers through a little bit of what she said. Let’s just take immigration and look at what she said here. She said on immigration, she made this open ended pledge the end immigrant detention. She said she supported taxpayer funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants. She also said —
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: KFILE Investigation; 2019 Harris Questionnaire Sheds Light on More Liberal Past]
BURNETT: Taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained migrants, she actually said she supported that.
KACZYNSKI: — she wrote — both wrote and answered in the affirmative when she was asked this. And she said she also supported it for federal prisoners. Now, she also pledged to slash immigration detention by 50 percent, close all family and private facilities and decreased funding for ICE, and then the end ICE detainers with local law enforcement.
BURNETT: I mean, these are — these are things that it would be hard to think that you would come up with taxpayer funding gender transitions for detained migrants. And yet, as you say, written and verbally.
KACZYNSKI: Uh-huh.
BURNETT: You know, what else did you find?
KACZYNSKI: Well, let’s also — let’s take a look at her answer her on drugs. She got asked about this question from the ACLU was since drug use is better addressed as a public health issue through treatment and other programming, will you support the decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use? And Harris answers, yes. Now, what would that mean? Will it mean the federal — all drug possession that’s not just marijuana, which she alluded to in her answer to this question, but it also would mean —
BURNETT: Yes, federal level all drug —
KACZYNSKI: Fentanyl, crack, you know, cocaine.
BURNETT: Yes.
KACZYNSKI: Things like that, yeah.
BURNETT: Have they responded to you on her changes on these issues?
KACZYNSKI: So we did put this question to the Harris campaign about the entire ACLU questionnaire, and the Harris campaign didn’t answer any questions from CNN. Instead, they just provided a statement from an unnamed Harris campaign adviser that just said, the vice president’s positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance as part of the Biden/Harris administration. Now, they declined to CNN to elaborate on what those positions were. Then they also provided this statement which they attributed to his spokesperson saying, as president, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common sense solutions for the sake of progress. So where does she stand on this all, all this questioner today, we don’t know and they won’t say.
BURNETT: It’s pretty incredible stuff and thank you very much, Andrew, KFILE for this reporting.
