Tipsheet

POLITICO Savaged for This Biden-Harris Headline

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  August 15, 2024 10:20 AM

When it comes to covering for Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, POLITICO may be among the worst. A recent example came on Wednesday night, when the outlet pointed out that former and potentially future President Donald Trump dared to "tie Harris to Biden on the economy" by calling them "a team."

As much as POLITICO wants to make it something that "Trump moves to" do, Harris is already connected to President Joe Biden. She was his running mate in 2020 and is now the vice president. Biden also endorsed Harris to replace him. 

The article, which references Trump's remarks from earlier that day in Asheville, North Carolina, is just as bad as the headline.

As the piece read early on:

Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered a prebuttal of sorts to Kamala Harris’ anticipated economic policy rollout later this week, yoking the vice president to the Biden administration’s record on inflation while issuing his own vague promises for a second term.

“She really needs to explain the present suffering she has caused along with Joe Biden,” the former president told a crowd in North Carolina. “By the way, they are a team.”

It was a link Trump returned to repeatedly throughout his hour-plus speech — an effort to blunt Harris’ polling and fundraising momentum by tethering her to Biden. And it comes as the former president has struggled to regain his footing in the race since Harris took Biden’s place.

While the piece complains about Trump issuing "vague promises," Harris has taken this long to come out with policy plans, all while avoiding the press, and her "policy rollout" is meanwhile described as "anticipated." Her website has also notably lacked a policy section. 

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Harris has now announced a plan for price controls on food, which Sam J. at our sister site of Twitchy has called out for the bad idea that it is. 

This "momentum" that Harris has is likely due to some kind of a honeymoon period. There's also plenty of reasons to be skeptical about the polls that are out there, as we've covered. Further, Trump is "tethering [Harris] to Biden because she's his own vice president. 

The piece takes issue with Trump's points throughout. It also looks to provide cover for the economy under the Biden-Harris administration:

Trump’s rhetoric runs counter to the reality that the economy has been in a sustained upswing throughout much of Biden’s presidency — even as prices rose and voter sentiment remained glum. Economists broadly credit the passage of trillions of dollars in Covid aid with pulling the nation out of a pandemic-induced recession faster than anticipated. Jobs and wages have grown steadily since then, key achievements that were overshadowed by Americans’ fixation on spiking inflation two years ago.

What's the "reality" here, is that inflation is still too stubbornly high, which thus might explain "Americans' fixation" on such a key issue as prices have gone up during the Biden-Harris administration. There's also no mention of how even Democrats, like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, warned that the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), signed early in Biden's presidency, would lead to rampant inflation. He was gaslit by the White House for such a point, especially then Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

When it comes to a list of presidents going back to Lyndon B. Johnson, the Biden-Harris administration has seen some of the highest inflation rates, while Trump saw some of the lowest.

Another "reality" is that voters trust Trump more on the economy than Biden or Harris, and give him positive remarks for how he handled the issue as president. Polls also consistently show that Americans are not happy with the economy and do not give Biden top marks on such an issue. 

The piece also goes on to lament that "[o]n policy, [Trump] jabbed [Harris'] past support for banning fracking and claimed she 'broke' the southern border, two of his frequent lines of attack," which are certainly valid criticisms of Harris and have been noted by others. 

The press has covered up for the vice president there as well, even claiming that Harris wasn't actually the border czar, a point they've been corrected on. 

Towards the end, the piece again mentions how "...Trump worked to link Harris to Biden..."

The piece has close to 2,000 replies over X, as well as hundreds of quoted replies, many of them taking issue with such a take. 

Katie covered an even more damning connection to Harris on Wednesday. A report from Axios claimed that Harris wants to "redefine herself" on inflation, and yet the vice president cast the tiebreaking vote on the woefully misnamed Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022.