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Notes -
So, let me see if I'm understanding this situation right:
Per a 2021 article by Axios, Harris was "appointed by Biden as border czar." Their wording: "Why it matters: The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has reached crisis levels. Harris, appointed by Biden as border czar, said she would be looking at the "root causes" that drive migration." Yet another 2021 article by Axios says this very same thing, saying that Harris was "put in charge of the border crisis" and calling her border czar.
So Axios in 2021 (and many other such media outlets) call Harris "border czar" when they think it might make Harris look good and bolster her importance. Axios then conveniently disavows this label and issues a correction to their own article only three years later, in 2024, once it's discovered that the situation at the southern border might not reflect well on Harris now that she is running against Trump. Note both the second article calling Harris border czar and the one saying she was never border czar were written by the very same journalist. One moment it's Huzzah, Harris is border czar and the next it's You guys, Harris was never border czar, the Republicans just made that up, and we have always been at war with Eastasia. Democrats have already produced internal memos telling their people how to fall in line on this issue.
My understanding of this whole situation is that this is one of the things that are technically true, but that these pedantic fact-checks are obviously partisan and misleading (and designed to lead you to a different conclusion than it actually warrants). Yes, the term "border czar" doesn't exist, and so technically Harris cannot have been border czar. But "czar" is an unofficial term that is generically used to describe people in positions of power like this, going back to the Bush era. Clearly the media thought it was an appropriate term in 2021, but not in 2024, and the fact that they're now going back and "recontextualising" their previous articles based on whether or not it's politically convenient is an extremely bad look.
It is correct that her role was not to literally manage everything regarding border policy, and she was not directly in charge of the border. She did, however, have a responsibility to try and stem the core cause of the border crisis, engage in diplomacy to do so, and to work with these countries to enforce borders, something that she also admits to in this tweet. If she really did what she was tasked to do, she should be able to confidently reply that she offered solutions to these problems that weren't taken up, not to claim that she holds zero responsibility on one of the few issues she was asked to assist with. As Biden himself states:
"In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border."
"[T]he Vice President has agreed — among the multiple other things that I have her leading — and I appreciate it — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders."
This entire thing just seems like one of these comically exaggerated Ministry-of-Truth-esque things that happen often in election cycles, the last one being the total 180 on Biden, where before the debate they were proclaiming that Biden was in the best shape ever and that all the alt-media outlets talking about his mental decline were just conspiracy theorists, then right after that shitshow of a debate that they couldn't BandAid over, all of a sudden the calls to resign started up and it turned out his party had been silent about his decline for years despite knowing about it.
I am not a fan of overusing "Orwellian" but this is as close a case as I've seen to all those comments about everyone receiving a simultaneous "download" of their new talking points.
"Border czar" is not and never was an official title - so when everyone says "Harris was never appointed border czar" - yes, technically that is true. (Technically, the Vice President has precisely one official duty, which is breaking ties in the Senate. Other than that, the VP has only whatever duties and authority the President assigns, and there have been VPs who basically faffed around for four years with nothing to do.) But clearly Harris was referred to as "border czar" and everyone understood what that meant, even if it was a strictly informal title.
Frustratingly, mentioning this to my Harris-supporting friends just gets sighs and eye-rolls, like "Why does this even matter?" And how good a job she did as "border czar" probably doesn't matter all that much - what matters (to me) is watching the entire media apparatus turn on a dime to reinforce DNC talking points and everyone thinks that's fine and that people trying to point out the discrepancy are just bad-faith Harris-haters.
Go to Google.com and type "attempted assassination of Donald" or "of Trum" and look at the predictions.
The entire Dem system is orwellian, there is no other word for it. It's not possible to overuse it.
You've just gotten used to it, because that's what you have to do to feel like a Sensible Moderate rather than one of those witches you sneer at.
Also, I did this just to indulge you (I assume "Trum" was a typo, or is that supposed to be some new meme I am not familiar with?), and the top results were the latest AP, CNN, ABC, and Fox News stories, followed by links from the FBI and Wikipedia. What new Dem Orwellian nefariousness am I supposed to be seeing, exactly?
Jesus fucking Christ, it was not a typo. Look at the auto-complete suggestions like I told you to do. The last suggestion it will make is "TRUMan", and when you add the P it goes blank.
This is exactly what I meant by how you pretend not to see what's right in front of you so you can sneer at people
Read my other comment and stop rage-stroking.
When I specify exactly what I input and what I see, I am not "pretending not to see" anything. I have carefully elucidated the scenarios in which I think it's plausible there is skullduggery going on, and those in which it is less plausible, and why. It's possible I miss something or am wrong in my analysis, but so far I haven't seen anything to convince me that "Google engineers are giggle-giggle-tee-heeing over erasing certain Trump-related search phrases" beats "Google search sucks." If I set out to prove Google is "against" a certain person or event or trend, I would need to do a bunch of searches with different keywords, and then compare with similar searches of equivalent things, and even then account for the unpredictability of LLMs.
None of this is pretending anything. I am easily able to believe that most Google employees hate Donald Trump and would absolutely reengineer the entire site to make him lose if (1) they thought it would work (2) they thought they could get away with it. But you reading tea leaves (or more likely, the latest thing circulating on Telegram about how Google is messing with Trump-related search terms) is not uncovering some plain conspiracy that only those in denial can't see.
FWIW, I tried doing other related searches and got similar results, e.g. "Reagan a" and it's already suggesting "Reagan assassination attempt". Whereas even "Trump assassinatio" still doesn't autocomplete.
I don't have a particularly conspiratorial mindset and I fail to see how fiddling with autocomplete results serves any particular purpose. But it does seem like they have been fiddled with.
"Trump poli" doesn't autocomplete either- you'd expect "Trump police"(he likes to tout police endorsements) and "Trump policy/ies". On the other hand "Trump for" autocompletes to "Trump foreign policy". "Trump Ame" autocompletes to "Trump American Dream TV show". "Trump law" autocompletes to "Trump lawyer" and "Trump lawn sign". "Trump pr" autocompletes as "Trump presidency" and "Trump presidential library". "Trump ag" autocompletes as "Trump age" and not "Trump agenda".
It looks like it's been fiddled with a little bit, I guess. But I'm surprised I don't see "Trump project 2025" in the suggestions.
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I’m on your side and it wasn’t immediately obvious without actually attempting the search as written. You should not assume bad faith here.
I'm so God damn tired of watching people like that smugly pretend "I don't know what you mean, that's so weird, why would you notice that?"
It's never honest, it's always tactical sneering. You can tell because he's still doing it even after people showed him in the gentlest way possible.
With sneers like "the latest thing circulating on telegram", he's literally just doing the same thing as Kalema voters he was criticizing above, and doesn't even realize it.
Even when he's got the nerve to grudgingly notice things, he still has to get an elbow in at the people who noticed before it was fashionable.
I do not pretend.
I am always honest. I answered each of the people who pointed out what they saw, with what I saw with my own search results.
I notice things whether or not they are fashionable. I also notice when people have partisan blind spots.
I think it was the "bad faith trolls accusing me of lying" part that he's complaining about in the last bit. SteveKirk was the only one AFAIK who accused you of lying (a lot of people asked for evidence, but that's legitimate to check why you got different results than they did), and while he definitely didn't AGF and that's his error I'm reasonably confident he's acting in good faith himself (the only plausible way he could be a troll IMO would be if he were a full-blown agent provocateur trying to get us to attempt terrorism and get arrested).
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