In a profile that some are describing as “brutal,” The New York Times’ Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers and Peter Baker write, “Kamala Harris Is Trying to Define Her Vice Presidency. Even Her Allies Are Tired of Waiting.”
The Times writes, “… the painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the last few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country. Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.”
Harris’ approval rating, according to an aggregate of surveys from FiveThirtyEight, is at about 39% — which is even lower than President Joe Biden’s less-than-impressive 42%. The Times writes, “Ms. Harris’s allies said she was trapped in a damned-if-she-does, damned-if-she-doesn’t conundrum — she is expected to not do anything to overshadow Mr. Biden while navigating intractable issues he has assigned her such as voting rights and illegal immigration. And some see a double standard applied to a prominent woman of color.”
There is some hope among Harris' allies that she can have a fresh start with a new Senate. No longer required to be close to Washington to cast the deciding vote of a split Senate, Harris can get out more. The Times reports she wants to take at least three out-of-town trips per week.
It’s a smart and in-depth profile. Check it out.
Say what?
President Joe Biden will give his State of the Union address tonight. So to get you ready, check out this headline: “There’s too much State of the Union fact-checking.”
Wait, too much fact-checking? About a president? During his State of the Union address?
Who wrote this? Believe it or not, the man who helped launch PolitiFact — the Pulitzer Prize-winning website whose job is to fact-check politicians such as the president.
These days, Bill Adair is the Knight Professor for the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University. But he is formerly of the Tampa Bay Times, where he was when he launched PolitiFact in 2007.
Full disclosure: Poynter now owns PolitiFact (and the Tampa Bay Times) and Adair wrote his latest piece for Poynter.
So what’s the deal? What did Adair say about the State of the Union, otherwise known as the “Super Bowl of fact-checking?”
Adair wrote that tonight, all the fact-checkers will be “wasting their time on the wrong guy.”
Adair notes Biden is already one of the most fact-checked politicians in America. PolitiFact alone has rated him more than 250 times. Adair’s argument is we have enough fact-checking on the national level and that the “real need is at the state and local levels.”
Adair adds, “I’m not calling for an end to fact-checking the State of the Union. It deserves scrutiny like any major address by any president. But instead of adding another journalist to watch an overcovered event, national news organizations could provide a greater service by looking elsewhere to the lies that are sprouting around the country. Instead of covering the Super Bowl, they should cover the games that are being played around the country every day.”
Speaking of the State of the Union, here’s PolitiFact’s Ellen Hine with “Joe Biden’s 2023 State of the Union: How to watch, what he'll talk about, who's responding.”
Sold!
The National Enquirer, the celebrity tabloid known for its outrageous headlines and eye-raising stories, has finally been sold. VVIP Ventures is buying the National Examiner and the Globe (another tab) from a360 Media in an all-cash deal. Terms are not publicly known.
Katie Robertson of The New York Times wrote, “The National Enquirer has come under scrutiny in recent years for a litany of scandals. It paid $150,000 in hush money during the 2016 presidential campaign to a former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, for the rights to her story of an affair with Mr. Trump, then never published the story. The practice is known as ‘catch and kill.’ It also helped broker a hush-money deal with the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels, who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.”
What’s next? Robertson wrote, “The buyers said in an interview that they planned to expand the publications’ digital presence and tap the Enquirer’s expansive archives of nearly 100 years of celebrity news and gossip.”
Taking a gap year
