(DailyChive.com) – During her 2019 presidential run, Vice President Kamala Harris took several far-left positions that some are now revisiting. One of these positions involved taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for illegal immigrants in custody. Erin Burnett recently mentioned these policy stances, which caught her attention once again.
The New York Times found itself in a bit of a bind over this issue. After fact-checking former President Donald Trump’s claim that Harris supported taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for detained illegal immigrants, they initially said the claim “needed context.” Trump made this claim during a presidential debate, based on Harris’ response to a 2019 ACLU questionnaire.
At the time, Harris did support using taxpayer money to provide transgender and nonbinary individuals, including those in detention or prison, with gender-affirming care. So, when The New York Times claimed Trump’s statement “needed context,” it seems the extra details only confirmed what Trump had said. A reporter for the paper, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, even quoted Harris directly from the ACLU questionnaire, acknowledging that she did indeed support such policies.
Naturally, this fact-check drew criticism. Conservative voices online were quick to mock the Times for not fully admitting Trump’s claim was true. Guy Benson tweeted sarcastically, “NYT: ‘Needs context!’ The context: It’s literally her position.” Another conservative strategist, Greg Price, made a similar point, pointing out how the Times’ added “context” still proved Trump’s statement accurate.
The next day, The New York Times wrote a follow-up article that admitted Trump’s statement was “basically true.” This shift highlighted how quick some media outlets were to dismiss the former president’s claims, only to backtrack later. Other publications, like Time magazine, were also forced to issue corrections after initially calling Trump’s claim “false.”
This incident underscores how the media can sometimes be too eager to fact-check statements, only to find that the facts don’t align with their first impressions.
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