The Makeover of Kamala Harris and the Memory Holing of the Trump Assassination Attempt
While X users and lawmakers react to the Google auto-complete scandal (which as I wrote in my last piece may or may not actually be a scandal), there’s a much, much bigger threat to our democracy. Google is going for a repeat of the 2020 Election by using the exact same process they did in 2020: whitelist “authoritative” media sites while effectively blacklisting conservative sites from search results.
Like the old story of the frog boiling, it’s something so subtle that the vast majority of Americans won’t even notice what’s happening to them. But if you look at all the examples in the aggregate, you start to see clear patterns.
The Makeover of Kamala Harris
In the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Joe Biden dropped out of the primary after finishing fifth in the Iowa caucuses. He’d been polling at about 2%. He was widely mocked for his plagiarism scandal and his gaffes, such as cringeworthy comments about Obama being “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean” and “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven unless you have a slight Indian accent”.
And then in 2020, he got 81.3 million popular votes. While some may dispute how legitimate all those votes are, the bottom line is that his image was magically transformed to the point where millions of Americans saw him as presidential material. We all know how that went.
Now, Kamala Harris is in the spotlight. Like Biden, she ended up at about 2% in the polls as well and dropped out only to be picked as the VP. On the day that Biden announced that he was not running in the 2024 election, her favorability ratings showed that she was viewed favorably by 38% of respondents, but unfavorably by 52%.
We all saw how Google employees lamented at the thought of Google having helped Donald Trump in the 2016 election. As I documented in my series of articles, they introduced changes to their algorithm and manual controls so that such a catastrophe would not happen again.
Today, we’re seeing it play out. In the days following Harris’s announcement that she was the new Democratic nominee (despite having not received a single vote—so much for the other side being a ‘danger to our democracy’) the mainstream media kicked in.
On July 24, the supposedly non-partisan GovTrack deleted their page that ranked Kamala Harris as the most liberal of all 100 Senators. On that same day, Axios claimed that Harris was never named as the border czar, even though she clearly was.
On July 25, CBS News Minnesota reported that Trump’s accusation of Harris donating to a fund that resulted in bail to criminals was false, even though Harris expressed support for it on their own station. On that same day, Newsweek published a piece questioning whether Trump was really shot.
What’s going on here?
Put simply, the Democratic Party is manufacturing a Presidential candidate, memory holing her past and creating a blank slate where they can create a candidate that will be appealing to the American people. If this sounds outlandish, remember that they have Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the entire mainstream media on their side—and all of these people spend their entire careers telling stories.
Once these stories are told, Google dutifully amplifies them to make sure they’re firmly planed in the American psyche. Don’t believe me? Here’s a post I wrote on X that shows how much bias Google News has in their coverage of “Harris” vs “Trump”.
As promised in that thread, I’ll continue putting screenshots on this page for a few days just to show the extent to which Google crafts the narrative. Remember that Google doesn’t have to publish a single word, all it has to do is decide who to show and who not to show in their search results.
Here are some more examples; I’ll take one a day until I get sick of doing it and over time we should see a clear pattern. Remember, every article circle in green is a positive article for the candidate and/or a negative article about the opponent. Every article circled in red is a negative article about the candidate.
Wednesday July 31, 2024 – Trump at the NAJB
Google News overwhelmingly paints Trump’s performance at the NAJB convention as “embarrassing” and “disastrous”. There were zero voices on the other side, which saw Trump’s appearance as an act of courage and trying to be conciliatory (he accepted their invitation to go live in front of a hostile audience), the crowd reaction as mixed (the journalist on stage was not happy, but there was applause and laughter from the crowd).
An objective media (and in turn, Google) would have given equal time to focusing on some of the problematic behavior on the part of the NAJB and ABC News’ Rachel Scott (she was highly disrespectful and combative in her questioning, they allowed Harris to join via Zoom call but forced Trump to go there in person, they delayed his appearance by 35 minutes and then blamed him for “leaving early”, and much more). They would also have looked objectively into Trump’s assertion that the media cherry-picks whether Kamala Harris is “Indian” or “Black” depending on whether it helps their narrative. And It also would have had an honest discussion on whether the descendent of a Jamaican slave owner really represents or understands the plight of the American-American community.
Even in seemingly innocuous news like Harris’s impending pick of a VP candidate, outlets like Harris’s daughter having an incident involving the Secret Service, outlets like Yahoo and Slate can’t help but slip in digs about JD Vance, even though he is irrelevant to the story.
Thursday August 1, 2024 – Media continues to keep the narrative alive that Trump’s remarks were racist. Were they really?
There were multiple things going on in the world on August 1, 2024. And yet the media continued to focus like a laser beam of Trump at the NAJB convention. Notice the loaded words in the headlines: “Trump doubles down on false racial attacks”. “Fallout over Trump’s race comments”. “Trump escalates race attacks”. “False claims”. “Trump race slur”.
If you’re an ordinary American coming home from work and just have time to skim the headlines, what’s your conclusion here? That Trump is a racist against blacks.
What’s the reality? What the media is frantically painting as Trump attacking Harris’s race is in actuality Trump attacking her inauthenticity (or more accurately, the inauthenticity of the media who treat her as “Indian” or “Black” as it suits their narrative).
Take a look at some of the other language that’s used in the headlines. “Trump lashes out”. “Trump falsely claims”. “Bonkers response”. “Trump makes callous jokes”.
Compare it to the language used in headlines that talk about Harris. “Harris tries out a new role: consoler in chief”. (Seriously, NPR, get a room).
On this particular day, there were the rare sightings of actual journalism on the Harris side. There’s a Fox News story about how Harris did not address the controversy of a woman boxer being beaten up by a biologically male boxer. There’s a story by The Atlantic that reported how Black Lives Matter didn’t approve of Harris, and another one by The Hill that comes close to criticizing her stance on criminal justice reform. Both of these stories from traditionally fawning publications are likely just meat they’re throwing to their loyal bases. But notice that even these pieces which toe the line of being critical don’t use charged words as the Trump headlines do.
And of course, the balance that Google shows is still completely skewed.
Remember that there are thousands of stories being written every day about both candidates, but only 10-15 articles and 1-2 topics can be featured on the Google page. But while the Harris page has a fairly eclectic selection of stories, the Trump side continues to beat on things that the public stopped caring about long ago—Trump telling a Christian group “you won’t have to vote anymore” (conveniently leaving out the “because we’ll have fixed everything” page). There’s even an article by the Hill where that outlet quotes John Thune as saying that “Trump should stop focusing on race”, even though his “focus on race” was a seven second comment: the other hundreds of hours of coverage were thanks to the media regurgitating it over and over.
Is it really “The Algorithm” driving these pages and the selection of which outlets and headlines to feature on them?
Friday August 2, 2024 – Two more mainstream narratives are born: Egypt and Simone Biles
In today’s edition of “How Google is Manipulating Search Results’, we see for the THIRD straight day how the media continues to milk the NAJB cow dry. We’ve gotten to the point where the Smear—as Sharyl Attkisson put it in her excellent book on the subject—is complete. Even Trump supporters don’t remember the original context of Trump’s comments anymore; all everyone remembers is “Trump said something racist”.
And magically, Harris has pulled even with Trump in the polls, three weeks after he was shot in the ear and heroically stood with his fists, and two weeks after the Democrats undemocratically ousted their elected nominee and replaced him with another.
Note how there’s a new vector of attack: Egypt. Somehow, eight years later after four full years in office and two re-election campaigns there’s a NEW scandal that Trump somehow stole $10 million from Egypt. Yes, the man worth $5 billion dollars wants to take a $10 million bribe. That is like someone with a $100,000 net worth taking a bribe of $200. And yet the Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, and MSNBC are all reporting it, and Google is dutifully giving it prominence.
Another angle of attack the media is using: they’re taking five words that Simone Biles posted on social media (where she never mentioned Trump by name) and is using it to tell Americans that “see, even Simone Biles hates Donald Trump”.
What is astounding is that Biles never even mentioned Trump by name, so media outlets have to say words like she “appeared to take a jab”, “trolls”, “mocks”, “apparent swipe”.
My first question is…how is this news, and why is it dominating a quarter of today’s Google News screen.
My section question is, does the media even care about unemployment in the black community? Ironically, the comment that Trump originally made was in reference to the very real statistic that black unemployment rates are nearly double those of white Americans, in no small part due to illegal immigration. But the media being the media, they ignore the original context and see it as another opportunity o knock down Trump.
Once again, every single story about Harris is positive or neutral, while every one about Trump is negative.
Saturday August 3, 2024 – Deliberate misrepresentation of the Atlanta Trump Rally and Debate Scheduling
There’s a rare paucity of fawning in the headlines on the Harris side as Google News spends most of its Harris coverage talking about two breaking stories: Harris’s VP pick and news that her husband had an extramarital affair. Don’t get me wrong–the stories themselves continue to be fawning (the stories about VP invariably refer to J.D. Vance disparagingly, and the stories about Emhoff paint Harris as a woman who’s been wronged—while never addressing her own brushes with marital infidelity.
Lower down, the fawning is there. There are multiple stories about how Jimmy Carter wants to live to 100 to vote for Harris. Hard hitting news there.
But the big story on both sides is how Donald Trump, in the words of The New York Times, “Cancels a Debate with Harris on ABC News”.
Do you notice anything odd about that sentence? The debate that had been scheduled was supposed to have been with Joe Biden, and it was negotiated with the Biden team. For the New York Times to brazenly say that Trump cancelled the debate that had been scheduled with Harris is a complete lie. Trump’s team stated—rationally—that because the candidate had changed and there is pending litigation by the Trump team against ABC News, that the landscape has changed. But the media is gleefully pursuing the angle that Trump “backed out” and is scared of debating Harris.
This is the death by a thousand cuts. One day it’s “weird”. The next day it’s “scared”.
Of course, the media is relentless about attacking Trump. Coverage of Trump’s rally in Georgia didn’t cover that it took place in a packed arena with a diverse audience, that Trump met with black business leaders prior to the rally, nor that the speakers included dynamic, articulate, and powerful black speakers that inspired the audience and thousands of people watching. No, the only articles that Google News showcases are the ones talking about “name calling” and “attacks”.
Sunday August 4, 2024 – Selective poll reporting and introducing the narrative that Trump campaign is spiraling out of control
At some point you just have to marvel at the brutal efficiency of Google and the mainstream media.
As of this writing it’s been less than a month since a would-be assassin almost killed President Trump. Whether it was the acts of a lone gunman, a deep conspiracy, or (the likely reality) officials in the Executive Branch not going out of their way to harm Trump, but not going out of their way to protect him either, Donald Trump turned that moment into a huge political advantage when instinctively he rose up, pumped his fists, and told his followers to “fight”. He shot up in the polls at that point to insurmountable leads.
In less than a month, Trump’s leads has vanished—and this is citing respectively polls. People who don’t know better are saying that Trump “squandered his lead” by focusing on things like Harris’s race and being whiny and defensive about things like Project 2025 and accusations of him being “weird”.
If you’ve read this far, you know better.
Remember what the mainstream media did to Glenn Beck in 2009 and to Rush Limbaugh in 2012? They took a few isolated words they said out of context and amplified them to the point where it hurt their brands. It’s 15 years later and their ability to twist words out of context is now routine enough that they can do it for every news cycle.
Look at the red circled items representing negative headlines against Trump. Remember that three weeks ago Trump was unbeatable, to the point where the chosen Democratic nominee and sitting President had to step down. Now? Trump’s campaign is falling apart because “dozens of Republicans endorse Harris”. Trump is panicking because of the “size of Harris’s crowds”. Trump “edges ahead of Donald Trump in national polls”.
It all sounds terrible for Trump until you consider that 1) dozens of Democrats have endorsed Trump, to zero media coverage, 2) the size of Trump’s crowds are gigantic, easily dwarfing Harris’s crowds, and 3) Trump is ahead in most national polls, but because Harris is ahead in a handful of them the media can write—without lying—that “Harris now leads Trump in national polls”
By twisting the narrative towards Harris, fiction eventually becomes reality. The public sees Harris as a well-managed, streamlined campaign and sees Trump as imploding and chaotic. If you’ve ever taken the time to listen to one of Trump’s rallies live, you’ll see that his campaigning is as impressive as it was in 2016 when the media gave him lots of coverage. It seems that they’re now atoning for their sins by blocking any iota of good news from those rallies and contorting themselves to prop up Harris.
Monday August 5, 2024 – Continued misrepresentation of polling realities and continuing to characterize the Trump campaign as “flailing”, “fuming” and “embarrassing” despite an impressive live stream with Adin Ross.
What happened in the real world today? The stock market experienced a massive decline. Iran is threatening all-out war with Israel. What didn’t happen? President Biden and Vice-President Harris didn’t say one word about any of it. We’re still waiting for the first long-form interview or press conference with Harris since she was named the new Presidential candidate.
Notice how certain headlines somehow continue to linger despite being days old. There are STILL stories of the fallout of Trump at the NASB that happened A WEEK ago, and stories of “Project 2025” which Trump disavowed.
Outlets like Newsweek continue to rave about Harris “hitting record lead over Trump” in the headline, knowing that most readers wouldn’t do the research to see that they’re just talking about one poll of many. Similarly, continue to look carefully at the language in the headlines. “Harris has Broken Trump”. “Trump fumes”. “Trump picks a pointless fight”. “Trump gets an Embarrassing Wake up call”. Contrast that with the news coverage of Harris picking a VP candidate (a story that’s being stretched out to make her look more “Presidential”, and half of Harris’s coverage being anti-Trump articles, such as a handful of Republicans declaring their support for Harris or a supposed attempt on Harris’s life (which is clearly intended to elicit the same response as Trump got when he was actually shot three weeks ago).
Donald Trump was interviewed by social media influencer Adin Ross. Even Google News couldn’t ignore this as a story to post about Trump, but notice how even this news is downplayed as much as possible. The headline of a Hollywood Reporter says that the livestream “peaked” at 500,000 viewers (ignoring the fact that in addition to Adin’s stream, it was also posted on YouTube and other streaming outlets). The New York Times couldn’t help slip in that Ross’s audience is “heavily male”, adding to their ongoing narrative of white males being the greatest enemy of the world.
Tuesday August 6, 2024 – Continuing to selectively pick out national polls to make it seem like Harris momentum is building. Continuing to characterize Trump as “fuming” and having a “nervous breakdown”. Ignoring Tim Walz’s record.
Harris finally made her pick today: Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota.
If you go to right-leaning media and X accounts, you’ll immediately see lots of people exploring Tim Walz’s record and past; his handling of the BLM riots, his handling of COVID, and his embrace of Communist China.
If you go to Google News, the only commentary of Tim Walz you’ll see from the headlines is from an NPR article saying how he has “good vibes and midwestern appeal”. Of course, we’ve already explored how Google cleared the deck of conservative sites from its list of “authoritative” news sites about elections, with the token inclusion of Fox News (who themselves are not always pro-Trump either).
The rest of the headlines continues their daily drumbeat of how the Trump campaign is somehow “flailing”, “fuming”, “gibberish”, and showing “cowardice”.
To be Continued…
When I first started writing these synopses, I thought maybe I’d just do it for a little while to prove a point.
So far, we’ve seen how Trump went from an insurmountable lead to being behind in the polls. We’ve seen how Kamala Harris, without making one major speech or having a single press conference, managed to go from a Vice President who was known mainly for her cackle, for her failure to secure the Southern Border, and her awkward media moments to a savvy politician, a “brave” woman, a leader, and a foreign policy genius. She has faced zero questions about questions like the current state of the economy, the stock market crash earlier this week, the tensions in the Middle East. All the coverage, as you’ve seen has been about how she’s somehow taking over the lead in the polls, how her campaign is so brilliantly causing the Trump campaign to flounder.
None of this is real. This was all created by the mainstream media which many Americans still rely on for their daily news. And it was perfected by Google who ensures that Conservative news sites will never, ever see the light of day.
I’m realizing now that I should continue as long as I can. Why? Because this is going to be a historical record of what Google News looked like on any given day leading up to the 2024 election. And so I’ll start that with the next post.
