The Washington Post scrubbed an unflattering anecdote of Vice President Kamala Harris crassly laughing at the thought of a prisoner begging for a drink of water — then backtracked Friday after an eagle-eyed reporter took notice.
Harris made the comments in a July 2019 Washington Post profile about her relationship with her sister and trusted aide, Maya Harris, when the former California prosecutor was running for president.
But that story disappeared from the site — with its link redirecting to a newer version published on Jan. 11, sans anecdote.
In the opening of the 2019 piece, Harris described her grueling schedule on the campaign trail — and the respite she got from SoulCycle sessions and walks on the beach with her husband.
“It’s a treat that a prisoner gets when they ask for, ‘A morsel of food please,’” Harris told Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, who described the then-presidential candidate as “shoving her hands forward as if clutching a metal plate, her voice now trembling like an old British man locked in a Dickensian jail cell.”
“‘And water! I just want wahtahhh….'” Harris continued. “Your standards really go out the f—ing window.”
Terris noted, “Kamala burst into laughter.”
The link to the original story rerouted to the newer version published this month — a nearly identical version without the unflattering Harris prison anecdote.
The updated version instead has a more general opening about past politicians turning to family members as their closest advisors.
The quiet move was caught by libertarian magazine Reason on Friday — prompting the Washington Post to restore the original 2019 feature and link to it in its Jan. 11 story.
“This story has been updated from an earlier published version,” the newer story now says up top.
A Washington Post spokeswoman explained the update in a statement to Reason.
“We should have kept both versions of the story on the Post’s site (the original and updated one), rather than redirecting to the updated version,” said the newspaper’s vice president for communications Kris Coratti on Friday. “We have now done that, and you will see the link to the original at the top of the updated version.”
On Thursday, Coratti told Reason “we repurposed and updated some of our strong biographical pieces about both political figures” as part of an online series launched ahead of the inauguration.
“The profile of Maya Harris was updated with new reporting, as noted online, using the existing URL. The original story remains available in print,” Coratti said.
But the mag noted that Coratti didn’t provide other examples of similar updates or say if the Harris’s reps asked for the change.
Harris’ press secretary Sabrina Singh declined to comment and deferred questions to the Washington Post.
Harris, 56, spent decades working as a prosecutor in California. She was elected the state’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017 before her stint as a US senator.
During her bid for presidency, Harris billed herself as a “progressive prosecutor” — even though critics panned her for favoring police and moving too slowly on criminal justice reform.
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMESֱ
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