Politico’s Sam Stein Battles Critics Over Claim Kamala Harris is Too Much ‘First Black’ and Not Enough ‘First Asian’ VP

Tommy ChristopherMay 20th, 2021, 8:12 am
 

Politico editor Sam Stein has invited critics to direct their fire at him over a tweet and an article that contained the claim that Vice President Kamala Harris faces criticism for focusing too much on being the first Black VP, and not enough on being the first Asian-American veep.

On Tuesday, Politico tweeted an article by Anita Kumar with the headline “How Kamala Harris became a victim of the barriers she broke.”

“After nearly four months in office, Kamala Harris faces criticism that she hasn’t struck the right balance, that she’s focused more often on being the United States’ first Black vice president than the first Asian American one,” the tweet read — a direct quote from the article.

Ms. Kumar is a veteran White House correspondent and a pioneer in her own right, as the first Indian American to be elected to the Board of the White House Correspondents Association.

But the article and the tweet received a blistering amount of blowback, much of it focused on the fact that the article backs up the premise of that tweet with only two quotes: one from a tweet responding to Maya Harris after she celebrated her sister’s selection as the “first black woman to be a major-party vice-presidential nominee,” and one from a Republican donor.

Other critics were broader in their vociferous criticism. Here’s a sampling of tweets from political and media figures and other verified Twitter users, from a variety of political viewpoints:

Enter Sam Stein, who first tweeted the article by retweeting Politico reporter Maya King, who used a different quote from the article to promote it.

After the backlash began, Stein defended the article, while acknowledging that tweets sometimes don’t “convey the full depth of an article.”

He also retweeted a compliment from another Politico staffer, Blake Hounshell.

As the backlash continued, Stein came to Kumar’s defense once more, revealing that he had written the headline, and “signed off” on the “tweet language.”

“A lot of folks have been directing vitriol at a reporter here for a headline on a Kamala Harris story that I wrote and tweet language that I signed off on. Please stop it. Direct it at me,” Stein wrote.

He then added “i don’t think your criticism are fair, tbh. But i’m willing to hear them out and listen to them. What i can’t stand is people being completely nasty and unprofessional to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

Twitter critics obliged him.

There were some blue-checks who were supportive of Stein.

As Kumar noted in her article, Vice President Harris delivered the keynote speech to the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Unity Summit on Wednesday. Watch those remarks above via The White House.

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