Politico reporter Ben Lefebvre lashed out at the Washington Free Beacon on Monday after his article on Vice President Kamala Harris's fracking flip-flop was denounced as a poorly written mess of partisan nonsense.
"Thanks for pointing out the grammar error," Lefebvre told a Free Beacon reporter in an email. He proceeded to offer his "condolences for working at the Free Beacon," the award-winning neocon war blog located many, many floors above the Politico headquarters in Arlington, Va.
Lefebvre (pronounced "Loo-fev-wah" in the original French) is weird, but that's not why nonpartisan journalists were mocking his story about Harris, who recently disavowed her repeated calls to ban fracking during her failed primary campaign in 2019.
The Politico article was originally headlined: "Harris campaign pledges she won't ban fracking after Trump accusation." The last three words have since been removed in response to criticism. CNN reporter Andy Kaczynski, for example, highlighted the article's "bizarre framing," noting that Harris promised to eliminate fracking "on record numerous times" during her failed campaign.
Lefebvre mentioned former president Donald Trump's discussion of "statements Harris made during her 2019 primary run pledging to ban fracking," but declined to quote any of Harris's past statements, many of which are on video. Harris said the following, for example, during a televised town hall hosted by CNN: "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking."
It is the most recent example of mainstream journalists attempting to refurbish Harris's reputation after she became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president. (Rest in peace, Joe Biden.) Last week, a supposedly nonpartisan website deleted its own analysis describing Harris as "the most liberal senator," while multiple outlets recited Democratic talking points by insisting Harris was never appointed as "border czar," even thought many of those same outlets previously described her as such.
An exclusive Free Beacon review of Lefebvre's social media posts unearthed some predictable lib content as well as some weirder stuff. For example, Lefebvre is wearing a protective face mask in his profile photo on X (formerly Twitter), which includes a tag expressing support for the Politico union. He appears to be one of those people who is very concerned about masks.
In June 2020, Lefebvre complained about a neighbor who showed up "without a mask to a kid's outside birthday party in the community courtyard." Months later, he recounted being deservedly ridiculed by a future Free Beacon Man of the Year (2020, retroactive) while giving his cousin a ride in Washington, D.C.
"My cousin and I were in my car, both of us wearing masks," Lefebvre wrote of the time he drove his cousin to Union Station in Washington, D.C., in November 2020. "At one slow stretch, a guy wearing a MAGA hat driving his car in the opposite direction saw us, rolled down his window and started fake coughing at my car."
Lefebvre has also described being "endlessly fascinated" by watching Japanese people get drunk. (Indeed, he's one of those white guys who loves Japan.) He compared the sex scene in Homeland to the car chase scene in Dukes of Hazzard. He recounted how his "testosterone" was "raging" after he repaired his broken toilet while listening to a Nick Cave album in 2010. He's also a big fan of Taylor Swift and Teletubbies, whereas Lefebvre's wife is not a big fan of his nose hairs.
The lib journalist has written about his weird dreams, as well as the conversations with his son he finds amusing. "Son just asked me who's the world's strongest man," wrote Lefebvre. "I asked if he meant physically or emotionally. The look on his face as he processed that made me cackle." In 2022, he recalled a dream he once had after taking "some sinus medication" that reveals a demented mind in need of professional help.
"I had this really vivid dream that John McCain showed up to the funeral of my father-in-law (who's alive irl)," Lefebvre wrote. "McCain did one of those running high-fives thing [sic] with the people in the front pews. Then after the ceremony I found him talking with Joe Biden, and Biden was complaining that the country was ungovernable and thought we should have two capital cities, one in the east and one in the west."
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