There have been a wide range of fake news stories circulating on social media about US Vice President Kamala Harris since President Joe Biden withdrew his re-election bid on July 21 and endorsed her instead. Social media users have been circulating a photo that allegedly shows Harris next to the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Other posts feature Harris’ statements taken out of context or digitally altered videos.
If you only have a minute…
-
A video posted online on July 21 seems to show Vice President Kamala Harris saying something that, frankly, doesn’t make sense. It turns out that the video – and her speech – were digitally altered.
-
A photo has been circulating online that purports to show Harris posing with the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Turns out, the image was digitally altered and Epstein’s face was pasted over the face of Harris’ husband.
-
During a speech about the fight against climate breakdown, Kamala Harris said that she was in favour of reducing the population. The White House, however, released a corrected transcript, explaining that she had made a gaffe and said “reduce population” instead of “reduce pollution”. It’s true that “pollution” makes more sense in the sentence.
The fact check, in detail
When US President Joe Biden pulled out of the 2024 presidential race on July 21, his vice president, Kamala Harris, barely had time to announce her candidacy before the internet was flooded with fake news attempting to discredit her.
Did Harris really speak nonsense?
In a video that has garnered 1.9 million views since it was first posted on X on July 21, Harris seems to be speaking absolute nonsense.
“Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So live today so that future today will past today, as it is tomorrow," she seems to say in the video.
It turns out that this video is actually a montage put together by a pro-Trump account called @ramble_rants. It was first posted online on April 29, 2023. We carried out a reverse image search to find this version (check out our handy guide to find out how). In the version published on April 29, the name of the account that made this doctored version, "Ramble Rants", has been edited onto the front of Harris’ podium.
Ramble Rants removed the original sound on the video and added an AI-generated voice made to sound like Harris. We carried out a reverse image search and located the original, unedited video, which was posted on YouTube by American tabloid, the New York Post. It was filmed on April 25, 2023, when Harris gave a speech at Howard University in Washington, DC. In it, she spoke about the right to an abortion. This is what she actually said:
So I think it’s very important — as you have heard from so many incredible leaders — for us, at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past, but the future.
You can also read the transcript for this speech on the White House website. While her original speech was criticised by conservative media outlets like Fox News, who said that it wasn’t clear, the vice president never said “yesterday is today yesterday” or any of the other incomprehensible statements you can hear in the doctored version posted online on July 21.
Was Harris really photographed with Jeffrey Epstein?
Did Harris really pose with financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein? At first glance, that’s what a photo that has been circulating online seems to show. A post on X featuring this photo has garnered more than 1.1 million views since it was first posted on July 8. It has been circulated even more widely since Biden withdrew his candidacy and Harris announced hers.
However, this photo was digitally altered. If you run the photo through a reverse image search, then you can find the original photo in Getty Images.
The original photo was taken on September 17, 2015 during a dinner at the Broad Museum, a modern art museum in Los Angeles, California. In the original photo, you can see the red letters spelling out BROAD on the backdrop. These also appear in the digitally altered version.
In the original photo, Harris is posing with her husband, Douglas Emhoff. In the doctored version, her husband’s face has been replaced with Epstein’s.
Is Harris in favor of reducing the population to fight climate change?
An account managed by Donald Trump’s campaign team posted a video on July 15, which has since garnered more than 11.7 million views. In the video, Harris seems to say that she supports reducing the population to help fight climate change. Republican social media users were quick to call her out on X.
"When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,” she says in the video.
This video is real. It was filmed on July 14, 2023when Harris spoke at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland. Harris was speaking about climate breakdown and clean energy.
However, while Harris did indeed say “reduce population”, it seems like she misspoke, saying “population” instead of “pollution”. That’s noted in the transcript published by the White House where the word “population” is crossed out and the word “pollution” is written in brackets to rectify the error. And it is true that “pollution” makes more sense in the context of the sentence.
In April 2023, even conservative media outlets reported that Harris’ statements on population reduction were a “gaffe”.
Immediately after withdrawing his candidacy, Biden endorsed Harris in a statement published on July 21 on X. Harris still needs the support of her party’s delegates. However, as the only candidate to qualify for the Democratic National Committee’s virtual roll call ballot for president, she is the party’s all-but-certain nominee. Voting will continue until August 5.
