FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims around Kamala Harris and her campaign for the White House
The announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris will seek the Democratic nomination for president is inspiring a wave of false claims about her eligibility and her background. Some first emerged years ago, while others only surfaced after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his bid for a second term.
Here’s a look at the facts.
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CLAIM: Harris is not an American citizen and therefore cannot serve as commander in chief.
THE FACTS: Completely false. Harris is a natural born U.S. citizen. She was born on Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, according to a copy of her birth certificate, obtained by The Associated Press.
Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, anyone born on U.S. soil is considered a natural born U.S. citizen and eligible to serve as either the vice president or president.
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” reads the amendment.
There is no question or legitimate debate about whether a citizen like Harris is eligible to serve as president or vice president, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School.
“So many legal questions are really nuanced — this isn’t one of those situations,” Levinson told the AP on Monday.
Still, social media posts making the debunked assertion that Harris cannot serve as president went viral soon after Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and would back Harris for president.
“Kamala Harris is not eligible to run for President,” read one post on X that was liked more than 34,000 times. “Neither of her parents were natural born American citizens when she was born.”
False assertions about Harris’ eligibility began circulating in 2019 when she launched her bid for the presidency. They got a boost, thanks in part to then-President Donald Trump, when Biden selected her as his running mate.
“I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” the Republican said of Harris in 2019.
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CLAIM: Harris is not Black.
THE FACTS: This is false. Harris is Black and Indian. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Shyamala Gopalan, her mother, was born in southern India. Harris has spoken publicly for many years, including in her 2019 autobiography, about how she identifies with the heritage of both her parents.
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Despite ample evidence to the contrary, social media users are making erroneous claims about Harris’ race.
“Just a reminder that Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris isn’t black,” reads one X post that had received approximately 42,000 likes and 20,400 shares as of Monday. “She Indian American. She pretends to be black as part of the delusional, Democrat DEI quota.”
But Harris is both Black and Indian. Indeed, she is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. This fact is highlighted in her biography on WhiteHouse.gov and she has spoken about her ethnicity on many occasions.
Harris wrote in her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” that she identifies with the heritage of both her mother and father.
“My mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots,” she wrote. “Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness and appreciation for Indian culture.”
In the next paragraph, she adds, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters.” Harris again refers to herself as a “black woman” in the book’s next chapter.
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CLAIM: Harris got her start by having an affair with a married man, California politician Willie Brown.
THE FACTS: This is missing some important context. Brown was separated from his wife during the relationship, which was not a secret.
Brown, 90, is a former mayor of San Francisco who was serving as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown had separated from his wife in 1982.
“Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago,” Brown wrote in 2020 in the San Francisco Chronicle under the article title, “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?”
He wrote that he supported Harris’ first race to be San Francisco district attorney — just as he has supported a long list of other California politicians, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Harris, 59, was state attorney general from 2011-2017 and served in the Senate from 2017 until 2021, when she became vice president. She has been married to Doug Emhoff since 2014.
Harris’ critics have used the past relationship to question her qualifications, as Fox News personality Tomi Lahren did when she wrote on social media in 2019: “Kamala did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown.” Lahren later apologized for the comment.
Trump and some of his supporters have also highlighted the nearly three-decade old relationship in recent attacks on Harris.
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CLAIM: An Inside Edition clip of television host Montel Williams holding hands with Harris and another woman is proof that Harris was his “side piece.”
THE FACTS: The clip shows Montel with Harris and his daughter, Ashley Williams. Harris and Williams, a former marine who hosted “The Montel Williams Show” for more than a decade, dated briefly in the early 2000s.
In the clip, taken from a 2019 Inside Edition segment, Williams can be seen posing for photographs and holding hands with both women as they arrive at the 2001 Eighth Annual Race to Erase MS in Los Angeles.
But social media users are misrepresenting the clip, using it as alleged evidence that Harris was Montel’s “side piece” — a term used to describe a person, typically a woman, who has a sexual relationship with a man in a monogamous relationship.
Williams addressed the false claims in an X post on Monday, writing in reference to the Inside Edition clip, “as most of you know, that is my daughter to my right.” Getty Images photos from the Los Angeles gala identify the women as Harris and Ashley Williams.
In 2019, Williams described his relationship with Harris in a post on X, then known as Twitter.
“@KamalaHarris and I briefly dated about 20 years ago when we were both single,” he wrote in an X post at the time. “So what? I have great respect for Sen. Harris. I have to wonder if the same stories about her dating history would have been written if she were a male candidate?”
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CLAIM: Harris promised to inflict the “vengeance of a nation” on Trump supporters.
THE FACTS: A fabricated quote attributed to Harris is spreading online five years after it first surfaced.
In the quote, Harris supposedly promises that if Trump is defeated in 2020, Trump supporters will be targeted by the federal government: “Once Trump’s gone and we have regained our rightful place in the White House, look out if you supported him and endorsed his actions, because we’ll be coming for you next. You will feel the vengeance of a nation.”
The quote was shared again on social media this week. One post on X containing an image of the quote was shared more than 22,000 times as of Monday afternoon.
The remarks didn’t come from Harris, but from a satirical article published online in August 2019. Shortly after, Trump supporters like musician Ted Nugent reposted the comments without noting they were fake.
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CLAIM: A video shows Harris saying in a speech: “Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So live today, so the future today will be as the past today as it is tomorrow.”
THE FACTS: Harris never said this. Footage from a 2023 rally on reproductive rights at Howard University, her alma mater, was altered to make it seem as though she did.
In the days after Harris headlined the Washington rally, Republicans mocked a real clip of her speech, with one critic dubbing her remarks a “word salad,” the AP reported at the time.
Harris says in the clip: “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.”
NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights nonprofit whose president also spoke at the rally, livestreamed the original footage. It shows Harris making the “moment in time” remark, but not the “today is today” comment.
The White House’s transcript of Harris’ remarks also does not include the statement from the altered video. Harris’ appearance at the event came the same day that Biden announced their reelection bid.
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