On Politics: Tackling the falsehoods about Kamala Harris
Good evening. Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign is only just beginning, but disinformation about her is already rampant online. My colleague Tiffany Hsu, a technology reporter, joins us tonight to take a look. The latest
Tackling the falsehoods about Kamala Harris
Vice President Kamala Harris has been campaigning for president for three days. And she is already facing disinformation and abuse of a far different caliber than President Biden ever has. Ever since Sunday, when Biden backed her candidacy for president in his stead, many social media posts have parroted variations on the sexist and racist rumors that have followed Harris for years. Within hours of Biden's announcement, more than 11 percent of related mentions of Harris on X involved attacks related to her race or gender, according to the data firm PeakMetrics. Many posts, including one from a woman running for secretary of state in Missouri, involved hostile sexual references. Democrats such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York quickly came to Harris's defense; some Republican leaders also urged fellow party members to focus on Harris's record rather than her identity. Disinformation researchers, however, said the normalization of misogynistic language had become an inexorable byproduct of an online ecosystem run with weak oversight and powered by a hunger for engagement. The toxic discourse surrounding Harris has often recycled earlier falsehoods about her, said Nina Jankowicz, the chief executive of the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit studying disinformation. "So many of the narratives that we saw back in 2020 are being repeated," Jankowicz said. "It's part and parcel of the violent rhetoric plaguing our political discourse, and unless politicians on both sides of the aisle stop engaging in it and call it out, it's only going to get worse." Here are the facts behind several conspiracy theories and misleading claims about Harris that have spread widely in recent days. Claims tied to raceHarris's heritage — her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica — has once again become catnip for conspiracy theorists. Some claimed, falsely, that Harris was an "anchor baby" who was disqualified from seeking the presidency. Her parents' immigration status is irrelevant to her eligibility to run; she was born in California and is a citizen. Other social media users said that Harris was "not Black" or "not Black enough." She has repeatedly discussed her pride in her Indian and Black roots, including in her autobiography, in interviews and in speeches at Howard University, her alma mater and a historically Black school. At the same time, Harris was derided as a "D.E.I. hire" in posts and television appearances by Republican lawmakers who accused her of being unsuited for leadership because diversity, equity and inclusion policies could have helped her advance. The comments largely ignored her extensive history holding public positions in jurisdictions that required her to navigate widely disparate activist circles and what she has called "blood sport" establishment politics. Harris was a prosecutor for three decades before being elected as California's attorney general, where she investigated for-profit colleges and helped secure a multibillion-dollar relief settlement for homeowners affected by the foreclosure crisis. After handily winning election to the Senate in 2016, she was known for her courtroom-style questioning in hearings. The recent claims of her lack of qualifications largely ignored Trump's nonexistent government experience when he first ran for office. "This idea that she was only chosen for her race and ethnicity, while at the same time not being Black enough or South Asian enough to claim those identities is something that we've seen over and over again," Jankowicz said. Attacks based on genderHarris has long been subject to exaggerated or unfounded claims that her past romantic partners enabled her political ascent. Those have only picked up this week. From Saturday to Monday, posts on X referring to claims that Harris "slept her way to the top" garnered nearly 40.3 million impressions — a 44,000 percent increase from the prior two-day period, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research group. The sexist insinuations point in part to her brief relationship in the 1990s with Willie Brown, who was 60 and the speaker of the California Assembly when Harris was 29 and rising in the Bay Area legal scene. He appointed Harris to two well-paid state board positions and introduced her to his political connections. When she was campaigning to be San Francisco's district attorney in 2003, her opponents repeatedly commented on her link to Brown — references that she told The New York Times in 2019 were "frustrating" and "designed to degrade, frankly, the conversation about why we needed a new D.A." During the 2003 race, which she won, she told SF Weekly that there was nothing improper about benefiting from her ties to Brown, although she described the relationship as an "albatross hanging around my neck." She said she "brought a level of life knowledge and common sense" to the board roles, adding that "whether you agree or disagree with the system, I did the work." She said that she had "no doubt that I am independent of him" and that "I do not owe him a thing." Misrepresentations of her political positionsSoon after Biden's announcement, an X account linked to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee claimed that Harris was interested in "BANNING CERTAIN BEHAVIORS, like eating red meat." The post included a video clip from a town hall event organized by CNN in 2019 to discuss climate change, in which Harris says that she "loves cheeseburgers" and supports changing dietary guidelines to reduce red meat consumption (as opposed to banning it outright). Unsubstantiated claims that Harris was an agent of the so-called deep state reached at least 67,000 users on WhatsApp and Telegram by Monday morning, according to Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas, a think tank. A faked image purporting to show Harris with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender, surfaced again despite being debunked nearly three years earlier as a manipulation of a photo that showed her with her husband. Another recycled accusation also gained traction: that Harris had failed as "border czar," her "one job." Republican politicians, including the governors of Florida and Texas, perpetuated the claims; the Trump campaign repeatedly did the same on Wednesday. The title, however, is a misleading one that was never officially bestowed on the vice president. Instead, Biden deputized her with a diplomatic mission to evaluate the factors that cause people to leave their home countries in the first place. Both she and Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, have noted that it is his job to manage the border. — Stuart A. Thompson and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting.
Planning to leave the country if the election doesn't go your way? We'd like to hear from you.As national politics reach a fever pitch, some Americans are contemplating leaving the country depending on the outcome of the 2024 election. Some are already living abroad — partly the result of what they see as an increasingly toxic political, social and cultural environment. If you are considering leaving the United States for any of these reasons, are making plans to do so or have already done so, my colleague Ronda Kaysen wants to hear from you. She won't publish any part of your response without following up with you and hearing back from you. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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