TThe announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris will seek the Democratic nomination for President is inspiring a wave of false claims about her eligibility and background. Some first emerged years ago, while others only emerged after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his bid for a second term.
Here’s a look at the facts.
CLAIM:
Harris is not a U.S. citizen and therefore cannot serve as commander in chief.
THE FACTS:
Completely false. Harris is a natural-born American citizen. She was born on October 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, according to a copy of her birth certificate, obtained by the Associated Press.
His mother, a cancer researcher from India, and his father, an economist from Jamaica, met when they were graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Under 14th Amendment Under the Constitution, anyone born on U.S. soil is considered a natural-born U.S. citizen and eligible to serve as 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 in which they reside,” the amendment says.
There is no legitimate doubt or 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 issues are really nuanced — this is not one of those situations,” Levinson told the AP on Monday.
Still, social media posts making the debunked claim that Harris cannot serve as president went viral shortly after Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and would support 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 U.S. citizens when she was born.”
False claims about Harris’ eligibility began circulating in 2019 when she launched her bid for president. They got a boost, thanks in part to then-President Donald Trump, when Biden picked her as his running mate.
“I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” the Republican said of Harris in 2019.
CLAIM:
Harris is not black.
THE FACTS:
This is fake. Harris is black and Indian. His father, Donald Harris, is a black man born in Jamaica. Shyamala Gopalan, his mother, was born in southern India. Harris has spoken publicly for many years, including in her 2019 autobiography, about how she identifies with her parents’ heritage.
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, social media users are making erroneous claims about Harris’ race.
“Just a reminder that Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris is not black,” reads one X post that had received approximately 42,000 likes and 20,400 shares as of Monday. “She is Indian American. She pretends to be black as part of the illusory Democratic DEI quota.
But Harris is black and Indian. In fact, she is the first woman, person of color and of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. This fact is highlighted in your biography on WhiteHouse.gov and she has spoken about her ethnicity on many occasions.
Harris wrote in his autobiography, The Truths We Stand for: An American Journeythat she identifies with her mother’s and father’s heritage.
“My mother, grandparents, aunts and uncle instilled in us pride in our South Asian roots,” she wrote. “Our classic Indian names nod 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.
CLAIM:
Harris began having an affair with a married man, California politician Willie Brown.
THE FACTS:
Some important context is missing. Brown was separated from his wife during their relationship, which was no secret.
Brown, 90, is a former mayor of San Francisco and served as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown separated from his wife in 1982.
“Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago,” Brown wrote in 2020 on Chronicle of San Francisco under the article title, “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. And?”
He wrote that he supported Harris’ first run to be San Francisco district attorney — as he has supported a long list of other California politicians, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Gavin Newsom.
Harris, 59, was the state’s attorney general from 2011 to 2017 and served in the Senate from 2017 to 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, you either fought for ideals or slept your way to the top with Willie Brown.” Lahren later apologized for the comment.
Trump and some of his supporters have also highlighted their nearly three-decade relationship in recent attacks on Harris.
CLAIM:
An Inside Edition clip of television host Montel Williams holding hands with Harris and another woman is proof that Harris was his “sidekick.”
THE FACTS:
The clip shows Montel with Harris and her 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 internal edition segmentWilliams can be seen posing for photos and holding hands with the two women as they arrive at the 2001 Eighth Annual Race to Erase MS in Los Angeles.
But social media users are misrepresenting the video, using it as alleged evidence that Harris was Montel’s “sidekick” – a term used to describe a person, usually a woman, who has a sexual relationship with a man. in a monogamous relationship.
Williams addressed the false allegations in an X post on Monday, writing in reference to the Inside Edition clip, “as most of you know, this is my daughter on my right.” Getty Images photos from the Los Angeles gala identify the women as Harris and Ashley Williams.
In 2019, Williams described their relationship with Harris in a post on X, then known as Twitter.
“@KamalaHarris and I dated briefly 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 Senator Harris. I wonder if the same stories about her dating history would have been written if she had been a male candidate?
CLAIM:
Harris promised to inflict the “revenge of a nation” on Trump supporters.
THE FACTS:
A made-up quote attributed to Harris is spreading online five years after it first surfaced.
In the quote, Harris allegedly promises that if Trump is defeated in 2020, Trump supporters will be targeted by the federal government: “Once Trump is gone and we have regained our rightful place in the White House, be careful if you supported him and endorsed his actions , because we’ll come after you next. You will feel the revenge of a nation.”
The quote was shared again on social media this week. A post on X containing an image of the quote had been shared more than 22,000 times as of Monday afternoon.
The comments did not come from Harrisbut from a satirical article published online in August 2019. Shortly thereafter, Trump supporters such as musician Ted Nugent reposted the comments without noting that they were false.
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 that the future today is as past today as it will be tomorrow.”
THE FACTS:
Harris never said that. Footage of a 2023 rally about reproductive rights at Howard University, his alma mater, was altered to make it appear so.
In the days after Harris headlined the Washington rally, Republicans mocked an actual excerpt from her speech, with one critic dubbing her comments “word salad.” the AP reported at the time.
Harris says in the clip: “So I think it’s really important – as you’ve heard from so many incredible leaders – for us, in every moment, and certainly in this one, to see the moment in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it. , to understand where we exist in history and in the moment as it relates not just to the past, but to the future.”
NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights nonprofit whose president also spoke at the rally, broadcast live the original footage. It shows Harris making the “moment in time” remark, but not the “today is today” comment.
The White House transcription of Harris’ comments also does not include the altered video statement. Harris’ appearance at the event came on the same day that Biden announced his bid for re-election.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
