Vice President Kamala Harris’s rapid response social media account, with more than 1.3 million followers, has been caught being deceptive about former President Donald Trump’s campaign on numerous occasions by online fact-checkers, and even CNN.
A CNN analysis of several posts made by the @KamalaHQ X account over the last month shared examples of Harris’s team using “false or misleading” video editing and captioning to misrepresent statements made by Trump and his allies.
The posts had all been called out by an X account by the name of @KamalaHQLies, an anonymous page that works to hold the official Harris page accountable for spreading misinformation.
An August 17 post of a clip of Trump speaking at a Pennsylvania campaign rally was worded to make it seem like the Republican did not know where he was:
“Trump: Would that be okay, North Carolina? (He is in Pennsylvania),” the Harris team captioned the clip of the former president asking the quoted question as he pointed at someone off to the side of his podium.
The same video was posted to the Kamala HQ Instagram account, where it was captioned “Donald Trump is lost and confused.”
The post was viewed more than 4.3 million times and received more than 24,000 likes on X and nearly 48,000 on Instagram — all based on false pretenses.
The full video of the Wilkes-Barre rally shows that Trump had pointed at the same spot to his left earlier in his speech to acknowledge a group of supporters who traveled from North Carolina.
“Thank you very much. North Carolina,” he said at one point.
With the full context, it was clear that Trump never believed he was in North Carolina and there is no evidence to suggest he was “lost and confused” about the rally’s location:
“The Harris campaign declined to comment on this @KamalaHQ post,” CNN’s Daniel Dale wrote.
Another clip posted by Kamala HQ on Thursday again implied that Trump was confused as to where he was:
“Trump: ‘Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote’ (He is in Arizona),” Harris’s team captioned an eight-second video of the former president addressing a crowd in Tucson, saying “So Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote, okay, just remember this: 2,000% increase. This is a small —”
The Kamala HQ Instagram account also posted the video, with an overlay stating, “Trump forgets which state he is in (again)” and a caption claiming, “He is declining rapidly.”
Once again, Trump’s statement made sense with the full, unedited context.
The Washington Post‘s livestream of the rally shows that he was talking about immigration — one of the top voter concerns in Arizona — by bringing up a small Pennsylvania town that “experienced a 2,000 percent increase in the population of Haitian migrants under Kamala Harris.”
“So Pennsylvania, remember this when you have to go to vote, okay, just remember this: 2,000 percent increase, this is a small town; of all a sudden they got thousands of people,” Trump said.
KamalaHQLies also posted the video with additional context:
The Harris campaign again declined to comment on the post to CNN.
Another deceptive edit from the account touched on Trump’s infamous remark on the 2017 Charlottesville riot, which has repeatedly been taken out of context over the years.
“Trump says ‘nothing was done wrong’ in Charlottesville in 2017 when neo-Nazis chanted ‘Jews will not replace us’ and killed an innocent woman,” Kamala HQ wrote in a Friday post:
The full video shows Trump was actually stating that he was not wrong for making his “very fine people, on both sides” comment after the Charlottesville riot took place, which was falsely said to be condoning the white supremacists present that day.
A June fact check by Snopes even admitted that “No, Trump Did Not Call Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists ‘Very Fine People.’”
According to CNN, Trump was specifically complaining that ABC News’s David Muir was an unfair moderator during the Tuesday presidential debate for not challenging how Harris described his Charlottesville remark:
I think [Muir] corrected me 11 times. Of the 11 times, I don’t think he had the right to correct me at all. Didn’t correct her once. Like on Project 2025, I have no idea about — had nothing to do with me, he didn’t correct her, he knew that. Charlottesville — nothing was done wrong. All you had to do is read my statement one more sentence and you would’ve seen that. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jesse (Watters), all of them, they — Greg Gutfeld — they all took that and they corrected it many times. But they keep coming with the same lies.
The Harris campaign actually did provide a statement on this post, defending their deceptive video editing by saying, “He’s saying he did ‘nothing wrong’ in relation to him saying ‘very fine people’ who did what is described in the tweet.”
The campaign’s statement failed to address that the “nothing wrong” comment still had nothing to do with the murder of Heather Heyer, who was fatally struck by 22-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. when he drove his car into a crowd of demonstrators in Charlottesville.
Kamala HQ has also posted misleading and inaccurate quotes from Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
The caption on a nine-second clip posted to the account on Thursday quotes Vance as saying “I think I’d consider it” when asked if he would “consider privatizing veterans health care”:
In reality, Vance can be heard saying “I think I’d consider — and…” before being cut off by the Harris campaign’s deceptive editing.
The full video shows Vance speaking on the Shawn Ryan Show, explaining how he would give veterans a choice on whether to go to a private medical practice or a public one that is part of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA):
I think I’d consider — and Donald Trump was really good at this, doesn’t get enough credit for this particular innovation — giving veterans more choice. Right? So let’s say you’re in a rural hospital. Your closest VA is 120 miles away. Why force a veteran to drive two-and-a-half hours to that VA facility when he can get cheaper and good care right in his backyard? Right? So I do think that we ought to open up choice and optionality for veterans. You know, I think that there is areas where the VA actually works very well, so I wouldn’t say get rid of the whole thing. I would say give people more choice, I think you’ll save money in the process, you’ll also give veterans a lot more optionality.
“This is a flat-out lie from the hacks at Kamala HQ,” KamalaHQLies said:
The Harris campaign again defended their post, arguing to CNN that “Vance is suggesting he would consider privatizing VA functions. This is not misleading. Our caption does not say ‘the whole VA health system.’”
However, they did not acknowledge the misquote in their caption.
A spokesman for Vance told CNN that Harris’s campaign is “lying.”
According to William Martin, the vice-presidential candidate’s communications director, Vance “personally relied on the VA for years after leaving the Marine Corps” and he does not want to privatize VA “functions.”
“In the full exchange, Senator Vance clearly says he would not privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Martin explained.
Other posts made by Kamala HQ in the last few weeks include several misleading claims about Trump’s purported support of Project 2025, which he has repeatedly denied.
CNN even defended another Trump comment about tax cuts when Kamala HQ came after him in a September 5 post:
“Trump tells his wealthy donors he is going to make his tax handouts for the ultra-wealthy ‘permanent’ and cut their taxes ‘even more,’” the campaign said with a 13-second video of the Republican saying, “The fifth pillar of my plan is to make the Trump tax cuts permanent — they are massive tax cuts, biggest ever, permanent — and to cut taxes even more.”
The full speech revealed that Kamala HQ editors cut the clip just before the former president explained what he meant — policies such as eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security benefits, which are definitely not geared toward the upper class.
“Also, this was not a speech to wealthy Trump donors alone,” Dale wrote for CNN. “It was a speech to the nonpartisan Economic Club of New York, whose members include a broad array of business executives from the area; some attendees were wealthy Trump donors, but others were not.”
Dale also noted that the Harris campaign touted her own popularity among chief executives the very next day.
The Harris campaign told CNN that “no tax on tips and Social Security were not new.”
Another attack on Vance regarding a statement he made when addressing the International Association of Fire Fighters painted him as “anti-union”:
“Vance: Democrats want to attack Republicans as being anti-union and sometimes the shoe fits,” said an August 29 post including a five-second clip of the senator saying that phrase before it was cut off.
The full video shows the brazenly distorted editing by the Harris campaign.
“A lot of Democrats want to attack Republicans as being anti-union and sometimes the shoe fits — but not me, and not Donald Trump,” said Vance, before highlighting policies he supported to better help firefighters.
The Harris campaign’s response to CNN’s inquiry again defended the post, calling it a “direct quote of JD Vance.”
The campaign added that their post was “clearly meant to convey that Vance acknowledges Republicans have a history of being anti-union.”
They also lied about something that Human Events senior editor and Trump supporter Jack Posobiec said, claiming that he was talking about Project 2025 when he was not:
“Trump operative on Project 2025: If you have principles without power, it’s meaningless. We must wield power. We must seize power,” Kamala HQ captioned an August 28 post with a 12-second video of Posobiec saying, “Now if you have all power and no principle you’re a tyrant. But if you have principles without power, it’s meaningless, it’s completely meaningless. You must wield power. You must seize power.”
Posobiec thanked the campaign for the “free advertising” for his latest book, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them):
“Kamala HQ got the spicy takes,” he said on X. “But nowhere in this clip is Project 2025 mentioned — this is an interview about NYT Bestselling book Unhumans!”
The Harris campaign told CNN the author’s comments in the interview were “part of” a “larger” Trump-backed Project 2025 plan to fire civil servants who are not loyal to the Republican nominee if he is reelected.
“Posobiec wasn’t talking here about firing civil servants, and, regardless, the post made a specific claim that Posobiec was talking about Project 2025, which he was not,” Dale concluded.
