FACT FOCUS: Posts falsely claim video shows Harris promising to censor X and owner Elon Musk
After a national suspension of billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform in Brazil, social media users – including the former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. —misrepresenting a years-old video of Vice President Kamala Harris, falsely claiming that the Democratic presidential candidate threatened to censor both X and Musk.
Here are the facts examined in more detail.
CLAIM: In a video clip, Harris says she will take out X if she wins the 2024 presidential election and that Musk “has lost his privileges.”
THE FACTS: That’s not true. Harris was referring to Trump long before Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X.
The clip is from 2019 and shows Harris speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper after a Democratic primary debate. They discuss whether then-President Donald Trump’s profile should be removed from the platform, then called Twitter, and whether social media companies should be more accountable.
Kennedy, who suspended his candidacy for president on August 23 and Trump endorsedused the clip in an X post as alleged evidence that Harris was referring to Musk, stating, “Can someone please explain to her that free speech is a RIGHT, not a ‘privilege’?” He also offered his own interpretation of Harris’ comments on social media sites in general as follows: “If they don’t moderate the content to conform to government-approved narratives, they get shut down.”
As of Tuesday, the post had been liked and shared approximately 200,300 times.
Another popular X post that shared the video simply reads, “Kamala will take out X if she wins.” The video has been liked and shared about 105,000 times. Other social media users claimed that Harris was speaking in support of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who made the decision to ban X last week.
In extended footage of the interview, part of CNN’s post-debate analysis on October 15, 2019, Tapper asked Harris: “So, one of the things you talked about a lot, particularly the confrontation with Sen. Warren, was your push, your call, for Twitter to suspend President Trump’s account. Why was that important?”
Tapper referred to the moment in the debate when Harris criticized then-Democratic fellow candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not pushing for such a suspension. Twitter eventually did Block Trump’s account in January 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” following the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol, with multiple other social media platforms ousting him around the same time. Musk restored Trump’s account in November 2022, after purchasing the platform.
Harris replied during the interview that Trump “has proven himself willing to obstruct justice” and that what he says on Twitter “influences people’s perceptions of what they should and should not do.”
She continued: “And to me, and I think most people would say this, including the members of Congress that he has threatened, he has been stripped of his privileges and it should be revoked.”
Harris did not call for the platform to be shut down altogether. Instead, she called for greater accountability.
“The bottom line is you can’t say you have one rule for Facebook and another rule for Twitter,” she said. “The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility on these social media sites to understand their power. They’re speaking directly to millions and millions of people without any kind of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.”
The exchange is reflected in CNN’s transcript of the coverage.
Harris’ campaign referred an Associated Press inquiry into the false claims to a Democratic National Committee spokesman, who declined to comment. Representatives for Trump and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked last Friday for refusing to name a local legal representative as required by law. His decision was unanimously confirmed by a court panel on Monday. X had his legal representative removed from Brazil on the grounds that Moraes had threatened her with arrest. The platform will remain suspended until it complies with Moraes’ order and pays the outstanding fines.
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.