Did Vice President Kamala Harris say, "Today we celebrate the Olympics. Because Olympians are Olympic, & they are at the Olympics being Olympian, so it's more important now than ever to support their Olympianism"? No, that's not true: Harris' spokesperson said that's not something she said. It is a parody of a manipulated Harris quote that Lead Stories debunked previously. Lead Stories found no evidence Harris said those words in that order.
The claim appeared in a post on Threads (archived here) on July 28, 2024. The on-screen text read:
Today we celebrate the Olympics. Because Olympians are Olympic, & they are at the Olympics being Olympian, so it's more important now than ever to support their Olympianism.
-- Kamala
This is what the Threads post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Tue Jul 30 13:22:18 2024 UTC)
The post did not cite the date or place at which she is purported to have said it.
We contacted Kirsten Allen, Harris' spokesperson and asked if the claim was true. In a July 30, 2024, email, she replied with one word:
No.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on the Google News index of thousands of reliable information sites, visible here (archived here), which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
In July 2024, Lead Stories debunked what could be seen as the original iteration of this Kamala Harris word salad meme. In that fact check, an X user claimed that Harris said, "Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So live today so that future today will past today, as it is tomorrow" on video. We concluded that the audio from the video had been manipulated.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Kamala Harris are here.
More Lead Stories fact checks on the Olympics are here.
