Did Vice President Kamala Harris say "a problem is not a problem" as part of a longer quote in a meme circulating on social media? No, that's not true: A spokesperson for the vice president's office answered "no" by email when Lead Stories asked if the quote was real. Lead Stories could find no video or news articles indicating Harris ever said the words in the meme.
The claim resurfaced in a post (archived here) on Instagram on July 27, 2024. It showed an image of Harris with the following inscription:
THE PROBLEM OF SOLVING APROBLEM IS NOT A PROBLEM,BUT WHEN A PROBLEM SOLVES APROBLEM WITHOUT ANY PROBLEM,THEN THE PROBLEM IS NOT AT ALLA PROBLEM.
When asked whether Harris made the comment that is the focus of this fact check, a spokesman for the vice president's office told Lead Stories via email on August 2, 2024, that the answer is "no."
The quote in question started to circulate on social media on January 20, 2024. Such examples can be found on X, formerly known as Twitter (archived here), and Reddit (archived here). Those entries did not contain any elaboration about when and where Harris supposedly made the cited remark.
By January 2024, she had already been in the public eye for decades, including the first three years of serving as vice president.
A Google search (archived here) across U.S. government websites for the fragment of the purported quote did not produce any results. Had Harris made the comment posted on Instagram and elsewhere, it would likely have been reflected in official transcripts.
A search for the same fragment across news publications indexed by Google News (archived here) did not lead to any credible reporting confirming the quote. It did show that Snopes has reviewed the same claim.
Lead Stories previously debunked other claims that misattributed similar quotes to Harris. For example, she did not say that "Olympians are Olympic."
Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Kamala Harris can be found here. Stories about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
