Was Vice President Kamala Harris "too intoxicated to stand up" at the Democratic National Convention? No, that's not true: Harris was receiving applause at the moment in question and was not expected to stand. She was seen standing several times during the first night of the convention.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on August 19, 2024. The post included a clip of Harris seated while receiving applause, and the caption of the post read:
BREAKING 🚨
Kamala Harris appears to be too intoxicated to stand up.
This is getting bad. 👀
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Aug 22 14:26:26 2024 UTC)
The post gave no evidence nor did it cite anything to substantiate its claim that Harris "appears to be too intoxicated to stand up."
The clip, posted on the first night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), was taken from footage of a speech by Ashley Biden, President Joe Biden's daughter. A video of Ashley Biden's speech shows that Harris was receiving a standing ovation from the audience when Ashley stated that Harris would win the 2024 presidential election. Because she was the person who was being applauded, she did not stand, which is a typical way to accept public praise in a seated setting.
Other videos show Harris standing before and after Ashley Biden's speech. First lady Jill Biden gave a speech right before Ashley Biden, during which Harris stood. Directly following Ashley's speech, the president took the stage. Harris stood during the president's standing ovation.
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google News, visible here and here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
At the time this was written, Snopes had reviewed the same claim.
Lead Stories has published other fact checks related to Kamala Harris and the 2024 election.
