Did Kamala Harris say she would shut down X if elected, as posts on social media claimed based on a video where she said "He has lost his privileges"? No, that's not true: The video clip on social media is from an interview she did with CNN in 2019. A transcript of her remarks shows her comments were about Trump -- she did not say she would shut down X if she were elected president. She said she believed Donald Trump's account on Twitter should be taken down. She did not speak about Elon Musk, who did not own Twitter in 2019.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) on X on September 3, 2024. It said:
🚨Kamala Harris says she will shut down X if elected🚨
This is a direct threat to our first amendment rights. If this isn't reason enough to vote for Trump, I don't know what else to say.
Libs would hate if you shared and followed me on X, @dittletv
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 17:19:35 2024 UTC)
In the 28-second video Democratic presidential nominee Harris says:
He has lost his privileges and it should be taken down. The bottom line is that you can't say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter. The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.
Nowhere in the clip does Harris say she will shut X down if she were elected president. Lead Stories debunked a similar false claim that used the same footage to say Harris said Elon Musk had "lost his privileges," when she was actually speaking about Republican presidential nominee Trump.
The clip is from footage of Harris speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper after a debate among Democratic presidential contenders on October 15, 2019, in Westerville, Ohio. The now-vice president was then a senator from California running in the presidential primary. Tapper asked Harris about her "call for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump," and she responded that she believed he should have his account shut down.
Archived video from the "CNN Debate Post Analysis: Ohio" shows that Tapper asked Harris about Trump, not Musk or the platform in general. She responded that Trump should be banned from Twitter, saying, "He has lost his privileges" in the video.
A CNN transcript (archived here) quotes Harris after Tapper's question about Trump:
TAPPER: So, one of the topics that you chose to talk a lot about, especially confronting Senator Warren on was your push, your call for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump. Why was that important?
HARRIS: What's important about it is this, Jake, and I say this as a former prosecutor. You have to take seriously witness intimidation. You have to take seriously an attempt to obstruct justice. You have to take seriously a threat to a witness and really to their safety and potentially their life.
And when you're talking about Donald Trump, he has 65 million Twitter followers. He has proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice. Just ask Bob Mueller. You can look at the manifesto from the shooter in El Paso to know that what Donald Trump says on Twitter impacts people's perceptions about what they should and should not do.
And we're talking about a private corporation, Twitter, that has terms of use, and as far as I'm concerned and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened --
TAPPER: Mm-hmm.
HARRIS: -- that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down. The bottom line is that you can't say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter. The same rule has to apply, which is that there has to be a responsibility that is placed on these social media sites to understand their power. They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation, and that has to stop.
These are other Lead Stories fact checks about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. More stories about the 2024 election are here.
