Did the Kamala Harris campaign release a video ad depicting a boy in makeup, necklace and dress trashing his home as part of the campaign's efforts to push abortion rights? No, that's not true: The video was produced three years ago for a U.K. home-insurance company's marketing campaign and has nothing to do with Kamala Harris or abortion. The company told Lead Stories that it had asked X to remove the video, which had been altered.
As of the date of this fact check, however, the video was still available on both X -- examples here and here (archived here and here) -- and Facebook.
The claim that the video was a pro-abortion Kamala Harris campaign spot appeared in a post on Facebook (archived here) on October 2, 2024. The post's caption read:
DISTURBING: New Kamala Harris Campaign Ad Depicts Mother Who Wishes She Had An Abortion. Watch til the end.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Oct 7 17:50:27 2024 UTC)
The 60-second video depicted a bespectacled young boy wearing makeup, jewelry and women's clothes, dancing through a house while making a mess in front of stunned family members.
The video included the instrumental version of Stevie Nicks' song "Edge of Seventeen."
Over that music was a voice that sounded like Democratic presidential candidate Harris explaining why she feels so strongly about protecting abortion rights. At the end, the voice says, "We must protect a women's right to choose her own path for herself. For her family. For her future. So we don't wind up living with a child like this."
The video ended with the sound of a female laugh. It is unclear whether the voice actually belongs to Kamala Harris.
The video featured a blue Harris/Walz logo in the top left corner.
But one key difference existed from actual Harris campaign commercials. The video posted on X does not end with the obligatory tagline "I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message." Such taglines for candidates' political ads have been required by law in the U.S. since 2022.
The video could not be found on any of the Harris campaign's official social media accounts (archived here, here, here and here).
Lead Stories discovered this video was never a campaign commercial.
Putting a screenshot from the video (archived here) into Google Lens produced a series of news articles (archived here) about the original video.
According to news outlets like the mainstream British news site Metro.co.uk, the video was produced in October 2021 as part of a marketing campaign for the home insurance firm John Lewis & Partners. The Metro.co.uk report contained the original video ad, which can be seen below:
(John Lewis & Partners video embedded from Metro.co.uk on Thu Oct 3 at 23:52:00 2024 UTC)
John Lewis & Partners' logo is in the same top left corner as the Harris/Walz box in the post on Facebook and X. But this logo is wider, an indication that the altered video was digitally pushed in to avoid seeing the original John Lewis corner graphic.
Here's a screenshot from the original John Lewis video:
(Source: Metro.co.uk screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 15:56:07 2024 UTC)
Here's a screenshot from the same moment in the altered video. Notice how the boy is closer to the camera in this version.
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Thu Oct 3 15:57:20 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories contacted John Lewis Partners, in reference to a post of the video on X that has since been deleted (archived here), to ask about their ad being used this way.
In an email received on October 3, 2024, a company spokesperson, who gave her name as Erin, said, "thanks for contacting us about this. We have reported this to X and asked them to take down this video urgently."
Two days later, the video was removed from X.
More Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Kamala Harris are here. Our fact checks of claims about abortion can be found here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to the 2024 U.S. election are here.
