FACT FOCUS: Posts falsely claim video shows Harris promising to censor X and owner Elon Musk

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This article was published 03/09/2024 (734 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a nationwide suspension of billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform in Brazil, social media users — including former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are misrepresenting a years-old video of Vice President Kamala Harris to falsely claim that the Democratic presidential nominee has threatened to censor both X and Musk.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: A video clip portrays Harris as saying that she will shut down X if she wins the 2024 presidential election and that Musk has “lost his privileges.”

THE FACTS: That’s false. Harris was referring to Trump long before Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it as X.

The clip is from 2019 and shows Harris speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper after a Democratic primary debate, discussing whether then-President Donald Trump’s profile should be removed from the platform, called Twitter at the time, and how there needs to be increased accountability for social media companies.

Kennedy, who on Aug. 23 suspended his presidential bid and endorsed Trump, used the clip in an X post as alleged proof that Harris was talking about Musk, stating: “Can someone please explain to her that freedom of speech is a RIGHT, not a ‘privilege’?” He also provided his own interpretation of Harris’ comments on social media sites in general as follows: “If they don’t police content to conform to government-approved narratives, they will be shut down.”

The post had been liked and shared approximately 200,300 times as of Tuesday.

Another popular X post that shared the video simply reads: “Kamala will shut down X if she wins.” It has been liked and shared approximately 105,000 times. Other social media users claimed that Harris was speaking in support of a Brazilian Supreme Court justice who made the decision last week to block X.

In extended footage of the interview, part of CNN’s post-debate analysis on Oct. 15, 2019, Tapper asked Harris: “So, one of the topics that you chose to talk a lot about, especially confronting Sen. Warren on, was your push, your call, for Twitter to suspend the account of President Trump. Why was that important?”

Tapper was referring to the moment in the debate when Harris criticized then-fellow Democratic candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren for not urging such a suspension. Twitter did eventually ban Trump’s account in January 2021, citing “the risk of further incitement of violence” after the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, with multiple other social media platforms kicking him off around the same time. Musk restored Trump’s account in November 2022 after he bought the platform.

Harris responded during the interview that Trump had “proven himself to be willing to obstruct justice” and that what he says on Twitter “impacts people’s perceptions about what they should and should not do.”

She continued: “And as far as I’m concerned, and I think most people would say, including members of Congress who he has threatened, that he has lost his privileges and it should be taken down.”

Harris did not call for the platform as a whole to be shut down. Rather, she advocated for increased accountability.

“The bottom line is that you can’t say that you have one rule for Facebook and you have a different rule for Twitter,” she stated. “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.”

The exchange is reflected in CNN’s transcript of the coverage.

The Harris campaign directed an Associated Press inquiry about the false claims to a Democratic National Committee spokesperson, who declined to comment. Representatives for Trump and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X blocked last Friday for refusing to name a local legal representative, as required by law. His decision was unanimously upheld by a court panel on Monday. X had removed its legal representative from Brazil on the grounds that de Moraes had threatened her with arrest. The platform will stay suspended until it complies with de Moraes’ order and pays outstanding fines.

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