Kamala Harris defended her call to suspend then-President Donald Trump’s Twitter account in a 2019 interview, but stopped short of saying she wanted to shut down the platform, now known as Twitter, in the United States. She didn’t want to comment on the company,” or its current owner, Elon Musk.
Brazil’s telecoms regulator announced on August 30 that it would suspend access to the country’s X social network, blocking some users on social media Old videos that misrepresented Harris’s comments .
A Facebook post containing the video was posted on September 3 with the title, “Kamala says she wants to shut down X if she wins.”
Another post said, “BREAKING: Kamala Harris says Brazil made the right decision to remove Platform X and all social media platforms should comply with government censorship, including removing accounts of political opponents.”
Current independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped his candidacy and endorsed Trump on August 23, shared the video on Twitter, citing Musk’s name in his comments .
this post The content was misrepresented from an interview Harris gave to CNN that took place following a 2019 primary debate among contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
During that debate, then-Senator Harris Elizabeth Warren was asked to support their demand that Twitter shut down Trump’s account.
Later in the interview, host Jake Tapper asked Harris about her stance, and Harris responded: “We’re talking about Twitter, a private company, and it has its terms of use, and in the context of my question, I think most people would say that he threatened other members, including Congress, that he has lost his privileges and should be removed from office.”
Harris further said, “The main thing is, you can’t say you have one set of rules for Facebook and different rules for Twitter. The same rules should apply, you have power over these social media sites. It should not be like this. They need to talk directly to millions of people without monitoring or regulation, this has to stop.
Harris did not say whether she would block X if she became president, nor did she mention Musk, who purchased the platform in 2022 .
On September 4, 2024, Tapper posted on X that “we’re not talking about Musk” and shared a transcript and video of the interview.
Following the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Twitter banned Trump’s account for violating its “glorification of violence” rules. Musk reinstated it on November 19, 2022 .
Following the decision of judge Alexandre de Moraes, who had been feuding with Musk for months , X Platform announced on the morning of August 31Service was discontinued for most users in Brazil.
Harris’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Misleading. In a 2019 interview, Harris defended her call to suspend Trump’s Twitter account, saying she had not proposed suspending X in the US and did not mention Elon Musk, who did not own the platform at the time.
This article was written by the Askume fact-checking team. Learn more about our fact-checking efforts .
