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Debunking Kamala's Biggest Lies That the ABC News Moderators Let Slide

Mia Cathell
Mia Cathell  |  September 11, 2024 1:30 PM

Within a matter of minutes, Kamala Harris lied about Capitol Police officers dying on January 6, then brought up the "very fine people on both sides" Charlottesville hoax, and ended with the "bloodbath" lie, but the so-called ABC News "moderators" didn't bother fact-checking the Democratic nominee on the presidential debate stage. So we will for them.

January 6 

"And on that day, the president of the United States incited a violent mob to attack our nation's Capitol, to desecrate our nation's Capitol. On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died."

FACT-CHECK: False.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died in the hospital the next day and not by a fire extinguisher to the head, as falsely claimed by multiple mainstream media outlets. His official cause of death was two strokes, occurring many hours after the Capitol riot. 

According to the DC medical examiner's office's report, Sicknick suffered no injuries, internal or external. He also didn't have a reaction to bear spray, which national news outlets had fallen back on, claiming that the mace used by the rioters caused the officer's pair of strokes.

Specifically, Sicknick succumbed to "acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis," the coroner said. When the term "natural causes" is used in such cases, that means "disease alone causes death," the medical examiner explained. "If death is hastened by an injury, the manner of death is not considered natural." 

Harris also shamelessly claimed on the eve of 9/11 that J6 was "the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War."

'Very Fine People' Hoax

"Let's remember Charlottesville where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate. What did the president then at the time say? There were fine people on both sides."

FACT-CHECK: False.

Trump did not call neo-Nazis and white supremacists who had attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, "very fine people." In fact, Trump explicitly condemned them.

Even Snopes debunked this long-repeated lie, which President Joe Biden — and now Harris — had made a cornerstone of his campaign.

Here are Trump's actual remarks to reporters in 2017, including his outright condemnation [Emphasis added]:


You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me. Excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.

[...]

And you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay?


'Bloodbath' Lie

"Donald Trump the candidate has said in this election there will be a bloodbath if the outcome of this election is not to his liking"

FACT-CHECK: False.

Trump, while speaking at an event about the auto industry, warned that it would be an economic "bloodbath" for the future of autoworkers and the country at large if Biden were to win.

"We're going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you're not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected," Trump specifically said, promising to impose tariffs on foreign-made cars crossing the border.

"Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that's gonna be the least of it," Trump continued. "It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it."

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Speaking metaphorically, Trump was saying that such imports allowed by Biden — i.e. cars manufactured outside the United States — would kill the automobile industry. 

Moreover, Merriam-Webster defines "bloodbath" as "a major economic disaster."

Flip-Flopping on Fracking

"I made it that very clear in 2020: I will not ban fracking."

FACT-CHECK: False.

Although she says in 2024 she supports fracking, that wasn't always the case and Harris didn't make that clear in 2020 either.

While running in the Democratic presidential primary, she said, "There's no question I'm in favor of banning fracking," when asked if she'd commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking on her first day in office.

Also at the CNN town hall in 2019, where she outright opposed fracking, Harris added that she backed California's efforts to stop fracking in her home state when she was the attorney general there: "Starting with what we can do on Day 1 around public lands, right? And then there has to be legislation, but yes — and this is something I've taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue."

But after Biden selected Harris as his running mate a year later, she changed course and morphed her position to match his, telling The View on the 2020 campaign trail that she and Biden are "aligned on this" and won't ban fracking. However, her appearance on The View was a clean-up job clarifying the Biden-Harris campaign's position in the aftermath of the vice presidential debate.

She had the chance to declare her personal position during her only debate in 2020 against then-Vice President Mike Pence. Harris did say "Joe Biden will not end fracking," but she didn't disclose whether she personally holds a view on the subject different from what she had expressed while running for president. Here's the full transcript of that face-off, per the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Unemployment Under Trump

"Donald Trump left us [with] the worst unemployment since the Great Depression."

FACT-CHECK: False. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, when Trump exited in January 2021, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent, not far from full employment figures and lower than it was when President Barack Obama was in office

Pre-pandemic, in February 2020, unemployment under Trump was at 3.5 percent, according to Federal Reserve Bank records. Although that number had skyrocketed to a post-Great Depression record of 14.8 percent in April 2020, the highest rate seen since 1939, per BLS historical data, that was when the COVID-19 shutdowns shuttered the U.S. economy.

By the time Trump left office, as America's beleaguered economy was beginning to bounce back, the unemployment rate had declined significantly and was well below numerous other spikes documented during economic recessions. For comparison, Trump's 6.4 percent unemployment rate was better than Obama's 10 percent peak in October 2009. 

So, the Biden-Harris administration didn't exactly inherit a broken economy; it was already recovering. The economy, cratered on account of the COVID-19 pandemic, was in the midst of healing and steadily recouping jobs at a relatively rapid rate. The recovery process started during Trump's time and was well underway when Biden was inaugurated. However, Trump's tenure ended about eight months into the economic revival cycle.