The race to define Vice President Harris is on. The likely Democratic nominee for president dropped a new biographical ad at about the same moment Donald Trump’s campaign released an attack ad framing her as “dangerously liberal.” Here’s an assessment of the claims made in each ad.
Trump ad: ‘I don’t understand’
This 30-second ad is heavily focused on Harris’s role in the administration to address the “root causes” of migration from three Central American countries, using a label bestowed by Republicans (“border czar”), which The Washington Post reported in 2021 that she shunned. “Republicans try to crown Harris the ‘border czar.’ She rejects the title,” the headline said. But numerous TV commentators adopted the phrase and applied it to Harris, as this video compilation shows, giving the Trump campaign an opportunity to make the label stick.
“This is America’s border czar — and she’s failed us.”
This voice-over is accompanied by video of Harris dancing in a colorful shirt. It attributes the label of border czar to a 2022 article in the conservative National Review, which called her “border czar” in the headline.
But Harris was not in charge of immigration issues, and she certainly wasn’t a czar.
In 2021, President Biden assigned Harris to take charge of the “root causes” strategy — essentially a diplomatic effort with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to stem migration from those countries. The efforts appeared to have some impact — border arrests from those countries dropped from 700,000 in the 2021 fiscal year to fewer than 500,000 in 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data. The downward trend has continued in 2024. For instance, nearly 77,000 migrants from those countries crossed the border in June 2021 — and the figure dropped to 24,000 in June of this year.
But the problem shifted. Migrants surged from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti — countries that were not part of the “root causes” strategy. In June, more than 106,000 people from countries other than the three Central American countries were arrested at the border — though that is down from a peak of 239,000 in December. On June 4, Biden issued an emergency order to curb asylum access, and White House officials say illegal crossings have dropped 50 percent since then.
“Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here.”
The text of the ad says “over ten million illegal border crossings” — which is technically accurate — but the voice-over is false.
CBP recorded about 10 million “encounters” from February 2021, after Biden took office, through June. But that does not mean all those people entered the country illegally. Some people were “encountered” numerous times as they tried to enter the country — and others (more than 4 million of the total) were expelled, mostly because of covid-related rules that have since ended.
CBP has released more than 3.2 million migrants into the United States at the southern border under the Biden administration through April, the Department of Homeland Security said. These numbers, however, do not include “gotaways” — which occur when cameras or sensors detect migrants crossing the border but no one is found or no agents are available to respond. That figure could add an additional 2 million, bringing the total number of migrants arriving during Biden’s presidency to around 5 million — about half the figure the voice-over claims remained in the United States.
“A quarter of a million Americans dead from fentanyl.”
The text of the ad says this happened on “Harris’s watch.”
Under Biden, according to CBP statistics, overall drug seizures have dropped, especially for marijuana, but until this year increased substantially for fentanyl — the drug most responsible for overdose deaths. Both the decrease in marijuana seizures and the increase in fentanyl seizures reflect trends that started while Trump was president.
Moreover, fentanyl deaths increased nearly 50 percent under Trump, rising to 95,000 from 64,000 in a 12-month period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fentanyl deaths continued to increase under Biden but have dropped in the past 12 months, so the increase under Biden is 7 percent, for a total of about 102,000 deaths.
Most drugs come into the United States across the southern border with Mexico. But even a wall does not limit this illegal trade, as much of it travels through legal borders or in tunnels unaffected by visible physical barriers. Even if a wall could curb drug trafficking, it would have a minimal impact on the death toll from drug abuse. As president, Trump often touted how much seizures of drugs at the southern border had increased on his watch. This is an imperfect metric. It could mean that law enforcement is doing a better job. But more seizures also might indicate that the drug flow has increased, and that law enforcement is missing even more.
The amount of fentanyl seized at the border increased under both Biden and Trump, though so far the amount jumped by a larger percentage under Trump, CBP statistics show. In Trump’s four fiscal years, the number of pounds increased 586 percent, compared with 462 percent in the first three fiscal years under Biden.
“Brutal migrant crimes, and ISIS now here.”
Violent crime rates, especially for homicide in large cities, have fallen sharply during Biden’s presidency, after a surge during the pandemic. The violent crime rate is believed to be near its lowest level in 50 years. So the Trump campaign is forced to cite anecdotal stories of migrants killing people.
The reference to the Islamic State is sourced to a CNN report on the arrest of eight Tajik nationals “believed to have connections to ISIS.” Islamic State-Khorasan, the Afghanistan-based affiliate of the Islamic terrorist group, is led primarily by Tajiks. The individuals were allowed into the country but they were tracked down and arrested after intelligence officials connected them to the Islamic State. They are now in federal custody and will be deported.
“Do you have any plans to visit the border?”
The ad then selectively clips from an interview Harris had in June 2021 with NBC’s Lester Holt during a visit to Guatemala. He twice asks her if she plans to visit the border and she answers that she will go to the border, but expresses frustration at his question.
Harris: “I’m here in Guatemala today. At some point, we are going to the border; we’ve been to the border …”
Holt interjects: “You haven’t been to the border.”
She answers: “And I haven’t been to Europe. I don’t understand the point that you are making. I’m not discounting the importance of the border. … I care about what’s happened at the border. I’m in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration.”
The ad clips out all her comments about planning to visit the border, her concerns about the border and her focus that day on Guatemala. It just shows viewers this highly edited exchange:
Holt: “Do you have any plans to visit the border? … You haven’t been to the border.”
Harris: “And I haven’t been to Europe. I don’t understand the point that you are making.”
The implication is that she’s dismissive of the idea. The NBC interview took place on June 8, 2021. Harris visited the border on June 25, 2021.
“Kamala Harris. Failed. Weak. Dangerously liberal.”
The ad ends with this tagline.
Harris ad: ‘Fearless’
This is a positive biographical 60-second ad that seeks to portray Harris as tough and decisive — the opposite message of the Trump ad. It begins with the voice-over saying: “The one thing Kamala Harris has always been: fearless.”
“As a prosecutor, she put murderers and abusers behind bars.”
This is pretty self-evident — this is what prosecutors do. Harris was district attorney of San Francisco from 2004 to 2011, and the line is intended to show she cares about crime and is not “dangerously liberal.”
“As California’s attorney general, she went after the big banks and won $20 billion for homeowners.”
As recently recounted by Fortune, during the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 Harris walked away from a nationwide settlement that would have netted California no more than $4 billion in compensation for homeowners — what she called “crumbs on the table” — and cut a deal with three major banks that won state residents $20 billion. The agreement was intended to help people stay in their homes through lower mortgage payments. In a surprise, however, more than half chose the settlement’s option to sell their homes for less than what they owned the bank, according to a 2013 report by the program’s monitor, then-professor and now-Rep. Katie Porter (D).
Harris received some criticism for not seeking to charge bankers with crimes — which she acknowledged. “I too, like most Americans, am frustrated. Clearly crimes occurred and people should go to jail,” Harris told the Los Angeles Times in 2016. “But we went where the evidence took us.”
“And as vice president, she took on the big drug companies to cap the cost of insulin for seniors.”
Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, cast the tiebreaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, an omnibus bill that included a provision to cap the cost of insulin offered through Medicare at $35 a month. It also required the federal government to negotiate to lower the prices of some drugs — a policy shift that infuriated pharmaceutical companies.
Drew Hammill, who was deputy chief of staff to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), told The Fact Checker that Harris “was a key player in securing the necessary votes to pass the IRA. The vice president helped will the legislation into existence and was an important advocate in securing the insulin provisions.” When Harris first ran for president in 2020, she pledged she would “stop pharmaceutical companies from price-gouging patients by setting a fair price for what they can charge for prescription drugs.”
“This campaign is about who we fight for. We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by, but to get ahead. Where every senior can retire with dignity. But Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act.”
The ad then shifts to excerpts from Harris’s first campaign rally, in a Milwaukee suburb, where she tried to frame the election as a choice between the future and the past.
The key factual claims are that Trump wants to “give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and end the Affordable Care Act.”
Trump has not detailed specific tax plans, except for eliminating taxes on tips, but privately he has expressed interest in cutting corporate tax rates further if he is reelected, according to a Washington Post report. (His 2017 tax bill significantly cut corporate tax rates.) Congressional Republicans have also expressed interest in corporate tax cuts to increase U.S. competitiveness, according to another Post report. Trump also has dangled tax breaks to wealthy donors in exchange for campaign contributions, the report said.
As for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, Trump was frustrated in his first term that he could not terminate the law. In 2023, he suggested he would again make an effort, posting on social media: “I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!” But in 2024, Trump has mostly remained silent on his plans for the law — which remains popular and a rallying point for Democrats.
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