In June 2024, a video circulated online in which the US Vice President allegedly spoke about the need to reduce the population so that more children could breathe clean air and drink clean water. We have verified the accuracy of such messages.
For example, in the Telegram channel post “Alexander Semchenko”, published on June 15, 2024, the viral video was commented as follows: “US Vice President Kamala Harris directly announced a plan to reduce the population so that their children could breathe clean air and drink clean water. By the way, Harris herself has no children. So it’s not entirely clear whose children she cares about when advocating population reduction.” Thanks to channel reposts "The world today with "Yuri Podolyak"" And "Dmitry Vasilets"This publication received 1.7 million views.
Similar messages appeared on the RuNet last summer. For example, July 15, 2023 Telegram channel TarikNezalejko️️ (176,000 views including channel repost "Sheikh TamirHarris was quoted as saying, “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce our population, more of our children will be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water.” “Kamala just said that 'population reduction' is the goal of the climate change movement. They don't hide it anymore. You are the carbon they want to destroy. True evil,” the post says.
According to the TGStat service, over 11 months more than 300 similar posts appeared on Telegram, with a total of about 3 million views. Similar posts are also popular in “VKontakte"
The statement that Harris is childless is not entirely correct, since she has a stepson and a stepdaughter. In 2014, the future vice president got married for lawyer Douglas Emhoff, who raised two children from a previous marriage. In a 2019 column for Elle magazine, Harris toldthat neither she nor the children like the term “stepmother” - they use the word “Momala” instead.
Judging by the banner hanging behind Harris in the viral video, her performance took place in Baltimore, Maryland. July 14, 2023 Vice President spoke at one of the local universities, broadcast of the event available on the White House YouTube channel. Harris' speech focused on combating climate change and building a clean energy economy. At timestamp 57:34 she speaks:
“We have set an ambitious goal of halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. The investments we're announcing today will help us achieve these goals, but they will do so much more—think about the impact on more than just the local economy, and more than just investing in the entrepreneurs and innovators in our community. Think about the impact on things like public health. When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce our population, more of our children will be able to breathe clean air and drink clean water.”
In other words, Harris actually said the quote attributed to her about population decline. However, in official transcript on the White House website the word population (“population”) crossed out and pollution is indicated instead. It is quite possible that Harris misspoke and wanted to use the phrase reduce pollution (“reduce environmental pollution”), which fits into the context of her speech. In a conversation with a journalist from the Lead Stories fact-checking project, this confirmed and an unnamed White House official who added that the correction in the transcript was deliberately made to show an acknowledgment of the slip. Fact checkers also clarified that the word population was no longer used in Harris' speech. Additionally, this is the only time the phrase reduce population meets in publications on the White House website.
Back in 2023, this gaffe by Democrat Harris was perceived by her opponents from the Republican Party as evidence theories conspiracy. For example, Congressman Thomas Massie asked to her Twitter followers (now X): “Are you the population she wants to cut?” Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt added, that Harris "spoke out loud the quiet part of her and other climate alarmists' very inhumane ideology and their desire to 'reduce the population'." Far-right congresswoman and supporter various conspiracy theories by Marjorie Taylor Greene asked, what Harris meant: “Abortion? Assisted suicide? Or what means do you propose to reduce population to help public health?” The words mentioned at the beginning of this analysis and circulated in Russian that the population is carbon, which Harris and his colleagues want to get rid of, belong to an American far-right blogger Rogan O'Handley.
The problem of overpopulation has been addressed by various well-known speakers in recent decades, who have also been accused by conspiracy theorists of having misanthropic agendas. For example, widespread the opinion that entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Gates wants to reduce the world's population through vaccination. However, the real point of his program is to use vaccines to reduce child mortality. This, in turn, should lead to a reduction in population growth and thereby solve the problem of overpopulation. There are other points of view on this issue in scientific circles. Thus, researcher Jane Goodall more than once statedthat population growth can be slowed by improving women's access to education. Some representatives of the academic community addthat the reduction in growth is also influenced by the availability of contraception. That is, we cannot exclude the possibility that during her speech, Harris could really have meant “population reduction,” but not in the form that her Republican opponents wrote about. And the transcript could have been changed due to the indignation that began on the Internet.
So Harris actually said the now viral quote. However, as White House representatives explained, she only made a slip of the tongue by mixing up two consonant English words. Let us note that in most Russian media the phrase about population reduction was presented precisely as a reservation and it was for this that the US Vice President was ridiculed. Moreover, in the publication’s note “Reporter", published June 17, 2024, reports that Harris made this mistake twice, although in fact it describes the same incident in 2023.
Cover photo: video screenshot @WhiteHouse (YouTube)
- Is the video of Kamala Harris true, where she gives a speech about yesterday, today and tomorrow?
- Did the UN Peace Ambassador say that all of humanity's problems would be solved if the world's population was reduced by 90%?
- Did the head of Pfizer say that he plans to halve the world's population by 2023?
- Did Margaret Thatcher say that the economically viable population of Russia is 15 million people?
- Is it true that Bill Gates wants to reduce the world's population with vaccines?
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