Since April 29, 2023, Georgian writer Merab Ratishvili, as well as other Georgian– and Russian-language (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) Facebook accounts, have been disseminating a video of the Vice President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, in which Harris says the following words: “Today is today and yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow, so live today, so the future today will be as the past today as it is tomorrow.”
The video featuring Kamala Harris is fabricated. The footage is taken from Harris’ speech on April 25, 2023, when the US vice president spoke about the fight for reproductive rights at an event held at Howard University. The full transcript of the speech shows that Harris did not say the phrase mentioned above.
The footage used in the video was taken from Kamala Harris’ April 25 speech at Howard University’s reproductive rights event. Separate excerpts of the speech were distributed by a number of media outlets.
In both of the above shots, we can see that Harris’ outfit and part of the writing on the podium in front of her match that of the Facebook video, as well as the placement of the people behind the vice president, their clothing and the posters they are holding.
In the distributed video, part of the inscription on the podium standing in front of Harris has been changed. Instead of “Fighting for reproductive freedom”, the phrase “Ramble rants reproductive freedom” can be seen, hinting at Harris’s speech, which is difficult to make sense of.
In the video itself, Kamala Harris’ body language, especially her mouth movement, is unnatural and slightly slowed down. As for the voice, it differs from Harris’s natural voice and doesn’t exactly match the image in several parts. In addition, no other voice can be heard in the video except for Harris, which is unnatural, considering that the vice president is in a big hall with several hundred people.
The full text of Harris’ speech, which is available on the official White House website, shows that Kamala Harris did not say a phrase about today, tomorrow or yesterday.
The speech attracted particular attention because it was Harris’s first public speech since Joe Biden announced his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election. The sixtieth presidential election will be held in the United States in November 2024.
About the Sources:
Writer Merab Ratishvili and Facebook user Mamuka Karchkhadze have disseminated false information with anti-Western content many times in the past. Disinformation amplified by them was included in a number of “Myth Detector” articles (1,2).
As for the Russian-language Facebook account of оксана сорокина, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she published two video manipulations aimed at discrediting the Ukrainian military and Ukrainians in general.
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