Fact check: New Trump attack ad deceptively edits out key words from Harris and The New York Times

Fact check: New Trump attack ad deceptively edits out key words from Harris and The New York Times

A new television ad from former President Donald Trump’s campaign deletes key words from two separate quotes to deceptively attack Vice President Kamala Harris. The ad, which Trump also posted on social media on Wednesday, targets Harris on tax policy. Three components of the 30-second spot are dishonest: the two edited quotes and an important statistic, which the ad inaccurately describes. The ad twice shows a video clip of Harris saying this: “Taxes are gonna have to go up.” It also shows those words on screen in big, all-caps text. But the ad cuts out critical words from Harris’ actual comments. What she said in that sentence — at an event in 2019, during her previous presidential campaign — was that “estate taxes are gonna have to go up for the richest Americans.” By removing the words “estate” and “for the richest Americans,” the ad significantly alters Harris’ meaning. Here is the full Harris quote from 2019, which you can find around the 15-minute mark of this video: “We’ve got to increase the corporate tax rate. We also have to increase taxes for the top 1%. And that — part of that is going to be about repealing that tax bill that they just passed. And also looking at — estate taxes are gonna have to go up for the richest Americans. And closing certain corporate loopholes, including the carried interest deductible, and a number of other things that are about people not reporting income as income and therefore not being taxed on it as income the way you and I are being taxed.”