They say she isn't a real woman, she slept her way to the top, she's running a child trafficking network while taking orders from a globalist elite. And they say that for her running mate, she chose a supporter of the "Great Replacement" of the White population by the Black population, a defender of child sex offenders and even a zoophile.
Since August 2, the date of her official nomination as the Democratic Party's candidate for the US presidential election to replace Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris has faced an unusually violent barrage mixing unabashed fake news, conspiracy theories and degrading attacks.
Her primary fault? Being a woman. A number of pro-Trump activists have reasserted in recent weeks that the current vice president "slept her way to the top," a nagging accusation for several years, to the point of becoming a meme. The more radical accuse Harris of being a "prostitute for globalists" (an elite supposedly in control of the world) who allegedly "performed sexual services" in order to make a name for herself.
Donald Trump himself claimed that Willie Brown, former mayor of San Francisco and Harris' ex-boyfriend, confided "terrible things" to him about her during a hectic helicopter ride together – a flight that, according to Brown, never took place.
Added to these sexist attacks are transphobic rumors. The more conspiratorial fringes, close to the QAnon movement, claim that Harris is actually a man named Kamal Aroush. In 2023, a crease of a dress in an old photo was already being presented as "proof" that she'd had a penis in her youth. This slanderous behavior, typical of conspiracy-minded conservative circles, has also been targeted at Michelle Obama in the past, as well as Brigitte Macron in France.
Other typical far-right attacks target her foreign background. Harris, who could become the first US president of South Asian origin, is said to be ineligible, according to these detractors, because her parents are from Jamaica and India. Mike Engleman, a Trump supporter, insisted that she could not be elected because "neither of her parents were natural born American citizens when she was born."
Yet this claim is incorrect: the US Constitution specifies that the president must be American-born, be at least 35 years old and have lived on national soil for 14 years, but has no requirements about parents.
The attack is reminiscent of the one that targeted Barack Obama: In 2009, the birthers, a far-right conspiracy community, accused America's first Black president of being of Kenyan nationality like his father, and not American like his mother, on the basis of a false article.
Added to these smear tactics about her gender and origins are the interminable accusations against the Democratic Party's supposed links with pedophile rings. In 2016, Trump's victorious campaign was marked by "Pizzagate," a false scandal and real conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, with rumors of pedophile parties in the basement of a Washington pizzeria. On August 3, the pro-Trump gossip machine attempted to connect Harris to Pizzagate, with a host of convoluted links.
Accusations of pedophilia are among the springs pro-Trump conspiracies draw from the most. Other rumors have circulated about links with a bogeyman of American public life, multibillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was prosecuted for sex trafficking of underage girls before his suicide in prison in 2019. In 2021, a photo, which was actually digitally altered, featured Harris on Epstein's arm. Since mid-July, it has been going around again.
Another viral image, generated by artificial intelligence, shows them as a couple on a beach. Such a method had already been used in an attempt to smear Biden. In recent years, the Democratic president had been associated with a fake list of visitors to Epstein's island, as well as with a neighboring island he allegedly owned. One of Trump's advisers, Stephen Miller, no stranger to false allegations, even claimed that "Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the number one traffickers of children, girls, into sex slavery on planet Earth."
In response to these attacks, Harris' camp pointed out that numerous file photos, some authentic, show Trump in the company of Epstein. At the margin, a few rare pro-Harris forgeries have taken aim at Trump. A pro-Harris account called it "repulsive" the former president's campaign had borrowed a plane once owned by the billionaire. It failed to mention, however, that Trump's team had fallen back on this aircraft after his personal plane was damaged and had no knowledge of the borrowed aircraft's history. More recently, images showing Trump in the company of underage girls have been circulating on social media: Generated by artificial intelligence, they do not constitute an authentic document.
The wave of slander against Harris, the Democratic candidate, quickly spread to Tim Walz, whom she chose as her running mate on August 6. While he doesn't lend himself to sexist or racist attacks, this politician known for his rural roots has been targeted by sordid rumors of zoophilia. A rude satirical montage on the American social media platform Reddit launched the rumor that he had been hospitalized for drinking horse semen... a fabrication later supported by a fake local newspaper clipping.
Other fake news has accused him of having the Minnesota flag altered to resemble that of Somalia, in what would appear to be a promotion of the racist "Great Replacement" theory. "Now he wants to do the same to our country," wrote Andrew Torba, co-founder of the far-right social media platform Gab. Walz, however, is not the designer of the new flag, which takes its inspiration from "l'étoile du Nord" ("The Star of the North"), the nickname given to it by the French settlers who discovered this state, and which has been its motto since 1858.
Another rumor insists that Walz signed a law protecting pedophiles: It's based on an actual law from 2023, the Take Pride Act, which opposes discrimination against LGBT+ people, but in no way concerns child sex offenders.
In a more classic vein, fake news is circulating that he is setting up a "voter fraud" scheme by issuing driver's licenses to undocumented migrants to enable them to vote – even though this status does not confer US citizenship, which is required for taking part in elections, as AFP Fact Check reports.
In recent days, Trump's side has also accused Harris and Walz of using artificial intelligence to make it look like a large crowd was waiting for them when they got off the plane at a rally in Detroit. Considering the violence of previous smears, this false information almost seems like a by-the-book attack.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.