As they watch their own candidate slowly melt into a petulant puddle of incoherent ramblings, the MAGA movement is pulling at straws to find anything negative about Kamala Harris.
Their latest fixation of choice revolves around a recent town hall, in which the presidential candidate laid out her pitch to voters. The “Noticias Univision Presents: Latinos Ask, Kamala Harris Responds” town hall was presented as non-scripted, so when a flash of teleprompters was caught by cameras, criticism immediately popped off from right-leaning talking heads.
Waves of angry Trump supporters quickly took to social media to blast Harris for daring to use a teleprompter in an appearance touted as unscripted. Its certainly true that there were teleprompters at the town hall, and its also true that cameras picked up on the screens while recording the appearance, but is it fair to say that Harris ditched the “unscripted” promise to read off pre-written answers? Not so much.
Did Kamala Harris use a teleprompter at her Univision Town Hall?
Donald Trump has long rallied against teleprompters, despite the fact that he’s leaned on the devices for the vast majority of his appearances over the last decade. He’s historically called for teleprompters to be “outlawed,” among presidential nominees, and asserted that “if you run for president, you shouldn’t be allowed to use teleprompters.” Despite those brazen declarations, Trump has relied heavily on teleprompters over the last months and years, without ever walking back his virulent criticism of them.
Trump’s longstanding campaign against teleprompters once again reared its head with Harris’ Univision appearance, but — as usual — all claims surrounding the appearance were laced with inaccuracy. Far-right figures rushed to social media to criticize Harris for supposedly using a teleprompter at an event promoted as unscripted, but, true to MAGA form, they were completely off-base.
There was a teleprompter — two, in fact — present at the Harris town hall, but it wasn’t there for her. Any words that were captured on the screens were in Spanish, a language Harris doesn’t speak well, and were there to assist the event’s moderator. This was quickly clarified by journalist Daniel Coronell, who noted he was “in charge of the television program.”
“That’s not true,” Coronell said, in response to a user claiming “Kamala is using a teleprompter during her ‘town hall’ with Univision.”
“The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator,” he said, noting that he experienced the situation “first-hand.” The only other thing displayed on the teleprompters, so far as the sleuths of the web can determine, was a countdown timer, intended to keep the sometimes-wordy nominee on track.
That didn’t stop the claims from spreading, of course, but it did prompt an abrupt and savage response from people who do research before tweeting. They quickly dressed down far-right figures like Sean Hannity, pointing out that their so-called “evidence,” (aka pictures of the teleprompters) prove their own claims wrong.
The clear hypocrisy of the criticism also came under fire, as numerous people pointed out that Trump himself leans heavily on teleprompters of late, likely in an attempt to fool the American public into thinking his brain didn’t divorce him years ago, just like his ex-wives.
Harris also uses teleprompters in some of her public appearances, but in this case, she was actually speaking off the cuff. The town hall format allowed the presidential nominee to tackle a range of issues, from her plans to improve healthcare to housing, the economy, and immigration, and she did so in impeccable style, as usual.
