Assessing Trump’s and Harris’s Attacks on Each Other

In the weeks since Vice President Kamala Harris ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket, she and former President Donald J. Trump have each sought to portray the other as extreme and unfit for office.

Mr. Trump has tried out a variety of attack lines on Ms. Harris, such as falsely questioning her racial identity and the sizes of her crowds. The former president has also cast Ms. Harris as a member of the “radical left” by describing her positions and record on immigration, tax policy, climate change and criminal justice — often adding spurious extrapolations to overstate her positions even more.

For her part, Ms. Harris has sought to contrast her background as a prosecutor and attorney general with Mr. Trump’s conviction in May for falsifying business records. She has also repeated a number of claims first advanced by President Biden about Mr. Trump’s proposals for social safety nets, health care and abortion, ignoring Mr. Trump’s clarifications and contradictory evidence.

Here’s a fact check of some common talking points.

Mr. Trump has overstated Ms. Harris’s positions to portray her as far left.

What Was Said

“She said that a 70 to 80 percent tax hike is ‘a bold idea that should be discussed.’ She wants an 80 percent.”
— at a rally in North Carolina in July

This is misleading. Ms. Harris called a proposal to increase the top marginal tax rate for people making over $10 million annually a “bold” idea. But she did not endorse it. Nor has she called for an 80 percent tax increase on all taxpayers across the board.

In a January 2019 appearance on “The View,” Ms. Harris was asked whether proposals by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who assumed office that month, could “splinter your party.” Among the proposals singled out was Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s suggestion of a 60 or 70 percent top tax rate for people making over $10 million.

Ms. Harris responded: “No, I think she is challenging the status quo. I think that’s fantastic.”

“She is introducing bold ideas that should be discussed,” Ms. Harris added. “I think it’s good for the party — frankly, I think it’s good for the country. Let’s look at the bold ideas. And I’m eager that we have those discussions. And when we are able to defend the status quo, then do it. And if there’s not merit to that, then let’s explore new ideas.”

As a Democratic presidential candidate in the 2020 race, Ms. Harris proposed repealing the 2017 tax law enacted under Mr. Trump and replacing it with her own plan for middle-class tax relief. That would have effectively restored the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent, from 37 percent. Ms. Harris’s campaign has said she supports Mr. Biden’s pledge to not raise taxes on anyone making $400,000 or less annually.

What Was Said

“She wants the government to stop people from eating red meat. She wants to get rid of your cows. No more cows. No more cows.”
— at a rally in Atlanta in August

False. Ms. Harris has not said she wants to ban red meat. In a CNN town hall in 2019, she said the government should do more to encourage — not mandate — healthy eating habits, while adding that she loves cheeseburgers.

Asked whether she would support a change in dietary guidelines to reduce the consumption of red meat because of cattle rearing’s impact on climate change, Ms. Harris answered yes.

She continued, “As a nation, we actually have to have a real priority at the highest level of government around what we eat and in terms of healthy eating because we have a problem in America.”

“I mean just to be very honest with you, I love cheeseburgers from time to time. Right,” she added. “I mean I just do, but there has to be also what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation, and that we will be educated about the effects of our eating habits on our environment.”

It is also worth noting that current dietary guidelines established by the Agriculture Department under Mr. Trump in December 2020 said diets associated with positive health outcomes include “relatively lower consumption of red and processed meat.” The U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, an industry group, criticized that line and how few times beef specifically was mentioned.

What Was Said

“Lyin’ Kamala supported abolishing ICE. She compared ICE agents to members of the K.K.K. Can you believe it?”
— at the North Carolina rally

This is misleading. Ms. Harris had suggested revamping and reforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but she did not support eliminating the agency altogether. He also took her comments about the agency and the Ku Klux Klan out of context.

In an interview with MSNBC in March 2018, Ms. Harris was asked if Immigration and Customs Enforcement should exist.

“ICE has a purpose, ICE has a role, ICE should exist,” she said. “But let’s not abuse the power.”

That June, asked in another MSNBC interview if she agreed with abolishing the agency, Ms. Harris responded: “I think there’s no question that we’ve got to critically re-examine ICE and its role and the way that it is being administered and the work it is doing. And we need to probably think about starting from scratch because there’s a lot that is wrong with the way that it’s conducting itself, and we need to deal with that.”

Her office later said she was weighing “a complete overhaul of the agency, mission, culture, operations,” rather than abolishing ICE, according to BuzzFeed News.

Asked in 2019 on “The View” if she supported abolishing the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, Ms. Harris said, “No, I would not.”

The distorted suggestion that Ms. Harris equated the agency with the Ku Klux Klan emerged from an exchange in 2018. That year, during a Senate hearing on Mr. Trump’s nomination of Ronald Vitiello as director of the agency, Ms. Harris questioned Mr. Vitiello about his past comments describing the Democratic Party as “neo-Klanist.” Mr. Vitiello responded that “it was wrong” to do so as the Klan was a domestic terrorist group that used “fear and force” to enact political change.

Ms. Harris then asked Mr. Vitiello whether he was “aware of the perception” that ICE also used its power to cause fear and intimidation among immigrants. When Mr. Vitiello said he was not, Ms. Harris noted that the agency should work to correct the perception, no matter its accuracy. She agreed with Mr. Vitiello that “the vast majority” of ICE agents did a “noble and good job.”

He has misrepresented her record on criminal justice.

What Was Said

“Kamala supports ending cash bail nationwide. No bail. If you kill somebody, that’s OK. ‘Come back whenever you’re ready. We’ll give you a little trial, put you in jail for about two days,’ which means releasing violent criminals immediately after arrest right onto the streets.”
— at a rally in Minnesota in July

This is misleading. Ms. Harris supported ending cash bail in her 2020 campaign and during her time in the Senate. But her proposals replace it with other measures for assessing pretrial detention — not a blanket release of all defendants.

In 2017, Ms. Harris and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, introduced legislation providing federal funding for states to replace their bail systems with “individualized, pretrial assessments.” Those assessments would measure the possibility that a defendant would flee or commit another crime. The bill did not allow for the release of all suspects. Nor did it free people who have been convicted of a violent crime.

In a risk-based system, people charged with low-level crimes are typically released quickly, but people charged with more serious crimes are not, said Sandra Mayson, a professor of criminal law at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Instead, the court must make a determination of how serious a risk they pose and what conditions of release, if any, are sufficient to reasonably assure public safety,” Ms. Mayson said.

She added that those conditions could include supervision, GPS monitoring and targeted interventions to address the underlying drivers of risk like addiction, domestic conflict or mental illness. Courts can also order and prosecutors can seek detention if necessary.

For example, Illinois ended cash bail statewide in 2023, but allows detention for people accused of certain crimes — including all forcible felonies such as murder, sexual assault and aggravated robbery — and deemed to pose a flight or public safety risk. Since September, about 52 percent of more than 20,000 cases were deemed to be detention-eligible and 63 percent of those cases resulted in detention, according to a state agency that provides pretrial services for 77 counties in Illinois.

Similarly, in 2017, New Jersey largely replaced its cash bail system with a risk-assessment-based system, which considers a defendant’s record and whether an offense is violent, among other factors. Prosecutors sought detention in 42 percent of cases and judges granted 59 percent of those motions, or more than 7,100 cases in 2023. In a brochure dispelling myths about its law, New Jersey explained that a dangerous defendant could post bail and be released under its previous system, but may stand “no chance for pretrial release” under its current system.

What Was Said

“As California attorney general, she defined and redefined child sex trafficking, assault with a deadly weapon and rape of a unconscious person, an unconscious person raped, as nonviolent. These were nonviolent crimes. We shouldn’t even prosecute these people.”
— at the Atlanta rally

This is misleading. Mr. Trump was referring to — and hyperbolically extracting from — descriptions of ballot initiatives provided by Ms. Harris’s office when she was California’s attorney general. In that role, Ms. Harris did not redefine those crimes as nonviolent, nor did she refuse to prosecute such offenders.

Mr. Trump’s campaign specified two measures in question.

One, Proposition 57, “allows parole consideration for persons convicted of nonviolent felonies upon completion of full prison term for primary offense, as defined,” according to the summary. It did not concern the prosecution of such crimes.

The summary did not include a definition of a nonviolent felony, nor did the original text of the initiative, proposed by the governor at the time, Jerry Brown. California state law defines 23 categories of crime as “violent felonies” and does not specifically include assault with a deadly weapon, sex trafficking or assault of an unconscious person. (California, separately, has a list of more than 40 crime categories it deems “serious felonies.”)

Ms. Harris herself did not take a position on Proposition 57 (or other initiatives related to criminal justice). But the attorney general’s office provided the official summary presented to voters, as it does with all ballot measures and initiatives (including, for example, proposals to increase cigarette taxes and require the use of condoms in pornographic films).

Her office told The Fresno Bee in 2016 that the term “nonviolent felony” came from “the language of the governor’s sentencing measure itself” and that it “remains to be seen how ‘nonviolent felony’ will be defined.”

The other measure cited by Mr. Trump’s campaign, Proposition 47, appears less squarely on point, requiring misdemeanor sentences for thefts and forgeries with a value of $950 or less.

Ms. Harris has repeated cherry-picked attacks on Mr. Trump.

What Was Said

“He intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”
— at a rally in Arizona on Monday

This is misleading. Mr. Trump has said repeatedly during his 2024 presidential campaign that he would not cut Social Security or Medicare, though he had previously shown brief and vague support for such proposals.

Asked about his position on the programs in relation to the national debt, Mr. Trump told CNBC in March, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”

But Mr. Trump and his campaign clarified that he would not seek to cut the programs. “I will never do anything that will jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare,” Mr. Trump told the website Breitbart. “We’ll have to do it elsewhere. But we’re not going to do anything to hurt them.”

During his rally in Minnesota in July, he again vowed, “I will not cut one penny from Social Security or Medicare, and I will not raise the retirement age by one day, not by one day.”

Still, Mr. Trump has not outlined a clear plan for keeping the programs solvent. Joseph Costello, a spokesman for the Harris campaign, argued that Mr. Trump also promised not to cut either program in his 2016 campaign, but broke that pledge in his presidential budgets.

During his time in office, Mr. Trump did propose some cuts to Medicare — though experts said the cost reductions would not have significantly affected benefits — and to Social Security’s programs for people with disabilities. They were not enacted by Congress.

What Was Said

“If Donald Trump wins in November, he intends to end the Affordable Care Act and take us back to a time when insurance companies have the power to deny people with pre-existing conditions.”
— at the Arizona rally

This is exaggerated. Mr. Trump campaigned in 2016 on repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans in Congress never succeeded. Though Mr. Trump continues to criticize the health care law as an expensive “disaster,” his statements this campaign have been more ambiguous. And he has said he would retain protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.

The Harris campaign cited a comment Mr. Trump made in November on social media that Republicans should “never give up” on efforts to terminate the health care law.

But more recently, at a January rally in Iowa, Mr. Trump promised “much better health care at a lower price for you, and that will be either working on Obamacare or doing something new.”

“I’m not running to terminate the ACA,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media in March, adding that he would make the health care law “much, much, much better for far less money.” He echoed that message in a video in April.

Mr. Trump has not released any specific details on what this would entail. On his campaign website, he pledged to protect “patients with pre-existing conditions.”

The Harris campaign argued that Mr. Trump has made a similar promise to protect pre-existing conditions for years, a pledge at odds with his record.

What Was Said

“Now think about this: Donald Trump said he wants to punish women.”
— at a rally in Philadelphia in August

This is misleading. Mr. Trump made the comments in a March 2016 town hall on MSNBC. But he retracted the remarks hours later and has yet to again endorse punishing women who seek abortions.

Pressed repeatedly in March 2016 on his views on punishments for abortions, Mr. Trump tried to evade the question but eventually replied, “The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.”

Hours later Mr. Trump walked back his remarks in a statement: If abortion were illegal in a state or nationally, he said, then “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

The next day, Mr. Trump suggested that he misspoke in the town hall and said that he was talking about the view of the Catholic Church.

Asked by Time magazine in April whether he was comfortable with states punishing women who have abortions after a ban, Mr. Trump said that “the states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”