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No, Harris didn't tell NBC she'd refuse to accept election results | Fact check
The claim: Harris said she wouldn’t accept election results in NBC interview
An Oct. 23 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) purports to present statements Vice President Kamala Harris made during an NBC News interview two weeks before the 2024 presidential election.
“IN CASE YOU MISSED IT,” reads the first portion of text on the image, which is a screenshot of a post on X, formerly Twitter. “Kamala Harris sat down for an interview with @NBCNews last night where she: Proclaimed she would not accept the outcome of the election and has a team of lawyers ready to overturn them.”
It was liked more than 8,000 times in five days.
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Our rating: False
Harris said no such thing during the interview. She said she had a team ready to respond if former President Donald Trump were to prematurely declare victory in the presidential election, and she criticized Trump’s unwillingness to accept the 2020 election results.
Harris said she has considered possibility of Trump denying election results
At no point during NBC’s 22-minute sit-down interview with Harris did the vice president say she wouldn't accept the election outcome.
Rather, NBC's Hallie Jackson asked Harris what plans were in place if Trump were to baselessly proclaim victory on election night, as he did in 2020. Harris responded in part by saying her team has the "resources and the expertise and the focus" to respond to developments through election night and in the following days.
Jackson asked Harris if that meant she had “teams ready to go” and had considered the possibility of Trump again prematurely declaring victory.
“Of course,” Harris said. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to undo a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people."
She went on to condemn Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack and his 2022 Truth Social post in which he called for suspending the Constitution.
Trump said during his June debate against President Joe Biden that he would only accept the election outcome if, in his view, "it's a fair and legal and good election." Trump and his allies have since been appearing to lay the groundwork for legal challenges to the election results if he does not win, as USA TODAY reported.
The post makes a number of other claims about statements Harris made during the interview, some of which are accurate:
It asserts Harris said she would “force Pro-Life Christians and Christian organizations to pay for abortions." When asked by Jackson whether she would be open to religious exemptions for abortion, Harris said, "I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body."
The post claims Harris “suggested she would put Liz Cheney in her cabinet.” This is false. When asked whether she would consider Cheney, a Republican former congresswoman from Wyoming who has campaigned for Harris, for a cabinet position, Harris was non-committal and said, "I'll keep you posted."
The post claims Harris said President Joe Biden was "never suffering from cognitive decline and was totally fit to be president." Harris didn't specifically address his cognitive capacity, but when asked whether she had been truthful with Americans about Biden's mental acuity, she said the president is "extremely accomplished, experienced and capable in every way that anyone would want if they’re president."
As the post claims, she did appear to briefly forget the state of Michigan when mentioning the swing states she was planning to visit.
The post said Harris "admits that the American dream is basically dead under her administration." She said the American dream was not something Americans could count on "as much anymore."
Fact check: Headline about Harris needing to steal election is fabricated
USA TODAY has debunked an array of claims surrounding the Harris campaign, including false assertions that the IRS endorsed Harris, that McDonald’s said there is “no record” of Harris working at the restaurant and that an authentic video shows Harris calling Biden “unstable.”
USA TODAY reached out to the Harris campaign and the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive responses.
PolitiFact also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources:
NBC News (YouTube), Oct. 22, Kamala Harris full interview: ‘Absolutely’ the country is ready for a woman to be president
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harris has plans for if Trump baselessly declares victory | Fact check