Verified Information: Manipulated Trump Campaign Commercial Misrepresents Important Phrases from Harris and The New York Times
The advertisement, which Trump shared on social media on Wednesday, focuses on Harris' tax policy. Three elements of the 30-second advertisement are misleading: the manipulated quotes and a significant statistic, misrepresented in the advertisement.
The advertisement manipulates Harris' quotes
The advertisement features a video clip of Harris saying, "Taxes are gonna have to go up." The words also appear in large, bold letters on the screen. However, the advertisement omits critical words from Harris' original statement, which she made in 2019 during her previous presidential campaign. She truly said, "Estate taxes are gonna have to go up for the richest Americans."
By omitting the words "estate" and "for the richest Americans," the advertisement significantly distorts Harris' intended message.
Here is the complete 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."
The Trump campaign did not comment on this manipulation.
The advertisement manipulates a New York Times article
Additional text in the advertisement quotes The New York Times, stating, "Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes." The advertisement attributes this quote to an August 22 article.
However, as The New York Times itself mentioned on Thursday, this claim is also misleading. The actual August 22 article stated, "Harris is seeking to significantly raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations."
The Trump campaign did not comment on this manipulation.
It is also worth noting that the advertisement did not mention that the previous sentence of the article stated, "No one making less than $400,000 a year would see their taxes go up under Harris's plan."
The advertisement misrepresents a central statistic
The advertisement cites the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think tank, as the basis for a narrator's claim that "Kamala's plan will raise families' taxes by nearly $2,600 a year." The advertisement also uses a highly specific number, $2,580.
But Erica York, senior economist and research director at the Tax Foundation, said on Thursday, "I don't know where that number comes from. We have done estimates of how taxes would increase if the 2017 tax cuts were allowed to expire, but that's not the number they use, and that is not our estimate for Harris's tax proposals."
Indeed, the Tax Foundation's May 7 analysis, which York co-authored, was not about Harris's various tax proposals. Instead, it was an examination of what would happen if Trump's 2017 individual tax cuts expired in 2025, as scheduled, rather than being extended by Congress and the next president. The analysis did not contain the number $2,580.
When CNN asked the Trump campaign to explain the $2,580 figure, campaign spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer said the campaign took the Tax Foundation's May 7 estimates of the average tax increase in each state in 2026, if Trump's individual tax cuts were allowed to expire, and then averaged those state averages to come up with a figure for the impact of "Kamala's plan."
This raises significant issues.
First and foremost, it is incorrect to cite the Tax Foundation analysis as if it were an analysis of "Kamala's plan." Harris has made her own tax proposals, which the Tax Foundation was not considering in this analysis.
Second, it is unclear if Harris actually wants to let all of Trump's individual tax cuts expire. According to The New York Times article, Harris has promised during this current campaign not to raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000 per year. While Pfeiffer noted that Harris called in 2019 for a complete repeal of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, she is not making such calls today—and York said on Thursday that though Harris has not specified how she would handle the expiring provisions, it is "possible she would continue the TCJA for people making under $400,000."
Third, the Trump campaign's math would be questionable even if it were accurately labeling that math. You cannot calculate a meaningful figure for "families" by simply averaging the average for each state. Using the averaging-the-averages method treats Wyoming, a state that has less than a million people, as being mathematically equal to, say, Pennsylvania, a state that has about 13 million people.
In an advertisement that is so slippery, the shortcomings of the figure are minor compared to the mendacity in how it is framed and the mendacity of the quote-snipping.
After analyzing the advertisement, it becomes clear that it manipulates Kamala Harris' statements and misrepresents facts from a New York Times article. The advertisement takes Harris' statement about increasing estate taxes for the richest Americans and twists it to make it sound like she supports a broad tax increase. Furthermore, the advertisement misquotes The New York Times article, omitting crucial information about who would be affected by Harris' proposed tax increases. These actions in politics can lead to misinformation and confusion among voters.
