FACT-CHECKED

Fox News Host Neil Cavuto Corrects Trump Campaign: Kamala Harris Never Called Biden ‘Racist’

Neil Cavuto immediately shut down the Trump campaign’s attempt to rewrite history.

By Matt Wilstein & Andrew KirellAug 11, 2020

Immediately after Joe Biden announced Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as his 2020 running mate, Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson released a statement attacking her. There was a blatant lie in the first sentence.

“Not long ago, Kamala Harris called Joe Biden a racist and asked for an apology she never received,” Pierson wrote. “Clearly, Phony Kamala will abandon her own morals, as well as try to bury her record as a prosecutor, in order to appease the anti-police extremists controlling the Democrat Party.”

Aside from the fact that the statement attempted to paint Harris as both a tough prosecutor and somehow “anti-police,” it also mischaracterized the infamous confrontation between the senator and former vice president during the first Democratic primary debate last June.

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After Fox News’ White House correspondent John Roberts read aloud from Pierson’s statement on Tuesday afternoon, host Neil Cavuto first pointed out that, “if anything,” Harris was getting heat from the left for being “a little too tough on crime.”

Cavuto then offered up a direct factual correction to the Trump campaign’s attack: “By the way, the real quick clarification that I want to get in, the president seems to be saying that Kamala Harris called Joe Biden a ‘racist.’ She never did.”

Noting that this specific lie did not come from the president himself, Roberts admitted that Harris never used the word “racist” to describe Biden, but added, “whether or not she actually said the word ‘racist’ or not, I mean, the intimation was there.”

Neither man acknowledged the words that Harris actually said before she went after Biden on the issue of school busing to integrate schools: “I do not believe you are a racist.”