Fact Check: No, Kamala Harris Didn't Say 'the Problem of Solving a Problem Is Not a Problem'

Claim:

Kamala Harris once said, "The problem of solving a problem is not a problem, but when a problem solves a problem without any problem, then the problem is not at all a problem."

Rating:

Misattributed ( About this rating? )

According to memes and social media posts, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is rumored to have once opined about dealing with problems, problems and more problems. The purported quote reads, "The problem of solving a problem is not a problem, but when a problem solves a problem without any problem, then the problem is not at all a problem."

For example, a reverse-image search found numerous postings of the quote in meme and text form from 2023 and 2024 on America's Best Pics and Videos , Facebook , iFunny , Imgflip and X . Some users also shared the quote after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 election and endorsed Harris.

In a more prominent example, two-time, Oscar-nominated actor James Woods posted one of the most engaged-with shares of the quote meme with Harris' name. Woods captioned his June 15, 2024, post ( archived ) with the words "DEI VP" — a reference to some right-wing disagreements with efforts toward promoting initiatives regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.

However, we uncovered no video, audio or other type of documentary evidence suggesting Harris ever spoke or wrote the words in the quote.

In our research of the quote, we examined a Reddit thread on the r/Conservative subreddit featuring a meme of Harris with the quote. One user replying to the Jan. 20, 2024, thread commented , "The fact that I can't tell if this is something she actually said because it sounds like something she would say is funny."

However, all that user – or any user in the thread – needed to do to research the quote was quickly and simply search online.

For example, we performed a Google search for the first few words of the quote: "the problem of solving a problem is not." Surrounding the words with quotation marks instructed Google to only display results for an exact match of our search.

As of July 2024, Google only displayed 14 links on two pages of search results. None of the results brought forth any information suggesting video, audio or other evidence existed of Harris saying or writing the quote.

If the quote truly originated from Harris, political websites — primarily right-wing blogs — would likely have widely covered the quote. However, we located no such coverage.

We will update this report if further details come to light.

Sources:

Evon, Dan. "Snopes Tips: A Guide To Performing Reverse Image Searches." Snopes , 22 Mar. 2022, https://www.snopes.com//articles/400681/how-to-perform-reverse-image-searches/. Google . https://www.google.com/. "James Woods." IMDb.com , https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000249/awards/. Staff, Snopes. "Biden Dropped Out of Presidential Race, Endorsed Kamala Harris?" Snopes , 21 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/biden-resigns-election/.