Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Boost Out-of-Context Vance Quote Which Was Deleted by AP for Twisting His Words

AP Photo/Matt York

Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz boosted an out-of-context quote from Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance on Thursday that was so misleading, it was deleted by AP.

“Look, I don’t like this, I don’t like to admit this, I don’t like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets,” said Vance during a campaign rally in Arizona:

We’ve got to bolster security so that if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they’re not able to, and again, as a parent, do I want my kids’ school to have additional security? No, of course I don’t. I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you’ve got to have additional security, but that is increasingly the reality that we live in.

Vance’s remarks were quickly distorted by media outlets, including AP, which published them under the headline, “JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life.'”

While AP changed its headline after receiving backlash on social media, Harris’s campaign attacked Vance in several posts which distorted the vice presidential nominee’s actual remarks.

“Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and ‘we have to get over it,'” said the Harris campaign in a statement. “Donald Trump and JD Vance will always choose the NRA and gun lobby over our children. That is the choice in this election.”

Harris and Walz also shared the misleading quote on their own social media pages, condemning Vance’s supposedly controversial remarks.

Harris and Walz received backlash on social media for boosting the misleading quote, with critics accusing the two of intentionally lying and spreading disinformation.

“This is disinformation,” reacted Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway , while international security professor and author Max Abrahms tweeted , “This is why there are so many low-information Democrat voters. The AP deleted this headline after thousands of conservatives noted that Vance actually said the opposite. But it doesn’t matter because Kamala’s campaign was served up a damning Tweet albeit one based on nothing.”

In his own response, Vance wrote , “Kamala wants to take security out of our schools instead of protecting our children. Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said. More desperation from the biggest fraud in American politics.”