The Associated Press (AP), along with the Harris-Walz campaign, used a partial quote out of context to claim vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance (R-Ohio) said school shootings were a “fact of life.” Following the post, AP issued a correction after being fact-checked by X’s Community Notes, while Vice President Kamala Harris’ Kamala HQ account continued to exploit the misleading story.
AP retracted the post that stated, “JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security,” replacing the misleading headline with, “JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a “fact of life” and says the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.” AP replied to the correction, posting, “This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance.”
The Kamala HQ account posted a video of Vance responding to the Apalachee High School shooting in Barrow County, Georgia, alleging Vance said the shooting was “a fact of life,” posting, “JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just “a fact of life” and attacking common sense gun safety reform”
The Harris-Walz campaign released a statement in response to the manipulated quote, claiming former President Donald Trump and Vance favor “the NRA and gun lobby” over victims, and misconstrued Vance’s remarks, stating:
Yesterday, Vice President Harris said “it doesn’t have to be this way” in response to another senseless school shooting. Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a “fact of life” and “we have to get over it.”
Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know we can take action to keep our children safe and keep guns out of the hands of criminals. 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 Minnesota Governor Tim Walz responded to the post, with Harris stating, “School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can take action to protect our children — and we will.”
Walz used the misleading post as an opportunity to insult Vance and allege he “quit on our kids,” stating, “This is pathetic. We can’t quit on our kids — they deserve better.”
The Kamala HQ account run by the Harris-Walz campaign was originally created by the Biden-Harris campaign to target younger voters, and has consistently used disinformation and misinformation tactics to criticize former President Donald Trump’s campaign before and after being re-branded as “Kamala HQ.”
Examples of disinformation posted by the account include an edited video of a Trump campaign rally in Atlanta hours before Trump’s speech, with audio replaced, misleading viewers to believe the video was filmed during the speech.
In response to the Kamala HQ account posting continuous misinformation and disinformation, the X account Kamala HQ Lies has fact-checked posts by the Harris campaign, stating:
THE LIE: JD Vance said school shootings are a “fact of life.”
THE TRUTH: This is an egregious lie and is taken completely out of context.
It’s also worth noting that Kamala opposes police officers in schools who would help stop school tragedies.
Here is exactly what JD Vance said:
“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. And we have got to bolster security at our schools. We’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.”
