Fact check: Kamala Harris didn't say Joe Biden would 'do whatever the Chinese tell you' at debate

Rick Rouan, USA TODAY

April 30, 2021 at 7:11 AM·6 min read

The claim: Kamala Harris said during a debate Joe Biden would “do whatever the Chinese tell you!”

The 2020 Democratic presidential primary included nearly two dozen candidates, a once-a-century pandemic and at least one memorable and tense exchange between the future president and vice president.

During a June 2019 debate, then-Sen. Kamala Harris attacked then-former Vice President Joe Biden. The exchange led much of the media coverage of the debate and prompted questions later about whether Biden, the eventual Democratic presidential nominee, would consider Harris as a running mate.

“Anyone remember Kamala telling Joe during the debate: ‘You will do whatever the Chinese tell you! They gave your son over a billion dollars,” the April 24 Facebook post says. The text sits over a cropped image of Biden and Harris facing off behind lecterns on the debate stage.

But Harris didn’t say that. Transcripts of the debates where Harris and Biden shared the stage show no such exchange.

Harris’ jab at Biden was over his work with segregationist senators and opposition to school busing in the 1970s, not Biden’s stance on China.

The April 24 post has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook.

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The Facebook user who shared the image did not respond to a request for comment.

Reading the transcripts

Harris suspended her campaign for president on Dec. 3, 2019, about two weeks before the sixth debate in the Democratic presidential primary.

Before dropping out of the race, Harris was on stage for all five primary debates. But transcripts of the debates from the service Rev and The Washington Post show she didn’t say the quote attributed to her in the meme.

Harris’ office declined to comment on the claim in the meme.

The only significant mention of China by Harris during those debates was in response to a question about trade policy during the September 2019 debate. ABC News host and debate moderator George Stephanopolous asked Harris how her trade policy would differ from former President Barack Obama’s.

After answering, Harris pivoted to what she called a “complicated” relationship with China, according to the Rev transcript.

“We have to hold China accountable,” she said. “They steal our products, including our intellectual property. They dump substandard products into our economy. They need to be held accountable. We also need to partner with China on climate and the crisis that presents. We need to partner with China on the issue of North Korea.”

Harris also didn't bring up Biden's son, the transcripts show. President Donald Trump and his supporters frequently invoked Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign, accusing him of profiting off political connections, including in China.

In December, Hunter Biden confirmed that he was the subject of a Department of Justice investigation into his finances. The Associated Press reported part of the investigation was into Hunter Biden's "past work in China."

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A search for other instances where Harris might have said the quote also did not return any credible results.

Transcripts of the debates did not show any other Democratic candidate attacking Biden with a similar quote either. During the two general election debates, Trump attacked Biden over China.

In this June 27, 2019 photo, Democratic presidential candidates, author Marianne Williamson, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, entrepreneur Andrew Yang, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, and Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., raise their hands when asked if they would provide healthcare for undocumented immigrants, during the Democratic primary debate hosted by NBC News at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) ORG XMIT: WX401

Tense exchange

While Harris did not say the quote attributed to her about China, she did go after Biden during the first Democratic presidential primary debate in June 2019.

The photo used in the meme was from that exchange. In the original image, Biden grips the podium on the left side of the frame while Harris, on the far right, holds a pen as she points with her right hand.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., stands behind his own lectern between the two candidates. The meme cropped out Sanders to show Biden and Harris face-to-face.

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About an hour into the debate, Harris jumped in to say she wanted to “speak on the issue of race.”

She said she believed Biden was not a racist, but questioned the way Biden spoke of segregationist Sens. James Eastland, D-Miss., and Herman Talmadge, D-Ga., along with his opposition to busing early in his career.

Harris was part of the second class at Berkeley Public Schools in California to be part of the busing integration program. The practice of busing Black and Latino kids to predominantly white schools was used to integrate the education system following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Harris later dismissed the exchange as part of "a debate of differences of opinions and issues," during a June 2020 interview with Stephen Colbert.

Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris debate on June 27, 2019.

Our rating: False

The claim that Kamala Harris said, “You will do whatever the Chinese tell you! They gave your son over a billion dollars,” to Joe Biden during a debate is FALSE, according to our research. Transcripts from the Democratic presidential primary debates contain no similar quotes from Harris. A search for other instances when Harris might have said the quote did not return any results.