Fact check: Is Kamala Harris really a ‘radical left lunatic’ as Donald Trump says?

Reality Check is a Bee series holding officials and organizations accountable and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email realitycheck@sacbee.com.

Now that the presidential race has turned to the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the candidates are emphasizing stark differences between each other.

Each is trying to paint the other as extreme, with Trump blasting Harris as a “radical left lunatic,” and Harris charged Sunday that Trump “wants to take the country backward.”

As new polls show a race that is shaping up to be too close to call, supporters of Trump, the Republican nominee, are warning Vice President Harris will upend American life in big and little ways--banning plastic straws, ending private health insurance and so on.

Here, we look at some of the claims Trump and his allies have made since Harris entered the race:

Ban plastic straws?

MAGA, a group backing Trump, issued a statement Wednesday quoting Breitbart News saying Harris “wanted to ban plastic straws.”

TRUE. “We do need to ban the plastic,” she told a CNN climate change forum in 2019.

Harris did lament that using paper straws would be tough. “I’m going to be honest. It’s really difficult out of --drink out of a paper straw — like, if you don’t gulp it down immediately, it starts to bend, and then the little thing catches it.”

Don’t eat red meat?

“Kamala said she wants to ‘educate’ Americans about their eating habits from the “highest levels of government” — and ‘BANNING CERTAIN BEHAVIORS,’ like eating red meat,” the Republican National Committee said in an X message this week.

NOT TRUE. Harris supported changing federal dietary guidelines that recommend regarded as a healthy diet.

Harris was asked at at the 2019 CNN climate change town hall.“Would you support changing the dietary guidelines? Reduce red meat specifically?”

“Yes, I would,” Harris said.

The guidelines, though, don’t mandate what people can eat, but could alter eating patterns in federal programs such as school lunches.

No more private health insurance?

Harris “backed Bernie Sanders Medicare for All legislation,” a MAGA press release said this week.

TRUE. As a U.S. senator, Harris was an enthusiastic supporter of Sanders’ plan, which sought to expand government coverage to everyone, and would have all but ended private insurance.

When she ran for president, during a Democratic debate in 2019, moderator Lester Holt asked “Who here would abolish their health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?” Harris raised her hand.

But after the debate, she said she misunderstood the question and explained “in my vision of Medicare for All, it includes private insurance where people can have supplemental insurance.”

Defund the police?

“She applauds defunding the police,” Team Trump said in a statement this week.

SORT OF TRUE. Harris’ views on policing have shifted over the years, and as a senator, she was a strong advocate of changing how police operated.

In 2010, as San Francisco’s district attorney, she argued for more police on the streets.

Ten years later, as a U.S. senator, she was asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” if she supported Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s plan to reallocate $150 million from the police budget for community programs in underserved areas.

“I support investing in communities so they become more healthy and therefore more safe,” Harris said, adding later,”I applaud Eric Garcetti for doing what he’s done.”

Ku Klux Klan and immigration?

For years, Republicans have charged that in a 2018 Senate hearing, Harris compared the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to the Ku Klux Klan.

NOT TRUE. The charge stems from a tweet that Ronald Vitiello, a veteran Border Patrol official who was Trump’s nominee to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, posted years before he was chosen to head the department, saying that the Democratic Party could be called the “NeoKlanist party.”

At his 2018 Senate confirmation hearing, Vitiello said it was wrong to make that statement.

Harris, then a U.S. senator, grilled him on the comment. “Are you aware of the perception of many about how the power and discretion at ICE (is) being used to enforce the laws? And do you see any parallels?” she asked.

Vitiello said he did not. After more back and forth, he said, “I see no perception that puts ICE in the same category as the KKK. Is that what you’re asking me?”

“No, I’m very specific about what I’m asking,” Harris replied.

She kept pushing. “Are you aware of a perception that ICE is administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation particularly among immigrants and specifically among immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America?” Harris asked.

“I do not see a parallel between the power and the authority ICE has to do its job,” Vitiello said.

Childless cat lady?

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance in 2021 referred to Harris and some other Democrats as “childless cat ladies.”

NOT TRUE.

“We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” Vance said told Fox News at the time.

“And it’s just a basic fact if you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)— the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,” he said.

Harris has two stepchildren. Their father is her husband Doug Emhoff, who has two children, Cole and Ella, from his first marriage.

Harris is known as “Momala” to them and this week talked about the children in an affectionate piece published in Elle magazine. “I can say one thing with certainty, my heart wouldn’t be whole, nor my life full, without them,” the vice president said.

Her office did not respond to questions about whether she has a cat.