Claim: An image shows Kamala Harris and Andy Beshear standing next to each other, as the Democratic party’s presidential and vice-presidential nominees in the upcoming 2024 US elections.
Fact: An old image of Kamala Harris has been doctored to include Andy Beshear to show that he is standing next to her at the podium.
On 21 July, X user @olivegardensnob posted (archived) an image of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear standing next to Vice President Kamala Harris at a podium, and said: “Kamala Harris and Andy Beshear are the ticket America needs to defeat Donald Trump #HarrisBeshear2024.”
The post implies that Harris and Beshear are the Democratic party’s nominees, running for office in the upcoming 2024 US presidential election.
After Joe Biden stepped aside from the presidential election, Kamala Harris has emerged as the Democratic party’s top candidate, likely to win the party’s nomination ticket at the Democratic National Convention, which will be held from 19 August to 22 August in Chicago.
A presidential nominee has to choose a running mate for the vice presidential office. Donald Trump, who won the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidential candidacy, chose Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate, who was then nominated as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.
Harris is yet to choose her potential running mate for the vice presidential nomination. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear are among the Democratic party candidates being considered for the office of Vice President, according to news reports.
Fact or Fiction?
A reverse-search of the full frame of Harris and Beshear’s image in the claim yielded limited results. By adjusting the Google Lens frame to focus on Harris only, Soch Fact Check found abundant results which confirmed our suspicions that the image of Harris and Beshear is doctored. Among these results were news reports from 2020 which had published the image of only Harris standing at the podium.
Images similar to the one in the claim, published by various news outlets, show only Harris standing at the podium in her white suit, delivering her acceptance speech at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware in November after she was elected Vice President of the US in the 2020 presidential election.
Teen Vogue, The Cut, and Slate published pieces about the symbolism behind Harris’ Carolina Herrera white suit which “invokes a history of women’s rights across race, class, and sexual orientations.” The photo, included in all three articles, captures Harris smiling widely as she stands at the podium, with her left hand placed over the right, exactly as she appears in the photo in the claim. Unlike the image in the claim, it does not show Andy Beshear standing next to her.
Unlike the photo in the claim that shows another microphone extending towards Beshear, the original image of Harris from 2020 only depicts a single microphone on the podium, placed in front of her.
The articles by Teen Vogue, The Cut, and Slate credited the image to Tasos Katopodis from Getty Images. Taking cues from this, Soch Fact Check conducted a keyword search that led us to the full version of the image on the Getty Images website. Here, it was captioned, “President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris address the Nation after election win.” The image also depicts the front of the podium clearly which does not have any campaign posters with the “Harris Beshear” slogan plastered over it.
Furthermore, the podium is also visible in a video report by The Guardian, from November 2020, at timestamps 0:01, 0:07, and 0:09. Here too, no such banner with a “Harris Beshear” campaign slogan can be seen on the podium.
Additionally, none of the articles and images mentioned above, included any news or images reporting on Andy Beshear’s appearance at Kamala Harris acceptance speech in 2020.
Soch Fact Check also ran the image through InVid WeVerify’s forensic tool for analysis. A combination of various filters shows areas of tampering that are indicated with green dots in the visuals below. These areas are concentrated around Beshear, his hands, and mostly around the slogan on the podium which confirm that these elements were edited into the image artificially:
Result from InVid WeVerify’s forensic analysis.
Result from InVid WeVerify’s forensic analysis.
Result from InVid WeVerify’s forensic analysis
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that an original image of Kamala Harris from her acceptance speech event in 2020 was doctored to include Andy Beshear.
Virality
The doctored image was shared on X here, here, here.The picture also appeared on X early in July, here.
On Facebook, the image was shared here and here on Youtube.
Conclusion: A viral image on social media showing Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear standing alongside Vice President Kamala Harris is doctored. The original image shows only Kamala Harris at the podium, from when she delivered her acceptance speech at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware after being elected Vice President of the US in the 2020 election.
Background image in cover photo: Al Jazeera
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