CLAIM: Kamala Harris claimed that Donald Trump “wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself.”
VERDICT: FALSE. This is another hoax, based on something Trump said in jest.
Vice President Harris repeated several familiar hoaxes about Trump during Tuesday night’s debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, among them the “dictator” hoax.
Trump was asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity at a televised town hall in December 2023 about media predictions that he would be a dictator.
They had the following exchange:
HANNITY: I put a montage together. They want to call you a dictator. You use the words “I am your retribution.” And now, before that, you said you’ve been wronged and you used other words as well, but I want to be very, very clear on this. To be clear, do you in any way have any plans, whatsoever, if re-elected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?
TRUMP: You mean like they’re using right now? In the history of our country, what’s happened to us, again, has never happened before. Over nonsense, over nothing. Made up charges. I often say: Al Capone, he was one of the greatest of all time, if you like criminals. He was a mob boss, the likes of which… Scarface, they call him and he got indicted once. I got indicted four times. I wonder what my father and mother would say looking down.
…
HANNITY: We almost have to go to a break. I want to go back to this one issue, though, because the media has been focused on this and attacking you. Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody.
TRUMP:Except for day one.
HANNITY: Except for?
TRUMP:: He’s going crazy. Except for day one.
HANNITY: Meaning?
TRUMP:I want to close the border and I want to drill.
HANNITY: That’s not retribution.
TRUMP:I’m going to be… He keeps… We love this guy. He says you’re not going to be a dictator, are you? I said, no, no, no. Other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator. Okay?
HANNITY: That sounds to me like you’re going back to the policies when you were president.
Trump never made any serious claim that he would be a dictator; he made a joking reference to his determination to enact his policies on day one.
The ABC News moderators, eager to fact-check Trump at every turn, did not correct Harris’s familiar distortion.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
