Univision News President Daniel Coronell says there’s zero truth to right-wing conspiracists’ claims that Vice President Kamala Harris was reading from a teleprompter during her Thursday night town hall hosted by the network.
The claim is “not true,” Coronell wrote on social media in response to one of the more high-profile posts pushing the conspiracy theory.
“The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator,” he continued. “I can tell you this with first-hand knowledge because I was in charge of the television program.”
That’s not true. The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator. I can tell you this with first-hand knowledge because I was in charge of the television program. https://t.co/Co5MIgZkry
— Daniel Coronell (@DCoronell) October 11, 2024
Moderator Enrique Acevedo confirmed the report.
“The prompter displayed my introduction (in Spanish) and then it switched to a timer,” he wrote. “Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue.“
The conspiracy theory caught on after the Trump campaign tweeted a video of the Univision forum with a teleprompter visible in the background.
The teleprompter👀 pic.twitter.com/fIhyPzedXY
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 11, 2024
Right-wing influencers then hopped on the bandwagon.
“BREAKING: Univision accidentally broadcast proof that Kamala used a teleprompter at her town hall,” wrote one podcaster, Benny Johnson, sharing the post with his 2.8 million followers.
“Watch them panic when they realized they were showing the prompter live on-air.”
🚨 BREAKING: Univision accidentally broadcast proof that Kamala used a teleprompter at her town hall
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 11, 2024
Watch them panic when they realized they were showing the prompter live on-air pic.twitter.com/fiUFcfN2Kx
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In a separate post, Johnson claimed to have “EXPOSED” an audience member who’d been planted by the Harris campaign to ask a friendly question.
Johnson was recently mentioned in a federal indictment for unwittingly accepting money from Russia in a lucrative deal with a now-defunct U.S. conservative media outlet that churned out English-language Russian propaganda.
The same group of right-wing conspiracy theorists also claimed Harris’ earrings during the presidential debate were actually earbuds. That, too, is false.
