No, this video doesn’t show Vice President Kamala Harris intoxicated

Vice President Kamala Harris has faced numerous unfounded accusations of public intoxication, especially when she was the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. 

The misinformation hasn’t stopped since her campaign ended. 

“KAMALA IS PLASTERED AGAIN,” the caption on a Dec. 17 Instagram post said. 

The post included a C-SPAN video of Harris speaking at a lectern. 

“And I ask you to remember the context in which you exist. Yeah, I did that. Uh-huh,” Harris said, laughing. “I ask you to remember that this struggle is not new.”

It was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The clip is from a Dec. 17 address Harris gave to students and recent graduates at Prince George’s Community College in Largo, Maryland.

But the comment highlighted in the Instagram post isn’t nonsense; Harris made it as a nod to a May 2023 speech in which she talked about something her mother used to say to illustrate how people should consider the needs of their families and communities, NPR reported.

“She would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris said in 2023. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” 

The coconut tree became a symbol of her campaign. 

We rate the claim that this video shows Harris “is plastered again!” False.