Fact Check: Kamala Harris is alive. Honest!

by David Benjamin

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.”
— Donald Trump, 23 Jan. ‘16

It all started with a question from ABC News’ David Muir during the September 10 presidential debate. Muir asked ex-president Donald Trump his position on “political violence.”

Suddenly, Trump pulled from his blue suit a plastic gun identical to the one wielded by John Malkovich in the film In the Line of Fire. “You wanna see some political violence?” Trump bellowed. “Get a load of this, Dave!”

At this, he leveled the barrel at his debate opponent, vice president Kamala Harris and pumped two rounds, through her apricot Chloé blazer, into her chest. She sank to the floor, bleeding and motionless.

The audience at Philadelphia’s National Constitutional Center uttered a collective gasp and showed signs of launching a panicky and dangerous mass exit. However, ABC moderators Muir and Linsey Davis responded by quickly quelling the restive masses, urging them to take their seats. They promised to continue the “process,” asking the ex-president, “aggressively,” why he had decided to murder his adversary on live national TV.

“Sir,” said Davis, as Trump blew a curl of smoke from the barrel of his heater, “only recently, in this very state, you suffered the trauma of being shot by a would-be assassin. So, it’s understandable that you would come to this debate armed against a woman who has spoken of you in terms that might be regarded as menacing. It can be argued that this was an act of preemptive self-defense. Were you indeed, sir, in fear for your life?”

“Damn right, Linsey! This woman’s a dusky Amazon straight out of the jungle. God knows what she’ll do next!” replied the GOP nominee. “Ever since Biden’s hitman missed me by inches, the Democrats have been spoiling for another chance to gun me down. Frisk her, somebody. I bet she’s heeled to the teeth.”

A search of Harris’ body revealed no weapon. Muir followed up by asking, “Sir, this incident, at least technically (although your Supreme Court will probably rule that you killed the lady in anticipation of a ruling that you were acting officially as the once and future President for Life), is a felony. Do you believe the state of Pennsylvania should prosecute you for homicide?”

“That’s a nasty question,” Trump huffed. “But I’ll tell ya, pigface. This was a perfectly legal abortion.”

“Abortion?” asked Davis, puzzled.

Trump snapped. “You’re as stupid as you are ugly. You oughta know that Pennsylvania is one of the liberal states where a baby can be executed after being born. Look it up! There’s no statute of limitations on post-birth abortions. In Pennsylvania, you can kill the baby any time after birth, a day, a month, a year, ten years, fifty years. Kamubla’s an unwanted fetus. I was just following the law.”

Muir had another question. “Sir, now that you’ve snuffed your opponent, do you think that running against a corpse will give a boost to a campaign which—you gotta admit—has been pretty much a train wreck up ’til now?”

“You’re the train wreck, you and your whole fake-news network,” Trump replied. “Listen to these people!”

Trump raised his arms. Suddenly, the entire audience leapt to their feet in a standing ovation, shouting Trump’s name. Their thundering “Four more years!” chant drowned out the moderators’ efforts to restore decorum …

Of course, none of this happened.

Fourteen hours later, the assassination of Kamala Harris by Donald Trump on the debate stage was revealed as an AI-generated “deepfake” that intercepted, then overrode the ABC News feed. Since the broadcast, electronics sleuths have traced the bogus video to a cell of Hungarian black-hats affiliated with a pro-Trump super-PAC that remains safely anonymous behind firewalls erected by Apple, Google and Elon Musk. Efforts to force the revelation of the cybercriminals’ encryption codes have been forbidden by judges of the Fifth Circuit. Appeals to the Supreme Court have been postponed ’til Hell freezes over.

In the wake of her mock-assassination, Ms. Harris continued her campaign with an exhausting series of town hall forums and dozens of rallies—although with steadily shrinking attendance—in battleground states. But despite widespread reporting that she was alive, more than forty percent of registered voters, according to Five Thirty Eight’s composite polls, believed Trump’s continued claims that he had “blown her away before she could draw on me.” Official Trump liar Steven Cheung’s insistence that Ms. Harris’ seeming public appearances were actually a “diablically devised holographic illusion” have been aided by the fact that nine out of ten U.S. voters don’t know a hologram from a horse-apple.

In the actual debate—cut off by the Hungarian hack—Trump responded to a question about tariffs by deteriorating into a typical state of incoherence, comparing his golf handicap to Tim Walz’s penis, regressing decades back to the Howard Stern interview during which he referred to his own daughter as a great “piece of ass” that he would love to date if incest were legal and “maybe I can change that when I’m president again,” after which he fantasized pushing Hannibal Lecter over the rail of an electrified yacht into a school of transgender sharks and suggested reverently that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) might be the Second Coming of Joan of Arc “or maybe the Virgin Mary,” at which he began to sing “Silent Night” including a line that read “… all is bomb, all is might.” He speckled his monolog with slurs and profanities, including frequent expletions of the “n-word,” the “c-word” and several “f-words. The moderators only thought to mute Trump’s microphone when he started promising Ms. Harris a “visit to the fitting room” for “a thrill like nothing she’s ever seen before,” although warning that he would be dispensing said thrill using only his fingers so as to withhold his precious bodily fluids and preserve his manhood’s “purity of essence.”

Of course, no one saw this strange performance live. Efforts by ABC and other networks to replay the real debate in its entirety were a ratings bomb. Worse, Fox News declared that ABC’s debate tapes were doctored “fake news” and a hoax perpetrated by “Democrat fraudsters desperate to steal their second straight election and deny Donald Trump the majesty that he has earned and the American people want more than their own selfish lives, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

The outcome of the 2024 presidential race was grimly foreshadowed on the doorstep of Kamala Harris’ home, where heartsick supporters gathered to grieve. A makeshift shrine, composed of sympathy cards and mourning placards, tons of flowers, hundreds of stuffed animals, countless Harris-Walz t-shirts, baseball caps, campaign buttons, coffee mugs, hoodies, tote bags, scarves, onesies, stickers and lawn signs, plus reams of photos and children’s drawings of the fallen heroine became a tragic mountain that covered the lawn and spilled into the street.

In the White House, President Joe Biden initially said he was “heartbroken” by the death of his second-in-command. He later retracted his grieving remarks when told about the deepfake scam and reiterated his support for the vice president. Privately, however, he was overheard expressing regret over his decision to end his re-election campaign in favor of Ms. Harris.

“I may be old,” he reportedly said, “but at least I’m not dead.”