Teleprompter at Univision town hall was for moderator, not Kamala Harris

Social media users are taking a short video clip from a more than an hourlong Oct. 10 Univision town hall in Las Vegas to falsely claim Vice President Kamala Harris was using a teleprompter.

"Univision accidentally shows that Kamala Harris is reading from a teleprompter live on air," said an Oct. 10 Instagram post’s caption.

High-profile conservative accounts, including the Trump War Room, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, conservative commentator Benny Johnson, promoted this notion. And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, wrote on X that Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, was "caught red-handed."

The Instagram post 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.)

A teleprompter is visible in the clip shared in the Instagram post, but it’s also visible at several times throughout the debate when Harris was facing away from the device. It wasn’t provided for Harris’ use —  and the words that appear on the teleprompter were in Spanish, Enrique Acevedo, the Univision debate moderator, wrote Oct. 10 on X.

"The prompter displayed my introduction (in Spanish) and then it switched to a timer. Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue," Acevedo wrote.

Univision News President Daniel Coronell, also rebutted claims that the vice president used a teleprompter.

"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," Coronell wrote on X above a post making the false claim.

The claim that Harris used a teleprompter mirrors criticism from conservatives that she can’t speak off-script. PolitiFact has debunked earlier claims that Harris used a teleprompter at a Sept. 19 forum with Oprah Winfrey and that the earrings she wore in her Sept. 10 debate with Donald Trump were audio earpieces feeding her information.

Harris’ campaign declined to comment. Univision spokesperson Anna Negron confirmed the X posts from Coronell and Acevedo.

The short video clip shown on the Instagram post came when Harris was responding to an audience member’s question about what her administration would do differently to help Floridians affected by Hurricane Milton.

It’s clear from the full video of the town hall that she was looking up at the man in the audience when she answered the question. The camera then panned behind her and a teleprompter in the center of the stage in front of the audience with some words on it was visible. 

The words then disappeared and Harris, without pausing, continued her answer for about three minutes. 

The claim that Harris used a teleprompter in a Univision town hall is not true, the town hall’s monitor and a Univision news president said. We rate the claim False.