A rumor circulating online on Election Day 2024 claimed that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris "faked" or "staged" a phone call with a voter during a stop at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. — a moment broadcast live on CNN. According to the rumor, the visibility of the camera app on the phone's screen indicated no one had initiated a call, and that Harris had pretended to speak to someone.
For example, on Nov. 5, the self-described "#1 conservative website" TownHall.com posted (archived) a 30-second video on X from CNN's daytime broadcast of "Election Day in America," writing, "Kamala Harris — allegedly speaking with a voter — clearly has the camera app open on the phone." The video showed Harris either asking for or accepting a phone from one of several phone bank participants.
Popular conservative accounts for podcaster Tim Pool (archived), Libs of TikTok (archived) and @EndWokeness (archived) also shared the video, claiming Harris "faked" or "staged" the phone call, or "pretended" to speak on the phone. The New York Post also uploaded a similar YouTube video from C-SPAN, claiming in its text description, "It appeared that Harris was actually on the iPhone's camera app and not actually on a call."
However, we uncovered no evidence of Harris faking the in-question call. Apple iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones do not display a largely-visible indication of an in-progress phone call with the devices' native camera apps open. Also, these devices' microphones and speakers still function for active phone calls with camera apps open in photo mode. Neither device allows video recording while calls are in progress.
Seconds after the brief video posted by the X users and the Post ended, the live CNN broadcast continued with Harris speaking to another voter on a different device with the phone app clearly visible.
The YouTube channel for Forbes Breaking News published a longer video showing Harris taking in-progress calls with the phone app visible and, at times, other people audible over speakerphone. The phone app is visible in the following video at the 2:27 and 6:34 marks.