Associated Press sets stage for Harris campaign's latest deception — this time targeting JD Vance

The Associated Press has once again furnished the Harris campaign with propaganda to further mislead voters about its political adversaries.

Following a horrific school shooting in Georgia on Wednesday, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) expressed his sympathy for the victims and their families and lamented the fact that such tragedies happen.

The AP mutilated Vance's remarks both in a now-deleted social post and in a since-re-titled article with the ostensible aim of painting him as callous and accepting of the school-shooting status quo.

The Harris campaign did not miss a beat, seizing upon the AP's deceptive framing to engage in some deception of its own — providing a damning characterization of Vance's remarks and recommendations wholly divorced from reality.

'More bulls*** from the Fake News AP.'

Although the Associated Press has walked back its misleading titles, the false narrative it inspired lives on in the propaganda shared by the Harris campaign and its boosters.

Reality

A school shooting took place Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, claiming the lives of two teachers and two students.

Vance told the crowd at a campaign rally in Phoenix the following day:

First of all, what happened in Georgia is just an awful tragedy. And I know we've got a lot of parents and a lot of grandparents in this room — I mean, I cannot imagine. You know, little kids so excited to go back to school, God love them, and they're at their first week back from the summer, and an absolute barbarian decides to open fire and take their lives and also a couple teachers.

The video the Associated Press shared to YouTube omitted the following from its playback of Vance's speech:

We gotta think about these people. If you're the praying type, and I know I am, we gotta hold them up in prayer. We gotta be hoping for the best for this incredible community because no parent should have to deal with this. No child should have to deal with this. And yes, after holding these folks up in prayer and giving them our sympathies — because that's what people deserve in a time of tragedy — then we have to think about how to make this less common. Now look: the Kamala Harris' answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens' guns away from them. That is what Kamala Harris wants to do. But we have to ask ourselves, we actually have been able to run an experiment on this because you've got some states with very strict gun laws and you've got some states that don't have strict gun laws at all. And the states with strict gun laws — they have a lot of school shootings, and the states without strict gun laws, some of them have school shootings too, so clearly strict gun laws is not the thing that is going to solve this problem.

The AP resumed sharing footage from Vance's speech at the point where the senator discussed a potential remedy to this problem, stating, "I don't like this. I don't like to admit this. I don't like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets."

Vance added, "We have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door and kill a bunch of children, they're not able to."

The Ohio senator noted further that this is not the reality he wants, particularly not for his own children, but this is the reality "that we live in."

The Associated Press' framing

The Associated Press covered the speech Thursday. Although the body of the article was relatively accurate in its characterization of Vance's remarks, the corresponding title and social media post, which netted millions of impressions and thousands of retweets prior to its deletion, told a different story.

The original article title — which survives on the pages of various publications that recycle the Associated Press' content and has lookalikes in the pages of the Washington Post and other liberal publications — read, "JD Vance says school shootings are a 'fact of life,' calls for better security."

Noticeably absent from the title was the indication he "lament[ed]" the reality of school shootings; specifically that he said, "I don't like that this is a fact of life."

The post on X, like the original article, said, "JD Vance says school shootings are 'fact of life,' calls for better security."

Critics cognizant of the difference between the Associated Press' framing and the actual content of Vance's remarks lashed out. Soon, a community note was appended to the post, prompting the liberal publication to change the article's title and delete its tweet.

The Trump War Room on X wrote, "More bulls*** from the Fake News AP."

Vance spokesman William Martin told Fox News Digital, "This is yet another case of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician. Senator Vance said exactly the opposite of what the Associated Press claimed."

"It should come as no surprise that the AP lost any and all credibility it had years ago, because they will lie about literally anything in order prop up the Democrats," continued Martin. "Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has called for all police officers to be removed from schools, putting children all over America at risk. It's yet another example of how Kamala Harris's weak, failed, and dangerously liberal agenda makes her unfit for office."

The new title for the article is "JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a 'fact of life' and calls for better security."

The new tweet reads, "JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a 'fact of life' and says the U.S. needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia."

The AP said in a subsequent message, "This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance."

Harris propaganda

The Harris campaign ran with the Associated Press' framing, hyperlinking it to an internal communications plan then tweeting, "JD Vance responds to the deadly shooting in Georgia by saying school shootings are just 'a fact of life' and attacking common sense gun safety reform."

'Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said.'

In an official statement, the Harris campaign wrote, "Yesterday, Vice President Harris said 'it doesn't have to be this way' in response to another senseless school shooting. Donald Trump and JD Vance think school shootings are a 'fact of life' and 'we have to get over it.'"

— (@)

The Trump campaign responded, "Kamala's interns just released a statement pushing FAKE NEWS that the Associated Press just retracted. Watch the full video and you'll clearly see that JD Vance does not say what they claim he said. These morons do nothing but lie every single day."

Harris' campaign was not alone in peddling the falsehood, however; its leader had similarly gone in on the action, tweeting, "School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn't have to be this way."

Vance responded directly, writing, "Kamala wants to take security out of our schools instead of protecting our children. Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said. More desperation from the biggest fraud in American politics."

Late last month, the Associated Press supported another false Democratic narrative.

Blaze News previously reported that the liberal publication parroted the false Democratic claim that Project 2025 is the "Republican blueprint for a second Trump term in the White House."

Project 2025 responded on X, "Is this the AP or the DNC account? Project 2025 does not represent any candidate or campaign."

Only after the damage was done did the AP correct its error and delete its post, noting it had "misidentified the blueprint as Republican."

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