Fact-checking Donald Trump’s rally in Charlotte, N.C.

In his first campaign rally since President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, former President Donald Trump attacked his most likely opponent: Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee. 

"She is a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country. If she ever gets the chance to get into office," Trump said July 24 in Charlotte, N.C.

Trump criticized Harris’ positions on multiple policy topics including immigration, health care and abortion.

We fact-checked four of his claims. 

False.

We’ve rated claims that Harris is Biden’s "border czar" in charge of stopping illegal immigration Mostly False. Biden tasked Harris with working alongside officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues driving people to leave those countries and come to the United States. These issues include economic insecurity, corruption, human rights and violence. Border security and management is the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.

The U.S. border also isn’t open. Physical barriers such as fences, surveillance technology such as drones and about 20,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents help control who and what comes into the United States. Additionally, immigration officials at the border continue to enforce immigration law. 

We rated Trump’s statement during the June 27 debate that Biden allowed in "18 million people," False.

During Biden’s administration, immigration officials have encountered immigrants illegally crossing the U.S. border nearly 10 million times.  When accounting for "got aways" — people who aren’t stopped by border officials — the number rises to about 11.6 million. 

But encounters don’t mean admissions. Encounters represent events, so one person who tries to cross the border twice counts for two encounters. Also, not everyone encountered is let in. The Department of Homeland Security estimates about 4 million encounters have led to expulsions or removals.

About 3.3 million people have been released into the U.S. to await immigration court hearings under Biden’s administration, Department of Homeland Security data shows. About 415,000 children who crossed the border alone were also let in.

True.

In April 2019, Harris became one of 14 original co-sponsors of the Medicare for All Act of 2019 sponsored by Sanders, I-Vt. The bill would have established a national health insurance program administered by the federal Department of Health and Human Services. 

Under the bill, the health insurance program would automatically cover all U.S. residents without deductibles, coinsurance or copayments. Private insurers could continue to operate, but only to offer supplemental coverage.

Although PolitiFact gave its 2010 Lie of the Year to Republican claims that the Affordable Care Act would be a government takeover of health care, Sanders’ bill, which he has subsequently reintroduced, would go much further than that law. It would create an automatic, federally run health insurance program for all Americans, which would mirror the socialized medicine systems in such countries as the United Kingdom.

Harris backed Medicare for All when she was preparing to run in the 2020 presidential primaries and many candidates believed that Democratic base voters wanted the most liberal positions possible. Besides Harris and Sanders, three other Democratic primary candidates also signed on as co-sponsors: Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

In her 2019 campaign launch speech, Harris said, "I am running to declare, once and for all, that health care is a fundamental right, and we will deliver that right with Medicare for All!" 

However, Medicare for All failed to gain steam with other Democrats; it has never advanced to a vote in the Senate. (The bill’s current House and Senate versions have not been taken up by committees after being introduced.) After her 2020 candidacy ended, Harris focused instead on bolstering the ACA as opposed to pushing for Medicare for All.

"Harris’ previous support for Medicare for All with a private insurance option is suggestive of her values, but I doubt it will be a big emphasis for her in the current campaign," Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health policy research organization, told the Hill July 22. "I think Harris will lean much more into the Biden-Harris record on health care than policies she proposed in the 2019 primary."

Half True.

The first part of Trump’s statement is close to accurate: The Medicare for All bill Harris backed in 2019 would eliminate private health insurance except as supplemental coverage beyond what the government-funded plan would cover. But the second part twists Harris’ words.

It comes from a Des Moines, Iowa, town hall CNN’s Jake Tapper hosted when Harris was running for president in 2019:

Audience member: "What is your solution to ensure that people have access to quality health care at an affordable price? And does that solution involve cutting insurance companies as we know them out of the equation?"

Harris: "I believe the solution — and I actually feel very strongly about this — is that we need to have Medicare for All. That's just the bottom line."

Moments later, Tapper noted that Harris had co-sponsored Sanders’ Medicare for All bill.

Tapper: "I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance. So, for people out there who like their insurance, they don't get to keep it?"

Harris: "Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don't have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. Who of us has not had that situation, where you've got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, ’Well, I don't know if your insurance company is going to cover this’? Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on."

Trump’s version of Harris’ comment ignores that the statement, "Let's eliminate all of that," referred to delays and paperwork from waiting for insurance company approval for treatments. Also, Harris clarified in the town hall that even if private insurance were eliminated, "the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care" from the federal plan.

False. 

Willfully terminating a newborn’s life is infanticide and is illegal in every U.S. state. 

Harris hasn’t publicly said how late in a pregnancy an abortion should occur. But she has publicly supported abortion under Roe v. Wade’s standard, which provided abortion access up to fetal viability. This is typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy, when the fetus can survive outside of the womb.

Medical experts say situations resulting in fetal death in the third trimester are rare — less than 1% of abortions in the U.S. occur after 21 weeks — and typically involve fatal fetal anomalies or life-threatening emergencies affecting the pregnant woman. For fetuses with very short life expectancies, doctors may induce labor and offer palliative care. Some families choose this option when facing diagnoses that limit their babies’ survival to minutes or days after delivery.

Some Republicans who have made claims similar to Trump’s point to Democratic support of the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022, citing the bill’s provisions that say providers and patients have the right to perform and receive abortion services without certain limitations or requirements that would impede access. Anti-abortion advocates say the provisions in the bill, which failed to advance 49-51 in the Senate, would have created a loophole that eliminated any limits to abortions later in pregnancy. The Biden administration supported the bill.

Alina Salganicoff, director of KFF’s Women’s Health Policy program, said the legislation would have allowed health providers to perform abortions without obstacles such as waiting periods, medically unnecessary tests and in-person visits. The bill would have allowed an abortion after viability when, "in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health."

PolitiFact Staff Writer Samantha Putterman contributed to this report.