Trump supporters concoct bizarre Kamala Harris conspiracy theory after presidential debate

Donald Trump’s performance against Kamala Harris left his supporters casting around for an explanation. They think they’ve found one.

Donald Trump’s shaky performance in his debate against Kamala Harris yesterday has left his supporters casting around for an explanation.

Or, to phrase it less charitably, an excuse.

The mainstream reaction among conservatives, including Mr Trump himself, has been to complain about ABC News’ moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, who interrupted the former president to fact-check him multiple times. More on that in a bit.

For a more extreme subset of Mr Trump’s supporters, the moderators are apparently too familiar and boring a scapegoat.

It’s quite normal, you see, for the loser of a debate to chafe against the questioning; Democrats did the same thing after President Joe Biden spectacularly botched his debate against Mr Trump back in June.

And some folks on the internet are what you might call aggressively abnormal.

These wannabe sleuths have landed on a juicier theory: that Ms Harris was being fed lines, throughout the debate, via an earpiece, disguised as a normal earring.

Kamala Harris during the debate. Note her earring. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

The debate didn’t go too well for her opponent, Donald Trump. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

As far as I can tell, the first social media account to float the earpiece theory was MAGABrittany, who calls herself a “truth seeker”. Not as ironic as it seems, that. It’s possible, after all, to seek the truth without ever finding it.

She suggested Ms Harris had been wearing NOVA H1 Audio Earrings, a Kickstarter-funded product that was once being developed by a now-defunct German company.

“NOVA H1 Audio Earrings are the first clip-on earphones on the planet,” the company said on its Kickstarter page, which is still up.

“These earrings are fully packed with the latest technology embedded in real pearls to provide you with music, phone calls and digital assistants all day long.

“Like conventional earrings, the NOVA H1 are placed on the earlobes and project the sound from inside the pearl straight into your ear canal.

“Thanks to our worldwide patented Directional Sound Technology, the sound travels from the earlobe to the ear canal, avoiding sound leakage and keeping your conversations and music private and secure.

“Besides being beautiful, the NOVA Audio Earrings also open up a new category of audio devices. On the one hand, they can be worn all day without being intrusive, and on the other, they provide the most natural sound experience – augmented hearing.

“The technology is so camouflaged that while using them no one around you will perceive them as a headset, making people approach you and talk to you as they normally would.”

The H1 Audio Earrings were designed to double as, essentially, headphones.

The earring the internet's conspiracy theorists think Kamala Harris was wearing. Picture: Instagram

The suggestion that Ms Harris had been using these earrings to cheat was picked up and amplified by other Trump supporters and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Russian state media, which is always eager to sow doubt and discord among American voters.

“Vice President Kamala Harris was wearing NOVA H1 Audio Earrings, which are wireless headphones, during her debate with Donald Trump last night,” the Russian state media service Sputnik said.

Here’s a small sample of other posts from accounts I shan’t amplify.

“BUSTED! SHE’S WEARING EARPHONE EARRINGS.”

“KAMALA HARRIS EXPOSED FOR WEARING EARPIECE IN DEBATE. This earring has audio transmission capabilities and acts as a discreet earpiece.”

“She had a NOVA smart device earpiece/earring in and was being fed her lines.”

“KAMALA CAUGHT CHEATING DURING THE DEBATE!!!”

And so forth.

One minor problem: she wasn’t wearing those earrings. Zoom in on high resolution images from the debate and you can discern that Ms Harris was, in fact, sporting one of her frequent accessories, a pearl earring sold by Tiffany and Co.

The design of her earrings on the debate stage matched the company’s “South Sea Pearl” product (which, incidentally, sells for more than $US3000. Nice, if you can afford it).

Ms Harris appears to have in fact been wearing these (very expensive) Tiffany earrings.

The earring in question. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

Ms Harris speaking to supporters after the debate, wearing the same earring. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

So no, Ms Harris was not being fed lines through a secret earpiece. It is possible – and do stop me if this sounds too outlandish – that she had answers ready for the moderators’ quite predictable questions because she had prepared for the debate ahead of time.

‘Very unfair’: Trump complains about the moderators

What of those moderators, though?

“I thought the moderators were very unfair. Basically, it was three-on-one. But I thought they were very unfair,” Mr Trump himself said as he answered questions from reporters in the spin room after the debate.

The fundamental complaint, here, is that Mr Muir and Ms Davis fact-checked Mr Trump multiple times and treated Ms Harris more gently.

Specifically, the moderators jumped in four times to correct the former president.

During a discussion on abortion, after Mr Trump claimed Democrat-run states were “executing” babies after birth, Ms Davis clarified that “there is no state where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born”.

David Muir.

Linsey Davis.

When Mr Trump claimed Haitian migrants had been “eating dogs”, “eating the cats” and “eating the pets” of residents in some American towns, Mr Muir cited local officials, who said there was no evidence of any such cases.

When he claimed violent crime in the United States was “up” and “through the roof”, the moderators pointed to the official data, which shows the crime rate has actually fallen.

And when Mr Trump repeated his years-long claim that he actually won the 2020 election, they clarified that, in fact, he lost to Mr Biden.

I shall leave you to judge whether or not it was appropriate for the moderators to intervene in those instances.

There was another moment when Ms Davis, following up on a question about Mr Trump’s long-promised healthcare plan to replace Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, asked: “You still don’t have a plan?”

A bit blunt, perhaps.

Donald Trump during the debate. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

Mr Trump first promised to unveil such a plan during the 2016 election campaign, claiming it would be ready within a few weeks. That was eight years ago.

“I have concepts of a plan,” he replied to Ms Davis yesterday.

“I’m not president right now. But if we come up with something, I would only change it if we come up with something better and less expensive.

“There are concepts and options we have to do that. And you’ll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future.”

Twitter: @SamClench