Jesse Watters has struck again, this time turning the spotlight on Vice President Kamala Harris’ long-touted narrative of growing up in the “rough and tumble” streets of Oakland. But Watters claims there’s just one problem—she didn’t grow up in Oakland at all.
On his prime-time Fox News show, Watters unveiled Harris’ birth certificate to reveal what he called the “real truth” about where the Vice President spent her formative years. According to Watters, Harris was born in Berkeley, not Oakland, which he says is a far cry from the gritty, working-class upbringing she’s often portrayed.
“Kamala Harris wants you to believe she’s a product of Oakland’s hard streets,” Watters said, showing a copy of Harris’ birth certificate. “But in reality, she was born and raised in the People’s Republic of Berkeley—yes, Berkeley, the most insanely liberal precinct in America.”
Watters went on to describe Berkeley as “Berserkly,” the epicenter of radical leftist movements, where Harris grew up just a stone’s throw away from the University of California campus. “Her birth certificate lists an apartment right next to Berkeley’s campus, a half block south of People’s Park,” Watters continued. “This is ground zero for every single radical protest movement in the country.”
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The Fox News host didn’t stop there. He pointed out that Harris attended Berkeley public schools and was even bused to schools within the city, a far cry from the urban struggles of Oakland that she’s used as a political talking point. Watters mocked Harris’ famous debate line, “That little girl was me,” suggesting that the Vice President has crafted a misleading story about her upbringing. “If you lie about where you grew up—about something that’s at the very core of who you are—how can people trust anything you say?” Watters questioned.
The New York Times reported:
She was indeed born in an Oakland hospital in 1964, but she did not settle in the city until she was in her 20s and working as a prosecutor in the county district attorney’s office.
Her birth certificate lists an apartment building near the University of California, Berkeley campus, where her parents were pursuing Ph.D.s. It sat just a half-block south of People’s Park, the campus land taken over by activists in 1969, just a few years after the Harris family moved out of the building.
When Ms. Harris was a toddler, her family moved to the Midwest where her father, Donald Harris, taught briefly at universities in Illinois and Wisconsin. After her parents split up, Ms. Harris returned to Berkeley when she was 5, with her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, and her sister, Maya, and eventually settled into the little yellow house in the “flatlands,” then a working-class part of the city with a large population of Black families.
Ms. Harris’s mother was steeped in the social activism vibrant in both Berkeley and Oakland. Ms. Harris attended Berkeley public schools and was bused to Thousand Oaks Elementary School in a more upscale neighborhood in the hills of north Berkeley as part of a voluntary program to integrate schools.
Harris has often referenced her upbringing as a key part of her political identity, describing herself as a child of the civil rights movement who grew up with a strong sense of justice. However, the timing couldn’t be worse for Harris, as she faces mounting scrutiny in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
