Joe Biden's freshly picked running mate, Kamala Harris was seemingly ready to accept and use a damning recording of US President Donald Trump, when she was reportedly tricked into believing that such a tape exists by two Russian pranksters known as Vovan and Lexus.
The prank was recorded in January 2020, a month after she ended her presidential bid over a lack of support, but was not released by the pranksters at the time and was published by The U.S. Sun on 21 August. In a recording Harris greets the prankers' team, one of whom impersonated Greta Thunberg and the other – her father Svante, offering the California Senator help in boosting her campaign.
While Harris herself only suggested that the "climate activist" could highlight her climate plan in a speech, the "fake Greta" and her "father" had spicier things in mind. They claimed to have an audio recording of Greta's alleged encounter with Trump at the UN, where she purportedly shouted at POTUS to sign the Paris climate accord and the president allegedly told her "softly" that she "will never achieve the goal".
"Greta always has a recorder with her, and when it happened it was on Greta's recorder. If you would like to get it, we can provide it. Maybe this recording can help you", the pranker duo told Harris with the senator responding "thank you, that would be wonderful".
"Greta" also repeatedly condemned Trump as "very sick" and claimed she "cannot eat or sleep when [she sees] him on TV". Harris, in turn, encouraged the "climate activist", explaining to her that no serious cause comes without opposition from other people, including countries' leaders, and praising her work as inspiring.
The pranksters have not commented on the sudden publication of one of their unreleased audios.
It is unclear why the recording never made it to the pranksters' YouTube channel, with their January video being devoted to a trick played on another US Congresswoman, Maxine Walters, whom they fooled into believing that the fictional island of Chunga-Changa and its people require US aid. Vovan and Lexus, whose real names are Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexey Stolyarov, routinely prank high-profile politicians and individuals, including heads of state such as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
