With Fox News and senior Republican figures also admitting that Vice President Kamala Harris won Tuesday night’s presidential debate, some supporters of former President Donald Trump are desperately looking for some semblance of solace. Prompting predictable conspiracy theories.
A persistent complaint from conservatives (but interestingly, not Democrats) over the past decade has been that their opponent was wearing an earpiece during the debates. These unfounded allegations were leveled at President Joe Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Barack Obama in 2012. Each time, the theory was debunked.
In Harris’ case, conspiracy theorists have claimed on X and other social media platforms that she had earpieces built into her earrings. Looking for earpieces that resemble pearl studs, these losers declared that Harris was using Nova’s H1 audio earrings.
The earrings are said to have directional sound that is only audible to the wearer. According to their Kickstarter page, they are “placed on the ear lobe and project sound from inside the pearl directly into your ear canal.” Sure, they look like the pearl earrings Harris wore on stage, but they’re not the same. Style bloggers have already identified the pair of Tiffany earrings Harris wore to the debate and previous events (as well as noting that she wore a chain from the same collection).
The main problem is that the Nova H1 audio earrings barely exist.
As Newsweek reported, the device was part of a Kickstarter project that has now disappeared. The earrings are not available for purchase anywhere online and never were. Nova Products, the company behind the campaign, hasn’t logged into Kickstarter since May 2023, and supporters have posted on the page asking for status updates on the earrings they were supposed to receive in exchange for their pledge.
The URL of Nova Products’ website listed on Kickstarter now redirects to another company, Iceback Sound Solutions. That website shows a pair of audio earrings with a different design and, after the debate, a message stating “Special edition for the presidential debate – soon available to all” was added to the site between 7 a.m. and 11:25 a.m. ET, according to a cache on The Wayback Machine. That presumably joking claim added links to the CES 2025 website.
Both Iceback and Nova’s website list their domain registrar as Stefan Berendsen of BBG Entertainment GmbH, an apparent mobile game developer based in Germany. What such a company has to do with audio products or the U.S. presidential election remains a mystery, but we’ve contacted BBG – as well as the Harris campaign – for comment.
“We do not know if Mrs Harris was wearing any of our products. The resemblance is very striking and while our product was not specifically developed for use in the presidential debates, it is nevertheless suitable for it,” Iceback Sound Solutions managing director Malte Iversen told Engadget in a statement, which we assume is an attempt to take advantage of some sudden unusual publicity.
“To ensure a level playing field for both candidates, we are currently developing a male version and will be able to offer it to the Trump campaign soon. The choice of color is a bit challenging though as orange doesn’t look good with a lot of colors.”
In any case, this seems to be another straightforward task for Occam’s razor. Harris almost certainly was not wearing earpieces as the earrings she wore look clearly different and the product she has been accused of wearing does not exist.
Likewise, it’s more plausible that a seasoned politician could win a debate by being extremely well prepared and ready to throw an opponent off his game than one who has a very fragile ego and doesn’t need a team to feed them information via earpiece.
The Nova H1 audio earrings show all the classic signs of being vaporware until they’re shown for the first time at CES 2023, though perhaps we’ll see a new version under different branding somewhere on the show floor in January.