In June 2019, the following meme featuring a quote by a Fox News personality and a purported comic by Dr. Seuss on “foreign children” circulated on social media: At the top of the meme was a screenshot of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, and a June 2018 quote from Brian Kilmeade during the show. Kilmeade said …
On June 23 2019 pundit Dinesh D’Souza tweeted a very old claim: That Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) once married her own brother: In the tweet above, D’Souza claims without citation or evidence that Omar “married her brother to evade immigration laws,” and that “she divorced him and illicitly filed joint tax returns with another guy years …
There Is No Credible Evidence Rep. Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother Read More »
In June 2019, social media posts popped up claiming that that it costs taxpayers $750 (or $775) per child per day to house immigrant children in “tent cities” and other detention facilities. A June 22 2019 post on the Facebook page “Your Privilege Is Showing” was shared nearly 10,000 times, and it featured a screenshot …
Does It Cost $750 a Day to House Migrant Children in Camps? Read More »
In June 2018, a Facebook user shared a post (archived here) featuring a screenshot of a tweet about rosary beads purportedly confiscated from migrants taken into custody by border agents. That post was shared more than 89,000 times in a year. The tweet was originally published on the same date, and it accrued more than 209,000 shares …
Does a Photograph Show Rosaries Confiscated from Border Detainees? Read More »
In late June 2019, United States President Donald Trump repeatedly claimed that his administration did not have a family separation policy at the border — going further to attribute the controversial actions to his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump outright stated this lie multiple times in a series of interviews between June 21 and June 23, 2019: On …
Did U.S. President Barack Obama Have a Separation Policy at the Border? Read More »
On June 23 2019, the Facebook page “Just Disney” shared a meme which claimed that the late Don Rickles’ Mr. Potato Head character appeared in the feature film Toy Story 4 — despite his death in April 2017: Beneath a still from the animated films, the text read: Don Rickles intended to reprise his role as Mr. …
Was Don Rickles Included in ‘Toy Story 4’ Thanks to Archival Material? Read More »
As tensions between the United States and Iran escalated in June 2019, a number of memes circulated that purportedly depicted tweets sent by Donald Trump between 2011 and 2013 — predicting that former United States President Barack Obama would fabricate a reason to attack Iran to divert attention from his administration. At least two versions …
Despite fears of “deepfake” videos and other high-tech ways disinformation could potentially proliferate in the very near future, the stories that still get the most traction are often decidedly low effort. Take, for example, the case of a May 2019 story with the provocative headline “Panel of 16 Judges Agrees: Barr Has Enough to Indict Clinton …
Have Arrest Warrants Been Issued for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? Read More »
On June 16 2019, the Facebook page “Weird Facts” shared the following meme (archived here), about a cook and a janitor who purportedly refused to abandon the residents of a bankrupted care home: Atop an image of two unidentified men, the meme read: A Californian care home went bankrupt. About 16 elderly residents were abandoned, …
A headline about former First Daughter Malia Obama (archived here) depositing a suspiciously large check got a lot of traction on social media in June 2019: However, this story is suspect for two reasons. First, it contains little beyond a provocative headline, a photograph, and a few lines of text: Malia Obama cashed a check for …
