Rep. Jack Kimble: ‘A Whopping 25% of American Students Are in the Bottom …’
Claim
Reporting
On May 21 2023, a Reddit user shared a screenshot of a tweet about American students attributed to a “Rep. Jack Kimble” to the subreddit r/technicallythetruth:
Can’t decide if this is satire
by u/ShubhamG77 in technicallythetruth
The post was titled “Can’t decide if this is satire,” and it appeared with a tweet by Rep. Jack Kimble (@RepJackKimble) . Text above a graph of four “quartiles” (each reading “25%”) read:
For people that doubted that our education system was struggling as much as I said, see for yourself. A whopping 25% of American students in the bottom quartile on standardized tests
A date and time stamp at the bottom of the tweet indicated it was published on May 12 2023. Google Trends data for May 22 and 23 2023 demonstrated “Breakout” levels of search interest in “Jack Kimble Wikipedia,” “Jack Kimble Twitter,” “Representative Jack Kimble,” “Jack Kimble quartile,” “California districts,” and “how many districts in california[?]”
The tweet was real, but only in the sense that it was a post that existed on Twitter. On May 12 2023, “Rep. Jack Kimble” tweeted:
For people that doubted that our education system was struggling as much as I said, see for yourself. A whopping 25% of American students in the bottom quartile on standardized tests pic.twitter.com/CyFwN1Gxdh
— Jack Kimble (@RepJackKimble) May 12, 2023
Kimble’s tweet held that a “whopping 25% of American students” were in the bottom quartile on standardized tests.
Several of Google Trends’ “related searches” attempted to place Kimble in relation to California’s congressional districts. On May 20 2023, the Rep. Jack Kimble account joked about representing California’s “54th” congressional district — however, the state only has 52 congressional districts:
People are always shocked that I represent California’s 54th district because California only has 52 districts. That’s because we got grandfathered in. Instead of the 54th, California dropped the 53rd and the 38th. However, we remain the fighting’ 54th
— Jack Kimble (@RepJackKimble) May 20, 2023
In 2021, we examined a previous viral tweet attributed to Rep. Jack Kimble:
In that fact check, we mentioned that Kimble’s satirical commentary had been confusing readers for more than a decade at that point; in 2023, the account’s record is still going strong.
On May 20 2023, a tweet attributed to “Rep. Jack Kimble” circulated on social media after it was shared to Reddit. In the tweet, Kimble lamented that 25 percent of American students were “in the bottom quartile,” commentary that (given years of other examples of statements from the “Rep. Jack Kimble” account) was intended as humorous and satirical. Kimble is not a real congressman; California does not have a 54th congressional district.
