The midterm elections are finally over, but it won’t be long before the 2024 campaign cycle — which will really start in 2023 — gets going. Before that happens, we’ve put together this list of the year’s biggest whoppers that politicians and others made over the past 12 months.
When asked whether Republicans would “make it more difficult” for Congress to approve Ukrainian aid, Rep. Mike Turner criticized the $40 billion package enacted in May, saying: “We don’t need to pass $40 billion large Democrat bills … to send $8 billion to Ukraine.” Much more than that, however, was allocated for military support.
Two American carmakers have donated 100 pickup trucks and SUVs to assist with humanitarian aid in Ukraine. But an Instagram post makes the baseless claim that the vehicles were provided at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
Conspiracy theories aimed at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have been circulating on social media since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. One recent example, falsely attributed to a “Pentagon official,” is the unfounded claim that Zelensky is the cousin of billionaire philanthropist George Soros.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia’s talk of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine is a non-starter in peace negotiations. We’ll explain what these claims are all about and why experts say they are misleading.
A recent Facebook post falsely claims that CNN footage from the war in Ukraine was faked, citing a firefighter’s jacket bearing the name of a Canadian city. But the footage was shot in Ukraine. The jacket was donated by a Canadian organization.
Amid rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, a misleading photo posted March 22 on Facebook shows an American fighter jet intercepting a Russian bomber near Alaskan airspace. But the incident was not related to the current situation in Ukraine; the photo appeared in an article published in Aero Magazine in June 2020.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered a barrage of false claims on social media, including posts that purport to show a video of “crisis actors” portraying dead victims of the fighting. The video used in the posts is from a climate protest held in Vienna, Austria, weeks before the war in Ukraine began.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene parroted a Russian talking point with her claim that Ukraine is a country whose “government only exists because the Obama State Department helped to overthrow the previous regime.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appeared in several recent videos that show he has remained in the country since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. But a post circulating on Facebook falsely claims he fled and recorded a video using a green screen to make it appear as though he’s still in Ukraine. There’s no evidence to support the claim. A digital forensics expert told us that nothing in the video indicates it was filmed using a green screen.