Dozens of former President Donald Trump’s supporters gathered outside his Florida home to protest a recent FBI search of the building. The activity triggered a satirical tweet falsely attributed to Trump’s eldest son, purportedly telling supporters to disperse, and saying, “We have many important people coming through the club and need to keep it clean.”
Here we review what we know about the ongoing conflict between the entertainment company and the Republican governor.
Dozens of people stayed at a Florida hotel in January while employed as temporary farmworkers for a wholesale plant nursery. But a Facebook video and a tweet by State Rep. Anthony Sabatini falsely claimed they were “illegals” — sparking a protest outside the hotel. Attorneys for the nursery said all of them had visas to work in the U.S.
Florida’s total COVID-19 case rate is higher than the national rate and 10th highest in the U.S. But social media posts and the state’s governor point to a recent decline in daily cases as evidence of Florida’s success in handling COVID-19, while ignoring the full impact of the pandemic’s toll on the state.
A manipulated image online shows Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holding a T-shirt reading, “Your mask is as useless as Joe Biden.” DeSantis and the White House have sparred, including on the issue of masks, but the original photo is from 2019 and actually shows DeSantis holding a Popeyes restaurant shirt.
Florida health officials have reported a 60% rise in COVID-19 cases, and hospitals are reporting that 95% of COVID-19 patients are not fully vaccinated. But a Facebook post makes the baseless claims that Florida’s numbers are not going up, and that all COVID-19 patients recently admitted to a Palm Beach County hospital had been vaccinated.
COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020. But a meme featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis minimizes the toll the pandemic already has taken — particularly among the elderly. The meme also questions getting inoculated, despite the safety record of the vaccines and DeSantis’ public support for vaccines.
This is a guide to key stories we did during the 2020 election between Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
Social media posts are using an image of a CBS News report to accuse the network of misrepresenting a campaign event for President Donald Trump as one for former Vice President Joe Biden. That’s false. The report’s voiceover was discussing the Trump campaign while the photo was on the screen.
As Florida’s COVID-19 case count rose to the second-highest in the U.S. in July, a former challenger for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat falsely claimed on social media that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had made a “mistake” and subsequently reduced Florida’s count by 79,000 cases. There was no such adjustment.