While campaigning for a second term in office, President-elect Donald Trump declared “tariff” to be his “favorite word” and “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.” We’ll explain how tariffs work, what Trump has proposed and what experts say about it, and what happened during Trump’s first term.
Elon Musk’s Starlink system helped provide internet access to communities affected by the recent hurricanes. But online posts spread baseless claims that Starlink “uploaded votes in swing states” and helped Donald Trump win the election. Experts said voting machines are not connected to the internet during tabulation; one state election official called the claims “utter garbage.”
Some social media posts falsely claimed that CBS News reported there was “cheating” in the 2024 presidential election that benefitted President-elect Donald Trump. We found no evidence of such a report, and a CBS News spokesperson said the outlet “did not report or say there was cheating in the election.”
Ballots were still being counted in the days following the 2024 election, but a claim that there was a suspicious gap of 15 million to 20 million votes as compared with the 2020 election has been circulating on social media. There is no such large gap — states were still counting their ballots — and even if there are fewer votes for the Democratic candidate than there were four years ago, that doesn’t prove fraud.
Less than a month after we wrote about a misleading ad that used out-of-context quotes to attack Vice President Kamala Harris on taxes, former President Donald Trump’s campaign has released another anti-Harris ad drawing from the same deceptive political playbook. This time, the campaign used distorted quotes from news outlets to criticize Harris on taxes, illegal immigration and other issues.
The Department of Defense issued a standard policy revision in September to existing procedures for the intelligence community. Some social media accounts have misrepresented the language and timing of the update to falsely claim the military has been newly authorized “To Use Lethal Force On Americans!!”
A super PAC supporting conservative Republicans.
Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he will not endorse former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, but Pence has also said he “could never” vote for Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. An edited video on social media misleadingly purports to show Pence endorsing Harris. He did not.
The House committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, issued a more than 800-page report presenting and analyzing the evidence about what happened that day. It also released videos, transcribed interviews, depositions and other documents. But some high-profile conservatives are now making the false claim that the committee destroyed “all the evidence.”
The 2024 hurricane season has brought with it a deluge of conspiracy theories and false or misleading claims about storms that have devastated some parts of the country and killed hundreds of people.