In the days following an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, social media swirled with misinformation about the shooter. The 20-year-old gunman was a registered Republican and there is no evidence he had a criminal record, contrary to popular claims online.
We fact-checked the first night’s speeches, which mainly focused on economic issues.
Posts from the anonymous online forum 4Chan have been spreading the false claim that Secret Service officials prevented an agent named “Jonathan Willis” from shooting former President Donald Trump’s attempted assassin. The Secret Service has no employee by that name, and the claim is “categorically false,” the agency said.
The actions of the Secret Service at the Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was wounded in an assassination attempt are under review. But social media posts show an altered photo to falsely claim agents were smiling while moving Trump to safety. The original Associated Press photo shows the agents weren’t smiling.
In a press conference in which President Joe Biden was repeatedly asked about whether he would — or should — stay in the presidential race, Biden made a few remarks that were misleading or could use more context.
FactCheck.org has won the 2023 Sigma Delta Chi award for fact-checking from the Society of Professional Journalists. This is our third win in the fact-checking category and our fourth award from SPJ overall.
The judge in the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump denied a defense request to ask jurors about their party registration, so their political affiliation is not known. But conservative commentator Tucker Carlson made the unsupported claim in a Facebook post that the jury was “stacked with Biden voters.” Both sides had the opportunity to reject jurors.
A photo of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likely shows him holding the carcass of a goat, lamb or other ruminant animal in Patagonia. Social media posts, citing a Vanity Fair article, make the unsupported claim the photo shows a dog carcass in South Korea. The magazine deleted remarks by a veterinarian who said it was a dog.
In his first televised interview since his admittedly “bad” presidential debate, President Joe Biden made a few exaggerated and misleading statements.
COVID-19 vaccination is generally very safe, and except for extremely rare cases, there is no evidence that it contributes to death. Social media posts about a now-published, but faulty review of autopsy reports, however, are repeating an unfounded claim from last summer that “74% of sudden deaths are shown to be due to the COVID-19 vaccine.”