Various memes circulating online falsely claim that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State leader who recently died after a U.S. raid, had been released from U.S. military custody under President Barack Obama. He was actually released in 2004, under President George W. Bush.
Social media posts distort the facts around an 11-year-old, dismissed DUI charge against Rep. Matt Gaetz. They also leave the false impression that he “stole from dying people.”
President Donald Trump repeatedly has said his July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect,” and a simple reading of the “transcript” is all that’s needed to evaluate the impeachment probe. But congressional testimony has revealed key pieces of information beyond that conversation.
National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien dismissed as “Twitter intel” the suggestion that more than 100 captured Islamic State fighters escaped from prisons in Syria amid fighting between Turkish soldiers and Syrian Kurds. But that was a figure provided by the secretary of defense and a top official in the State Department.
In explaining his decision to pull U.S. forces from northern Syria and allow Turkey to set up a “safe zone” in Syria, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Turkey has lost “thousands and thousands of people from that safe zone.”
There’s no evidence for social media claims that the children of Nancy Pelosi, Mitt Romney and John Kerry are working for “Ukrainian gas companies” or sitting “on the board of directors for energy companies doing business in Ukraine.”
Viral headlines wrongly suggest that the Ukrainian government gave more money than any other country to the Clinton Foundation. But the 2015 news report cited does not support that.
In his campaign rally speeches, President Donald Trump often boasts of his administration’s plan to end the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. in 10 years. It’s true he has proposed funding for that initiative, but he’s wrong to say “the previous administration spent no money” on such efforts.
Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to make the misleading claim that “the average family of four spends $28,000 a year on health care.” That’s the projected average cost for employer-sponsored health insurance for “typical” families of that size, but the employer paid 56% of the total amount in 2018.
White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney engaged in some serious political spin when he tried to deny what he said in a televised press conference: that the White House withheld security aid to Ukraine, in part, because the administration wanted Ukraine to investigate Democrats and the 2016 election.