President Donald Trump has falsely claimed his administration invested “$2.5 trillion in all of the greatest equipment in the world” for the military. That’s approximately the total for defense budgets from 2017 to 2020, but the cost of purchasing new military equipment was 20% of that.
A Christian blogger writing for The Daily Jot accused former President Barack Obama in 2017 of running a “shadow government.” The blog post has been recirculating lately on social media, but it is falsely attributed to the late Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer.
Viral posts wrongly claim that a painting depicting children in face masks was created as a mural for the Denver airport in 1994 — and baselessly suggest the COVID-19 pandemic was planned. The painting is not at the airport, and is not from 1994.
Noting that the United States accounts for about one-quarter of global COVID-19 cases and deaths, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. has “the worst record of any country in the world.” While the U.S. has the most confirmed cases and deaths by a wide margin, it does not have the most in either category on a per-capita basis.
Amid a surge in Florida’s COVID-19 cases, a Facebook meme dated June 24 falsely claims the state’s surgeon general recommended that people stop wearing face masks. The surgeon general actually issued an advisory two days earlier saying everyone in Florida “should wear face coverings in any setting where social distancing is not possible.”
A meme making the bogus claim that wearing a face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic “REMOVES YOUR CONCEAL CARRY ability” is spreading widely online. Laws regulating concealed weapons vary by state, but sheriffs in many states have debunked the rumor.
FactCheck.org has won a 2019 Sigma Delta Chi Award for fact-checking from the Society of Professional Journalists.
Then-President Barack Obama’s 2016 designation of a marine monument off the New England coast grandfathered in lobster and crab harvesting for seven years — so there has been absolutely no impact as of yet on the lobster industry.
![Biden Floats Baseless Election Conspiracy [UPDATE: See our latest story ‘Trump Proves Biden Right on USPS Funding, Mail-In Ballots’]](https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/usps-1-200x200.png "Biden Floats Baseless Election Conspiracy [UPDATE: See our latest story ‘Trump Proves Biden Right on USPS Funding, Mail-In Ballots’]")
Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, claimed without evidence that President Donald Trump “wants to cut off money for the post office so they cannot deliver mail-in ballots.”
With some states posting record numbers of new COVID-19 cases, President Donald Trump continues to downplay the concern, falsely asserting that cases are up “only because of our big number testing,” and pointing to the falling number of daily COVID-19 deaths.