It is customary for presidents to invite guests to the State of the Union address to provide anecdotal evidence that supports the president’s policies. But it turns out President Donald Trump’s speech included misleading descriptions of two such guests.
A story shared on social media falsely claims that Malia Obama was “busted” for selling “trinkets” she stole from the White House. That story originated on a self-described satirical website.
A meme misquotes Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on a proposed abortion bill that aims to address nonviable pregnancies and severe fetal abnormalities. Northam, a pediatric neurologist, supports the bill, but the meme falsely implies he condones infanticide.
President Donald Trump has criticized the Justice Department for prosecuting the president’s longtime associate Roger Stone and recommending that Stone serve up to nine years in prison. That’s his opinion, but he falsely supports it by claiming Stone did “nothing” and “nobody even can define what he did.”
An online conspiracy theory falsely claims that Democratic leaders coordinated the June attacks on two oil tankers and a U.S. drone and that President Donald Trump caught them in the act. The Trump administration has placed the blame squarely on Iran.
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg misleadingly stated that he “cut” the police practice of stop-and-frisk — a policy that he “inherited” — by “95%” by the time he left office as mayor of New York. There were nearly twice as many stops in his last year as mayor compared with the year before he took office.
President Donald Trump suggested that the new coronavirus would “go away” in April, as temperatures warm. While some viruses are seasonal, it’s not yet clear if the new virus will follow the same pattern — and experts caution against banking on the weather to resolve the outbreak.
A fabricated newspaper clipping is circulating online claiming a teenage Pete Buttigieg was arrested in the late 1990s for killing dogs. The Twitter user who created the bogus story — and the newspaper that allegedly published it — say the clipping is a fake.
President Trump defended removing Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council by claiming that Vindman’s “superior … publicly stated that Vindman had problems with judgement, adhering to the chain of command and leaking information.” But the latter claim leaves a false impression, and the others omit important context.
Online posts claim that vitamin C can “stop” the new coronavirus. While it’s true that vitamin C can have a marginal effect on warding off a cold, there’s no evidence that it can stop or treat the new coronavirus.