Category: Fact Check

  • Fact Check: Pentagon: Video doesn’t show U.S. pilots arriving in Palestine

    A recent Instagram post worries about the possibility of “World War Three” as the Israel-Hamas war causes death and suffering in the Middle East. 

    “U.S. Navy pilots arrive in Palestine,” reads the text above a video in the post, which shows about a dozen aircraft flying in tight formation. 

    This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    After Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the United States started moving warships and aircraft to the region to help the country. The Pentagon has also ordered warplanes to bolster squadrons at bases throughout the Middle East, The Associated Press reported. But this video doesn’t show U.S. Navy pilots arriving in Palestine, according to the Pentagon. 

    “This is false,” a spokesperson for the U.S. defense secretary’s office told PolitiFact. 

    We looked for, but couldn’t find, where this video originated. However, an archived version of a  deleted TikTok post appears to show a still of the video and suggests it was fabricated. 

    “BREAKING,” the TikTok post said. “A large Israeli offensive is underway in retaliation for Hamas attacks.” 

    The post used hashtags including #virtualreality #shorts #edit #cinematic and said “Filmed with Digital Combat Simulator.”

    We rate this post False.

     



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  • Fact Check: Day 2 of the New Hampshire GOP summit, fact-checked

    NASHUA, N.H. — On the closing day of a summit sponsored by the New Hampshire Republican Party, two more presidential candidates — Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and former Vice President Mike Pence — sought support in the crucial early primary state.

    Scott and Pence spoke at the First in the Nation Summit in Nashua, delivering 20-minute speeches for an audience packed with party officials and Republican voters. 

    The only major candidate not to speak was President Donald Trump.

    Scott leaned heavily on his personal story, describing growing up in poverty in South Carolina to a single mother who worked long hours as a nurse’s aide. He also described being partly raised by a grandfather who had little formal education. 

    “I didn’t know if the American dream would work for me,” he said.

    Scott said his upbringing shaped his outlook. 

    “There’s this drug called victimhood that is devastating our country,” he said, offering veiled criticism of Trump by saying that “there are people who believe that grievance is our way forward.”

    Pence focused on curbing federal spending, saying that he — unlike President Joe Biden or Trump — would tackle entitlement spending in programs such as Social Security and Medicare for people younger than 40, suggesting raising the retirement age, means-testing for benefits and letting Americans invest a invest portion of their pay instead of having to pay payroll taxes on it.

    Pence said he strongly supports Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion, but the comment received only a trickling of applause. Support for Ukraine divides Republicans across the country.

    “If you don’t see a growing axis between Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea, you’re just not paying attention,” Pence said.

    We fact-checked several of the candidates’ claims. Earlier, we fact-checked claims by candidates former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy during the summit’s first day.

    Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., addresses the First in the Nation summit Oct. 14, 2023, in Nashua, N.H. (Louis Jacobson/PolitiFact)

    Economy and budget

    Pence: “Runaway spending has caused the worst inflation in 40 years.”

    Inflation did hit 40-year highs, though year-over-year inflation has since fallen near historical norms.

    Inflation was under 2% when Biden was inaugurated in January 2021. It then rose sharply, peaking at about 9% in June 2022, which was the highest in about 40 years. It has since fallen to 3.7% for September. That’s much closer to the Federal Reserve Board’s target rate of 2%.

    Also, economists say that higher federal spending designed to target the coronavirus pandemic accelerated inflation, but did not cause it; inflation emerged earlier because of supply chain difficulties during the pandemic.

    Pence: “75% of federal spending is in entitlements. … (In the House budget battles) they’re nickel and diming with about 10% of the budget.

    His numbers are in the ballpark. 

    Entitlements — a type of spending that Congress does not have to reauthorize every year, and that includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits paid to older and low-income people and people with disabilities — account for about 67% of federal spending.

    The type of spending Congress has to approve annually — which includes funding for federal departments and agencies — amounts to 25.6% of federal spending. About 11.5% of that amount covers defense spending; the other 14% covers spending for everything other than defense.

    Pence: “We’re a year away from spending more on the national debt than on national defense.”

    This outcome is expected during the next few years, not quite as soon as Pence said.

    Congressional Budget Office projections from February 2023 show that net interest is projected to exceed defense spending starting in fiscal year 2029.

    Scott: “Our current interest-only payment (is) $572 billion, not touching the principal. Interest only.”

    It’s even higher. For fiscal 2022, the most recent full year, the Office of Management and Budget reported that the U.S. paid almost $661 billion in net interest costs.

    Scott: After President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted in 2017, “we saw unemployment rates go to the lowest in the history of the country for minorities” and “a 70-year low for women.”

    The economy is so sprawling that it’s hard to gauge how much the tax cuts factored in reaching those initial lows under Trump. But Scott has a point on the correlative data.

    The Black unemployment rate reached a record low of 5.4% in September 2019; the Hispanic rate hit a record low of 4% the same month; and the rate for women reached a 67-year low of 3.4% in February 2020.

    The rates have fallen further under Biden. The Black rate fell to 4.7% in April 2023; the Hispanic rate fell to 3.9% in September 2022; and the rate for women fell to 3.3% in April 2023. 

    Scott: “Biden in his first act passed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, and the only thing missing was COVID relief.”

    This might be a rhetorical exaggeration by Scott, but the package included numerous provisions targeted at reducing COVID-19’s spread. 

    The 2021 American Rescue Plan clarified that COVID-19 vaccines and administration were covered free for people on Medicaid, and it provided $250 million for states to aid Medicaid-certified nursing facilities with COVID-19 cases among residents or staff, according to KFF, a health policy think tank.

    It also included extended unemployment insurance when COVID-19 was keeping some businesses from hiring, and it provided emergency aid to small businesses to rehire or retain workers and to buy the health and sanitation equipment needed to keep workers safe from the virus. 

    Foreign policy

    Scott: The U.S. agreement to trade Iranian hostages in exchange for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds could aid Hamas because “money is fungible.”

    None of that money would have gone directly to Hamas before it attacked Israel on Oct. 7, because the funds — oil revenue that was frozen in South Korea — has not been disbursed and can be unfrozen only for humanitarian purchases. (The U.S. is considering refreezing the funds because of to the Hamas attack.)

    Still, experts say the fungibility argument is plausible.

    “The safeguards in place are surely good enough to make sure only legitimate goods are purchased using those funds,” said Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Middle East-focused think tank. “But nobody can say what’s then done with those goods.”

    Matthew Kroenig, a Georgetown University government and foreign service professor, said, “If you had a large end-of-year bonus payment coming your way, might you start spending more money in the meantime? Of course. Money is fungible.”

    This is especially true in a country with a highly centralized economy and government, Levitt added. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an influential military branch within Iran, “controls so much of the Iranian economy, there’s no way to have comfort (that) the goods aren’t sold and some funds go to underwrite militancy.”



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  • Fact Check: No, a CNN reporter didn’t ‘fake’ being near the Israel-Gaza border

    Amid false claims that a CNN team staged a rocket attack near the Israel-Hamas border, a recent Instagram post suggests that they weren’t even there. 

    “A long honored tradition at CNN to absolutely fake being somewhere they ain’t,” the Oct. 11 post said.

    The post shared an image of Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, taking shelter on the roadside.

    “CNN staging a dramatic live reporting of a barrage of rockets by them,” text above the image says. “They cut off the footage when 2 men casually walking on the sidewalk with flipflops get into the camera view.” 

    This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    We asked CNN about the post, and a spokesperson said Ward and her team were near the border “when a barrage of rockets flew close to their position.” (This echoes CNN’s description of the Oct. 9 footage on its website.)
    “Their location was close to the place where Hamas militants had first breached the border wall and begun firing at vehicles, resulting in multiple casualties,” said Jonathan Hawkins, CNN’s vice president of communications. “The team was reporting on the aftermath of the weekend’s assault and the ongoing situation close to the border.” 

    Ward said as much in the broadcast. About two and a half minutes into the clip on CNN’s site, two men walk by, one wearing flip-flops, but the video doesn’t “cut off” as the post claims. Ward continues to describe the scene for another minute. 

    Hawkins said Ward was still reporting from Israel on Oct. 12 but declined to disclose her exact location. 

    We found no credible evidence to doubt this. 

    We rate this post False.



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  • Fact Check: Video from 2020 isn’t evidence that recent violence in Israel and Gaza is ‘fake’

    A video recirculating on social media suggests that recent violence in Israel and Gaza is staged. 

    The footage shows about 10 people surrounding and carrying what looks like a stretcher. When an air siren sounds, the people scatter, dropping the stretcher and leaving it in the street. As the camera zooms in, the person who’d been on the stretcher, covered in a wrap and presumably a corpse, throws off the cover, stands and  runs off. Someone off camera laughs. 

    “How radical Israeli build narrative,” an Oct. 11 X post sharing the video said. “A dead boy suddenly comes alive hearing an air raid siren. #Gaza_under_attack #Hamas #Israel.” 

    “Everything seems to be fake,” reads the text over a version of the video shared on Instagram Oct. 11. 

    This Instagram post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    A reverse-image search of several stills from the video revealed it predates the current violence in the Middle East. 

    It’s been online since at least March 2020, and several posts connect it to COVID-19. 

    One September 2021 Facebook post also suggests the clip was filmed in Jordan. BBC News reviewed 2020 reports that said “it showed a group of boys in Jordan trying to avoid strict COVID-19 restrictions by pretending to hold a funeral.” (The BBC fact-checked another claim in 2021 that the video showed a fake funeral in Gaza.) 

    We rate claims the video is related to the current violence in Israel and Gaza False.

     



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  • Fact Check: Altered image shows Las Vegas Sphere displaying Israeli flag. That didn’t happen

    The Sphere venue in Las Vegas has an outdoor LED screen that can turn the orb into everything from a giant jack-o’-lantern to a seascape.

    But a recent video shared widely on X that appeared to show the Sphere displaying the Israeli flag amid violence in the country was altered.  

    “This image was photoshopped,” Sphere wrote Oct. 11 on X. 

    The venue has been the subject of misinformation before. 

    In July, we fact-checked a claim that the Sphere showed a crude message directed at President Joe Biden. That image was also fabricated. 

    We rate posts that the Sphere displayed the Israeli flag False.



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  • Fact Check: Falso: La Esfera de Las Vegas no se ilumino con la bandera israelí

    La Esfera en Las Vegas tiene afuera una pantalla LED que puede cambiar la apariencia de la órbita, incluyendo de calabaza a una imagen  marina.

    Unos videos recientes compartidos ampliamente en Facebook, X y TikTok muestran la Esfera iluminandose con la bandera israelí, tras la violencia en el país. Pero estas imágenes fueron alteradas. 

    “Esta imagen fue photoshopped”, la cuenta de la Esfera escribió el 11 de octubre en X.

    No es la primera vez que surge desinformación sobre la Esfera.

    En julio, verificamos la declaración de que la Esfera mostraba un mensaje derogatorio dirigido al Presidente Joe Biden. Esta imagen también era falsa.

    Calificamos las publicaciones que muestran a la Esfera iluminada con la bandera israelí como Falsa. 

    Una versión de este artículo originalmente fue escrita en inglés y traducida por Maria Briceño.

    Lea más reportes de PolitiFact en Español aquí.

    __________________________________________________________________________

    Debido a limitaciones técnicas, partes de nuestra página web aparecen en inglés. Estamos trabajando en mejorar la presentación.



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  • Fact Check: False flag claims amid Israel-Hamas violence lack evidence

    Thousands of people have been killed or injured amid fighting between Israel and Hamas, and recent online claims that the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack on the country is a false flag defies reality. 

    “You are witnessing the biggest false flag and psyop committed on the world by Israel in real time since 9/11, an Oct. 8 Instagram post says. (A psyop, or psychological operation, is a military mission designed to influence targeted people’s behaviors and emotions.)

    “FALSE FLAG,” an Oct. 9 post says. “Hamas is the creation of the Israeli government and they planned these attacks and allowed them to garner support for a mass genocide and likely leading to World War III.”

    These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    Palestinian cleric Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded Hamas as a political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987 following a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, PBS reported. The next year, Hamas published a charter calling for Israel’s destruction and the establishment of an Islamic society in historic Palestine. 

    On Oct. 7, Hamas launched thousands of missiles from Gaza as militants charged into Israel using bulldozers, motorcycles and paragliders. Militants opened fire on Israelis and took hostages, and the Israeli military launched retaliatory strikes in Gaza.

    The war continues, and has been documented by people on the ground there, including citizens and journalists.

    Unfounded false flag allegations often follow incidents of mass violence, including school shootings, the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and chaos at the Kabul airport as the Taliban took over Afghanistan’s capital in 2021.

    Intelligence agencies do launch false flag operations, but other than social media rumors, we found no credible evidence to support claims that the current Israel-Hamas war is one. 

    As we’ve reported, actual false flags plotted in history appear to have been outpaced in recent years by dubious conspiracy theories that label real events as “false flags” that, in turn, were allegedly used to justify the expansion of government powers. That line of thinking took off after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks spawned a new war overseas and a scaled up surveillance state. 

    Experts warn that social media rumors alleging that big events in the news are “false flags” should be viewed skeptically. Real false flag operations are logistically complex; they rope in significant numbers of people and force leaders to consider complicated ethical questions.

    A day after the Oct. 7 attack, Israeli health officials said more than 700 people were dead in Israel. As of Oct. 12, Israel’s military has said more than 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’ attack, CBS News reported. The Gaza Ministry of Health has said at least 1,537 people have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s retaliatory strikes.

    In line with other claims we have checked that falsely allege large-scale violent events were not real, we rate claims that the recent violence in the Middle East is a false flag Pants on Fire!



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  • Fact Check: Claim that there’s ‘zero footage from the Ukraine war’ ignores countless photos and videos

    As Russia’s war in Ukraine raged on, a different conflict erupted more than 1,200 miles away in Israel and Gaza.

    Social media users quickly drew comparisons between the wars, but some didn’t get the facts right.

    An Oct. 9 Instagram post claimed images and videos of the Russia-Ukraine war, which began in February 2022, were being withheld.

    (Screengrab from Instagram)

    “Anybody else find it funny that Israel was attacked less than 48 hours ago and already we have hundreds of hours worth of footage but zero footage from the Ukraine war,” the post said.

    This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    The devastation from the Russia-Ukraine war has been well documented. There are hundreds of legitimate photos and videos depicting war casualties and decimated communities.

    Some photos and videos have been documented by news media; other footage has been taken by Ukrainian civilians whose lives were upended by Russia’s invasion.

    Even after Israel declared war Oct. 8, one day after Hamas’ attack, news outlets continued to cover and share photos of the Russia-Ukraine war.

    We rate the claim that there is “zero footage of the Ukraine war” Pants on Fire!



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  • Fact Check: Why do Americans have to pay for a State Department evacuation from Israel? It’s the law

    As thousands of Americans try to flee Israel amid a war, the State Department has offered U.S. citizens the opportunity to get a chartered flight — if they pay.

    Many commercial airlines canceled flights to and from Israel after it was attacked by Hamas, leaving tens of thousands of Americans in the country with few options to evacuate. Hundreds of Americans also are stuck in Gaza.

    The State Department said Oct. 12 that it would charter flights out of Israel to Europe, and the U.S. Embassy in Israel said citizens will be “asked to sign an agreement to repay the U.S. government prior to departure.”

    Critics of the Biden administration were angered that Americans will need to pay their own way.

    But Brian Krassenstein, a left-wing commentator, said Biden’s agencies are following a policy set decades ago. He responded to a critical X post with this message:

    “FACT Check: Conservatives are attacking Biden saying he’s requiring Americans Trapped in Israel, who want to leave, sign a promissory note to repay costs? FACTS: This has been US policy for at least 79 years!”

    Krassenstein said the promissory note policy, known as a form DS-5528, goes “back to at least 1944.”

    We researched the policy’s origins and found it predates Biden’s administration by decades. The policy was used in World War II and became law 67 years ago.

    At some points in history, American evacuees did not end up paying the transportation costs, but it’s unclear whether the requirement will be lifted for people leaving Israel now.

    U.S. law has required reimbursement since 1956

    We found a telegram Secretary of State Cordell Hull sent in August 1944 to the American Legion in Stockholm, Sweden, about Americans who had been evacuated.

    The telegram refers to 92 people and says adults “should be required to sign a promissory note” for the cost of transportation to Stockholm from Helsinki, Finland. It says children should be charged a half-fare.

    (Screenshot of telegram from Franklin D. Roosevelt Library)

    We could not determine when this policy started or why it became a law in 1956. The law requires U.S. citizens to reimburse the federal government for evacuation when their lives are endangered by war, civil unrest or natural disaster.

    The State Department website says people evacuated on U.S. government-coordinated transport must sign an Evacuee Manifest and Promissory Note (form DS-5528) before they leave.

    The form says the travelers know they will be billed for the cost. Payment is due within 30 days, but citizens can pay in installments, given State Department approval. 

    The State Department’s website explains, “U.S. law requires that departure assistance to private U.S. citizens or third country nationals be provided ‘on a reimbursable basis to the maximum extent practicable.’”

    The law has been cited, and sometimes waived, during many past overseas crises

    Searching news reports, we found multiple past examples of the law being cited. Sometimes, the repayment requirement was waived.

    • In 1989, the U.S. Embassy evacuated 282 Americans from El Salvador on chartered flights “after as many as nine U.S. officials and their families spent a harrowing night pinned in their homes by cross fire and rebel raids,” the Miami Herald reported. “The evacuation was the first in 10 years of civil war.” The embassy paid for flights of its staff and dependents, and asked other Americans to sign a $500 promissory note.

    • In 1990, a two-paragraph brief in the Los Angeles Times said the U.S. government would pay the costs of evacuating American citizens from Iraq and Kuwait. An unnamed government official told the Times that some officials may have asked evacuees to sign promissory notes covering airfares, but that was contrary to the George H.W. Bush administration’s policy.

    • In July 2006, when the State Department was evacuating U.S. citizens out of Lebanon, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., called on the State Department to not charge U.S. citizens. The department dropped plans to seek reimbursement.

    • In February 2011 amid a revolt in Libya, the American embassy in Libya used a ferry to evacuate Americans to Malta. Reports by CNN and The Associated Press said the evacuees would be required to reimburse the government.

    • In 2021, the State Department initially said it would charge U.S. citizens $2,000 to evacuate from Afghanistan, but it backtracked.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic’s early months, some lawmakers introduced legislation seeking to amend the law. Some bills called for waiving the reimbursement requirement if it was related to COVID-19. The bills did not reach a vote.

    PolitiFact asked the White House whether the Biden administration is considering lifting the requirement for reimbursement but received no immediate response. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby announced plans Oct. 12 to have chartered flights but did not share any details. 

    CBS reported that flights would begin Oct. 13 from Tel Aviv to Athens, Greece, or Frankfurt, Germany, and ships would leave Haifa, Israel, and travel to Cyprus. 

    Our ruling

    Krassenstein said it “has been US policy for at least 79 years” to require Americans who intend to be evacuated from overseas to sign a promissory note.

    In August 1944, a telegram from the U.S. secretary of state said American adults who had been evacuated in Europe during World War II “should be required to sign a promissory note” for the cost of transportation. This policy became law in 1956.

    The 1956 law has been cited for decades when Republican and Democratic administrations have evacuated Americans during war or conflicts.

    We rate this statement True.

    PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

    RELATED: Read all of our Israel-Gaza coverage



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  • Fact Check: Cargo plane that evacuated people from Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2021 is real, not a decoy

    In August 2021, hundreds of people desperate to be evacuated from Afghanistan ran alongside a moving U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane at the international airport in Kabul as the Taliban took control there. 

    A recent Facebook post rehashes an old unfounded conspiracy theory that the plane was fake. 

    In the video, the narrator points out how the windows and plane engines appear “blacked out.” 

    “This is what a C-17 that’s not an inflatable looks like,” the person says. “See the windows clearly. See the engines clearly.”

    An image of the aircraft appears with the label: “Inflatable decoy plane.”

    But there’s no evidence to support this claim. 

    This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    The footage of people running alongside the plane and clinging to it was shared Aug. 16, 2021, on X by an Afghan journalist. News outlets such as The Washington Post picked it up and published it. 

    Air Force officials have said the plane is real, and from the 62nd Airlift Wing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. 

    Further evidence that the plane is real: Human remains were discovered in the plane’s wheel well after the plane’s crew struggled to close the landing gear. The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations investigated the incident and determined the crew “acted appropriately” under the circumstances, The Hill reported. The office released the remains to local police. 

    We rate claims that this plane was an inflatable decoy False.

     



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