Donald Trump

Did the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks refuse an invitation to the White House? No, that's not true: There's no evidence the team has been invited to Washington for a reception with President Donald Trump or that the team has refused such an invitation. The White House has not responded to inquiries from Lead Stories about the matter. The Seattle…

Is this a real video of President Donald Trump kissing Nicki Minaj? No, that's not true: The black-and-white "security camera" footage purporting to show them kissing exhibits clear signs of AI manipulation, including unnatural facial blending where their faces appear to partially merge and separate, inconsistent lighting, and the absence of a verifiable source. An AI detection tool rated it…

Did Rep. Ted Lieu say that the full, unreleased Epstein files show Donald Trump raping children? No, that's not true: Lieu said at a February 3, 2026, news conference that the files include "highly disturbing allegations" of Donald Trump raping and threatening to kill children. He did not reference "unreleased" files, or say that child rapes are seen in them.…

Does a video from the White House show a woman acting strangely? No, that's not true: The grainy images are from a slow-motion version of a video taken at a White House news conference in December 2025 announcing that Michael Dell, the CEO of Dell Technologies, and his wife, Susan, would donate more than $6 billion to soon-to-be-opened Trump Accounts,…

Does an image show Attorney General Pam Bondi at age 14 with President Donald Trump at a Jeffrey Epstein party? No, that's not true: An AI-generated content detector concluded that it was 99.9% certain to have been made by an artificial intelligence tool. Lead Stories found obvious signs that it was a deepfake image in 2023 when we fact checked…

Was President Trump originally mentioned in the claim that 4,725 wire transfers totalling $1.1 billion were made to Jeffrey Epstein using Russian banks? No, that's not true: This appears to be based on a mangled version of a statement made by Senator Ron Wyden about various transfers flowing in and out of Epstein's account. The Congressional Record shows that when…

Does a real photo show Donald Trump Jr. at a shooting bench with the scope of his rifle mounted backwards? No, that's not true: This image has been digitally edited. An earlier copy of the image appears in a 2024 article with the scope mounted properly. The altered image appears in a post (archived here) published on Bluesky by @mrsbettybowers…

Did Kristi Noem say "If Jesus wanted America to speak Spanish and have the Super Bowl half time show in a foreign language, he would not have written the Bible in English."? No, that's not true: Noem did not say this. This fake quote came from a meme shared by a satire page that included a small watermark with the…

Did President Donald Trump say "I made a mistake" about nominating Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair? No, that's not true: Trump was referring to Jerome Powell, whom he previously nominated as chair and has sought to remove. His reference to the mistake came as he was describing the process by which he had been persuaded to select Powell over…

Did U.S. President Donald Trump threaten a 250% tariff on Norwegian salmon because "Norway is about to win the most golds" at the Winter Olympics? No, that's not true: The viral image of his supposed Truth Social post is not real. Lead Stories searched his account and news reports, but found no confirmation that he wrote what some on social…