Did investor Warren Buffett pay $1 trillion in cash to acquire Elon Musk's Tesla Motors company? No, that's not true: The story originated as an April Fools joke and went viral online. No actual news websites reported on any such investment or acquisition. The story appeared as an article (archived here) on GoBankingRates on April 1, 2025 titled "Warren Buffett…
Did President Donald Trump sign an executive order on February 3, 2025, announcing the purchase of 2 billion doses of COVID shots from Moderna and Pfizer? No, that's not true: The order established a sovereign wealth fund, a government-owned fund that directs funding from various resources. In a video of the signing, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick recalled purchasing pandemic-era…
Did Elon Musk and Donald Trump team up to conduct a cryptocurrency scam that would violate election laws, as claimed in a post on X? No, that's not true: Footage from the 2024 Tesla shareholder's meeting, streamed live, was altered with a fake AI-generated voice and facial synchronizing animation. Musk's original presentation had no mention of "crypto", the altered video…
Did the Toronto Star, BBC and other major media cover a scandal involving Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh that supposedly "erupted" after he left his microphone on while on TV? No, that's not true: Searches for coverage of this supposed money-making scandal on these news sites led to no results. The post on X that said this linked to a fake…
Did Tesla CEO Elon Musk invest $1 billion into actors Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg's "new un-woke production studio"? No, that's not true: We could not find any evidence to corroborate this claim. Lead Stories debunked a similar claim about a supposed Gibson-Walberg "non-woke film production studio" earlier in 2024. The original claim about the purported studio came from a…
Did music artist Kelly Clarkson and Tesla CEO Elon Musk promote weight-loss gummies in a 2023 televised interview? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that Musk and Clarkson promoted such a product. Lead Stories has previously reported on fake websites that use celebrities' likenesses to scam viewers into buying weight-loss products. The claim appeared in an article (archived…
Did the Australian TV network 9News report that the Australian Securities Exchange and Reserve Bank of Australia had announced a new financial platform that could enable investors to earn 30,000 Australian dollars each month? No, that's not true: A video on Facebook that made this claim did not include a genuine 9News newscast, nor is there any record that the…
Did Elon Musk promote an investing platform on SABC News South Africa? No, that's not true: This video post uses inauthentic audio dubbed over an authentic video of Musk speaking during a Fox News interview in April 2023. No such report on the South African Broadcasting Corporation website was found. This resembles multiple prior posts making false claims that Musk…
Did Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre endorse a "QuantumAI" platform? No, that's not true: The video showing Poilievre speaking has been doctored to make it appear he is extolling the virtues of a money-making program that shares the name Quantum AI, a cryptocurrency-trading platform. The original footage of Poilievre dates from a March 2023 interview he gave to…
Did CNN break the news that Elon Musk was unveiling an investment project, and did Musk make a guest appearance via live feed to introduce his new AI trading platform? No, that's not true: This fake promotion is made with real but repurposed video clips that have had an AI text-to-speech voiceover added to them. The video of Musk was…
Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
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