Oh, joy! It is the most wonderful day of the year (if you are a fact checker)... April Fool's Day is upon us, that day when every outlet, brand, influencer and Internet jokester under the sun tries to come up with something original to fool their audience with. Listing every effort at humor, satire, parody etc. on such a day…
Was a President Donald Trump quote from a video really about Iran hitting the "world's biggest aircraft carrier" from "17 angles" while planes were taking off every 32 seconds at one in the morning? No, that's not true: The quote was pulled from a longer video in which it is clear Trump was describing the hypothetical reaction of a Venezuelan…
Does an actual Truth Social post by President Donald Trump threaten to use weapons of mass destruction against Iran? No, that's not true: Even though a viral image claims to show one, there is no such post on his Truth Social account. There are also no news reports of such a threat coming from the White House, which, if it…
Did the BBC use AI to fabricate remarks by President Donald Trump in a Jan. 6, 2021, speech in a documentary that aired just before the 2024 election? No, that's not true: The $5 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the BBC does not allege that it used AI. Instead, it argues that the network edited together unrelated portions of the…
Is the video of Iran announcing the new leader with a cardboard cutout of Ayatollah Mojtaba Hosseini real? No, that's not true: In the original video, a framed photo of the Ayatollah is presented and not a cardboard cutout. An online AI detection tool found the video was 73.5% likely generated with AI. The claim appeared in a March 10,…
Does a video show U.S. troops captured in Iran? No, that's not true: An online AI video detection tool found that the clips of the U.S. soldiers are fake but are intermixed with a real clip of President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. The parts of the video with the troops contain a SynthID watermark indicating it was created…
Does a video show U.S. fighter jets in a real dogfight over Iran in the Feb. 28, 2026, conflict? No, that's not true: The clip from a video game was posted on a U.S. Army spoof account two days ahead of the conflict and has been circulating on social media since at least May 2025. It was originally purported to…
Did Chelsea Clinton tweet, "Close but no cigar Trump!!!" while claiming there was a conspiracy to disparage her father's name? No, that's not true: This is a fake screenshot. Chelsea Clinton never posted a tweet with this loaded satirical wording. Additionally, usernames on X are displayed with an @ sign, while the ChelseaClinton username pictured in the fake screenshot does…
Does a photo of Nigel Farage together with Jeffrey Epstein show that the two men were acquainted? No, that's not true: This image is fake. Although made to look like a photo taken with a flash, there is no evidence this is a real photo which existed before Feb. 3, 2026. Nigel Farage has stated that he never met Epstein.…
Did Stephen Colbert "reveal" Donald Trump's "1970 Wharton IQ test"? No, that's not true: This claim and its variations originated from accounts that warned their audiences that they do not post factually accurate content. The rumor spread in variations that contradicted each other on the name of the TV host, school, test type and even the name of the person…
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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