Donald Trump

Has Tina Peters been "fully pardoned" by Donald Trump, wiping out her prison sentence for giving unauthorized access to Mesa County, Colorado, voting machines in 2021, when she was county clerk? No, that's not true: Trump's "pardon" of Peters is only symbolic, not official. The U.S. Constitution grants the President power to pardon only those criminals facing federal charges. Peters,…

Did Donald Trump raise the monthly pension of Medal of Honor recipients to almost $70,000? No, that's not true: The Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed to Lead Stories that those figures show the annual change, not monthly. According to the federal agency, there are 63 veterans and 34 surviving spouses who receive this pension, as of December 3, 2025. The…

Did Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Marco Rubio "just cut the ribbon on a $150 million free education and health campus, entirely funded "by his own pocket", without a single tax dollar."? No, none of them did: The made-up stories are among dozens cranked out by Vietnam-based publishers building traffic on Facebook with stories attractive to fans of Obama, Trump…

Is a photo showing President Donald Trump using a walker to assist him real? No, that's not true: The image has the SynthID watermark that indicates it was created by Google's AI tool, according to an analysis by Google's Gemini chatbot. The image may have been created for satirical reasons since it was posted soon after President Trump signed an…

Did Donald Trump announce that people who had cosmetic surgeries would no longer be eligible for any form of government assistance starting in March 2026? No, that's not true:There were no news stories about any such announcement from Trump, despite claims in a viral video. Neither the White House nor Trump's social media accounts showed anything looking like such an…

Did Barack Obama say that he wants to return to the White House in 2028 as president through "legal avenues" or as a "proxy candidate"? No, that's not true: Contrary to the posts citing his "exclusive interview on a major news network" on December 7, 2025, the former president did not talk to any TV stations on that day. He…

Did Melania Trump glare at Donald Trump when he chatted with Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum at the FIFA World Cup Final Draw? No, that's not true: The footage showing Melania looking annoyed is not real and has been edited. Donald Trump chatted with Sheinbaum and Mark Carney, as well as the first lady during the event. The altered video was…

Did the United States send $45 million in freshly-printed cash to the Taliban in Afghanistan on a chartered flight on December 8, 2025? No, that's not true: The photo used to make the claim was published in 2023 in a report about United Nations cash shipments to Afghanistan as humanitarian aid. The UN -- not the US -- has sent…

When I received an invitation last month to come to Macedonia to talk with the fact checkers and journalists at the Metamorphosis Foundation about Lead Stories' experience with our automatically generated short-form fact checking videos, I didn't hesitate for a moment. Ever since 2019 when I wrote about a network of Macedonian fake news websites operating out of the town…

Was Pete Hegseth's nameplate at the December 2, 2025, cabinet meeting misspell his title as "SSECRETARY OF WAR"? Yes, that's true: Photos and video recorded by several media agencies and on the White House website confirmed that an image showing that spelling is real. The photo appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on December 2, 2025. The…