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…
Is "Tech world on fire" over news that Elon Musk bought Facebook in order to "delete it"? No, that's not true: Meta (which owns Facebook) had not, as of this writing, announced or documented a sale, as is required of publicly traded companies. Lead Stories found no credible news reports of an impending sale to Musk. The site that generated…
Are videos of New York Police officers arresting or threatening to arrest ICE agents on the streets and in the subways of New York real? No, that's not true: A series of videos portraying confrontations between NYPD and ICE officers were created by OpenAI's SORA artificial intelligence app. Many of them can be traced to one content creator who posted…
Is a video claiming that "all of our food is 3D-printed" or contains bioengineered ingredients to be taken seriously? No, that's not true: A TikTok video sent out a confusing message conflating bioengineered food and 3D-printed foods. Both are real things but they don't mean the same thing. The TikTok creator who made the claims as she reviewed food products…
Does a video show two big trucks hauling UFOs or bunkers over a bridge? No, that's not true: The convoy is carrying large industrial air-cooled heat exchangers, also called cooling fans. These induced draft heat exchangers are marked with a Fin-Fan logo, indicating they were manufactured by Hudson Products Corporation of Beasley, Texas. Fans like these may be used in…
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 "Irish Christian teacher Enoch Burke" sentenced to life in prison for transphobia and "refusing to use a transgender student's pronouns"? No, that's not true: The sentencing judge explicitly stated that the decision is about the repeated contempt of court for repeatedly ignoring an order to not trespas on school property. The same judge said that Burke "does not have…
Did the man charged with planting pipe bombs found near the Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, sue the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security over illegal immigration? No, that's not true: Legal disputes referenced in a Daily Wire article making that claim confused suspect Brian Cole Jr. with his father Brian Cole Sr. It…
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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