Trump

Are windmills -- also known as wind turbines -- killing all of the bald eagles in the United States, as President Donald Trump claimed in a Truth Social post? No, that's not true: Studies estimate the number of eagles killed by wind turbines in the contiguous 48 U.S. states was in the hundreds in 2024, including both bald and golden…

Is an archived page of a Melania Trump profile on "A Foreign Affair" mail-order bride website from 1996 real? No, that's not true: The purported page was never archived on the Wayback Machine servers, Internet Archive director Mark Graham told Lead Stories. "What you see is a doctored image," he said. An analysis done with help from the Wayback Machine's…

Is the letter in which convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein told another convicted sex offender, Larry Nassar, that "our president shares our love of young, nubile girls" real? No, that's not true: The Department of Justice, which published the letter as part of the Epstein file release, later referred to the letter as "fake." The agency said it relied on…

Did Cher, Patrick Mahomes, Bono and other celebrities pull business deals with Amazon over founder Jeff Bezos' "quiet alignment with Trump," sending messages to Bezos that all began "Wake up, Jeff"? No, that's not true: The posts tell nearly identical stories featuring those and dozens of other famous names all quitting Amazon. The clickbait fictions were published by a network…

Are 315,000 unsigned early votes in Fulton County, Georgia proof of electoral fraud? No, that's not true: The Georgia secretary of state told Lead Stories that the missing signatures on tabulator results were the consequence of a clerical error and did not invalidate legally cast votes. An election expert told Lead Stories that the minor administrative error did not affect…

Was Jon-Bernard Kairouz confronted about his appearance in pictures from newly released Epstein files while being interviewed on Fox News? No, that's not true: The viral video did not show a real Fox News segment. In what appears to be a digitally produced clip, Kairouz, who is a comedian, is seen making a satirical sketch. Kairouz is not mentioned in…

Is a photo showing Melania Trump kissing Jeffrey Epstein on the lips real? No, that's not true: The Hive Moderation AI detection tool was conclusive that the image was created by an artificial intelligence tool, rating it at 98.8 percent certainty. Online searches found no examples of the image earlier than one shared in an X post on December 17,…

Did Cher tell Karoline Leavitt to "sit down, baby girl" after reading out her bio on MSNBC? No, that's not true: The viral story about the singer reacting to a supposed rant from Leavitt about "out-of-touch celebrities who think they can lecture America" originated on a network of websites and Facebook pages run from Vietnam. It contained verifiably false details.…

Was a pdf that included images of Donald Trump with women deleted from the Epstein Library hours after the Department of Justice released the files as required by a new federal law? Yes, that's true: EFTA00000468.pdf was included in the files downloaded from the site soon after the link was made public, but it was no longer accessible on Saturday,…

Does the new Trump-Kennedy sign at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts have gold appliques like President Donald Trump added to the walls of the Oval Office? No, that's not true: Though Trump's name was added, there were no news reports that gold ornaments were added to the facade of the Kennedy Center. Photos taken by Lead Stories on…