Blue Feed

When he dropped out of the race on July 21, 2024, was it too late for Joe Biden's name to be removed from general election presidential ballots across the country? No, that's not true: Biden was not yet on the ballot for this election cycle, as his primary election wins only made him the presumptive nominee. The party's official candidate…

Did Kamala Harris tell a group she was "a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit" for no reason during the normal course of starting a meeting? No, that's not true: Harris was describing herself and what she was wearing, which is considered good manners during a meeting with blind or visually impaired persons. She was speaking at…

Did Joe Biden's letter withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race require the presidential seal? No, that's not true: The letter was written by Biden in his capacity as then-candidate -- not by Biden as president. The seal is only used for official presidential correspondence. The claim was implied in a post (archived here) on X, the site formerly known as…

Does an authentic video show Vice President Kamala Harris saying "Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So live today so that future today will past today, as it is tomorrow"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories submitted the clip to two AI detection tools, which documented substantial manipulation of the video in the…

Does a video show President Joe Biden calling former President Donald Trump "a danger to the country" after the assassination attempt against Trump on July 13, 2024? No, that's not true: The video of Biden calling Trump a "danger to the country" is from an interview he recorded the day before, on July 12, 2024. That's according to the White…

Was a military-like zone with fences set up last minute where President Joe Biden was scheduled to give his press conference on July 11, 2024? No, that's not true: A video on social media shows fences around the Walter E. Washington Convention Center that were previously set up for security for the 2024 NATO Summit. The Metropolitan Police Department in…

Did President Joe Biden say he had sex with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's wife at the NATO summit in Washington in July 2024, as a social media post claims? No, that's not true: The official White House transcript of the president's remarks reflect that he said "I was talking to your wife." That's easily confirmed by the video in the…

Did President Joe Biden call NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg an "intellectual wigger" at the NATO summit in Washington in July 2024? No, that's not true: Listening to recordings confirms the official transcript of the president's remarks at the summit, in which Biden said "intellectual rigor," not "intellectual wigger." No credible evidence or verified report supports this claim. The claim appeared…

While discussing a flash poll after CNN's June 27, 2024, presidential debate, did CNN Political Director David Chalian use a name for former first lady Michelle Obama that implied she is a transgender male? No, that's not true: Chalian did not call Michelle Obama "Big Mike." The 31-second-long video clip used to make this claim includes AI-generated fake audio. While…

Did President Joe Biden "literally" fall asleep during the first 2024 presidential debate with his opponent former President Donald Trump on June 27? No, that's not true: No candidate fell asleep, as a recording of the event confirms. A screenshot from the live broadcast, shared on social media, showed a brief moment when Biden was looking down. The claim appeared…

Does an image authentically show President Joe Biden and the late sex-crimes offender Jeffrey Epstein posing together? No, that's not true: Digital editing was used to fake the shot, putting the two men together in a photograph that was never taken. The doctored picture first began appearing online in 2020. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook…

Does a video posted on social media show Russian naval exercises off the coast of Florida in June 2024, as claimed in the post? No, that's not true: The missile launch test shown was performed from the White Sea in May 2018, not off the Florida coast in June 2024. The 2018 test was more than 5,000 miles from Florida.…

Did the U.S. Treasury building fly a Palestinian flag on June 16, 2024? No, that's not true: A representative for the U.S. Treasury responded to claims on X, saying it was "a pride flag." A search on Google News did not yield any evidence that would corroborate the claims. And one prominent person who posted one of the claims --…

Does a former listing on Ancestry.com that claimed that Joe Biden died in Guantanamo, Cuba, in 2018 prove the president is dead? No, that's not true: The listing, no longer available at the time of writing, appeared based on information from another site, FindAGrave.com, that allows the public to submit listings about individuals' burials and deaths. That earlier listing did…

Is it statistically impossible that Joe Biden added 600,000 votes in Pennsylvania overnight during the 2020 election count? No, that's not true: The Pennsylvania Department of State told Lead Stories that "This claim is misinformation." Both 2020 presidential candidates, Biden and then-President Donald Trump, added hundreds of thousands of votes in the overnight hours following the closure of polls on…

Did Jill Biden lead President Joe Biden out of the Normandy ceremony before it ended, as a post on social media implies? No, that's not true: The ceremony on June 6, 2024, honoring D-Day veterans at the 80th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings was ending when Biden and the first lady left the ceremony. French President Emmanuel Macron and…

Did Judge Juan M. Merchan tell jurors in the Donald Trump hush-money trial that they didn't have to reach a unanimous verdict? No, that's not true: The transcript of his instructions to the jury shows that Merchan said, "Your verdict, on each count you consider, whether guilty or not guilty, must be unanimous." Two law school faculty members rejected the…

Did Illinois legislators pass a bill to redefine all convicted criminals as "justice-impacted individuals"? No, that's missing context: An amendment to a bill renaming offenders "justice-impacted individuals" only applies to participants in the state's Adult Redeploy Illinois program, Illinois state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, one of the bill's sponsors, told Lead Stories. The name change does not apply to all people…

Did the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over former President Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York in spring 2024, "show Trump behind bars" on social media? No, that's not true: The account that showed the image does not belong to Loren Merchan. It was created in 2023 after she made her X, formerly known as Twitter,…

Does a photo on social media show former President Donald Trump's May 23, 2024, political rally in the Bronx? No, that's not true: The image does not depict the New York City borough. Instead, it shows a 2008 campaign event in St. Louis by then-presidential nominee Barack Obama, which news reports at the time said drew 90,000 people. The claim…