2024 Presidential Election

Did basketball star Michael Jordan endorse Donald Trump for president? No, that's not true: Jordan's management told Lead Stories that there was "absolutely no truth" to this claim. At the time of writing, Jordan had endorsed neither Trump or Kamala Harris for president. The claim appeared in a post on X (archived here) on November 3, 2024. The caption read:…

Did the Pentagon fail to provide enough absentee ballots for service members overseas? No, that's not true: If a member of the military requests an absentee ballot from their state but it does not arrive in time, they can print a ballot from a special website designed to assist any overseas American voter. More than 3,000 voting assistance officers are…

Do photos of ballots marked with a vote for Donald Trump prove that citizens of other countries are voting in the 2024 U.S. election because American law does not require them to show a voter ID? No, that's not true: Several copycat posts use the same ballot photo to say this, but list different countries in the caption. These posts…

Does a post on social media prove that a "male relative who recently started identifying as a 'woman' received two ballots for the election" in McHenry County, Illinois, in 2024? No, that's not true: The post's images of envelopes had labels that said they had applications for ballots, not mail ballots themselves. The post also didn't prove that the envelopes…

Did Donald Trump issue a statement on Peanut the Squirrel saying the animal was "executed" by the State of New York? No, that's not true: The Trump campaign said a viral image that is supposedly a Trump statement is fake. Lead Stories found no posts mentioning squirrels on Trump's accounts on X and Truth Social as of this writing. One…

Did The Atlantic publish an article with the title "How A Squirrel Became A Rallying Cry Of The Far Right"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found no such story on the magazine's website. The X account that posted a fake screenshot of the article later described it as a "meme." The story appeared in a post (archived here) on…

Does a video show an informant, who allegedly was once an aide to Arizona's secretary of state, telling about state plans to rig the election in favor of Kamala Harris? No, that's not true: This video is fabricated disinformation from a Russian propaganda network. A media forensics expert has identified it as one more example of the effort to spread…

Did Joe Rogan say "he will not be voting for Trump after having him on the podcast"? No, that's not true: Lead Stories reviewed Rogan's podcasts and public statements in the days after Donald Trump's appearance. Neither subsequent episodes of Rogan's podcast, his social media accounts nor credible news reports included any statements by Rogan that he had decided not…

Did the FBI publish a video reporting that it had apprehended three linked groups that had committed election fraud with mail-in ballots on behalf of the Democrats? No, that's not true: The FBI has published a statement on X that these videos are not authentic, are not from the FBI, and the content they depict is false. This bogus video…

Was Donald Trump's name misspelled or misprinted on ballots in Hamilton County, Ohio, and could this result in votes for him not being properly counted? No, that's not true: An image on social media seems to show an irregularity in the "m" of his last name, but county election officials say they have not seen another ballot with a similar…