Election

Does a video on social media show a Trump rally crowd in Salem, Virginia, in November 2024? No, that's not true: The original video is taken from pop-music singer-songwriter Chappell Roan's performance on October 6, 2024, at the Austin City Limits music festival in Texas, an event unrelated to Trump's presidential campaign rally in Virginia in November 2024. The audio…

Did CNN air a screenshot of election numbers that showed Kamala Harris winning Texas with 51.8 percent and 1,113,499 votes against Trump with 45.7 percent and 982,091 votes? No, that's not true: CNN said the image was "completely fabricated and manipulated" and that it "never aired on any CNN platform." Lead Stories found no credible proof that the post image…

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…