Did Queen Elizabeth II congratulate Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the presumptive president-elect of the Philippines, on May 11, 2022, for his presidential election win? No, that's not true: A social media post claiming that the queen called Marcos Jr. "a good leader" and Filipinos "the worst citizens" is marked as a satirical post.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post published on May 11, 2022. The post featured a graphic that read:
'Today, I wear red to express my congratulations to the Philippines' President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. I know that he is a good leader. Unfortunately, the oligarchs are destroying his name, and the citizens just keep complaining.
Therefore, I can say, Philippines doesn't have the worse governance. It has the worst citizens.
QUEEN ELIZABETH II
Congratulates Marcos Jr. for wonning the 2022 National ElectionsMay 11, 2021
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri May 13 14:31:49 2022 UTC)
The post contained many obvious clues that it was not sharing a legitimate quote from Elizabeth about Marcos Jr., who was the projected winner of the Philippine presidential election held on May 9, 2022. In the bottom right-hand corner of the graphic in the post, there was faint type reading "SATIRE | NOT TRUE." Below that text and slightly to the left, there was a logo for "HORBP FILES": its tagline read "Satire is our business." To the left of the logo, the website horbpQuirer.net was listed. Lead Stories searched for both the name "HORBP FILES" and "horbpQuirer.net" but did not get helpful results for either.
Lead Stories also searched for "Queen Elizabeth II Philippines" and "Queen Elizabeth II Marcos Jr." and did not come up with any results corroborating the claim made in the post. The graphic contained a spelling mistake -- "wonning" rather than the correct spelling, "winning" -- and listed the date of the quote as May 11, 2021. The queen could not have made a congratulatory statement about 2022 elections in 2021, obviously meaning that the graphic should have read "May 11, 2022." Additionally, the queen canceled several public appearances around the time of the supposed quote -- including the state opening of Parliament on May 10, 2022 -- because of health difficulties.
