Did Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweet about celebrating Christmas by "putting migrants on a bus and kicking them out into the freezing cold"? No, that's not true: The tweet is fake. It combines a genuine photo of the governor's family with a made-up caption.
The fake tweet appeared as a Facebook post published on December 27, 2022. It read:
We celebrated Christmas Eve by putting migrants on a bus and kicking them out into the freezing cold. May the joy of Christ's birth fill your heart as it did ours. Merry Christmas from the Abbott family.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
Although the post is made to look like a real tweet, it's not. Abbott did not tweet about "putting migrants on a bus and kicking them out into the freezing cold", as evidenced by a quick scroll of his verified account.
Lead Stories also checked PolitiTweet, a database of archived and deleted tweets from politicians and other public figures, for the possibility that Abbott deleted the tweet seen in the Facebook post. We found no evidence that Abbott tweeted the statement and then deleted it, as can be seen here.
The governor did tweet a photo of his family on Christmas Day, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas:
From our family to yours, Merry Christmas! pic.twitter.com/76n0MLgx0y
-- Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 25, 2022
Someone nabbed that photo and combined it with a made-up caption to create the fake tweet.
