STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.
Did former chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and billionaire philanthropist George Soros say they would leave the United States if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election? No, that's not true: No credible media reports indicate that either man has made plans to vacate the country should the presumptive Republican nominee win. Additionally, neither Fauci nor Soros has made any public statements on the matter.
The claim appeared in an article (archived here) on X, formerly Twitter, by Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 News on May 19, 2024. The post's caption said:
🚨BREAKING: Dr. Anthony Fauci and George Soros say they will leave the United States if Donald Trump becomes President in 2024.
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This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue May 28 14:25:38 2024 UTC)
The post provided no attribution or other evidence to substantiate the claim.
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Lead Stories did searches using keywords on Google News, visible here (archived here), which found no credible documents or reporting as of May 28, 2024, to corroborate the claim that Fauci and Soros said they would leave the United States if Trump became president in 2024
In a May 29, 2024, email to Lead Stories, a spokesperson for Soros' philanthropic organization, Open Society Foundations, provided this response to the claim. They said:
George Soros DID NOT say this. The accusation is false.
Lead Stories also reached out to representatives for Fauci and will add any response to the claim once it's been provided.
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At the time this was written, Reuters had reviewed the same claim.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims involving Anthony Fauci can be found here.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to George Soros can be found here.
Updates:
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2024-05-29T16:58:03Z 2024-05-29T16:58:03Z Adds response to the claim from a spokesperson for George Soros.
