Did Donald Trump name Rep. Lauren Boebert to be the next secretary of education? No, that's not true: Trump's pick for the secretary of education position had not yet been announced as of this writing on November 14, 2024. Posts on social media repeating this claim are either satirical or in error. The rumor that Boebert was Trump's choice for the role appears to have originated with a post that ended, "If you read this far, I'm sure you are like me and couldn't tell if this was real at first or not."
One example of this claim was a post (archived here) on X on November 13, 2024. It was captioned:
The most poetic oxymoron in human history... Lauren Boebert will be the next Secretary of Education.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 17:18:49 2024 UTC)
The Lead Stories composite image below shows another post (archived here) on X published by @ChrisDJackson earlier that same day. The account of Chris D. Jackson lists him as an "Election Aficionado" as well as a local Democratic Party chairman and strategist. The post looked like a breaking news announcement (below left). Starting with:
🚨 BREAKING: Trump Names Boebert Secretary of Education
STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMPI am thrilled to announce that the incredible Lauren Boebert will be taking the reins of the Former Department of Education. Lauren, a true American Patriot, has an unparalleled understanding of what real education should look like--not from some ivory tower, but from the heart of this great nation. She worked her way up, got her GED, and learned more about real life and the needs of American families than any bureaucrat ever could. Her journey is exactly what we need to bring REAL reform to our broken education system!
The body of the post has several paragraphs and a photo -- formatted so that the words at the end of the post are not visible unless the reader clicked "show more" to expand the lengthy post (below right). At the end of the text (blue box highlight) the post finishes by saying:
If you read this far, I'm sure you are like me and couldn't tell if this was real at first or not. 😉
(Source: Lead Stories composite image made with X screenshots taken on Thu Nov 14 18:04:26 2024 UTC)
At the time of writing Trump's pick for the next secretary of education (Google search archived here) had not yet been publicly announced.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving current events can be found here.
