Were President Donald Trump, former President Barack Obama or TV host Jimmy Kimmel silenced after calling Harvard grads "overrated and dumb" when opponents revealed their SAT scores? No, that's not true: There is no public record of Trump, Obama or Kimmel saying it. There is also no record of anyone confronting those men with their SAT scores. Facebook pages administered from Vietnam sought lucrative traffic by posting multiple copies of the identical fake news reports.
One example of the claim appeared in a Nov. 7, 2025 post (archived here) on the "Vocal Orbit" Facebook page, opening with "It began as another T.r.u.m.p rally jab -- a few sneering jokes about "overrated Harvard grads."" The post continued:
But before the laughter could fade, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett struck back with a calm, devastating counterpunch. "Since we're talking about brains," she said on live television, "let's talk about your SAT score."
The crowd froze. Producers scrambled. Then she read the number out loud -- and the internet exploded.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post on facebook.com/profile.php?id=61581332740225.)
The Vocal Orbit (archived here) Facebook page, which was used to promote the story included a transparency tab (archived here) indicating it was run by Facebook users from Vietnam and The Philippines:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of the page transparency tab of the "Vocal Orbit" page on Facebook.)
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. We have published at least 70 fact-check articles in 2025 focused on this content.
Lead Stories searched Google News for news articles mentioning "Harvard grads", "overrated" and "dumb". The index of thousands of news sites did not return any results (archived here). Nor did it find any news articles when searched for those key words along with "Trump", "Obama" or "Kimmel." Due to their prominence, such a comment by any of those men would be newsworthy, especially Obama, who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1991.
But a search on Facebook for the phrase "Harvard grads, overrated, and dumb" (archived here) brought up dozens of results with almost exactly the same story but about different leaders and media figures, accompanied by very similar images showing side-by-side pictures of Trump or Obama or Kimmel with a variety of debate opponents. Lead Stories found posts involving:
- Trump confronted by MS NOW anchor Rachel Maddow;
- Trump confronted by ABC anchor David Muir;
- Trump confronted by Rep. Jasmine Crockett;
- Trump confronted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez;
- Kimmel confronted by White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt;
- Obama confronted by Fox News host Jeanine Pirro;
- Trump confronted by Sen. John Kennedy;
- Trump confronted by podcast host Tucker Carlson;
- Trump confronted by Rep. Nancy Pelosi;
- Trump confronted late night host Jimmy Kimmel;
- Trump confronted by late night host Stephen Colbert;
- Vice President JD Vance confronted by Muir;
Here's what the mass-produced fake news stories looked like on Facebook:
(Image source: Lead Stories animation of Facebook search results for the phrase "Harvard grads, overrated, and dumb".)
Lead Stories has published a primer -- or a prebunk -- on how to identify these kinds of fake posts exported from Vietnam. It's titled "Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'"
