As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.
As the world raced to find a treatment that would alleviate the global pressure of the coronavirus pandemic, U.S. President Donald Trump contracted the virus in early October 2020 and developed COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. In the days following his diagnosis and public release from Walter Reed Hospital, where he received world-class treatment, Trump touted the powers of a “miracle drug” called Regeneron, which he promised to make available to the American people.
A video shared in tweet by the president on Oct. 7 claimed that Regeneron was a “cure.”
“I spent four days there [at Walter Reed] and I went in, I wasn’t feeling so hot. And within a very short period of time, they gave me Regeneron. It’s called Regeneron. And other things too but I think this was the key. But they gave me Regeneron, and it was like, unbelievable. I felt good immediately. I felt as good three days ago as I do now.
“So, I just want to say, we have Regeneron. We have a very similar drug from Eli Lilly, and they’re coming out and we’re trying to get them on an emergency basis. We’ve authorized it. I’ve authorized it. And if you’re in the hospital and you’re feeling really bad, I think we’re going to work it so that you get them and you’re going to get them free.”
“In short: we did not use human stem cells or human embryonic stem cells in the development of REGN-COV2,” Bowie told Snopes in an email.
But it’s not quite that cut and dried.
In the research and development of pharmaceutical therapeutics, many companies turn to what is known as a cell line. These are cultures of human or animal cells that are derived from a living organism and cultured and propagated repeatedly, and, in some cases, used indefinitely. The development of REGN-COV2 utilized HEK293T — a cell line that is derived from human fetal embryonic kidney tissues — to create a “pseudovirus” that mimics a spike Protein found in SARS-CoV-2 in order to test the drug’s ability to neutralize — and ultimately treat — the novel coronavirus.
“HEK293s are considered ‘immortalized’ cells (not stem cells) and are a common and widespread tool in research labs. This cell line was originally derived by adenovirus transformation of human embryonic kidney cells in 1977,” explained Bowie, adding that HEK293 were further transformed at Stanford in the 1980s with SV40 large T antigen, a solution that is used by researchers to initiate and maintain DNA replication necessary for creating cell lines.
Fetal tissues were not directly used n the development of REGN-COV2, but cell lines from decades-old embryonic kidney tissues were. Fetal tissues are used to develop cell lines. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, are different than adult stem cells in that they are undifferentiated and regenerative cells, which means that they have not been assigned a key task in the human body. As such, researchers have uncovered ways to direct their use in creating human tissues that allow for a variety of uses, including testing new pharmaceuticals.
Opposition to the use of fetal tissue and embryonic stem cell research has been at the heart of the pro-life platform due to the way in which these cells are obtained and its association with using living fetuses either inside (in utero) or outside of the uterus (ex utero). Pro-life groups like March for Life have even gone so far as to pressure the Trump administration to halt “funding for research that requires aborted fetal organs and tissues.” In summer 2019, the president required any federally funded research using fetal tissue to undergo an ethics review, and has since stocked his cabinet with other similarly-minded officials.
REGN-COV2 is currently in late-stage clinical trials for various populations, including non-hospitalized and hospitalized patients as well as for the potential prevention in individuals who may have had close household exposure to COVID-19. According to a news release published on Sept. 29, the company announced that the antibody cocktail was shown to reduce the viral load and alleviate symptoms in non-hospitalized patients with COVID-19. REGN-COV2 also showed positive trends in reducing medical visits. However, it is important to note that the research included a relatively small sample size of just 275 patients.
“The greatest treatment benefit was in patients who had not mounted their own effective immune response, suggesting that REGN-COV2 could provide a therapeutic substitute for the naturally-occurring immune response. These patients were less likely to clear the virus on their own and were at greater risk for prolonged symptoms,” said Regeneron President and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. George D. Yancopoulos in a statement.
As of Oct. 12, Regeneron had submitted an emergency use authorization (EUA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in early October, and noted REGN-COV2’s “early, promising clinical data — paired with the continued, pressing unmet need of COVID-19 — meets the FDA standard for emergency use authorization.”
Regeneron told Snopes that it “can’t speculate on potential timing for an EUA.” We will update when such is available.
In October 2020, a piece of text started to circulate on social media claiming that vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris called American churches “propaganda centers”:
This text, which was copied and pasted across a number of social media accounts, reads:
Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris this morning said that, “American churches are PROPAGANDA CENTERS for intolerant homophobic, xenophobic vitriol” and she called american pastors, ” knuckle-dragging disseminators of intolerance and enemies of social justice” Think about that … That was a verbatim quote from Biden’s running mate, who, God forbid, would become President if Biden won the election and if he passed/became incapacitated. This woman isnt even bothering to hide her utter disdain & contempt for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at Harris’ record as State of California Attorney General when she FREQUENTLY went after churches in California. You can be assured she will continue to be an enemy of the cross if she ever got into the Oval Office. Biden himself monday said that, “those who hold to traditional views and intolerant christian beliefs are dregs of society.” What christian, in their right mind, would vote for ppl who hold these views against churches/pastors?
These are not genuine quotes from Harris. The claims made in this text were made up out of whole cloth.
The alleged quotes contained in this Facebook post are controversial, to say the least. And this text claims that they were uttered by a woman running for vice president, a position that is highly scrutinized in the media. If these quotes were real, we would undoubtedly be able to find a multitude of news article’s about Harris’ alleged remarks. Yet, our search for videos, articles, press releases and tweets yielded no results.
The credibility of this Facebook post is also called into question since it misquotes Harris’ running mate Joe Biden as saying “those who hold to traditional views and intolerant Christian beliefs are dregs of society.” This is not what Biden said. We discussed this quote at length in a separate article. In short, Biden was talking about racists groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan, who have voiced their support for President Donald Trump, and referred to those “virulent people” as the “dregs of society.”
California Republicans in the fall of 2020 reportedly set up their own drop-off boxes for voters to leave mail-in ballots for the upcoming November general election.
Jordan Tygh, a regional field director for the California GOP, posted on Oct. 8, 2020, a picture of himself posing with thumbs up in front of one of the drop-boxes on Twitter, along with a message encouraging other voters to contact him for details on the drop-box locations. The post has since been deleted, but a cached version was still available as of this writing:
The online fury over Tygh’s post and the drop-boxes prompted Snopes readers to ask whether it was true that the California Republicans had installed unofficial mail-in ballot drop-boxes. (And as Tygh’s post indicates, some of them were misleadingly labeled “official.”)
It is true — the California GOP has acknowledged that it owns the boxes. And the California secretary of state announced such unauthorized ballot drop-boxes are illegal.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, during an Oct. 12 news conference, said multiple fake drop-boxes had been installed in Fresno, Los Angeles, and Orange counties. Padilla’s office and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra issued cease-and-desist letters to state and county Republican parties.
Ballot collection, sometimes referred to as “ballot harvesting,” is the practice of a voter designating a third party to deliver a mail-in ballot to election officials. It’s legal in many states, including California.
What is not legal, according to the Secretary of State’s Office, is posing as an election officer and “handling, counting, or canvassing of any ballots” by anyone who isn’t an election officer. That includes setting up unofficial ballot-collection boxes. Violating the law is a felony that could result in two to four years in prison, if a person is convicted.
Election officials ordered California Republicans to remove the unauthorized boxes by Oct. 15, with Becerra warning that his office would take further legal action if needed.
“Without equivocation,” the fake drop boxes set up by California Republicans “are illegal,” Becerra stated.
“If you participate in those activities, you are knowingly engaging in activity that is against the law,” Becerra said during the news conference. “So please understand what you are doing.”
California voters can look up the location of official ballot drop-box locations on the secretary of state’s website. The official drop-boxes are bright yellow and are secured, locked, and monitored round the clock.
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
More and more towns and cities across the country are electing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative to – or in addition to – the day intended to honor Columbus’ voyages.
But you’ll also find commemorations in less likely places. Alabama celebrates Native American Day alongside Columbus Day, as does North Carolina, which, with a population of over 120,000 Native Americans, has the largest number of Native Americans of any state east of the Mississippi River.
In 2018, the town of Carrboro, North Carolina, issued a resolution to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day. The resolution noted the fact that the town of 21,000 had been built on indigenous land and that it was committed to “protect, respect and fulfill the full range of inherent human rights,” including those of indigenous people.
While Columbus Day affirms the story of a nation created by Europeans for Europeans, Indigenous Peoples Day emphasizes Native histories and Native people – an important addition to the country’s ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be American.
On Oct. 7, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris squared off during their first and only debate of the presidential campaign season. As the two politicians discussed the biggest topics of the day — such as the coronavirus pandemic, police reform, global warming, and the Supreme Court — many social media users got distracted when a fly took up residence on Pence’s head for a full two minutes.
As social media jokes cracked jokes about the odd visual, some came to Pence’s defense and noted that he was not the first politician to be bothered by a housefly, and shared a photograph that supposedly showed former U.S. President Barack Obama with a fly on his lip:
This is a genuine image of Obama with a fly near his lip.
This image was taken by Carolyn Kaster for The Associated Press on June 22, 2010, and shows a moment when a fly landed on Obama as he delivered remarks concerning the Affordable Care Act and the New Patients Bill of Rights. Here’s a video from the incident:
As Obama referenced in the above-displayed video — at one point he says “get out of here” and then tells the press “you’ve seen me grab one of those before” — this wasn’t his only run-in with a fly. During an interview with CNBC, Obama briefly stopped the interview to swat a fly that landed on his hand:
Obama and Pence, of course, are hardly the only politicians who have been bothered by a fly at an inopportune moment.
For example, in August 2020, a fly landed on former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s face during his speech at the Democratic National Convention. During a 2016 campaign speech, a fly was spotted buzzing around then-candidate Donald Trump’s hair. At a presidential debate that same year, a fly landed on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s face.
In October 2020, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House following his treatment for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, an image supposedly showing a message posted to Twitter by the commander-in-chief started to circulate on social media, reading: “My blood IS the vaccine!!!!!”
This was not a genuine tweet that was posted to Trump’s Twitter account.
This message does not currently appear on Trump’s timeline, nor does it appear in any of the databases that catalog and archive Trump’s deleted messages.
Social media users may have found this message plausible because it started circulating around the same time that Trump was posting dozens of message on Twitter, some of which contained questionable assertions about COVID-19. Several news outlets published articles about this “tweet storm.” These articles, however, made no mention of the “My blood IS the vaccine” tweet.
The above-displayed message was likely created as a joke. However, it’s not clear if this joke was made to mock Trump or to support him. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted a similar jokey message on Twitter, claiming that Trump would use the antibodies in his own blood to develop a vaccine for COVID-19: “You think 2020 has seen its biggest twist? Wait until Trump develops the anti-covid serum using his own antibodies like Will Smith in ‘I Am Legend,’ and then wins 50 states.”
Although it’s not clear if the “My blood IS the vaccine” tweet was posted in joking support of the president or as a way to mock him, it’s clear that this viral tweet is not a genuine message from the president of the United States.
In August 2020, readers asked Snopes to examine the accuracy of news articles that claimed that U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., had once said she “believed” women who accused former Vice President Joe Biden of offenses ranging from inappropriate touching to rape.
Biden named Harris his pick for vice presidential running mate on Aug. 11, prompting reports, primarily from right-leaning sources, which pointed to Harris’ past remarks.
Fox News published an article on their website with the headline, “Flashback: Kamala Harris Said She Believed Women Who Accused Biden of Inappropriate Touching,” writing that:
“Sen. Kamala Harris, who was announced as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s running mate on Tuesday, once said that she believed women who accused Biden of inappropriate touching.
“‘I believe them, and I respect them being able to tell their story and having the courage to do it,’ the California senator told reporters in April 2019. Biden had been accused by a number of women of inappropriate touching and kissing, including by a Nevada politician who said he came up behind her at a 2014 campaign stop and kissed her on the back of her head.”
After Harris made the remarks in question on April 2, 2019, three more women publicly accused Biden of having touched them inappropriately, made them uncomfortable, or made inappropriate remarks about their physical appearance.
A fourth woman, Tara Reade, alleged in March 2020 that Biden sexually assaulted her at an office in the U.S. Capitol, providing descriptions that some readers might find disturbing. Reade said that when she worked in his U.S. Senate office in 1993, Biden pushed her against a wall, subjected her to unwanted kissing, and digitally penetrated her. (Although Reade did not herself use the word “rape” to describe the latter allegation, digital penetration without consent is included in the definition of rape used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in its Uniform Crime Report. In that context, it is reasonable to state that Reade accused Biden of raping her).
Biden has vehemently denied Reade’s allegations, telling MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”: “It is not true. I’m saying, unequivocally, it never never happened…”
While Harris said plainly “I believe them” about those women who had, before April 2, 2019, accused Biden of inappropriate touching, the senator has not said the same about Reade’s rape allegation, and did not do so when asked about it. Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle’s “It’s All Political” podcast, in April 2020, Harris said Reade had a right to be heard, and should face no repercussions for “telling her story,” but defended Biden’s record as “somebody who really has fought for women and empowerment of women and women’s equality and rights”:
This woman has a right to tell her story, and I believe that, and I believe Joe Biden believes that too. I’ve spent my whole career…fighting to give women a voice, and this brings up, I think, a bigger structural issue, frankly, which is that women must be able to speak without fear of retaliation…On the issue of Joe, I can only speak to the Joe Biden I know. He’s been a life-long fighter in terms of stopping violence against women. He has been the leader, I think really most people would agree, in the United States Senate on VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act.
So, you know, as I said, she has a right to tell her story, and she shouldn’t face any repercussions for that. But the Joe Biden I know is somebody who really has fought for women and empowerment of women and women’s equality and rights.
The Federalist’s claim, in its headline, which said that Harris had said she believed “Biden’s rape accusers,” was therefore false, both because Harris made her comments long before Reade accused Biden of rape, and because she is the only woman to have made that accusation. The Federalist later changed its headline to claim that Harris had said she believed “Biden’s sexual harassment accusers.”
However, as of Aug. 13, 2020, the article itself still stated that Harris “said last year that she believes the women who accused Biden of sexual assault.” This is equally misleading, since no woman had accused Biden of sexual assault when Harris made her remarks on April 2, 2019.
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
An investigative journalist receives a video from an anonymous whistleblower. It shows a candidate for president admitting to illegal activity. But is this video real? If so, it would be huge news – the scoop of a lifetime – and could completely turn around the upcoming elections. But the journalist runs the video through a specialized tool, which tells her that the video isn’t what it seems. In fact, it’s a “deepfake,” a video made using artificial intelligence with deep learning.
Journalists all over the world could soon be using a tool like this. In a few years, a tool like this could even be used by everyone to root out fake content in their social media feeds.
Journalists and the social media platforms also need to figure out how best to warn people about deepfakes when they are detected. Research has shown that people remember the lie, but not the fact that it was a lie. Will the same be true for fake videos? Simply putting “Deepfake” in the title might not be enough to counter some kinds of disinformation.
Deepfakes are here to stay. Managing disinformation and protecting the public will be more challenging than ever as artificial intelligence gets more powerful. We are part of a growing research community that is taking on this threat, in which detection is just the first step.
In October 2016, an image appeared on social media accusing Indiana’s governor (and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s running mate) Mike Pence of supporting “gay conversion” therapy, particularly the use of electric shocks as part of the practice:
The allegation dates back to 2000, when Pence was running for Congress. His campaign web site at the time touted his call to add a stipulation to the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, a 1990 law providing funding for HIV/AIDS treatment for patients living with the disease lacking either the income or the necessary insurance to pay for it on their own:
Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.
Although he didn’t say so outright, the position has been widely interpreted as signaling Pence’s support for “gay conversion” therapy, which seeks to “cure” patients of being attracted to members of the same sex.
According to the American Psychological Association, electric shocks were one of the techniques used to address homosexuality through “aversion therapy” prior to the group’s decision in 1973 to stop classifying it as a mental disorder. By the time Pence made his statement regarding the Ryan White CARE Act, that group and several others, including the American Psychiatric Association, had rejected the practice:
Psychotherapeutic modalities to convert or “repair” homosexuality are based on developmental theories whose scientific validity is questionable. Furthermore, anecdotal reports of “cures” are counterbalanced by anecdotal claims of psychological harm. In the last four decades, “reparative” therapists have not produced any rigorous scientific research to substantiate their claims of cure. Until there is such research available, [the American Psychiatric Association] recommends that ethical practitioners refrain from attempts to changeindividuals’ sexual orientation, keeping in mind the medical dictum to first, do no harm.
The potential risks of reparative therapy are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.Many patients who have undergone reparative therapy relate that they were inaccurately told that homosexuals are lonely, unhappy individuals who never achieve acceptance or satisfaction. The possibility that the person might achieve happiness and satisfying interpersonal relationships as a gay man or lesbian is not presented, nor are alternative approaches to dealing with the effects of societal stigmatization discussed.
“Conversion therapy” has been banned by law in five states (California, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont) as well as in Washington, D.C. We contacted Pence’s office seeking comment on his stance regarding the issue but did not receive a response.
Republicans were hit with a similar accusation in July 2016, when their national platform included the phrase “We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.”
When asked whether that statement represented support for “conversion therapy,” Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus replied that “It’s not in the platform.”
Snopes may be known for debunking urban legends, hoaxes, and folklore, but our journalistic efforts go far beyond that. Investigations into coordinated inauthentic behavior seek to expose bad actors and their methods. These stories also document patterns of the shortcomings of social media platforms, in particular when it comes to U.S. politics.
As part of our continuing coverage of election misinformation and disinformation efforts, we’ve been examining coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) on Facebook. Our latest investigation into the private Facebook group Sarah Huckabee Sanders Supporters has found mounting evidence of such behavior having occurred for nearly three years. Foreign-run fake accounts have littered the group’s posts with pro-Trump politics, hate, and disinformation. Fake account admins have also showed hints of foreign influence, possibly from North Macedonia. An unwitting American citizen moderated the group from Kentucky for more than two years. Several of the admins have been removed, yet the group lives on.
Pro-Trump content, some of which is disinformation, has been posted in the group by foreignaccounts as far back as 2017. In addition to disinformation, some posts within the group, such as one suggesting “using deadly force” on migrants attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, appeared hateful, and even Islamophobic. The examples below comefromaccountsthatnolongerexist.:
The group’s membership count has stayed steady at just over 20,000 members since around August 2018, the same time its head administrator apparently was removed because it was a fake account. That number of members is hardly considered large compared to other political groups on Facebook. For example, Snopes reported on a Macedonian-run group for White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany as having more than 456,000 members. Another example was the Ukrainian page World USA, which we reported had almost a million followers.
The American Moderator
A woman named Diane was the lone moderator in Sarah Huckabee Sanders Supporters. For privacy purposes, we have chosen to publish only her first name in our story. She remained listed as a moderator in the group for more than two years even after several admins disappeared around August 2018.
According to public records, Diane lives in Kentucky and is a real person. Snopes reporters attempted to reach out to her by phone and email, but did not receive a response.
In order to find out when she became a moderator in the group, we first looked at all of the data and research Snopes reporters have gathered about the group since 2018. According to our research, she was moderating the group as far back as July 31, 2018. Before we contacted Facebook for comment for this story, she was still listed as a moderator, but that changed after we reached out to the company:
Facebook users cannot become moderators without approval from admins, so this means the foreign fake account admins had a part in recruiting Diane, an American, to moderate the group.
On June 10, 2018, the foreign admin fake account named Kristina Cruz posted the Trumpian word, “YUGE!” More than a month later, Diane asked Cruz for help in the comments section under the post. On July 25, 2018, Diane said there were not yet any moderators in Sarah Huckabee Sanders Supporters:
One day later on July 26, 2018, another Facebook user responded to Diane: “Diane I think this group has bogus admins.” The other user also noted that the admins have few or no friends.
Diane then asked: “Really? I’m probably NOT as ‘savvy’ as you on fb matters – but! – HOW and/ or WHY does THIS happen? If true, I don’t get it….WHY would anyone create a ‘cool’ group and be ‘absent’? P.S If true…do you know HOW I CAN (,and selected few) take over?”
Less than five days later, Diane was recruited to be a moderator.
Our Questions for Facebook
We reached out to Facebook for comment, asking about the Sarah Huckabee Sanders Supporters group hosting what appeared to be foreign-pushed disinformation with hints of ties to specific countries, one example being North Macedonia. We also told them about Diane, apparently an unwitting American woman living in Kentucky, asking what protocols Facebook has in place when an unwitting American is brought on to unknowingly be involved in managing part of a foreign disinformation operation.
Our second question mentioned the 2018 removals of admins Cruz and Janevska, and that someone by the name of Ashley Lavrijssen disappeared for months. We asked why she reappeared, why Lillian Nguyen is still there, and what they could tell us about the removal of the accounts for Cruz and Janevska.
The final question posed to Facebook was the following: “Over the last two years, Snopes has internally documented a large number of foreign fake accounts and their disinfo posts in the group. A study of the commenters led us to believe the vast majority are Americans. Action was taken on what appeared to be at least three admins in the past, with one reappearing later. With all of this in mind, why has the Facebook Group not been removed?”
The company replied with thesethreepages detailing company policy. We also received the following from a Facebook company spokesperson:
“Our Community Standards apply across our services, including in Groups. We have reduced this Group’s distribution — which is how we treat this kind of misinformation — and will continue monitoring.”
Lillian Nguyen Disappears
After receiving this response from Facebook, the account for the fake admin named Nguyen disappeared. Diane also no longer appears as a moderator for the group, but is still active on Facebook. The last remaining account to manage the group is the fake account admin Lavrijssen.
We asked Facebook why it removed the account for Nguyen, but not Lavrijssen. We also pointed out that the group hosts not just misinformation, but also what appeared to be disinformation. Disinformation implies intent on the part of the accounts posting dubious content. We also asked again if the company had any comment on Diane, an American, being recruited to moderate the group. We did not receive a response.
Despite all of this, Sarah Huckabee Sanders Supporters is still active. Thousands of Americans have been influenced by its content, its lone admin is a foreign fake account, and a woman in Kentucky moderated a foreign influence operation for more than two years.
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
If you’ve noticed an uptick of male frontal nudity in TV and in movies in recent years, you’re onto something.
Although apocryphal, Sigmund Freud supposedly remarked, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” which was meant to suggest that cigars are not always phallic symbols.
It’d be nice if, on screen, sometimes a penis were just a penis.
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
John Lennon was acutely aware of his place in the musical lineage, and the strengths and weaknesses of his own songwriting. His tendency to speak in bold strokes – “Before Elvis there was nothing!” – belied at times both the variety in his work, and its complicated legacy.
Lennon would have been 80 years old on October 9, and his son Sean’s recent interview with Paul McCartney highlights a few aspects of how their partnership shaped popular musical practice. McCartney recalls seeing Lennon around locally – on the bus, in the queue for fish and chips – before their famous first meeting at the Woolton Fête, noting with approval at the time Lennon’s nascent identification with the Teddy Boy sub-culture.
But by the end of the decade, simultaneous divergence in the creative, social and financial pathways made the partnership unmanageable. “Musical differences” is often jokingly referred to as a proxy for personal enmity. But in truth, the various threads are often hard to fully disentangle.
Ultimately, Lennon and McCartney complemented one another as personalities and as musicians. McCartney’s melodic facility smoothed over some of Lennon’s rougher edges. Lennon’s grit added texture and leavened some of McCartney’s more saccharine tendencies.
Their legacy, though, was more than just musical. Their success coincided with, and helped to shape, an explosion of youth culture as both creative and commercial enterprise.
We can’t know, of course, what would have happened had Lennon lived to 80, especially given that – their business problems receding into the past – his personal relationship with McCartney had become warmer again by the onset of the 1980s. With the hurly-burly of the Beatles behind them, they found common ground over the more prosaic matters of middle age.
We’d chat about how to make bread. Just ordinary stuff, you know. He’d had a baby by then – he’d had Sean – so we could talk babies and family and bread and stuff. So that made it a little bit easier, the fact that we were buddies.
But the fact that their evolution as songwriters and as friends took place in tandem is still felt in the emergence of popular musical enterprises from schoolyards and youthful peer groups in rock and beyond.
When former U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware announced his candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, it did not mark not his first attempt to gain election to the highest office in the U.S. He also sought the Democratic nomination in 2008 but dropped out well before the convention after a poor showing in the Iowa Caucus. He was then chosen to be nominee Barack Obama’s running mate and went on to serve two terms as vice president.
Biden also sought the U.S. presidency in 1988, although his candidacy was cut short by accusations he had plagiarized material and exaggerated his academic record. These “character issues” re-surfaced in partisan social media posts that proliferated after Biden launched his 2020 presidential bid in April 2019. Facebook pages with names such as “Elect Trump 2020,” “Breitbart’s Bunker,” and “Being Libertarian” shared a video clip they maintained showed Biden announcing in 1988 that he was bowing out of the presidential campaign:
This TV news snippet does, in fact, show Biden at a press conference announcing his withdrawal from the 1988 presidential race, although it actually took place on 23 September 1987 and not in 1988, as stated in the Facebook post. (A full video of the press conference is available on C-SPAN.org.)
The lede of the Chicago Tribune‘s report on Biden’s withdrawal read as follows:
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, whose campaign for president has been damaged by admissions of plagiarism and embellishing his academic record, withdrew from the race for the 1988 Democratic nomination, saying the “exaggerated shadow” of his mistakes had begun “to obscure the essence of my candidacy.”
Biden, 44, called a news conference to say he was ending his campaign with “incredible reluctance” and that he was “angry at myself for having to make this choice” between running for president and leading the fight against the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Biden also claimed in the New Hampshire speech that he had attended law school “on a full academic scholarship,” but the records show his scholarship only covered about half of his tuition.
Biden said he was “frustrated” and “angry as hell” about the media reports. “I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me,” he told the New York Times. “It’s so easy to make things look like there’s something sinister about them.”
But the damage was done. On 23 September 1987, two days after the discrepancies between his public statements and the academic record were reported, Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. He admitted making mistakes — unintentional mistakes, he said — but insisted that the public’s perception of his character had been skewed by the “exaggerated shadow” of his mistakes as portrayed in the press and by his political opponents.
He would later write in his memoir, Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics (Random House, 2007), that he only had himself to blame:
When I stopped trying to explain to everybody and thought it through, the blame fell totally on me. Maybe the reporters traveling with me had seen me credit Kinnock over and over, but it was Joe Biden who forgot to credit Kinnock at the State Fair debate. I had been immature and skipped class and blown the Legal Methods paper. I was the one who thought it was good enough to just get by in law school. I lost my temper in New Hampshire. What I’d said about my academic achievements was just faulty memory or lack of knowledge. I hadn’t remembered where I finished in my law school class. I hadn’t cared. But to say “Wanna compare IQs?” was so stupid. All of it was my fault, and I didn’t want to compound the mistakes.
On Oct. 12, 1864, Roger B. Taney, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, passed away at the age of 87 — thereby creating an opening on the bench just four weeks before the United States was set to hold a presidential election in the midst of a civil war. Lincoln didn’t move to nominate Taney’s replacement right away, but instead, waited until a month after the election — a course of events that 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris attributed to Lincoln’s supposed viewpoint that filling a vacant Supreme Court seat just before an election was “not the right thing to do”:
“In 1864 … Abraham Lincoln was up for reelection. And it was 27 days before the election. And a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln’s party was in charge not only of the White House but the Senate. But Honest Abe said, ‘It’s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States, and then that person will be able to select who will serve on the highest court of the land.”
One searches in vain for evidence of Lincoln’s having either expressed or acted upon this sentiment, however.
Although Lincoln could have named a nominee prior to the 1864 election, he could not have filled the open Supreme Court seat prior to that event. When Taney died, Congress had been in recess since July 4, and would not reconvene until Dec. 5, so Lincoln had no opportunity to designate a successor and have that person confirmed by the Senate prior to the Nov. 8 presidential election.
More important, though, was that even in the midst of a civil war, Lincoln had to manage a fractious coalition of quarreling politicians and competing interests (including Radical Republicans and War Democrats), while seeking to secure re-election, successfully bring the war to a close, and plan for reunification with the rebellious Confederate states. In order to secure the support of War Democrats and others who would not vote for a Republican, Lincoln ran in 1864 on the ticket of the National Union Party with a Southern Democrat (Andrew Johnson) as his vice presidential running mate, while facing a challenge in the general election from George B. McClellan, the U.S. Army general whom Lincoln had first removed as commanding general of the U.S. Army in March 1862 and then relieved from command of the Army of the Potomac in November 1862. And amidst that election-year tumult, Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase — who himself had designs on the presidency — resigned from Lincoln’s cabinet in June.
That last point was key. By delaying the announcement of his Supreme Court choice until after the election, Lincoln could use the opening as a lure to secure the support of those whom he needed to campaign on his behalf and help him govern the post-war nation — primarily Chase, and his Radical Republican supporters:
As ever, Lincoln was the shrewd politician and in October of 1864 he saw no profit in alienating any of the factions of his political support by making a selection before the election. There is no evidence that he seriously considered announcing his choice before he was re-elected.
Lincoln was not, however above using the enticement of the office to encourage campaigning on his behalf. The highest prize in that regard was the active political support of Salmon P. Chase, the former Senator, Governor, Secretary of the Treasury, and presidential candidate and a towering figure in the country. In the apt analysis of historian David Donald, after Taney’s death in October 1864 Chase took the “cue” and stumped for Lincoln throughout the Midwest in marked contrast to his earlier maneuverings in 1864 to replace Lincoln as President.
When Congress reconvened a month after Lincoln’s re-election, Lincoln promptly sent Chase’s name to the Senate as his nominee. Chase was confirmed a week later, and he served as the 6th Chief Justice of the United States until his death in 1873.
As well, no solid evidence backs the notion that if Lincoln had lost the 1864 election, he would have avoided designating a Supreme Court nominee during the remaining four months of his term in order to allow the incoming president to make the choice. He might or might not have done so, but either way his primary motivation in waiting until after the election to reveal his choice was not a nobly neutral feeling that the “American people deserve to make the decision,” but because delaying the announcement was politically expedient for him as he sought another term in office.
Snopes reporters are providing live coverage during all of the presidential debates, in addition to the lone vice presidential debate, during the 2020 election year. In this Oct. 7 debate, Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris squared off from Kingsbury Hall in Salt Lake City, Utah, just two days after President Donald Trump returned to the White House after testing positive for COVID-19.
Reporters Madison Dapcevich and Bethania Palma along with Operations Editor Jordan Liles and Engagement Editor Brandon Echter covered the debate. We were also happy to welcome Connor Klentschy, who assisted the team. He is a student of Jevin D. West, Assistant Professor, DataLab, iSchool, University of Washington.
Additionally, our team will be presenting brand new fact-check content (including some spun off from the debates) in the days after, just as we have been doing for more than 25 years. We encourage readers to sign up for our newsletter for our analysis, and to support our newsroom and fact-checking efforts by becoming a Snopes Member.
U.S. Mail and Voter Fraud?
Vice President Mike Pence said: “Universal mail-in voting will create a massive opportunity for mail-in fraud.”
❌ Mostly false. President Trump has repeatedly made this claim as states scrambled to establish new elections rules during the COVID-19 pandemic. #VPDebate//t.co/nc52Y9sXB5
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
Within minutes after U.S. President Donald Trump told the Proud Boys, a far-right group with members who espouse white supremacism, to “stand back and stand by,” on national television on Sept. 29, 2020, members of the men-only group took to fringe social media sites to celebrate what they considered a “historic” moment for their ideological push against leftists.
The president’s comment — which viewers interpreted as either an endorsement of neo-fascism or an example of his unorganized speaking style — took place on a presidential debate stage with Democratic rival Joe Biden after moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump to condemn white supremacists and militia groups, and he did not do it. The scene unfolded like this:
Trump: — I would say, I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing — Wallace: So what do you, what are you saying? Trump: I’m willing to do anything, I want to see peace — Wallace: Then do it, Sir — Biden: Say it. Do it. Say it. Trump: Do you want to call them, what do you want to call them? Give me name, give me a name, go ahead — Wallace: White supremacists and right-wing — Trump: Who do you want me to condemn? Who? Biden: The Proud Boys Wallace: White supremacists and right-wing militias Trump: The Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the Left…
Tarrio had attended Florida Republican events for years and launched a brief, unsuccessful campaign to represent a portion of South Florida in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020. He dropped out of the race before the primary election.
Florida Republican congressional candidate Laura Loomer, a far-right provocateur whose hate speech has gotten her banned from mainstream social media sites, defended the group in a October 2020 interview with Forward, a news outlet for Jewish Americans, and said McInnes is a friend to her. “I think Jewish organizations should be more concerned with Antifa and Black Lives Matter than the Proud Boys,” she said.
In an interview with Business Insider, Tarrio said at least 30 Proud Boys were campaigning for political offices ranging from local City Council seats to U.S. Congress, but he did not identify them, citing concerns for their safety. “People may not even know they’re voting for a member of the group,” the news outlet reported.
Who Is Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio?
McInnes announced he was stepping away from the Proud Boys in November 2018 and months later filed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC, alleging that its “hate group” designation for the Proud Boys erroneously damaged his career. (That case is ongoing as of this report.) Then, Tarrio, 36, a Cuban-American from Miami, took over as chairman.
Responding to a survey during his brief congressional campaign, Tarrio said he was born in Miami to Cuban-American parents, owns several small businesses in the security and surveillance industry, and got involved in political activism in 2005. He said he studied at Miami Dade College and the University of Miami.
According to public records obtained by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Tarrio has a criminal history that includes theft charges. In 2013, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for rebranding stolen medical devices and reselling them across state lines, according to federal records.
In a December 2018 interview with The Miami New Times, Tarrio said he was attracted to two of the Proud Boys’ ideals — glorify the entrepreneur and abolish prisons — since he said he saw firsthand that the prison system isn’t helping reform anyone. (We should note here: Proud Boys did not list abolishing or dismantling the prison system as a core value on its website.) He defended members’ offensive posts, including homophobic and racial slurs and rape jokes, as free speech. Tarrio himself at one point called African American actress Leslie Jones an “ape,” called Islam a “shitstain of a religion,” and referred to transgender people as “it” on social media, per the newspaper’s analysis.
Also in 2018, Tarrio was captured in video footage representing the Proud Boys and heckling then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a campaign event, yelling: “You don’t belong here, you fucking communist.”
Does the Group Only Allow White Members?
No, but that doesn’t mean the group doesn’t promote racism (we’ll explain more below).
First, members of the Proud Boys represent a range of ethnic backgrounds, and leaders have repeatedly said they will screen any man who wants into the group — regardless of of his sexual orientation, voting record, or race.
That, according to supporters, is evidence of the group’s inclusiveness and discredits allegations of racism and bigotry — as well as the fact that their leader identifies as Afro-Cuban. Wilfred Reilly, a political science professor at Kentucky State University, told the conservative media outlet, The Washington Times: “The Proud Boys are openly right-leaning group and they’ll openly fight you. They don’t deny any of this, but saying they’re white supremacist, if you’re talking about a group of people more than 10% people of color and headed by an Afro-Latino guy, that doesn’t make sense.”
But what’s missing in that logic is the clear pattern of social media posts and statements by Proud Boys members that promote white supremacy, as well as members’ associations with extreme white nationalists. No matter how leaders attempt to control the narrative and brand the Proud Boys as a benign, men-only drinking club, documented evidence shows otherwise, according to findings compiled by the anti-hate groups.
Such a rhetorical strategy is known to scholars of white nationalist and extremist groups. Sociologist Rogers Brubaker, for instance, said the concurrent embrace of intolerance and inclusion is a recruiting strategy — people who may otherwise hold an aversion toward extremist groups might join because of the ideological muddiness, and the organization could grow to gain mainstream acceptance among journalists, politicians, and the public, per the SPLC. The center added:
The Proud Boys’ pro-western posture allows them to position themselves — somewhat counterintuitively — as a tolerant and progressive social force. If Islamic backwardness, as they imagine, threatens gay people and women, then they serve as their guardians by protecting and promoting “western values.” Their opposition to Muslims and Islam, improbably, stands as a marker of their own tolerance. In that way, their ideology is similar to many European far-right groups — like the French National Front and Danish Party for Freedom — who push hardline anti-immigration policies at the same time they call for greater tolerance in the form of secularism and gender equality, all the while attempting to distance themselves from overt racists.
In other words, Proud Boys are “utter exemplars of plausible deniability and wanting to have it both ways,” to keep followers, said Alexandra Minna Stern, a University of Michigan professor and researcher of eugenics in the U.S.
One former member told ABC News reporters he left the Proud Boys after the deadly Charlottesville rally because — while the group was not “solely responsible” for the violence there — its meetings and online forums provided “a safe haven for those kinds of racists ideas.”
“Everybody is not perpetuating violence, but the complicitness in knowing that there’s violence going on, the complicitness in that you’re not checking people who have racist and violent tendencies makes you part of the problem,” the ex-Proud Boy said.
During the contentious debate between U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Sep. 29, 2020, Biden referenced an article from The Atlantic where he took a shot at Trump, who supposedly referred to veterans who died in combat as being “suckers” and “losers.” When Biden spoke of his own son’s military service, the following exchange took place:
BIDEN: And speaking of my son, the way you talk about the military, the way you talk about them being losers and being, and just being suckers. My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got, he got the Bronze Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser. He was a patriot. And the people left behind there were heroes …
TRUMP: Really? You talking about Hunter? Are you talking about Hunter?
BIDEN: … and I resent — I’m talking about my son, Beau Biden. You’re talking about …
TRUMP: I don’t know Beau. I know Hunter. Hunter got thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged for cocaine use.
BIDEN: That’s not true, he wasn’t dishonorably discharged. None of that is true.
Joe Biden was speaking of his late son Beau, who as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard was deployed to Iraq in October 2008, where he remained for a year and received a Bronze Star Medal for his service (later passing away of brain cancer in 2015.) Trump, however, tried to shift the conversation to Biden’s other son, Hunter, who served in the Navy Reserve, claiming that he “got thrown out of the military” and was “dishonorably discharged for cocaine use.”
As reported in 2014, Hunter Biden was commissioned as an ensign by the Navy Reserve in 2012, when he was 42 years old:
Hunter Biden, an ensign, [was] selected for commission as a reserve officer through the Direct Commission Officer program in 2012, according to Cmdr. Ryan Perry, a Navy spokesman. He was commissioned into the Navy Reserve unit for Navy Public Affairs Support Element East in Norfolk, Va. Biden, who had no prior military experience, was one of six officers commissioned nationally into the Navy Reserve public affairs division.
Applicants to the direct commissioning program for the Public Affairs Reserve must hold a baccalaureate degree or higher from an accredited institution, preferably in the fields of communication, English, journalism, broadcasting, public relations, rhetoric/speech, marketing, international studies or public administration. Applicants may not have passed their 42nd birthday at time of commissioning or an age waiver is required. The board meets twice annually and, on average, about 35 people apply, Ryan said.
Hunter Biden sought and received a waiver to join the service because of his age.
The Wall Street Journal also reported that Biden had “received a second Navy waiver because of a drug-related incident when he was a young man, according to people familiar with the matter.”
Hunter Biden’s tenure in the U.S. Navy Reserve was a short one. In October 2014, the news broke that he had failed a drug test for cocaine in June 2013, and he was discharged in February 2014. So, it is true, as Trump claimed, that Biden was discharged from the Navy for drug use. But it is not true, as Trump also claimed, that Biden’s discharge was a “dishonorable” one.
As the VA.org website (not affiliated with the U.S. government) observes, the U.S. military utilizes two forms of discharge — administrative and punitive. A dishonorable discharge is a form of punitive discharge:
Many people are under the impression that military discharge comes in one of two forms: honorable or dishonorable. If an enlisted person received less than an honorable discharge they are often under the impression that they received a dishonorable discharge. However, to be clear, you would absolutely know if you received a dishonorable discharge … it is designed to ruin your life ever after and is often accompanied by an extensive visit to a military prison.
THERE ARE TWO FORMS OF MILITARY DISCHARGE
1. Administrative – This form of discharge is given by the discharge authority, often a commanding officer of high rank.
2. Punitive – This form of discharge is imposed by a court-martial.
Dishonorable Discharge:
This type of discharge is the worst anyone in the military can receive. It can only be given by a general court-martial for the highest of offenses, which are often accompanied by a prison sentence in a military prison.
However, Dishonorable Discharges are generally only rendered for the most serious of offenses (e.g., treason, espionage, desertion, sexual assault, murder), not for drug offenses, and they require conviction at a general court-martial, something which did not take place in Biden’s case. When news broke of his discharge, Biden acknowledged in a statement that it had been an administrative one:
“It was the honor of my life to serve in the U.S. Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge,” Hunter Biden said in a statement distributed through his lawyer. “I respect the Navy’s decision. With the love and support of my family, I’m moving forward.”
[A] person familiar with the case said he “was treated no different than any other sailor.”
Hunter Biden’s discharge was therefore certainly not a dishonorable one, but most likely a general discharge, or an other than honorable discharge:
General Discharge (under honorable conditions)
This is often referred to as a general discharge and is bestowed upon those whose serve was faithful and honest in spite of some trouble — as determined by the commander. You might receive this discharge if you were discharged on the basis of:
o failure to maintain military standards in weight
o failure to maintain military standards in fitness
o failure to maintain military standards in dress
o failure to maintain military standards in appearance
o failure to progress in your training
o you received minor disciplinary infractions
Other Than Honorable Discharge
Of all the administrative discharges this is the worst. This is warranted if your discharge was for a pattern of bad behavior. This can include:
a pattern of continued misconduct
an act of serious misconduct
abuse of authority
fraternization
美国总统唐纳德·特朗普说：“医生们说，他们从来没有见过像我身体一样杀死冠状病毒的尸体。他们测试了我的 DNA 而不是 DNA这是美国。”
【结论】
假
【原文】
As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.
On Oct 6, 2020, an image started circulating on social media that supposedly showed a screenshot of a television appearance in which U.S. President Donald Trump said, “the doctors said they’ve never seen a body kill the Coronavirus like my body. They tested my DNA and it wasn’t DNA. It was USA.”
This is not a genuine quote from Trump.
This image of Trump in the above-displayed media comes from a video the president released while he was hospitalized at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after testing positive for COVID-19. The included quote, however, was made up out of whole cloth. This meme appears to have been created by the Twitter account Out of Context Earth, which bills itself as “parody.”
Trump was airlifted to Walter Reed on Oct. 2, 2020. The following day, Trump addressed the American people in a video that he posted to Twitter:
In this video, Trump thanked the medical team at the hospital for its hard work, and told the American people that he was doing well. Trump did not say, however, that the doctors marveled at how his body had killed coronavirus, and that his DNA was not actually DNA, but USA.
直到1904年，新西兰女教师伊莎贝尔同时得到了雌雄植株。这几株猕猴桃正是中华猕猴桃，它们也成为了世界猕猴桃产业的发端。直到现在，至今栽培面积占全球80% 以上的猕猴桃品种——海沃德(Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa ‘Hayward’)、布鲁诺(Actinidia chinensis var. deliciosa ‘Bruno’)等均是从这几株中华猕猴桃培育而来。(1)
“Déjà vu” is the eerie sensation that something — a place, a person, an event — is oddly familiar to us, even when that cannot possibly be the case. It manifests as our seemingly recognizing a place we’ve never been to before or a person we’ve never met, or “recalling” a past memory of an occurrence that is taking place in the present.
Nearly all of us know what déjà vu is and have experienced it ourselves. But how many of us have pondered the question of what the opposite of déjà vu is?
“Déjà vu” is a French term that literally translates as “already seen,” and opposite of that phenomenon is known as “jamais vu,” meaning “never seen” — a term that describes a sense of unfamiliarity with something that should be familiar. A person experiencing jamais vu might, for example, walk through their home or neighborhood and fail to recognize where they are, or encounter family members and friends but view them as strangers:
In psychology, the term jamais vu is used to describe any familiar situation which is not recognized by the observer.
Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer’s impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.
Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily doesn’t recognize a word, person, or place that he/she already knows.
What could cause jamais vu, though? How could we forget something that is so thoroughly familiar to us?
Certainly some medical conditions could produce that phenomenon, such as amnesia, epilepsy, and forms of dementia. But as cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Moulin has noted, it’s something people can experience fleetingly even in the absence of any underlying medical cause:
“If you stare at a word, for instance, it loses its meaning,” says Moulin, who adds that an estimated 60% of people have experienced jamais vu.
“Musicians can get [jamais vu] in the middle of playing a familiar passage. It’s the sensation where you wake up in the morning and turn to the person next to you and feel that they’re a stranger,” says Moulin.
“[It can also occur] when you look at a face for too long and it begins to look strange, or when you’re in a familiar place but think ‘I don’t know where I am’, for a brief, fleeting moment.”
Dr. Moulin also observed that a form of jamais vu known as “semantic satiation” could be induced experimentally:
Moulin says his study shows it’s possible to induce jamais vu by what’s known as semantic satiation, which occurs when the brain becomes fatigued in a specific way.
He asked 92 subjects to write common words such as “door” 30 times in 60 seconds.
When they were later asked to describe their experiences, 68% showed signs of jamais vu.
For example, after writing “door” over and over again some participants reported that “it looked like I was spelling something else,” it “sounded like a made-up word,” and “I began to doubt that I was writing the correct word for the meaning”.
Some thought they had been tricked into thinking it was the right word for a door.
“If you look at something for long enough the mind gets tired and it loses it’s meaning,” Moulin says.
A cousin to déjà vu and jamais vu is “presque vu,” meaning “almost seen.” Presque vu is “the sensation of being on the brink of an epiphany … Frequently, one experiencing presque vu will say that they have something ‘on the tip of their tongue.'”
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
If you think that vice presidential debates – like the one on Oct. 7 between Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris – have no political impact, I have two words for you: Dan Quayle.
After George H.W. Bush selected the little-known 41-year-old Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate, the youthful-looking Quayle tried to deflect concerns about his age and inexperience by comparing himself to John F. Kennedy, who also had served as a congressman and senator before running for president in 1960.
You say ‘potato,’ he says ‘potatoe’
Quayle himself perpetuated his reputation as a dour lightweight.
In 1992 he attacked television character Murphy Brown, an unmarried news anchor, for having a child out of wedlock.
In response, late-night comic David Letterman looked straight into the camera and told Quayle to pay attention. “I’m only going to say this once. Murphy Brown is a fictional character!”
Then, in June 1992, during a trip to an elementary school, Quayle corrected a 12-year-old boy who had correctly spelled “potato,” adding an “e” to the word.
“Maybe the vice president should quit watching ‘Murphy Brown’ and start watching ‘Sesame Street,” joked the late-night TV host Jay Leno.
“It was more than a gaffe,” Quayle wrote of the p-o-t-a-t-o-e moment in his 1994 memoir, “Standing Firm.” “It was a ‘defining moment’ of the worst imaginable kind. I can’t overstate how discouraging and exasperating the whole event was.”
Quayle thought the incident got so much play because “it seemed like a perfect illustration of what people thought about me.”
Dan Quayle was a one-term vice president whose greatest contribution to politics came in a VP debate. In the dog-eat-dog world of politics, no politician since has wanted to end up on the Quayle end of the fire hydrant.
Shortly after Chris Wallace of Fox News moderated a contentious debate between presidential candidates Donald Trump and Joe Biden on Sept. 29, 2020, social media users began circulating photographs said to show Wallace vacationing on the private island (commonly dubbed “Pedophile Island”) owned by the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein:
Although these photographs do capture Chris Wallace vacationing, they have no connection to Epstein or to the notorious private island he once owned in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The persons seen in these photographs are easily identifiable as Wallace and his wife, Lorraine Smothers, along with actor George Clooney and his former girlfriend Stacy Keibler.
The actor and the Fox News host have a friendly relationship, and the two couples spent some time together at Clooney’s home in Lake Como, Italy, in August of 2012. The photographs seen above can be glimpsed in a contemporaneous Politico video interview of Wallace, during which the host described his four-day vacation with his wife at Clooney’s Italian home.
Shortly after 1 a.m. (EDT) on Oct. 2, 2020, President Donald Trump tweeted that he and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19. Around 6 p.m., Trump left the White House via helicopter for treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and doctors later acknowledged that the president had been given supplemental oxygen earlier that day.
While pictures and video hit the news showing Trump’s giving a thumbs-up to reporters as he walked to Marine One for the trip to Walter Reed, social media users circulated photographs supposedly documenting that the president was wearing a “concealed oxygen cylinder” or concentrator under his suit at that time:
According to those posts, Trump was carrying a portable oxygen cylinder, or oxygen concentrator, in his right-hand suit pocket, with a cannula (i.e., thin tube), running up his back under his shirt, out behind his right ear, and then under the face mask he was wearing.
However, video clips of that event don’t back up that claim since they show no bulge in Trump’s suit pocket where the oxygen device was allegedly kept, no tell-tale track up his back where the cannula supposedly ran under his shirt, nor any tube extending out of his shirt and past his ear to his face mask:
Even the smallest of portable oxygen concentrators is bulky enough that it would have produced a noticeable bulge in a standard suit pocket, yet Trump’s pocket appeared completely flat in video of the event, as if it carried nothing:
In addition, no track, ridge or bump where the cannula purportedly ran up Trump’s back was visible along the rear of Trump’s suit:
Finally, what was claimed to be a cannula extending out from under Trump’s shirt collar in the “conspiracy” pictures seemed to be nothing more than a wisp of hair that looked somewhat tube-like when viewed in low-resolution images grabbed from just the right angle, and did not appear as such in other images:
We would also note that if the health of the president of the United States were truly so precarious that he was unable to safely make a 30-second walk from the White House to a waiting helicopter without carrying supplemental oxygen on his person, doctors and officials would undoubtedly have made other arrangements for his transport, or closed off the scene from the press and other observers.
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
On Sept. 15, 2020, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden participated in a roundtable with a group of veterans in Tampa, Florida. The conversation hit on many of the difficulties that were currently facing the United States, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which had already left more than 200,000 people in the U.S. dead. Near the end of the event, Biden said that despite the hardships facing the country, he was optimistic about America’s future.
Here’s a transcript of a portion of Biden’s remarks (emphasis added):
I am, ironically, more optimistic about the prospects of dealing with the problems we talked about today, as well as so many other problems we have right now, than I have ever been in my whole career. And you say, ‘Why in the hell would you say that, Biden? You just talked about all these difficulties.’ Well, I’ll tell you why. Because the American public, the blinders have been taken off. They’ve all of a sudden seen a hell of a lot clearer. They are saying: ‘Jeez, the reason I was able to stay sequestered in my home is because some Black woman was able to stack the grocery shelf, or I got a young Hispanic out there, or these dreamers out there, 60,000 of them, acting as first responders and nurses and docs.’ Or, all of a sudden people are realizing, my lord these people have done so much — not just black, white but across the board — have done so much for me. We can do this. We can get things done. And I think they’re ready and the irony of all ironies is that I think it’s the vehicle by which we’re going to be able to create really good paying jobs. We’re going to be able to provide for significant health care. The idea that in the middle of a pandemic — the worst thing since the great flu back at the turn of the century, where so many people died worldwide — is that people, you know, people are figuring out that we are all in this together. We can get through this if we just level with one another. Just tell the truth. Let people know.
A few weeks after this event, a 10-second clip of Biden’s remarks started to go viral as it was shared by social media users claiming that Biden had made a racist remark.
For example, a member of the group Students for Trump wrote: “Joe Biden literally said the reason he was able to stay quarantined … Was because ‘some black woman was able to stock the grocery shelf.’ And people still think Trump is the racist one.”
Biden: ‘I Was Able to Stay Sequestered’ Thanks to ‘Some Black Woman’ Who Stocked Grocery Shelves pic.twitter.com/raalFcUNKF
This is a genuine video of a remark Biden made during a round table in Tampa, Florida, in September 2020. However, this video — and the many social media posts spreading this video — failed to put Biden’s remarks in their proper context. The full quote shows that Biden was making a point about different groups pulling together in the fight against the coronavirus.
Here’s a longer video from C-SPAN showing Biden’s remarks before and after the quote:
A pending legal filing that seeks to end several options to ease voting amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas contains an allegation of an illegal “ballot harvesting” scheme in Harris County, supposedly run by several Democratic political figures.
This claim was picked up and reported as fact by a number of conservative news outlets, prompting readers to ask Snopes to verify it. We were unable to find any evidence corroborating the “illegal ballot harvesting” claim made in the legal filing.
Examples of headlines spreading the story include the American Greatness website, which ran a headline that reported, “Biden’s Texas Political Director Implicated in Massive Mail-In Ballot Harvesting Scheme in Harris County,” and The Gateway Pundit, which reported, “Joe Biden’s Texas Political Director Dallas Jones Accused of Illegal Ballot Harvesting.”
These stories are sourced from a Sept. 27, 2020, legal filing.
Conservative activist Dr. Steve Hotze, a physician, along with other Republican political figures including the Harris County Republican Party chair, filed a petition for a writ of mandamus. The petition asks the Texas Supreme Court to block Harris County Clerk Christopher Hollins from implementing Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s order moving up the beginning of early voting to start on Oct.13 instead of Oct. 19. It also seeks to stop Hollins from allowing voters to drop off absentee ballots early.
The filing further alleges that two licensed private investigators, described as a former Houston police captain and a former FBI investigator, “have been investigation [sic] ballot harvesting in Harris County for many months.” It claims that Hollins’ efforts as county clerk to organize early voting and early absentee ballot drop-off options for residents “are facilitating the vote harvesting operation.”
The filing accuses several Democratic political figures of involvement and claims a local businessman along with Dallas Jones, the Texas political director for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign, are acting as the scheme’s “lieutenants.”
The filing also cites two unnamed witnesses, one of whom alleged operatives in the scheme bragged they could harvest 700,000 illegal ballots. According to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, Harris County had 2,357,199 in 2018, the most recent figure available.
The only evidence offered in the filing are statements made by the private investigators under oath, which don’t offer any specifics. The statement doesn’t say who the private investigators are working for. One of the investigators claims he will bring his findings to law enforcement and that they are investigating, but he doesn’t state which agency he is referring to.
We reached out to Hotze and his attorney Jared Woodfill for comment, but didn’t hear back in time for publication.
We also reached out to the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, asking whether prosecutors were aware of any allegations like the ones contained in the filing or had any related criminal cases, but got no response.
Additionally, we reached out to Jones for comment but got no response.
“I have no knowledge of any alleged scheme, and Hotze’s filing presents no evidence. The claims are irresponsible and unfounded,” Hollins told us in an email.
The narrative about an illegal ballot harvesting scheme in Texas played into a previous viral story about one such alleged scheme in Minnesota. The claim was made in late September 2020 in misleading videos created by the conservative activist group Project Veritas, which accuse U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., of acting as the scheme’s “architect” but never present any credible evidence supporting that claim.
The term “ballot harvesting” refers to a practice, which is legal in some states, of allowing a third party to deliver mail-in ballots for voters. In Minnesota, a third party can collect and deliver up to three ballots on behalf of voters. In Texas, however, voters must deliver their ballots to election officials themselves.
The Texas Tribune described Hotze as a “litigious conservative activist” who has “gone to court a number of times to challenge Abbott, Hollins and other elected officials over coronavirus-related restrictions — and lately over election procedures — with minimal success so far.”
Hotze’s filing also originally sought to stop Hollins from allowing Harris County voters to drop off ballots at 11 different locations, however Abbott directed counties to designate a single drop-off location, rendering that aspect of the filing moot. Advocacy rights groups have sued Abbott over that decision, accusing him of voter suppression.
As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Read our coronavirus fact checks. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the CDC or WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.
U.S. President Donald Trump posted a message to social media just before midnight on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020, announcing that he and first lady Melania Trump had tested posted for COVID-19:
Around 6 p.m. EDT Friday, Trump was taken from the White House and transported by helicopter to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. CNN reported:
Emerging from the White House residence at 6:16 p.m. ET for his first public appearance since announcing … earlier he had tested positive for coronavirus, Trump walked under his own power to his waiting helicopter and displayed no major outward signs of illness.
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
Late in the evening of Oct. 1, 2020, news broke that U.S. President Donald Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, a highly contagious disease responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans. Shortly afterward, social media users noted that two “doomsday planes” had been mobilized and speculated that the launch of these planes was a show of strength to deter an attack from adversaries in the aftermath of Trump’s diagnosis.
Continuity protocols were activated not long before Trump came out as positive for covid-19. These planes are mobile command centers sent up on the west and east coasts. They can control the nuclear arsenal and activated as a message to any adversaries to not try any funny business in a time of potential weakness. Even if D.C. were gone, these planes can talk to our missile subs underwater etc.
The Boeing E-6B Mercury is an airborne command post capable of launching nuclear weapons and is sometimes referred to as a “doomsday plane.”
While it’s true that two of these “doomsday planes” were launched around the time that news broke about Trump testing positive for COVID-19, there’s no evidence that these two events are related. In fact, a U.S. Strategic Command spokesman told Fox News that this was “purely coincidental” and that these flights were planned before Trump’s diagnosis:
Two Boeing E-6B Mercury planes were detected flying along both coasts of the U.S. mainland early Friday, around the time President Trump announced he and first lady Melania Trump were diagnosed with coronavirus — but the flights were “pre-planned” and the timing was “purely coincidental,” a U.S. Strategic Command spokesman told Fox News.
A senior defense official also told Fox News there has been “no change to the posture of the U.S. military,” adding, “The president remains the commander-in-chief.”
National security reporter Marc Ambinder noted that these planes routinely fly over the United States. Chistiaan Triebert, a reporter for The New York Times, elaborated, saying the two “doomsday planes” that had been spotted after Trump’s diagnosis had made multiple flights over the last few weeks:
The Boeing E-6B Mercury plays a vital part in the United States’ defense strategy. The Navy has 16 of these airborne command posts and at least one of these planes is flown on a nearly daily basis. In other words, the fact that two “doomsday planes” were spotted over the United States on the same day that Trump tested positive for COVID-19 appears to be little more than a coincidence.
On May 27, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted a video posted to Twitter by the group “Cowboys for Trump” in which the group’s leader, Cuoy Griffin, a commissioner for Otero County in New Mexico, stated, “I’ve come to a place where I’ve come to the conclusion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”
Trump, a Republican, retweeted the video and added the comment, “Thank you Cowboys. See you in New Mexico!”
Griffin’s comments were originally made on May 17, 2020, during an event in Truth or Consequences, a city in New Mexico. He equivocated by saying, “I don’t say that in the physical sense,” although the local newspaper, the Alamogordo Daily News, pointed out that “his prior statements received cheers from the crowd before the clarification.”
The retweet by Trump drew criticism that Trump and Griffin were promoting violence against legislators who are members of the opposing political party. Griffin’s comments, in their entirety and as heard in the video tweeted by Trump, are:
I’ve come to a place where I’ve come to the conclusion that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat. I don’t say that in the physical sense and I can already see the videos getting edited where it says I wanna go murder Democrats. No, I say that in the political sense because the Democrat agenda and policy is anti-American right now. It’s where our country’s not coming to a place if you love or hate Donald Trump, our country’s coming to a place if you love or hate America. Because that’s what it’s boiling down to. But um, but as far as Democrats go you had some great conservative candidates.
We need to have, I say the reason why the only good Democrat’s a dead Democrat, I’m saying it politically speaking and I’m saying it because we need to have the majorities in the House and the Senate. It’s the only way that we’re gonna put the brakes on a out-of-control governor. Sometimes you have to hit very rock bottom in order to make real change. It can happen in our own personal lives. It happens in community but it’s also happening in government right now. I believe our government is showing the very worst than they have, and I believe that it’s gonna bring about the very best that our country has politically speaking.
Cowboys for Trump is marketed as a for-profit organization in New Mexico that accepts donations from the public. The tweet that Trump retweeted was originally posted by the organization to refute a Daily Beast article that reported Griffin had called for Democratic politicians to die.
In spite of Cowboys for Trump labeling the Daily Beast article titled “Anti-Lockdown Protesters Now Calling for Dems to Die” as fake news, Griffin is quoted in that article saying that certain Democratic governors should be executed for what he views as treason, stating, “You get to pick your poison: you either go before a firing squad, or you get the end of the rope.”
When asked whether protesters angry over stay-at-home orders meant to slow the spread of COVID-19 were considering using violence, Griffin said in the article, “I’ll tell you what, partner, as far as I’m concerned, there’s not an option that’s not on the table.”
We rate the claim that Trump retweeted a video stating that “the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat” as “True,” because equivocation or not, those were the exact words of Griffin as recorded in the video posted in the tweet, which the president retweeted.
The strange story of Pan Am Flight 914 is frequently shared by UFO blogs and conspiracy-minded websites as if it has been stumping the experts for decades. This “unsolved” event reportedly involves a plane that took off from New York in 1955 with 57 passengers, disappeared for 37 years, then reappeared and landed in Miami as if nothing had happened.
Various solutions have been offered to explain the riddle of Pan Am Flight 914, the most popular of which is that this plane flew through some sort of time-travel portal. The actual explanation is a bit more mundane: The saga of Pan Am Flight 914 is a work of fiction that originated with Weekly World News, a notorious tabloid that operated between 1979 and 2007 (the tabloid would later relaunch as an online-only publication).
In June 2019, the YouTube page “Bright Side” renewed interest in this “mystery” with a viral video that has garnered more than 5 million views:
The first seven minutes of this nine-minute video deal with the mystery supposedly surrounding the saga of Pan Am Flight 914. It isn’t until minute seven that Bright Side mentions the possibility that this story could be a work of fiction. Judging by the influx in queries we received about this topic at the end of June 2019, we’re guessing many viewers didn’t watch the entire film.
The story of Pan Am Flight 914 does not begin at a New York airport in 1955. It actually starts with an article published in Weekly World News three decades later:
Weekly World News was an infamous tabloid known for publishing fantastically fictitious stories, such as this bit about a time traveler getting busted for insider trading, this story about a man suing himself after hitting himself with a boomerang, and these doctored images of “giant” skeletons. In other words, Weekly World News isn’t exactly a reputable source of news.
Weekly World News republished this story at least two more times, once in 1993 and again in 1999. Curiously, the publication used two different photographs of two different men as if they showed “eye-witness” air-traffic controller Juan de la Corte:
Similar to today’s misinformation purveyors, Weekly World News had the habit of using unrelated photographs to illustrate their stories. The image of the plane in this article, for instance, does not show Pan Am Flight 914 landing in Miami after 37 years. This is actually a stock photograph available via Alamy that was taken of a DC-4 plane circa 1935:
Lastly, we searched through newspaper archives for any contemporary articles relating to the disappearance of a plane. Unsurprisingly, we were unable to locate any credible news accounts about the disappearance of Pan Am Flight 914.
Fans of the science-fiction TV series “Twilight Zone” may have experienced some déjà vu while reading this story. While the fictional story of Pan Am Flight 914 originated with the tabloid Weekly World News, it is reminiscent of a 1961 episode of the sci-fi show entitled “The Odyssey Of Flight 33.”
In February 2017, an image purportedly showing a still shot from an episode of the long-running animated television series The Simpsons, featuring a depiction of President Donald Trump lying in a coffin, was circulated on social media:
This image was frequently shared along with messages stating that The Simpsons were foretelling President Trump’s death, since the show has reportedly predicted so many other major events:
The Simpsons have shown impressive ability to predict the future, we have witnessed horrifying events that have come true and that without doubt have passed into history, as in the case of the fall of the twin towers , The emergence of Ebola, video calls, the triumph of Donald Trump as President of the United States and this, just to mention a few, however, recently The Simpsons have brought to light a new prediction that could undoubtedly mark the world and Is the death of the current president.
There are several problems with this claim.
First, the above-displayed image was not taken from an episode of The Simpsons (nor did it appear in an article by The Huffington Post promulgating this rumor, as the watermark suggests). According to a Spanish-language video from Badabun, which had more than 1 million views at the time of this writing and was largely responsible for spreading this rumor, the image first appeared in a thread on a 4chan.org forum.
An English-language video was also circulated about this theory.
In addition to the unofficial origins of this image, these videos are questionable because they used previously debunked “Simpsons predictions” in order to lend credence to their claims. For instance, the clip of Trump’s riding down an escalator aired after Trump had announced that he was running for president, not before.
On the last Friday of February 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump held a campaign rally in South Carolina and made comments during a speech in which he accused Democrats of “politicizing” the coronavirus outbreak that left many with the impression that he had referred to the virus itself as a “hoax.”
Various news media outlets and personalities reported that he did so, including syndicated columnist Dana Milbank, who tweeted:
Likewise, Politico ran a story headlined “Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax.'” And in an article headlined “Trump calls coronavirus Democrats’ ‘new hoax,'” NBC News correspondent Lauren Egan wrote: “President Donald Trump accused Democrats of ‘politicizing’ the deadly coronavirus during a campaign rally here on Friday, claiming that the outbreak is ‘their new hoax’ as he continued to downplay the risk in the U.S.”
These prompted inquiries from Snopes readers who asked us to verify the accuracy of the claim.
Trump held the rally on Feb. 28 on the eve of the South Carolina Democratic primary, which former Vice President Joe Biden ultimately won. During his roughly one-hour, 20-minute commentary, Trump hit back at his political opponents in the Democratic Party for their critiques of his administration’s handling of a potential pandemic.
Here are Trump’s exact words on the topic at the South Carolina rally:
Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa, they can’t even count. No they can’t. They can’t count their votes.
One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia. That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was on a perfect conversation. They tried anything, they tried it over and over, they’ve been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning, they lost, it’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax. But you know, we did something that’s been pretty amazing. We’re 15 people [cases of coronavirus infection] in this massive country. And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more than that.
In context, Trump did not say in the passage above that the virus itself was a hoax. He instead said that Democrats’ criticism of his administration’s response to it was a hoax. He muddied the waters a few minutes later, however, by comparing the number of coronavirus fatalities in the U.S. (none, at that point in time) to the number of fatalities during an average flu season, and accusing the press of being in “hysteria mode”:
So a number that nobody heard of that I heard of recently and I was shocked to hear it, 35,000 people on average die each year from the flu. Did anyone know that? 35,000. That’s a lot of people. It could go to 100,000, it could be 27,000, they say usually a minimum of 27, it goes up to 100,000 people a year who die, and so far we have lost nobody to coronavirus in the United States. Nobody. And it doesn’t mean we won’t, and we are totally prepared, it doesn’t mean we won’t. But think of it. You hear 35 and 40,000 people, and we’ve lost nobody, and you wonder, the press is in hysteria mode.
For his part, Trump later defended his comments by stating he was indeed calling out the Democrats’ efforts to blame him and his administration for what they have characterized as an inadequate response “because we’ve done such a good job.”
Trump did however downplay the scale of the virus and the danger it posed to the public. At the time he made his remarks, the U.S. had 57 confirmed coronavirus cases, 40 of which came from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which experienced an outbreak of the virus. And health officials were warning that the spread of the virus domestically was “inevitable.”
The novel coronavirus infection has been a fast-moving crisis. Just hours after Trump’s rally in South Carolina, the U.S. had its first coronavirus death. As of this writing (at the beginning of March 2020), six people in the U.S. have died from the COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus. Globally, more than 80,000 cases have been identified and 3,000 people have died, while experts have warned the outbreak of the virus could become a pandemic.
Although Trump made a reference to seasonal flu death rates, COVID-19, which was first detected in the winter of 2019 in Wuhan, China, appears so far to be more lethal. And because the virus is new, no vaccine or treatment exists for it.
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
People who have had the COVID swab test say that it feels like their brain is being pierced by an oversized cotton bud. Recent lurid headlines will not put people at ease. “Woman’s nose ‘starts leaking brain and spinal fluid’ after she took a Covid swab test”, said the Daily Star. “Coronavirus swab test went so far up a woman’s nose it caused her brain to leak”, was the Mirror’s headline.
Woman’s brain punctured during coronavirus nasal swab. #auspol Just another reason not to allow untrained people to conduct dangerous medical procedures. //t.co/XSFRhGyUUN
The inside of the nose follows the roof of the mouth towards the back of the head. snapgalleria/Shutterstock
Please do not be afraid of having your nose swabbed. It may be uncomfortable, but you cannot accidentally jab your brain. The swab test is our only way of telling who has and who hasn’t got COVID. It’s a vital public health tool to help us bring this pandemic under control.
This article is republished here with permission from The Conversation. This content is shared here because the topic may interest Snopes readers; it does not, however, represent the work of Snopes fact-checkers or editors.
President Donald Trump went directly to the public and announced via Twitter early on Oct. 2 that “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!”
The president’s straightforward announcement was unlike many presidents in the past. My research has focused on how politicians dodge questions. I have co-authored an entry in the Encyclopedia of Deception with scholar Michael J. Beatty about how rampant deception is when it comes to presidential health.
Nixon had been campaigning intensely and did not prepare for the debate. He held a campaign event that morning with the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, and never met with his staff and didn’t even take their calls. Meanwhile, Kennedy had been fiercely preparing with his advisers at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago.
After an initial announcement with remarkable transparency, it remains to be seen whether Trump will continue in that vein or adopt the more traditional practices of presidents who were less than open about their health.
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
Mail-in ballots have been the subject of criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration ahead of the November 2020 elections, as more people will use that option to cast their votes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the administration argued that it will lead to “substantially” more voter fraud — a claim we have debunked — stories about problems with mailing services are going viral on conservative media outlets.
One particular story covered by Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Fox News, detailed how three trays of mail, which included mail-in ballots, were found in a ditch by a highway in the state of Wisconsin in late September. Some of the headlines covering this story included: “Mailed-in Ballots Found Tossed in Wisconsin Ditch,” “Trays of mail, including absentee ballots, found in a ditch in Wisconsin,” and “U.S. Postal Service Investigating Trays of Mail, Absentee Ballots found in Wisconsin Ditch.”
Snopes readers asked us to verify this story, and while we learned that the incident did take place, it’s worth noting that many important details remain unknown.
We learned that three trays of mail were found in a ditch at the intersection of two highways in Greenville, Wisconsin, on the morning of Sept. 21, 2020. We reached out to the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office, which initially found the trays in the ditch. Lt. Ryan Carpenter, supervisor of the Criminal Investigation Division said: “The mail was supposed to be in transit to the post office. The content of the mail was mixed, but did contain several absentee ballots.”
Their full statement:
We do not know if the absentee ballots were completed by voters, or blank ballots on their way to the voters, nor do we know if ballots were predominant among the mail found.
Meagan Wolfe, the director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said during a press conference on Oct. 1, 2020, that no absentee ballots from Wisconsin were found. She did not know, however, if these were ballots from other states.
When we pressed the Sheriff’s department further about the contents of the absentee ballots, they added that they “did not look at the ballots specifically,” before they handed them over to the Postal Inspector. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service began investigating the circumstances that led to the assortment of mail being found in a ditch. We asked the Postal Inspector’s office about the nature of the ballots in the mail, how many were found, and other details about the investigation. They said they were “unable to comment” at this time.
The Postal Service has been under fire for various problems in the mail-in voting process. During the election primaries conducted over the summer of 2020, more than one million ballots were sent late to voters, running the risk that votes would not be returned to officials in time to be counted. While local election officials were mostly blamed for this inefficiency, the Postal Service was also taken to task. In Wisconsin, thousands of missing or nullified ballots were reported during the state’s primaries in April. In the state alone, hundreds of ballots were left unaccounted for in tubs in Milwaukee, at least 160 ballots were erroneously returned to a local election office, and almost 400 had issues with the postmarks, leading to confusion over whether they could be counted.
At the same time, the new postmaster general Louis DeJoy, who is also a close ally to Trump, made a number of operational changes, including cost-cutting measures, that coincided with slowdowns in mail deliveries. This led to accusations from Democrats that the Postal Service was deliberately being gutted to impact the election process.
It is accurate to report that three trays of mail — including several mail-in ballots — were indeed found in a ditch by a highway in Wisconsin and an investigation into the incident is ongoing. We thus rate this claim as “True.”
In July 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that he would commute the sentence of Roger Stone, a political ally who was convicted of seven felony charges, including witness tampering, lying to congress, and obstruction, in relation to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Shortly after the news broke, a photograph started to circulate online that supposedly showed Stone and members of the Proud Boys flashing a white power gesture at a bar:
This is a genuine photograph of Stone and members of the Proud Boys. Some may argue that this group is merely flashing an “OK” symbol, but this argument doesn’t really hold up, especially when you consider that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the Proud Boys as a hate group that espouses white supremacist ideals, and that white supremacists have adopted the “OK” hand gesture as a symbol of hate.
This photograph was taken around the time of the Dorchester Conference, Oregon’s oldest Republican political conference, in March 2018. The Willamette Week reported that Stone, who was scheduled to speak at the event, hired members of the Proud Boys to be his private security.
The Willamette Week wrote:
Roger Stone—the former political adviser to Richard Nixon and President Donald Trump—appeared without incident at the state’s oldest Republican conference last weekend.
But an organizer of the Dorchester Conference in Salem says Stone was so worried for his safety that he enlisted a right-wing group as private security.
Patrick Sheehan, a Dorchester board member who booked Stone, says Stone reached out to the Proud Boys—a group notorious for its participation in Portland street brawls—after reading about violent political clashes in Oregon.
“He was worried about getting killed,” Sheehan says. “He gets death threats constantly.”
Photos of Stone drinking with a handful of Proud Boys circulated across social media over the weekend, outraging Democrats.
The photograph of “Stone drinking with a handful of Proud Boys” mentioned in the Willamette Week article was originally posted by InfoWars host Alex Jones on Twitter on March 3, 2020. The image was captioned: “InfoWars Roger Stone joined the @proudboysUSA in Salem Oregon tonight. I joined them in spirit!”
This is a genuine image of Stone with members of the Proud Boys in March 2018. Although the meaning behind the “OK” hand gesture is a bit murky — it was, and is still, widely used as a harmless symbol for approval or consent — this symbol has been adopted by white supremacists as a symbol of hate.
Here’s the Anti-Defamation League’s explanation of the “OK” hand gesture as a symbol of hate:
In 2017, the “okay” hand gesture acquired a new and different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters “wp,” for “white power.” The “okay” gesture hoax was merely the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a common image as white supremacist.
In the case of the “okay” gesture, the hoax was so successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post photos to social media of themselves posing while making the “okay” gesture.
Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
And here’s how Southern Poverty Law Center described the Proud Boys:
Established in the midst of the 2016 presidential election by VICE Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys are self-described “western chauvinists” who adamantly deny any connection to the racist “alt-right,” insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt” agenda.
Their disavowals of bigotry are belied by their actions: rank-and-file Proud Boys and leaders regularly spout white nationalist memes and maintain affiliations with known extremists. They are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric. Proud Boys have appeared alongside other hate groups at extremist gatherings like the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Indeed, former Proud Boys member Jason Kessler helped to organize the event, which brought together Klansmen, antisemites, Southern racists, and militias. Kessler was only “expelled” from the group after the violence and near-universal condemnation of the Charlottesville rally-goers.
Other hardcore members of the so-called “alt-right” have argued that the “western chauvinist” label is just a “PR cuck term” McInnes crafted to gain mainstream acceptance. “Let’s not bullshit,” Brian Brathovd, aka Caeralus Rex, told his co-hosts on the antisemitic The Daily Shoah — one of the most popular alt-right podcasts. If the Proud Boys “were pressed on the issue, I guarantee you that like 90% of them would tell you something along the lines of ‘Hitler was right. Gas the Jews.’”
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
One of the biggest talking points to emerge after the first presidential debate between U.S. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in September 2020 was the claim that Trump had “refused to condemn white supremacists” when invited to do so.
On CNN, political commentator Van Jones emphatically made the argument that Trump had “refused to condemn white supremacy,” stating:
Only three things happened, for me, tonight: Number one, Donald Trump refused to condemn white supremacy. Number two, the president of the United States refused to condemn white supremacy. Number three, the commander-in-chief refused to condemn white supremacy on the global stage, in front of my children, in front of everybody’s families. And he was given the opportunity multiple times to condemn white supremacy, and he gave a wink and a nod to a racist, Nazi, murderous organization that is now celebrating online, that is now saying “We have a go-ahead.” Look at what they’re saying, look at what the Proud Boys are doing right now online, because the president of the United States refused to condemn white supremacy.
Only three things happened tonight:
1. #DonaldTrump refused to condemn white supremacy. 2. The #POTUS refused to condemn white supremacy. 3. The #CommanderInChief REFUSED to condemn white supremacy on the GLOBAL STAGE.
On Sept. 30, the day after the debate, Trump told reporters that he didn’t know who the Proud Boys were, but “whoever they are, they have to stand down, let law enforcement do their work.” Asked whether he denounced white supremacists, Trump said, without specificity, “I’ve always denounced any form, any form, any form of any of that.”
Trump hasn’t always condemned white supremacists — for example, he did not do so just hours earlier, despite being repeatedly asked to, in front of an international television audience — but he has spoken of them in condemnatory terms in the past.
In August 2017, Trump was widely criticized for saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of clashes between neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and pro-Confederate monument demonstrators, and anti-racist counter-protesters (including some antifa activists) in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those clashes came to a head when James Alex Fields, an Ohio man with ties to the American far right, murdered anti-racism activist Heather Heyer by striking her with the car he was driving.
We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence. It has no place in America…No matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws, we all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other, and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry, and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans. Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.
During an Aug. 15, 2017, press conference, Trump said his earlier reference to “very fine people” pertained to demonstrators who are in favor of preserving Confederate monuments rather than removing them, and he added: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
In August 2019, Trump condemned “racism, bigotry, and white supremacy” after a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which the suspect allegedly targeted those he perceived to be immigrants and had allegedly posted a far-right, anti-Hispanic and white supremacist manifesto. Speaking from the White House, Trump said:
“The shooter in El Paso posted a manifesto online consumed by racist hate. In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart, and devours the soul. We have asked the FBI to identify all further resources they need to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism — whatever they need.”
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
In September 2020, just weeks before the Nov. 3, presidential election, the Republican chairmen of two U.S. Senate committees published a joint report about the business activities of Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, which carried the somewhat dramatic title of “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns.”
Right-leaning websites and supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump talked up the findings of the investigation, which was published by U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — the Republican chairmen of the U.S. Senate committees on Finance, and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, respectively.
The Daily Wire called it a “bombshell” report that contained “damning new allegations” against Hunter Biden, while Donald Trump Jr. said the investigation had uncovered a “laundry list of despicable corruption surrounding Hunter Biden.” Fox News host Sean Hannity, one of Trump’s most prominent supporters, said the report “should immediately disqualify Joe Biden from being the president of the United States.”
On Twitter, Trump highlighted one of the most-publicized allegations in the report — that Hunter Biden had received $3.5 million from Elena Baturina, a Russian billionaire and wife of the former mayor of Moscow.
Amos Hochstein, former U.S. special envoy and coordinator for International Energy Affairs, testified to the committees’ investigation that he had spoken to Joe Biden in October 2015 in order to make Biden aware that Russian actors were using his son’s work for Burisma as part of a campaign of disinformation by falsely claiming that it constituted a conflict of interest. Hochstein said he had a similar conversation with Hunter Biden in November 2015.
In the same section of his testimony, Hochstein stated unambiguously that Hunter Biden’s work with Burisma had never had any bearing whatsoever on U.S. policy towards Ukraine. It’s worth quoting that section of Hochstein’s testimony in full (from page 73). Here, Hochstein is being questioned by attorney Zach Schram, who is appearing on behalf of Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee:
Schram: Did you change U.S. policy toward Ukraine in any manner to assist Hunter Biden or Burisma? Hochstein: No. Schram: Are you aware of any U.S. official who changed U.S. policy toward Ukraine in any manner to assist Hunter Biden or Burisma? Hochstein: No. Schram: On August 14th of this year, Chairman Johnson stated to One America News that there was, quote, evidence of wrongdoing or illegal activity related to Vice President and Hunter Biden. Do you agree with that characterization? Hochstein: No. Schram: Are you aware of any evidence to support a claim of wrongdoing by Vice President Biden with respect to his policy in Ukraine? Hochstein: No.
Notably, none of this section of Hochstein’s testimony was included or mentioned in the final report.
Schram put similar questions — about whether Joe Biden had engaged in any wrongdoing, whether U.S. policy was changed to benefit Hunter Biden, and so on — to five Obama-era officials. Each one of them gave substantially the same responses: that they were unaware of any wrongdoing of any kind by the former vice president, and unaware of any effort by any official to change U.S. policy, or make any decision whatsoever, in order to benefit either Hunter Biden or Burisma Holdings.
The committee lawyers also interviewed Karen Tramontano and Sally Painter, two former Clinton administration officials who work for Blue Star Strategies, an international consultancy firm that was hired by Burisma during the period in question. Both testified, in clear terms, that U.S. policy on Ukraine had never been affected in any way, by considerations of Burisma or Hunter Biden.
Remarkably, Grassley and Johnson’s report does not mention that clear consensus among the individuals the committees interviewed. Instead, the final report states simply, “The extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”
Former U.S. Officials Worry Grassley-Johnson Investigation Product of Russian disinformation
Joe Biden (L) and Amos J. Hochstein (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
Hochstein, the former State Department official who spoke to Joe and Hunter Biden about his concerns regarding Russian propaganda, told Senate investigators he believes that, five years later, the former vice president is still being targeted by Russian disinformation efforts. Uninvited, Hochstein volunteered during questioning that he thought the Grassley-Johnson investigation was itself a product of that Russian disinformation campaign:
Schram: Do you remain concerned that Vice President Biden is a target of a Russian disinformation effort? Hochstein: Yes. Schram: Why? Hochstein: Because I can see it on a regular basis. I think this investigation is probably the successful outcome of that effort…
In his testimony, Hochstein outlined his concerns that the Senate investigation was being used by Russia to “launder” false claims and smuggle them into mainstream public debate in the United States. Hochstein referred to Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian Ukrainian MP who has for years made unsubstantiated allegations that Ukraine — and not Russia — orchestrated disinformation campaigns during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and that former vice president Biden had acted corruptly with regard to Ukraine and Burisma.
In 2019, Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, traveled to Ukraine and openly met with Derkach as part of an effort to obtain evidence against the Bidens. In September 2020, the U.S. Treasury Department implemented economic sanctions against Derkach, describing him as “an active Russian agent for over a decade”:
From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day. Derkach’s unsubstantiated narratives were pushed in Western media through coverage of press conferences and other news events, including interviews and statements.
Between May and July 2020, Derkach released edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials, and he levied unsubstantiated allegations against U.S. and international political figures. Derkach almost certainly targeted the U.S. voting populace, prominent U.S. persons, and members of the U.S. government, based on his reliance on U.S. platforms, English-language documents and videos, and pro-Russian lobbyists in the United States used to propagate his claims.
Schram, the attorney asking questions on behalf of Peters, outlined what he presented as a troubling overlap between several announcements and statements by Derkach, and the timing of meetings, statements and hearings initiated by Republicans on the committees. Schram asked Hochstein if that pattern concerned him. Hochstein said it did (page 61):
“… The pattern that concerns me is that it’s the laundering of information when someone who has no credibility in Ukraine, let alone anywhere else … I don’t really care what he says in Ukraine. It doesn’t bother me. Nobody believes him in Ukraine. What bothers me is that it seems that more people in the United States believe him than people who know him in Ukraine believe him. There, he’s discredited, and here, his information, sometimes in a direct leap and sometimes through a stop on the way, gets into the mainstream discussions of U.S. policy.”
Hochstein later added:
“I had heard these allegations before, except that they usually came from noncredible sources. I was rather disappointed and sad to see that it was coming from more mainstream, as in the United States Senate, which I hold in great regard and great esteem.”
None of this section of Hochstein’s testimony was included or mentioned in Grassley and Johnson’s final report.
In his testimony (on page 27), Kent said he was “concerned that some of their [the committees’] activities could be exploited to advance a Russian agenda” and expressed a concern that Derkach’s “unsubstantiated allegations have also been amplified by some Americans,” including Giuliani.
Anita Decker Breckenridge, records representative to former President Barack Obama and formerly White House deputy chief of staff for operations, was responsible for responding to the committees’ requests for certain Obama-era records, as part of the Grassley-Johnson investigation. In her reply, she put on record her view that the request “serves no legitimate purpose” and “[gives] credence to a Russia disinformation campaign” but ultimately handed over the records “in the interest of countering the misinformation campaign underlying this request.” In March 2020, she wrote (on page 398):
President Obama has consistently supported the nonpartisan administration of presidential records and the commitment to transparency core to NARA’s [the National Archives and Records Administrations] mission. However, the current request is not a proper use of the limited NARA exceptions. It arises out of efforts by some, actively supported by Russia, to shift the blame for Russian interference in the 2016 election to Ukraine …
The request for early release of presidential records in order to give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign — one that has already been thoroughly investigated by a bipartisan congressional committee — is without precedent … This use of the special access process serves no legitimate purpose, and does not outweigh or justify infringing confidentiality interests that all presidents have sought to protect. Nevertheless, in the interest of countering the misinformation campaign underlying this request, we are prepared on this occasion to provide the Committees access to the records responsive to this request.
The Republican authors of the final report firmly denied that they were advancing a Russian disinformation campaign, claiming that that was, itself, an unfounded conspiracy theory. They attributed to theory to Democratic lawmakers on the two committees, a misleading characterization because it omits to mention the trenchant concerns raised by non-partisan officials.
Report Hints at, but Doesn’t Prove, Criminal Financial Activity by Hunter Biden
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) participates in hearing (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Perhaps the most salacious allegations in the report, and the most widely publicized ones, relate to Hunter Biden’s personal financial affairs. In particular, the report alleges the following:
“Hunter Biden received a $3.5 million wire transfer from Elena Baturina, the wife of the former mayor of Moscow.”
Here’s what the final report says about that alleged $3.5 million payment (on page 69):
Hunter Biden and his associate, Archer, had a financial relationship with Russian businesswoman Elena Baturina. Baturina is the former wife of the late Yuri Luzhkov, who was the mayor of Moscow and was fired in 2010 by then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev over corruption allegations. Baturina became Russia’s only female billionaire when her plastics company, Inteko, received a series of Moscow municipal contracts while her husband was mayor.
…On Feb. 14, 2014, Baturina wired $3.5 million to a Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (Rosemont Seneca Thornton) bank account for a “Consultancy Agreement DD12.02.2014.” Rosemont Seneca Thornton is an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden that was incorporated on May 28, 2013 in Wilmington, Del.
However, Hunter Biden’s attorney, George Mesires, refuted this claim, which the report describes as one of the investigation’s “key findings.” In a statement sent to Snopes, Mesires wrote:
“The Senate report falsely alleges that Hunter Biden had a financial relationship with Russian businesswoman Yelena Baturina and that he received $3.5 million from Baturina. Hunter Biden was not a co-founder of Rosemont Seneca Thornton LLC (“RST”) nor did he have an equity interest in RST, so the claim that he was paid $3.5 million is false.”
None of the news reports referenced above contained any evidence that their authors had sought comment from Hunter Biden on the Baturina allegation. We asked Grassley and Johnson for a response to Mesires’ statement, but we didn’t receive a response of any kind.
‘Prostitution, and or Human Trafficking’
Another “key finding” from the report was the allegation that:
“Hunter Biden paid nonresident women who were nationals of Russia or other Eastern European countries and who appear to be linked to an ‘Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.'”
Predictably, this allegation attracted widespread news coverage, including articles by Fox News, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, the Sun, and the Federalist. However, its sourcing appears rather uncertain. In a footnote on page 67, the report states that:
There is extensive public reporting concerning Hunter Biden’s alleged involvement with prostitution services. Records on file with the Committees do not directly confirm or refute these individual reports. However, they do confirm that Hunter Biden sent thousands of dollars to individuals who have either: 1) been involved in transactions consistent with possible human trafficking; 2) an association with the adult entertainment industry; or 3) potential association with prostitution. Some recipients of those funds are Ukrainian and Russian citizens.
The records note that it is a documented fact that Hunter Biden has sent funds to nonresident alien women in the United States who are citizens of Russia and Ukraine and who have subsequently wired funds they have received from Hunter Biden to individuals located in Russia and Ukraine. The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to what “appears to be an Eastern European prostitution or human trafficking ring.”
The first thing to note is that the “extensive public reporting” in question appears to amount, in fact, to a single article published by the New York Post in March 2017. It was based on a leaked court filing from Hunter Biden’s divorce from his wife, Kathleen, who accused him of “spending extravagantly on his own interests (including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations) …”
Speaking to The New Yorker in the summer of 2019, Hunter Biden denied hiring prostitutes.
Secondly, the footnote itself notes that the committees don’t have evidence that directly confirms the claim that Hunter Biden hired prostitutes. Rather, it states that “records on file” with the two committees point to patterns of transactions and payments involving Biden which suggest a link to prostitution or human trafficking.
It’s not clear what the nature of those records is. Elsewhere in the report, claims about payments and transactions are linked to citations of specific “confidential documents”, for example “Confidential Document 1”, “Confidential Document 14” and so on. Those typically appear to be bank records. However, the allegation that Biden sent thousands of dollars to women linked to prostitution is not cited in that way, and the alleged payments are not referred to separately, or cited separately. This would tend to suggest that the “records on file with the committees” are not bank statements.
The footnote also refers to the records in a somewhat unusual way, for example: “The records note that it is a documented fact that Hunter Biden has sent funds to nonresident alien women …” and “The records also note that some of these transactions are linked to…” If the records constituted concrete evidence of Biden’s transactions, then it would make more sense to say “The records show that …” It is notable that the report doesn’t describe them in that way, and it suggests some measure of distance between concrete proof of Biden’s alleged payments, and the records on file with the committees.
Snopes asked Grassley and Johnson for further details about those records, including their format, their author(s), and why they hadn’t been specifically cited in the report, or published as exhibits. We also asked for copies of the records in question. We did not receive a response of any kind.
Other Claims
The Grassley-Johnson report also details business connections between Hunter Biden and several Chinese nationals who, according to the report, have “deep connections to the Communist Chinese government.” In particular, the report addresses BHR Partners, a fund created by a 2013 agreement between Rosemont Seneca and Bohai Capital.
The report details multiple transactions between Hunter Biden, his uncle, James Biden, and James Biden’s wife, Sara, and entities associated with Ye Jianming, a businessman reportedly detained in China on suspicion of financial crimes, as well as Patrick Ho, an associate of Ye, who was convicted in 2019 of international bribery and money laundering.
The transactions in question are rather convoluted, and some of the individuals and entities involved certainly appear questionable. However, the Grassley-Johnson report does not articulate specific acts of wrongdoing, or criminal offenses, by Hunter Biden or his family members.
U.S. Election Day is Nov. 3, 2020. Check your state’s vote-by-mail options. Browse our coverage of candidates and the issues. And just keep fact-checking.
In September 2020, in the days before the first presidential debate between U.S. President Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden, rumors circulated online that Biden and his team were undertaking nefarious actions in order to gain an advantage over the incumbent. These rumors in general claimed that the former vice president would be wearing a secret earpiece to receive answers from his team, or that he would have a hidden teleprompter in order to read lines during the debate.
One website went so far as to claim that Biden had a “medical device implanted in his skull.”
No evidence exists to support these claims. And if these attacks sound familiar, it’s because they are nearly identical to false rumors that were spread to smear former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.
On Sept. 7, 2016, Clinton sat down with NBC reporter Matt Lauer to answer questions during the network’s “Commander-In-Chief Forum.” Shortly afterward, a “high-res” image was circulated online along with the claim that it showed a “secret earpiece” in Clinton’s ear and that the candidate was being fed her answers from someone offstage. This “high-res” image was actually a severely cropped image from an AFP reporter and the “secret earpiece” was actually just an odd reflection near Clinton’s ear. This “object” didn’t appear in any of the other photographs or videos from the event that we examined, and the claim that Clinton was being given the answers was based on nothing but speculation.
The “secret earpiece” claim above was just a prelude to the onslaught of disinformation that would get churned out after the first 2016 presidential debate. One such rumor was centered on an odd wrinkle on Clinton’s suit. While propagandists claimed that this was evidence that Clinton was again using a secret earpiece, the wrinkle was actually caused by the wire from the lapel microphone that both Clinton and Trump were wearing during the debate.
In addition to falsely claiming that Clinton was being fed answers via a secret earpiece, online trolls also claimed that Clinton had a teleprompter embedded in her debate podium. Photographs and video from the event clearly showed that this was not the case.
It should be noted that the 2016 smear campaign against Clinton wasn’t entirely novel. In fact, similar accusations were also levied against presidential candidates Al Gore in 2000, George W. Bush in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008. In Bush’s case, the rumor was based on an image supposedly showing a “mysterious bulge” on the back of his suit. Bush said at the time that the “bulge” was the result of a poorly tailored suit and scoffed at the idea that he was being fed information during the debate:
I don’t know what that is. I mean, it is — I’m embarrassed to say it’s a poorly tailored shirt.
I guess the assumption was that if I were straying off course they would … kind of like a hunting dog, they would punch a buzzer and I would jerk back into place … That’s just absurd.
These false smears were designed to give voters the impression that the opposing party’s politician was attempting to steal the election through nefarious means. This tactic has been used for years, and it doesn’t seem like the 2020 presidential debates are going to be any different.
As the first presidential debate of the 2020 campaign approached in September 2020, we examined a number of similar rumors circulating about Biden. For example: An out-of-context video clip of Biden taking a question from a potential voter was shared on social media as if the candidate was reading from a teleprompter during a live interview; dubious websites started spreading the idea that Biden was planning on using a secret earpiece so that he could receive answers from someone offstage; and the conspiratorial website Infowars started pushing the unfounded notion that Biden was given the questions in advance. The aforementioned rumors are either outright false or are unsupported by evidence.
On the morning of the first debate, Fox News reported that Biden was refusing a request from the Trump campaign for a third party to examine the ear canals of both candidates before they took the stage. The Biden campaign has denied this report, calling it “completely absurd.” Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield added that Biden “is not wearing an earpiece” for the debate, and that the campaign “never asked for breaks.”
While we have not yet mastered the ability to predict the future, we have grown accustomed to examining the past. And if the historical record is any indication, the claim that Biden will be wearing a “secret earpiece” during the debate is a recycled and baseless smear aimed at undermining a presidential candidate.
