Your weekly fact-checks
We fact-checked the first 2024 US Presidential debate live!
Using the Factiverse Live Fact Checking product, we detected and fact-checked numerous claims made by candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, during their debate last week.
We gathered the total number of claims made by each of the candidates and allocated which claims were supported and disputed.
Here are the results:
Want to learn more about how it works? Click HERE to watch a tutorial made by the team!
#Elections2024
This week's election: United Kingdom General Election
CBS News
Election Date: 04/07/2024
British voters will head to the polls Thursday to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) for the House of Commons, with a party needing at least 326 seats to form a majority government and its leader becoming the prime minister. Polls and political analysts have predicted for many weeks that Labour will sweep to a landslide majority in Parliament. If the latest polling data proves accurate, Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's 18-month tenure will end and Britons will wake up Friday morning to a new party in charge of the country for the first time in 14 years.
#Politics
Snopes
False: CNN planned to implement a one- to two-minute delay during the first U.S. presidential debate on June 27, 2024, and use it to "cut and edit" the audio as it pleased.
Social media posts claimed CNN planned to use a lengthy broadcast delay during the debate to allow time "to cut and edit audio they don't like. A writer with TheLeadingReport.com, posted on X, "BREAKING: CNN will implement a 1-2 minute delay for tonight's presidential debate instead of the standard 7-second delay, potentially allowing time to edit parts of the broadcast." Minutes later, @CNNPR, the official CNN Communications account on X, replied to Webb's post by stating the delay rumour was "false."
Reuters
False: France’s Le Pen did not say Macron could be arrested.
Marine Le Pen, the leading figure of France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party, did not say in a video that she would “save” the country from a “New World Order”, or that President Emmanuel Macron could be arrested, despite people sharing a year-old article headline that makes such a claim. The posts were shared after Macron on June 9 announced snap legislative elections following his centre-right La Republique en Marche (LREM) party’s heavy defeat to Le Pen’s RN in the European Parliament vote.
Snopes
Mostly True: Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the two oldest U.S. presidential candidates ever.
Biden and Trump have all but officially secured presidential nominations from their respective political parties. When that happens at party conventions in the coming weeks, they will indeed be the two oldest presidential nominees representing a major political party. There have been older third-party and independent candidates, as well as older candidates who sought but did not receive a major-party nomination.
Newschecker
False: Photo of Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros with former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s daughter.
A reverse image search led to an August 13, 2012, Guardian article featuring the same photo, captioned "Billionaire investor George Soros with his fiancée Tamiko Bolton," confirming the viral image shows Soros and Bolton at his residence in Southampton, New York. Additionally, a keyword search for "Manmohan Singh daughters" led to a September 15, 2014, Indian Express report with a photo of Singh's daughters, proving the woman in the viral image is not Singh's daughter.
#Conflicts
PolitiFact
Half-True: “The weapons that Ukraine used in the early days of this war to fend off the Russian invasion are the weapons that Donald Trump sent, that Barack Obama and Joe Biden had refused to send.”
The Obama administration in 2014 rejected Ukraine’s request for lethal aid. The Trump administration in 2018 approved a plan to sell Javelin missiles to Ukraine. The Biden administration has approved billions of dollars in assistance to Ukraine, including Javelins.
Reuters
False: Videos show the U.S. Navy's response to the Russian military.
Videos showing the 2024 Hyundai Air and Sea Show in Miami during Memorial Day weekend are being miscaptioned in social media posts as showing a U.S. Navy response to Russian military presence off the Florida coast in June. The posts refer to Russian naval exercises taking place in the Caribbean region over the summer which will likely include stops in Cuba and possibly Venezuela, a senior U.S. official said on June 6.
India Today
False: The image shows a Palestinian father leaving Eid clothes on his daughter's grave.
A reverse image search of the picture led to a news report by Al-Khaleej, a news organisation based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. Dated April 22, 2023, this report featured the same photo and stated that a Turkish man purchased an Eid dress for his daughter, who died in the earthquake that occurred in Turkey and Syria in February 2023 and placed it on her grave. Thus, it is evident that an old photo is being falsely linked to the ongoing Israeli onslaught in Gaza.
#Healthcare
PolitiFact
False: "Hospitals murdered patients” with remdesivir, a drug banned from Ebola trials because of the “53% kill rate.”
There’s no evidence showing that remdesivir, the first treatment approved for COVID-19, killed patients taking the drug. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration still approves the antiviral drug to treat the coronavirus that causes the disease. The FDA said it based its approval of the drug on three randomized controlled clinical trials. Remdesivir was one of four drugs used in a 2018 clinical trial against Ebola virus in Africa. It was found to be far less effective than two experimental drugs, but the trial did not show that remdesivir killed patients.
PolitiFact
False: "There were 42,000 people diagnosed with (an) STD in Houston” in one week.
A social media post that claimed Houston had reported 42,000 sexually transmitted disease cases in one week shared a chart that city and state health officials said reflected the number of statewide tests, not confirmed Houston cases. A Houston Health Department spokesperson said the numbers in the post were "grossly overstated" and "incorrect," and the result of a "misuse" of a data system.
#Economy
Full Fact
Partly False: There were two million fewer children living in poverty when Gordon Brown left office.
A post on Facebook claims that there were two million fewer children living in poverty when Gordon Brown left office in 2010 compared to today. While some measures show an increase in child poverty since 2010, it is not by as many as two million children. At least one measure shows a fall.
#Nordics
Tjekdet
Falsk: Store jobtab kan skyldes ny CO2-afgift.
Den nye CO2-afgift på landbruget kan koste op mod 8.000 arbejdspladser, hævder De Radikales klimaordfører, Mads Fuglede. Han henviser til en rapport, hvor tallet 8.000 optræder, men det tal er baseret på et andet scenarie end det, som den grønne trepart er blevet enige om. Ifølge Økonomiministeriets beregninger vil trepartsaftalen føre til et samlet tab på 100 arbejdspladser i 2035. Det er fremskrivninger med usikkerhed om, hvor mange job der går tabt, og hvor der skabes nye job som følge af aftalen.
#WTF?! What The Fact of the week
Snopes
True: NBA star Kobe Bryant was the only person ever to win both an Olympic medal and an Academy Award.
The claim is true. Bryant, who died in 2020, won his two Olympic gold medals in Beijing, in 2008, and in London, in 2012, both times as a member of the US men's Olympic basketball team. He won his Oscar in the short film (animated) category for "Dear Basketball," which he wrote and narrated, in 2018 at the 90th Academy Awards ceremony.
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