FactCheck.org's Weekly Update
February 14, 2020
SciCheck
President Donald Trump suggested that the new coronavirus would “go away” in April, as temperatures warm. While some viruses are seasonal, it’s not yet clear if the new virus will follow the same pattern — and experts caution against banking on the weather to resolve the outbreak.
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FactCheck Posts
Roger Stone’s Crimes Posted on Friday, February 14th, 2020
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President Donald Trump has criticized the Justice Department for prosecuting the president’s longtime associate Roger Stone and recommending that Stone serve up to nine years in prison. That’s his opinion, but he falsely supports it by claiming Stone did “nothing” and “nobody even can define what he did.”
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Bloomberg Misleads on Stop-And-Frisk Posted on Friday, February 14th, 2020
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Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg misleadingly stated that he “cut” the police practice of stop-and-frisk — a policy that he “inherited” — by “95%” by the time he left office as mayor of New York. There were nearly twice as many stops in his last year as mayor compared with the year before he took office.
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President Trump defended removing Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council by claiming that Vindman’s “superior … publicly stated that Vindman had problems with judgement, adhering to the chain of command and leaking information.” But the latter claim leaves a false impression, and the others omit important context.
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Trump Has Condemned White Supremacists Posted on Tuesday, February 11th, 2020
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Former Vice President Joe Biden wrongly claimed President Donald Trump has “yet once to condemn white supremacy, the neo-Nazis.” Trump has specifically condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis on a few occasions.
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Several days after Sen. Mitt Romney was the lone Republican vote to convict President Donald Trump of abuse of power in the impeachment trial, the president used his Twitter account to spread dubious and unfounded viral claims about the Utah senator.
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In a misleadingly edited video, President Donald Trump falsely implied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disrespected a Tuskegee airman and others during the State of the Union. Our video shows what actually happened.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed there was a “huge voter turnout” among young caucusgoers in Iowa this year, saying the turnout was “even higher than Obama’s extraordinary victory in 2008.” In fact, about 10,300 fewer young voters turned out this year than in 2008.
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Debunking False Stories
A meme misquotes Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on a proposed abortion bill that aims to address nonviable pregnancies and severe fetal abnormalities. Northam, a pediatric neurologist, supports the bill, but the meme falsely implies he condones infanticide.
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An online conspiracy theory falsely claims that Democratic leaders coordinated the June attacks on two oil tankers and a U.S. drone and that President Donald Trump caught them in the act. The Trump administration has placed the blame squarely on Iran.
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A fabricated newspaper clipping is circulating online claiming a teenage Pete Buttigieg was arrested in the late 1990s for killing dogs. The Twitter user who created the bogus story — and the newspaper that allegedly published it — say the clipping is a fake.
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Online posts claim that vitamin C can “stop” the new coronavirus. While it’s true that vitamin C can have a marginal effect on warding off a cold, there’s no evidence that it can stop or treat the new coronavirus.
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Online posts falsely claim the new coronavirus can be cured by drinking one bowl of freshly boiled garlic water. That’s not true; there is no cure for the virus.
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Online posts have claimed to reveal various “cures” for the new coronavirus. Some are benign, like eating boiled garlic, while others are potentially dangerous, like drinking chlorine dioxide, an industrial bleach. Neither will cure the virus.
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Ask FactCheck
Q: Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi break the law by ripping up the president’s State of the Union address?
A: Legal experts have widely dismissed the idea that Pelosi’s copy of the address would be subject to a criminal statute cited by some conservatives.
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