Fight the fake

Donald Trump Jr, shares a video he claims shows President Joe Biden is senile A video from January 17 showing then-President-elect Joe Biden seeming lost and confused while on stage at an event has garnered more than three million views on Twitter. It was picked up and shared by Donald Trump Jr, son of the former president, who claimed it was proof that Biden was senile and mentally unfit to take office. Turns out, however, that the video was altered. ADVERTISING A few days before Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States, Donald Trump Junior posted a video on Twitter showing Biden looking confused. He stands on stage, behind a podium. He gestures to the cameras, then turns towards a table to pick up a folder there, before leaving. His movements are very slow and hesitant and he seems weary. The caption on Trump Jr.’s tweet says, “Yikes. If he was a Republican, the 25th amendment talk would be trending and rightly so.” The 25th amendment of the United States Constitution states that if the president is unable to do his job, if he dies or if he resigns, then he can be replaced by the Vice President. Trump Jr. is referring to the fact that the House of Representatives requested that Vice President Mike Pence invoke this amendment, thus removing Donald Trump from power before the end of his term, after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. Trump Jr. is also referring to Biden’s age – implying that, at age 78, he is too old to govern. This was a theme oft-repeated during his father’s re-election campaign. Why this video is false The original video is on President Biden’s YouTube channel. It was posted on January 16, the day before the modified video appeared online. The original video shows Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announcing the make-up of the White House Science Team. The video that Donald Trump Jr. shared online was edited, explains the website Politifact. The video was cropped and the sound was dropped four seconds in. The original scene takes place 43’06” into the original video. In the original, uncut footage, you can see that Biden isn’t alone on stage and he isn’t confused. He is simply waiting for two people to leave the stage. The edited sound means you can’t hear the other people leaving the stage.

No, this photo doesn’t prove Trump is going to declassify secret documents A Facebook post published on January 16 claimed that former US president Donald Trump was about to declassify a large number of documents, with the aim of “revealing them to the world”. The post, which includes a photo of the president posing next to tall stacks of paper, was shared more than a thousand times the day before his successor Joe Biden took office. Turns out, however, this photo is old and has nothing to do with classified documents. ADVERTISING The photo shows a smiling Trump posing next to several stacks of paper. One towering series of piles is labeled “Today” while the other, much shorter stack is labelled "1960". The caption claims that Trump is getting ready to declassify all of the documents in the “Today” stacks. “Files that will be declassified and revealed to the world,” says the caption, claiming that Trump is planning to reveal state secrets before leaving the Oval Office. We ran this photo through a reverse image search on Google (take a look here to find out how), which pulled up photos of the same scene published by various media outlets. Turns out, the photo isn’t recent: it was taken at the White House on December 14, 2017 during a press event. The stacks of papers aren’t documents declassified by Trump. They are actually meant to represent regulations. On that day, Trump’s team set up this exhibit to demonstrate what they saw as the need to simplify – and some cases throw out – these laws. “We have decades of excess regulation to remove,” Trump stated during the event. In the Washington Post video below, the president says that he will make the “Today” pile even smaller than the “1960” pile by the end of his time in office. He then cuts a red ribbon strung across the two piles. The piles of paper are meant to represent the number of pages of regulations in 1960 and 2017, respectively. Trump said, at the event, that there were 20,000 pages of regulation in 1960 and 185,000 pages in 2017. However, The Washington Post was sceptical and determined that the stacks at the event were too high and must have contained many more papers than those figures.

Debunked: The so-called 'doctor' claiming Bill Gates wants to kill 3 billion people Does Bill Gates really want to eliminate 3 billion people, most of them African, to decrease the global population? That’s what controversial American homeopathic doctor Robert Young claimed in a video that recently emerged on social media. It turns out that Young and the organisation that held the conference where he made his claims have a history of spreading unfounded conspiracy theories. ADVERTISING The video excerpt, which lasts about 30 seconds, circulated widely on Twitter, shocking and angering many users. Someone shared it with our team via WhatsApp, where it is also circulating widely. The video shows Young at a conference held by the International Tribunal for Natural Justice (ITNJ), an organisation that claims to function as some kind of court. "Apparently Africans are deplorable and worthless, but I can [be] sure that Africa's resources are not ‘worthless,’” posted this social media user. In this excerpt, Young claims that the founder of Microsoft said that 3 billion people need to be eliminated from earth, starting with Africans: "For the purpose of sterilisation and population control, there are too many people on the planet we need to get rid of. In the words of Bill Gates, 3 billion people need to die. So we’ll just start off in Africa. We’ll start doing our research there and we’ll eliminate most of the Africans because they are deplorable, they are worthless. We ran a search on Google and found the International Tribunal for Natural Justice’s YouTube channel, where this excerpt was first posted. The excerpt comes from a longer video – which lasts over an hour and a half –that was posted online on November 20, 2019. The excerpt that was circulating on Twitter comes from this video. It appears at 33’40”. Later in the conference (at 1h36 and 40 seconds) Young adds: "These are not my words, they are Bill Gates’ words. Just Google ‘Bill Gates and depopulation and sterilisation’ and you’ll hear out of his own mouth the plan." Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, both Bill Gates and the foundation that he created with his wife, Melinda Gates, have been the subject of various conspiracy theories. In the video above, Young is likely referring to a statement made by the American philanthropist during a Ted Talk in 2010, but Young has completely skewed his words and taken them out of their context. Our team looked up what Bill Gates actually said during that talk, which was about how to achieve carbon neutrality. He shows the audience an equation, showing how many people there are in the world and how much energy each person uses as well as other factors. He examines each factor one by one, beginning with population. "The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, healthcare, reproductive health services, we could lower that by about 10 or 15% But there we see an increase of about 1.3,” Gates says, breaking down the formula. To be clear – it’s not the global population that the American billionaire wants to reduce by 10 to 15%, but the population growth. Gates believes that we should work to slow population growth in the poorest countries so that they can develop and get themselves on a path to economic growth. Gates believes that reducing infant mortality in the poorest countries can help reduce rampant population growth. The idea may seem paradoxical but Gates believes that parents won’t feel a need to have so many children if those they have are healthy and expected to survive. So, who is Robert Young? The video circulating online features Robert Young, the controversial figure who is spreading this conspiracy theory about Gates, as well as a controversial organisation, the International Tribunal for Natural Justice. Young is a homeopathic doctor in the United States. He advocates for only natural medicine to be used against serious illnesses, like cancer. In 2016, he was sentenced to prison for illegal medical practice. The International Tribunal for Natural Justice is an organisation based in the United Kingdom that often shares conspiracy theories. Members claim, for example, that 5G contributes to the spread of Covid-19, which has never been proved. Robert David Steele, one of the members of this so-called "tribunal", claims that he is a former member of the CIA. In an interview from 2017, he claimed that American space agency NASA kidnapped his children and enslaved them on Mars.

Did The Simpsons really predict the riot at the United States Capitol? Social media users have been sharing images that they say show how the iconic cartoon series The Simpsons predicted the storming of the United States Capitol building by extremist supporters of President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021. Many people pointed to the similarities between an animated figure and Jake Angeli, one of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol. Angeli’s get-up – he wore an animal skin and horns on his head – earned him a spot on front pages across the country. However, the image attributed to The Simpsons is actually a photomontage and never appeared on the show. Back in the summer of 2020, some social media users claimed that the popular cartoon The Simpsons had predicted the protests against police violence and racial injustice that swept the United States after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Now, some are claiming that The Simpsons also predicted the storming of the Capitol on January 6. Amazed users have been sharing an image showing The Simpsons standing in front of the Capitol next to a person draped in the American flag and wearing an animal skin and horns on his head. The outfit looks strikingly similar to that worn by insurrectionist Jake Angeli when he participated in the riot on the Capitol. Because of this similarity, many social media users have been sharing the image and hailing the show’s creators as visionaries who predicted the insurrection. Social media user Novello Vladimiro hails the creators of The Simpsons as visionaries for, as he sees it, predicting the riot at the Capitol. Why it is false It turns out, however, that this image is a photomontage of three distinct images created by an unknown person. It isn’t an excerpt from the animated series at all. The first image used in the photomontage just shows the Simpson family. If you crop the image to just show the family, you can run the cropped image through a reverse image search (check out how by clicking here) to see the first time that image was posted online. Using the same reverse image technique, we discovered that the background image of the Capitol building is from episode 2 of season 3 of The Simpsons. The image was flipped in the final montage. This is the background image used for the photomontage. This is the background image used for the photomontage. © https://simkl.com/ Then, we used the same technique and cropped the image so it just showed the man wearing an animal skin and then ran that through a reverse image search. We discovered that the original image is from the video game “The Simpsons: Springfield" and is called “Bare Chested Willie.” The character appears in exactly the same position and stance on Simpsons fan websites. This photo was used in the photomontage. This photo was used in the photomontage. © https://les-simpson-springfield.fandom.com/ Even though this image doesn’t actually come from The Simpsons, it is true that the creators of the show did have a certain clairvoyance when analysing the state of American society. Their episode from November 1 last year imagined the end of Donald Trump’s term. In the episode, Homer forgets to go and vote in the election. As a result, on January 20, Inauguration Day, Homer has to fight against the robots who have taken control of the town of Springfield – a reference to the chaos they thought might follow the American presidential election.

Was there really 'no needle' when Kamala Harris got vaccinated for Covid-19? Look again… Conspiracy theories alleging that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris faked her Covid-19 vaccination have been circulating on Facebook and Twitter in numerous languages. Adherents to this theory claim that the syringe used to vaccinate her didn’t have a needle. But it turns out that the quality of the video has been reduced, making the image blurry… and making it easier to believe this misinformation. ADVERTISING “Look very, very closely”, “There’s no needle” and “Politicians are pathetic when they try to stage a scene” are just some examples of the captions that French-speakers have posted alongside a video showing Harris getting the Moderna vaccine against Covid-19 on December 29. These conspiracy theorists offer a zoomed in image that they claim shows that there was no needle in the syringe. They also point to a slowed down version of the video, which seems to show a pink part of the syringe bending. One of these posts was shared more than 3,200 times. Our colleagues at Italian fact-checking site Open found this same video circulating on Facebook with a caption in Italian. It had been shared 1,700 times. The video has also been uploaded to YouTube several times with captions in English. Why it is false The video used in all of these posts has extremely low-quality footage, making it impossible to distinguish clearly if the syringe actually has a needle or not. If you search “Kamala Harris vaccination” on YouTube, then you can find the same footage in better quality, shared by American media outlets like the Los Angeles Times. Fourteen seconds into the video, when the nurse removes the cap to the syringe, you can see the needle clearly. But what is that thing that looks like it is made out of pink plastic that seems to bend 19 seconds into the video? Italian media outlet Open explains that it is a security mechanism made out of plastic that helps make sure that neither the nurse or the patient accidentally injure themselves during the injection. Online, many people were discussing the pink cap on the syringe. A number of political figures from across the globe have been vaccinated in public in an attempt to encourage citizens to do the same. However, a number of these videos have sparked conspiracy theories, especially when people tamper with the footage.

Anti-vaxxers – people who disagree with the use of vaccines – have recently been sharing a video online that they say shows a local Israeli politician pretending to get the Covid-19 vaccination. A nurse holds the syringe up to his arm as if to give him the vaccine, though you can’t see the needle. During the entire encounter, the politician is speaking to the assembled cameras. Turns out, even though this video was staged, the politician did get vaccinated and there is another video to prove it. Anti-vaxxers – people who disagree with the use of vaccines – have recently been sharing a video online that they say shows a local Israeli politician pretending to get the Covid-19 vaccination. A nurse holds the syringe up to his arm as if to give him the vaccine, though you can’t see the needle. During the entire encounter, the politician is speaking to the assembled cameras. Turns out, even though this video was staged, the politician did get vaccinated and there is another video to prove it. Anti-vaxxers – people who disagree with the use of vaccines – have recently been sharing a video online that they say shows a local Israeli politician pretending to get the Covid-19 vaccination. A nurse holds the syringe up to his arm as if to give him the vaccine, though you can’t see the needle. During the entire encounter, the politician is speaking to the assembled cameras. Turns out, even though this video was staged, the politician did get vaccinated and there is another video to prove it. One of the most popular postings of this video garnered 2.8 million views on Facebook and was shared 72,000 times. The caption, written in French, reads: "How far will the lie go. Look closely, I beseech you, there isn’t a needle or any pressure. Judge for yourself." Many vaccine sceptics say that this video offers proof that politicians themselves don’t have faith in the Covid-19 vaccine. Proof that this politician actually did get vaccinated The man you see in the video is named Beni Ben Muvchar. He leads the regional council in Mevoot Hermon, located in Israel’s Northern District. He went to get his vaccine at the Clalit Health Services Group Hospital in Kiryat Shmona on December 23, 2020. During his visit, Muvchar let a hospital employee make a short video of him for the hospital’s social media channels so that the politician could thank healthcare workers and encourage others to get vaccinated, according to a report by Israeli media outlet Makorrishon. For the purposes of the video, a nurse pretends to give him the vaccine. However, Muvchar had already gotten his Covid-19 vaccine before this video was filmed. In an effort to address the rumours that he hadn’t actually been vaccinated, Muvchar posted another video to his Facebook page showing him actually being vaccinated. Muvchar was frank in an interview with Israeli media outlet Makorrishon. "I understand that opponents to the vaccine are happy about this video, but I wanted to inform them that I am already on the waiting list to get the second dose of the vaccine and I am calling on everyone to go get vaccinated to fight Covid-19."