In the past week, there have been a few fake political stories circulating related to the U.S. election and presidency. See the round-up, below:
1. Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who is openly supporting Donald Trump and appeared in an ad for the candidate, was duped by a fake story about Hillary Clinton and Twitter. Hannity brought up on air claims that both Michelle and Barack Obama as well as Sen. Elizabeth Warren removed any Hillary Clinton mentions from their Twitter accounts. CNN has more on the backstory, including comments from Hannity, who said he mentioned the claims “in an insignificant way” and that he “questioned the accuracy of it on the air.”
Hannity also posted a correction on Twitter.
2. A photo of Barack Obama purportedly showing him with his head inside his shirt while reading a story is fake, Gizmodo reported. Gizmodo noted that “the original photo is from April of 2012.”
The original Associated Press photo from 2012. (Credit: AP)
At the time, BuzzFeed posted a collection of photos from the 2012 book reading.
The fake photo, via Gizmodo
3. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews didn’t endorse Donald Trump. There’s an edited video of Matthews from his show Hardball where it appears Matthews did support Trump, but as Snopes pointed out, in the real Oct. 27 video, Matthews said Trump was missing easy ways to go after Clinton.
“He seems to devote every day fighting fights that make people forget the reasons why he started running for president,” Matthews said. “Reasons that continue to carry the shrinking chance that he may win this thing. I say this not because I want Trump to win but because I can’t stand politics being practiced so pathetically. “