Category: Fact Checking

Claim:

John Hinckley Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981, makes $3,500 a month on eBay by selling the same portrait of his cat he paints.

Rating:

In mid-July 2024, the claim circulated on social media that John Hinckley Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981, makes $3,500 per month by repeatedly painting a portrait of his pet cat, titled “My Cat,” and selling it on eBay for hundreds of dollars per canvas.

According to the viral X post, which has received over 1 million views as of this writing, “The man who tried to assassinate Reagan makes an income just painting the same portrait of his cat over and over again and selling it on ebay for hundreds of dollars,” adding, “It’s a monthly income of $3500.” 

(zeta/X)

Hinckley has his own dedicated X account with more than 63,000 followers, where he frequently posts about “My Cat,” with links to where it’s available for purchase, including his eBay store, /kingsmgoods, as well as the online art gallery ArtPal. Since December 2022, Hinckley has posted the cat portrait for sale on X more than 200 times. 

The background, cat’s color, and fur pattern usually vary slightly in the feline-centric paintings.

To get to the bottom of how much Hinkley makes per month selling his original artwork “My Cat” on eBay, we asked the artist and his lawyer, Barry Levine, for comment. We will update this story once we receive an answer. 

We also asked eBay’s chief technology officer if there is a mechanism on the auction and sales platform that allows the public to see how much revenue a seller makes in total or monthly, but received no immediate reply.

Hinckley Promotes His Feline Artwork on Social Media

Hinckley’s most recent post about his cat portrait appeared on July 13, 2024, the day of the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump. While Hinckley has mostly sold the artwork on eBay, his X post states: “Art of the Day: ‘My Cat’. Buy at: https://ArtPal.com/hjohn8325?i=23john8325?i=236942-2.” 

 

On ArtPal, buyers can purchase the cat portrait in several reproduction forms, including art prints starting at $19.97, and framed prints up to $104.97. Generally, Hinckley writes the same statement to accompany his X posts about his feline artwork: “My original CAT painting is for sale on Ebay. Use link. Only ship to U.S,” along with a link to that version of the portrait. As of this writing, Hinckley did not have any items or original artwork listed for sale in his eBay store. 

Hinckley’s eBay store lists past sales and buyer feedback, noting that items ship from Williamsburg, Va., where Hinckley has reportedly lived since his release from St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital in Washington, D.C., in 2016. Authorities confined Hinckley there for nearly four decades after his attempted assassination of Reagan when he was just 25 years old.

Although “My Cat” is not the only painting Hinckley, who is also a singer-songwriter, displays for sale on social media, he first posted the feline artwork on his X account in April 2022 to advertise a gig in Connecticut where he was scheduled to perform:

 

eBay Seller Hub Protects Identity of Sellers 

Snopes conducted its own research into Hinckley’s “My Cat” sales using the eBay Seller Hub, a dashboard on the platform designed to help sellers manage their listings.

We searched within the past three years for “JOHN HINCKLEY ORIGINAL PAINTING SIGNED 11×14 ABSTRACT ART BRUT OUTSIDER ART RARE,” the description the artist gives “My Cat” when listing it for sale on the platform. We also limited the parameters of the search to paintings sold in the United States and in new condition. We did not look for any used or resold items under this search term, as Hinckley had listed “seller does not accept return” whenever he posted the artwork for sale.

The eBay Seller Hub found “no active results” for “JOHN HINCKLEY ORIGINAL PAINTING SIGNED 11×14 ABSTRACT ART BRUT OUTSIDER ART RARE,” but displayed several pages listing past sale results that matched the description given by Hinckley of his cat portrait. These paintings were sold by eight sellers, but the tool did not identify who those sellers were, nor did it allow for itemization of artwork sold by the sellers. 

According to the information we were able to unearth using this search, artwork matching the description given of “My Cat” sold for an average price of $502.79. The price ranged from $175.00–$1,975.00. However, Hinckley often reuses the same description for “My Cat” for several of his paintings, including portraits of people and abstract canvases, which were also listed on the eBay Seller Hub. 

The eBay Seller Hub indicated that “My Cat” first sold on the platform on March 7, 2022, for $350. That listing was the first to include a photo of the cat portrait, followed by another sale of the painting for the same amount the next day, March 8. Neither dashboard listing mentions the seller’s identity. Before March 7, 2022, the sold listings of Hinckley artwork featured either a portrait of a person or an abstract canvas.

“My Cat” has sold on eBay on multiple occasions — while the sales price is always listed, the seller identity never is. To add, not every listing matching the description included a photo of the artwork sold, making it impossible to determine whether that sale was of “My Cat” or another Hinckley artwork, and thus impossible to calculate the average monthly sales price of the feline painting on the platform.

The “About” section of Hinckley’s eBay store /kingsmgoods notes that it has been on the platform since Oct. 6, 2017, and has sold 669 items since its launch, with “100% positive feedback” from buyers. EBay does not provide a function to identify an itemized list of these past sales unless the buyer chooses to disclose that information in feedback. 

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Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris has only recently begun identifying as Black, and that until a few years ago “she was only promoting Indian heritage.” That’s nonsense.

Harris, whose mother was born in India and whose father was from Jamaica, has always identified as both Indian American and Black.

Trump appears to be trying to resurrect bogus social media claims that gained some traction back in 2020 after Harris was tapped as Joe Biden’s running mate. The posts claimed that when Harris became a senator in 2017, she only identified as an Indian American, and that she only later began identifying as Black for political gain. It was nonsense then, too.

At the annual convention of the National Association of Black Journalists on July 31, ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked Trump if he thought Harris was “only on the ticket because she is a Black woman.”

“So I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly, very much,” Trump said. “And she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

“I respect either one,” Trump continued. “But she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she became a Black person. I think someone should look into that, too.”

As we said, there is ample evidence that Harris, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has for decades identified as both Indian American and Black, reflecting her biracial parentage.

In her 2019 autobiography, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” Harris describes being brought up in a multicultural home. Harris’ parents divorced when she was a young girl, and while her father “remained a part of our lives,” it was “really my mother who took charge of our upbringing,” she wrote.

“Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness of and appreciation for Indian culture,” Harris wrote.

But, she added, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud black women.”

A May 25, 2016, profile of Harris in the New York Times Magazine states, “She [Harris’ mother] brought up her daughters, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, in a black neighborhood in Berkeley, sharing a house with a friend who ran a small preschool. ‘She had two black babies, and she raised them to be two black women,’ Harris says of her mother’s choice of community.”

In her autobiography, Harris recounted as a child regularly attending a “pioneering black cultural center” that held performances by “some of the most prominent black thinkers and leaders of the day.” Some of her greatest heroes, she said, were African American lawyers “Thurgood Marshall, Charles Hamilton Houston, Constance Baker Motley – giants of the civil rights movement.”

Following the example of Marshall, who went to law school at Howard University, Harris also decided to attend the historically Black university in Washington, D.C., as an undergraduate. At Howard, Harris joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, which bills itself as “America’s premier Greek-letter organization for African American women.”

An alumni profile of Harris in Howard Magazine in the fall of 2016 noted that Harris was “reared by her mother, a scientist and immigrant from India” and that “Harris said being on Howard’s campus ‘during those formative years’ was central to her development as a Black person.”

After graduating from Howard in 1986, Harris returned to Oakland, California, and went to law school at UC Hastings College of Law (now UC San Francisco Law).

At UC Hastings, she wrote in her autobiography, “I was elected president of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) during my second year in law school. At the time, black students were having a harder time finding employment than white students, and I wanted to change that. As BLSA president, I called the managing partners of all the major law firms and asked them to send representatives to a job fair we were hosting at a hotel.”

While serving in the U.S. Senate, Harris was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

On occasions when she has spoken before a largely Indian American audience, she has sometimes emphasized that part of her heritage — as one would expect. Speaking at the Indian American Impact Summit in May, for example, Harris talked about her Indian heritage while encouraging Indian Americans to participate in the political process and to run for elected office.

“You are going to find yourself, invariably, in rooms where you are the only one who looks like you,” Harris said to the predominantly Indian American audience. “And what I then say to you each, look around this room and hold on to this image. And remember then when you walk into those rooms … you remember you are not alone, we are all there with you.”

Trump and Campaign Double Down on Falsehood

At a Trump rally in Pennsylvania after his remarks at the NABJ convention, the campaign posted on a large video screen behind the stage the headline of a Nov. 9, 2016, AP story that Business Insider published, that read, “California’s Kamala Harris becomes first Indian-American US senator.”

That’s entirely accurate, of course. She was.

An AP story published the same day, Nov. 9, 2016, presents a more complete description, stating, “Harris will enter the chamber as the first Indian woman elected to a Senate seat and the second black woman, following Carol Moseley Braun, who served a single term after being elected in 1992.”

Similarly, when Harris was elected as San Francisco district attorney in December 2003, the Associated Press reported, “Harris, a former girlfriend and political protégé of Mayor Willie Brown, will be the first female district attorney in the city’s history and the first black to hold the office in California.” A month later, Jet magazine ran a story under the headline, “Kamala Harris is San Francisco’s First Black District Attorney.” Both stories were obtained from the news archives, LexisNexis.

After Trump made his comments, conservative commentator Laura Loomer posted on X a reprint of Harris’ birth certificate and wrongly claimed it proved Harris is “a liar” and that “Donald Trump is correct. Kamala Harris is NOT black and never has been.” Loomer noted, “Nowhere on her birth certificate does it say that she is BLACK OR AFRICAN.”

That last part is true. According to a copy of Harris’ birth certificate posted by the Mercury News in August 2020, Harris’ race is not recorded — because there is no box for it. The certificate notes that Harris’ mother, who was living in Berkeley, California, was born in India. Where certificate form asks for the “color or race of mother,” it is marked “Caucasian.”

That’s not surprising. A 1995 document from the Office of Management and Budget titled “Standards for the Classification of Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity” notes that in decennial censuses, “There have been many changes in the broad racial categories, the specific components of the categories, and whether data on ethnicity were collected. Asian Indians, for example, were counted as ‘Hindus’ in censuses from 1920 to 1940, as ‘White’ from 1950 to 1970, and as ‘Asians or Pacific Islanders’ in 1980 and 1990.” Harris’ birth certificate is from her birth year, 1964. She was born in Oakland.

Under the “color or race of father,” the certificate states, “Jamaican.” The form also notes that Harris’ father, Donald J. Harris, is a native of Jamaica. While the birth certificate makes no note of it, Donald Harris is Black.

In other words, Kamala Harris is both Indian American and Black.

Trump amplified Loomer’s bogus post by re-posting it on his social media platform. He also posted an old photo of Harris with Indian relatives in traditional Indian garb. Trump commented, “Your warmth, friendship, and love of your Indian Heritage are very much appreciated.”

Additionally, Trump posted a recent cooking video Harris made with Indian American actress Mindy Kaling. Trump commented, “Crazy Kamala is saying she’s Indian, not Black. This is a big deal. Stone cold phony. She uses everybody, including her racial identity!”

In the video, Kaling asks, “You are Indian?” to which Harris enthusiastically replies, “Yes, yes.”

“I don’t know that everybody knows that,” Kaling says. Moments later, when Kaling notes that they both have family from south India, Harris replies, “You look like the entire one-half of my family.” And that line is exactly the point. It is a part of her heritage from her mother’s side.

In a February 2019 interview with a morning radio show called “The Breakfast Club,” Harris addressed questions about the “legitimacy” of her blackness. “I think they don’t understand who Black people are,” she said. “Because if you do, if you walked on Hampton’s campus, or Howard’s campus or Morehouse, or Spelman or Fisk, you would have a much better appreciation for the diaspora, for the diversity, for the beauty in the diversity of who we are as Black people. So I’m not going to spend my time trying to educate people about who Black people are.”

In remarks at a convention for the Black sorority Sigma Gamma Rho, Harris addressed Trump’s claims at the NABJ event, saying “it was the same old show — the divisiveness and the disrespect.”

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At a campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minnesota, former President Donald Trump rattled off several criticisms of Vice President Kamala Harris, his presumptive opponent in the presidential race. But some of Trump’s attacks ran afoul of the facts.

• Trump falsely claimed that Harris voted to “cut Medicare by $237 billion” and “betrayed American seniors.” The legislation allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices and reduces costs for some seniors.

• He pointed to Harris’ support in early 2019 for Medicare for All, saying she “endorsed outlawing private health insurance entirely.” Harris also proposed a plan later that year that included private insurance, but regardless, she isn’t supporting Medicare for All now.

• Trump claimed that Harris “said that a 80% tax rate is a bold idea that should be discussed.” Harris didn’t endorse that rate. Instead, she said a Democratic lawmaker’s ideas, which included a rate that high for people making more than $10 million a year, “should be discussed,” adding that “when we are able to defend the status quo, then do it.”

• Trump said Harris “just turned him free,” referring to Shawn Tillman, who committed murder in 2022, weeks after he was bailed out of jail by a nonprofit Harris promoted on social media in 2020. But it was not her decision to release Tillman, nor was he someone she sought to help get out of jail.

• He distorted the facts in claiming that Harris, a former prosecutor, “couldn’t pass her bar exam” to become a licensed lawyer. She did pass California’s bar exam on her second attempt.

• Trump claimed that Harris previously “supported mandatory gun confiscation,” without mentioning that she talked about having a mandatory buyback program only for so-called assault weapons. Harris’ campaign told us she is no longer pushing a buyback program.

• The former president said Harris “called for slashing consumption of red meat to fight climate change.” Harris once said she supported encouraging and incentivizing Americans to eat better, but she did not say she would restrict how much red meat is consumed.

• He claimed Harris’ votes “created the worst inflation in half a century.” Economists say the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is primarily to blame.

• He wrongly said inflation was the worst “we’ve ever had” under this administration. The worst was in 1919-1920.

• Trump falsely said Harris supported abortion “even after birth,” and he wrongly said “all legal scholars” wanted the issue of abortion rights to be returned to the states.

• He baselessly said that Harris would let “40 to 50 million more people in our country,” referring to illegal immigration, and added that it would “kill Social Security and Medicare.” Those concocted figures aside, workers who aren’t authorized to be in the country can’t receive the benefits of those retirement programs.

Trump spoke in Minnesota on July 27. The day before, in Florida, Trump made some of the same claims on Medicare, inflation and abortion.

Medicare Benefits, Not Cuts

Trump falsely claimed that Harris “cast the tiebreaking vote to cut Medicare by $237 billion,” telling the crowd in Minnesota that “she betrayed American seniors.” He’s referring to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which passed the Senate with Harris’ tie-breaking vote, but the law doesn’t cut benefits for seniors. In fact, it could lower what some seniors pay for prescription drugs.

The Medicare provisions of the law are expected to lower federal deficits by $237 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, by, among other things, allowing Medicare to negotiate the prices it pays for some drugs and requiring rebates from drug companies if their prices increase faster than inflation.

The provisions will lower out-of-pocket costs for some beneficiaries, and lowering Medicare spending overall strengthens Medicare’s finances. The nonpartisan health policy research group KFF said in a 2023 analysis that the number of beneficiaries who will pay lower drug costs and how much they save “will depend on how many and which drugs are subject to the negotiation process and the price reductions achieved through the negotiations process relative to what prices would otherwise be.”

The law also caps seniors’ out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year for Medicare’s prescription drug plan next year, and it has already capped monthly insulin copays at $35. Those provisions cost the federal government money, as we’ve explained.

We often see politicians, of both parties, falsely claiming or suggesting that legislation to reduce Medicare spending would harm seniors.

Private Health Insurance

Trump highlighted Harris’ support in 2019 for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation, which aimed to expand Medicare to everyone, creating a universal health care system. Trump said Harris “endorsed outlawing private health insurance entirely.” But at the time, Harris wasn’t as steadfast as Sanders that private health insurance would have to be eliminated, and Harris is no longer supporting such a plan.

Her campaign told us Harris “will not push Medicare for All as President.”

At a January 2019 town hall on CNN, Harris indicated that Sanders’ plan, which she supported, would lead to the elimination of private insurance. But the next day, her press secretary noted that she also supported other health care legislation that wouldn’t go that far. Later in the campaign, Harris proposed her own version of Medicare for All that would include a role for private insurance.

But now, Harris isn’t advocating Medicare for All.

Taxes

Trump went on to hit Harris on taxes, saying: “She said that a 80% tax rate is a bold idea that should be discussed. It’s very interesting to her.”

He appeared to be referring to comments that Harris made during a January 2019 appearance on ABC’s “The View.” Harris was asked if she believed that “socialist left” policies proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, such as a “70% to 80% tax rate,” could splinter the Democratic Party. Harris said “no,” and added that Ocasio-Cortez was “challenging the status quo” which is “fantastic.”

“I think that she is introducing bold ideas that should be discussed. And I think it’s good for the party, and frankly I think it’s good for the country,” Harris continued. “Let’s look at the bold ideas and I’m eager that we have those discussions. And when we are able to defend the status quo, then do it. And if there’s not merit to that, then let’s explore new ideas.”

At the time, Ocasio-Cortez had floated increasing the top income tax rate to 70% or more — but only for U.S. residents making at least $10 million annually. Moreover, Harris never said she supported that hypothetical policy.

While running for president in 2019, Harris proposed raising the top income tax rate on the top 1% of earners back to 39.6%. Trump had reduced it to 37% in 2017, when he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Harris’ Connection to Shawn Tillman

Being in Minnesota, Trump attacked Harris for soliciting donations in 2020 for a Minnesota-based nonprofit that later paid bail for a man who went on to commit murder.

“Kamala urged her followers to donate to the so-called Minnesota Freedom Fund, helping raise $35 million to set loose violent offenders after they shot at police, looted your stores, sexually assaulted innocent victims and committed all sorts of other heinous crimes.” Trump said. “One of the criminals Kamala helped bail out of jail was Shawn Michael Tillman, very famous now unfortunately, a repeat offender, who, with Harris’ help, was set free –  she set free many very bad people – then he went on a murder rampage. He killed a man on a train platform in St. Paul, shooting him six times in the head. She just turned him free.”

But Harris did not have the authority to free Tillman or other criminals. Tillman is not even someone Harris tried to help get out of jail.

Days after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by a police officer in May 2020, Harris encouraged donations “to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The group that she highlighted, the Minnesota Freedom Fund, pays bail for individuals who cannot afford to secure their release from jail while their court case is pending. The bail amount is set by a judge.

After Harris and other public figures promoted the nonprofit, it raised almost $40 million in 2020, the group’s then-interim executive director told us in February 2021. MFF did use some of the money to pay bail and legal expenses for people who were arrested while protesting, and in some cases rioting, but there is no indication that Tillman was a protester.

MFF said it paid a bail amount of $2,000 in April 2022 for Tillman, who was in jail on a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure. That was almost two years after Floyd’s death.

Weeks after his release, Tillman shot and killed Demitri Ellis-Strong at a rail station in St. Paul. He was sentenced in March to life in prison for the murder.

Trump blamed Harris for Tillman’s release, but there is no evidence that she had any say in the judge’s decision to grant Tillman bail or the nonprofit’s decision to pay it. Harris requested financial assistance specifically for protesters in Minnesota – not people arrested for any other reason.

“We have no connection to Harris or her campaign beyond a four-year-old tweet,” an MFF spokesperson told us in an email. “All our clients have been made eligible for pre-trial release by a judge, and are in jail until trial simply because they cannot afford bail.”

Bar Exam

In an attempt to insult her intelligence, Trump distorted the facts in claiming that Harris “couldn’t pass” the state exam required to become a licensed lawyer.

“You know she couldn’t pass her law exam, right? Have you heard that?” Trump asked the crowd. “These are minor details. She couldn’t pass her bar exam. Took the bar exam; she couldn’t pass it. She thought she’d never be able to pass it.”

Harris, a 1989 graduate of the then-University of California Hastings College of Law, failed the first time she took the bar exam in California in July 1989, according to her book, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.” (About 28% of those who took the exam for the first time in July 1989 failed, and about 40% of all people who took it did not pass, according to figures sent to us by the State Bar of California.)

However, in February 1990, on her second attempt, she passed the exam, considered to be one of the toughest in the country, and was admitted to the State Bar of California in June 1990.

Harris went on to hold multiple positions as a prosecutor before being elected San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003 and then California’s attorney general in 2010.

Trump raised this issue again when speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31. “She didn’t think she was going to ever pass it. And I don’t know what happened. Maybe she passed it,” he said. One of the journalists interviewing the former president corrected him, saying, “She did pass it.”

Guns

On the subject of Harris’ position on guns, Trump said, “She supported mandatory gun confiscation, ripping firearms away from law-abiding citizens.” That’s misleading.

In multiple interviews during her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris did talk about implementing a mandatory buyback program — but only for so-called assault weapons, not all firearms.

For example, during an October 2019 forum on gun violence, Harris was asked about a potential assault weapons ban and what she would do about millions of those particular guns already in circulation in the country.

“We have to have a buyback program, and I support a mandatory buyback program,” Harris replied. “It’s got to be smart, we got to do it the right way. But there are 5 million [assault weapons] at least, some estimate as many as 10 million, and we’re going to have to have smart public policy that’s about taking those off the streets, but doing it in the right way.”

In an NBC News interview the following month, Harris talked about rejecting the “false choice” that “either you’re in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away.” She added that “there are certain types of weapons that should not be on the streets of a civil society,” and said incentives should be provided for the public to turn in what she called “weapons of war.”

Recently on the campaign trail, Harris has called for an “assault weapons ban.” But the campaign confirmed to us that she was no longer advocating a mandatory buyback program.

Red Meat

Trump suggested that, to combat climate change, Harris was prepared to limit how much red meat is consumed in the U.S.

“Kamala called for slashing consumption of red meat to fight climate change,” Trump said. “Now, you know what that means, because in a couple of countries, they’re actually getting rid of their cows and their cattle … because they say it’s environmentally unacceptable.”

Harris did not explicitly say that she would restrict how much red meat Americans consume, as Trump suggested. During a September 2019 climate town hall, Harris, when asked, said that, for health reasons and because of climate change, she would support modifying U.S. dietary guidelines to encourage a change in eating habits.

“The balance that we have to strike here, frankly, is about what government can and should do around creating incentives and then banning certain behaviors,” she said, before relating her own love of cheeseburgers “from time to time.”

Although Harris did mention “banning certain behaviors” as part of a balanced government approach, her answer primarily focused on motivating, rather than forcing, the public to eat better. After all, Americans are not required to follow the dietary guidelines.

“But there also has to be what we do in terms of creating incentives that we will eat in a healthy way, that we will encourage moderation, and that we will be educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment,” she said.

Inflation Distortions

Economists say the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is the primary reason for higher inflation beginning in 2021, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine the following year further compounded the problem. The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief measure that President Joe Biden signed into law in March 2021, contributed to inflation, economists told us two years ago, though estimates varied as to how much.

But Trump, echoing a claim made throughout the Republican National Convention, claimed in his Minnesota speech that Harris “cast the tie-breaking votes that created the worst inflation in half a century,” going on to falsely claim “they don’t use the real numbers” and he believed it was “the worst inflation that we’ve ever had.”

The worst inflation the U.S. has ever had occurred from June 1919 to June 1920, when the 12-month increase in the Consumer Price Index was 23.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Under the Biden administration, the largest increase was 9.1% for the 12 months ending June 2022. BLS said it was the biggest increase since November 1981. So, it was the worst inflation in 41 years.

Inflation has moderated since that June 2022 peak. It rose 3% in the 12 months ending in June, according to the BLS.

In July 26 remarks in Florida, Trump similarly cast doubt on the official inflation figures, saying, “they say, ‘Sir, it’s only 58 years.’ I say I believe it’s the worst we’ve ever had. The numbers are much higher than they’re showing.” This false claim fits a pattern of Trump rejecting statistical measures when criticizing his political opponents, but accepting the figures when they are favorable to him. For instance, he claimed BLS unemployment rate figures were “phony” when campaigning in 2016, but once in office, he embraced the figures.

As for Harris’ vote, she cast the tie-breaking vote on a motion that moved the American Rescue Plan legislation forward in the Senate, which a few days later passed the bill without Harris’ assistance. As we said, economists cite the impact of the pandemic — a shutdown of the economy followed by a rapid recovery — as the primary culprit for inflation. (See our 2022 story on the issue for more.)

Abortion

Trump repeated false claims he’s made before about abortion. He said that Harris “wants abortion … right up until birth and even after birth.” There are no post-birth abortions. That would be homicide, and it’s illegal.

He also said that “everybody” and “all legal scholars” wanted the issue of abortion rights to be returned to the states. Plenty of legal scholars, and a majority of the American public, didn’t want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, which it did in June 2022, sending the issue to the states.

We’ve written about both claims before.

Trump said that Harris “wants abortion in the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy. Think of that. And right up until birth and even after birth.” Harris has called for abortion rights to be guaranteed by federal law. “And when Congress passes a law to restore reproductive freedoms — as president of the United States, I will sign it into law,” she said at a July 30 rally in Atlanta.

Republicans have pointed to a September 2023 interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” saying that Harris didn’t explain what gestational limit on abortion she would support. Harris said she wanted to “restore the protections of Roe v. Wade,” adding, “we’re not trying to do anything that did not exist before June of last year.”

As we’ve explained, the 1973 Roe ruling said states could outlaw abortion after fetal viability, but with exceptions for risks to the life or health of the mother. Many Republicans have objected to the health exception, saying it would allow abortion for any reason after viability.

Abortions late in a pregnancy are rare. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 93.5% of abortions in 2021 were performed at or before 13 weeks of gestation, and less than 1% were performed at or after 21 weeks.

Trump also referred to a 2019 bill, saying that Harris “voted against legislation that would require medical providers to give care to babies born alive after an attempted abortion.” The GOP bill would have instituted penalties and jail time for health care providers who don’t provide certain medical care “[i]n the case of an abortion or attempted abortion that results in a child born alive.” As we wrote then, Democrats said the legislation was unnecessary and aimed at restricting access to legal abortion, while Republicans said it was about protecting babies.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe after Trump’s appointment of three conservative justices during his time as president. “I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars, both sides, wanted and in fact demanded be ended. Roe v. Wade, they wanted it ended,” Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social on April 8.

He made the same claim in Minnesota, saying that “everybody wanted it back in the states. Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives and legal scholars, every legal scholar wanted it back in the states.”

When we wrote about this in April, legal scholars told us the claim was “utter nonsense” and “patently absurd.”

Legal scholars wrote many amicus briefs supporting Roe and opposing the Mississippi law that prompted the Supreme Court case that led to the court overturning Roe. Several polls since then have found a majority of Americans oppose the court’s decision.

Medicare and Social Security

Trump, who has grossly inflated immigration figures before, baselessly claimed that if Harris is elected “it’ll be 40 to 50 million more people in our country,” referring to illegal immigration, adding that “they’ll be using Medicare and Social Security,” programs that would then be “destroyed.” Harris “will kill Social Security and Medicare,” he said.

The baseless 40-to-50-million figures aside, illegal immigration doesn’t destroy those programs — instead it improves their finances.

That’s because workers who are not authorized to be in the U.S. have to pay a percentage of their paychecks in Medicare and Social Security taxes, even though they can’t receive any of the benefits from those programs. We and other fact-checkers have explained this before.

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Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

On December 26, 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s second-largest superpower and flagship for state communism for 74 years, suddenly ceased to exist. The Cold War, the four-decade- long ideological struggle between East and West, was finally over. But while December 26 marked the official birth of the newly-democratic Russian Federation, the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been a chaotic, drawn-out affair, fuelled by decades of economic stagnation, the attempted reforms of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, independence movements in the Soviet republics, and countless other factors. In the process, 18 former Soviet republics and satellite states found themselves newly independent: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. For Ukraine, the transition to independence was particularly dramatic, as it left the nation in possession of thousands of formerly Soviet nuclear weapons. Yet within five years Ukraine had rid itself of all these weapons and signed the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But what led Ukraine to give up such an overwhelming strategic advantage, and what does this decision mean for a nation once again facing invasion and occupation by Russia?

Ukraine has long been a key strategic asset in Russian and later Soviet global affairs, being both the breadbasket of Eastern Europe and home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sebastopol. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union also stationed large numbers of nuclear weapons in the region for use against targets both in Europe and North America. At the time of Ukraine’s independence on July 16, 1990, these numbered some 1,700 warheads divided among various delivery systems, including 33 strategic bombers and 130 UR-100N Stiletto and 46 RT-23 Molodets intercontinental ballistic missiles. This effectively made Ukraine the third-largest nuclear power on earth after the United States and Russia.

Nonetheless, for a while these weapons still remained under the control of the Soviet military. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, the political status of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal suddenly became uncertain. In January 1992, Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk ordered military commanders in charge of nuclear forces to pledge loyalty to the newly-independent Ukraine, which would give Kyiv administrative control over the weapons. However, many commanders refused, plunging Ukraine into a period of tense confusion and political debate regarding the nation’s future as a nuclear-armed nation. On May 23, 1992, Ukraine, along with former Soviet republics Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, signed the Lisbon Protocol, which under the terms of the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty or START restricted signatories from deploying more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and 1,600 bombers or intercontinental ballistic missiles. Internally, however, Ukraine had little intention of complying with theProtocol, with many in the government pushing for the country to retain nuclear capability as a safeguard against future invasion and occupation. Despite the United States Government pledging $175 million towards disarmament efforts, in early 1993 Kyiv claimed national ownership of its former Soviet weapons and began implementing administrative control over the arsenal.

Ultimately, however, Ukraine concluded that the costs of maintaining nuclear status far outweighed any potential benefits. While Ukraine maintained extensive facilities for designing, building, and maintaining aircraft and ballistic missiles, it had no nuclear production capabilities of its own and would have had great difficulty maintaining and replacing its warhead stockpile. The command and control infrastructure for launching its nuclear weapons was also based entirely in Russia. It would thus have taken Ukraine years and millions of dollars to bring its inherited arsenal under full operational control – an expense the nation’s shaky post-independence economy could scarcely afford. Furthermore, the arsenal itself was of limited use as a deterrent against Russia, for the UR-100N and RT-23 missiles had a minimum range of 5,000 to 10,000 kilometres and could only be targeted against Russia’s far eastern regions. Most importantly, however, a nuclear-armed Ukraine would likely have faced sanctions or withdrawal of diplomatic recognition from the United States and other NATO countries, or provoked retaliation by Russia – the very thing the arsenal was meant to prevent.

Thus, in April 1993, a group of 162 Ukrainian politicians submitted 13 preconditions for ratifying the START treaty, including assurance of national sovereignty and security from Russia and the United States, international assistance for weapons dismantlement, and financial compensation for all weapons-grade Uranium and Plutonium surrendered. Furthermore, Kyiv stated that it would dismantle only 42% of its warheads and 36% of its missiles, with the rest remaining under Ukrainian control. Russia and the United States balked at these demands, but Ukraine held firm, leading to a temporary breakdown in negotiations. Eventually, however, an American offer of additional financial assistance for dismantlement changed Kyiv’s mind, and on January 14, 1994, Ukraine signed the Trilateral Statement agreeing to full nuclear disarmament. This was followed on February 3 by Ukraine’s ratification of the START treaty, and on December 5 by the signing of the Budapest Memorandum, which read in part:

“The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as non-nuclear-weapon State,

Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time…

Confirm the following:

1. …their commitment… to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.

2. … their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

3. … their commitment… to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.

4. … their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.

5. …their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a State in association or alliance with a nuclear-weapon State.”

The Budapest Memorandum gave Ukraine 7 years to completely disarm, and by 2001 – one year ahead of schedule – all warheads and missiles had been dismantled and returned to Russia and all missile silos decommissioned. This made Ukraine the first – and thus far only – nation to give up a functioning nuclear arsenal. The only exception to Ukraine’s status as a nuclear-free nation were a handful of nuclear-armed ships of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, based at Sebastopol under a strategic agreement between the two nations.

But while total disarmament may have seemed the most economically and politically prudent move in 1994, recent acts of Russian aggression have led many to reconsider this fateful decision. Among those who have expressed betrayal at the hands of Russia and the other Budapest Memorandum signatories is former Ukrainian defence minister Andriy Zahorodniuk, who stated:

“We gave away the capability for nothing. Now, every time somebody offers us to sign a strip of paper, the response is, ‘Thank you very much. We already had one of those some time ago.’”

These sentiments echo those of former missile base commander Volodymyr Tolubko, who upon his election to the Ukrainian parliament in 1992, told the assembly that total disarmament was “romantic and premature” and that Ukraine should maintain at least a residual missile force to “deter any aggressor.” The following year, John Mearsheimer, an international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, concurred that Ukraine maintaining a nuclear arsenal was “imperative” to ensure that:

“…[the Russians], who have a history of bad relations with Ukraine, do not move to reconquer it.”

Following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the cause of nuclear rearmament began to be taken up by more and more mainstream politicians, including former foreign minister Volodymyr Ohryzko, who in March 2014 stated that Ukraine had the moral and legal right to reestablish its nuclear status. That July, an ultranationalist parliamentary bloc introduced a bill for nuclear rearmament, while a poll conducted later that year found that nearly 50% of the Ukrainian population supported the reestablishment of a nuclear arsenal. More recently in 2021, Andriy Melnyk , Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, stated that Kyiv would consider nuclear rearmament if its bid to join NATO was rejected – though the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry later denied Melnyk’s claims.

Skeptics of Ukraine’s disarmament point to numerous examples of nations who gave up weapons of mass destruction only to be subsequently betrayed and invaded. For instance, in 2003 Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi agreed to abandon his nuclear and chemical weapons programs in exchange for improved diplomatic and economic relations with the West, even going so far as to allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into the country. Yet despite this show of good faith, following the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Western nations provided air support and other military aid to anti-government forces, ultimately leading to Gaddafi’s death and the collapse of his government. Similarly, in 2015 the Islamic Republic of Iran signed a deal with the Obama administration agreeing to extensive international oversight of its civilian nuclear program. Barely one year later, however, the administration of newly-elected president Donald Trump reneged on this agreement, hitting Iran with crushing economic sanctions and launching a campaign of targeted assassinations against its military leaders.

Standing in stark contrast to these examples is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which by stubbornly clinging to its nuclear arsenal, rearmament proponents argue, has succeeded in rising from pariah state to a valued security partner of the United States.

Many experts, however, are skeptical of this view, arguing that the instability of Libya and Iran and the ongoing security of Pakistan and North Korea are due to multiple complex factors unrelated to nuclear weapons. Nonetheless, the notion that nuclear weapons guarantee security continues to gain traction in Ukraine, as Mariana Budjeryn, an expert on Ukraine at Harvard University, explained in 2022:

“The gist is, ‘We had the weapons, gave them up and now look what’s happening.’ On a policy level, I see no movement toward any kind of reconsideration. But on a popular level, that’s the narrative.”

Indeed, not only would nuclear rearmament be financially costly for a nation already fighting for its survival, but it would also likely cost Ukraine dearly on the world diplomatic stage, as former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer argues:

“A lot of countries are supportive of Ukraine, [but if it went nuclear], that support would dry up quickly.”

But even if Kyiv is not seriously considering rearmament, experts worry that the rising popularity of the pro-nuclear argument combined with international inaction against the Russian invasion might send the wrong message to nations considering the acquisition of nuclear arsenals. As Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, stated in 2022:

“If a diplomatic solution is not achieved, it will reinforce the impression that nuclear-armed states can bully nonnuclear states.”

Mariana Budjeryn agrees, arguing that:

“[It] really doesn’t look good for the international non-proliferation regime. Because if you have a country that disarms and then becomes a target of such a threat and a victim of such a threat at the hands of a nuclear-armed country, it just sends a really wrong signal to other countries that might want to pursue nuclear weapons.”

However, she remains confident that Ukraine made the right decision in 1994:

“I would say, after having researched this topic for nearly a decade, Ukraine did the right thing at the time. It did the right thing by itself, and also by the international community. It reduced the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world and that makes everyone safer. Now, looking at this history, however, the guarantors — the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum especially but also the international community more broadly — needs to react in the way as to not make Ukraine doubt in the rightness of that decision.”

For now, only time will tell whether the other signatories of the Budapest Memorandum will make good on their promise to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and security, or whether Ukraine will find itself forever regretting its decision to become a non-nuclear nation. Sláva Ukrayíni.

Expand for References

The world of aviation abounds with thousands of unique aircraft designs, from tiny ultralights to giant military transports. Yet no matter how advanced or outlandish these designs get, nearly all fall into one of only two basic categories: fixed wing or rotary wing. But the history of aviation, like that of all technologies, is riddled with false starts and dead ends, and once upon a time the landscape of aircraft design was considerably more diverse. For example, well into the 20th Century many inventors believed that flapping-wing ornithopters were a viable means of human flight, while in the 1920s it seemed like giant gas-filled airships were the future of commercial aviation, offering a more comfortable and luxurious experience than airliners of the time. By the end of the 1930s, a series of high-profile disasters including the crash of the British R101 and German Hindenburg (which by the way despite the plummeting firey ball, over half the passengers actually survived that one), this all brought the age of the giant airship to an abrupt close, ceding the future of flight to the airplane and eventually the helicopter. But largely forgotten among aviation’s many false starts is a bizarre effort to achieve manned flight using giant powered kites. And the unlikely figure behind this eccentric quest was none other than legendary inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Born in Scotland in 1847, Bell is perhaps best remembered for his work on the telephone, which he patented in the United States in 1876. However, Bell’s creative genius knew few bounds, spanning fields as diverse as architecture, medicine, genetics, and – his lifelong passion – teaching the deaf to speak. Among his numerous inventions were the first metal detector, a precursor to the iron lung, an improved version of Thomas Edison’s phonograph called the Graphophone, and a hydrofoil boat that in 1919 set a world speed record of 113 kilometres an hour. In 1893, flush with cash from the telephone, Bell and his wife Mabel built a palatial estate at Baddeck on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, which they dubbed Beinn Bhreagh [“Ben Vree-ah”] – Gaelic for “Beautiful Mountain.” In addition to the large mansion, the grounds included a variety of facilities dedicated to Bell’s wide range of scientific interests, such as an observatory, a sheep farm for studying genetics, and a boat house where Bell developed hydrofoils. That same year, Bell would develop a new obsession: human flight, research on which was beginning to pick up steam all around the world. His entry into this exciting new field was celebrated by his fellow scientists and inventors, including meteorologist Henry Clayton, who wrote in 1903:

“It is fortunate for those interested in aeronautics and the exploration of the air that Professor Alexander Graham Bell has joined the band of experimenters and is lending his inventive genius to the cause.”

Bell began his experiments by building a helicopter-like device with rotating wings, powered by a miniature steam boiler. Though the contraption successfully flew across a room, it was impossible to control and like all steam-powered machines could not be scaled up to a level needed for manned flight, steam engines simply having too low a power-to-weight ratio. Nonetheless, Bell was optimistic, writing to his wife:

“I have the feeling that this machine may possibly be the father of a long line of vigorous descendants that will plough through the air from Beinn Bhreagh to Washington. And perhaps revolutionize the world! Who can tell? Think of the telephone!”

But the course of Bell’s research would soon be diverted by the work of two men. The first was German inventor Otto Lilienthal, who between 1891 and 1896 performed hundreds of successful, controlled flights in homemade, bird-like hang gliders. The second was Australian Lawrence Hargrave, who in 1893 invented the box kite, a design so efficient Hargrave was able to use three kites to lift himself 16 feet off the ground. Inspired by Hargrave, in 1894 Bell built a giant box kite 14 feet long and 10 feet wide, which he referred to as “a monster, a jumbo, a full-fledged white elephant.” Indeed, it was so large an entire wall of the kite house at Beinn Bhreagh had to be dismantled to get the kite outside. And true to Bell’s description, it proved too heavy to fly in even the strongest winds.

Then, on August 10, 1896, Bell received shocking news: Otto Lilienthal had been killed when a stray gust of wind caused his glider to stall and crash, breaking the inventor’s spine. This event profoundly impacted Bell’s outlook on manned flight, as he wrote in his diary:

“A dead man tells to tales; he advances no further. How can ideas be tested without actually going into

the air and risking one’s life on what may be an erroneous judgement?”

This further pushed Bell to think that kites were the answer. In Bell’s conception, a powered kite did not need to land; instead it could be brought into the wind and moored to the ground by a cable, allowing the pilot to climb down via a rope ladder. And in an emergency, a kite would not violently crash but rather float gently to the ground. At least, so he thought. It was, Bell concluded, the only way for humans to achieve flight safely, and with this in mind he threw himself into research on manned kites.

The main technical hurdle facing Bell was that of scale. When a kite is scaled up, its surface area increases by the square of its length while its volume – and thus its weight – increases by the cube, meaning the kite quickly becomes too heavy to lift itself off the ground. After much experimentation, Bell came up with an elegant solution: the tetrahedral cell, a 3D construction of four triangular faces which could be combined into much larger, modular structures. As multiple cells could share the same structural member, the weight of the kite grew at a much slower rate than conventional designs when scaled up. It was also immensely strong. As Bell explained:

“It is not simply braced in two directions in space like a triangle, but in three directions like a solid.”

Bell’s finalized cell design, built first of black spruce and later aluminium tubing, was 10 inches to a side and covered on two sides with red silk, chosen because it was lightweight, airtight, and photographed well in black-and-white.

Over the next ten years Bell and his assistants test-flew dozens of different sizes and shapes of tetrahedral kites, including rings, prisms, and hexagons. This research reached its peak in 1905 with the construction of the largest kite the world had ever seen: the Frost King. So-named because Bell’s daughter Susie had recently married a man named Jack Frost, the kite measured 30 feet long, contained 1300 cells and had 400 square feet of lifting surface, yet weighed only 165lb. Nonetheless, Bell was forced to wait months for winds strong enough to lift it.

That wind finally came in November 1905 when a powerful gale blew through Baddeck. Bell excitedly rushed out to fly the Frost King, only to discover that his assistants, unwilling to row across the choppy lake, had decided to remain home. Bell, already depressed by the death of his Father two months before, was devastated by the apparent missed opportunity. After writing a note disbanding the kite-flying team, he retreated to his study to sulk. However, his devoted wife Mabel was having none of it. Realizing that her husband was squandering ideal flying conditions, she rounded up the rest of the domestic staff – including Bell’s manservant Charles Thompson, secretary Arthur McCurdy, and coachman Neil McDermid – and together this makeshift team carried the Frost King out onto the testing field. The flight was a resounding success, the kite producing so much lift it accidentally hoisted McDermid nearly 30 feet off the ground. Of the event, Mabel would later write:

“The experiment was so satisfactory, that it demonstrates that this form of kite could sustain a much greater load than he had dared hope.”

However, by this time Bell’s obsession with kites had begun to worry his family and colleagues, many of whom saw the experiments as a technological dead end. For example, a few years earlier, after visiting Beinn Bhreagh in 1901, Bell’s former student Helen Keller opined:

“Mr. Bell has nothing but kites and flying machines on his tongue’s end. Poor dear man, how I wish he would stop wearing himself out in this unprofitable way.”

Bell, however, dismissed his critics as having missed his point, writing:

“The word ‘kite’, unfortunately, is suggestive to most minds of a toy just as the telephone at first was thought to be a toy.”

Ironically, Bell would later suggest developing the tetrahedral kite into a toy, the sales of which he believed could finance the construction of larger machines. In a letter to Mabel, he claimed that if only 1/4 of all American children bought this toy, he could raise over $100,000 (about $3.1 million today). Apparently finding her husband’s logic rather dubious, Mabel instead encouraged him to patent the tetrahedral method of construction and find other applications for it. Towards this end, in August 1907 Bell erected an observation tower on the highest point of Beinn Bhreagh. Composed of three tetrahedral trusses arranged to form one large tetrahedron, the tower was highly efficient structurally and could be easily erected from the ground without the need for cranes or scaffolding. Today, this method of construction is known as an octet frame, and is widely used in applications as diverse as sports stadiums and the International Space Station.

Nonetheless, aeronautical science was rapidly passing Bell by. Among Bell’s many scientific colleagues was Samuel Langley, President of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington and main rival to the Wright Brothers in the race to achieve controlled, powered, manned flight. On May 9, 1896, Bell was present when Aerodrome #6, a scale model of Langley’s manned aircraft design, was launched from a houseboat on the Potomac near Quantico, Virginia, and flew for an extraordinary 1 minute, 20 seconds, covering a distance of over 3,000 feet. This demonstration made it clear to Bell that manned flight was just around the corner, and that it would be achieved not by kites, but by winged aircraft.

Thus, at Mabel’s suggestion, on October 1, 1907, Bell formed the Aerial Experiment Association, a group dedicated to advancing aviation technology. Backed by a $20,000 grant from the sale of some of Mabel’s family property, the AEA’s members comprised Bell, engineers J.A.D. McCurdy and Frederick Casey Baldwin, U.S. Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, and engine designer Glenn Curtiss. Despite being nearly four years since the Wright Brothers’ historic first flight on December 17, 1903, Bell insisted on carrying on with his kite research. This resulted in the construction of the Cygnet, a man-carrying kite composed of 3400 tetrahedral cells and fitted with a short stabilizer tail and a pair of pontoons. On December 6, 1907, with Lt. Selfridge at the controls, the Cygnet was towed out onto Bras D’Or lake by the steamer Blue Hill. As the steamer accelerated, the kite lifted gracefully into the air, reaching a maximum height of 168 feet. She remained aloft and stable for a full 7 minutes until, suddenly, disaster struck. Selfridge was supposed to cast off the towline as soon as the aircraft touched down on the water, but nestled in among the kite cells, his visibility was limited and by the time he realized he had landed the Cygnet was dragged through the water and torn to pieces. Though Selfridge managed to disentangle himself from the wreckage and swim to the surface, the incident was an eerie portent of things to come. On September 17, 1908 Thomas Selfridge would be killed during a demonstration flight with Orville Wright over Fort Meyer, Virginia, becoming the first person in history to die in a plane crash.

Despite this setback, Bell proceeded with the construction of the improved Cygnet II, which featured a wheeled undercarriage and Curtiss V-8 engine. It proved a dismal failure, as did the even larger Cygnet III, which, despite using a more powerful engine, only managed to lift itself two feet off the ground. During a test flight on March 19, 1912, the tetrahedral structure failed and the aircraft was destroyed beyond repair. This failure finally convinced Bell that this approach to manned flight was a dead end, and he abandoned his kite experiments. However, kites would continue to hold a special place in the inventor’s heart. When Bell died in 1922, he was buried in a coffin lined with red kite silk.

But the AEA’s efforts had not been in vain. While Bell remained in Baddeck, the rest of the team moved their operations to Glenn Curtiss’ headquarters in Hammondsport, New York, where they constructed a series of increasingly sophisticated aircraft. On March 12, 1908, their first design, Red Wing, flew 319 feet over Lake Keuka. Red Wing was soon followed by White Wing, which introduced an important new innovation: hinged ailerons on the wingtips for roll control. Previous aircraft, including the Wright Brothers’ 1903 Flyer, had induced roll by physically distorting the wing tips, a system known as wing warping. Today, ailerons are standard equipment on nearly all aircraft. The AEA’s next aircraft, June Bug, was even more sophisticated, introducing special paint called dope to seal the wing fabric and steerable tricycle undercarriage. On July 4, 1908, June Bug achieved another first when it flew a distance of 5,090 feet, winning the Scientific American Trophy for the first flight over 1 kilometre.

The AEA’s last and most famous creation was the Silver Dart, which incorporated all the lessons learned from the group’s previous aircraft. Built largely of bamboo and wood and powered by a 50 horsepower Curtiss V8 engine, the aircraft was named after the metallic balloon dope used to seal its wing fabric.

On February 23, 1909, with J.A.D. McCurdy at the controls, the Silver Dart made history when it lifted off the ice of Bras D’Or Lake, becoming the first manned aircraft in the British Empire to make a controlled, heavier-than-air powered flight. The aircraft would be flown another 30 times over the next month, making its longest flight of 11 minutes on March 9. This flight brought an end to the AEA’s activities, the association being officially disbanded on March 31, 1909. In less than a year and a half, this small band of pioneering inventors and dreamers had succeeded in turning the aeroplane from a rickety, precarious contraption into a viable transport technology.

While Alexander Graham Bell’s quixotic obsession with giant kites might seem quaint and foolish to us today, it is important to remember that at the time, nobody could have predicted what path the brand-new technology of flight would take. It was an exciting era of endless possibilities, when anything seemed possible and the sky really was the limit.

Expand for References

Claim:

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris failed the California bar exam on her first attempt, soon after she graduated law school in 1989.

Rating:

Context

Harris eventually succeeded in the bar exam and was admitted to the California bar in 1990, a year after she graduated law school.

In late July 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump claimed during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference that Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic frontrunner for president, failed her bar exam. At a campaign rally earlier in the month, Trump also claimed Harris was a “lousy student” and “couldn’t pass her bar exams.”

A number of posts on X discussed Harris’ credentials, questioning why she became a prosecutor and later attorney general of California after having failed her bar exam.

Harris did fail the California bar exam on her first attempt, but she later passed and was admitted to the California bar in 1990, just a year after she graduated. As such, we rated this claim as “True” with added context.

The bar exam is a qualifying written exam administered by a jurisdiction for lawyers to practice law in that particular state.

According to a 2016 New York Times profile of Harris about her Senate campaign, she did fail the bar exam on her first try. Harris described consoling a recent law graduate who did not make it either: “[Harris] failed the bar exam the first time she took it. Harris says she recently consoled a young law graduate who also didn’t pass; ‘I told her, it’s not a measure of your capacity’.”

Harris was admitted to the bar in June 1990, according to the State Bar of California records. She graduated from the University of California Hastings school of law in 1989.

The California bar exam has been described as notoriously difficult. According to the Los Angeles Times, there was only a 41.8% pass rate in 1985. In July 1989, also according to the Los Angeles Times, 59.5% of people passed and won the right to practice law from the July 1989 exams, and the pass rate was 72.2% among the 4,909 people taking the exam for the first time. In February 1990, the likely date Harris took the bar exam for a second time, the pass rate was 45.9%. 

Only 33.9% of people passed the February 2024 general bar exam.

Sources

Claim:

Social media users in 2023 and 2024 correctly stated that a map of forest growth in Asia showed no country in the world had ever planted as many trees as China.

Rating:

What’s True

Although the map was misrepresented by some social media users, it was genuine. Also, between 2001 and 2021, China did have more forest growth than any other nation in the world. However …

What’s False

… forest growth does not necessarily equate to trees being planted, but rather involves several factors, including a tree’s growth in height and diameter. Social media users oversimplified and misrepresented the data of the map in question.

A post shared to X on July 14, 2024, cited a map showing forest growth in Asia to claim “no country in history has ever planted as many trees as China.”

The post had received more than 2.9 million views at the time of this writing.

A similar post appeared on Reddit in 2023, where it was claimed China had “planted more trees than all nations in the world combined in the last 2 decades.”

However, while data showed China had seen the highest forest growth of any country in the 21st century, this did not necessarily equate to the nation having planted the most trees. Forest growth is determined by several factors, which we describe below.

Although the above social media posts included an accurate map, they misrepresented its meaning by saying it showed China had planted more trees than any other country in history. Therefore, we rated the claim “Miscaptioned.”

Forest Growth in China

Between 2001 and 2021, China added roughly 164,000 square miles of forest growth, a 24% increase, the most of any nation in the world, according to data visualization company Visual Capitalist, which cited data by World Bank. This was more than the next 19 countries combined.

Forest area is “land under natural or planted stands of trees of at least 5 meters in situ, whether productive or not, and excludes tree stands in agricultural production systems and trees in urban parks and gardens,” the World Bank wrote.

However, forest growth does not necessarily equate to trees being planted. Rather, the U.S. Department of Agriculture described overall forest growth as involving several factors, including a tree’s growth in height and diameter.

A reverse image search revealed (archived here) the map in question was first published elsewhere by Visual Capitalist on Dec. 29, 2021. It showed net forest change and deforestation by country and region between 1990 and 2020. China led “in forest growth by land area” in that period.

However, at no point did the graphic state China had planted more trees than any other country in history.

Visual Capitalist’s graphic also said the country “increased their forests by almost 243,000 square miles” in those 30 years.

(Visual Capitalist)

Visual Capitalist said the graphic was created using data published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in a report titled, “Global Forests Resources Assessment 2020.” Snopes verified the calculations produced by Visual Capitalist, based on the the FAO’s data, and determined their figures were correct.

According to the report, deforestation represents “the conversion of forest to other land uses, like agriculture or infrastructure.” It said, “forest area can increase when trees are planted on land that was not previously forested (afforestation) or when trees grow back on abandoned agricultural or other land (natural forest expansion).” Therefore, forest net change, which is shown in the map in the social media posts, is the sum of all losses due to deforestation and all gains due to afforestation and natural forest expansion.

In other words:

FOREST AREA NET CHANGE = FOREST EXPANSION GAINS – DEFORESTATION LOSSES

But, as the FAO report noted, “forests encompass a wide range of ecosystems that vary considerably in their characteristics,” and forest area alone is an insufficient parameter for identifying changes in the planet’s forested areas. For example, there are naturally regenerating forests, which contribute to more biodiversity conservation, compared with planted forests.

Again, while China may have led the world in forest growth during between 2001 and 2021, this did not mean the country had planted more trees than any other country in history. Forest is determined both by the “presence of trees and the absence of other predominant land uses,” the World Bank noted. This means China may have converted previous industrial or agricultural land areas to forests, thus increasing rates of forest growth.

Although it’s possible China experienced the highest net forest change of all countries because it planted more trees than any other nation, none of our research stated this was definitively the case. Finding out which country had planted the most trees ever fell outside the remit of this fact check.

The map was therefore misrepresented and miscaptioned by the Instagram and Reddit posts.

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino.

For months, Vice President Kamala Harris has walked a fine line on the conflict in Israel and Gaza. She has repeatedly and clearly condemned Hamas and expressed support for Israel’s right to eliminate the threat of the “brutal terrorist organization.” But she has also been critical of Israel’s military strategy, which she says has resulted in the death of “too many innocent Palestinians.”

The second part of Harris’ position has drawn fierce criticism in the last week from Republicans who argue that Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is equivocating on the issue, and that her sympathetic comments about Palestinians’ amounts to opposition to Israel. While some criticisms are opinion and a matter for political debate, some of the rhetoric attacking Harris goes too far and misrepresents her stated position.

In an interview on Fox Business News on July 25, Republican Sen. Rick Scott bluntly claimed that Harris “supports Hamas” and “works for the Hamas-loving part of her party.”

In an interview with CNN on the same day, Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who ran for the Republican presidential nomination this year, said Harris has “always sided with the Palestinian protests instead of our friend Israel.”

But Harris has condemned Hamas multiple times, and the Biden administration has approved billions in military aid to Israel. 

According to the Council on Foreign Relations’ calculations through May 31, “Since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas on October 7, 2023, the United States has enacted legislation providing at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel.” The Biden administration has supported that aid, and according to CFR, “Since October 7, the Biden administration has reportedly made more than one hundred military aid transfers to Israel.”

Oct. 7 is the date that Hamas attacked Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 Israelis — almost all of them civilians — and taking another 250 people hostage. According to United Nations data, more than 39,000 Palestinians, including nearly 12,800 women and children — and more than 300 Israeli soldiers — have died in the ensuing military offensive launched by Israel inside Gaza. Although Israel disputes these casualty figures — which are based on data from Gaza’s Health Ministry, an agency of the region’s Hamas-controlled government — Reuters noted that in May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu estimated that 14,000 Hamas fighters and 16,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed in the war.

Scott also criticized Harris for failing to show up for Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on July 24 and claimed that Harris did not “[call] out these protesters that defaced … Union Station.”

Just hours after Scott’s interview, Harris did condemn the pro-Hamas protesters who vandalized Union Station in Washington, D.C., calling it “despicable acts by unpatriotic protestors and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric.”

“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews,” Harris said in the statement. “Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation.”

At a recent rally in North Carolina, former President Donald Trump, Harris’ opponent in the presidential race, claimed Harris is “running away from Israel.” Trump also criticized Harris for not attending Netanyahu’s speech before Congress.

“Even if you’re against Israel or you’re against the Jewish people, show up and listen to the concept,” Trump said. “But she’s totally against the Jewish people.”

Harris, whose husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish, did miss Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress, saying she had a previously scheduled trip to Indianapolis. But she met with Netanyahu the following day.

In remarks after that meeting, Harris said she told Netanyahu “that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah” and that she has always held “an unwavering commitment to the existence of the state of Israel, to its security, and to the people of Israel.”

“Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization,” Harris stated. “On October 7, Hamas triggered this war when it massacred 1,200 innocent people, including 44 Americans. Hamas has committed horrific acts of sexual violence and took 250 hostages.”

“I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters,” Harris said.

Harris said she expressed to Netanyahu “my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians. And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating — the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

Harris said she continued to push for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by President Joe Biden.   

“It is time for this war to end and end in a way where Israel is secure, all the hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can exercise their right to freedom, dignity, and self-determination,” Harris stated. “There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal. And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done.”

Harris said she ultimately remains committed to a two-state solution.

“And I know right now it is hard to conceive of that prospect, but a two-state solution is the only path that ensures Israel remains a secure, Jewish, and democratic state and one that ensures Palestinians can finally realize the freedom, security, and prosperity that they rightly deserve,” Harris stated.

On CNN’s “State of the Union” on July 28, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton claimed that in her statement, Harris “equivocated between Hamas and Israel and effectively blamed Israel for civilian casualties in Gaza or for the lack of food in Gaza that Hamas is diverting from aid stations.”

Cotton said Hamas is to blame for civilian Palestinian casualties, because “it’s Hamas that is using civilians as human shields and locating its command posts and mortar firing positions at schools or at mosques or at hospitals.”

Cotton argued that Harris’ position “simply makes it harder to get a peace deal.”

“What we should do is back Israel to the hilt, not put pressure on Israel, not scramble behind the scenes to try to stop Israel from retaliating appropriately for this heinous attack that killed more than a dozen people, including children,” Cotton said, referring to the July 27 rocket strike that hit a soccer field in Israeli-controlled territory. Israel said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was responsible, which the group denied. 

Cotton also criticized Harris for failing to publicly condemn that rocket strike.

But as was the case with the vandalism at Union Station, shortly after Cotton’s appearance, Harris’ national security adviser, Phil Gordon, released a statement saying that Harris “condemns this horrific attack and mourns for all those killed and wounded.”

Gordon said “Israel continues to face severe threats to its security,” and that Harris’ “support for Israel’s security is ironclad. The U.S. will continue working on a diplomatic solution to end all attacks once and for all, and allow citizens on both sides of the border to safely return home.”

In a radio interview after Harris’ meeting with Netanyahu, Trump said it was clear, “No. 1, she doesn’t like Israel. No. 2, she doesn’t like Jewish people. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it and nobody wants to say it.”

In her statement on July 25, Harris addressed those who have accused her of equivocating in her support for Israel.

“It is important for the American people to remember the war in Gaza is not a binary issue,” she said. “However, too often the conversation is binary, when the reality is anything but. So, I ask my fellow Americans to help encourage efforts to acknowledge the complexity, the nuance, and the history of the region. Let us all condemn terrorism and violence. Let us all do what we can to prevent the suffering of innocent civilians. And let us condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hate of any kind.”

Past Statements

For months, Harris has staked the same position: condemnation of Hamas, support for Israel, but a concern about the deaths of too many Palestinian civilians in Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 massacre.

At a campaign event on Nov. 9, Harris said she and Biden “have been very clear that Israel has a right to defend itself, and it is a right that we support.” However, she said, it was also important that there be “no intentional targeting of civilians.”

“It is also important for us all to agree that we should not conflate the Palestinians with Hamas … and that the Palestinians are entitled to self-determination and dignity,” Harris said. “And so, that is the position that we have taken as an administration.”

Harris repeated those themes in an interview on MSNBC on Dec. 19.

“So, our position as the United States, and the position that the president and I and we have taken from the day of the horror of Oct. 7, where as you know 1,200 people were massacred, many of them young people who were simply going to a concert, where women were assaulted and abused, our position has always been that Israel has a right to defend itself, without any question,” Harris said. “And how it does so matters. And, as I have said many times, and I think we know, far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. And it is important then that … there be a lessening of the intensity and more precision around how Israel goes after Hamas and the leadership of Hamas.”

In March 3 comments in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when civil rights marchers were beaten by state troopers in 1965, Harris’ rhetoric ticked up a notch as she spoke about “the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” which she called “devastating.”

“We have seen reports of families eating leaves or animal feed, women giving birth to malnourished babies with little or no medical care, and children dying from malnutrition and dehydration,” Harris said. “As I have said many times, too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. And just a few days ago, we saw hungry, desperate people approach aid trucks, simply trying to secure food for their families after weeks of nearly no aid reaching Northern Gaza. And they were met with gunfire and chaos.

“Our hearts break for the victims of that horrific tragedy and for all the innocent people in Gaza who are suffering from what is clearly a humanitarian catastrophe,” Harris said. “People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act.”

Harris urged Israel to “do more to significantly increase the flow of aid” to Gaza and added, “No excuses.”

“As I have said repeatedly since October 7th, Israel has a right to defend itself. And President Joe Biden and I are unwavering in our commitment to Israel’s security,” Harris said. “Hamas cannot control Gaza, and the threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel must be eliminated. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that has vowed to repeat October 7th again and again until Israel is annihilated.”

Harris called for an immediate, if temporary, ceasefire “given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza.”

“This will get the hostages out and get a significant amount of aid in,” Harris said. “This would allow us to build something more enduring to ensure Israel is more secure and to respect the right of the Palestinian people to dignity, freedom, and self-determination.”

Daylight Between Biden’s and Harris’ Positions?

Following her on-camera statement after the meeting with Netanyahu, two unnamed Israeli officials reportedly told Axios that “Netanyahu and his team were caught off guard by Harris’ on-camera statement and taken aback by its tone, which they said sounded much more critical than Biden’s.”

Biden has repeatedly and explicitly defined himself as a Zionist, which he said was “about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how they’ve been persecuted” (though he added that he also “been very supportive of the Palestinians”). But when a CNN reporter asked a Harris aide if Harris was a Zionist, the aide sidestepped the descriptor.

“The vice president has been a strong and longstanding supporter of Israel as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people. She will always ensure Israel can defend itself from threats, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah,” Harris’ deputy national security adviser, Dean Lieberman, responded. “One can criticize specific policies of the government of Israel while still strongly supporting the state of Israel and the people of Israel. And that support for Israel in no way conflicts with the vice president’s strong view that the Palestinian people deserve freedom, dignity, and self-determination.”

In December, Politico reported that Harris had been pushing the Biden administration “to show more concern publicly for the humanitarian damage in Gaza” and for Biden specifically to “show more sensitivity to Palestinian civilians.” The story, citing an unnamed person close to the vice president’s office, said Harris advocated for the U.S. taking a tougher posture with Netanyahu in pushing for a peace deal.

Politico reported that Kirsten Allen, Harris’ press secretary, told the publication that “‘there is no daylight between the president and the vice president, nor has there been’ and that the two are aligned and ‘have been clear: Israel has a right and responsibility to defend itself; humanitarian aid must be allowed to flow into Gaza; innocent civilians must be protected; and the United States remains committed to a two-state solution.’”

In an interview with Ynet on July 23, Israeli Ambassador to Washington Mike Herzog expressed some ambivalence about Harris’ position toward Israel.

“Overall her record is positive, and she has often expressed support for the State of Israel, and support for American aid to Israel,” Herzog said. “And at the same time, in recent months she has made quite a few problematic statements in the context of the war in Gaza. I think we also felt the influence of the more progressive camp in the Democratic Party there, and we felt it more as the political season here heated up. Is this something that will continue to follow us in the future as well? We will have to see and of course have a dialogue with her about these things.”

Harris has also been criticized from the pro-Palestinian side.

“Every time we’ve talked in the past six months about the genocide and who’s responsible and who’s complicit and who has blood on their hands, we say ‘Genocide Joe’ and ‘Killer Kamala,’” Hatem Abudayyeh, chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network and spokesperson for Coalition to March on the DNC, a planned protest of the upcoming Democratic National Convention, told Politico.

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee released a memo that claims “Harris has fully capitulated to the Radical Left as she quickly abandoned any support for Israel.” That’s clearly not the case, as Harris’ comments show.

In support of the claim, the RNC claimed Harris “‘both sides’-ed” the terrorist attack on Israel, and noted that Harris began criticizing Israel’s response “mere weeks after the October 7 terrorist attacks.” It cited Dec. 2 remarks in which Harris said, once again, “As Israel defends itself, it matters how.”

“The United States is unequivocal: International humanitarian law must be respected,” Harris said. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating. … As Israel pursues its military objectives in Gaza, we believe Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.”

Left out of the RNC clip — and from Republican attacks this week — were Harris’ comments immediately prior to that quote.

“On October 7th, Hamas terrorists launched a terrorist attack that killed 1,200 innocent people in Israel, including 35 Americans. It was a brutal and horrific massacre,” Harris said. “Babies and Holocaust survivors were killed. Young people who were simply attending a concert were shot dead. Two hundred and forty hostages were taken from their homes. And over, then, the past eight weeks, President Biden and I have been clear: Israel has a right to defend itself. And we will remain steadfast in that conviction.”

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On July 30, 2024, the Facebook page America – Love It Or Leave It posted a meme claiming Home Depot ended its longstanding sponsorhip of the Olympic Games.

The post appeared to suggest the home improvement company retracted its support for the Games after the controversial opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.

(Facebook user America’s Last Line of Defense)

The post had amassed more than 14,000 interactions at the time of this writing. An example of the meme also appeared on X.

Some social media users seemed to believe the rumor. One comment on the Facebook post read: “Thank you Home Depot! This is only one of the many reasons why I shop Home Depot! Always!” Another said: “Great decision by a great company.”

However, the claim originated from a Facebook page that described its output as satirical in nature. Its Facebook Intro said: “A subsidiary of the America’s Last Line of Defense network of trollery. Nothing on this page is real.”

Likewise, the “About Us” section of the America’s Last Line of Defense website stated: 

Everything on this page is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. Any similarities between site’s pure fantasy and actual people, places and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical.

No news outlets published reports about Home Depot withdrawing its sponsorship of the Games in response to the 2024 opening ceremony.

America’s Last Line of Defense has a history of making up stories for shares and comments. In June 2024, Snopes addressed a satirical claim that former soccer player Megan Rapinoe was disqualified from the Soccer Hall of Fame. In July 2024, we also debunked a satirical rumor that former football player Colin Kaepernick was unemployed, broke and freeloading off former teammates. Both were linked to America’s Last Line of Defense.

We also have addressed other claims about the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics, including the assertion it referenced “The Last Supper” and a rumor Samsung withdrew $1 billion in endorsements in response to the “woke agenda.”

For background, here is why we sometimes write about satire/humor.