Category: Fact Checking

Claim:

Frida Baby, a company that makes products for baby, birth and postpartum care, used sexual innuendo in its marketing, both in its social media posts and on its packaging.

Rating:

What’s True

The company printed suggestive phrases on the packaging of at least three of its products and in one social media post from 2020, which it has since deleted. However …

What’s Undetermined

… Snopes could not confirm that two of the alleged posts were real. Neither Google searches nor a search of the company’s Instagram feed showed the posts, which circulated only in screenshot form as of this writing.

In February 2026, a rumor spread widely that Frida Baby, a company that makes products for babies and postpartum care, used sexual innuendo in its marketing, leading a number of social media users to express their outrage.

For example, an X post shared several images of Frida’s alleged Instagram posts and packaging (archived):

sexual jokes to market baby products is actually sick and twisted @fridababy this is absolutely appalling and disgusting

The images showed:

• A purported screenshot of an Instagram post promoting a “3-in-1” thermometer with the caption “This is the closest your husband’s gonna get to a threesome,” referring to a sexual practice that includes three people. 
• A supposed box for another touchless thermometer with the phrase “How about a quickie,” a common phrase for rapid sexual intercourse. 
• An alleged step-by-step “quick start” manual for a humidifier titled “I get turned on easily” — a phrase that can both mean “switched on” and “aroused.”
• A box with the phrase “I’m a [power] sucker,” which evoked a term widely used in gay circles, “power bottom,” in which the “bottom” is the person who receives during sexual intercourse, but does so in an active, dominant way. “Sucker” may mean a person who gives oral sex. Frida makes devices that suck mucus from babies’ noses.

In another post (archived), the same user included the an apparent screenshot of a July 5, 2021, Instagram post promoting a device that helps relieve babies’ gas-induced intestinal pain, also known as colic. The device, Windi, is a short tubelike tool one introduces into a baby’s anus to let out gas. The alleged caption read:

Top Windi Pro-Tips to tap that [g]a** (and sometimes even [excrement emoji]):

– Massage it real good

– Lube that ish up

– Wear a poncho

(“Tap that a**” is a vulgar phrase for having sex. “Ish” reverses the sound from the expletive “s***.”)

Another screenshot in the same post showed a purported Instagram post with the caption “What happens when you pull out too early,” evoking the ineffective “pullout” method of contraception. The photograph showed a baby with a trail of mucus across its face. 

The X user also linked to the supposed Frida “Team” page and shared screenshots of the profiles (archived) of company employees who may have been responsible for the posts and packaging. The images showed portraits of three men, who worked as director of packaging, vice president of marketing strategy and production manager for package design.

While Snopes could not verify all alleged Instagram posts, we confirmed Frida has used sexual innuendo in its marketing since at least 2020. For this reason, we rate the claim a mixture of true and undetermined information.

In an emailed statement, Frida said its marketing strategy was meant to expose the messiest parts of parenting young children, and that it tried to inject some humor to help parents feel less alone:

From the very beginning, Frida has used humor to talk about the real, raw, and messy parts of parenting that too often go unspoken. We do this because parenting can be isolating and overwhelming, and sometimes a moment of levity is what makes a hard experience feel human, shared, and survivable. Our products are designed for babies, but our voice has always been written for the adults caring for them. Our intention has consistently been to make awkward and difficult experiences feel lighter, more honest, and less isolating for parents. We’re never trying to offend, push boundaries for shock value, or make anyone uncomfortable.

The statement did not address whether the company had shared, then deleted, the posts Snopes could not find.

Sexual innuendo as a marketing strategy

Snopes determined Frida had used sexual innuendo as a marketing strategy since at least 2020. 

A Google search for the phrase “This is the closest your husband’s gonna get to a threesome” led to a Nov. 17, 2020, Facebook post by the company:

(Google)

The link led to a Facebook page that read “this video is no longer available.” The URL showed that the link led to a post by the official Frida Baby page on Facebook, however. This indicated the video for the 3-in-1 rectal thermometer and its caption were real. 

Several searches confirmed that the box for the touchless thermometer included the reference to a “quickie.” We identified it in an Instagram reel shared by Frida on Dec. 23, 2025 (archived):

(Instagram users @Fridababy and @Fridamom)

Several e-commerce websites and one “unboxing” video from December 2024 confirmed the box for the electric nose-sucker included the phrase “[power] sucker:”

The electric nose-sucker also was for sale on the Frida website.

Unboxing videos on YouTube from October 2022 and March 2020 showed the “quick start” guide on the cardboard box of the Frida humidifier included the phrase “I get turned on easily”:

(YouTube channel Crystal Had a Little Home)

This product was no longer for sale on the Frida website as the company had updated the model, but it was available on other e-commerce websites.

We could not find the Instagram posts with the photograph of the baby or the Windi tool. Neither Google searches nor a search of the company’s Instagram feed showed the posts, which circulated only in screenshot form as of this writing. However, users posted multiple screenshots of the post with the baby’s face that had slight differences, including both light and dark modes, and in one instance an indication that a user’s Instagram contact had liked the post. This suggested the post did truly exist at one point, as fabricated screenshots tend to be completely identical in every post that shares them.

Lastly, while the company removed the “Team” page from its website, we identified an archive of the page from late January 2026, confirming the identities of the three men and their positions within the company.

Claim:

An image authentically shows U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi at age 14 with President Donald Trump at a party connected to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Rating:

In February 2026, a supposed image of U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi at age 14 with an adult President Donald Trump spread on social media platforms such as Threads, Facebook and X.

The most popular version of these claims included a text overlay that suggested the photo was taken at a party somehow related to convicted sex offender and late financier Jeffrey Epstein: 

Pam Bondi at 14, She is now Trump’s head of the DoJ. She is an Epstein party baby! Just sickening…how deep does this go! 

Snopes readers wrote in to ask whether the girl in the picture was really Bondi and if the context of the image included Epstein. 

We first fact-checked the authenticity of this image in 2025 amid social media claims that it showed an anonymous 13-year-old girl with Trump on Epstein’s island. While the claim has changed, the rating has not: The image is fake. As we previously reported, the image was generated by artificial intelligence. 

The Department of Justice did not immediately return a request for comment about the claim and an inquiry as to whether Bondi had met Epstein. A reverse image search could not determine the original creator of the image. 

How we know the image was AI-generated

The image as circulated in 2025 had clear indicators of AI generation, including the unnatural hair and skin tone on the teenage girl, particularly the smoothness of the skin on her arm. The 2025 version of the image also included red flags in the background of the picture. As we reported in 2025: 

The man behind the girl’s shoulder appears to be holding the glass of alcohol with six fingers (including one invisible thumb), five of which are strangely elongated. The individual behind Trump’s shoulder also has no visible ear lobe, despite the rest of the ear being in place.

Someone likely added grain or blur and cropped the version of the image circulating in 2026 to hide these clues of AI generation. This is actually a good example of why AI detection tools are not foolproof: The detection engine Hive Moderation determined that the 2025 version was likely AI-generated but claimed the 2026 version was not likely AI-generated, even though they’re the same picture. 

Left: 2026 version of claim. Right: 2025 version of claim.  (Facebook user Kween Galloway McCloud/X user @AngeliqueSuzan1)

There’s still at least one major indicator of AI in the 2026 version: Trump has blue eyes, as seen in these real images. The AI-generated image shows Trump with brown eyes.    

That’s not Pam Bondi 

Comparing the fake girl in the picture to a credible image of Bondi as a high school senior published by the Tampa Bay Times also showed that the fake girl’s features did not match with young Bondi’s features. For example, the width of the fake girl’s nose and the shape of her jawline differed from Bondi’s actual nose and jawline. 

Pam Bondi, 1983

Article from Dec 1, 2024 Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg, Florida) 

The timeline also doesn’t add up. As we have previously reported, Trump told New York magazine in 2002 that he’d known Epstein for 15 years, placing the start of their relationship around 1987. Bondi was born Nov. 17, 1965. That means she turned 14 on Nov. 17, 1979, years before Trump said he became friends with Epstein. 

As such, it doesn’t make sense to claim that she attended a party with Trump and Epstein — or that she was in the two men’s circuit — at age 14. 

Finally, if this image actually showed Bondi as a minor with an adult Trump, it would have certainly made news, and no reputable news outlets have published any stories reporting on this image as legitimate, per a Google search. 

For further reading, Snopes has a collection of stories debunking pictures of Trump with young girls. 

A social media post cited by Elon Musk to bolster his argument that mail-in voting should be curtailed, and which was subsequently amplified by President Donald Trump, makes the false and long-ago debunked claim that in the 2020 election, “Pennsylvania sent out 1,823,148 mail-in ballots but received back around 2.5 MILLION mail-in ballots.”

As the Pennsylvania Department of State’s final report on the 2020 election shows, there were 2,673,272 mail-in ballot applications approved for the 2020 general election, so that’s how many were sent out. And of those, 2,273,490 votes were cast. (See charts 6.2 and 6.3 in the report.) Another 435,932 absentee ballots were also approved, and 374,659 of them were cast.

“This claim is based on mixing up statistics from the primary and the general election,” Charles Stewart III, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, explained to us via email.

As online Pennsylvania records show, there were roughly 1.8 million absentee and mail-in ballots approved for the primary election in 2020, nearly 1.5 million of which were cast. In other words, the post mixes up the number of mail-in ballots (including absentee ballots) sent out for the 2020 primary election and then cites approximately the number of mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 general election.

“These are long-ago debunked claims that will not disappear despite the availability of official data,” Stewart said.

The Posts

Trump has been making false and unfounded claims related to mail-in voting for years. And he has long called for ending mail-in voting “other than if you’re in the military, or you’re sick, or you’re away, or some reasonable but good excuse,” as he said on Feb. 9.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk, a former Trump adviser, agrees, according to a Feb. 8 post from an X account called The Leading Report: “Elon Musk calls for mail-in voting to be abolished nationwide except for troops overseas or a serious medical condition.” Musk reposted it and commented, “Critical to avoid fraud.”

The same day, The SCIF — an X account whose bio identifies the operator as a “Digital Operator, Creator and Intelligence Researcher” with the motto, “Truth is the most effective weapon in a war of information filled with lies” — weighed in with an X post that read: “Elon is right, banning mail-in voting is critical to avoiding fraud in our elections. During the 2020 election, Pennsylvania sent out 1,823,148 mail-in ballots but received back around 2.5 MILLION mail-in ballots. This accounts for Biden’s fraudulent and impossible 682,000+ vote spike, which were counted with NO observers and were all for Biden, which magically just happened to be enough to steal Trump’s almost 700,000 vote lead in PA before swing states shut down counting locations at the same time, to steal the 2020 election. PA’s own Secretary of State website then wiped the 2.5 MILLION mail-in ballot number after the total number was questioned. Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide.”

Musk reposted that, and commented, “Essential to stop fraud in elections.” On Feb. 10, Trump reposted the claim and Musk’s response on Truth Social, without comment.

This latest criticism of mail-in voting comes as Congress considers the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote, and also photo identification to vote in federal elections. It would not abolish mail-in voting, but it would require a copy of identification to both request and submit a mail-in ballot.

Mail-in voting is widely used around the country. Eight states and Washington, D.C., conduct their elections mostly by mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Another 28 states — including Pennsylvania — offer “no excuse” mail-in voting, meaning that any voter can request a mail-in ballot without needing to provide a reason. (Pennsylvania has both no-excuse mail-in ballots as well as absentee ballots for those who can’t make it to a polling place due to illness, disability, work or travel.)

The Origins

The post claiming there were hundreds of thousands more mail-in ballots received than were actually sent out in Pennsylvania — a swing state that broke for Biden in 2020 — originated in a Nov. 25, 2020, hearing held by Pennsylvania Senate Republicans (a video of which is attached to the post). During that hearing, then-Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani referred to Pennsylvania voting data and said, “Now this is the part that is a mystery. Mailed ballots sent out: 1,823,148. But when you go to the count of the final count of the vote, there are 2,589,242 mail-in ballots.” Giuliani asked witness Phil Waldron, a retired Army colonel, “How do you account for the 700,000 mail-in ballots that appeared from nowhere?”

Waldron, who has promoted many unfounded theories about manipulated voting machines, speculated the voting machines may have been tampered with and called for a “detailed forensic analysis” of the voting machines used in Pennsylvania.

(Waldron later circulated a PowerPoint document to Trump allies that drew the attention of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. At the time, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the panel, called the document “an alarming blueprint for overturning a nationwide election.” According to the Jan. 6 committee report, Waldron was among those who “invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when asked by the Select Committee what supposed proof they uncovered that the election was stolen.”)

But again, the premise of Giuliani’s question was flawed. There were not more ballots returned in Pennsylvania than had been sent out.

“This is completely false,” Kathy Boockvar, who was the Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth at the time of the 2020 election, said in an email to us about the online claim. She explained the same thing at the time in a Dec. 16, 2020, letter to U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson and Gary Peters about similar claims.

All of the election data are, and were, in public records available online, and they contradict Giuliani’s claim.

The claim is also contradicted by the contemporaneous reporting made to the U.S. Elections Project, a clearinghouse for voting data maintained by Mike McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida.

“The individual-level Pennsylvania 2020 mail ballot data I received on a daily basis from the Secretary of State’s office does not substantiate these allegations,” McDonald told us via email. “Pennsylvania election officials reported issuing a little over 3 million mail ballots during the COVID crisis, of which election officials accepted a little more than 2.6 million returned ballots.” Those figures include both mail-in and absentee ballots.

And the claim is further contradicted by news accounts before the election that cited the correct number of ballot requests for the general election.

Indeed, the bogus claim was widely debunked at the time.

“It’s pretty unbelievable this is still being used,” Eric Kraeutler, a member of the board of directors and former chair of the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based election watchdog, told us in a phone interview. “They mixed up data for these two separate elections (the 2020 primary and general elections). … As far as we’re concerned, this was disposed of five or six years ago.”

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Claim:

The construction of U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom was halted by a federal judge in mid-February 2026.

Rating:

Context

As of this writing, a federal judge has yet to rule on the legal status of the construction project. In a social media post, Trump stated that the project is moving “ahead of schedule,” while a White House spokesperson told us that the project is still in the “demolition phase.”

A social media rumor that emerged around Feb. 10, 2026, claimed a federal judge had halted U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom construction project. 

Trump began the demolition of the White House’s East Wing in October 2025 in order to replace it with a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. In December 2025, the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation sued the administration, arguing the project began without necessary approvals or congressional authority.

In mid-February 2026, numerous readers asked us to confirm whether a federal judge had halted construction on the ballroom. A Feb. 10 Facebook post stated:

Trump’s infamous new White House ballroom and bunker has been scrapped by a federal judge and the national trust preservation committee. It was also discovered the $400 million in ballroom donor money has either disappeared or simply never existed. 🤔

The image of the White House (below) shows the former site of the East Wing, built in 1902 and renovated in 1942, completely demolished with several bulldozers and skip loaders clearing the last of the rubble.

GSA has to now hire a construction company to fill the east wing (trump improperly had demolished) with dirt and sod. The Judge and committee have also ruled trump “cannot as much as paint a wall in the white house without a permit and committee approval”. 

(Facebook user Alex W. Weis)

As of this writing, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, the judge overseeing the case, had yet to issue a decision on the status of the ballroom construction project. We reached out to the White House; a spokesperson told us the ballroom was not yet being constructed and the project was still in the “demolition stage.” 

We therefore rate the claim that a judge has halted the construction as false. We will update the story when the court releases a decision.

Photographs on Getty Images showed construction cranes around the demolition area in late January 2026. 

The National Trust argued that the project proceeded without receiving authorization from Congress and with inadequate environmental assessments.

On Dec. 17, 2025, Leon denied the National Trust’s motion for a temporary restraining order on the project and temporarily allowed work to continue. The judge’s order noted that because the ballroom plans had not been finalized, there was no “imminent risk of irreparable aesthetic harm.” 

According to arguments filed by the Trump administration in January 2026, previous presidents did not require congressional approval to carry out construction or renovations on White House grounds. The government also said above-ground construction would not begin until April 2026.

In late January 2026, Leon expressed skepticism that the administration had the legal authority to tear down the East Wing and proceed with construction. However, he said he would make a decision in the coming weeks, likely in February 2026, on whether or not to allow a preliminary injunction, which would stop the construction work for the duration of the case. 

According to Bloomberg’s reporting, Leon predicted the issue would also be appealed to a federal appeals court and possibly the Supreme Court. According to court records viewed on Feb. 12, Leon had not issued such an injunction. 

The White House didn’t specify how much money it had raised and who the private donors were, directing us to Trump’s most recent statement instead. On Feb. 10, 2026, Trump posted on TruthSocial that the construction project “is on budget, and ahead of schedule.” He also shared digital renderings of what the potential ballroom would look like. 

On Jan. 25, Trump posted that the project was privately funded and would cost $300 million to $400 million dollars: 

I’m building, on top of everything else that I am doing, one of the greatest and most beautiful Ballrooms anywhere in the World, with more than 300 Million Dollars of Great American Patriots’ money, and working closely with, right from the beginning, the United States Military and Secret Service. This is a GIFT (ZERO taxpayer funding!) to the United States of America, of 300 to 400 Million Dollars (depending on the scope and quality of interior finishes!), for a desperately needed space […]

In November 2025, the White House released a list of donors for the ballroom project, which included charitable organizations, sports team owners, tech companies, media companies and billionaires. The Associated Press reported an additional corporation as well as an artificial intelligence chipmaker that also donated to the project. The administration did not reveal how much each donor contributed. 

Snopes has covered numerous claims on the East Wing demolition and Trump’s plans for a White House ballroom.  

Sources

Claim:

An image of a person holding a gun authentically depicted Jesse Van Rootselaar, who was identified by police as the attacker in a Feb. 10, 2026, mass shooting in British Columbia.

Rating:

Context

The image was altered using artificial intelligence to make it appear as though the subject, social media influencer William Sexton, who uses the name Vrillium online, was holding a gun. Social media users miscaptioned the altered image by falsely claiming it showed Jesse Van Rootselaar.

On Feb. 11, 2026, Canadian authorities identified 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar as the attacker in a shooting the previous day that killed eight people and wounded more than 25 more in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. She reportedly died from a self-inflicted wound.

Officials (at 8:17) confirmed Van Rootselaar began to transition from a biological male to female six years earlier and publicly identified as a female, noting that it was too early in the investigation to determine whether her trans identity had any bearing on a possible motive.

Shortly after authorities identified Van Rootselaar, an image began circulating on social media (archived, archived, archived) that allegedly showed her holding an assault rifle and wearing a shirt that read “Internet Princess.”

(X user @Breaking911)

The image did not depict Van Rootselaar. It was a years-old picture of social media influencer William Sexton, who uses the name Vrillium, that was altered using artificial intelligence to make it appear as though Sexton was holding a gun. Because of this, we’ve rated this claim as fake.

The original image — first posted in February 2020 (archived) — depicted Sexton holding a guitar, not an assault rifle. If the circulated image was unaltered, the gun would appear in the mirror behind Sexton.

Sexton confirmed on his social media accounts that he was not the shooter, writing on his Instagram story on Feb. 11: “Insane I have to say this: No, I’m not the trans shooter from Canada.”

(Instagram user @vrilliumlive)

The image previously resurfaced in December 2025 when users circulated images of Sexton from his alternate X accounts (circulated image at lower left):

(X user @BillySexton2013)

Sexton later addressed the images in since-deleted posts, saying: “I don’t get how this is a ‘gotcha’ when this is like, a staple of my brand. I was a drug addled, sexually deviant, leftist degenerate who was saved by Christ in 2023.”

Snopes could not immediately identify who originally posted the AI-altered image of Sexton.

The misidentification of Sexton as the shooter was further confirmed by an authentic image of Van Rootselaar released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Feb. 11 (archived). 

(Royal Canadian Mounted Police)

In short, the image of a person holding an assault rifle did not depict Van Rootselaar. The original image was posted in 2020 by Sexton, who held a guitar, not an assault rifle. Sexton confirmed on his Instagram story that he was not the shooter, and Canadian police released an authentic image of Van Rootselaar on Feb. 11 that further confirmed the circulated image misidentified Sexton as the shooter.

In February 2026, a claim (archived) circulated online that a man in Texas fatally shot his daughter Lucy Harrison after they argued about then-President elect Donald Trump.

One X account sharing the story posted, “🚨🇺🇸 BREAKING — MAGA Dad Shot and Killed his Daughter After Argument about Trump.”

(X user @PamphletsY)

Posts about the alleged killing also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived).

On Feb. 11, 2026, an inquest (archived) reportedly found Lucy Harrison died “due to unlawful killing on the grounds of gross negligence manslaughter” on Jan. 10, 2025. The 23-year-old woman’s father, Kris Harrison, reportedly claimed his gun went off accidentally while he was showing it to his daughter.

Speaking at the inquest, Lucy Harrison’s partner Sam Littler said that, before the shooting, the father and daughter had a “big argument” (archived) about Trump, the BBC reported. The inquest reportedly did not directly link the Harrisons’ argument to the fatal shooting or establish a motive for the reported manslaughter.

We contacted the Prosper Police Department, the Collin County medical examiner’s office, the Collin County district attorney’s office and Cheshire Coroner’s Court for their records related to Lucy Harrison’s death and await replies to our queries. 

In the meantime, we leave this claim unrated. Here’s what we know:

Partner said father and daughter clashed over Trump

According to the BBC’s report on the inquest into Lucy Harrison’s death that cited Littler, he and Harrison were due to fly home to Warrington, England, on Jan. 10, 2025, the day of the fatal shooting. 

Littler said Harrison and her father had a “big argument” about Trump that morning, when she reportedly asked her father, “How would you feel if I was the girl in that situation and I’d been sexually assaulted?”

The BBC reported: “Kris Harrison had replied that he had two other daughters who lived with him so it would not upset him that much.”

It was not clear from reports which “situation” Lucy Harrison was referring to or how it related to Trump.

Later, according to Littler and a reported statement from Kris Harrison, Harrison took his daughter into his bedroom to show her his Glock 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.

A statement from Harrison presented at the inquest reportedly said, “As I lifted the gun to show her I suddenly heard a loud bang. I did not understand what had happened. Lucy immediately fell.” The BBC reported that Harrison couldn’t remember whether his finger had been on the trigger.

‘Reckless’ actions led to Lucy’s death

According to a medical report (archived) by the Collin County medical examiner’s office seen by the Liverpool Echo, a local newspaper near Lucy Harrison’s home, she died after a gunshot to the chest from “medium range.”

Snopes has requested this report from the medical examiner’s office and will update this article if we learn more.

Authorities in the U.S. did not carry out an inquest into Harrison’s death. An inquest is a judicial fact-finding inquiry where a court attempts to determine a cause of death. In the U.K., the process is generally led by a coroner.

On Feb. 11, 2026, Cheshire Senior Coroner Jacqueline Devonish concluded the court’s inquest into Harrison’s death, reportedly finding that Harrison died “due to unlawful killing on the grounds of gross negligence manslaughter.” 

Gross negligence manslaughter is a criminal offense in the U.K. that suggests a defendant has either done or failed to do something that amounts to negligence. 

In the Feb. 11 inquest conclusion, Devonish reportedly said (archived) Lucy Harrison’s wound could only have occurred “with the gun being pointed directly at her across the room.” Devonish added that such behavior “was ‘gross’ due to the existence of a reasonably foreseeable and obvious risk of death.”

Kris Harrison reportedly said in a statement that his gun went off when he was lifting it to show his daughter. Devonish appeared to dismiss this claim, reportedly saying of Harrison:

To shoot her through the chest whilst she was standing would have required him to have been pointing the gun at his daughter without checking for bullets and pulled the trigger. I find this action to be reckless.

An inquest does not assign criminal guilt or civil liability. 

No prosecution in Texas

Kris Harrison has not been charged in the U.S. in connection with the shooting of his daughter. According to reports in British media, a grand jury in Collin County declined to indict him in 2025. We contacted the district attorney’s office there to ask why the grandy jury declined to indict Harrison and await a reply.

According to the Offences against the Person Act, Kris Harrison could be tried for manslaughter in the U.K. if he was still a British citizen. It was unclear at the time of this writing if he was, or if British prosecutors were pursuing this possibility. Some news reports said he was a U.S. citizen, meaning extradition to stand trial in the U.K. was unlikely.

After the inquest concluded, Lucy Harrison’s mother, Jane Coates, reportedly told (archived) local media: 

I never imagined she would be shot and killed in the US, in a place where she should have been safe. We respectfully accept that our two cultures are different in regards to firearms, yet we feel Texas gun laws did not keep Lucy safe from harm.

Sources

Claim:

A photograph authentically shows former U.S. President Barack Obama drinking beer in Southeast Asia with sex offender Jeffery Epstein.

Rating:

Context

The man in the photograph with Obama is late television host and chef Anthony Bourdain.

In early 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice released more than 3 million files pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein, prompting a flurry of rumors surrounding people purportedly associated with the late sex offender. Many social media users claimed that a photograph showed former President Barack Obama once having dinner with Epstein.  

(X user @st_louis_stan)

The picture was allegedly taken in a Southeast Asian country, according to numerous posts — which previously spread widely in 2025. One X user’s post read: “It was buried by the press, but not only were Obama and Jeffrey Epstein friends, they traveled around Thailand together, in search of ‘the perfect spring roll.’”

However, the photo above does not show Obama drinking a beer with Epstein. The man drinking alongside the former president is the late chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain. As such, we have rated this picture as miscaptioned.

The authentic photo was taken while Bourdain was interviewing Obama in a small restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam — not Thailand — for his show “Parts Unknown” in 2016 (archived). They had a dish called bún chả while drinking beer.

During the interview, Obama spoke about his past experiences in Southeast Asia, parenthood and reaching across political divides. 

Bourdain died by suicide in 2018. On June 8 of that year, Obama posted the photograph of the pair drinking beer with the caption: “‘Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer.’ This is how I’ll remember Tony. He taught us about food — but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown. We’ll miss him.”

While Bourdain and Epstein may have had some facial similarities, it is clear that they are two different men and that Epstein was not pictured in the above photo alongside Obama.

Snopes has investigated numerous claims regarding Bourdain and Obama. For example, we looked into whether the late chef said that people should have a drink with those they disagree with and whether the former president said that boys need gay mentors.

Sources

After Puerto Rican singer Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known as Bad Bunny, sang in Spanish during the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, claims spread online that he had used foul language in his songs. 

For example, U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Republican from Florida, took to X to deem Bad Bunny’s performance “illegal,” calling for the Federal Communications Commission investigate it. His post included screenshots of supposed translated lyrics of one of Bad Bunny’s songs (which we did not include as they were full of expletives). In his post, Fine wrote:

You can’t say the f-word on live TV.

“Bad Bunny”‘s disgusting halftime show was illegal.  

Had he said these lyrics — and all of the other disgusting and pornographic filth in English on live TV, the broadcast would have been pulled down and the fines would have been enormous.

Puerto Ricans are Americans and we all live by the same rules.  

We are sending @BrendanCarrFCC a letter calling for dramatic action, including fines and broadcast license reviews, against the @NFL, @nbc, and “Bad Bunny.”

Lock them up.

(X user @RepFine)

Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee, echoed Fine’s accusation, saying on X (archived) that the “performance’s lyrics openly glorified sodomy and countless other unspeakable depravities.” Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Alford, a Republican from Missouri, told Real America’s Voice (archived) that Bad Bunny’s show “could be much worse than the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction.” (Alford was referring to the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show, during which Justin Timberlake removed the right side of Jackson’s bra, revealing her breast.)

Following the controversy over Bad Bunny’s halftime performance, Snopes readers emailed us seeking to confirm whether any of his lyrics were obscene enough to warrant concern.

Snopes examined Bad Bunny’s performance in detail, accounting for Puerto Rico’s variant of Spanish, its slang and the codes of reggaeton (a dance music genre born on the island). While the musician may have pushed the boundaries of acceptable content in his lyrics for a TV performance, it remains up for debate whether he actually crossed them. 

We sent our analysis of Bad Bunny’s lyrics to Fine, Ogles and Alford, asking for their reaction. We will update our report should they respond. 

Bad Bunny’s ‘bad’ lyrics

Bad Bunny doesn’t shy away from profanity in his music. Of his seven studio albums, only one lacks an “explicit” label. His latest album, “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” includes the label on 11 of its 17 songs. 

The screenshots of the song Fine posted online accurately translated the original lyrics of “Safaera,” a song from Bad Bunny’s album “YHLQMDLG” (short for “yo hago lo que me da la gana” — “I do what I want”). 

Even so, the singer toned down much of his language for the Super Bowl audience. A comparison of his live vocals with his original lyrics showed that while he kept the sexual innuendos and references to drugs in certain songs, he omitted more graphic imagery and obscene language. 

In some cases, he mumbled, switched out words or simply went silent when a line called for profanity. He also played a medley of his songs, allowing him to cut more explicit sections. Together, these adjustments allowed him to avoid riskier language while still playing his most recognizable verses and choruses.

Based on the NFL’s YouTube video of his performance, we identified multiple instances of Bad Bunny adjusting or avoiding his more risqué lyrics.

Below is our breakdown of his lyrics:

“Tití me Preguntó”

• 1:04: “Las que ya les metí” — “The ones I already slept with.” “Metérselo” translates as “to put it in him/her.” The closest equivalent in English would be “the ones I already smashed.”  
• 1:38: “Mi bicho es cabrón” — “My [expletive for penis] is [expletive for awesome].” Here, Bad Bunny mumbles, making the phrase difficult to recognize to those who haven’t heard the song before.

“Safaera”

• 2:18 “Mi bicho anda fugao” — “My [expletive for penis] is on the loose.” Bad Bunny mumbles the word.
• 2:22 “Agárralo como una bonga” — “Grab it like a bong.” Bad Bunny refers to a device used to smoke marijuana.
• 2:23 “Una pepa que la pone cachonda” — “A pill that makes her horny.” Here, he doesn’t say “pepa,” or pill. 
• 2:26 “C**** en el Audi no el Honda” — the lyrics for the original song read, “F*** in the Audi, not in the Honda.” Bad Bunny stays quiet to avoid the expletive.
• 2:27 “Si te lo meto no me llames” — “If I put it in you [if I sleep with you] don’t call me.”
• 2:33 “Si tu novio no te m*** el c***” — “If your boyfriend doesn’t [sexual act].” Bad Bunny stays quiet.
• 2:35 “Pa eso que no m***” — “He may as well not [sexual act meaning, in this case, to annoy].” Bad Bunny stays quiet.

“Yo perreo sola”

• 2:42 “Fuma y se pone bella****” — “She smokes and gets freaky.” Bad Bunny does not say the word for “freaky” in full, only the first two syllables.

“EoO”

• 4:12 “Sobeteo baby” — “Getting handsy baby.”
• 4:14 “No te quites baby, en la disco baby” — Bad Bunny sings, “Don’t leave, baby, in the club, baby,” instead of the original lyrics, which could translate to, “In the club, baby, I f*** you, baby”

“NUEVAYoL”

• 8:50 “El perico es blanco, el Tusi rosita / No te confundas, mejor evita” — “Blow [cocaine] is white, Tusi [mix of drugs also known as pink cocaine] is pink / Don’t get confused, best if you avoid.”

“El Apagón”

• 10:25 “Puerto Rico está bien ca…, está bien cabrón” — “Puerto Rico is well… is well [expletive for awesome].” Bad Bunny mumbles here, though it remains intelligible.
• 10:31 “Los hijue… de Bayamón” — “the mother… from Bayamón.” Bad Bunny avoids the expletive by not saying half the word.
• 10:44 “Este PR” — The original lyric is “P f***ing’ R,” but Bad Bunny removed the expletive for the halftime show. 
• 10:54 “Maldita sea, otro apagón, vamo’ pa los bleacher’ a prender un blunt antes que a Pipo le de un bofe…” — “Damn it, another blackout, let’s go to the bleachers to light up a blunt before I slap Pipo.” 

For further reading, Snopes has covered several rumors about Bad Bunny, including the claim he wore a bulletproof vest during the halftime show.

In the second and third quarters of 2025, the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in two years. Those growth rates were not “numbers unheard of,” or figures the U.S. “never had” before, as President Donald Trump has claimed.

In addition, economic experts told us that federal data do not support Trump’s claim that there was economic “stagflation” during the Biden administration and “the complete opposite” during Trump’s first year back in office. Inflation was high during much of Joe Biden’s presidency, but economic growth was not stagnant, another key indicator of stagflation, the experts said. 

They also said that Trump’s tariff policies likely hindered economic growth, rather than helped spur it, as the president has suggested. 

Trump made those claims while touting the U.S. economy in recent speeches and remarks, as well as in a late January opinion piece written for the Wall Street Journal.

Economic Growth

During a Jan. 27 speech in Iowa, Trump said, “So, under my leadership, economic growth is exploding to numbers unheard of. They’ve never had them before.”

He later said in an interview with NBC News on Feb. 4, “We have low inflation and we have tremendous growth. You haven’t had these numbers like this.”

And when claiming to have achieved “unprecedented” growth numbers in a Jan. 29 Cabinet meeting at the White House, Trump said that if not for the 43-day federal government shutdown last fall, “we would have picked up about a point and a half more than [the] already high numbers, record setting numbers.”

While the U.S. economy grew significantly in the second and third quarters of 2025, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the numbers did not set records, as Trump claimed.

After declining by an annualized rate of 0.6% in the first quarter of 2025, which covers the three months from January to March, real gross domestic product (meaning it has been adjusted for inflation) grew at an annualized rate of 3.8% in the second quarter of 2025 and at a rate of 4.4% in the third quarter. Those were the largest quarterly increases since the third quarter of 2023, under Biden, when the economy expanded at an annualized rate of 4.7%, according to BEA estimates.

The record for quarterly growth is 34.9% in the third quarter of 2020, which happened right after the economy shrunk by 28% at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pre-pandemic quarterly growth record is 16.7% in the first quarter of 1950, according to BEA quarterly data going back to 1947.

On several occasions, Trump has said that fourth quarter growth is projected to be 5.4%, a figure that he has attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. But that projection is now out of date.

Throughout much of January, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model was projecting growth of 5.4% for the fourth quarter of 2025. Then, on Jan. 29, the projection lowered to 4.2%, and, as of Feb. 10, it was down again, to 3.7% projected growth.

The BEA is scheduled to release its advanced estimate of GDP for the fourth quarter, and all of 2025, on Feb. 20.

Stagflation

Trump also has claimed that he turned around an economy that had stalled under Biden.

“Under the Biden administration, America was plagued by the nightmare of stagflation, meaning low growth and high inflation, a recipe for misery, failure and decline. But now, after just one year of my policies, we are witnessing the exact opposite – virtually no inflation and extraordinarily high economic growth,” Trump said at a World Economic Forum meeting on Jan. 21.

He repeated the “stagflation” claim in his Jan. 30 opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal.

But economists told us that the U.S. economy under Biden did not experience stagflation, which has a specific economic meaning.

“It refers to a sustained period of high inflation combined with weak or stagnant real economic growth, typically alongside rising unemployment,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told us in an email. “By that definition, the U.S. economy during the Biden years does not qualify as stagflation.”

Handley said that the annual inflation rate did “rise sharply” during Biden’s first two years in office. It peaked in June 2022, at 9.1%, before declining dramatically in Biden’s last two years in office. 

“However, real GDP growth during the Biden presidency was positive and often above trend, and unemployment remained historically low,” Handley said. “Real GDP grew strongly in 2021 during the post-pandemic recovery, slowed in 2022 as monetary policy tightened, and then re-accelerated in 2023 and 2024. That is not a period of economic stagnation.”

In an infographic from November, the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland wrote that the “last major case” of stagflation in the U.S. “occurred in the mid-1970s, when global crude oil prices surged, triggering widespread rises in other prices and fueling inflation of more than 12 percent and unemployment that peaked at 9 percent.” The infographic said that stagflation — the combination of rising unemployment and inflation, and slowing economic growth all at the same time — was “rare” and “an unusual pattern.”

When we asked about the basis for the president’s stagflation claim, a White House spokespeson told us that “[r]eal wages shrank markedly during the Biden presidency, and growth – once you put aside the early bit of Biden admin when Democrat state officials finally started lifting unscientific and draconian lockdowns – was tepid with inflation at 40-year highs.”

There was a decrease in real wages under Biden, as we’ve written. But the economy grew by well over 2% each year during his administration, and the rate of inflation, while still elevated, was not near a 40-year high when he left office. The 9.1% annual rate in June 2022 was the highest since November 1981. The rate was 3% in Biden’s final 12 months.

The unemployment rate also decreased under Biden, going from 6.4% when he was inaugurated to 4% in his last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average monthly rate for Biden’s presidency was 4.1%, below the historical average.

“You had high inflation, yes, but paired with strong growth and a robust labor market,” Aeimit Lakdawala, an associate professor of economics at Wake Forest University, told us in an email. “That’s just not stagflation by any standard definition of the term.” 

He said that Trump’s claim of engineering a complete turnaround from the Biden economy is an overstatement.

“What we’re really seeing is a continuation of trends that were already well underway before Trump took office in January 2025,” Lakdawala said.

He noted that the annual inflation rate had cooled to 3% when Trump’s second term started. It had been as low as 2.4% in September 2024.

“That disinflation happened under Biden, driven largely by the resolution of supply chain issues and Fed monetary policy,” he said, referring to the Federal Reserve. “Under Trump’s second term so far, inflation has averaged about 2.7%. That’s modestly lower, but it’s not a dramatic reversal.”

Although Trump considers the 2.7% annual inflation rate, as of December, to be “very low” or “virtually no inflation,” it is still above the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve. Prices are still increasing, just at a slightly slower pace than before he became president again.

As for economic growth, Lakdawala said that the increase in real GDP has “averaged about 2.5% annualized so far under Trump’s second term, which is solid but actually a touch lower than the 2.9% we saw” in Biden’s last two years as president.

“So characterizing this as ‘extraordinarily high economic growth’ is a stretch,” he said about Trump’s claim. “It’s good growth, roughly in line with where we’ve been.”

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, was 4.3% in January, slightly higher than when Trump took office.

Tariff Effect

In his Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Trump said that the “entire Trump economic agenda deserves credit for this explosion of growth” — but he specifically gave credit for the country’s “economic success” to his tariff policies.

“We have proven, decisively, that, properly applied, tariffs do not hurt growth — they promote growth and greatness, just as I said all along,” the opinion piece said.

But the experts we consulted told us that the economy likely grew despite the tariffs, not because of them.

“Year-over-year real GDP growth over the past year looks similar to the years immediately preceding the new tariffs,” Handley said. “Outside of the pandemic period, growth has been relatively stable across administrations, which makes it difficult to attribute recent performance to tariffs rather than economic momentum.”

He noted that the tariffs that Trump placed on imported foreign goods last year were not as high as the rates he originally proposed, and that tariff revenue, which did increase significantly in 2025, is still quite small in relation to GDP (about 1% of GDP as of the third quarter of 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).

“By construction, a policy of that size cannot plausibly explain an increase in aggregate economic growth,” he said.

Lakdawala had a similar take.

“Crediting tariffs for economic growth gets the causation backwards,” he said. “The economics on this is fairly clear and there is broad consensus among economists: tariffs are essentially a tax on imports that raises costs for domestic consumers and businesses. If anything, they’ve been a modest drag on growth, not a driver of it.”

He pointed to an analysis done by the Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan research center, that said that in 2025 tariffs slowed real GDP growth by 0.5 percentage points and increased the unemployment rate by 0.3 percentage points. The Budget Lab estimated that tariffs will reduce real GDP growth by 0.4 percentage points in 2026, and said that “[i]n the long run, the US economy is persistently 0.3% smaller, the equivalent of $100 billion annually in 2025 dollars,” because of tariffs.

“These aren’t catastrophic numbers and the economy is resilient and has absorbed the tariff shock reasonably well,” Lakdawala said. “But they clearly point in the wrong direction for someone trying to credit tariffs with economic success.”

The pro-business Tax Foundation also said that Trump’s imposed tariffs, if the Supreme Court rules that some of them can remain in effect, “will raise $2.0 trillion in revenue from 2026-2035 on a conventional basis and reduce US GDP by 0.5 percent, all before foreign retaliation” from other countries. 

The White House told us that, under Trump, the “[a]nnualized rate of inflation has been trending in the mid-twos and GDP growth in Q3 surpassed expectations by over a full point, hitting above 4 percent. Largely driven by the investments we are seeing thanks in part to tariffs.”

But Handley noted that many of the investments touted by Trump are “announcements rather than realized outcomes.”

“Foreign investment commitments do not directly enter GDP, and they often reflect projects planned years in advance,” he said, adding that some of the pledges made by foreign countries and companies “may never come to fruition.”

We’ve already written that Trump’s claim that he has brought in about $18 trillion in investments to the U.S. is exaggerated, according to experts and a White House webpage.

Giacomo Santangelo, a senior lecturer of economics at Fordham University, told us in an interview that consumption is the “largest portion” of GDP, and that people are currently taking on more debt to finance that spending. “That’s what’s driving this economy,” he said.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, wrote in December that the third-quarter growth was due to “[h]ousehold consumption driven by higher-income consumers and AI-related investment,” which he said “accounted for just under 70% of total growth during the [third] quarter.”

In its news release about third-quarter growth in 2025, the BEA said, “The increase in real GDP in the third quarter reflected increases in consumer spending, exports, government spending, and investment.” For the second quarter, the BEA said the increase “primarily reflected a decrease in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, and an increase in consumer spending.”

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