Not Real News
A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out. Here are the facts:
ClaimU.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, falsely claimed she faced rioters in the main Capitol building during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The FactsOcasio-Cortez never claimed she was in the main Capitol building, nor did she claim she was face-to-face with a mob of violent rioters. In a Feb. 2 Instagram Live video where the congresswomen opened up about the Capitol attack and her past sexual assault, she explained that she was in her office in a neighboring building on the Capitol complex, where she experienced a frightening encounter with a Capitol Police officer who she said didn't announce himself. Days later, viral social media posts falsely accused her of lying about the details. “Sooo is Twitter going to fact-check AOC's fake story about imaginary mobs in her hallway?” read one Facebook post viewed more than 66,000 times on Thursday. “Or do they only do that to conservatives…” Another Facebook post viewed more than 100,000 times read, “AOC wasn't even in the Capitol Building during her 'near-death' experience. One big lie. #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett.” The hashtag #AlexandriaOcasioSmollett, which appeared in multiple social media posts this week and was trending nationwide on Twitter Wednesday night, appeared to liken the congresswoman to former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, anti-gay attack against himself in 2019. But in her video explaining her experience of the insurrection, Ocasio-Cortez made a point to clarify that she was in her congressional office in a different building nearby. “For you all to know, there's the Capitol Hill complex,” she told her Instagram followers. “But members of Congress, except for, you know, the speaker and other very, very high ranking ones, don't actually work in that building with the dome. There's buildings like right next to the dome, and that's where our actual offices are.” Other social media posts falsely attributed a quote to her to undermine her account of an interaction she had with a Capitol police officer on Jan. 6. A Facebook post with more than 50,000 views on Wednesday features a picture of the congresswoman overlaid with the quote: “And then the Capitol police officer said 'This is MAGA country!'” But Ocasio-Cortez never made this claim.
<b>Claim</b>Nine parents who were deported under the Trump administration after being separated from their children at the border were allowed to return to the United States on Wednesday.<b>The Facts</b>The family reunions referenced on social media did not happen this week — they occurred in 2020 due to a court order. After President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday establishing a task force that will focus on reuniting families separated by border agents under the previous administration, a false rumor spread on social media that a group of parents had been given permission to return to America to reunify with their children. “Nine parents deported by the Trump administration landed back into the U.S. Wednesday to reunite with children they had not seen in a year and a half. Some of the children were at the airport to greet them, including David Xol's 9-year-old son Byron,” the tweet claimed. But David Xol, who is from Guatemala, and his son were among a small number of families who were reunited in January 2020. The reunifications followed a 2018 American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit challenging family separations, which resulted in U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw allowing a small number of deported parents to return to the U.S. Sabraw found government agents had unlawfully prevented those parents from pursuing asylum cases. The erroneous post misrepresents an Associated Press photo of the father and son hugging at Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 22, 2020, after Xol arrived on a flight. The author of the tweet issued a second post Thursday acknowledging the reunions happened in 2020, but by then the original tweet had been retweeted more than 37,000 times. Many social media users shared the original post along with praise for the president, and it was even retweeted by the White House director of political strategy and outreach, Emmy Ruiz. After other social media users notified her the post shared old information, Ruiz wrote: “I'm sorry. Will undo RT.”
