Facts Matter: Biden flew on Air Force One for a recent trip home

After a Feb. 5 flight President Joe Biden took from Washington, D.C., to Delaware, some social media users claimed the plane used for the 25-minute trip proves Biden is not actually the president.

"Biden's Air Force One is not the same as Trump's Air Force One," reads a post on the social media platform BitChute.

A Facebook post, showing the current president and the former president riding in different planes, reads, "Media lied to you about Joe flying on AF1 ... The bottom plane is a Boeing C-40 the one Joe flew on ... used for high profile government officials to fly on but NOT the President."

Both planes are Air Force One, according to PolitiFact.

Air Force One is not a particular aircraft, but rather a designation for air traffic control to identify any Air Force plane transporting the president.

The president generally chooses between two aircrafts: the Boeing VC-25A, a larger, iconic plane that the public mostly knows as Air Force One, and the smaller Boeing C-32, used for short domestic flights.

The C-32 was the plane Biden used for that trip to Delaware. That plane was also frequently used by former President Donald Trump.

Ocasio-Cortez's account of riot not a 'hoax'

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a 90-minute Instagram Live talk this month, recounted her experience during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

The Democratic congresswoman talked about how she first hid in a bathroom and ended up sheltering with Rep. Katie Porter in Porter's office. Ocasio-Cortez said the situation was especially frightening for her because she once had been a victim of sexual assault.

"I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and I haven't told many people that in my life," she said. "But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other."

A few days after the Instagram Live talk, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Ocasio-Cortez had lied.

"I was in the chamber, unlike AOC - Rep. Ocasio-Cortez - that faked her outrage with another hoax, just another hoax that gets shared everywhere," Greene said during a news conference.

But Ocasio-Cortez's experience was no hoax, according to The Washington Post. She didn't say she was in the chamber.

"And so for you all to know, there's the Capitol Hill complex," Ocasio-Cortez said during the talk. "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."

Ocasio-Cortez was actually in the Cannon House Office Building, across the street from the Capitol, where she and Porter have offices, the Post said.

"We had no way to know if and when the people who had penetrated the Capitol were coming through the tunnels to get us," Porter said during an interview.

Photo from Wisconsin, not Washington

After the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington by Trump supporters, social media posts attempted to show that a similar riot had been staged by Democratic supporters.

A post on singer Ted Nugent's Facebook page, shared hundreds of times, claims protesters stormed the U.S. Capitol building after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court in 2018.

"Remember when democrat protesters stormed the US Capitol in 2018, took over the US Senate building, and tried to get into the US Supreme Court during the Kavanaugh confirmations?," the post states. "Democrat legislators and the MSM cheered it on."

There were protests during Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, according to The Associated Press, but the protest depicted in photo on this Facebook post is nowhere near Washington, D.C.

The photo actually shows a February 2011 labor demonstration at the Wisconsin State Capitol when protesters objected to the governor's plan to eliminate collective bargaining for many state workers.

Watchdog group The Center for Media Democracy, which posted the original photo, told the AP the image was from the Wisconsin protest.

During the Kavanaugh hearing, dozens of protesters were arrested for unlawfully demonstrating in Senate office buildings, the AP said.

Bucs didn't turn down White House invitation

A story posted the day after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 55 claims the champions refused an invitation to the White House, according to Snopes.com.

The article, posted on the America's Last Line of Defense site, said the Buccaneers were refusing to go to the White House because "the towel boy" thinks the election was somehow stolen.

The article is a joke, Snopes said. America's Last Line of Defense is a satirical offering that claims, "Everything on this website is fiction."

The fake story was shared thousands of times, Snopes said.

• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.