Facts Matter: Trump rode in SUV, not limo, on Jan. 6
During hearings held by the House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson testified that she was told former President Donald Trump had lunged for the steering wheel of a vehicle on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump, at the time, was being driven from a speech he delivered during a rally at the White House Ellipse.
Some social media users quickly posted counterclaims to Hutchinson's account, purporting that it couldn't have happened. The post includes a photo of the presidential limousine with red arrows added to show how far Trump, in the back section, was from the driver.
But Trump wasn't riding in that limousine as he left the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
A Secret Service spokesperson told PolitiFact the former president actually was riding in an SUV at that time. A video from C-SPAN's coverage of the event, aired during the House hearing, shows a motorcade of SUVs leaving the rally.
The photo of Trump riding in the limousine, used in the misleading post, was taken in 2020 in Santa Ana, California, PolitiFact said.
Tank not purchased for farmers' protest
Thousands of Dutch farmers have been staging protests and disrupting distribution centers in the Netherlands in response to government plans to cut emissions. The changes are expected to force farmers to reduce livestock.
Recent posts claim the farmers are using a military vehicle in their protest.
"Dutch farmers have purchased a tank to use to block distribution centres," read a tweet, shared more than 13,000 times, that accompanied a video of a tank being unloaded from a truck.
Another tweet read farmers "just purchased a British tank from Russian arms dealers."
But the tank has nothing to do with the protests, according to The Associated Press. It's a restored vintage tank that was being returned to its owner's warehouse following an event.
The World War II Sherman Firefly tank, built in 1943 and owned by a person living in the Netherlands, was featured in an ad for the June "Tankfest" held at the Tank Museum in Covington, U.K.
The tank's owner, in a June 28 Facebook post, said "issues with customs/export papers etc." prevented the vehicle from participating in the planned event, the AP reported. Instead, the tank was part of a different event nearby.
Twitter did not suspend Musk's account
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently announced his intention to terminate a deal to buy the social media platform Twitter for $44 billion.
Almost immediately social media users began sharing posts claiming Twitter had suspended Musk's account because he backed out of the deal. Some posts were retweeted more than 19,000 times and liked 136,000 times.
Twitter officials said they were considering legal action against Musk, but they did not suspend the billionaire's account, according to Reuters. There has been continued activity on Musk's official account, @elonmusk.
However, there is a suspended account that led to the confusion.
Suspended by Twitter is the account @eIonmusk, which uses an uppercase "i" instead of the lowercase "L" Musk uses as the second character in his handle.
Cruz didn't expose Hunter Biden deal
A Facebook post earlier this month claimed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has revealed a secret deal made between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden's son Hunter.
"Sen. Ted Cruz REVEALS Shocking Documents EXPOSING Documents Nancy Pelosi And Hunter Biden Secret Deals," reads the headline that includes a 15-minute video.
But the information in the headline has nothing to do with the video. Hunter Biden isn't mentioned in the clip and there is nothing about a deal between the president's son and the speaker.
The video is a combination of two unrelated video clips of Cruz talking about two different topics, according to USA Today.
The first section of the video is a June 10, 2021, clip of Cruz speaking during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on criminal justice reform. That's followed by a brief clip of committee chairman Sen. Dick Durbin responding to Cruz. The rest of the video is Cruz on March 1, 2022, speaking on the Senate floor.
But no mention of a secret deal in either video.
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.