Walz leaves Trump off his list of union members
While on the campaign trail, Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has been touting his credentials as a union member. As a Minnesota teacher, he was a member of the National Education Association, the largest teachers union in the country.
“I happen to be the first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan,” Walz said during a speech last month at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Los Angeles. He repeated that claim Sept. 21 in Pennsylvania.
But Walz is leaving out a fellow union member, according to PolitiFact. Former President Donald Trump was a member of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, became a Screen Actors Guild member in 1989, and as a member, he appeared in the movies “Home Alone 2” and “Zoolander” and TV shows “The Apprentice” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
Following the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol building, the SAG-AFTRA board voted in favor of a motion that said the former president had violated the union’s guidelines for membership. Trump resigned from the union in a Feb. 4, 2021 letter, stating, “You have done nothing for me.”
Before switching to politics, Reagan was a member of the Screen Actors Guild during his acting career and served seven terms as the group’s president.
Absentee voters need to be registered
Trump recently claimed anyone living overseas can get an absentee ballot to vote in U.S. elections.
“The Democrats are talking about how they’re working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living overseas. Actually, they are getting ready to CHEAT!,” he wrote Sept. 23 on his Truth Social account.
Trump said Democrats will “use UOCAVA to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever.”
But Trump didn’t offer any evidence to back up this false claim, according to The Associated Press.
The purpose of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, is to ensure that U.S. citizens living out of the country will have an opportunity to vote in federal elections.
Once those votes are cast, local election officials verify the eligibility of the ballot, which includes checking the identity of the voter. Those voting by absentee ballot must confirm they are U.S. citizens, just like those voting in person.
Scott Wiedmann, director of the Federal Voting Assistance Program, which administers UOCAVA, told the AP it’s state and local election offices, not Democrats, who administer the election process, working with absentee voter registrations and ballot requests.
“The election officials are the final arbiter as to whether a voter meets the eligibility requirements to vote in their jurisdiction,” Wiedmann said.
Altered clip makes Harris appear drunk
A video making the rounds on social media includes a clip of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat’s presidential candidate, in which she appears to be drunk.
“And This is What Democratic Supporters Want To Run This Great Nation. She is hammered. This is insane!” reads the text in a Sept. 22 Instagram post that includes a video that shows Harris speaking slowly and stuttering.
But that video, taken from an actual event, is fake, according to USA Today. The clip posted to the internet has been altered.
The video was taken Sept. 20 in Atlanta, as Harris spoke about abortion rights in front of an audience. But that original video is slowed down and manipulated to make it appear Harris is slurring her speech. One 20-second section of Harris’ speech is stretched out to 30 seconds in the altered video.
Vance didn’t rent a dog
Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, recently did an interview that included his dog in an effort to dispel rumors he rented a dog to be part of his election campaign.
But social media users are using a clip from that interview to claim Vance did rent his dog.
“JD Vance admits he has a ‘rent-a-dog’ and the dog is to ‘ … make me seem like I'm a dog fan.’ Where is the ASPCA when you need them to step in and remove the poor dog?,” read a Sept. 21 Threads post.
But this comment is taken out of context, according to FactCheck.org. It makes it appear Vance said the opposite of what he said.
During the interview, with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vance is seen with his dog Atlas, while talking about fake claims online.
“I found out on the internet a few weeks ago that he’s actually a rent-a-dog that was given to me by the campaign to make me seem like I’m a dog fan,” Vance said.
Vance said his family got Atlas as an 8-week-old puppy that accompanies the senator on the campaign trail.
“It’s like shocking to me that anybody would think that he’s not our puppy,” Vance said.
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.