Trump’s claim incomes are ‘roaring’ is misleading

President Donald Trump gave his annual State of the Union address to Congress last week. Lasting 1 hour, 48 minutes, it was the longest such speech in history.

However, some of the Feb. 24 speech included misleading claims, according to The Associated Press.

“Incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before,” the president said.

“Not so,” the AP said.

Trump spent much of the night complaining that many of the problems with the economy were inherited from his predecessor, President Joe Biden. But during 2024, Biden’s last year in office, after-tax incomes, adjusted for inflation, increased by 2.2%.

In the following year, Trump’s first in this term, incomes in 2025 rose just 0.9%. That was the lowest gain since 2022.

Wages and salaries, the largest component of incomes, are currently down as hiring has decreased, the AP said.

Trump didn’t call C-SPAN

In 2016, the Washington Post published an article which claimed President Donald Trump had a spokesperson named John Barron who would handle some of Trump’s communication.

But the newspaper reported that Barron was actually an alias of Trump’s. The name of that spokesperson had been used since the 1980s at the Trump Organization.

In the 1990s, Trump admitted to the pseudonym, the Post reported.

“I believe on occasion I used that name,” Trump said.

Recently, a caller named John Barron phoned into a news show on C-SPAN, and social media “quickly kicked into overdrive” as many users claimed the caller was actually Trump, according to the British online newspaper The Independent.

During the Feb. 20 C-SPAN program, host Greta Brawner announced the caller as “John in Virginia, a Republican,” and the caller introduced himself as John Barron.

The caller said the Supreme Court’s action against Trump’s tariff policy was a “terrible decision.”

He went on to insult some Democratic lawmakers.

“You have Hakeem Jeffries, he’s a dope, and you have Chuck Schumer, who can’t cook a cheeseburger,” the caller said.

But that caller was not Trump, The Independent said. C-SPAN confirmed, in an X post, that the rumor was false.

“Because so many of you are talking about Friday’s C-SPAN caller who identified himself as ‘John Barron,’ we want to put this to rest: it was not the president,” the Feb. 22 post read. “The call came from a central Virginia phone number and came while the president was in a widely covered, in-person White House meeting with the governors.”

The caller was eventually cut off by Brawner.

Rescued dogs video created with AI

A recent video appears to highlight a dramatic rescue.

The Feb. 16 X post, headlined “Rescuing a mother dog and her puppies from a burning home,” includes a video showing a firefighter with a grinder cutting the bars of a cage.

Behind the bars is an adult dog and a litter of puppies. In the back of the pen, flames can be seen in the window. The firefighter removes the bars and says, “It’s OK, you’re safe now. Good girl, I’ve got you.”

Dramatic, but not real, according to Lead Stories. This video was created using artificial intelligence, or AI.

The corner of the clip has a watermark, showing it was generated with AI, and an early version of the video includes the disclaimer, “Altered or synthetic content. Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated.”

Moreover, much of the video doesn’t make sense. The firefighter uses the grinder on two spots along the bars of the cage door, but it doesn’t seem to do anything other than make a lot of sparks. The cage door then opens on its hinges before suddenly breaking in two.

There are other similar videos posted with various differences, but they all include the same comment from the firefighter, Lead Stories said.

Cadbury not making Eid Egg

The Cadbury Creme Egg is a chocolate egg which is popular during the Easter season. But a recent post appeared to show the treat is also associated with a different religious celebration.

“They’ve taken everything from us!,” the text reads on a Facebook post with a photo of a package of a “Cadbury Eid Egg,” which appears to refer to an Islam celebration.

But this product isn’t real, according to Reuters. A spokesperson for the British confectionery company Cadbury confirmed that the package is fake and this is not a product they sell.

In the fake image, the Cadbury logo has been altered and there is a misspelling in the Arabic word “halal.”

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