Facts Matter: Video falsely says Biden occupies fake White House
A video making the rounds on social media falsely claims an unoccupied White House is waiting for the former president to move back in.
"It's real! U.S. military holding White House for Trump's return," a Facebook user wrote while posting the video.
It's not real, PolitiFact.com points out.
The narrator is reading from a fake story posted last month on the website Real Raw News, which has published other false stories debunked by PolitiFact.
The latest includes a collection of lies.
It claims President Joe Biden has "never set foot in the real White House" while ignoring the fact he also served two terms as vice president. It says the military took control of the White House following the November election and would not let Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris inside. It asserts that Harris (not Biden) ordered the Secret Service to storm the building and a resulting firefight killed two Secret Service agents and a Marine.
It further asserts the Biden administration conducts business at an 80%-scale replica White House on an Atlanta property owned by actor Tyler Perry. It's supposedly from that location that Biden has hosted foreign dignitaries and press secretary Jen Psaki holds her daily briefings.
Pelosi isn't arresting people without masks:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends masks be worn while inside public spaces due to a rise in coronavirus infections because of the delta variant. Dr. Brian P. Monahan, attending physician for the U.S. House of Representatives, made the decision to require masks inside that chamber.
Some Republican legislators falsely claim that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will arrest anyone who doesn't mask up, according to The Associated Press.
"In today's edition of Pelosi's abuse of power, Capitol Police have been directed to arrest staff and visitors to comply with her mask mandate for vaccinated individuals. For Members, they advise not arresting but 'reporting Members to SAA (House sergeant at arms) for their failure to comply,'" Florida Rep. Kat Cammack said on Twitter.
The false claim was shared by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican.
Pelosi didn't mandate mask wearing, doesn't direct law enforcement in the House and doesn't have the authority to arrest anyone.
The Capitol Police force, which does have that authority, said "there is no reason it should ever come to someone being arrested. Anyone who does not follow the rules will be asked to wear a mask or leave the premises."
Biden didn't plan pandemic
During a CNN town hall last month, President Joe Biden was promoting the COVID-19 vaccine and touting the years of medical research that went into the development of vaccines to combat viruses.
"Everybody talks about how, you know, this virus came, this - the drugs that are designed to kill the virus came along so quickly. They've been working on it for two decades. There's nothing quick about this. It's been over two decades," the president said.
Internet users misconstrued that statement to claim Biden said the pandemic was planned, <URL destination="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/05/fact-check-biden-decades-research-went-into-covid-19-vaccines/5486534001/">according to USA Today.
</URL>"Why would you be working on a vaccine for 20 years for a nonexistent pandemic unless you knew the future?" an Instagram user wrote on a post that received more than 6,000 views.
Biden was referencing more than 20 years of research scientists have been doing on other coronaviruses such as SARS.
Planned variant list is fake:
A list of COVID-19 variants and false claims about when they will be released has shown up on the internet.
The list is fake, according to The Associated Press. It's impossible to know when a variant, or mutation, will appear.
The chart falsely claims the delta variant was "launched" in June 2021 but it was actually first detected in October 2020. It lists 21 potential variants with false launch dates through 2023.
University of Washington public health researcher Dr. Christopher Murray told the AP that there are four serious variants circulating through the world, resulting in nearly 2 billion cases. He said researchers believe a new serious variant will emerge once for every 500 million people who become infected.
"That's a crazy wild guess but it's what we've observed," Murray said. "The goal of predicting the next evolutions is quite hard."
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.