Rick Perry Speech
Claim:  Transcript reproduces a speech given by Texas governor Rick Perry. CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED Example:  [Collected via e-mail, July 2011] Thought this was interesting. It is food for thought..... It would be nice if Rick Perry really is that strong of a Christian.  From   TEXAS                TO THE WHITEHOUSE! Below are his remarks in Longview.  Be sure and readwhere he stands and where his heart is.  In 1977, I had left the Air Force and moved home. I'll be real honest with you  I was a bit lost spiritually, and I really didnt know what I wanted to do with my life. So I moved in with my mother and father. Now that's a real trip! I had been an aircraft commander, traveling all around the world, seeing amazing places that a boy from Paint Creek, Texas, had never even dreamed were out there before. I had this great epiphany during my mid twenties. As I had lived in Europe and South America and the Middle East, I saw all these different countries with different forms of government. I was actually paying attention to the dictatorships, theocracies, monarchies, democratic states, etc. I started making the connection between how those people lived and the form of government they had. It was most interesting for me, as I'd never really given that much attention to our form of government in America . I'd taken for granted this extraordinary country we live in, but I came to realize that America is really a special place. I also made the calculation that inside that really cool place was this incredible place called Texas! At twenty-five, twenty-six years old, it dawned on me what an incredible country we live in, and that the vast majority of the people take it for granted. They abuse the privilege of living in a free country. They don't realize how so many other people live around the world. But with that knowledge, I went home and lived with my mom and dad. I moved back into my old room. At eighteen years old, I left to go to my beloved Texas A&M University. Nine years later, I came back into my old room. I swear to God, I know mother cleaned it, but it looked exactly like it did the day I left. It had my football number on the door, and it had the all-star football game program still stuck on the bulletin board. It was an eerie moment for me to move back home. My dad was pretty sure I was the same stupid eighteen-year-old that had left. I was pretty sure he hadn't gotten any smarter either. So we went through this really brutal period of time of finding our comfort zone. But God was dealing with me. At twenty-seven years old, I knew that I'd been called to the ministry. I've just always been really stunned by how big a pulpit I was gonna have! I still am. I truly believe with all my heart that God has put me in this place at this time to do His will. On Aug. 6 of this year, 2011, we are going to have a day of prayer and fasting. And it's going to be the real deal. It's not going to be some program where we line up a dozen political figures to come in and talk. It's going to be people standing on that stage, projecting and proclaiming Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior at Reliant Stadium in Houston. Let me tell you, that's a big stadium and there will be a lot of people. But it's going to send a powerful message across this country!  Our country's broke. Well, actually, Washington's broke; our country's going to be just fine. But we've got to have men and women who are willing to stand up to  proclaim the values that this country was based upon. In 1774, at the Continental Congress when they got together and penned that first document, they talked about "life" and "liberty." Interestingly, the third thing they talked about was "property." A couple of years later, when they actually wrote the Declaration, they changed that "property" to "the pursuit of happiness." I just signed a piece of legislation today, the eminent domain legislation. I tell people, that "personal property" and the ownership of that personal property is crucial to our way of life. Our founding fathers understood that it was a very important part of the pursuit of happiness. Being able to own things that are your own is one of the things that makes America unique. But I happen to think that it's in jeopardy. It's in jeopardy because of taxes; it's in jeopardy because of regulation; it's in jeopardy because of a legal system thats run amok.And I think it's time for us to just hand it over to God and say, "God, Youre going to have to fix this." (I think it was Herman Cain who stood up the other day and said, "How's that 'Hope and Change' thing working out for you?") I think it's time for us to use our wisdom and our influence and really put it in God's hands. That's what I'm going to do, and I hope you'll join me.I hope you'll join us in Houston on the 6th day of August and really start a revival across this country. Here's what I want to leave you with. I know from time to time, people will say something like, "There goes Perry. He wants to secede." But I love this country. We're a special place. We were created by God-fearing individuals who understood those biblical values and how powerful they could be and would be in the future. And I suggest that for our country, our best days are ahead if we'll get on our knees and ask God to take over and give us wisdom. I may wear the Lord out every day in prayer. I pray for this country. I pray for restoration for this country. I pray for our president every day. I pray that God turns buckets of wisdom out on his head, that God will open his eyes. We can change this country, but it requires our giving it to Him and letting Him guide us. Origins:  The above is an accurate transcript of a speech given by Texas governor Rick Perry at Longview, Texas, on 23 May 2011.  The event referred to therein is The Response, a "solemn gathering of prayer and fasting for our country" to be held at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, on 6 August 2011. The Response Last updated:  11 July 2011
Claim:  The U.S. government unfairly excluded Hawker Beechcraft from bidding to supply military aircraft for Afghanistan. UNDETERMINED Examples:  [Collected via e-mail, December 2011] "Any president whose actions so consistently refute his own words must have deep contempt for the intelligence of the American public." The obama administration told U.S. owned Hawker Beechcraft earlier this week they are being excluded from bidding on the US Air Force contract for a light attack aircraft. That leaves Brazilian owned Embraer as the likely recipient of the lucrative deal. I found this one hard to believe so I did a little research. It was tough because this was completely ignored by the main stream media.  This is a double slap in the face of the United States. At a time when jobs, the economy, and security are the most critical priorities for our country, the Obama administration decides to send a defense contract to a foreign owned company. This has to be the stupidest thing this administration has done to date. This is not just a dumb decision, it is a perfect example of why this president is such a poor leader. He talks about wanting jobs. He says we need to force companies to repatriate billions of dollars that Americans keep overseas. He wants to raise taxes so he can spend billions on stimulus that does nothing to stimulate anything. And when it's time to act, he sends our tax dollars overseas at the expense of American jobs and income for an American company. This is nothing more than a Chicago-style political pay back; but this time it is at the expense of our national security. How much more damage will obama be allowed to do in the next 14 months? One of the lead stories in the media this week blasted congress for insider trading. If this contract goes to Embraer it will be a huge pay off to another George Soros company. When will the 4th estate do it's constitutionally protected job and expose the real obama to the American people?   Origins:   On 30 December 2011, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it had awarded a $355 million contract to Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) for 20 light air-support/single-engine turboprop aircraft that will serve as both trainers and ground-attack planes for Afghanistan's air force.  Wichita-based aircraft manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft (HBDC) had hoped that their AT-6 aircraft, an armed version of their T-6 trainer which is currently used by the U.S. military, would be chosen for the contract, but the U.S. Air Force (USAF) excluded the AT-6 from the running, leaving the A-29 Super Tucano built by Sierra Nevada Corp. in partnership with Brazil-based Embraer as the lone eligible supplier. Hawker Beechcraft Corp. has since filed suit against the U.S. government over the exclusion, maintaining that the Air Force had not provided them with sufficient detail about the reasons behind their exclusion and that Embraer had been unfairly favored: The suit alleges the exclusion was "arbitrary and capricious" and seeks to prevent the government from awarding a contract until Beechcraft can make its case in court. "This is yet another example of the Air Force's lack of transparency throughout this competition," said Bill Boisture, Hawker Beechcraft chairman and CEO, in a statement. "With this development, it now seems even clearer that the Air Force intended to award the contract to Embraer from early in this process." "We think we were wrongfully excluded from the competition," Boisture said. "We don't understand the basis for the exclusion, and frankly, we think we've got the best airplane. "So we're going to take every avenue available to us to make sure our product is fully evaluated and recognized for what it is. There are several issues here that just, frankly, don't make sense." The Air Force maintains that the process was fair, that Hawker Beechcraft was excluded because "multiple deficiencies and significant weaknesses found in HBDC's proposal make it technically unacceptable and results in unacceptable mission capability risk," and that the company failed to respond to its notice of exclusion in time to request a debriefing or file a protest: respond Lt. Col. Wesley Miller, an Air Force spokesman, said the contest "was conducted in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations" and that the evaluation of the aircraft "was fair, open and transparent." In dismissing Hawker Beechcraft Corp from the competition, the Air Force found Hawker Beechcraft's bid "technically unacceptable," one that would result in an "unacceptable mission capability risk."  The Air Force said the company missed a three-day deadline to file a request for a debriefing and a 10-day deadline to file a protest. It is not possible at this point to definitively determine why the USAF excluded Hawker Beechcraft from the Light Aircraft Support (LAS) bidding, as ongoing litigation prevents the Air Force from releasing information regarding the competition, but according to industry observers the primary issue behind Hawker Beechcraft's disqualification was that the LAS contract called for a non-developmental, production-ready aircraft, and Hawker Beechcraft's AT-6 was still a developmental aircraft.   observers According to SNC's own statement on the issue: statement In its Request for Proposal, the Air Force specifically sought a non-developmental, in-production aircraft so that warfighters in-theater could have an advanced solution quickly and so that American taxpayers would not have to pay development costs. The plane proposed by SNC's competitor is a developmental aircraft that is not in production and has never been used for light air support or any other purpose. The AT-6 is a developmental aircraft.  With only two prototypes in existence, it has never been in production. In contrast, the aircraft selected by the Air Force and to be provided by SNC, Embraer's A-29 Super Tucano, is a light air support aircraft that is currently in use with six air forces around the world.   Unlike the AT-6, the A-29 Super Tucano has more than seven years of real-world combat and training experience behind it.  This means that its operational costs are known and that all costly development issues related to weapons load, maneuverability and operations have already been worked out.  Only the A-29 Super Tucano has actually flown in combat.  More significantly, only the A-29 was built from the ground up to perform counterinsurgency and light air support operations.  The A-29 is larger in size allowing it to make full use of the 1,600-hp engine without power limitations due to torque.  It sits higher off the ground and has a broader stance, increasing stability on unprepared airfields.  The A-29's longer tail section increases longitudinal stability and provides exceptional accuracy for the delivery of weapons.  Only the A-29 delivery system is specifically designed with the five NATO hard points for external stores, translating into maximum operational flexibility for the war fighters in the theater.  The AT-6 carries no munitions in its native configuration. This is a critical difference.  The A-29 also is munitions-certified with over 130 operational external load configurations.  The AT-6 is not yet munitions-certified. In February 2012, the Air Force announced it was canceling the contract with Sierra Nevada Corp. pending an investigation of the award: General Donald Hoffman, commander of the Air Force Materiel Command, has started an investigation, Jennifer Cassidy, an Air Force Spokeswoman, said. She said she didn't know whether the contract would be re-opened for competition and didn't elaborate on the reason for the cancellation. "While we pursue perfection, we sometimes fall short, and when we do we will take corrective action," Michael B. Donley, the Air Force secretary, said in a statement. "Since the acquisition is still in litigation, I can only say that the Air Force Senior Acquisition Executive, David Van Buren, is not satisfied with the quality of the documentation supporting the award decision." The awarding of the Air Force contract to a partner of Brazil-based Embraer did not necessarily mean that all the jobs connected with the contract would be sent overseas, as Embraer said that its partner, Nevada-based Sierra Nevada Corp., would build the turboprops in Jacksonville, Florida, if it won the contract: The A-29 Super Tucano will be built in America.  Embraer will make the plane at a new production facility in Jacksonville, Fla.  Over 88 percent of the dollar value of the A-29 Super Tucano comes from components supplied by U.S. companies or countries that qualify under the Buy America Act. No new jobs are being created in Brazil as a result of this contract. Despite the claim made in the example text reproduced above that the subject of Hawker Beechcraft's exclusion was "completely ignored by the mainstream media," it has in fact received widespread news coverage in a variety of media sources, including at least five of the nine highest-circulation newspapers in the U.S. (The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the San Jose Mercury News, the New York Post, and the Chicago Tribune). widespread Also, we found no evidence to support the claim that "If this contract goes to Embraer it will be a huge pay off to another George Soros company,"  as we turned up no information indicating that George Soros holds an ownership stake in Embraer.  The closest connection we found between George Soros and Embraer seems to be that the former is one of the leading shareholders in China's Hainan Airlines Group (HNA), and HNA bought ERJ-145 jets from Harbin Embraer, a partnership between Embraer and the Harbin Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation of Harbin, China. However, that connection makes Soros a customer of Embraer, not an owner, and therefore does not put him in a position to profit from the awarding of an Air Force contact to Embraer. shareholders Last updated:  5 March 2012    Hodge, Nathan.  "Hawker Beechcraft Sues Over Air Force Bidding."   The Wall Street Journal.  28 December 2011.    Hodge, Nathan.  "Embraer Hits Defense Barrier."   The Wall Street Journal.  11 January 2012.    Ivory, Danielle.  "Air Force Cancels Contract to Sierra After Hawker Protest."   San Francisco Chronicle.  1 March 2012.    McMillin, Molly.  "Hawker Requests GAO Review of Air Force Deal."   The Wichita Eagle.  22 November 2011.    McMillin, Molly.  "Hawker Beechcraft Files Suit Over Air Force Contract."   The Wichita Eagle.  28 December 2011.    Associated Press.  "Hawker Beechcraft Sues Over Air Force Contract."   28 December 2011.    Associated Press.  "Air Force Temporarily Halts Work After Hawker Beechcraft Lawsuit."   The Washington Post.  5 January 2012. A graphic circulated online about 2018 Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams' owing a lack sum in back taxes was technically accurate, but it omitted several key details for the sake of trying to frame her as being irresponsible or dishonest. The meme showed a photograph of Abrams along with a caption reading "This is Stacy [sic] Abrams the Democrat on the ticket for Georgia governor. She owes the IRS $50,000 in back taxes":  Abrams publicly revealed that she owed a $54,000 debt to the Internal Revenue Service when she released her personal financial disclosure documents in March 2018. But although she is in debt, she is not delinquent in her taxes, as documents show her to be on a payment plan after deferring payments for tax years 2015 and 2016. revealed The candidate elaborated on her situation in an op-ed published by Fortune magazine on 24 April 2018, saying that even though she earned $95,000 a year at her first job after graduating college, the cost of her education still left her more than $100,000 in debt before she had to take on even more financial responsibilities: op-ed I'd love to say that was the end of my financial troubles, but life had other plans. In 2006, my youngest brother and his girlfriend had a child they could not care for due to their drug addictions. Instead, my parents took custody when my niece was five days old. Underpaid, raising an infant, and battling their own illnesses, my parents' bills piled up. I took on much of the financial responsibility to support them, and even today remain their main source of financial support. Paying the bills for two households has taken its toll. Nearly twenty years after graduating, I am still paying down student loans, and am on a payment plan to settle my debt to the IRS. I have made money mistakes, but I have never ignored my responsibilities; I will meet my obligations -- however slowly but surely. Abrams' opponent in the 2018 gubernatorial race (which she lost), Republican Brian Kemp, was reportedly also in heavy debt. He was sued by an investment company in June 2018 after allegedly failing to repay a $500,000 loan he guaranteed for an agricultural company in which he invested, Hart AgStrong LLC.  sued Kemp has claimed that he is not responsible for paying the loan, but the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in September 2018 that according to court documents, Kemp also promised to cover around $10 million in other loans for the company. reported Bluestein, Greg.  "Georgia 2018: Abrams Owes More Than $50K to IRS."
  Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  14 March 2018. Abrams, Stacey.  "Commentary: My $200,000 Debt Should Not Disqualify Me for Governor of Georgia."
  Fortune.  24 April 2018. Elliott, Richard.  "Investment Company Sues Brian Kemp Over $500K Loan."
  WSB-TV.  12 June 2018. Judd, Alan.  "For Brian Kemp, Suit Over Bad Loan Reveals Political, Financial Perils."
  Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  21 September 2018. Claim:  The Obama administration is selling blueprints for the B-2 Stealth Bomber to China in exchange for debt relief.  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, July 2009] Is this true ? 6/5/2009: Security News Brief: Obama To Sell B-2 Stealth Bomber Blueprints To China The Defense Department is reportedly furious with Obama's proposal to sell blueprints of the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to the People's Republic.  Gates has flatly rejected Obama's plan, but has since been asked to step down if he will not facilitate the process. According to the deal, the United States would sell the plans for the B-2, along with radar-absorbing paints and metals in exchange for $50 billion in debt relief.  The B-2 cost the US government $23 billion to develop the bomber in the 1980s. According to the Administration, this proposal will help the United States resolve its debt issues.  They point out their belief that the B-2 bomber is "strategically obsolete", according to a source in the White House Press Office.  In addition, the source claims that the Chinese would be unable to create their own functioning stealth bomberfleet for "at least eight years." [Rest of article here.] article Origins:  Although a weak economy and a growing foreign debt (held by nations not necessarily overly friendly to the U.S.) might be issues of pressing concern, the concept of raising funds by openly selling vital military secrets to a Communist country isn't quite a reality yet. The notion that the Obama administration would sell plans for the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber (a "low-observable, strategic, long-range, heavy bomber capable of penetrating sophisticated and dense air-defence shields") in exchange for a mere $50 billion in debt relief is simply another bit of  humorous fiction, a satirical piece published by the Jumping in Pools blog on 1 June 2009 (where it was tagged as such). B-2 Jumping in Pools such Other satirical articles from the Jumping in Pools blog include "Biden, Obama to Have Gaffe-Off," "US in Chaos as Teleprompter Assassinated," and "Palin to Join Obama Cabinet." Biden, Obama to Have Gaffe-Off US in Chaos as Teleprompter Assassinated Palin to Join Obama Cabinet Last updated:  28 July 2009 Possible presidential aspirant Scott Walker opens his newbookwith a dismal depiction of conditions in the nations capital. If you are like me, the view from Washington, D.C., these days is pretty grim, the Republican governor writes in Unintimidated: A Governor's Story and a Nation's Challenge, which is due out Nov. 19, 2013. Barack Obama has been elected to a second term. Obamacare will not be repealed anytime soon. Congress has approved massive tax increases. Then Walker makes this claim: The national debt is on track to double during Obamas presidency. Lets see how much the debt has grown and to what extent Obama is responsible. What is the debt? We hear plenty about the federal debt and annual federal budget deficits. So, lets make sure were on the same page before we dig in. Total federal debt, also known as gross debt, is the amount of debt issued by the U.S. Treasury and other federal agencies. It has two components: Debt held by the government is money the government owes itself. Mainly, the government borrows from trust funds such as Social Security and Medicare -- payments owed to beneficiaries in the future -- to fund current government operations. Debt held by the public is owed to investors outside the federal government, including individual and corporate investors in the United States and overseas, foreign governments, the Federal Reserve and other entities. It's money the government borrows when it runs annual budget deficits -- in other words, the money the government needs to bridge the gap between what it spends and what it takes in. How much is the debt? Jacquelynn Burke, a publicist for Sentinel, Walkers publisher, responded to our request to Walker for information to back his claim. She told us Walker was referring to total debt and to the portion held by the public and cited two documents from Obamas own administration, a2013 reportfrom the Council of Economic Advisers and Obamas2014 budget. Its helpful here to note that debt is tallied at the end of the fiscal year and that the federal fiscal year runs from October through September. So, fiscal 2008 started in October 2007 and ended in September 2008. The documents Walker relies on show total debt on pace to double -- from $9.99 trillion in fiscal 2008 to an estimated $20 trillion in fiscal 2016; and debt held by the public to more than double, from $5.8 trillion to $14.7 trillion. (FactCheck.org also reports that debt held by the public ison pace to doubleduring Obamas presidency.) Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, cited the same documents Walker did when we asked him about Walkers claim. Edwards said that, even though fiscal 2008 ended more than three months before Obama was first inaugurated, it is a good starting point because most of the debt accumulated in fiscal 2009 was from Obamas stimulus plan. Joshua Gordon, policy director at the centristConcord Coalition, which advocates for fiscal responsibility, argued that a better starting point is the end of fiscal 2009 -- a year later than what Walker uses -- since Obama would have been in office for nearly nine months at that point. He also argued against examining total debt, saying that since it includes borrowing from Social Security, it doesn't really have any economic significance. Gordon cited figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for debt held by the public. They show that that portion of the total debt was $7.54 trillion at the end of fiscal 2009, but isnt projected to double until fiscal 2019, after Obama leaves office. Gordon and Marc Goldwein, senior policy director of the nonprofitCommittee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan organization focused on debt reduction, also made another point on comparing debt levels over time. They told us measuring debt as a percentage of gross domestic product is better for comparison purposes than simply using raw dollars. According to Congressional Budget Office figures, debt held by the public as a percentage of gross domestic product wont double during Obamas presidency. They show debt held by the public at the end of 2009 was equal to 52.3% of gross domestic product. Thats expected to reach 76.2% at the end of fiscal 2014, but then drop during the rest of Obamas presidency. At the same time, the federal debt is commonly reported in raw dollars, not as a percentage of GDP. So, at least in terms of raw dollars, there is evidence that debt is projected to double during Obamas time in office. Who's to blame Walker implied that Obama plays a role in how much the debt has grown, but he didnt say the president caused the increase. That squares with how weve evaluated similar claims in the past. For one thing, each president inherits the previous presidents budget, as well as the interest payments needed to pay off debts accumulated under previous presidents. Moreover, about two-thirds of the annual deficit during Obamas presidency term has been from entitlements and interest. Entitlements, such as Social Security and Medicare, are less susceptible to a presidents policy preferences than discretionary spending that Congress must approve on an annual basis. Entitlements are also more heavily driven by demographic factors, such as the aging of the population, which is also out of any presidents control. For its part, The White House didn't challenge Walker's claim, but cited documents indicating that annual deficits are becoming smaller. A couple of other points on responsibility for the debt before we close. Ananalysisby the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities acknowledged that deficits and debt have been sharply higher under Obama. But the analysis says the Great Recession, tax cuts adopted under President George W. Bush, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain most of the deficits that have occurred on Obamas watch. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, meanwhile, traces the the debt problem back even further, to around 1970, when the government decided to significantly increase spending without a corresponding increase in revenue. The problem cant be fixed, according to thatanalysis, without creating a mechanism to prevent the government from running persistent deficits in the future. Our rating Walker said: The national debt is on track to double during Obamas presidency. Documents from Obamas own administration indicate the debt is on pace to double in raw dollars, the way the debt is commonly reported, though not as a percentage of gross domestic product. Walker aptly indicated that Obama bears part of the blame. We rate Walkers statement Mostly True. To comment on this item, please go toJSOnline.com. In a letter shared by the joint labor union Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) on Feb. 4, 2021, former U.S. President Donald Trump resigned as a member of the union. Trumps resignation came just as the union leadership was moving to expel Trump in the wake of his alleged provocation of a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. shared resignation The letterhead appeared to carry the logo for what was called the Office of the Former President, created by Trumps team in Palm Beach, Florida, to serve as the official outlet for Trumps statements and to share his future plans. Office of the Former President However, now, the stationery on which the letter was submitted says Office of Donald J. Trump. The letter was shared on SAG-AFTRAs website, along with the union's response to Trump, which was a simple, Thank you. website response As seen in the document, the end of the letter is indeed signed with President Donald J. Trump.   In the letter, Trump cited his own acting experience and contributions to television: Im very proud of my work on movies such as Home Alone 2, Zoolander and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; and television shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Saturday Night Live, and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history, The Apprentice  to name just a few! Ive also greatly helped the cable news television business (said to be a dying platform with not much time left until I got involved in politics), and created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC and Fake News CNN, among many others. He concluded with a criticism of the unions actions: Your organization has done little for its members, and nothing for me  besides collecting dues and promoting dangerous un-American policies and ideas  as evident by your massive unemployment rates and lawsuits from celebrated actors, who even recorded a video asking, Why isnt the union fighting for me? These, however, are policy failures. Your disciplinary failures are even more egregious. I no longer wish to be associated with your union. Professor and author Seth Abramson pointed out how signing the letter this way is troubling, given that Trump is on trial for inciting the riots:  However, signing a letter as President does not appear to be out of the ordinary. Former President Barack Obama's statements are also released under "President Obama." Former presidents are still addressed as President [insert name] or Mr. President. All U.S. presidents retain their titles for life. statements addressed Given that the official letter was shared by SAG-AFTRA, along with Trumps signature, we rate this claim as True. In early 2021, Snopes became aware of online reports that alleged the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) said the practice of students documenting how they answer math problems perpetuated white supremacism. Among web pages circulating the claim was a Feb. 15 article on conservative commentator Ben Shapiro's media website, The Daily Wire. It read: Feb. 15 article A mathematics guide sent out to Oregon schools tells educators that asking students to show their work in math class is a form of white supremacy. [...] Examples of classroom actions that allegedly perpetuate white supremacy include asking students to show their work, focusing on getting the right answer, tracking student success, and grading students. A separate web page by Fox News titled, "Oregon promotes teacher program that seeks to undo 'racism in mathematics'," also made the assertion, while users of social media sites including Twitter and Reddit debated the accuracy of such reports, or circulated their allegations about the state department's instructions to educators as fact. web page Reddit   We learned the rumor's source was a Feb. 5 newsletter from ODE to math teachers across the state that included links to additional teaching resources. See the below-displayed screenshot of a portion of the public bulletin, of which Snopes confirmed the authenticity via ODE's Director of Communications Mark Siegel. Feb. 5 newsletter   In other words, a portion of the ODE-sponsored newsletter promoted a virtual learning seminar designed by an outside entity  Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction  that aimed to equip middle school math teachers with ideas to curb documented performance gaps between white and English-speaking students and all other students, according to the bulletin and our correspondence with Siegel. Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction documented The Oregon newsletter included links to the home page of the so-called "Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction" project (on which we elaborate below), as well as to register for the course. Siegel said in an email to Snopes: home page "The materials contained in the [newsletter] are drawn from both internal and external sources and inclusion of external materials does not necessarily indicate Oregon Department of Education endorsement." More than 30 people from agencies across California and other states  such as San Diego State University, the Los Angeles County of Education and UnboundEd (a hub of training resources for teachers)  designed the ODE-advertised project "Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," according to an online pamphlet listing collaborators. UnboundEd online pamphlet In addition to the online teaching classes featured in the ODE newsletter, the initiative's website hosts several PDFs to which middle school teachers anywhere can refer if they are interested in working toward the project's goal: dismantling racism in math classes. One such report, totaling 82 pages, stated more than halfway through: initiative's website   In other words, a resource on the website for "Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction," which ODE called a partner in the newsletter, indeed stated that "white supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms" when educators require students to show their work because the mandate does not necessarily help students process information. Instead, the PDF encouraged teachers to offer a variety of ways for students to demonstrate their question-answering process, including via verbal discussions or multimedia projects that don't use written words or numbers. We reached out to several of the project's collaborators for their comment on the The Daily Wire and Fox News' framing of the above-described advice for middle school math teachers, and we heard back from Joanne Rossi Becker, a math and statistics professor at San Jose State University. Becker said while she did not author the report  she served as a reviewer of its materials  the recommendation aimed to encourage educators to allow students to explain their thinking in ways other than writing, such as through conversations, graphs, or videos. "Overall, the document is well done and has cogent recommendations for teachers and other educators to ameliorate implicit bias and racism," Becker wrote in an email to Snopes.   To be clear, while the ODE newsletter promoted a course designed by the project to eliminate racial and language gaps in teaching, as well as a link to a homepage, it did not include a link to or mention the above-displayed PDF, specifically. Siegel told Snopes: ODE did not directly instruct educators in terms of specific instructional practices, rather an optional resource was shared to support teacher conversations to examine their actions, beliefs, and values around teaching mathematics. The department is supportive of conversations in the larger context identifying beliefs and practices that perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics. The authors of this resource described this larger idea using the term white supremacy. The term 'showing the work' in this resource refers to a single approach identified by the teacher. Although a single answer may be expected, students could arrive at correct answers using a variety of approaches such as grouping physical objects (legos, blocks), diagrams of problems, writing it out, video explanations, and spreadsheets. Put another way, the department said it supports the project's goal to help students of color and multilingual students do better in math class, as well as its recommendation to allow classes a variety of ways to explain how they solve problems. "Neither ODE nor the course has made claims that math content itself is racist," Siegel wrote. "The system of mathematics education, including policy, graduation requirements, standards, instruction, course sequences, and assessments, must be evaluated through an equity stance to disrupt inequitable outcomes we currently experience." In sum, it's true a project designed by dozens of school administrators and scholars said expanding options for math students to explain their processes for answering questions could help close racial and language gaps in teaching, addressing existing "white supremacy culture." But it was false to frame that recommendation as a mandatory directive from ODE to teachers, or to suggest the department itself said the standard idea of "showing work" is a form of white supremacy. For those reasons, we rate this claim a "Mixture" of truth and misleading information. Claim:  Oprah Winfrey said that restaurant customers need not tip their servers more than 10%..  Example:  [Collected via e-mail, November 2009] Did Oprah Winfrey state that, in this economy, tipping 10% is acceptable? Origins:  Leaving a relatively substantial monetary tip for the waitstaff at the conclusion of a restaurant meal is the custom in some countries, including the U.S. and Canada. A gratuity amounting to 15% to 20% of the bill is now considered the standard or minimum tip, with even more left in recognition of superlative service. It is therefore little cause for surprise that any cultural icon's public voicing of an opinion that folks should leave no more than a 10% tip would raise the hackles of many in the service industry.  And so it was with the belief that Oprah Winfrey, beloved television talk show host, had instructed members of her audience to not leave more than a 10% tip when dining in restaurants, with such rumor often coupled with a further assertion that this advice was offered in recognition of the recession's having hit everyone hard. Such belief that Oprah had said it fit  well with a widely-held stereotype that African American customers tip less than do other restaurant patrons. In September 2009 a page on the social networking site Facebook raised the false "Oprah said not to tip more than 10%" claim. Titled "1 Million Servers Strong Against Oprah's Comments," the group stated as its purpose:  Against Oprah Winfrey has recently stated on her TV show that it is acceptable to tip servers 10% in our current economy. This group is being put together to show Oprah that her comments have a crippling affect on servers all over the world. As of 4 November 2009, "1 Million Servers Strong Against Oprah's Comments" has 37,228 members. Yet the claim that has inflamed so many is false. There is no evidence in support of the assertion that Oprah Winfrey recommended her audience tip waitstaff 10%, in response to economic recession or otherwise, on her television show or in her magazine. No one has yet to turn up a video clip from her show of her supposed  tipping advice or produce a copy of an article from  O, The Oprah Magazine in which such counsel was allegedly given.  Instead, material from both those venues state that restaurant goers should tip at least 15%. While we've yet to locate a video clip or news report of Oprah herself instructing the audience to pony up with 15% or better, there are examples of invited guests on her show or columnists in her magazine saying exactly that. In the "Ending Rudeness" segment of The Oprah Winfrey Show (which aired on 9 September 2008), Steven Dublanica, author of Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip  Confessions of a Cynical Waiter, sat beside Oprah and, with her nodding in agreement, offered this bit of advice for restaurant goers: Rudeness Don't tip less than 15 percent Waiters are paid wages well below the minimum wage  as little as $2.15 an hour in some states  with the expectation that they will earn the majority of their income through tips. In addition, some restaurants require waiters to pay around 20 to 30 percent of their tips to food runners, hostesses and bartenders.  "If you don't tip, then that person doesn't get paid," Steven says. "Literally." Of the "10 Do's and Don'ts of Restaurant Etiquette" proffered by The Oprah Winfrey Show via oprah.com, its official web site, the first is "Tip 15 percent or more." first Likewise, the "Guide to Tipping" published in the December 2002 issue of  O, The Oprah Magazine says:  Guide to Tipping Normally, 15 to 20 percent of the total bill  20 percent for a first-class place. Note that people tip more in urban areas. According to the Zagat Survey, the average gratuity in city restaurants across the United States is about 18 percent. In response to the rumor, HarpoBear (moderator of oprah.com's message board) posted a clarificationon 8 June 2009 (and repeated periodically since then) that said: posted We'd like to respond to the concerns raised about Oprah's thoughts on tipping. The truth is that Oprah has never said that people should tip less during the recession. She believes in generously compensating waiters and waitresses. While a November 2009 Facebook page marked a resurgence of the Oprah rumor, it wasn't the first time the claim had been bruited on that venue: In December 2008 a now defunct Facebook group titled "No, Oprah, it's not OK to tip 10%" repeated the gossip. The rumor comes in two forms: that Oprah herself directed her audience never to tip more than 10% or (far less frequently) that one of her guests did. One name that has been mentioned as the identity of the guest who gave such advice is financial guru Suze Orman, as in this 19 September 2009 blog entry:  Suze Orman blog entry It has been brought to my attention that Suze Orman went onto the Oprah Winfrey show some time ago to give some sound financial advice to all the Oprah-ites who bow down to the feet of the great and powerful O. [...] She said that when it comes time to tip you should just leave 10% instead of 15%. Barbara "the ten percent dissolution" Mikkelson Last updated:  11 November 2009    Day Owen, Sarah.  "Servers at Restaurants See Dropoff in Gratuities."   Augusta Chronicle.  19 December 2008.    Ellen, Daryn.  "Guide to Tipping."   O, The Oprah Magazine.  December 2002. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump, a billionaire real estate developer, vowed that if elected he would forgo the $400,000 annual presidential salary. So far as president Trump has stuck to that promise, handing over checks every three months for various projects overseen by different government departments. vowed In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland.In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation.As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months.Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research."  The president donated another quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an Emerging Leaders program focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this time to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in order to help battle the nation's opioid crisis.'Military Cemeteries'In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted:White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage. Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit:News the media didnt report today:Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims:And on 2 August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk's tweet:These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily.AnalysisThere were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims.Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone.Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House "spending report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!"Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation.The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office's Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary.Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows:The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause.... Its what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking! Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! Its so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and wheres the media coverage of this? Oh thats right, they dont cover anything good that the President does. So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today." However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk's viral tweets. The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump's intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president's salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind.The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods -- particularly the section that read as follows:While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries.The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation as being "in the first quarter," and simply replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.e., the entire yearly salary).According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South).A press release described the project in detail:The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred.There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump's donation had nothing to do with it. ConclusionThe claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false.Each of President Trump's actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation's biggest and most widely-read news outlets.The news media has not reported on the president's donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened.  In the first quarter of 2017, for example, President Trump donated $78,333 (his $100,000 salary for that quarter, after taxes) to the Department of the Interior, specifically for the National Park Service's maintenance of an historic Civil War site. His contribution was put towards two projects at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland. donated Battlefield In July 2017, the White House announced in a press release that President Trump had donated his second-quarter salary to a science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) camp for children, overseen by the Education Department. He signed over his third-quarter salary to the Department of Health and Human Services for a public awareness campaign about opioid addiction, and the last of his 2017 salary went towards an infrastructure grant program overseen by the U.S. Department of Transportation. press release addiction program As the Washington Post has pointed out, some of the initiatives President Trump donated to were at uncertain stages of development or did not yet exist at the time he made his contribution, which prompted some additional scrutiny, but President Trump has nonetheless stayed true to his word and handed over a check representing his presidential salary every three months. Washington Post Trump continued this tradition in 2018, donating his first-quarter salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs, a sum which then-Acting VA Secretary Robert Wilkie said had been earmarked for "caregiver support in the form of mental health and peer support programs, financial aid, education training, and research."  The president donated another quarter's salary to the U.S. Small Business Administration for the purpose of establishing an Emerging Leaders program focused "on helping veterans start small businesses after military life." And the third quarter of his 2018 salary went to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, according to the Associated Press. On 18 March 2019, Trump announced on Twitter he was donating a quarter of his salary to the Department of Homeland Security. On 26 November 2019, Trump announced he was donating again, this time to the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health in order to help battle the nation's opioid crisis. Veterans Affairs salary Associated Press 'Military Cemeteries' In late July and early August 2018, scattered social media posts and memes claimed that the president had donated his entire $400,000 salary to the Department of the Interior, for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries. Many of these posts criticized the news media for not having reported on this purported donation. On 31 July 2018, for example, conservative radio host Mark Simone wrote, in a tweet that has since been deleted: tweet White House sent their spending report to Congress. This was in it: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Media gave this no coverage.    Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative activist and founder of the Turning Point USA organization, followed suit: News the media didnt report today: Today @realDonaldTrump donated his $400,000 salary to rebuilding military cemeteries Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2018 @realDonaldTrump August 1, 2018 One Facebook user garnered almost 150,000 shares within three days for a 31 July post which made similar claims:   And on 2 August, "Uncle Sam's Misguided Children" posted a widely-shared meme on Facebook, which was almost identical to Charlie Kirk's tweet: meme   These social media posts were accompanied by articles published by various right-wing web sites including the Gateway Pundit, the Right Scoop, and the viral content web site Social News Daily. Gateway Pundit Right Scoop Social News Daily Analysis There were two immediate problems with this set of claims. First, President Trump could not possibly donate his entire $400,000 annual salary for 2018 for the purpose of rebuilding military cemeteries, because he has already donated the first quarter's worth of that salary to the Department of Veterans Affairs for an entirely separate initiative. So he only had three-quarters of his salary left to distribute, a mathematical fact that undermines the credibility of these claims. Second, the social media posts and articles making this claim were very thinly sourced, to say the least. Neither the viral Facebook post nor meme that we highlighted above cited any source, and the three news articles we mentioned all relied on the two tweets from Charlie Kirk and Mark Simone. Kirk's tweet cited no source whatsoever. Simone claimed that the information came from a White House "spending report" sent to Congress, which he asserted contained the following statement: "Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!" Simone did not include a link to that report in his tweet, and neither he nor Kirk responded to our requests for clarification or documentation. The White House did send a somewhat related report to Congress a month before these claims emerged online. The White House Office's Annual Report to Congress on White House Personnel lists the names, titles and salaries of White House employees, and the 2018 report, published on 29 June, made no mention of President Trump's salary, nor his donations from that salary. report Furthermore, we did not find the quotation that Simone included in his tweet in any official White House document or report to Congress. We did, however, find it in several online postings from the summer of 2017. As posted to the web site MyCrazyEmail.net on 25 July 2017, the message typically read as follows: message The Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause. ... Its what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking!  Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries! AMAZING! Its so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much! Oh, and wheres the media coverage of this? Oh thats right, they dont cover anything good that the President does.  So the claim that Trump donated his entire $400,000 annual salary for rebuilding military cemeteries actually comes from online rumors posted in 2017. This means the vast majority of claims made in July and August 2018 are false on this basis alone, since they stated that Trump's donation had happened "today."  However, the claim was as false in 2017 as it was in 2018. As we outlined at the beginning of this article, President Trump distributed his 2017 salary in four separate chunks, to four separate projects, none of which involved military cemeteries. The White House had already announced two of those donations by 26 July 2017, so the viral rumor was demonstrably false even as it first emerged online, twelve months before Mark Simone and Charlie Kirk's viral tweets.  The 2017 rumor, which was the source of Simone's tweet, claimed that the 2017 White House Office Personnel report had described President Trump's intention to donate his whole salary for repairs on military cemeteries. That official report, which can be viewed here, did not mention the president's salary, his donations from that salary, nor cemeteries of any kind. here The original source of this flurry of inaccurate rumors appears to have been a 2 July 2017 article in Forbes magazine, about that year's White House Office Personnel report. The rumor which spread online later that summer plagiarized whole sections of the article, indicating that the Forbes piece provided a template for subsequent distortions and falsehoods -- particularly the section that read as follows: article While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump vowed to forego his paycheck. However, Article II of the United States Constitution mandates a presidential salary. In the first quarter, President Trump donated his pay to the Dept. of Interior for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries. The president did donate his first-quarter 2017 salary to the Department of the Interior, but not for the reconstruction of military cemeteries. This inaccuracy was then compounded in the subsequent online rumor, which took Forbes' accurate description of the donation as being "in the first quarter," and simply replaced it with "all $400,000" (i.e., the entire yearly salary). According to a Department of the Interior press release, President Trump's $78,333 donation formed part of a larger $263,545 fund which was used by the National Park Service to make repairs at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, site of the Civil War Battle of Antietam (or the Battle of Sharpsburg, as it was commonly known in the South). press release A press release described the project in detail: The donation will restore the historic Newcomer House on the Antietam battlefield, and will underwrite the replacement of 5,000 linear feet of deteriorated rail fencing along the Hagerstown Turnpike where some of the most intense fighting of the battle occurred. There is a cemetery at Antietam National Battlefield, but President Trump's donation had nothing to do with it.  Conclusion The claim that President Donald Trump decided either in 2017 or 2018 to donate his entire $400,000 salary to the reconstruction of military cemeteries, and that a blinkered, biased news media refused to report this, is false. Each of President Trump's actual salary donations (executed in quarterly disbursements, not once a year) has been reported by major news media, including some of the nation's biggest and most widely-read news outlets. The news media has not reported on the president's donation of his entire $400,000 annual salary for the reconstruction of military cemeteries due to the plainest reason of all: because it hasn't happened. U.S. Department of the Interior. "Press Release -- Secretary Zinke Accepts President Trump's Q1 Salary as a Donation for National Park Service."
  3 April 2017. U.S. Department of the Interior. "Press Release -- President Trump's Salary and Matching Funds to Restore Antietam National Battlefield."
  5 July 2017. Lima, Cristiano.  "Trump Donates Third-Quarter Salary to HHS Opioid Efforts."
  Politico.  30 November 2017. Fahrenthold, David A.  "Trump Donates $100,000 of His Salary to a New Federal Grant Program for Infrastructure Projects."
  The Washington Post.  13 February 2018. O'Connell, Jonathan and David A. Fahrenthold, David A.  "10 Key Questions About the Ethical Issues Surrounding President Trump's Company."
  The Washington Post.  6 March 2018. Hoft, Jim.  "Trump Gives $400,000 to Repair Military Cemeteries -- Liberal Media Ignores the Story."
  The Gateway Pundit. 1 August 2018. The Right Scoop.  "Trump Just Donated His Presidential Salary to the Rebuilding of Military Cemeteries."
  1 August 2018. Granger, Aaron.  "Trump Donates His Salary to Rebuild Military Cemeteries -- Media Ignores Story."
  Social News Daily. 1 August 2018. White House Office.  "2018 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel."
  29 June 2018. White House Office.  "2017 Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel."
  30 June 2017. Andrzejewski, Adam.  "Trump's Leaner White House Payroll Projected to Save Taxpayers $22 Million."
  Forbes.  2 July 2017. Reints, Renae.  "Trump Donated His 2018 Third-Quarter Salary to an Organization That Funds Alcoholism Research."
  Fortune.  25 January 2019.

 Sullivan, Kate. "Trump Donates Part of His Salary to Department of Homeland Security."
  CNN. 19 March 2019. "Trump Donates 3rd-Quarter Salary to Help Fight Opioid Crisis."
  The Associated Press. 26 November 2019. Updated to include information on President Trump's most recent salary donation. In May 2021, a set of photographs supposedly showing a baby albino bat was widely circulated on social media.  set of photographs   The "animal" seen here isn't an animal at all. This is actually a small plush doll.  This doll appears to have been made by Anna Yastrezhembovskya, an artist from Russia who sells similar figurines on her Etsy page. We haven't been able to find a listing for this specific item, but Yastrezhembovskya did share several photos of this plush albino baby bat doll to her Instagram in October 2019. Etsy page   In June 2020, Yastrezhembovskya posted a message on her Instagram explaining that some fraudulent websites were claiming that they were selling the doll. Yastrezhembovskya's work, however, is only available via her Etsy page: Again!!! ? Scammers still cant calm down and again steal my photos. Now they are selling the white bat. They use my photos, but theyre sending to buyers another things. Scroll through the photo to see an example of what they are sending. I want to warn everyone, I sell my works ONLY in the store on Etsy - a link in the profile, or in the instagram. All other stores and stuff are SCAMMERS!!! Please be careful. Do not be fooled. Yastrezhembovskya talked to MyModernMet.com about her work in 2019. The Russian artist said that she primarily works in felt and that these figurines typically take 12-14 hours to make: MyModernMet.com Yastrezhembovskya said: My first toy wasnt nearly as pretty, it was rather funny but I enjoyed the process so much that I kept trying. I was felting during my free time, even at night, and I got better with each toy I made ... I am flattered that my bats won the hearts of so many people, but the amount of orders I got was terrifying ... Of course, I will keep felting as many bats as I can, but I want people to understand that these toys are fully handmade, so its a fairly lengthy process. The internet has a relatively difficult time determining the difference between dolls and genuine real-world animals, apparently. Photographs of figurines featuring albino tarantulas, four-eyed goats, tiny birds, giant moths, and adorable bunnies have all been shared on social media as if they were real animals.  albino tarantulas four-eyed goats tiny birds giant moths adorable bunnies Legend:  The family of a POW are reassured by letter sent by their son until they steam off the stamp and read what's written there.  Examples:  [Cohen, 1993] During World War II Beth Lynn's oldest son, Robert, joined the navy. Even before the outbreak of the war the boy had dreamed of being a sailor. He was a very dutiful son, and he wrote his mother regularly, at least once a week, sometimes more often. After his ship went into combat in the war in the Pacific, Robert still wrote regularly. Sometimes he had to be very careful about what he said so as not to betray any military secrets that might then fall into the hands of the enemy. Letters often arrived with lines cut out of them by navy censors. These letters could be delayed for days, even weeks, owing to the uncertainties of mail delivery from a combat zone. But eventually they would show up in a bunch, much to the relief of Mrs. Lynn. So she was not too concerned when a couple of weeks went by without receiving the customary letters from her son. But when the weeks stretched into months, Mrs. Lynn became deeply concerned. Finally she contacted the Department of the Navy. After a long runaround and a great deal of red tape, Mrs. Lynn learned that her son's ship had been sunk off one of the Pacific islands  which one she couldn't be told "for security reasons." The navy was not sure whether her son had been killed or had been captured by the Japanese. It was known that many Japanese ships had been in the vicinity when the ship went down, and it was assumed that at least some of the crewmen had been captured. Mrs. Lynn was devastated. But she took some small comfort in the possibility that Robert had not been killed but had been captured and taken to Japan and would be returned after the war. She clung to this fragile hope for many months. And then one day her prayers seem to have been answered. She received a telephone call from the navy. A letter from Robert had arrived from Japan. Naturally the government had intercepted all correspondence from the enemy and read it before passing it on. But this letter was perfectly harmless and would doubtless relieve her mind greatly. They would send it on to her. Mrs. Lynn waited anxiously for the letter to arrive from Washington. It came three days later. It was written on a thin, light blue paper. The letter didn't contain much hard information. Robert merely reported that his ship had been sunk and he had been captured and taken to Japan. He was now in a Japanese prison camp. He said that though he missed his family greatly and wanted more than anything else to be home, his captors were treating him quite well. Mrs. Lynn was almost hysterical with relief. She read the letter over and over again. then she looked at the envelope. It had a Japanese stamp. A Japanese wartime stamp would be quite rare in the United States, she reasoned. And her nephew collected stamps. He would be thrilled to add this to his collection. So Mrs. Lynn steamed the stamp off the envelope. And there, in tiny printing where the stamp had been, was this message: They've cut off my hands.  [Collected on the Internet, 1997] A family in Kewanee (town of 17,000, 20 miles away) had a son in the military, in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. They received a letter from him, in which he asked them to be sure to save the stamp, he wanted to add it to his collection after the war. This puzzled the family; the boy had never collected stamps. They soaked off the stamp. Under the stamp he had written, "They have cut out my tongue." Origins:  The blood chilling tale of the "message under the stamp" dates to 1866, when it was set during the American Civil War. In those early days the maimed serviceman was a Confederate lad held in a northern prison camp. Under the stamp on the letter home to his momma was found the first grisly message: "My God! They've cut out my tongue." Though the oldest sighting on record, it's by no means the only one.  In common with a number of atrocity rumors, old tales of horror and vilification are revamped to fit new circumstances as different enemies and conflicts arise. Witness the following British telling from 1918, gathered near the end of World War I: [Jacobson, 1948] A clergyman was seated in a local restaurant. Opposite him at the table a stranger recited the rumor with all the drama and dogma of a religious fanatic. "This friend of mine's boy," the stranger at first confided, "is in a Boche prison camp. He sends a letter home and tells how things are all right with him and all that. It seems he likes everything, even the stamp on the letter. That stamp, he tells his ma, is a rare one and she ought to soak it off for little Alf's stamp collection." "Now," the stranger revealed, "they ain't got no little Alf in the whole family. But my friends does what their boy says. They steam off the stamp." The stranger's eyes glistened. His lips became thin and taut as he said, "Underneath the stamp they find a message that the boy couldn't put in the letter." The man seemed completely overcome by the emotional impact of his own story. His voice became shrill and each word was emphasized as though he wanted everyone within earshot to keep it in his mind forever. "It says," he went on, "they've torn out my tongue!" Though stunned by the story, the clergyman had the sense to realize the tale was an obvious fake. He knew prisoners' letters bore no stamps. Had the apocryphal boy sent such a message, there wouldn't have been a   stamp under which to hide such a communication.  Around the same time the "Little Alf" tale was being used in England to focus hatred upon the Germans, the same story was circulating in Germany about the Russians. In that version, a boy from Munich locked up in a Russian prisoner of war camp conveyed a gruesome message to his mother by hiding it under the stamp. His revelation read, "They have cut off my feet so I cannot escape." Atrocity rumors fall into disuse during times of peace but spring up like mushrooms after a rain once the clouds of war again roll in.  In 1942, during WWII, this same basic story again hit the trail in Britain. Sometimes the letter was received by a father. Sometimes it had come to a wife. And the messages sometimes read, "They are starving us" or "They have cut off my ears" or "They have pierced my eyes" or "They have cut off my hands." In the United States, it was told about an American serviceman who had been captured by the Germans or the Japanese. What we have here is a typical atrocity rumor, a  handy device used to vilify the guys on the other side of the battle line and thus make the idea of killing them in combat all that more palatable. By portraying the enemy as unredeemably cruel and heartless, the other guys are rendered into cartoon figures who it is okay to hate. Maybe you might not be capable of bayoneting a 28-year-old man with two small children at home, a wife he loves, and a mortgage he sweats to meet the payments on every month, but turn him into a slavering killer who chops the hands off helpless prisoners, dashes the heads of newborn babies against walls, rapes nuns, and crucifies priests, and killing him almost becomes a sacred duty. Such is the purpose of these blood-boiling tales. They help convince the army in the field to fight like the Devil, and they help convince the civilian population back home that being in this war is the right thing to do. Atrocity rumors are never new; they are merely retooled as circumstances change. In the ramp-up days towards the Gulf War, we were told Iraqi soldiers had rampaged through a Kuwaiti hospital, grabbing premature babies up out of incubators and tossing them to the floor to meet their deaths on the cold, hard tiles. Never mind that this apocryphal hospital was never pinpointed nor the grieving families of these infants located, the story spread like wildfire, inflaming passions against the Iraqis and stiffening resolve to fight them tooth and nail if it came down to that. [Columbia Journalism Review, 1992] "I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators ... and left the children to die on the cold floor." This was the story told by "Nayirah," the fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl who shocked a public hearing of Congress's Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990. Nayirah's testimony came at a time when Americans were wondering how to respond to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2. Her story was cited frequently in the congressional debate over war authority, which was approved by only five votes in the Senate. President Bush mentioned it often as a reason for taking firm action. It was a major factor in building public backing for war. As many are now aware, the incubator story was the centerpiece of a massive public relations campaign conducted by Hill and Knowlton [a PR firm] on behalf of a group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, for a fee of $11.5 million. After the war, the group revealed that it was financed almost entirely by the Kuwaiti government. A few babies did die during that conflict, but as a result of needed supplies not reaching hospitals, not because enemy soldiers threw them to the floor and left them to die there.  Only someone with a very long memory would recall that similar "soldiers kill babies" rumors had been kited during numerous conflicts in the past. For example, in the 1600s the English were likewise inflamed by lurid tales of Irish atrocities. They were told how the Irish  dashed babies' heads against walls, stripped and raped wives in front of their husbands, and buried alive brave townspeople in mass graves. Each of these shockers, you see, is a common atrocity rumor and will be trotted out when a population needs to be inspired to fight. Women, children, and clerics are often cast in the victim's role in this form of rabble rousing. Which should not be all that surprising; the object is, after all, vilification, and that is best accomplished by pitting the most helpless and appealing of innocents against the most vicious and vile of oppressors. In World War I, one of the most widespread rumors of this type concerned Belgian children maimed by German soldiers. Officials of the Catholic Society were said to have seen with their own eyes members of the German soldiery chop the arms off countless babies even as the tots clung to their mothers' skirts. A horrific extension of the rumor had German soldiers afterwards feasting on these severed limbs.  Sometimes the tale was presented unvarnished (as above) as a one- or two-line bit of fact, and sometimes it was spun out into a horrendous tale: [Jacobson, 1948] And in many cases, the story was enlarged upon, as for instance the harrowing anecdote of a prominent woman who was visiting a home for Belgian refugees in Paris and came upon a little girl, no more than ten years old. The room the child was in was rather warm but still the girl kept her hands in a pitifully worn little muff. "Mamma," she said, "please blow my nose for me." The prominent woman who was standing by is then supposed to have said, half laughingly but somewhat sternly, "A big girl like you can't use her handkerchief?" The sad-faced little girl made no reply. But slowly the mother turned her head toward the visitor and in a dull, matter-of-fact tone said, "She has not any hands now, ma'am." The woman visitor shuddered. "Can it be that the Germans . . .?" Tears welled from the eyes of the wretched Belgian mother. Like all the other atrocity rumors, there were no handless Belgian tots. All efforts to locate even one such child failed miserably. Yet as a rumor, it was unparalleled in the way it spread and the frissons of horror it sent clawing up the spines of all who heard it. Atrocity rumors are as old as the hills, and you should be on the lookout for them during times of international strife and lines being drawn in the sand. Yes, it's true man's inhumanity to his fellow man is boundless and that verifiable atrocities have been committed during numerous conflicts, but even so, it seldom pays to believe all the vilification tales passed wildly around during the build-up days towards a war. Whipped into a hate-filled frenzy in reaction to these tales, even the most peaceable of nations can be impelled by its outraged populace to throw itself into what it otherwise would have stayed far distanced from.  War is serious business. The decision to engage in it or not cannot be taken lightly and should never be dictated by deliberate rumormongering. Though protection of the weak is a noble and worthy ideal, no one should be in favor of seeing the blood of his loved ones spilled in protection of the fictional. Barbara "cattle hymn of the republic" Mikkelson Last updated:  2 August 2007    Sources:  Brunvand, Jan Harold.  Curses! Broiled Again!  New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.   ISBN 0-393-30711-5   (pp. 73-75). Curses! Broiled Again!    Cushman, John.  "U.S. Offers Detail on Iraqi Atrocity."   The New York Times.  6 February 1992  (p. A11).    Jacobson, David J.  The Affairs of Dame Rumor.   New York: Rinehart & Co., 1948  (pp. 287-288, 291, 377). The Affairs of Dame Rumor    Morgan, Hal and Kerry Tucker.  Rumor!   New York: Penguin Books, 1984.  ISBN 0-14-007036-2  (pp. 17-18).  Rumor!    Munday, Alicia.  "Is the Press Any Match for Powerhouse PR?"   Columbia Journalism Review.  September 1992  (p. 37).  ;  Also told in:   Cohen, Daniel.  The Beheaded Freshman and Other Nasty Rumors.   New York: Avon Books, 1993.  ISBN 0-380-77020-2 (pp. 109-111). The Beheaded Freshman and Other Nasty Rumors    The Big Book of Urban Legends.  New York: Paradox Press, 1994.  ISBN 1-56389-165-4  (p. 76).  The Big Book of Urban Legends