Did Myeshia Johnson Accuse Rep. Frederica Wilson of Using Her Husband 'As a Political Platform'?
Conservative social media users circulated an image of a purported Facebook post from 17 October 2017 which they said showed Gold Star widow Myeshia Johnson accusing Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Florida) of exploiting a presidential condolence call over the death of her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, for political gain: circulated   The picture allegedly depicts a post from Myeshia Johnson's Facebook page dated "17 October 2017 at 3:27 p.m." saying: I want to set the record straight! I'm getting sick and tired of this so called politician using my husband as a political platform. Even buy [sic] her own words she did not hear all of the conversation she only heard part of it. This is what actually was said. "They know the risk, they know what they sign up for but they still volunteer to put their lives on the line for their fellow Americans. We owe them a debt that can never be repaid" A phone call from President Donald Trump to Johnson is at the center of what has become a public dispute between Johnson and the Trump administration. But the validity of the screenshot is doubtful. While the date of the post corresponds with that of the 17 October 2017 condolence call, the time listed is actually more than an hour before the reported time of President Trump's phone call, which was 4:45 p.m. Eastern time. reported Also, the picture shows a Facebook profile bearing a square profile picture. But the social media site implemented an update in August 2017 that changed the shape of users' profile pictures in the Facebook newsfeed from square to round, as seen in this example from the Snopes.com Facebook page (top left): update shape Facebook   La David Johnson was killed while serving in Niger on 4 October 2017, in what has been described as an ambush by Islamic insurgents. Three other U.S. service members, Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, were also killed in the attack, as were four Nigerien troops. described Rep. Wilson said she was riding with the Army sergeant's widow and members of her family to receive his body when the President called, telling CNN host Don Lemon that night: telling I heard what [Trump] said because the phone was on speaker. Basically he said, "Well, I guess he knew what he signed up for, but I guess it still hurt." That's what he said. Wilson accused Trump of being insensitive not only to La David Johnson's family but "to the family of every soldier that has paid the ultimate price for our freedom." The sergeant's mother, Cowanda Jones-Johnson, has corroborated Wilson's account of the phone call, saying that "President Trump did disrespect my son and my daughter and also me and my husband." corroborated President Trump responded by denying what Rep. Wilson had claimed: I didn't say what that congresswoman said. Didn't say it all. She knows it. I had a very nice conversation with the woman, with the wife who was  sounded like a lovely woman. Did not say what the congresswoman said, and most people aren't too surprised to hear that. On 23 October 2017, Myeshia Johnson told ABC News that Wilson was "100 percent" in her description of the phone call. She said: told The President said that he knew what he signed up for, but it hurts anyway. And it made me cry cause I was very angry at the tone of his voice and how he said he couldn't remember my husband's name.  The only way he remembered my husband's name is because he told me he had my husband's report in front of him and that's when he actually said La David. I heard him stumblin' on, trying to remember my husband's name and that's what hurt me the most, because if my husband is out here fighting for our country and he risked his life for our country why can't you remember his name. But while President Trump suggested he had proof to support his account of events, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that the call had not been not recorded. Instead, Sanders said, Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly and other White House staff members were near President Trump when he phone Myeshia Johnson and heard what he said. proof told For his part, Kelly called Wilson an "empty barrel" and accused her of taking credit in 2015 for the funding of a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Miami, a claim that was debunked by footage of Wilson's remarks that was posted online on 20 October 2017. debunked Despite Sanders' statement that the president's conversation with Myeshia Johnson was not recorded, Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and host of a Facebook broadcast devoted to what his administration calls "real news," asserted on 20 October 2017 that she had read a transcript of the call which confirmed Trump spoke the words in question, albeit with additional context: broadcast asserted [Trump] said, "Your husband went into battle, you know, knowing that he could be injured, knowing that he could be killed, and he still did it because he loved this country, and he did it for the American people." Wilson came under additional criticism after she responded to Kelly's allegations by exclaiming that "You mean to tell me that I've become so important that the White House is following me and my words? This is amazing. That's amazing. I'll have to tell my kids that I'm a rockstar now." exclaiming Two days earlier, Rep. Wilson had issued a statement reading: statement Despite President Trump's suggestion that I have recanted my statement or misstated what he said, I stand firmly by my original account of his conversation with Myeshia Johnson, the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson. Moreover, this account has been confirmed by family members who also witnessed Mr. Trump's incredible lack of compassion and sensitivity. The Johnson family and the families of the three other soldiers who tragically lost their lives in the Niger ambush are experiencing what I am certain must feel like an unbearable loss. Rather than engage in a petty war of words with Mr. Trump, it is so much more important to embrace and support the families and honor these fallen heroes. We reached out to Rep. Wilson for comment but have not yet received a response. Sabovic, Sanela et al.  "Trump to Widow of Sgt. La David Johnson: 'He Knew What He Signed Up For.'"
  WPLG-TV.  17 October 2017. Wilson, Frederica S.  "Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson Stands by Account of President Trump's Condolence Call to the Widow of Sgt. La David Johnson."
  18 October 2017. Kelly, Heather.  "Facebook's Adding Text Bubbles and Round Profiles."
  CNN.  15 August 2017. Sabovic, Sanela.  "Remains of US Army Sgt. La David Johnson return to Miami."
  WPLG-TV.  17 October 2017. CNN.  "Congresswoman Describes Trump's Call to Widow."
  17 October 2017. Gearan, Anne and Kristine Phillips.  "Fallen Soldier's Mother: 'Trump Did Disrespect My Son.'"
  The Washington Post.  18 October 2017. de Moraes, Lisa.  "White House: No Recording Of Donald Trumps Phone Call to Widow of Soldier Killed in ISIS Ambush."
  Deadline.  18 October 2017. Barszewski, Larry.  "Frederica Wilson 2015 Video Shows White House Chief of Staff John Kelly Got It Wrong."
  The Sun-Sentinel. nbsp; 20 October 2017. Holly, Jessica.  "Congresswoman Reacts to White House Statement on Call to Army's Family."
  WSVN-TV.  19 October 2017. Searcey, Dionnne et al.  "Conflicting Accounts in Niger Ambush Are Subject of Pentagon Investigation."
  The New York Times.  20 October 2017. Slattery, Denis.  "Lara Trump Says She 'Read Exactly What' President Said to Fallen Soldier's Widow Even Though There's No Transcript."
  [New York] Daily News.  20 October 2017. Nestel, M.L.  "'I Was Very Angry' at Trump, Says Myeshia Johnson, Widow of Fallen Soldier."
ABC News.  23 October 2017. Update [23 October 2017]: Updated with statement from Myeshia Johnson interview with ABC News backing up Wilson's account.
In mid-September 2020, videos started to circulate on TikTok that supposedly showed an alien spaceship, or unidentified flying object (UFO), flying over New Jersey: circulate   The video, which racked up millions of views within a few days, shows several curious onlookers observing the "UFO" near New Jersey's Route 21 highway. While this may have been an unidentified flying object to these onlookers, this "alien spaceship" has since been identified as a Goodyear Blimp.  The above-displayed video was taken on Monday, Sept. 14, in an area close to MetLife Stadium. Coincidentally, the stadium was hosting the NFL's Monday Night Football game between the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  A Goodyear spokesman told Insider that the company's blimp was indeed flying in the area: Insider  "A representative for Goodyear confirmed to Insider that the company flew a blimp in New York City and northern New Jersey on Monday evening to capture aerial footage of the NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Giants at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey." The object in the above-displayed video does resemble the size and shape of a Goodyear blimp. The "alien" looking light can also be explained, as many Goodyear blimps are equipped with bright digital displays. Here's a video from Goodyear showing a Veteran's Day message on the blimp in 2017: video   While it's easy to see how this large, unidentified, flying, and seemingly glowing object could be mistaken for a UFO, it's also easy to see how the "UFO" in the viral video looks eerily similar to the Goodyear Blimp. Here's a comparison of the "UFO" from the viral video (left) and a genuine photograph of the Goodyear Blimp that was taken in 2016.  photograph of the Goodyear Blimp       Young, Jabari.  "ESPNs Week 1 Monday Night Football Ratings Fall Nearly 11%."
  MSNBC.  16 September 2020. Greenspan, Rachel.  "Viral Videos of a 'UFO' in New Jersey Really Captured a Goodyear Blimp."
  Insider.  15 September 2020. CORRECTION [Sept. 17, 2020]: A previous version of this article erroneously stated the NY Jets played the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sept. 14, 2020.  It was the NY Giants. Claim:  The IOC has announced 3-on-3 basketball will be an official sport at the 2016 Olympics.   Example:  [Collected via Twitter, January 2015]  The 2016 Olympics will feature 3-on-3 basketball. Who would you chose? pic.twitter.com/4VZhxLLy2i pic.twitter.com/4VZhxLLy2i  BALL UP NBA (@BallUpNBA) January 15, 2015 January 15, 2015  Origins:  On 14 January 2015, the satirical Australian web site Betoota Advocate published a fake news article claiming 3-on-3 basketball would be an officially sanctioned sport at the 2016 Summer Olympics: published After decades of pressure and debate, as well as an official application submitted by the International Basketball Federation, the IOC have this week confirmed that a three-men-a-side basketball variant will be included as a part of the official event program for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The final decision was made quietly during an annual committee meeting late last month. After nearly a decade of exploring different options, the International Olympic Committees executive board have confirmed that they will to go ahead with the proposal despite the fact that the request would result in a higher number of athletes and increased number of medals, thereby adding to the cost and complexity of the Games. While the Betoota Advocate's article was shared only a few hundred times on social media, the rumor about 3-on-3 basketball's becoming an official Olympic sport received a viral push when Deadspin reported the hoax as real news: reported The IOC has officially added a new half-court 3-on-3 basketball event to the competitions to be held in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. This rules. Right away, you'll have to throw a big bucket of calm down on your head because, as the IOC put it in a 2012 letter discussing its interest in 3-on-3, a large part of the impetus is to focus more on the amateurism of sports and get the event away from being "somewhat of an exhibition for the American NBA." When reporter Kyle Wagner realized his mistake, he added an update at the top of the article stating he had been duped by a satire site: Nah, this isn't happening. I wrote a post based on a satire website, which is just about the dumbest way to f*ck up. Sorry. F*ck me. Woulda been cool though.   Last updated:  16 January 2015 On Nov. 15, 2023, a user on X with the handle @PatMaguire10 published a post (archived) that said Fox News had reported former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida had received a foreclosure notice from Deutsche Bank. We received reader mail that asked if this was true. post archived The post read, "BREAKING FOX NEWS: Deutsche Bank has filed a notice to foreclose on Mar A Lago. The Trump property is part of a larger estate lien that is 190m$ delinquent. Court documents show a 3.4b$ loan that's in default. Trump hasn't respond to repeated attempts for comment. Developing story."  However, a quick check of @PatMaguire10's X bio showed that the account posts "parody" content. In other words, Fox News didn't report on any such foreclosure notice, nor was there any public record of a foreclosure of Mar-a-Lago taking place or scheduled to happen in the future. For a little more background on the subject that was referenced, on the same day that the post was created, Trump's legal team reportedly asked for a mistrial to be declared in the civil fraud trial brought against him in New York. mistrial Weeks earlier, the same trial featured testimony from retired Deutsche Bank executive Nicholas Haigh. Haigh provided information to the court about the bank's decision to loan Trump roughly $125 million for the purchase of the Trump National Doral property in Miami in 2011, according to ABC News. ABC News As for Mar-a-Lago, Miami Herald reported in August 2022 that Trump had received a loan from Chase Manhattan Bank  not Deutsche Bank  for his 1985 purchase of the property: Miami Herald Mar-a-Lago itself cost Trump $8 million, which he financed with an $8.5 million loan from Chase Manhattan Bank. The other parcel - oceanfront land next to the manor - cost $2 million. Trump was able to use $500,000 from the estate loan and a $1.5 million mortgage from the seller, Jack C. Massey, to cover the bill. For further reading, we previously published a report titled, "Media Literacy: How Can You Tell if a Post Is Satire/Parody?" report Bromwich, Jonah E. Trump Lawyers Call for Mistrial in Civil Fraud Case, Attacking Judge. The New York Times, 15 Nov. 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/nyregion/trump-mistrial-fraud-case.html. Charalambous, Peter, et al. Bank Relied on Trumps Financial Statement to Secure Loan. ABC News, 11 Oct. 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/trump-fraud-trial/bank-relied-on-trumps-financial-statement-to-secure-loan-103895871?id=103642561. ---. Deutsche Bank Executive Set to Take Stand. ABC News, 11 Oct. 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/trump-fraud-trial/deutsche-bank-executive-set-to-take-stand-103889913?id=103642561. Ibrahim, Nur. Media Literacy: How Can You Tell If a Post Is Satire/Parody? Snopes, 25 Feb. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/articles/464404/media-literacy-satire-parody/. Kleinman, Jeff. How Donald Trump Changed a Palm Beach Mansion. The Story behind His Mar-a-Lago Takeover. Miami Herald, 9 Aug. 2022, https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article264318476.html. Spencer, Terry. Is Mar-a-Lago Worth $1 Billion? Trumps Winter Home Valuations Are at the Core of His Fraud Trial. The Associated Press, 9 Oct. 2023, https://apnews.com/article/trump-maralago-lawsuit-palm-beach-51fea4e520b1901c1c045590b2a7bdc0. Claim:  Mitt Romney is facing federal ethics charges. :    Mitt Romney has been charged with ethics violations by the federal government.  The United Auto Workers (UAW) and several other organizations have requested a federal investigation of Mitt Romney's financial disclosures. Example:  [Collected via e-mail, November 2012] I saw this on Face Book and I am wondering if this is true? BREAKING: Romney facing federal ethics charges. YES. This is REAL.  On Monday, Mitt Romney is expected to face charges for ethics violations and profiteering with regard to his involvement with the 2009 government bailout of the auto industry. Origins:  On 1 November 2012, five days before the U.S. presidential election, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and several other organizations sent a letter to Don W. Fox, the General Counsel and Principal Deputy Director of the United States Office of Government Ethics, calling for an investigation of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's financial disclosures.  The senders maintain that Mitt Romney has "undisclosed stock holdings [that] create very serious conflicts ofinterest" and that he garnered a profit of "at least $15.3 million" from the automobile industry bailout of 2009. letter In a press release about the letter, the UAW stated: press release A coalition of community, labor and good government organizations is calling on the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to investigate presidential candidate Mitt Romney for noncompliance with the Ethics in Government Act and compel him to either disclose his investments or divest them. A letter sent to Don W. Fox, general counsel of the Office of Government Ethics, states that Gov. Romney "has not even attempted to meet the requirements for a federal blind trust with respect to his substantial equity holdings. The only way for this law to be enforced in a meaningful way is for your Office to act promptly to  demand that candidate Romney disclose his stock holdings, or divest them if disclosure is not feasible." The letter was sent by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, People for the American Way, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, SEIU, UAW and The Social Equity Group, and it follows up on a previous letter sent to the Office of Government Ethics on Aug. 23, 2012, that urged the office to act. "The American people have a right to know about Governor Romney's potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue," said UAW President Bob King. "It's time for Governor Romney to disclose or divest." The groups believe that Romneys undisclosed stock holdings create serious conflicts of interest. They point to the auto loans as a key example. The Nation recently reported that the Romney family personally profited by at least $15.3 million from the auto loans of 2009. Yet Romney's June 1, 2012, Public Financial Disclosure Report to the Office of Government Ethics did not reveal this windfall because he did not disclose the underlying holdings of his private equity and limited partnership funds.     Romney profited from his family's investment in Delphi Corp. at the expense of the Delphi workers. Other unreported investments that could create conflicts of interest include controversial holdings in Sensata and Global-Tech. The statement that Mitt Romney is "facing federal ethics charges" is at this point an exaggeration, however, as no charges have been issued against him by the federal government for violating ethics laws.  All that has happened is that some groups have sent a letter to the Office of Government Ethics requesting an investigation of Romney's financial disclosures, based on information of as-yet undetermined accuracy.  Whether sufficient basis will be found to merit an investigation, whether any such investigation will be conducted, what that investigation might find, and whether it would result in any criminal charges being brought against Mitt Romney are all matters of mere speculation. Last updated:  5 November 2012 For dog owners who have noticed their furry friends regularly following them into the bathroom or pawing beneath the door and wondered why, social media posts offer this answer: Your dog is trying to protect you. The claim has made the internet rounds for decades and again came to the forefront when TikTok user mavandmel posted a video in December 2020 that showed her golden retriever following her into the bathroom. mavandmel   You know when you keep trying to go to the bathroom and [the dog] keeps trying to nose their way in or theyre always standing at the door, said the golden retriever's owner, whose video had been shared more than 48,000 times as of this writing. Wolves and wild dogs, they protect one another while one goes to the bathroom because when youre going to the bathroom, youre vulnerable. So, they stand guard! Snopes readers asked our team to verify whether this TikTok explanation accurately accounts for the affectionate toilet behavior of our furry companions. We found that though there is some level of truth to the claim, generally speaking, this type of behavior is one learned more from nurture than nature. For millennia, humans and dogs have grown alongside one another to form very special evolutionary bonds. In fact, research suggests that the domestication of dogs occurred at least 20,000 years ago, but likely closer to 40,000 years ago. It may come as no surprise, then, that the two species are capable of reading one another  from the dogs ability to understand both the words and tone of human speech to being able to communicate with its owner through facial expressions. research suggests understand both the words and tone of human speech facial expressions But do dogs carefully watch their toilet-seated owners in order to protect them? That remains to be scientifically proven. In the wild, wolves have been shown to mark their territorial boundaries using the scent of their urine  a trait that pet dogs have brought with them into their neighborhood environments. This same behavior suggests that both wild and domesticated canines use olfactory cues to communicate with other members of their species. And when it comes to protection, canines are known to defend members of their pack from predators and perceived threats, contributing to the strong societal and familial bonds that both wolves and pet dogs share with their families. mark their territorial boundaries protection  Members of the Yellowstone Druid wolf pack chase down an elk. NPS/Doug Smith  NPS/Doug Smith That loving connection extends to the human-canine relationship as well. Research published in the journal Science found that shared eye contact between humans and their furry companions increases concentrations of oxytocin  the so-called happy hormone  in much the same way humans may bond emotionally when they gaze into another persons eyes. That loving connection extends to the human-canine relationship as well. Research published in the journal Science found that shared eye contact between humans and their furry companions increases concentrations of oxytocin  the so-called happy hormone  in much the same way humans may bond emotionally when they gaze into another persons eyes. Human-like modes of communication, including mutual gaze, in dogs, may have been acquired during domestication with humans, wrote the study authors at the time, adding that wolves rarely engage in eye contact with their human handlers. We show that gazing behavior from dogs, but not wolves, increased urinary oxytocin concentrations in owners, which consequently facilitated owners affiliation and increased oxytocin concentration in dogs. While the scientific literature has shown strong evidence for communication and bonding through the act of urinating and other bonding behavior in both canine and human-canine relationships, it does not prove that dogs go into the bathroom with their owner to protect them. Rather, it more than likely simply reflects a desire to be closer to their humans.  Snopes spoke with Paul Mundell, executive director of the American Service Dog Access Coalition, who said that although he has not systematically studied the question, he is skeptical of the claim that dogs who look intently at their owners while defecating are seeking assurance that either the owner will protect the dog or vice versa. I think its more plausible to consider the habit established during puppyhood  if the puppy was picked up and moved while defecating in an inappropriate area, or if it was scolded or punished for defecating in a particular area, its reasonable that the puppy got in the habit of watching the owner to ensure all was okay while defecating, Mundell said. Conversely, if the pup was rewarded for defecating in the right areas, it may have set up the expectation that defecating may be followed by a reward  even if the owner hasnt maintained the practice. Mundell remained equally as skeptical when it came to describing the behavior of a pup following a person into the bathroom for protection, particularly as the bathroom is not likely to be considered an unsafe space. During thunderstorms or fireworks, for example, dogs will often turn to the confined, isolated space of a bathroom or bathtub for security. For some dogs, following a person into the bathroom is the same behavior they display whenever their person goes anywhere  they follow them in order to remain near them. This is most pronounced in dogs displaying hyper-attachment to their owners, said Mundell, comparing the bond to that of children with their parents. Going to the bathroom provides an opportunity for our furry friends to interact with their uninterrupted owners, who may otherwise be occupied with chores, the computer, or other things that distract from petting and attention. Finally, dogs live in an olfactory world, and Mundell says that the urine and feces humans produce contain uniquely personal mixtures of volatile organic compounds due to each persons individual metabolisms, diets, and microbiomes  all of which may be interesting and even rewarding information to the dog. Claim:  On-line bookseller Amazon.com is partnered with the web site Intifada.com.   Not any more. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2001] A good friend of mine, while searching the Internet, ran across Intifada.com. OK. Then he sees a promotion right on their web page by Amazon.Com advising the readers that: "You can buy books about the Intifada and Palestine from Amazon.Com. All profits from the referral will go to developing Intifada.com." How great! I would assume that this pretty well eliminates Amazon.Com as a book seller, for those of us that understand that the Intifada is about killing Israeli civilians and driving Israel out of the land of their forefathers. And obviously Amazon.Com is not planning on receiving any more of our business! It would also be nice for us to notify Amazon.Com of our decision and how shocked we were at their evident lack of knowledge of the conflict and the terrorist activities and suicide bombings of civilians that have been the paramount focus of this Intifada. Origins:  Like many other web retailers, Amazon.com operates an associates program under which operators of qualifying web sites can earn commissions by directing visitors to purchase books and other products through Amazon.com's own site.  (We here at snopes.com participate in this program, offering links on our site  to various urban legend-related books which can be purchased through Amazon.com.) associates books An inquiry to Amazon.com about this issue drew the following terse response: Greetings from the Amazon.com Associates Program. Thank you for taking the time to write to us regarding the Web site www.intifada.com. Please note, this account has been suspended pending further investigation, and we have requested they remove all links to Amazon.com immediately. Thanks again for contacting us regarding this matter.  posted policy states that sites which may be found unsuitable for acceptance into their associates program include those that promote sexually explicit materials; promote violence; promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age; promote illegal activities; include "amazon" or variations or misspellings thereof in their domain names; or otherwise violate intellectual property rights.  Intifada.com did have Amazon.com associate links on their site at one time (as confirmed by Amazon.com's statement that their account has been "suspended"), but we have no way of knowing whether Amazon.com took them on as an associate site because they didn't feel the site unsuitable under their guidelines, or because they simply didn't screen the site's application as thoroughly as they ordinarily do.  Either way, Intifada.com no longer has any links to Amazon.com that we can find. Last updated:  7 March 2008 Claim:  "Make the Pie Higher!" poem is composed of actual quotes from George W. Bush.  Status:  True. Example:  [Collected on the Internet, 2002] MAKE THE PIE HIGHERby George W. Bush  I think we all agree, the past is over.This is still a dangerous world.It's a world of madmen and uncertaintyand potential mental losses.  Rarely is the question askedIs our children learning?Will the highways of the Internet become more few?How many hands have I shaked?  They misunderestimate me.I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream.  Put food on your family!Knock down the tollbooth!Vulcanize society!Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher! Origins:  We certainly didn't need to write a piece to inform the world that, like his father, President George W. Bush is not a strong public speaker.  Particularly when speaking   extemporaneously, he often uses words similar in sound but different in meaning to what he intends tosay (e.g., "vulcanize" for "Balkanize") or uses incorrect forms of words (e.g., "resignate" for "resonate"), garbles familiar phrases by transposing words (e.g., "where wings take dream"), and makes a variety of grammatical mistakes (e.g., "how many hands have I shaked").  The point here was not to rehash the numerous lists of "Bushisms" to be found in a variety of media, but to perform a sort of investigative experiment into the accuracy of information transmission in the Internet age. A common phenomenon in the world of the printed word is that once a public figure  whether he be an athlete such a Yogi Berra, an entertainment figure such as Samuel Goldwyn, or a politician such as Dan Quayle  acquires a reputation for spouting malapropisms, people quickly begin to put words into his mouth. All sorts of humorous misuses of words and phrases that sound like something that person might have said are soon attributed to him as something he "really said"; newspapers run the erroneous quotes without verification and are later cited as documented proof of their veracity, thereby enshrining apocrypha as  fact. Only when someone undertakes the chore of trying to track the quotes back to their sources are the misattributions discovered, usually far too late to dislodge them from the public consciousness. So, we thought we'd tackle a project to see whether the increased availability of information in the Internet age has had any effect on this phenomenon; whether quotes are less likely to be misattributed when nearly every utterance of a public figure as prominent as a presidential candidate is recorded and stored in one form or another.  As a test example, we chose the "Make the Pie Higher!" piece reproduced above (generally credited to "Washington Post writer Richard Thompson," a satirist and illustrator who produces the "Richard's Poor Almanac" feature appearing in the Post's Sunday edition) and attempted to trace every statement listed therein to its source to determine how many of them were actually uttered by George W. Bush.  Our standard was that in order to consider a statement to be a genuine "Bushism" we had to find at least one major newspaper article that quoted the actual words spoken (rather than paraphrasing them), included specific information about when and where the statement was made, and was printed within a few days of the event at which the statement was offered. In this statistically insignificant non-random sample of one, we found that yes, the accuracy of quote transmission was remarkably high: All but a couple of the items in this piece could be reliably traced back to the mouth of George W. Bush. Here are the results:  "I think we all agree, the past is over." In March 2000, Texas governor George W. Bush locked up the Republican presidential nomination, beating out his chief rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona, in a rancorous primary campaign marked by personal attacks and charges of dirty tactics on the part of both sides.  Two months later Senator McCain somewhat reluctantly endorsed Governor Bush for president during a joint appearance at the Westin William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh, where both men tried their best (somewhat unconvincingly) to assure the press that they had put their differences behind them: Both sides swapped charges of dirty campaign tactics. McCain aides accused Bush supporters of personal attacks, and Mr. Bush denounced McCain forces for suggesting that the governor was guilty of anti-Catholic bigotry. On Tuesday, the pair told some 200 journalists that they had discussed policy, not personal history. "There's no point," Mr. McCain said. "I hold no rancor. Others will be the judge of this campaign, not me."  Mr. Bush said the McCain challenge toughened him for the fall campaign against Mr. Gore.  "We had a tough primary," Mr. Bush said. "I told him point blank: 'You made me a better candidate.'"  Later, on his campaign plane, the governor described the discussion as "very cordial, very frank, very open." He added: "I think we agree, the past is over."1 "This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." On the campaign trail in South Carolina while pursuing the Republican nomination in January 2000, Governor Bush spoke before 2,000 loyal Republicans at a well-attended oyster roast held on a plantation outside Charleston and mystified his audience when, during his discourse on the need for a strengthened U.S. military, he made reference not to "mental" losses (which itself would have sounded odd in the given context), but to "mential" (pronounced "men-shul") losses: During his visit to South Carolina this week, the first Bushism exploded as the governor painted a passionate picture of the military dangers facing the US, and the pressing need for protection against rogue missile launches. "This is still a dangerous world," he told more than 2,000 supporters at an oyster roast. "It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses." Bush's spokespeople could not immediately explain what a mential loss was, but it seemed only distantly related to missile launches.2 "Rarely is the question asked, 'Is our children learning?'" During that same South Carolina campaign swing in January 2000, Governor Bush committed another grammatical mix-up while wrangling a sentence containing both singular and plural subjects, this example occurring (with a modicum of irony) during the portion of his stump speech dealing with education: That's not to say Bush hasn't had his share of flubs. Part of his stump speech focuses on education. On Tuesday, talking to a crowd of several hundred at a cavernous civic center in Florence, S.C., Bush decried those who ignore educational programs that produce no results  inadvertently revealing a temporary shortcoming in his own grammar skills.  "What's not fine is rarely is the question asked, are, is our children learning?" Bush said.3 "Will the highways of the Internet become more few?" During his January 2000 push to win the first primary election of the campaign, held in New Hampshire, Governor Bush was asked to comment on the recently announced merger of media giants Time Warner and AOL, and he addressed concerns over its potential monopolistic effects with some unusual phrasing: When asked about the Time Warner/America Online merger, the candidate took an unexpected detour on the information superhighway. The key question in considering the merger, Bush said, is "will the highways to the Internet become more few?"4 "How many hands have I shaked?" By October 1999 Republicans were noting Governor Bush's relatively rare appearances in New Hampshire and were beginning to question whether he had assumed he had the nomination sewn up and could afford to take the February 2000 New Hampshire primary for granted.   When reporters persistently questioned him about that possibility on 22 October 1999, during his first campaign swing through New Hampshire since early September, Governor Bush expressed the notion that the important factor was not the number of appearances he made, but the number of people he reached during those appearances: Asked repeatedly today about why he had not been around more, Mr. Bush at one point interrupted a reporter's question to say, "The important question is, How many hands have I shaked."5 "They misunderestimate me." The misuse of 'misunderestimate' for 'underestimate' seems to be one of  George W. Bush's more common elocutionary mistakes.  We can't pin down exactly when he used 'misunderestimate' for the first time in a public statement as a presidential candidate; the earliest print reference we could find appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on 13 November 2000, but it didn't detail where and when he said it.  Nonetheless,  Bush was still using the word (and catching himself at it) after his inauguration as President, as demonstrated by this excerpt from a 29 March 2001 news conference: Look, it is in our nation's best interests to have long-term tax relief, and that has been my focus all along. I'm confident we can have it, get it done. I believe not only can we get long-term tax relief in place. Since our country is running some surpluses in spite of the dire predictions about cash flow, I believe we have an opportunity to fashion an immediate stimulus package, as well. The two ought to go hand in hand. Those who think that they can say, "We're only going to have a stimulus package, but let's forget tax relief," misunderestimate ...  or, excuse me,  underestimate  just making sure you were paying attention  underestimate our administration's resolve to get this done ...6 "I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity." This line is a retrospective statement Bush uttered during an interview about his involvement in a partnershipthat bought the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989: George W. Bush has frequently claimed to have cobbled together the deal to buy the Rangers in 1989. "I was like a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity," Mr. Bush said in a long interview about his past. "And I just grabbed on to it. I was going to put the deal together. And I did." The initiative, Mr. Bush acknowledges, came from Bill DeWitt, a businessman and friend of the family. Mr. DeWitt had heard that the Rangers were on the market and wanted to recruit Mr. Bush as a partner to buy the team.15 "I know that the human being and the fish can coexist." On Friday, 29 September 2000, Governor Bush was on the stump in Saginaw, Michigan, and deviated from his prepared speech to reassure the business community that he would not support the tearing down of energy-producing dams merely to protect threatened fish species, an issue he had recently covered while campaigning in the Pacific Northwest:    Friday, feeling the need to explain his statement during a speech on energy policy that he intended to maintain dams in the Pacific Northwest, he departed from his text and added, "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." He did not elaborate.7 Mark Crispin Miller noted in The Bush Dyslexicon that: This remark is striking not because it's silly but because it casts a threatened creature as a national enemy.  A relic of the Cold War, the phrase "peaceful coexistence" was a predtente Soviet coinage, meant to pitch conciliation between the world's two rival superpowers. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where our wings take dream." Swinging through Wisconsin in mid-October 2000 en route to a debate with Democratic presidential challenger Al Gore, Governor Bush was discussing the importance of tax cuts to American families when he transposed a couple of words in a well-worn phrase: The Texas governor and GOP presidential nominee tangles up words often enough that he sometimes jokes about it, and the phenomenon has acquired a name  Bushism. On the campaign trail Wednesday, he let one fly: "Families is where our nation finds hope," he said, "where wings take dream."8 "Put food on your family!" On 27 January 2000, speaking in Nashua just a few days before the New Hampshire primary, Governor Bush was trying to illustrate the economic plight of single working mothers and again transposed (and omitted) a few words in the familiar reference to putting food on the table for one's family: At a breakfast meeting with the Nashua Chamber of Commerce, Bush illustrated his brand of compassionate conservatism by urging his listeners to put themselves in the role of a single mother "working hard to put food on your family."4 Since these words are difficult to quote in the context in which they were offered, they were soon being rendered as the pithier "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." "Knock down the tollbooth!" Governor Bush's misuse of 'tollbooth' for 'roadblock,' in reference to eliminating tax obstacles that prevent the working poor from joining the middle class, comes from his New Hampshire campaign appearances in January 2000, but contemporary reports don't seem to agree on the exact words he used  perhaps there was more than one such incident: Things must be good here, because the mere mention of tax cuts is not enough to get the crowd cheering. What they like is when Bush worries about the working poor; they applaud vigorously when he complains that a single mother making $22,000 is being penalized by the tax system. "It's not fair!" Bush exclaims. "It's a tollbooth on the road to the middle class, and I intend not only to reduce the fees but to knock the tollbooth down."9  "The hardest job in America is to be a single mom, making $20,000 a year," Bush declared at a recent Rotary Club lunch where he promised that as president, he would reduce the struggling woman's marginal income-tax rate and "knock down her tollbooth to the middle class."10   Last weekend, fire marshals were actually turning people away from political rallies. At a high school near Nashua, you could see folks forlornly peeking in the windows, yearning to be let inside to hear George W. Bush call for "a law that provides liability to teachers who enforce discipline in the schools." All the candidates are tired, but Mr. Bush's speeches are getting particularly unintelligible  at the same high school, he announced, "I think we need not only to eliminate the tollbooth to the middle class, I think we should knock down the tollbooth." 11 "Vulcanize society! " At the very beginning of the 2000 presidential campaign, Ken Herman reported in a front-page story appearing in the 23 March 1999 edition of the Austin American-Statesman that Governor Bush had expressed his disdain for racial quotas as programs that "vulcanize" society: Sometimes this smooth operator is anything but. This was evident in a March 23 piece by Ken Herman, the Austin American-Statesman's chief Bush watcher, who wrote about the governor's "2-step around hot topics." Mr. Bush says he's against "hard quotas, quotas that basically delineate based on whatever. However, they delineate, quotas, I think, vulcanize society."12 In this instance Governor Bush of course meant to say 'Balkanize' (to divide a group into small, often hostile units) rather than 'vulcanize' (to improve the strength of rubber by combining it with sulfur in the presence of heat and pressure).  However, the issue was muddied a few days later when the American-Statesman reversed itself and issued a correction:  A front-page story Tuesday inaccurately quoted Gov. George W. Bush's position on quotas in college admissions and the awarding of state contracts. The story said Bush believes quotas "vulcanize society." Bush actually said he believes quotas "Balkanize society."13 Whether the reporter misquoted Governor Bush or whether Governor Bush really did say 'vulcanize' and the American-Statesman later printed an amended quote at the behest of his office is something we can't determine. "Make the pie higher!" This final item (a misstatement of the concept of putting more money into the hands of Americans by reducing taxes to grow the economy and enlarge the economic "pie" that everyone shares  i.e., making the pie "bigger" rather than "higher") is the phrase perhaps most often cited as an example of "Bushisms," so much so that it was used for the title of the poem quoted at the head of this page.  And it is a real quote, something Bush said during the course of a 15 February 2000 Republican debate (moderated by CNN host Larry King) in Columbia, South Carolina, between Texas Governor George W. Bush, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and former Reagan administration official Ambassador Alan Keyes: The difference between our plans is, I know whose money it is we're dealing with. We're dealing with the government  we're dealing with the people's money, not the government's money. And I want to give people their money back.  And if you're going to have a tax cut, everybody ought to have a tax cut. This kind of Washington, D.C., view about targeted tax cuts is tax cuts driven by polls and focus groups. If you pay taxes in America, you ought to get a tax cut.  Under my plan, if you're a family of four in South Carolina, making $50,000, you get 50-percent tax cut. I've reduced the lower rate from 15 percent to 10 percent, which does this  and this is important. There are people on the outskirts of poverty, like single moms who are working the toughest job in America. If she has two kids, and making $22,000, for every additional dollar she earns, she pays a higher marginal rate on her taxes than someone making $200,000.  You bet I cut the taxes at the top. That encourages entrepreneurship. What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy. We ought to make the pie higher. This one initially posed something of a mystery to us, because transcripts of the debate prepared by the Federal Document Clearing House and CNN attribute the block of text quoted above to Senator John McCain, not Governor Bush.  However, the immediately preceding question had clearly been posed to Governor Bush, and newspaper accounts the following morning noted the "make the pie higher" comment as something uttered by Governor Bush: Bush, shedding his sometimes goofy demeanor, was as animated and forceful as he has been in any debate, punching the air with his fist to underscore his words. He scored points among the party faithful in calling for an end to the Clinton era in Washington  one of the money lines of the night. On taxes and bringing prosperity to struggling working mothers, however, Bush mangled one metaphor: "We ought to make the pie higher."14 Moreover, at a Radio/TV correspondents' dinner in Washington, D.C., a few weeks later, Governor Bush made humorous use of the item with no indication that the words weren't his own: Now most people would say in speaking of the economy, "We ought to make the pie bigger." I, however, am on record saying, "We ought to make the pie higher." As frivolous as this experiment may have been, let's hope it's a harbinger of more accurate information to come. Last updated:  21 July 2008    Sources:    7.  Allen, Mike.  "Bush's Gaffes Are Back As Debates Near."   The Washington Post.  1 October 2000  (p. A8).    11.  Collins, Gail.  "Savor the Moment."   The New York Times.  1 February 2000  (p. A21).     5.  Henneberger, Melinda.  "New Hampshire Warns Bush, 'Don't Be a Stranger Hee-ahh'"   The New York Times.  23 October 1999  (p. A12).    12.  Hunt, Albert R.  "George W. Can Run But He Can't Hide."   The Wall Street Journal.  1 April 1999  (p. A23).     4.  Hutcheson, Ron.  "Candidate George W. Bush Sometimes Mangles Words."   Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.  29 January 2000  (p. A8).        Ivins, Molly.  Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush.   New York: Random House, 2000.  ISBN 0-375-50399-4  (p. 19). Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush     1.  Jackson, David and Wayne Slater.  "Subdued McCain Endorses Bush."   The Dallas Morning News.  10 May 2000.    16.  Kristof, Nicholas D.  "The 2000 Campaign: Breaking Into Baseball."   The New York Times.  24 September 2000.    10.  Leonard, Mary.  "Fight Intensifies for Votes of Women."   The Boston Globe.  22 January 2000  (p. A1).     8.  Mason, Julie.  "Campaign Notebook."   The Houston Chronicle.  19 October 2000  (p. A38).    14.  Miga, Andrew.  "Tight S. Carolina Race Fuels Contentious Debate."   The Boston Globe.  16 February 2000  (p. 27).        Miller, Mark Crispin.  The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder.   New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.  ISBN 0-393-04183-2. The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder     3.  Miller, T. Christian.  "With a Grin, Bush Answers Early Charges of Aloofness."   Los Angeles Times.  14 January 2000  (p. 20).        Smith, Zay N.  "A Small Comfort Amid Election Snafus, Quarrels."   Chicago Sun-Times.  13 November 2000  (p. 26).     9.  Von Drehle, David.  "12 Hours, 4 Contenders, Many Parallels."   The Washington Post.  15 January 2000  (p. A1).    13.  Austin American-Statesman.  "Corrections."   25 March 1999  (p. A2).     2.  The Financial Times.  "Bushed Again."   14 January 2000.     6.  The New York Times.  "In Bush's Words: 'Both Sides Must Take Important Steps' in the Mideast."   30 March 2001  (p. A12). In October 2018, social media users shared a meme posted by the liberal Facebook page Occupy Democrats reporting a series of events involving Gulf states were the result of President Donald Trump and his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner "using American foreign policy to enrich themselves":   Although the sequence of events referenced in the meme is described accurately according to reputable news reports, the motives, connections, and causality the meme ascribes to those events have not been proved. It is true that Jared Kushner, who is married to President Trump's eldest daughter Ivanka, was in need of over a billion dollars to cover the mortgage on 666 Fifth Avenue, a 41-story Manhattan building he purchased for $1.8 billion in 2007, as the New Yorker reported on 2 March 2018: reported Kushner Companies co-owns 666 Fifth Avenue with another developer, Vornado Realty. In 2007, at Jared Kushners urging, the company paid $1.8 billion for the building -- at the time, the highest price ever paid for a New York office tower. The property occupies a prime spot between Fifty-second and Fifty-third streets, but it was built in 1957 and needed extensive upgrades. It still has many vacancies, and the $1.2 billion mortgage, which reportedly has ballooned to almost $1.5 billion, is due in February, 2019. Right now, it is not entirely clear whether Kushner Companies is in a position to repay or refinance the loan. The company hoped to knock the building down and put up another, twice as tall and far more luxurious, in its place, Bloomberg reported. It sought funds from investors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, South Korea, Israel and France. No investors were announced for the plan, described by many as prohibitively expensive. That same day, The Intercept reported that in April 2017, Kushner's father Charles, who runs the family's real estate firm Kushner Companies, had made a direct appeal for financing to Qatari Finance Minister Ali Sharif Al Emadi, which was followed shortly afterwards by the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar: reported The 30-minute meeting, according to two sources in the financial industry who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the potential transaction, included aides to both parties, and was held at a suite at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. A follow-up meeting was held the next day in a glass-walled conference room at the Kushner property itself, though Al Emadi did not attend the second gathering in person. The failure to broker the deal would be followed only a month later by a Middle Eastern diplomatic row in which Jared Kushner provided critical support to Qatars neighbors. Led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, a group of Middle Eastern countries, with Kushners backing, led a diplomatic assault that culminated in a blockade of Qatar. Kushner, according to reports at the time, subsequently undermined efforts by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to bring an end to the standoff. Middle Eastern diplomatic row subsequently undermined In May 2017, Qatar's Gulf neighbors commenced a blockade of that country, and within days President Trump tweeted his support of the blockage despite the fact that Qatar is home to Al Udeid Air Base, a key U.S. military installation: commenced tweeted During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar - look!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017 June 6, 2017  In May 2018, the New York Times reported that the Kushner family was close to reaching a bailout deal for 666 Fifth Avenue with a company possessing Qatari government ties: reported Charles Kushner, head of the Kushner Companies, is in advanced talks with Brookfield Asset Management over a partnership to take control of the 41-story aluminum-clad tower in Midtown Manhattan, 666 Fifth Avenue, according to two real estate executives who have been briefed on the pending deal but were not authorized to discuss it. Brookfield is a publicly traded company, and its real estate arm, Brookfield Property Partners, is partly owned by the Qatari government, through the Qatar Investment Authority. And, the Trump administration around that time reversed course with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo telling the Saudis in April 2018 that it was time to end the blockade against Qatar. telling It's likely the meme gained momentum on social media in October 2018 due to scrutiny over Kushner and Trump's relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in light of the gruesome murder of Jamal Kashoggi.  scrutiny Kashoggi, a Saudi national and columnist for the Washington Post, went missing on 2 October 2018 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul seeking documents he needed to get married. According to reports citing Turkish government and U.S. intelligence sources, the Virginia resident never left the consulate, where he was ambushed by Saudi agents, tortured and murdered, and his body dismembered. ambushed Trump has resisted calls by U.S. lawmakers to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the journalist's apparent death, comparing global condemnation of the Gulf kingdom to accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Trump told the Associated Press: "Here we go again with, you know, you're guilty until proven innocent. I don't like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I'm concerned." calls told Cassidy, John.  "Jared Kushners Conflicts of Interest Reach a Crisis Point."
  The New Yorker.  2 March 2018. Swisher, Clayton and Ryan Grim.  "Jared Kushner's Real Estate Firm Sought Money Directly from Qatar Government Weeks Before Blockade."
  The Intercept.  2 March 2018. Bagli, Charles V. and Jesse Drucker.  "Kushners Near Deal with Qatar-Linked Company for Troubled Tower."
  The New York Times.  17 May 2018. Kirkpatrick, David D. and Carlotta Gall.  "Audio Offers Gruesome Details of Jamal Khashoggi Killing, Turkish Official Says."
  The New York Times.  17 October 2018. A photo often shared on social media purportedly shows an electric bus driving into a "charging and power station" in the early 1900s. shared  The picture shows an authentic bus charging station operated by the London Electrobus Company during that company's short existence between 1906 and 1909. A version of this photo appears in the Getty Images archives. version As reported by The Economist in 2007, these charging stations were not plug-in stations as we know them today, but instead were facilities in which old batteries were swapped for fresh ones: reported The electrobus needed 1.5 tonnes of lead-acid batteries to carry its 34 passengers. It could travel 60km (38 miles) on one charge. So at lunchtime the buses went to a garage in Victoria and drove up a ramp. The batteries, slung under the electrobus, were lowered onto a trolley and replaced with fresh ones. It all took three minutes.  An ad for the company indicated that they had two charging and power stations for electric buses located at 1 Earl Street and 45 Horseferry Road in London. Here is another close-up photo of one such "electrobus" from 1907: An ad  By several reports, the buses were a hit, thanks to their reduced noise and smoother ride. In debuting their first bus in 1906, the directors of the company said that they "confidently anticipate that the petrol omnibus, young as it is, will shortly be an obsolete vehicle, so far as urban traffic is concerned." reports said It was not to be. The company was beset by allegations of fraud during its effort to go public on the London Stock Exchange in 1908. As described in The Economist, the company had been duped by a team of con artists: described The firm was buying rights to a patent for 20,000 (7.5m, or $15m, in today's money) from the Baron de Martigny. But the patent was old and had nothing to do with battery buses. It was a scam. Investors asked for their money back, and the firm had to return 80,000. The investors would have been even less impressed had they known the true identity of the "Baron", who was a Canadian music-hall artist. Martigny was only the front man. The mastermind behind this and a clutch of subsequent scams was Edward Lehwess, a German lawyer and serial con-artist with a taste for fast cars and expensive champagne. After this initial fiasco, the London Electrobus Company struggled to raise money. But Lehwess had set up a network of front companies to siphon off its funds. Chief among these was the Electric Vehicle Company of West Norwood, which built the buses. The company collapsed entirely in 1909. Because, however, the photo is in several archives and the buses and their charging stations are documented in newspaper accounts from that time, the claim is  "Electrobus Makes Debut on Streets of London." The San Francisco Call, 27 May 1906, p. 19. newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120381891/electrobus-makes-debut-on-streets-of/. "How Crooks Stalled the Rise of Electric Cars for 100 Years." New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531420-600-how-crooks-stalled-the-rise-of-electric-cars-for-100-years/. Accessed 7 Mar. 2023. "The London Electrobus Company Limited." The Guardian, 27 Apr. 1908, p. 9. newspapers.com, https://www.newspapers.com/clip/120388804/london-electrobus-1908/. "What Is This That Roareth Thus?" The Economist, https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2007/09/08/what-is-this-that-roareth-thus. Accessed 7 Mar. 2023. Despite what online scammers might have you believe, Dr. Mehmet Oz of the former "Dr. Oz" talk show has never endorsed apple cider vinegar (ACV) weight loss gummies or any sort of CBD or keto diet gummies. According to scammy websites where customers can purchase many of these kinds of products, Oz once called keto gummies the "holy grail" of weight loss. However, he never said anything of the sort.  A seemingly countless number of product websites falsely claim that Oz gave his endorsement of weight loss gummies. A few recent examples of the Oz scam appearing on order pages included the product namesRetroFit Keto + ACV Gummies, XtremeFit Keto + ACV Gummies, Optimal Keto + ACV Gummies, Speedy Keto + ACV Gummies, Transform Keto + ACV Gummies, and Ketoviva Keto + ACV Gummies. RetroFit Keto + ACV Gummies XtremeFit Keto + ACV Gummies Optimal Keto + ACV Gummies Speedy Keto + ACV Gummies Transform Keto + ACV Gummies Ketoviva Keto + ACV Gummies While some of the websites for these products have since disappeared, we were able to confirm that they all originally promoted Oz's name. Again, these were just a few recent examples. Going back to 2022, it's possible hundreds of more keto gummy product names falsely mentioned that Oz endorsed them. The websites for these purported weight loss products promised that the candy-like gummies can "melt fat fast without diet or exercise." Always remember with online offers that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  These websites alsofalsely claimed that CBS News, NBC, CNN, Women's Health, Honolulu Magazine, Woman's World, and theDiabetes, Obesity, and Metabolism Journal all endorsed, reviewed, or mentioned the products. In truth, none of them ever did. Parent company information for many keto diet weight loss gummies products is often hard to find. Phone numbers for customer support, if they haven't been omitted from the websites, route to call centers that greet customers in a general sense without announcing any company names. Most of them simply begin with, "Thank you for calling customer service." We previously asked one of the call center agents to reveal parent company information or anything about the whereabouts of the people behind the gummy websites. The person provided no details. In our research, we found that many customers who received these products at their doorstep and found a charge on their credit card said that they had no recollection of ever ordering them. Other commenters said that, in addition to not remembering ordering the keto gummies, they also found no charge on their credit card. It's possible that this could have occurred because ofcard-skimming scams, when a criminal places a device on top of a credit card reader at a place of business, all to secretly capture the card's sensitive data. card-skimming scams Customers who shared their experiences also said that the return address for these weight loss gummy products that bore Oz's name was a nameless "fulfillment center" with a P.O. Box in Smyrna, Tennessee, or Las Vegas, Nevada. Many others also said that Tampa, Florida, was the city mentioned on their packages. Oz While a package at the door is the last step of some of these scams, the first step oftentimes involves an alluring paid ad. This kind of an ad might appear next to an article on a website or on Facebook or Instagram.  Clicking on the ad leads to the second step: a fake article that scammers designed to fool readers into believing they're reading from Fox News, CNN, ABC, or other big-name news organizations.  While these kinds of fake articles might look like the website for one of those companies, the address bar at the top of the browser reveals the truth  that the user is not, in fact, on cnn.com, for example, but instead on a strange scam website that's simply pretending to be CNN simply by featuring its logo and article page design. Within the fake articles are links to the third step in the scam: the aforementioned product order pages that misleadingly mention Oz's name. On these pages people fill out their credit card information, a move that, apparently unbeknownst to the customers, enrolls them in recurring charges of hundreds of dollars per month. As we've done in the past, we'll continue to provide more reporting about these dangerous and costly scams in the future. in the past Note: In the past, Ozfaced allegations of promoting a "magic weight-loss cure" for "green coffee extract." However, this had nothing to do with weight loss gummies. allegations Gabriel, Trip. "'Magic' Weight-Loss Pills and Covid Cures: Dr. Oz Under the Microscope." The New York Times, 26 Dec. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/us/politics/dr-oz-medical-advice.html. Liles, Jordan. "Did Oprah Winfrey Suffer a 'Tragedy' and Endorse Keto Weight Loss Gummies?" Snopes, 12 May 2022, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/oprah-winfrey-tragedy-keto-gummies/. ---. "Oprah Winfrey 'Allegations' Facebook Ads Are False, Nor Did She Ever Endorse 'Weight Loss Gummies.'" Snopes, 13 Jan. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/01/13/oprah-winfrey-allegations-weight-loss-gummies/. Smith, Daeshen. "Better Business Bureau Warns Customers to Be Mindful of Card Skimming Schemes." Fox10TV.com, 25 Apr. 2023, https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/04/25/better-business-bureau-warns-customers-be-mindful-card-skimming-schemes/.