100 Days, 134 Million Views of False Claims About Trump
NewsGuard has identified 20 false claims about President Trump during the launch of his second administration — most of them pushed by his supporters
As the second Trump administration hits its 100-day mark on April 29, NewsGuard has identified 20 false claims about Donald Trump that have gone viral, collectively accumulating at least 134.5 million views and 3.8 million likes across multiple social platforms.
A NewsGuard analysis of the 20 false claims found that they range from the bizarre — such as the claim that Trump cut off former President Barack Obama from receiving royalties for the name “Obamacare” — to the policy-oriented, such as the claim that Trump canceled taxes on overtime pay.
The origins and the motivation behind the claims were similarly varied, with some deriving from pro-Kremlin influence campaigns, others from satirical websites, and others from TikTok “engagement farms” looking for clicks.
Most of the falsehoods relating to Trump (14) were largely circulated by pro-Trump social media users, who typically cited the false claim as evidence of Trump’s support for the middle class. For example, the claim that Trump eliminated taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits was pushed by a number of conservative influencers and one member of Congress, Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna, who wrote on Feb. 26, “Congratulations America, tonight we finally put an end to tax on tips and tax on overtime!” It collectively generated more than 18.7 million views and 302,400 likes across social platforms. Rep. Luna’s office did not respond to a NewsGuard email requesting comment.
Other claims pushed by pro-Trump partisans included that Trump raised the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour and that he shortened the standard workweek to 32 hours. Together, these two claims amassed at least 14.7 million views and 426,500 likes on TikTok and X, primarily boosted by TikTok “engagement farms” — a practice in which users seek to attract views with short videos using AI-generated voiceovers.
NewsGuard traced two elaborate falsehoods that spread through fabricated videos to Russia’s “Matryoshka” influence campaign — a pro-Kremlin network that disguises disinformation as originating from legitimate news sources, as previously reported in Reality Check. These videos respectively falsely claimed that Trump imposed tariffs on uninhabited islands because Ukrainian oligarchs registered companies there to embezzle U.S. military funds and that the Trump administration banned the use of all pro-Ukrainian slogans.
Two of the 20 claims originated from satirical sources that were intended to dupe conservatives, and they apparently succeeded.
The satirical Facebook page “America’s Last Line of Defense” ran an article claiming that under Trump, FEMA shifted $2 billion that the Biden administration had allocated for migrant relief to hurricane recovery aid instead. The group states on its About page that “Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.” Yet, a conservative X user @MilaLovesJoe issued a post stating, “FEMA said they were out of money and couldn’t help North Carolins. Today Trump moved $2 billion from money used to support illegals to the people of North Carolina.” The post received 1.6 million views and 115,000 likes.
America’s Last Line of Defense also runs a satire site called The Dunning-Kruger Times, which published an article stating that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency had blocked royalty payments to former President Barack Obama for the name “Obamacare.” Proponents of this claim cited a “little-known clause” in the fine print of the 2010 healthcare law that guaranteed Obama $2.6 million annual royalty payments.
Together, these claims received at least 2.4 million views and 177,500 likes in posts that did not acknowledge their satirical origin.
On the other side of the political divide, the most viral negative false claim about Trump stated that he froze federal student aid and food assistance programs. The Trump administration has not halted federal student loans or food aid. Nonetheless, the claim amassed over 8.3 million views and 148,000 likes on X and Bluesky.
Trump detractors also pushed the false claim that Trump fired 3,000 air traffic controllers one week before a deadly airplane-helicopter crash near Washington in January 2025, garnering 5 million views and 64,000 likes. Thousands of federal workers were laid off during the first weeks of Trump’s second term, but air traffic controllers were not among them.
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