Like hand, foot, and mouth disease to a kindergarten classroom, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi has attracted quite a few falsely attributed quotes in recent years. One such tweeted forgery recently popped up again on Facebook.
A screenshot of a tweet Pelosi supposedly sent out late last year has been posted with the claim, “I’m glad someone got a snapshot of this before deleting it.”
The image has been shared a depressing 138,952 times on the platform.
No, Pelosi never tweeted that statement. 1) There’s no record of the tweet ever existing, 2) there is a watermark in the bottom right of the image for Tweeterino.com, a defunct site that allowed people to create parody tweets. (What’s worse than Twitter? Tweeterino, apparently.)
While many commenters pointed out the falsehood, others chose to keep the faith. “Fake or not that is the dems sentiment, they look at the hard working middle class as their cash cow!!!” one motivated user wrote. Others suggested that while fact checkers had previously debunked this particular tweet, they could not be trusted. “I wouldn’t necessarily trust Snopes or politico as they are very biased.” Regardless of perceived bias, this image is clearly fake—the watermark is a dead giveaway.
A rule of thumb, dear readers: When in doubt, don’t share. (And always be in doubt.)
To be safe, we might as well just smash the internet.
If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email Holmes Lybrand at [email protected] or the Weekly Standard at [email protected]. For details on TWS Fact Check, see our explainer here.
