Facebook Team Sends Reminder That Fact-Checking Donald Trump is Off-Limits After Presidential Run Announcement: Report

According to a report, a Facebook team sent a reminder that fact-checking former President Donald Trump is off-limits once he announced that he was running for president again.

The memo was reportedly sent prior to his presumed announcement, which did ultimately occur last night.

CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan reported in a tweet, “NEW: Facebook sent a memo to its fact-checkers this afternoon telling them if Trump announces he’s running for president tonight they can no longer fact-check anything he says.”

“It’s not just Trump who gets an exception to the Meta fact-checking rules, all politicians/candidates do,” O’Sullivan explained.

O’Sullivan then noted that “There were enough questions about Trump that a manager on Meta’s ‘news integrity partnership’ team sent the memo reminding fact-checkers earlier today.”

“Trump is banned from Facebook and Instagram at the moment — although he may be allowed back on as soon as January,” O’Sullivan suggested.

O’Sullivan concluded by pointing out that, “However, the page Team Trump, run by a Trump-affiliated group is still live and has 2.3 million followers.”

NEW: Facebook sent a memo to its fact-checkers this afternoon telling them if Trump announces he’s running for president tonight they can no longer fact-check anything he says. https://t.co/2oKkYe2nyq

— Donie O’Sullivan (@donie) November 15, 2022

In the article that O’Sullivan wrote regarding the situation, he brought up that in 2019, Meta executive Nick Clegg said that “It is not our role to intervene when politicians speak.”

The memo sent yesterday also reportedly stated that “political speech is ineligible for fact-checking. This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign.”