'Unfounded' claim of bomb found near Donald Trump's Long Island rally | Fact check
The claim: Bomb found near site of Trump rally in New York
A Sept. 18 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) claims to share breaking news about another serious security threat faced by former President Donald Trump.
“JUST IN: TERRORISM? BOMB Found Near New York Trump Rally, Emergency Evacuation, Third Assassin (sic) Attempt!?” reads the post.
Similar versions of it were reposted thousands of times on X, formerly Twitter, by billionaire Elon Musk and by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. The post amplified by Musk was later deleted.
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Our rating: False
No explosives were found, according to authorities who investigated the claim. They say they detained the person who made the false report.
‘Unfounded’ claims of bomb found near Trump’s Long Island rally
Trump held a campaign rally Sept. 18 on Long Island, New York, to strengthen support in a state critical to Republicans’ push to maintain control of the House. It came three days after what the FBI called a botched suspected assassination attempt on Trump. Authorities said Secret Service agents opened fire on an armed man hiding in the bushes of his Florida golf club while the former president played his round.
Fact check: Officials: Suspect in assassination attempt on Trump isn't Republican
But the claim that explosives were found near the site of the rally is false, the Nassau County Police Department said in an X post. And contrary to the Facebook post, there is no credible evidence that any locations were evacuated.
While police did respond to a "suspicious incident" in the area, Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder called reports of explosives “unfounded" in a statement shared to social media. He also said the person who made the false report was detained and may have been training a bomb-sniffing dog at the time.
An “emergency evacuation” of the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the rally was being held, or any nearby locations would have been widely reported by legitimate media outlets covering the rally. But there were no credible reports that any of those places were evacuated.
The claim appears to have originated hours before the rally in an X post from a reporter citing unidentified people in the police department, The Associated Press reported. Versions of the claim were then shared by Musk and Greene, among others, to their millions of followers. Greene based her post, which includes a screenshot of a headline from a non-credible news outlet, on media reports, spokesperson Nick Dyer told USA TODAY. He added that the congresswoman also shared the police commissioner's statement debunking the claim in a subsequent post.
USA TODAY debunked several false claims that centered on the Florida incident, including assertions that suspect Ryan Routh previously appeared in an ad for investment firm BlackRock, that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to hand over Routh to federal authorities and that Trump responded to the attempt by posting that his would-be assassins are “0-2.”
USA TODAY reached out to X and to the Facebook user who shared the claim but did not immediately receive any responses.
Our fact-check sources:
Nassau County Police Department, Sept. 18, X post
Nassau County Police Department, Sept. 18, X post
Nassau County Police Department, Sept. 18, Suspicious Incident - Uniondale
The Associated Press, Sept. 18, False reports of explosives found in a car near a Trump rally spread online
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: False claim bomb found near Trump's Long Island rally | Fact check