On Tuesday night, President Donald Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress for the first time as commander in chief. During his speech, Trump addressed Carryn Owens, the widow of Navy SEAL William "Ryan" Owens who was killed last month during a bitched mission in Yemen.
Fake news debunked
Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens was part a raid last month in Yemen which was designed to extract as much information as possible about al-Qaeda in the region.
Though 14 members of al-Qaeda were killed in the raid, Owens lost his life along with as many as 30 civilians. Owens wife, Carryn Owens, was invited as a guest to Donald Trump's speech to Congress, and when the president highlighted her, she received a standing ovation that lasted minutes. Not long after the incident took place, right-wing news outlets took screen shots from the video stream and claimed that members of the Democratic Party refused to stand and show their respect for Owens. As reported by Snopes on March 1, the right-wing reports have been debunked as nothing more than fake news.
On Twitter Tuesday night, Benny Johnson of the Independent Journal tweeted out that Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz refused to get on their feet during the standing ovation for Carryn Owens. The story went viral after the Daily Wire, run by conservative Ben Shapiro, published an article appearing to validate the claims. While the Daily Wire article included a video of the moment, it never clearly showed the two Democrats, leaving many questions unanswered.
Further evidence
On Wednesday, Snopes looked into the allegations, and labeled them as "FALSE." After digging through the video files, Snopes found that the still image used to show Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Keith Ellison sitting was from an earlier portion of the speech, which was used as a way to push the false allegation against them.
When the full video was released on the offical White House website, both Wasserman-Schultz and Ellison could be seen standing and cheering along with the rest of those in attendance. As of press time, no comment as been offered by the Daily Wire or Johnson, though the damage appears to have already been done with the story becoming viral across social media.