A picture of the White House in dark is doing the rounds on social media with a claim that the lights at the White House were turned off for the first time in history.
“For the first time in the history, the lights of the White House went off and The President was taken to the Bunker, Welcome 2020! ” the text read.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral post and found it to be misleading.
We ran a search and found reports claiming that on May 31, amid the protests over the death of George Floyd, the lights at the White House went out sometime around 11 p.m. EST.
However, this was not the first time that the lights at the White House went out.
A CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, in a tweet, clarified that the lights are turned off every night around that same time. “As someone who has done many late night live shots, the lights at the White House go off every night around 11 p.m, “she tweeted.
As someone who has done many late night live shots, the lights at the White House go off every night around 11 p.m.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 1, 2020
Speaking to Newsweek, the White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley said that it’s nothing new. “The White House lights go out at about 11 p.m almost every night,” he said.
Moreover, one of the pictures in circulation is actually from 2014. We found the picture of the White House on the stock photo website Alamy. The original picture from 2014 is titled ‘White House in Washington at night’.
On comparing both the pictures, it became evident that the original picture was edited to make it darker and few lights were blacked out.
This proves that the picture was in fact taken before Donald Trump’s presidency.
On the other end, several reports emerged stating that President Trump was briefly taken to the underground bunker on May 29, 2020. Read the reports here and here.
Also, according to an explanatory article by The Indian Express, President Trump was not the first president who was taken to the underground bunker.
“President Bush also used the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center) to meet with senior administration officials after the terror attack. First Lady Laura Bush was also escorted to the bunker” an excerpt from the article read.
Hence, from the above information, we can conclude that the post in question is misleading and partly false.
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