An online clickbait “poll” asked readers if they supported President Trump’s non-existent ban on “full face” veils
CLAIM
President Trump announced intent to ban “full face” veils in public places, an act presumably targeting Muslim women.
FALSE
One common technique employed by clickbait web sites is to social post content that consists of nothing other than a solicitation to readers to indicate whether they “support” a particular controversial political issue or decision. And as often as not, the political subjects addressed in such posts are non-existent ones fabricated for the purpose of driving click-throughs.
Sites such as USA Daily Info have employed this technique in February 2017 by falsely suggesting that President Trump had “just declare to ban [‘full face’] veils in public places, posting links to a page that consisting of nothing but an image of a veiled woman and a poll posing the Yes/No question “Trump Agrees To Ban Full-Face Veils In Public Places. Do You Support This?” Beneath that content was a comment section in which readers expressed support for the non-existent ban.
No legitimate news outlet reported that President Trump had announced, or even opined about, an outright ban on veils. And any contemplation of such a ban would have raised a host of constitutional issues that would have been widely debated in the public sphere and the news media.
