CNN Fact-Checker Mocks Trump’s Wild Claim About Beyonce As ‘Imaginary’: ‘Simply Did Not Happen’

CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale mocked President Donald Trump’s wild claim about pop superstar Beyoncé and former Vice President Kamala Harris as a concoction of Trump’s imagination.

Trump raged in a lengthy late-night social media rant on Saturday that Democrats “admit to paying, probably illegally, Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT” and demanded Oprah, and Rev. Al Sharpton be criminally prosecuted along with Bey and the ex-VP.

On Sunday’s edition of CNN Newsroom, anchor Jessica Dean brought Dale in to ask if Trump has the goods to get Bey locked up. Dale debunked the attack, as well as Trump’s assertion about the law:

JESSICA DEAN: Let’s bring in CNN’s Daniel Dale, who can walk us through the facts here. Daniel, what’d you find?

DANIEL DALE: I found that this claim about an $11 million payment is imaginary. This simply did not happen. There is not one shred of evidence that the Harris campaign or any other Democrat paid Beyonce anything like $11,000,000 for an endorsement.

Now, this claim began circulating among random Trump supporters on social media last year. It’s been repeatedly investigated by fact check outlets. No one has produced any support for it. The White House did not comment when I reached out this time.

Now federal election spending records do show that the Harris campaign made a $165,000 payment to Beyonce’s production company after this event you’re seeing, where Beyonce endorsed then-Vice President Harris at an event in Houston in October 2024.

But two things about that.

First of all, there’s no evidence that this was payment for an endorsement. The Harris campaign said that they are obligated by law to cover the ancillary costs related to celebrity appearances when celebrities come to their events.

And second of all, 165,000 is a far cry from 11 million. That figure just seems to have been fabricated, invented out of thin air.

So I reached out to the Harris campaign about this. They pointed me to a post last year from Beyonce’s mother, Tina Knowles, who posted that it was a lie and noted that it had been taken down as false information by Instagram at the time.

Beyonce’s own spokesperson told PolitiFact in November 2024 that this claim is, quote, “Beyond ridiculous.”.

Now, again, I did reach out to the White House about this to ask where the president got this claim. Not only that there was an $11 million payment, but that Democrats admit that there was, they certainly have not.

They didn’t respond.

So I went looking to see what the president himself had said previously about this. It turns out he referenced it in February. And he spoke of his source in the vaguest possible terms. He said, “Somebody just showed me something.”.

So that’s not much of anything. Now, I’ll add one more thing. In this same social media post, the president asserted that it is, quote, “Totally illegal to pay someone for endorsements.”.

It turns out that’s not true either. So there’s no evidence there was endorsement payments by the Harris campaign. They said they did not pay for endorsement, but there is no federal law that prohibits a hypothetical candidate from hypothetically paying some influencer, some celebrity to endorse them. It doesn’t exist.

Watch above via CNN Newsroom.