Viral Video Of Man Claiming F-22 Pilots Quit Over Vaccine Mandate Gets Debunked

A Twitter video featuring a man making false claims about the military’s vaccine mandate racked up more than one million views in less than 24 hours.

That’s right. Someone was being wrong on the internet and many people believed the fake claims.

The originally video appears to have been posted and later deleted by user @Suzy_1776.

Filming in his car, the man said, “My dad just let me know this. A text message went out last night from the Secretary of Defense to all the active military personnel saying, you know, by 10 am you have to go get the magic potion or you’re gonna be courtmartialed. And so as a result of that, 12 F-22 pilots – the most highly trained pilots in the world – walked off the job. That’s 12 multi-billion dollar, million-dollar aircraft grounded now.”

He “explained”:

The military is being compromised at a rapid rate, and with F-22s being grounded, you could kiss Taiwan goodbye. I would hate to be a Taiwanese citizen right now. So, this is probably not covered anywhere in the media. I’m sure it’s blocked or censored by all the bullshit that goes on here. But it’s time to frickin’ wake up, people. You better start preparing because your little cushy American life isn’t gonna be so cushy much longer when the rest of the world realizes how frickin’ weak we are when we have this idiot who’s in office and all this bullshit that’s been passed and what’s happening to our military.

The man was correct that the resignations of the pilots are not being covered, and that is because there were no such resignations.

But for some conservative Twitter accounts the claims he made were just too good (or bad) to pass up. When an unidentified man filming from his car says his dad told him pilots were resigning over a vaccine mandate, and that our military is being destroyed by President Joe Biden, there is apparently no time to waste in spreading it far and wide.

As CNN’s Daniel Dale pointed out, the military’s vaccination deadline against Covid-19 is in November, not “by 10am.”

Dale also said a spokesperson for the Department of Defense said that the military “has never sent any kind of force-wide text message,” and that they aren’t aware of any walk-offs by pilots.

A Department of Defense spokesperson, Charlie Dietz, says the Defense Secretary “has never sent any kind of force-wide text message” and that “we have no awareness of any kind of Air Force pilot walk-off.”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 10, 2021

The man’s claims echoed an already debunked article saying that 27 pilots had resigned.

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