Category: News

Claim:

A time-lapse video authentically shows Sen. Mitch McConnell sitting in the U.S. Senate chamber, barely moving, for 20 hours straight.

Rating:

What’s True

Video provided by C-SPAN shows McConnell attended the 19-hour, 45-minute session and remained seated continuously for stretches as long as six hours. Periodically over the first few hours of the session, he can be seen standing up, moving around and walking in and out of the chamber, albeit leaning on desks for support. During the session, he was visibly slow and weak. At the end, an aide helped him out of the chamber.

What’s False

It’s false that time-lapse video authentically shows McConnell sat on the floor of the Senate, barely moving, for 20 hours straight.

As U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., remained absent from the Senate floor due to his health issues in August 2026, a video taken June 4, when he was still able to attend, purportedly showed him remaining seated, nearly motionless, throughout a 20-hour Senate voting session.

According to several posts on X and Reddit, the footage was condensed into a time-lapse video of the entire 20-hour session. A post on Instagram claimed McConnell was in a wheelchair.  A post on X claimed he was “in the Senate for nearly 20 hours and barely moved.”

The full 19 hours and 45 minutes of C-SPAN footage recorded that day proves otherwise. It also proves that the time-lapse video was heavily edited and only covered select parts of the session. 

McConnell didn’t sit near-motionless on the Senate floor for 20 hours. The C-SPAN video shows he walked in and out of the chamber several times on his own, though he was visibly weak and leaning on desks. He also sat for brief periods during the early part of the session. McConnell only remained continuously seated for around six hours toward the end of the session, after which he was escorted out by an aide. 

As such, we rate this claim as mostly false.

Photographs on image repository site Getty Images show McConnell standing but being physically supported by aides on the day of the session. Contrary to some social media posts, he wasn’t in a wheelchair that day but was often photographed in a wheelchair in prior months.

Ten days after this session, McConnell was hospitalized after he reportedly fell in his home. Snopes received several health updates from the senator’s office in the subsequent weeks. As of this writing, McConnell has still not returned to the Senate and is recovering at home.

For further reading, Snopes has kept track of McConnell’s health based on public information and debunked numerous false claims of his death.

Sources

Akin, David. “Mark Carney Tapped by Liberals to Lead New Task Force Advising Trudeau.” Global News, Global News, 9 Sept. 2024, globalnews.ca/news/10740296/mark-carney-advisor-justin-trudeau/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2025.

Grenier, Éric. “CBC News Canada Poll Tracker.” CBC News, www.cbc.ca, 10 Apr. 2025, newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2025.

Kemp, Olivia, and Max Saltman. “Mark Carney Sworn in as Canada’s PM after Trudeau Steps Down.” CNN, 14 Mar. 2025, edition.cnn.com/2025/03/14/americas/canada-carney-prime-minister-trudeau-resigns-intl-latam. Accessed 26 Aug. 2025.

“Mark Carney.” Bankofengland.co.uk, 15 Mar. 2020, www.bankofengland.co.uk/about/people/past/mark-carney/biography. Accessed 26 Aug. 2025.

“Mark Carney.” Www.bankofcanada.ca, www.bankofcanada.ca/profile/mark-carney/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2025.

Yousif, Nadine. “Pierre Poilievre: The Man Who Could Become Canada’s Future PM.” BBC, 27 Apr. 2025, www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9dpde9dxp0o. Accessed 26 Aug. 2025.

In August 2026, social media users recirculated allegations that U.S. President Donald Trump sexually assaulted six children and paid tens of millions of dollars in settlements connected to the alleged incidents.

One Instagram video stated:

Breaking news. An Australian man found a live frog inside of his salad bag. And here are six kids Donald Trump has formally graped in the span of six years. Michael Parker, just 10 years old, was orally graped by Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Trump paid his parents $3 million in settlements. Kelly Foyer, just 12 years old, was forced into intercourse by Donald Trump at the Trump Tower and was given a $1 million settlement. Charles Bacon, 11 years old, was forced into oral and anal sex by Donald Trump in the Trump Tower in 1994. He was given a $3 million settlement. Rebecca Conway, just 13 years old, was forced into oral and intercourse by Trump at the Trump Vineyard Estates. She was given a $5 million settlement. Maria Oliveira, 12 years old, was forced into intercourse by Trump at Mar-a-Lago and was given $16 million and settlements. Kevin Noll, forced into anal rape in the Trump Tower in 1998 and the settlement details are unknown. We are not mad enough.

The claim has frequently appeared as a meme (archived) titled “TRUMP RESUME FOR THE PRESIDENCY.” Under that heading is list of six children, each paired with an age, location, year, description of alleged abuse and alleged settlement amount.

Versions of the rumor have circulated on Instagram, Facebook, Reddit and X, often shared as evidence that Trump is a “child rapist” whose wealth and political power have allegedly kept him out of prison. Numerous Snopes readers have emailed us seeking the truth about the claim.

In short, there was no credible evidence that any of the six named children exist as accusers, that any such lawsuits were ever filed or that Trump paid the alleged settlements . The origin of the rumor is an uncorroborated list published on a blog, not a court document or credible news investigation.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the claims were “obviously false.”

We investigated a similar rumor in 2020 that claimed Trump had paid at least $35 million to settle child-rape allegations and likewise found no evidence that such settlements existed.

Where the rumor came from

The rumor traces back to a Jan. 16, 2019, blog post (archived) on Legal Schnauzer titled “Donald Trump has paid about $30 million to settle child-sex complaints, including a 2012 incident at Albemarle Estate in Charlottesville, Virginia.” 

That post in turn cites an article at Wayne Madsen Report, a blog run by American writer Wayne Madsen, titled “Why is Trump so afraid of [ex-Trump lawyer Michael] Cohen’s testimony?” (In 2020, the article was available only to members.)

The Legal Schnauzer piece quotes Wayne Madsen Report as saying that Trump had paid roughly $30 million to settle “child-sex complaints” since 1989, and that the alleged settlements extended “beyond those widely reported in the mainstream press.” 

Wayne Madsen Report claimed it had received a list of child-sex settlement claims “from a reputable Republican source,” but it presented no documents, court filings, or corroborating evidence for these purported cases. The only stated basis was an unnamed Republican source. As such, we were unable to independently verify it.

Wayne Madsen Report is not a reputable, mainstream investigative outlet and has been frequently described as being run by a conspiracy theorist or spreading conspiratorial views. Fact-checking organization Lead Stories, which investigated a similar meme in 2021, likewise described it as “a blog which was described by the Encyclopedia of American Loons as an ‘utterly deranged nutter with a mind unclouded by facts, evidence, or reason.’”

We contacted Legal Schnauzer and Wayne Madsen Report seeking supporting evidence, and we will update this story if we receive a response.

Six cases, zero evidence

The six names most often cited online are Michael Parker, Kelly Feuer, Charles Bacon, Rebecca Conway, Maria Olivera and Kevin Noll. For each name, the meme specifies the child’s age (10-13), a Trump-owned property and year, a description of alleged sexual assault and a specific settlement amount (or “unknown” for one case).

If any of these were real lawsuits in U.S. courts, there would be some record of them, such as a case docket, court filings, media reports, or later mentions in books or legal databases — even if the specific terms of any settlement were kept confidential. However, no public records, credible news reports or court documents corroborate the existence of any of the six alleged victims or the multimillion-dollar settlements listed.

The Katie Johnson lawsuit

Wayne Madsen Report also pointed to two pseudonymous accusers, “Katie Johnson” and “Maria P.,” who allegedly were raped as minors at the Manhattan townhouse of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a one-time friend of Trump, in 1994. 

In fact, there were two related lawsuits filed in 2016 by the same anonymous woman, first as “Katie Johnson” in California and then as “Jane Doe” in New York, accusing Trump and Epstein of raping her when she was 13. Both cases were ultimately dismissed or withdrawn, with no trial, no public finding of guilt and no announced settlement.

In 2020, we reported the lawsuit was promoted by figures such as former TV producer Norm Lubow, who told us he helped file it under a false name, Al Taylor. As we’ve reported, it “does not disprove that Johnson is a real person, but it does show that those claims were aggressively promoted and aided by someone who has a professional history of using individuals to create fictional salacious drama, and that is a fact both he, and lawyers working for the plaintiff, attempted to downplay or hide.”

Bottom line

All in all, claims that Trump paid about $30 million to settle child-sex complaints brought by six minors is unsupported by any credible evidence and rests entirely on an unverified list from a blog.

In July 2024, PolitiFact, a fact-checking organization, published a fact check of a Threads post sharing the same list, concluding, “We found no evidence of these cases or settlements.” Lead Stories similarly stated in a 2021 article that “there is no evidence of the cases ever having been filed against Trump and no proof the listed legal actions exist.”

The in-question list was not the only social media claim asserting that Trump has been charged with, or paid to cover up, child rape. In 2024, Reuters debunked a rumor that The Associated Press had reported prosecutors were “reconsidering” bringing child rape and molestation charges against Trump. Reuters confirmed with the AP that no such story had ever been published and noted that “there are no credible news reports about any child molestation charges against Trump.”