QUESTION:
#Walkaway viral memes claim Democrats are leaving the party?
ANSWER:
No, this is false.
SOURCES:
ShutterStock, Hamilton 68, Social Media Analyst at Hamilton 68 and Communications Officer at Alliance for Securing Democracy, Bret Schafer
PROCESS:
Our Verify team works to separate fact from fiction, including the propaganda being pushed by Russia.
We're looked into a political group that took off as a grass roots campaign and ended up the target of internet trolls.
Late night talk show host Stephen Colbert took notice the viral memes gaining traction online noting what they showed and claimed.
"A man decides to hashtag walkaway from the democrats over their position on immigrants or the hashtag walkaway story of this bearded tattooed hipster doesn't say which Democratic policy turned him off, " Colbert described.
So our Verify team decided to find out if they were legit or not. WUSA9 researchers did a reverse image search on the pics and found out they were were actually lifted from the stock photo site, Shutterstock.
This one image actually originated from a book about pipelines.
Also, Hamilton 68, a group that monitors and tracks Russian linked Twitter accounts, said this 'Walk Away' hashtag is being used to push and spread divisive messages.
And we spoke with the co-founder of the real Walk away campaign, who said these fake accounts have no affiliation with his organization's goal of encouraging Americans to walk away from intolerant behavior on the left.
So we can verify these viral memes claiming Democrats are leaving the party are false.
