Says Nancy Pelosi’s "4th husband" filed for divorce.
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Paul and Nancy Pelosi attend the 2019 Time 100 Gala, on April 23, 2019. (AP)
Nancy Pelosi divorce story is fake
If Your Time is short
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The article is originally from a website that discloses that it does satire.
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The House speaker has wed only once, to Paul Pelosi. They have been married since 1963.
An article making the rounds on Facebook claims Nancy Pelosi’s fourth husband is filing for divorce. It’s as fake today as it was a year ago when it was first published on a website that describes its content as satire.
"Nancy Pelosi’s 4th Husband Files for Divorce: ‘I Just Can’t Take It Anymore,’" reads the headline on an April 14, 2020, story on a site called Maga20 News.
The article was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
The entire article was lifted from a satirical story published in 2019.
Satirical site
The same headline, and the same article, were previously posted on tatersgonnatate.com with this tag: "Pelosi's Satirical Bout with Alcoholism."
The article includes clues that it is satirical, such as its claim that one of the House speaker’s former husbands is Marsellus Wallace. He was the gang boss character played by Ving Rhames in the movie "Pulp Fiction."
Featured Fact-check
The About Us tab on the taters website says the site "is a subsidiary of the America’s Last Line of Defense network of parody, satire and tomfoolery." PolitiFact has written about that website and its faux-news creator, Christopher Blair.
Though the tatersgonnahate.com story does not have a date of publication attached to it, Lead Stories fact-checked the original article, reporting that it was satire, on March 31, 2019, saying the article had been posted 10 days earlier.
That’s more than a year before the article we’re checking was posted.
Pelosi and her husband, Paul Pelosi, a businessman in real estate and venture capital, have been married since 1963. The California Democrat has never divorced. And there is no indication she is divorcing now. A Pelosi spokesman called it "fiction."
Our ruling
An April article claiming that Pelosi’s fourth husband is filing for divorce is a reprint of an article from more than a year earlier from a website that publishes satire.
Pelosi has been married to the same man since 1963 and has never divorced.
We rate the claim False.
Our Sources
Maga20 News, "Nancy Pelosi’s 4th Husband Files for Divorce: ‘I Just Can’t Take It Anymore,’" April 14, 2020
Tatersgonnatate.com, "Nancy Pelosi’s 4th Husband Files for Divorce: ‘I just Can’t Take It Anymore,’"
Tatersgonnatate.com, "About Us," accessed April 18, 2020
Email, Nancy Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hamill, April 20, 2020
PolitiFact, "If you're fooled by fake news, this man probably wrote it," May 31, 2017
Lead Stories, "Fake News: Nancy Pelosi's Husband Did NOT File for Divorce, Did NOT Say 'I just Can't Take It Anymore,’" March 31, 2019
Washington Post, "‘Makes going to work look easy’: Decades before she was House speaker, Nancy Pelosi had an even harder job," Feb. 12, 2020
CNN, "Nancy Pelosi Fast Facts," March 24, 2020
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Nancy Pelosi divorce story is fake
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