The 'black' hole in RFK Jr.'s housing conspiracy theory Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is running for president as an independent, is best-known these days for spreading dangerous conspiracy theories about vaccines and the coronavirus. Now he has a new one — evil institutional investors are driving up home prices. In a campaign video titled "I'll help you buy a home," Kennedy especially targets a company called BlackRock, saying that when houses come on the market, it "swoops in" and outbids prospective home buyers with "all-cash offers" and turns the homes into rentals. He also often includes two other investment firms, Vanguard and State Street, in his critique, which he also spreads across social media and in campaign speeches. The housing crisis in the United States is real — there are too few homes on the market, sending prices soaring — but Kennedy's claims are financially illiterate poppycock. He gets so many things wrong that it's hard to know where to begin. But we will start with the most apparent problem: He's mixing up two companies. BlackRock is not in the business of buying single-family homes. That would be another company — Blackstone. But Blackstone doesn't buy enough homes to have much effect on the market. You can read our full report and find out the Pinocchio rating by clicking this link. Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here. Did you hear something fact-checkable? Send it here; we'll check it out. DeSantis PAC snips and clips its way to falsehood in attacking Haley With former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley rising in the polls to emerge as a (distant) second-place finisher in the Republican primaries behind former president Donald Trump, allies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have begun to attack her as a Hillary Clinton-loving liberal. "We know her as 'crooked Hillary.' But to Nikki Haley, she's her role model — the reason she ran for office," says the voice-over of an attack ad from a group called Fight Right, Inc. The ad is especially noteworthy because in just 30 seconds, all four quotes in the ad are snipped in misleading ways. There were plenty of clips for Fight Right to chose from. Haley has made no secret of the fact that an appearance by Clinton at a women's professional event in Greenville, S.C. — at a time when, by her account, many people were giving Haley reasons not to seek public office — was a galvanizing event that gave her the confidence to enter politics. Click the link below to discover how many Pinocchios the ad received. The link also has a video that shows how the clips used in the ad were taken out of context. We're always looking for fact-check suggestions. You can reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP and @AdriUsero) or Facebook. We're also on TikTok. Read about our process and rating scale here, and sign up for the newsletter here. About the cats: It's a Friday and sometimes our fact checks deal with heavy subjects. So we hope to bring a smile to your face. Scroll down to read other election-related fact checks | 
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