President Donald Trump has recently been claiming that retail chain Walmart is closing hundreds of stores in California. Now, the company is directly refuting him.
CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reported Thursday that Trump spread several falsehoods in a late-night social media posting spree, making "wildly inaccurate and often conspiratorial claims." On two separate occasions, Trump posted a YouTube video entitled "California Governor PANICS as Walmart Shuts Down 250+ Stores Across State" to his Truth Social platform. The video asserted Walmart was unable to afford California's "$22" hourly minimum wage (California's hourly minimum wage is currently $16.90 for all employers, and $20 for fast food employees).
"This isn’t accurate information,” an unnamed Walmart spokesperson told CNN. "In fact, we actually just recently opened a new store in California."
California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), who is presumed to run for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, wrote on his own social media account that all of California's 303 Walmart stores remain open.
"We cannot believe we have to say any of this out loud. We cannot believe this is real life," Newsom said. "And we truly cannot believe this man has the nuclear codes."
CNN further reported that the YouTube account that claimed Walmart stores in California were closing also had a pattern of posting videos making conspiratorial claims about the California governor. But by Thursday morning, all of the anti-Newsom videos had been deleted.
According to Dale, Trump also made baseless claims on his Truth Social account that Wisconsin — which he narrowly lost to former President Joe Biden in 2020 — had millions more registered voters than it had adults residing in the state. However, the figure Trump cited is the number of inactive voters in the Badger State, which is the term for voters who have either died, moved out of the state, were convicted of a felony or purged from voter rolls due to inactivity.