About

Facts With Fiona Fake Drilling Video is a viral video that features Fiona Moriarty-Mclaughlin, a journalist known by her Twitter handle @factswithfiona, posing for a photograph with a drill and pretending to board window in preparation for the George Floyd Protests.

Origin

On June 1st, 2020, Twitter user @ewuforthless tweeted, "This lady stopped someone boarding up a store in Santa Monica so she could hold the drill for a picture, then drove away. Please don’t do this." The video features the woman posing with a drill for a photograph. She then hands the drill back to the man working on the building and turns to her Mercedes-Benz automobile. She and the photographer get in the car as someone off-screen heckles, "Great job, guys. BLM." The post received more than 26 million views, 79,000 likes, 30,000 retweets and 2,900 comments (shown below).

This lady stopped someone boarding up a store in Santa Monica so she could hold the drill for a picture, then drove away. Please don’t do this. #santamonicaprotest #BlackLivesMatter #BlackLivesMatterLA pic.twitter.com/lgt2rZogk9

— ewu (@ewufortheloss) June 1, 2020

@ewufortheloss later clarified that "she’s not the person saying 'good job guys, BLM' or 'boyfriends of Instagram,' that was someone heckling her sarcastically" (shown below).^[1]

Spread

That day, people began reporting that the woman in the video was Fiona Moriarty-McLaughlin, a journalist for the media outlet the Washington Examiner and known as @factswithfiona online. Twitter^[2] user @BrettNestadt tweeted, "apparently she’s @factswithfiona and writes for right-wing garbage rag @dcexaminer" (shown below, left).

Film director Ava DuVernay shared the video and tweeted,^[3] "You know what? I’m… I think I’m gonna put Twitter away for a few minutes before I throw this phone across the room." The tweet received more than 130,000 likes and 46,000 retweets in less than two days (shown below, center).

That day, New York Times writer Taylor Lorenz tweeted,^[4] ".@factswithfiona stopped someone boarding up a store in Santa Monica so she could hold the drill for a picture, then drove away. The video is now all over influencer tea accts. She’s since gone private but said nothing." Within two days, the tweet received more than 3,600 likes and 1,300 retweets (shown below, right).

Instagram user @influencersinthewild posted the original video. They captioned the video, "This chick stopped a guy from actually working and asked to borrow his drill so she could pretend to help." The post received more than 900,000 views and 76,000 likes in less than two days.

That day, people began sharing videos of an earlier post by @factswithfiona in which she criticized the spray painting of a billboard. The owner of the brand that the billboard is advertising for responded by writing, "Made our sign every better."

I thought her twitter handle sounded familiar. I looked it up earlier today when she got owned by the billboard advertiser https://t.co/lp4jKy7sJ4 pic.twitter.com/BRpCp78tVT

— ⚖️ Salina ⚖️ (@Salina_Duncan_P) June 2, 2020

That day, Moriarty-McLaughlin closed her social media accounts, including her Twitter and Facebook account.

Several media outlets covered the controversy, including HITC,^[5] Distractify,^[6] BSO,^[7] CBS,^[8] Heavy^[9] and more.

Search Interest

External References