A quote card showing a fictional Saudi princess allegedly praising presidential aspirant Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr was shared on Facebook. This is fake. The lady in the photo is not a Saudi princess but a former porn actress.
The featured quote of a certain “Ameera Nasir Khalifa” read: “I, the Princess of Saudi, would like to express my support to Bongbong Marcos because he is a visionary leader. I hope someday I will met [sic] him. His bashers are the worst citizens in his country.”
There is no Ameera Nasir Khalifa in Saudi Arabia’s royal family, but a former princess is named Ameerah al Taweel.
The fabricated graphic shows a Jan. 30, 2015 photo of former adult entertainer Mia Khalifa wearing a hijab, which was used in an April 25, 2016 tweet of Pakistani commentator Zaid Hamid. Khalifa, or Mia Callista in real life, is Lebanese-American.
A netizen in the FB group House of Representa-thieves: Butasang Pambulsa said on Jan. 27 that someone cropped out the disclaimer in the original graphic posted on Dec. 30, 2021 stating that the post is satirical and that the quote was never uttered.
FB page BBM Unity UK (created on Nov. 14, 2021) and a netizen uploaded the quote card without the satire disclaimer; their posts garnered a total of over 1,800 interactions. Captions for these posts did not reveal that the graphic was originally labeled as satire.
Several netizens who thought the quote was true praised the princess, while some pointed out that the quote is fake and that the woman in the graphic is a former porn actress.
FB page Marites2022 BBM & SaraDu30 Bacolod City (created in Nov. 7, 2021) and five other FB groups reshared the quote card with the satirical disclaimer, garnering 216 interactions, according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.
The quote card — both with and without the satire disclaimer — was shared on Jan. 27, a day after Vice President Leni Robredo said in an interview with Boy Abunda that people should not vote for Marcos Jr. because he’s a liar.
Fact Check Philippines pointed out in a Jan. 28 tweet that the graphic was fake, while university-based fact-checking initiative FactRakers debunked a similar quote card in July 2020 praising former president Rodrigo Duterte.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)