Fired for no American flag? No, Mark Wahlberg didn’t call for terminating teachers.

Schools often become a political battleground, but are famous actors stepping into the fray?

That’s what some social media posts have claimed.

“Mark Wahlberg calls for immediate firing of teachers who removed American flags from classrooms,” a Nov. 25 Facebook post read. The post included a link to a story in the comments, but it opened as “404 Error – Page Not Found.”

The post garnered more than 11,000 likes with scores of commenters believing the claim, writing, “Agree. We are in America and should respect our flag for all it represents,” and, “if they remove the AMERICAN flag then they aren’t going to teach the kids about true American values.” 

But we flagged this claim for a different reason — it originated as satire. 

(Screenshot of Facebook Post)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

An identical claim was shared on Facebook in July and on Threads in September with a “Rated Satire” watermark. According to Check Your Fact, the Facebook page that shared the claim had a satire disclaimer in its “About” page in October, but as of Dec. 3, that language had been removed; it now describes itself as a “News & media website.” Several of its recent posts included satire watermarks.

PolitiFact reviewed Nexis news archives and found no evidence that Wahlberg called for teachers to be fired for taking down American flags. PolitiFact also found no posts on Wahlberg’s X or Facebook accounts making this claim. Wahlberg has been the subject of other baseless social media posts that we found also originated as self-described satire.

We rate the claim that Wahlberg called for the firing of teachers who take down the American flag False. 

By

Grace Abels

Staff writer

December 3, 2024

Truth-o-meter Ruling

False

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

• This claim originated as satire.

Statement

"Mark Wahlberg calls for immediate firing of teachers who removed American flags from classrooms"

Context

a post

Speaker/Target

Speaker: Facebook posts

Statement Date

November 25, 2024