A viral video by the right-leaning YouTube content creator Nick Shirley, which he claims shows daycare centres siphoning public money, is now under social media scrutiny.
Nick Shirley's video — which amassed over 127 million views on X and was repeatedly aired on Fox News — struck a chord with Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) circles.
US Vice President JD Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk also reshared the video.
"This dude has done far more useful journalism than any of the winners of the 2024 @pulitzercenter prizes," Vance posted while sharing Nick Shirley's video on X.
Meanwhile, Musk said, “Fraud is fraud and it doesn’t matter what race someone is.”
What does the viral video show?
Nick Shirley, a 23-year-old self-described "independent YouTube journalist," posted a 42-minute video on X and YouTube the day after Christmas.
He alleged that nearly a dozen daycare centres in Minnesota receiving public funds were not actually providing any services.
In the video, Shirley and an older man — identified only as "David" — could be seen visiting empty day care centres, bombarding Somali employees with questions, and accusing them of not providing services to children despite receiving public money.
They claimed to have exposed over $110 million in fraud.
What happened next?
Several reports claimed that the Trump administration was freezing child-care funding to Minnesota in response to the viral video. At the same time, the video itself came under scrutiny from social media users and media houses.
CBS News reporter Jonah Kaplan posted a video shared on CBS News' X account on Tuesday, offering "its own analysis" of nearly a dozen daycare centres Shirley had highlighted.
In his video, Kaplan reported that while those centres had received citations for safety and cleanliness issues, there was no evidence of fraud.
"We visited those sites too, as did state inspectors many times over the last six months, and we found the facts on the ground tell a different story," Kaplan said.
"Those daycares, many of them were written up for safety violations, things like maybe busted equipment or staff training issues, but that's not the same as being fraudulent, so it's important to put all of this into context," he added.
Kaplan's video drew backlash for not showing the investigation itself, prompting Shirley to respond. "Why don’t you go to a daycare yourself, and you will see it first hand. Or you can just keep yapping on selfie mode," Shirley wrote on X.
Meanwhile, CNN said it is examining Shirley’s claims that Minneapolis-area daycare centres are committing fraud.
CNN grills Shirley
In a segment on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, reporter Whitney Wild confronted Shirley outside one of the centres featured in his viral video, notable for its misspelt sign, “Quality Learing Center.”
“Did you come during normal operating hours when you came to visit?” Wild asked.
“I came at 11 a.m., I believe, and then also came the following day later in the day. The point of it is not whether or not I came at the right time of their operation hours, the point is that — blacked-out doors, they can’t give you any information, you call that number, no one answers,” Shirley responded, wearing a sweatshirt mocking the centre’s misspelling.
“I wasn’t trying to go inside and there should be a way for somebody to actually be able to call that number and somebody be able to answer it. These aren’t real businesses,” he added.
“But surely you don’t think a day care should just be unlocked? You shouldn’t be able to just walk into a day care,” Wild says.
