This girl has good aim, but she didn’t hit former Vice President Mike Pence with a water balloon

Former Vice President Mike Pence walked in a Fourth of July parade in Urbandale, Iowa, but a video of another Independence Day event in another town has been wrongly described as showing a girl hitting the 2024 presidential hopeful in the head with a water balloon. 

"This girl SMOKED Mike Pence," reads text above a video of a girl hitting a white-haired man in the back of the head with a water balloon as he walked down the street.

Instagram posts sharing the miscaptioned video were 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.)

This video was taken in Stewart Manor, on Long Island, New York. And it doesn’t show Pence but Bruce Blakeman, county executive for Nassau County, which is on Long Island. Blakeman posted the clip on July 12, tweeting: "The @Mets and @Yankees could certainly use her!" 

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He also shared it on Facebook that day, writing: "The water balloons and soaker guns are a long tradition at the Stewart Manor parade. Please do not be offended. All those who march, including me, do so at their peril and are fair game. I had fun even if I got a little wet!"

CBS News reported that thousands of people lined the parade route "armed with American flags and coolers filled with thousands of water balloons." 

We rate claims that this video shows Pence False.