Did former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg open "America's first 100% free homeless hospital"? No, that's not true: The picture purporting to show the opening ceremony was AI generated. No credible news organizations published any reports about it.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook, where it was published on November 23, 2025.
PETE BUTTIGIEG JUST OPENED AMERICA'S FIRST 100% FREE HOMELESS HOSPITAL - 'THIS IS THE LEGACY I WANT TO LEAVE BEHIND'No fanfare. No ribbon. Just open doors at 5 a.m.Pete Buttigieg, 43, stood in the freezing dawn and unlocked the Pete Buttigieg Sanctuary Medical Center, a 250-bed, zero-cost hospital built exclusively for America's homeless - the first of its kind in U.S. history.Cancer wards. Trauma ORs. Mental health wings. Addiction detox. Dental suites. 120 permanent apartments on the upper floors. Everything free, forever.$142 million raised in secret over 18 months, all from Buttigieg's personal foundation and bipartisan donors who begged to stay anonymous.First patient: a 61-year-old Navy vet named Thomas who hadn't seen a doctor in 14 years. Pete carried his bag inside himself, knelt down, and said:'This hospital carries my name because I know what it's like to feel invisible. Here, nobody is. This is the legacy I want to leave behind when I'm gone - not speeches, not headlines, just lives saved.'By noon the line wrapped around six city blocks.#PeteSanctuary detonated X with 38.7 billion impressions in eight hours - fastest humanitarian trend ever.From mayor to miracle-maker, Pete Buttigieg didn't just build a hospital.He built hope, one free bed at a time.America's heart just got a new home.
This is what the image from the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post by "Perpetual Drumbeats" at facebook.com)
The picture purporting to show Buttigieg at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, however, contradicted the caption stating the supposed hospital's opening did not have a ceremony.
A closer look at the image showed anatomical abnormalities associated with generative AI: the strangely shaped fingers on both hands.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post by "Perpetual Drumbeats" at facebook.com)
Reverse image searches on Google did not trace the image back to any credible media organization:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of search results page on google.com)
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the "About this image" page on google.com)
A search across Google News and Yahoo News (archived here) yielded no results confirming that Buttigieg opened a hospital for the unhoused populations:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of news search results page at google.com)
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of news search results page at yahoo.com)
According to the transparency tab, the page that published the claim was managed predominantly from overseas and ran multiple Buttigieg-themed ads:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the "Perpetual Drumbeats" page on facebook.com)
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of ad library at facebook.com)
The page's characteristics were consistent with "Viet spam". Those are the networks of accounts spreading false claims about celebrities, often accompanied by AI generated images, with the goal to pursue ad income driven by the number of views.
This type of spam quickly spread on Facebook in the first months of 2025, shortly after the platform's owner, Meta, abruptly ended (archived here) its third-party fact-checking program in the U.S. Lead Stories participated, along with other fact-checking newsrooms. By the end of the same year, Lead Stories documented over 50 cases of the most viral false claims that fall under the umbrella of "Viet spam".
