Multiple right-wing media figures, outlets, and social media users falsely claimed that a viral video showing a man in Afghanistan suspended from a helicopter was an execution by the Taliban. Other footage of the flight showed the man alive and well, and reportedly he was attempting to fix a flag. 

This narrative is just one example of multiple falsehoods spread by conservatives to attack President Joe Biden following his decision to withdraw U.S. military forces from Afghanistan.

As Media Matters previously wrote, Fox News host Sean Hannity aired the footage on the August 31 edition of Fox News’ Hannity, falsely claiming it showed the Taliban dangling a hanged man from a Black Hawk helicopter in Afghanistan. But Hannity’s claim had been debunked before his show aired. 

Conservative media personalities and politicians — including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) — also repeated the false claim on Twitter, using it to criticize the Biden administration’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Cruz later deleted his tweet, writing that the information in it “may be inaccurate.” 

A Fox anchor along with multiple contributors and guests have also engaged with the false claim, as have other right-wing cable channels like One America News Network and Newsmax, other media organizations and users on fringe social media platforms.

Fox News and Fox Business

• On August 30, a day before Hannity himself pushed this lie, Hannity guest Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) said that “we had a video today of one of our Blackhawk helicopters with somebody hanging from it as it moves through the sky.”
• Also on August 30, guest Elliot Ackerman said on The Ingraham Angle that “we just saw the Taliban flying a Blackhawk helicopter above Kandahar with a dead body hanging from its bottom.”
• On August 30, Fox Business guest Stephen Yates said: “We have today the Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter.”
• On August 31, Fox Business guest Sam Brown said, “We’re seeing the reality of the Taliban now flying Blackhawk helicopters over Kabul, hanging their enemy.”
• Later the same day, Fox contributor Katie Pavlich said on The Five, “They are hanging people from our helicopters.” Pavlich repeated this later in the show, saying the Taliban have “been using” weapons left behind “to execute our allies who helped us on the ground. … They hung a guy with a helicopter.”

• That evening, Fox Business anchor David Asman was discussing the helicopters U.S. forces left behind and said: “At least one was used yesterday in horrific fashion to hang a human being. We don’t know the circumstances of that. We don’t know who that person was that was hanging from the helicopter. But in one of the typically sick dimension of the way that these -- the Taliban think, or whoever was piloting that helicopter, that’s how they used it.”
• And on September 1, Fox News contributor Charles Hurt said on Fox Business, “The image of our Blackhawk helicopter flying around Kabul with the body of what appears to be a dead person hanging from the bottom of it -- those images get seared into people’s minds, and they never forget it.”

Newsmax

• On the August 31 edition of the morning show Wake Up America, Newsmax's Alex Kraemer showed and read a tweet claiming that the Taliban “are now hanging innocent civilians from [helicopters] for the world to see.” Later in the show, co-host Rob Finnerty said: “We saw someone hanging from a helicopter on video. This person was dead.”
• During Newsmax’s August 31 midday show John Bachman Now, the host said there are “U.S. Blackhawks reportedly being flown by the Taliban with people hanging from them.”
• Later that day on American Agenda, Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield said the Taliban were “flying people hanging from Blackhawk helicopters yesterday.” Later in the show, former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller referenced people in Kabul risking being “flown around the city hanging by their neck off of a helicopter.”
• On September 1, Finnerty repeated this lie on Wake Up America, saying: “We saw somebody hanging from a U.S. military helicopter over Kabul just a couple of days ago.”

One America News Network

• On August 31, the host of OAN’s In Focus with Stephanie Hamill said: “There’s video circulating online of them in an American helicopter with a man hanging by his neck off of the helicopter.” Her guest, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), replied: “That’s sick. That is sick.”
• Later on Real America, host Dan Ball previewed the video he claimed shows “the Taliban flying one of our Blackhawk choppers in Kandahar with a body hanging from it” with a long-winded warning about graphic content. He added: “Now, have we vetted it all out? Can I confirm it happened yesterday? I don’t know when it happened. It’s all over the web. It’s from Kandahar. I can’t read what that says, but we’re getting this from multiple sources of folks that were there on the ground. They confirm it’s one of our choppers, they confirm it’s from Afghanistan. I don’t know who’s hanging there, but -- you want to see this stuff come over here? And I’m not trying to fearmonger one bit. I’m keeping it real, folks.”

Other right-wing outlets and social media

• On August 30, Gateway Pundit shared a screenshot of the video on its website along with tweets containing versions of the video, incorrectly claiming that “today the Islamists used US helicopters to hang ‘traitors’ in Kandahar Afghanistan” and argued that the Taliban was “openly mocking” the U.S.
• On August 31, the New York Post published the video on its website along with an article that said “it is not immediately clear exactly how [the person in the video] is attached or if he is alive.” The piece then quoted “some journalists” who it says “insisted that it showed someone who had been hanged — and then paraded in the skies.”
• The video of the helicopter and screenshots from the video also spread on several fringe right-wing social media platforms between August 30 and September 1, including Gab, 4chan, and Patriots.win. This content was also shared widely among right-wing users on the messaging app Telegram. Many of these posts criticized the Biden administration, with one Patriots.win user claiming, falsely, that the Taliban was “flying [a] Biden-provided Blackhawk helicopter…while hanging someone from it.” This post quoted a tweet stating that “it’s an absolute shitfest to see the Taliban now actually flying US BlackHawk helicopters, hanging people by the throat from them!! The American President will never be forgiven for this!!”