After Nick Shirley's viral exposé on Minnesota day care ‘fraud’, questions arise over credibility of report | Today News

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 blew up on X with 127 million views and played repeatedly on Fox News — resonated with Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) circles.

It was also shared by US Vice President JD Vance and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

"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."

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 day care centers in Minnesota that are receiving public funds are not actually providing any service.

In it, he 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 any children despite receiving public funds.

They claimed to have exposed over $110 million in fraud.

While several reports claimed that the Trump administration is freezing child care funding to the state of Minnesota in response to a viral video, the video itself came under the scrutiny of social media users and media houses.

CBS News reporter Jonah Kaplan posted a video shared on CBS News' X account on Tuesday that offered "its own analysis" of nearly a dozen daycare centers Shirley visited in his viral video.

In his video, Kaplan reported that while the locations Shirley highlighted have received citations for issues related to safety and cleanliness, 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," Kaplan said.

Kaplan's video received widespread backlash for not showing their investigation, leading Shirley himself 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 also stated that it is looking into Shirley’s claims that this and other Minneapolis-area day care centers are committing fraud.

“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 center’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.