Fact-Checkers Immediately Enter Witness Protection Program

WASHINGTON — Moments after President Donald Trump concluded his State of the Union address, the nation’s leading fact-checkers were seen quietly climbing into unmarked vans and relocating to undisclosed safe houses.

“It’s just… a lot,” whispered one exhausted researcher while shredding a stack of annotated transcripts. “We can’t keep living like this.”

The nearly two-hour speech reportedly generated so many claims, statistics, and bold declarations that several independent verification teams immediately applied for new identities.

“We’re thinking of becoming beekeepers,” said one analyst who had been cross-referencing economic data in real time. “Bees don’t cite sources.”

Throughout the address, fact-checking websites experienced unprecedented traffic spikes, briefly replacing their usual red and green rating systems with a new category labeled simply: “Deep Breath.”

One editor confirmed that staff had prepared for the speech by stretching, hydrating, and pre-writing the phrase “This claim lacks context.”

By the 90-minute mark, interns were seen rocking gently under desks while muttering, “Correlation is not causation.”

In response, administration officials defended the speech, arguing that numbers are “vibes-based” and that confidence itself counts as a metric.

At press time, fact-checkers were last spotted somewhere in rural Montana, attempting to explain to a confused park ranger what “baseline inflation adjustment” means.