Posts from users on social media platforms on Thursday shared an image claiming that incoming US official Richard Grenell called for the resignation of Chief of Army Staff General Asim Munir. However, the image was edited; the original post did not mention the army chief but instead referred to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Grenell, Trump’s pick for presidential envoy for special missions, has unexpectedly become a notable figure in Pakistan’s political landscape after frequently posting in PTI founder Imran Khan’s favour and calling for his release.

His outspoken comments, part of a growing series of statements and posts made over the past couple of weeks, have garnered significant attention in Pakistan, where both the government and the opposition are grappling with the implications of his remarks.

A post by a PTI supporter on TikTok on Jan 9 shared a video with the screenshot of an alleged X post, dated Jan 9 at 8:42am, from Grenell saying: “Resign, Karen. Asim Munir.”

The video also had an image of Imran and the following caption: “It took you quite a while to show up. Richard Grenell has demanded Asim Munir’s resignation.”

The post gained 112,800 views, 14,200 likes and 193 reshares.

The same image and caption of Grenell’s edited X post were shared by multiple Facebook users as seen here, here, here, here and here.

A fact-check was initiated to verify the claim due to its virality and keen public interest in the army and Grenell at a time when the latter is gaining popularity in Pakistan for his remarks.

Checking Grenell’s official X account yielded a post dated Jan 9 at 8:42am that said: “Resign, Karen.”

As can be clearly seen, the post did not mention the army chief and a reverse image search for the original alleged post did not yield any results or any coverage of it by reputable news outlets.

Further inspection of Grenell’s X timeline showed a number of posts criticising “Karen Bass” and calling on her to resign.

A keyword search for “Karen Bass” showed that she was the mayor of Los Angeles, a city in the US state of California.

Thousands of structures have been incinerated and nearly 180,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes as at least five separate wildfires burnt in Los Angeles County. Fast-moving flames fanned by powerful winds levelled more than 2,000 structures, many of them multi-million dollar homes in a tragedy that the US media described as the worst in the city’s history.

Bass was severely criticised by Grenell and Republicans for her administration’s response and resource mismanagement amid the wildfires, during which she was on a foreign trip to Ghana.

Therefore, it was clear that Grenell’s reference in his X post was to the Los Angeles mayor.

Furthermore, ‘karen’ in Urdu is derived from the root word of ‘kar’ which translates as “do” while the former is a more respectful version of the latter. A literal translation of the alleged X post would thus be: “Do, resign. Asim Munir.”

However, this translated sentence does not grammatically make sense when considering the punctuation marks that Grenell used, the comma and the period. The viral posts therefore misunderstood or glossed over the punctuation in Grenell’s X post and understood the word “Karen” literally as per the Urdu language instead of checking the context of his post.

The same observation regarding the Urdu understanding of “karen” was also pointed out by PTI leader Shahbaz Gill in an X post.

Therefore, the fact-check determined that the claim that Grenell called on the army chief to resign was false. The viral image of his X post was fake and edited as Grenell did not mention the army chief in his original post; which was instead referring to the Los Angeles mayor amid criticism over her handling of wildfires in Southern California.

This fact check was originally published by iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP.