Trump did not shove man in Mar-a-Lago video clip

"People are saying Donald Trump shoved a man at Mar-a-Lago. What do you think?" says a February 21, 2024 post from Ed Krassenstein, an entrepreneur and social media influencer, on X, formerly Twitter.

The clip zooms in on Trump and appears to show him reaching out to forcefully move someone out of his line of sight.

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Screenshot from X taken February 26, 2024

Similar claims spread across X and other platforms. The American magazine Newsweek repeated them in a February 21 headline, saying: "Donald Trump appears to shove person at Mar-a-Lago in viral video."

Trump, who is running against President Joe Biden to retake the White House despite facing several criminal investigations, was infamously filmed pushing past the leader of Montenegro during a 2017 NATO summit in Belgium.

But the latest video does not show the Republican doing the same thing at his Mar-a-Lago residence in February 2024.

"Let me settle this," Garrett Ventry, the man seen with Trump in the clip, said in a February 21 post on X (archived here). "It’s me, we were talking and he gave me a pat on the back."

Ventry, a former chief of staff for GOP Congressman Ken Buck and senior communications advisor for Senator Chuck Grassley, made news during Trump's presidency while helping the Senate Judiciary Committee as it responded to sexual assault allegations facing then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. 

In a February 22 post on X, Ventry shared a separate video of his interaction with Trump (archived here). The recording, taken from a wider angle, shows Trump giving Ventry a firm but friendly tap.

"Guys this isn’t a scandal," he said. "I was talking to President Trump after his speech, we then took a picture, then he patted me on the back and walked away. The internet is insane."

AFP could not independently verify when or at what event the video was captured, but Ventry posted what appears to be the photo of him posing with Trump to X on February 16. He said the same night that he was at Mar-a-Lago for a dinner (archived here and here).

Reached for comment via LinkedIn, Ventry sent AFP his post on X sharing the footage from an alternative vantage point.

AFP also contacted the Trump 2024 campaign for additional comment, but no response was forthcoming.

On February 22, Newsweek corrected its article to include Ventry's clarifying posts. The outlet also changed its headline to: "Did Donald Trump Shove Someone in Viral Video Clip?"

PatriotTakes, the X account that appears to have first posted the clip shared by Krassenstein and Newsweek, also referred its followers to Ventry's posts (archived here). The account said in another update that the tightly cropped video originally came from the Instagram story of someone who attended the event (archived here).

AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.