Photo of Tim Walz altered to add racist object

"Hold up," says a December 21, 2024 post on X from a prominent account known as "@Alphafox78."

The account has previously amplified other disinformation, including a video likely seeded by a Russian propaganda campaign that falsely claimed to show a Haitian immigrant confessing to voter fraud in the 2024 US election.

The post includes an image appearing to show a ceramic figurine of a Black child eating watermelon on a counter behind Walz, who is cooking and smiling for the selfie.

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Screenshot from X taken December 27, 2024

Similar posts spread the picture across X and other platforms, prompting allegations of racism and speculative comments about what the item depicted.

Issues of race took center stage during the 2024 election as Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, born to immigrants from Jamaica and India, sought to make history as the first Black and South Asian woman to become president.

But the photo of Walz, Harris's running mate, is doctored.

Reverse image searches surfaced the original photo, which Walz shared to X and Facebook on December 21, and which does not show the statue in question (archived here). "Homemade caramel popcorn," the Minnesota governor wrote in the posts.

AFP contacted Walz's Minnesota governor's office for comment, but no response was forthcoming.

The miniature statue in the doctored version of the photo resembles a ceramic ashtray found in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture (archived here) that AFP uncovered via keyword searches.

The museum's website classifies the piece as a racist and stereotypical object and says it is part of an exhibition about racial segregation in the United States spanning from 1876 to 1978. The ashtray depicts the boy as a "picaninny," an offensive caricature of a Black child.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.