Old picture, video misrepresented after Donald Trump attends Super Bowl
- Published on February 12, 2025 at 22:03
- 6 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"Trump gets booed at the superbowl," says a February 9, 2025 post on Threads.
The clip appears to show the Republican and First Lady Melania Trump walking onto an American football field as boos ring out.
Similar posts spread across Threads and other platforms after Trump attended the NFL's championship game in New Orleans, Louisiana, becoming the first sitting president to ever do so. The Eagles routed the Chiefs 40-22 in the February 9 match, which also saw pop star Taylor Swift, who is dating Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce, and a bevy of other celebrities in the stands.
Other posts spread online claimed to show a fan in red flashing two middle-finger gestures as Trump waved at the crowd from a stadium suite.
"This photo of Trump and a Chiefs fan at the Super Bowl," says one post sharing the picture on X.
"Superbowl picture of the century," adds another on Instagram.
Neither shot of Trump was taken at the NFL's big game, however -- and the video of the president walking onto the gridiron was altered to dub in booing sounds.
Reverse image searches revealed the footage of Donald and Melania Trump taking the field dates to January 13, 2020, when they attended the college football national championship between the Clemson University Tigers and the Louisiana State University Tigers -- coincidentally in the same stadium as the 2025 Super Bowl (archived here).
Trump was in his first term as president at the time.
Local news sites published the same clip on YouTube (archived here and here). The boos heard in the version circulating online are not part of the original audio.
The Trump White House also shared video highlights from the event.
At the 2025 Super Bowl, Trump was pictured on the field with local law enforcement and survivors of the New Year's car ramming attack on New Orleans. Melania did not attend the game.
The second image depicting a man gesturing explicitly at Trump has circulated online since at least September 9, 2023, when the Iowa State University Cyclones played the University of Iowa Hawkeyes in a rivalry matchup, at a time when Trump was a candidate and Joe Biden was president. Text on the back of the man's shirt says: "Iowa State Cyclones."
Liberal commentators and outlets such as Brian Tyler Cohen and MeidasTouch were among the first to share the picture along with other similar photos, reverse image searches show (archived here, here, here and here).
AFP could not independently verify the photo's origin or authenticity. Cohen said in a February 11, 2025 email he could not recall the original source.
The New York Times and Des Moines Register reported that Trump received a mix of cheers and boos at the Cyclones' stadium, with the Times writing: "Some attendees gave him the middle finger from the stands while he looked on from the glass-paneled box from which he watched the game" (archived here and here).
A USA Today report mentioned the image: "Social media lit up with videos of the boos and catcalls that greeted Trump during his visit to Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, Iowa, including a photo that quickly gained traction of an Iowa State fan flipping off the former president with his middle fingers" (archived here).
During the 2025 Super Bowl, meanwhile, cameras captured Trump during the US national anthem. He received a broadly positive reception, AFP reported.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
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