As Trump surges troops to Washington, old images recirculate online
- Published on August 15, 2025 at 21:40
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
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"These pics from DC today are downright dystopian," says the August 11, 2025 post on X.
The post came after Trump said August 11 that he would place Washington's Metropolitan Police Department under federal government control while also sending the National Guard to patrol the streets of the US capital.
The president ordered the deployment -- which included 800 National Guard troops and follows a similar move in Los Angeles, California in June -- to curb what he billed as rampant crime in the city, where violent offenses are in fact down.
AFP and other media captured photos and videos of military personnel and vehicles set up throughout the city.
But the photos shared in the post on X are old and unrelated to Trump's actions, reverse image searches revealed.
The first image in the post is an AFP photo captured January 17, 2021, showing members of the National Guard standing watch outside the US Capitol in anticipation of possible protests from anti-government and far-right groups.
After the January 6, 2021 attack on the building and Trump's false claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election, authorities had been on alert for potential armed protests ahead of Biden's presidential inauguration.
The second picture in the X post was published by the National Guard and shows the force's soldiers providing security outside the Capitol the day Biden was sworn into office (archived here).
According to the photo's caption, more than 26,000 National Guard members from all states and territories mobilized to Washington for the ceremony, with about 2,200 staying until May 2021.
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
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