A rumor circulating online on Feb 9, 2025 — the day of the 2025 Super Bowl — concerned a photo purportedly showing a man giving two middle fingers to U.S. President Donald Trump, who was in attendance at the game in New Orleans.
The most prominent posts we located of users sharing the photo on the day of the Super Bowl appeared on Reddit, TikTok and X. One TikTok photo post (archived) receiving more than 6 million views and 1.4 million likes originally featured a caption labeling the man in the red shirt as a "Chiefs fan."
Two posts on X read, "THIS TO THE LOUVRE NOW," and, "CACKLING," receiving more than 2 million and 135,000 likes, and 10 million views and 666,000 likes, respectively. A since-deleted Reddit post titled "We need more of this kind of energy over the next 4 years" had more than 34,000 upvotes. Other examples appeared on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and Threads.
However, while the photo authentically showed a man giving two middle fingers to Trump, the photographer did not take the picture at the 2025 Super Bowl. As such, we have rated this miscaptioned, meaning users incorrectly captioned a genuine image.
A photographer, whose name we did not yet determine, originally snapped the photo at the Iowa at Iowa State college football game on Sept. 9, 2023. A video from progressive political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen displayed additional pictures of people giving Trump, at the time a former president, the middle-finger gesture.
On the day of the game, The Des Moines Register reported the crowd in Iowa "greeted" Trump with "cheers and chants." The reporting also said, "Some attendees did boo and shout obscenities as Trump passed, but he drew far more eager and excited onlookers who appeared unbothered that he faces criminal charges in four separate cases."