Trump fell, as shown by this image?

A rumor that circulated online in August 2025 claimed U.S. President Donald Trump recently took a fall and that a photographer captured the tumble on camera.

In the most prominent example, this matter trended on Meta's social media platform Threads. In the U.S. morning hours of Aug. 11, Threads' "trending now" list displayed the text, "Trump fell, prompting varied responses on social media platforms." The trend showed "179K" as the number of users' posts allegedly discussing the matter. That number reflected any past conversations in which users mentioned the word "Trump" and/or "fell."

(Threads)

Threads users genuinely asked whether Trump truly fell. One user posted (archived), "Is Trump Fall a real thing? Did he actually fall?" Another person inquired (archived), "Did Trump really fall over? I can't find it anywhere." Users on X also asked the Grok AI tool whether Trump fell, and generally shared the rumor, as well.

However, searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets credibly reporting Trump falling in early August. Had Trump fallen on the ground, outlets worldwide would have covered the matter.

Instead, the rumor was false. On or before Aug. 10, someone asked an artificial-intelligence tool to create a fake image showing Trump having just fallen onto a grassy surface. That image, once posted, led Threads' AI technology to misinterpret the matter and create the false trend.

While it's possible Trump — or any other politician — could fall in a private setting in a moment that would receive no publicity, Snopes traced the origins of how this particular rumor began. The evidence of the inauthentic way this specific rumor started allowed us to draw a straight line to a false rating.

We contacted the White House to ask if officials wished to share a statement regarding the rumor and will update this story if we receive a response.

How the 'Trump fell' rumor originated

For users logged in on Threads, the "Trump fell" trend listed (archived) several posts on the subject. Some displayed the inauthentic image showing Trump having fallen on the ground.

A reverse-image search with Google Images found two of the most prominent examples of posts featuring the fake image were from the content creator Keith Edwards, who posted the image on Threads (archived) and X (archived), receiving more than 786,000 and 1.6 million views, respectively.

(@keithedwards/X)

Then, on Aug. 11, the false statement "Trump fell" trended on Threads. Threads' "trending now" section displays the text, "What people are saying, summarized by AI."

In other words, a human used AI to create the fake image — as exhibited by the slightly different appearance of Trump's face, when compared to genuine photos — and Meta's AI technology then misinterpreted posts with that image and created the "Trump fell" trend, furthering the false rumor.

The fake picture displayed small text reading, "trump is in the epstein files" — a reference to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The text referenced a story The Wall Street Journal published on July 23 headlined "Justice Department Told Trump in May That His Name Is Among Many in the Epstein Files."

We contacted Edwards to ask whether he created the image showing Trump falling and will update this story if we receive more information.

For further reading, a previous fact check from June confirmed the authenticity of videos and photos showing Trump stumbling while walking up the steps to board Air Force One.