An alleged sign positioned outside an Exxon gas station declared, "Free gas any day Trump doesn't say something stupid," according to an image circulating online in May 2025.
The photo was widely shared on social media platforms including multiple posts on Instagram (archived, archived), Threads (archived), BlueSky (archived) and Facebook (archived).
The photo gained popularity as U.S. President Donald Trump made headlines for incidents such as referring to the toy company Mattel as a country and posting an AI-generated image of himself as the pope.
However, the image is a fake. It was made using a once-popular gas station sign generator that allowed people to input the prices of regular, plus and supreme gasoline as well as five lines of text that would appear on the sign.
Because the images generated by the tool appear identical save for the prices and text inserted by users, a reverse-image search returns results as far back as 2008. A photograph matching the same angle, cars and sign in the background as the one in the claim can be seen on a theme park blog from that time. The text reads, "Forget about that well deserved trip to your local theme park!" The same reverse-image search revealed dozens of other examples through the years.
The bottom of the generated images reveals a URL that appears to have been deactivated in 2022 according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The reverse-image search shows the specific sign featured in the claim has been circulating since at least 2018 (archived), before the generator went down.
Further, keen-eyed viewers will note that the image in question has the lower portion cropped, likely to remove the URL that would appear on generated images.
While the generator is no longer active, a Google search for "atom smasher gas sign generator" reveals a slew of results ranging from old fact checks about its misleading signs to a Reddit thread mourning the loss of the tool and a Pinterest collection of the funniest creations.
Messages included on the generated images range from political statements like "Support the United States Supreme Court" to jokes implying fired employees are giving away free gas.