A rumor that circulated online in mid-June 2025 claimed a video authentically showed U.S. President Donald Trump swinging a golf club to hit a ball on a tee, missing the ball completely and then picking up the ball and moving along.
For example, on June 20, Aaron Parnas — a popular user who provides social media users with breaking news alerts — posted the video to his more than 300,000 Threads followers with the caption, "Donald Trump tries to hit the golf ball, misses, then tries to pick up the ball before anyone notices."
An X user also posted the clip on the same day, receiving more than 1.2 million views as of this writing. The post (archived) read, "Watch closely, Trump completely misses the ball and then tries to grab it off the ground before anyone notices. Trump spends all that time on the golf course and is still one of the worst golfers in the country, it's absolutely hilarious." Others (archived) shared (archived) the same video (archived) on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok and X (archived).
(X screenshot @MatthewLauseng)
However, the video showing Trump missing the golf drive with his club and then picking the ball up off of the tee was not genuine. The clip featured a watermark for the X user @Tarquin_Helmet, who indicated in several replies he doctored the clip with video-editing software. The user's X bio identifies them as an "English graphic satirist."
An examination of the end of the altered video shows Trump's hand partially disappear when supposedly picking up the ball off of the tee. That moment served as one sign of the clip's fakery.
Washington, D.C., news station WUSA published the original video, which did not show Trump swinging and missing the ball, on May 25, 2023. The clip confirmed the month and year, as well as the location, of the recording as the site of a LIV Golf event at Trump National Golf Club Washington D.C. in Virginia. The event occurred from May 26 to 28. The video shows Trump taking practice swings, successfully hitting the ball off of the tee and then gathering the tee.
A check of Parnas' post link sharing the doctored video redirected to the main page for his Threads feed, indicating he or someone else removed his post (archived) after publication. In a private message on X, Parnas told Snopes, "I took it down two min after posting it. I removed because I could not confirm it's veracity."
X user @Tarquin_Helmet also told us, "It was originally posted on 25th May 2023 and has zero AI content. It was made using After Effects."
For further reading, a previous fact check examined whether or not Trump left a U.S. Military Academy at West Point graduation early to play golf.