A rumor spread widely in late August 2025 that the White House released photographs of U.S. President Donald Trump from 2019 and claimed they were from the present day.
The claim circulated amid a larger rumor that Trump had died over Labor Day weekend, which was not true. A post on TikTok (archived) alleged that the White House released photos from 2019 as an attempt to cover up the alleged news in an effort to depict the president alive and well.
The video featured the user clicking back and forth between different photos and claiming they were nearly identical. As of this writing, the video had nearly 500,000 reactions and thousands of comments. The photos depicted the president and his grandchildren getting into the presidential motorcade from the White House's south lawn en route to the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
The rumor caught on and spread to other social media platforms, such as Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Instagram (archived) and Reddit, which led Snopes readers to reach out asking for clarification on the situation.
However, the claim that the White House disseminated old photographs of Trump was false.
First, tabloid website TMZ posted the photos that social media users then claimed were from 2019, as seen in the viral TikTok video, so it was not the White House that shared the images.
Further, TMZ credited the photos to Getty Images, which had more images of Trump available from Labor Day weekend 2025. A reverse-image search of the photos in question revealed no results earlier than that weekend. Had the photos actually been several years old, there likely would have been results from previous years.
While there are obvious similarities between the 2025 photos and the ones from 2019 mentioned in the claims — primarily the angle, license plate of the vehicle and Trump's golf attire — there are similar photos from identical angles from 2018 and 2020 as well.
Many users focused on the license plate being identical in the various photos. The Washington, D.C., plate designated "800-002" has been used on a variety of the sitting president's vehicles since 2013. The same license plate can be seen in photos of Trump's motorcade from his first term, as well as motorcades of former presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Additionally, the 2025 photographs featured Trump's grandchildren Kai, 18, and Spencer, 12, children of Donald Trump Jr. Had these photos originated in 2019, the children would have been six years younger, which they clearly are not.
Finally, the 2019 photo depicted Trump in a red "Make America Great Again" hat emblazoned with "45" on the side, denoting himself as the 45th president of the U.S.
Since taking his second term as president, Trump has worn an updated hat with "45-47." While the "45-47" was not visible in the photographs shared by TMZ, it was present on a white hat featured in a Getty Images photo from Sept. 1, 2025, as Trump wrapped up his weekend of golf.
Snopes reached out to the White House for further comment and will update this article if we receive a response.