A rumor circulating online in late 2024 claimed a photo shows a set sold by the Lego toy company featuring U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, a McDonald's fast-food restaurant and a garbage truck.
According to a reverse-image search, users began sharing the image of the purported Lego set in early November 2024. It was unclear who created the image, but it was inspired by Trump's late-October 2024 visit to a Pennsylvania McDonald's and his subsequent photo opportunity boarding a garbage truck in Wisconsin.
The aim of Trump's campaign stop at the McDonald's location was to draw attention to Vice President Kamala Harris' claim she worked at one of the fast-food chain's restaurants in the 1980s. Meanwhile, his garbage truck photo opportunity sought to capitalize on a controversy involving President Joe Biden's use of the word "garbage" while speaking to Latino activists about a Trump campaign rally.
Our research located numerous reposts displaying the photo of the supposed Trump Lego set on Facebook, Instagram, Patriots.win, TikTok and X. For example, one of the most popular posts (archived) appeared on X on Nov. 6, in a response to a post from Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who had asked users to share memes following his father's reelection victory. The reply had more than 1.6 million views and read, "Number one toys for Christmas 2024?"
While some users submitted comments on the aforementioned websites showing they realized the Lego set was not an official company creation, others were unsure. For example, some users asked, "I wonder if you can really buy them?" "Uh is this real? Cause I really want it," "Where can I get these from?" and "Is this real? I need a few of these!!"
However, this picture did not show an authentic Lego set featuring Trump, a McDonald's restaurant and a garbage truck. The toy company does not sell products themed on U.S. politicians.
The photo possibly originated as the creation of someone using an artificial-intelligence tool. After all, the right hand of the Trump-inspired Lego character standing in front of the McDonald's showed a possible discrepancy, in that its shape and color didn't appear normal. Further, the "Trump 2024" logo — next to the Lego company logo — displayed on the garbage truck were potentially askew.
This image provides a closer look at the possible discrepancies.
As of this writing, the oldest instance we located displaying the photo of the Trump-inspired Lego set came from a Nov. 2 post on X (archived). We found no indication of that user being the originator of the picture. Further, on Nov. 9 — seven days later — a user on the SoraCreators.ai website posted a video bringing the photo to life in a clip created using the generative-media tool Kling AI.
We contacted both users to ask whether they created the image or knew who did and will update this story if we receive further details.