Ahead of the 2024 election, some social media users are claiming former President Barack Obama wore a T-shirt opposing former President Donald Trump’s campaign for a second term.
An April 23 Facebook post showed a photo of Obama wearing a black T-shirt that said, “NOPE Not again.” The “O” in “nope” was stylized with a blond swoop of hair and a red necktie that mimicked Trump’s likeness.
The post’s caption linked to a website selling the shirt.
(Screengrab from Facebook)
Another Facebook post shared the same image. These posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
It’s no surprise that Obama favors his former vice president, Joe Biden, over Trump in the 2024 election. Obama has been helping Biden’s campaign by appealing to small-dollar donors in advertising and attending high-dollar fundraising events.
But this photo is not real.
Reverse-image searches using Google Images, TinEye and Yandex found no authentic images of Obama wearing this shirt. We searched for the image in photo databases of Getty Images and The Associated Press and found no results.
We also found no news articles about Obama wearing this T-shirt when searching Google and the Nexis news database.
This is not the first time images of Obama have been altered to falsely show him wearing a T-shirt with anti-Trump messaging. Reuters and Agence France-Presse fact-checked similar fake images of Obama.
PolitiFact and other news outlets have also fact-checked multiple false claims about well-known figures, including pop singer Taylor Swift, actor Tom Hanks and former first lady Michelle Obama, wearing this “NOPE Not again” T-shirt.
We rate the claim that a photo shows Obama wearing an anti-Trump T-shirt Pants on Fire!
