A photo meme dating to at least 2018 and made to resemble a “mugshot” of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump has been confusing social media users, some of whom believe Trump has been arrested amid news of potential charges by New York prosecutors.
The image of two mugshot-style portraits of Trump, who appears to be wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, can be seen in a tweet with more than 1.6 million views (here). Another example can be seen on Facebook (here).
User comments suggest that some appeared to believe the image is authentic, including: “Trump got arrested? Or is this just a good ai generated image”, “HE GOT ARRESTED???” and “wait what happened to the old man omg...”
A March 9 New York Times report stating that New York prosecutors had signaled they could arrest Trump (here) on charges related to business records falsified to conceal hush-money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels has sparked speculation that an arrest of the former president is imminent (here) , (here) , (here) .
However, the mugshot meme appeared online at least as early as July 2018, including in satirical posts, according to a reverse image search on TinEye (here).
Reuters did not identify the original photos of Trump edited to fabricate the meme, but the images of Trump facing forward and to the side closely resemble previously published portraits (here) and (here).
At the time of publication, no arrest of Trump had been announced.
VERDICT
Satire. The image is a meme that has been circulating since at least 2018 and is not an authentic mugshot of Donald J. Trump.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.