September 25, 2020
Charlotte Wismer | MediaWise Teen Fact-Checker

MediaWise rating: Not legit

A photo of white-robed Ku Klux Klan members carrying a sign that reads “Trump Pence” has spread across social media. But, is it legit?

Do a reverse image search

A reverse image search of this picture using Google Images brings up multiple similar images —  the top result notably missing “Trump Pence.” Instead, the banner reads “Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” Everything else in the photo is the same.

What are other sources saying?

The image search brought up several articles, including posts from legit fact-checking organizations like Snopes and Reuters.

According to Snopes, the original photo was taken during a 2009 KKK rally, years before Trump announced his campaign to run for president. Snopes also included the unedited version, which, again, does not show them holding a Trump/Pence banner.

And according to Reuters, this photo has been edited multiple times over the years to say different things. For example, one was poorly edited to make it seem like the KKK supported then-President Barack Obama.

Our rating

This photo was doctored, and the banner held by the photographed Klu Klux Klan members did not actually say “Trump, Pence.” The banner said “Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”

This fact check is available at IFCN’s 2020 U.S. Elections FactChat #Chatbot on WhatsApp. Click here for more.

Support high-integrity, independent journalism that serves democracy. Make a gift to Poynter today. The Poynter Institute is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, and your gift helps us make good journalism better.
Donate

More News

Back to News
https://www.poynter.org/tfcn/2020/fact-check-did-kkk-members-carry-a-banner-endorsing-trump/
www.poynter.org
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-45
222916
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:YTHHKZCV7UXLRABVSITJ5EEPAU7OEP4A
<urn:uuid:60a4d826-573d-4702-9255-4f70cc42efbd>
2020-10-20T12:21:22Z
35.224.135.162
text/html
sha1:BAH4ZKJWPWW2MNQB3Q4KV7IB4HUB46II
<urn:uuid:f7a6c1f6-031c-494c-83ff-1dd23d39623b>
https://www.poynter.org/tfcn/2020/fact-check-did-kkk-members-carry-a-banner-endorsing-trump/
response
<urn:uuid:f5128086-14cc-4b13-be7c-d5068b315e0f>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-45
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-54.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.17 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/