If the poor image quality and extreme unlikeliness of such a scenario playing out weren't dead giveaways, a reporter has proven the photo is a fake. Photo / Facebook
If the poor image quality and extreme unlikeliness of such a scenario playing out weren't dead giveaways, a reporter has proven the photo is a fake. Photo / Facebook
Over the past week, you may have seen this image of a rather gallant Donald Trump floating around the internet.
Yes, quite literally floating. In the picture, which has gone viral in the wake of Hurricane Florence, the US President appears to be rescuing a stranded man on a raft in heavy floodwaters.
The only trouble is the photo is fake. If the poor image quality and extreme unlikeliness of such a scenario playing out weren't dead giveaways, New York Times reporter Kevin Roose has pointed out the picture was taken in Central Texas in 2015 — long before Trump had entered the White House.
The original photo shows three rescuers with the Austin Fire Department reaching out to save a man grasping a chain-link fence.
You'd think the photoshop job was obvious. There's the fact that Trump isn't wearing a life vest, the fact that presidents don't personally take part in rescue operations after disasters, and the fact that they probably wouldn't wear a full suit in the unusual circumstance that they did.
Yet Roose's screenshot reveals the image has been shared more than 250,000 times on Facebook, with the caption: "You won't see this on the news … make it go viral."
Here is the footage of the original rescue in May 2015, courtesy of the Austin Fire Department:
Earlier this week, we showed you some dramatic video taken by our friends at KXAN Austin News of a water rescue happening live at House Park. Unfortunately, the reporter's cell phone cut out right at the moment of rescue. However, our Captain Nick Warring managed to capture the whole thing! Kudos to all of our folks who have been working so hard over the last few days both here in Austin and around the state to help move the recovery effort along as quickly as possible. #atxfloods
If you look closely, you can see Trump actually appears to be giving the stranded man a 'Make America Great Again' hat in the digitally altered photo, which … wouldn't be all that helpful in a flood.
A similar photoshopped image of Mr Trump saving a pair of kittens during a flood went viral last year after it was posted by Facebook group 'All about President Trump'.
The post, which was captioned "Things the media forgets!" and uploaded in the wake of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, amassed 20,000 likes and over 17,000 shares, despite the fact that it clearly wasn't Trump's body and the face and body skin tones didn't match.
Fact-checking website Snopes traced the image back to floodwaters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2008.
To be fair, Trump did throw rolls of paper towels into a crowd of people impacted by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, so … that's something.
President Donald Trump tosses paper towels into a crowd at Calvary Chapel in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the region. Photo / AP
Addressing the backlash to the incident, he said the crowd was "having fun" and urging him to throw them in.
"They had these beautiful, soft towels. Very good towels," he told TBN. "And I came in and there was a crowd of a lot of people. And they were screaming and they were loving everything. I was having fun, they were having fun. They said, 'Throw 'em to me! Throw 'em to me Mr President!'"
Earlier this year, Facebook reaffirmed its pledge to eliminate misinformation being distributed on the social media network.
