In the months leading up to the 2024 U.S. elections, a rumor circulated online that claimed a video showed former U.S. President Donald Trump "waving at no one" after walking outside of Trump Tower in New York. A Snopes reader asked us to verify whether this rumor was true.
The reader's email featured a screenshot of an Instagram post showing a video with the onscreen caption, "Speaking of crowd size, here's Donald waving at no one." The caption for the video read, "The emperor has no clothes."
Using our reader's submitted screenshot, we located the same post (archived) shared by a user on Facebook and Instagram on Aug. 11, 2024. As of Aug. 14, that post received nearly 4 million views and more than 34,000 shares.
In our research, we concluded this post and others like it falsely claimed the video showed Trump "waving at no one" or "waving at nonexistent supporters." The slightly longer original video featured loud cheers and a lengthier shot of a crowd standing behind barricades. In cases like this one where a picture or video is real but also features a false or misleading description, we apply the fact-check rating "Miscaptioned."
Finding the Original Post of the Video
As visible at the top of the screenshot above, the post submitted by our reader displayed the source of the video's upload as an earlier post (archived) from the Instagram account for the progressive network MeidasTouch. That video, posted on the MeidasTouch account more than two months earlier on June 2, displayed the false onscreen caption, "Trump Waves to Non-Existent Supporters." Its false caption also read, "Trump tries to stage a propaganda video showing lots of supporters cheering for him as he leaves Trump Tower, but... nobody is there."
A reverse-image search on the TinEye.com website for the first frame of the video displayed results for reposts from other users on Imgur.com. Some of those users simply reposted the same video with the caption shared by MeidasTouch.
A watermark visible on some of the videos displayed the Instagram handle @realtoriabrooke, a user who posted a longer video on Instagram and X on May 23, 2024. That user's X post credited the video to Margo Martin, whose bio described her as the deputy director of communications for Trump's campaign.
In other words, Martin first uploaded the original and longer video on the afternoon of May 23. The video showed the former president departing Trump Tower for a campaign rally in the South Bronx.
The Getty Images website features several photos of Martin departing Trump Tower that day. Some of the pictures even show her holding the phone possibly used to capture the video.
Trump Was Waving at People Behind Barricades
As circled in the image below, people standing behind barricades are visible in Martin's video. Martin's longer video presented a slightly clearer image quality than the reposts of the clip, seeing as the reposts went through at least one additional round of video compression.
Our closer examination of the original video found crowds visible behind barricades. Also, MeidasTouch's upload of the video cut out loud cheering from the end of the original clip. (Image courtesy Margo Martin/X)
Martin's original video lasted about four seconds longer than the version uploaded by MeidasTouch. Those four seconds featured loud cheers from the crowd. Police cars and a taxi block the view of other sections of barricades. Further, some cheering is also faintly audible in the distance before the louder cheers.
We reached out to MeidasTouch via email to ask why they shared a shortened version of the clip. We also contacted Martin via direct message on X to ask about the day she posted the video. We will update this story if we receive a response.
For further reading, we previously reported about a similar rumor claiming Trump waved at "nobody" at a NASCAR race.