Fact Check: Donald Trump Was NOT Born In Pakistan

Fact Check

  • by: Victoria Eavis
Fact Check: Donald Trump Was NOT Born In Pakistan Born in U.S.

Was President Donald Trump actually born in Pakistan as Dawood Ibrahim Khan and then adopted by the Trump family nine years later? No, that's not true: Donald Trump was born in Queens, New York, and an image of his birth certificate exists to prove it. This baseless claim has been circulating for about four years, but is likely gaining steam again because of the recent birther accusations against Kamala Harris.

The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) published on August 15, 2020. The caption that accompanied the meme read in part, "Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. We should definitely look into it though. You wouldn't believe what people are finding out about him." The meme that claims Trump wasn't born in the U.S. began:

Donald Trump was born in a Muslim family in Shawal Valley North Waziristan on June 14th 1946, original name was Dawood Ibrahim Khan, he studied in a Madrassa in South Waziristan. His parents were killed in an accident in 1954, Capt. Stockdale a retired British Indian army officer brough him to England in 1955 and later a couple form Queens, NY by the name of Fred and Mary Trump adopted him and called him Donald.

This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:

Facebook screenshot

(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Aug 17 17:07:16 2020 UTC)

This is Trump's birth certificate that includes his full name, Donald John Trump, and place of birth, Queens, New York: o-TRUMP-570.jpg

A Pakistani news channel, Neo News, quickly picked up this misinformation and aired it as fact.

The photo of the young boy in the meme is not Trump as a child. This photo was taken in Afghanistan in 2009 by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Massoud Hossaini. In 2016, when Neo News claimed the photo was Trump, Hossaini tweeted:

Hossaini then replied to a Twitter user in the same thread:

The resurgence of the claim that Trump was not born in the U.S. comes as Kamala Harris has become the newest target of birther accusations after being named Joe Biden's running mate.

Lead Stories debunked accusations against Harris' birthplace and heritage previously:

Fact Check: Senator Kamala Harris IS A United States Citizen And IS Eligible To Be President

Fact Check: Photo Is NOT Kamala Harris With Her Parents And Is NOT Evidence She Is Not A Black American

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  Victoria Eavis

Victoria Eavis is a fact checker at Lead Stories. She recently graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology. In her last few months at Duke, she was a reporter for a student news site, The 9th Street Journal, that covers the city of Durham, North Carolina. 

Read more about or contact Victoria Eavis

Different viewpoints

Note: if reading this fact check makes you want to contact us to complain about bias, please check out our Blue feed first.

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion