Is a meme picture of Kansas City Chiefs football player Travis Kelce in a "Biden Harris 2024" hat actually real? No, that's not true: The picture of Kelce seen in an Instagram post has been edited. In the original photo, Kelce is wearing an energy drink hat, not one endorsing the incumbent president and vice president.
The claim appeared on Instagram (archived here) where it was published on February 11, 2024. The caption opened:
The entire NFL offseason these next coming months will consist of nothing but Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift coverage.
This is what the post looked like on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 13:09:27 2024 UTC)
The rest of the caption goes on to claim that the NFL and the American electoral system have conspired together to "be propaganda for Elites to distract and control the masses."
Separate reverse image searched of Kelce (archived here) and Swift (archived here) showed that the Kelce image is fake, but the Swift one is real albeit from 2020. The picture of Swift holding a plate of "Biden Harris 2020" cookies can found be found on her verified Instagram account. It was posted on her account in October 2020 (pink highlighting done by Lead Stories):
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Feb 12 14:18:44 2024 UTC)
In contrast, the Kelce image is not real. Lead Stories found the original image of Kelce on Getty Images. In the Getty image, Kelce is not wearing a "Biden Harris 2024" hat, but an "A SHOC ENERGY" hat, a drink brand that's part of the larger brand, Accelerator Active Energy. At the time of writing, Kelce can be seen on Accelerator Active Energy's homepage (archived here) and on their Athletes page (archived here).
There is no evidence of Kelce wearing a "Biden Harris 2024" hat, according to a Google News search (archived here).
At the time of writing, neither Swift nor Kelce had endorsed a 2024 presidential candidate. Searching "Taylor Swift AND endorses AND American presidential election 2024" (archived here) and "Travis Kelce AND endorses AND American presidential election 2024" (archived here) on Google News did not yield any relevant results from the online news index.
Other Lead Stories fact checks on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are here.
