Does a social media video show Donald Trump playing golf on July 14, 2024, a day after he was struck in the ear during an attempted assassination? No, that's not true: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who was one of those who posted the video online, later said, "Okay I'm now told this video was uploaded today but *not* taken today." There's no evidence posted with the video in question to confirm it was taken July 14, 2024, nor that Trump golfed that day. Trump did fly to Wisconsin July 14, ahead of the Republican National Convention, which started July 15.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) published on X, formerly Twitter, on July 14, 2024. The video's caption said:
JUST IN: Cheers erupted as Trump played golf at Bedminster today, following his assassination attempt
President Trump also announced he will be arriving in Milwaukee today for the RNC
"Based on yesterday's terrible events, I was going to delay my trip to Wisconsin, and The Republican National Convention, by two days, but have just decided that I cannot allow a "shooter," or potential assassin, to force change to scheduling, or anything else.
Therefore, I will be leaving for Milwaukee, as scheduled, at 3;30 P.M. TODAY.
Thank you!
DJT"
DJT stands for Donald John Trump.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Jul 15 16:53:29 2024 UTC)
The post provided no evidence to substantiate its claim that Trump played golf on July 14, 2024, a day after he was shot at by Thomas Matthew Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania. Crooks, later identified by authorities as the shooter, was killed by Secret Service snipers after he opened fire on the former president during a campaign rally.
Social media
Claims that the former president teed it up less than 24 hours after the shooting circulated widely on social media, racking up tens of millions of views. In addition to the post above, here are two others, below, one of which is from Sen. Mike Lee of Utah:
(Source: X screenshots taken on Mon Jul 15 2024 UTC)
Lee initially spread the false claim, saying:
Gets shot
Gets up the next day
Goes golfing
But later on July 14, 2024, Lee backed away from his earlier social media comments with another post on X. He added:
Okay I'm now told this video was uploaded today but *not* taken today. My bad!
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Jul 15 21:00:44 2024 UTC)
At the time of writing, Lee had failed to remove the original inaccurate post about Trump supposedly hitting the links, which had tallied more than 9 million views up to that time. Lee's retraction had been seen by fewer than 170,000 people when this story was published.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims springing from the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024, can be found here.
