The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Threads on August 4, 2024, under the heading "Rehearsed and Staged , a Big Lie." The meme said:
I knew I had seen it before
so weird
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 15:47:22 2024 UTC)
The post provided no evidence to support its claim that the image of Trump matches a real photo of Hitler, which supports an implication that the Trump shooting was staged.
Hitler photograph
DeepFake-o-meter
The picture of Hitler in the post is digitally manipulated. Lead Stories ran it through an online tool called the DeepFake-o-meter, hosted by The University at Buffalo's Media Forensic Lab, which focuses on "the forensic analysis of digital media." The following screenshot shows the findings: that the Hitler image bears evidence of being AI-generated.
(Source: Deepfake-o-meter screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 18:03:10 2024 UTC)
Image search
Lead Stories could not find a historical photograph of Hitler that matched what was used in the social media post. A query using the reverse image search tool TinEye (archived here) produced "0 matches." See below:
(Source: TinEye screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 18:53:39 2024 UTC)
The image of Hitler used to create the digitally manipulated version was taken in 1934. Lead Stories also used TinEye to find it (here and archived here). The original picture appears below:
(Source: Alamy screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 18:17:40 2024 UTC)
The caption for the photo says:
Adolf Hitler speech, leader of the Nazi Party and Fuhrer of Germany making an impassioned speech with his fist clenched, wearing military uniform with Iron Cross and Swastika armband. The day on which he became commander in chief of Nazi Germanys armed forces. Nazi Germany 1934.
By flipping the picture, you end up with Hitler in the same general orientation as the digitally manipulated image, to which other people have been added in the foreground and background. The authentic original photograph and the manipulated digital image are shown side-by-side below:
(Source: Threads and Alamy screenshots taken on Mon Aug 5 2024 UTC)
Whoever created the photo meant to mimic the picture of Trump following the assassination attempt also switched Hitler's clenched fist from one side to the other and added the man, the woman and the Nazi flag.
Read more
Additional Lead Stories fact checks about Donald Trump can be found here.
