Does an authentic photograph show supporters at the Republican National Convention wearing diapers for Donald Trump in July 2024? No, that's not true: A reverse image search revealed that the image originated on satire website The Shovel. Lead Stories ran the image through a detection tool which found "substantial evidence" that the image was generated using AI.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) made on Threads on August 1, 2024. It opened:
This is really weird. Can you imagine being this weird?
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 18:00:23 UTC)
The post had a picture of six men wearing what appeared to be diapers. Text over the picture said: "Supporters Arrive At Republican Convention Wearing Diapers, Out Of Respect For Donald Trump."
There have been people at Trump events wearing diapers to make parodic points, according to reports by Sky News and Snopes, but not at the Republican National Convention in July 2024.
A reverse image search proves that the Republican convention image originated from satire website The Shovel. Its about page explains that they publish mock news.
In addition, Lead Stories ran the image through True Media, an AI detection tool, which found substantial evidence that the image was created using AI.
Here are the findings of True Media:
(Source: True Media screenshot taken on Mon Aug 5 17:24:31 UTC)
Other Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to Donald Trump can be found here.
