Does a viral video show Donald Trump dancing on "Soul Train" in the 1980s? No, that's not true: When played at reduced speed, the footage of a 1987 "Soul Train" episode reveals that it features a different, younger man with a mullet. As multiple photos of Trump from that year confirm, he didn't have a mullet. The footage was originally uploaded 11 years before the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok that was posted on April 6, 2024, under the caption:
Trump on
SOUL
TRAIN!
At the 0:05 mark, another line appeared on the screen:
It's really him.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Sep 26 14:29:21 2024 UTC)
A reverse image search showed that the earliest version of the footage available online dated back to October 18, 2013 (archived here). That was roughly three years before Trump's victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The upload's description said nothing about him.
If slowed down, the footage showed that the face of the dancing man is different from that of 2024 Republican presidential nominee Trump:
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Thu Sep 26 17:50:10 2024 UTC)
The video captured people dancing to music with audible lyrics (archived here) matching "Why Should I Cry?" by Nona Hendryx. That song was playing on radio stations back in 1987, as the charts published by Billboard magazine showed here (archived here) and on page 27 here (archived here).
The video-editing choices, including the sequence that opens with a shot of a disco ball, as well as the overall setting were consistent with dance segments featured on "Soul Train," a music show broadcast on TV in the United States between 1971 and 2006 (archived here).
According to IMDb (archived here), Hendryx performed on "Soul Train" in May 1987.
Already a public figure, Trump was extensively photographed that year. Born in 1946 (archived here), Trump turned 41 in June 1987. Pictures of him from that period -- as seen, for example, on Getty Images (archived here) -- show a man who is less slim and much older than the person in the footage in question. Furthermore, unlike that man, Trump didn't wear a mullet hairstyle (archived here) in 1987.
Had the then-real estate entrepreneur appeared on the popular show, that would have been likely mentioned in celebrity news. But an advanced Google search for the keywords seen here (archived here), set for archival results from 1987, showed no articles corroborating the rumor.
The same claim was previously reviewed by Snopes, Check Your Fact and Sportskeeda.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims about Donald Trump can be found here. Stories about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
