Did journalist Bob Woodward tweet about Donald Trump wearing incontinence underpants? No, that's not true: Earlier versions of the tweet made it clear that its creator -- not Woodward -- was someone who specializes in anti-Trump parody. The later versions of the tweet crop out the reference to the satirist, who published the meme on X in January 2023.
The claim appeared in a post on Threads (archived here) on October 14, 2024. It shows an image of Woodward's X handle with a tweet that reads:
Since Donald Trump is suing me I will reveal something I've never revealed before about a public figure. The scent-barrier on his Depends™ is completely insufficent
Here is what the post on Threads looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Threads screenshot taken on Tue Oct 15 14:42:39 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories ran the Threads meme through a reverse-image search on Google Lens on October 15, 2024 (archived here). It revealed that the same image of a tweet purportedly authored by Woodward had appeared on Reddit on January 31, 2023. However, the Reddit version also featured a satire disclaimer, plus the following information at the bottom:
6:68 PM • Jan 30, 2023 - Parody by Back Rub
(Source: Reddit screenshot taken on Tue Oct 15 16:03:10 2024 UTC)
The version that appeared on Threads in October 2024 has been cropped, as evidenced by the fact that the "more options" button in the upper right-hand corner has only two dots instead of X's standard three.
Lead Stories then searched X for "Back Rub" and found an account belonging to a user called Faith Back Rub (@FaithRubPol). The description on the user's profile reads:
Opposed Trump since 2015. Aimed this Christian Apologetics page at fascism. This account itself is not a parody but most of the images we share are parodies.
Lead Stories then conducted a Google keyword search (archived here), which revealed that Faith Back Rub had posted the tweet containing the claim about Trump's alleged incontinence problems on January 30, 2023 (archived here). The account features many tweets attributing fictitious claims to public figures, most of which are marked with the word "parody."
Meanwhile, a search of Woodward's X account did not turn up any tweets at all between January 20, 2023, and January 31, 2023. A Google advanced search between the dates of January 20, 2023, and February 20, 2023, did not turn up any news articles on Woodward's purported tweet, which would have generated headlines if it were real (archived here).
At the time this was written, the claim had previously been reviewed by Reuters.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning former President Donald Trump can be found here. Fact checks of claims about the U.S. presidential election are here.
