Does a video on social media show a Trump rally crowd in Salem, Virginia, in November 2024? No, that's not true: The original video is taken from pop-music singer-songwriter Chappell Roan's performance on October 6, 2024, at the Austin City Limits music festival in Texas, an event unrelated to Trump's presidential campaign rally in Virginia in November 2024. The audio was altered to add chants in support of former President Donald J. Trump.
The claim appeared in a post on TikTok on November 3, 2024. Its text read:
Salem, Virginia
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Nov 4 17:57:07 2024 UTC)
The post text mislabeled the location of the crowd scene as in Virginia. As the camera scanned the crowd, pop music and audio of a chant that said, "We want Trump!" could be heard.
The crowd-scene video used in the post making the claim was taken from a post (archived here) that the Austin City Limits Festival placed on TikTok on October 14, 2024. The footage used for the claim about the Trump rally starts around 25 seconds in.
Chappell Roan performed before a "massive" crowd at the Austin City Limits Festival on October 6, 2024, according to the Austin-American Statesman. Wearing red pants, she can be seen on the stage in both the footage used for the claim about the Trump rally and the original video from the Austin City Limits Festival's post on TikTok. In the video about the Trump rally, she appears in the very first frame of the footage at the bottom left.
Lead Stories created a composite of the two videos at roughly the same frame. On the left is the Austin City Limits Festival original video at 28 seconds; on the right is the video used by the post making the claim about the Trump rally from the start of its footage:
(Source: Lead Stories composite image made on November 4, 2024)
The U.S. flag above a monitor, scenery, camera angle, camera movement, smoke and light show cycling through the colors of the rainbow during Roan's performance all match the video used in the TikTok post. The post making the claim is a crop of the original video; only the brightness is higher.
The original audio was just the sound of the crowd singing in unison, and there was no mention of Trump's name heard.
The video used in the post on TikTok that is the focus of this fact check had added "We want Trump!" chants over the song "Sandstorm" by music artist Darude.
As of November 3, 2024, other social media accounts had shared the post on TikTok that claimed the scene showed a Trump rally. An example can be seen in the screenshot of a post from X below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Nov 4 18:20:14 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning Donald Trump can be found here. Our other fact checks of claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential election are here.
