Does a collection of still images demonstrate that other politicians have made the same gesture as Elon Musk did at the closing of his speech at President Donald Trump's inauguration rally in 2025? No, that's not true: These photos do show real moments in time, and they are authentic -- but they do not capture the full context in which the gesture was made. When viewed in a video format, sometimes with words of a speech, the gestures are not remarkable. These cherry-picked screenshots, critical of the various politicians, were previously circulated online to portray something that hadn't happened.
The image appeared in a post (archived here) on Instagram on January 21, 2025, with text captioning that read:
Hypocrisy 101 from the media
This is how the post appeared on Instagram at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Tue Jan 21 20:46:59 2025 UTC)
The scope of this fact check does not extend to determining Musk's intention when he made an emphatic gesture twice with his right arm raised. After his speech at the presidential inauguration rally, Musk pounded his chest, or heart, and thrust his hand upward (pictured in the screenshot directly above). He turned to face those behind him, and repeated the gesture. Video footage (archived here) embedded below (at 0:13 seconds in) shows Musk making the gesture. He said:
Thank you. My heart goes out to you.
The post also has four additional photos of Kamala Harris, Hillary Rodham Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Lead Stories was able to identify the events where these images originated but could not find a video match for Clinton or Bush.
Kamala Harris
Harris was making a speech at the South Carolina Democratic Convention in Columbia on June 22, 2019. She made an arm gesture at the culmination of her speech when she declared, "We're not going back."
The moment Harris raised her right arm appears at the 5:12-minute mark in the YouTube video embedded above (archived here). She gestured with her right hand, enumerating her points with a pointed finger. Then Harris flattened her hand in a final closing gesture with a somber facial expression. She said:
A president who says he wants to make America great again, well what does that mean? Does that mean he wants to take us back to before schools were integrated? Does that mean he wants to take us back before the Voting Rights Act was enacted? Does that mean he wants to take us back before the Civil Rights Act was enacted? Does he mean he wants to take us back before Roe v. Wade was enacted? Because we're not going back. We're not going back.
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Thu Jan 23 00:27:55 2025 UTC)
Hillary Clinton waves to greet crowd
The picture of Clinton in a camel-colored suit dates back to a campaign stop in McAllen, Texas, on February 13, 2008. A video (embedded below) was posted to YouTube on the channel of The Associated Press Archive on July 31, 2015.
Clinton wore this tan suit at several campaign stops. Lead Stories pinpointed the location and date using the women shown behind Clinton in the photo, one in a white jacket (below left), which matched the AP video of the McAllen stop (below right).
It does not appear that this 1:36-minute-long news segment, with several cuts, contains the footage showing the exact moment that appears in the post being fact checked. However, the 0:05-second mark in the video (archived here) shows Clinton waving to the crowd with an excited, open-mouthed expression and switching the hand she is waving. This appears to be a characteristic wave, as seen in the July 30, 2010, footage of Hillary and Bill Clinton (pictured below bottom) on the eve of their daughter's wedding at 0:08 seconds (archived here).
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X and YouTube screenshots taken on Thu Jan 23 00:04:40 2025 UTC)
Barack Obama speaking on Medicare
A 1:20:54-hour-long video (embedded below) was posted on January 30, 2010, by the Obama White House titled, "President Obama Takes Questions at GOP House Issues Conference." It was recorded at the GOP House Issues Conference in Baltimore on January 29, 2010.
At the 1:20:51 hours mark (archived here), Obama answered a question about Medicare. With his right hand, he draws an imaginary level line in front of himself to represent a constant cost, then he gestures, reaching his hand up while making eye contact with the congressman he is responding to, with his hand position representing a high cost, or as he said, "out of whack."
In the composite image below, this moment can be seen from two angles, with the inset image on the right showing a higher-resolution copy (archived here) of the image appearing in the Instagram post. The transcript of Obama's speech reads:
And the basic idea would be that at some point we hold Medicare cost per recipient constant as a way of making sure that that doesn't go way out of whack, and I'm sure there are some details that --
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X and YouTube screenshots taken on Thu Jan 23 00:23:06 2025 UTC)
George W. Bush
The photo of Bush (pictured below) has circulated since at least January 21, 2004, when it appeared in a blog post (archived here) on voxfux.com titled "The State of Fascism."
(Source: voxfux.com screenshot taken on Thu Jan 23 17:54:26 2025 UTC)
The original press photo of Bush, above, and potential verification have remained out of reach.
A now-expired TinEye image search result (screenshot archived here) shows the stock photo archives of stock.adobe.com and TinEye crawled Alamy.com in 2019 and 2021 -- but the image is no longer present on these sites. Searches with Google Lens, Yandex, Bing, and a manual search of footage from before January 21, 2004, in the catalog of C-SPAN videos also did not yield results identifying when or where this image of Bush originated.
The now-broken Alamy.com URL on TinEye contained the caption details for the photo:
https://www.alamy.com/u-s-president-george-w-bush-waves-at-a-fundraiser-for-the-gop-candidate-for-the-mississippi-governship-haley-barbour-at-the-mississippi-coliseum-in-jackson-september-12-2003-the-president-is-scheduled-to-continue-on-to-an-event-in-houston-before-returning-to-washington-this-evening-reuterslarry-downing-lsd-image381285220.html
This led to finding a STEPHEN JAFFE/AFP via Getty Images press photo from the event (archived here) and several other photos on Getty Images. Some shots show Bush waving to the crowd with a bent or outstretched arm. The press photo (pictured below) from the Barbour fundraiser appeared years later in a GQ article on April 26, 2011. Currently, the article link returns a 404 error but is archived here.
(Source: web.archive.org screenshot taken on Thu Jan 23 18:14:50 2025 UTC)
Before the Jackson, Mississippi, fundraiser on September 12, 2003, Bush visited Fort Benning, Georgia. A C-SPAN video (archived here) shows Bush recognizing the troops with a hand salute, shaking hands and waving to the crowd starting about 1:05 minutes in. This video captures his greeting style, which sometimes includes a rapid wave of just the hand and then a brief pause before lowering his arm. It is not a salute-like gesture.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving Nazi salutes or Elon Musk can be found here and here.
