Does a photo on social media show a man flipping off President Donald Trump during the 2025 Super Bowl game? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found evidence of the photo being posted online since 2023. Social media posts of the photo indicated it was taken at a college football game in Iowa on September 9, 2023. Media outlets widely reported Trump's appearance at that event.
The claim appeared in a post on Instagram (archived here), published on February 9, 2025. The onscreen text read:
Superbowl picture of the century
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Mon Feb 10 14:21:32 2025 UTC)
The Instagram post showed a man in a baseball cap and a red shirt holding up both hands with middle fingers extended as Trump as stood behind a window.
A reverse image search of the photo, shown below, led to two September 9, 2023 posts on Instagram here and here (archived here and here, respectively) with captions mentioning "Iowa State."
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Mon Feb 10 14:56:13 2025 UTC)
A Google search (archived here) of keywords led to Yahoo, Business Insider, Iowa State Daily and Vanity Fair reporting on the September 9, 2023, Iowa State v. Iowa game and Trump's attendance at that event.
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More Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding Donald Trump are here.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims surrounding the Super Bowl are here.
