Fact Check: People Magazine Did NOT Publish An Image Of Trump As Marie Antoinette With Article About White House Ballroom Construction

Gag Screenshot

Did People magazine publish a satirical image of Donald Trump dressed like Marie Antoinette to illustrate an article about the White House Ballroom construction project? No, that's not true: People magazine illustrated the article with a standard portrait photo of Trump wearing a blue suit with red tie. A fake screenshot used the real article's headline and People logo -- but the satirical image of Trump was pasted over the standard Trump photo.

The fake screenshot appeared in a post on X (archived here) published on Oct. 1, 2025 by @GovPressOffice, the official press office account of the California Governor, Gavin Newsom. The X post was captioned to spell out the word "CLOWN":

Crooked
Lunatic
Obsessed
With
Nonsense

This is the altered screenshot with the real People headline which appeared in the @GovPressOffice post:

(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of image from GovPressOffice/status/1973596845332111576.)

The altered screenshot (pictured above) has also had the sub-headline and byline removed. Pictured below is a screenshot of the real People article (archived here) showing how it was titled:

White House Will Continue Construction on 90,000-Square-Foot Ballroom During Government Shutdown

The $200 million construction project is privately funded, so it's unaffected by the shutdown that began on Oct. 1

By Charna Flam Published on October 1, 2025 07:22PM EDT

(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot from people.com/white-house-will-continue-ballroom-construction-during-government-shutdown-11822811.)

The spoof cover is one in a series of Newsom parodies.

In a different article (archived here) published on Oct. 1, 2025, People magazine wrote about the Governor's trolling campaign. The article titled, "Gavin Newsom Fires Back at Trump's String of Deepfake Videos with His Own AI Roast of JD Vance and a Couch". The article explains:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom continued to troll President Donald Trump and his administration on social media this week, copying the White House's latest tactics to spin mockery back in their direction.

Over the last several weeks, Newsom's press office account has taken to posting in all-caps, mimicking Trump's posting style on Truth Social.