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Ciara O'Rourke
By Ciara O'Rourke January 7, 2020

A doctored photo appears to show Obama using binoculars wrong

A recent Facebook post appears to show former President Barack Obama peering through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars while a general watches.

"The look on the 4 stars face as obama looks through the wrong end of the upside down binoculars…" the Dec. 2 post says. "People actually voted for this clown… No face ever screamed "You gotta be sh tting me louder than this… #obama." 

But the image has been manipulated, and this post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

You can see the original here. Associated Press photographer Pablo Martinez Monsivais took it on March 25, 2012, as Obama looked through the correct end of the binoculars to see North Korea from the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea. 

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Getty Images has other photos from that day from other angles. Obama isn’t holding his binoculars incorrectly in any of them. 

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A doctored photo appears to show Obama using binoculars wrong

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