No, this isn’t a recent photo of Donald Trump at the White House

The title of a recent Facebook video offers some false hope for people who wrongly believe that former President Donald Trump is still in power. 

"Trump photo at White House today!" it says. A woman who can be heard speaking during the more than 18-minute video explains.

"So this is a photographer for the White House and he took the photo yesterday on the 24th of October 2021 and his name is William Moon at the White House," she says.  

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.)

Here’s what we know. 

On Oct. 25, a Twitter account called White House Photos — @photowhitehouse — posted a picture of Trump at what looks like the foot of the stairs of the South Lawn entrance to the White House. It appears to be night, with Trump standing under an awning, a prominent shadow thrown onto the stairs.

"Yesterday!" the account said. "Photo: William Moon at the White House." 

Some people replying to the tweet cheered, while others called it misinformation. A few questioned what the word "yesterday" meant. Was it literal? 

We messaged the account to ask when and where the photo was taken but didn’t hear back. 

The account’s bio says: "White House Correspondent, Journalist, Photographer, Poet and Pesco Vegetarian" and "Copyright William Moon." It is not an official White House Twitter account.

Moon drew attention in 2020 for another South Lawn photo of Trump walking toward the Oval Office. He was not an official White House photographer, just credentialed to take pictures there, the Washington Post reported at the time.  

According to the Post, Moon wouldn’t say who has employed him since he started taking pictures at the White House, and when he was pressed for information about himself and his work, he wrote back: "You ask too much personal things." 

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stated on November 25, 2024 in an Instagram post

"Half of all Ukrainian aid was laundered and sent back to Democrat candidates for re-election."

We don’t know if Moon still has White House media credentials. The White House didn’t respond to our questions about this post. Neither did Trump. 

We also couldn’t find any other instances of this photo being posted online. But there’s plenty of reason to doubt that the photo was taken on Oct. 24. 

First, what Trump says and does is closely followed in the media, and there are no news reports of him making a White House appearance in range of a photographer’s camera. 

Second, while we didn’t find the exact photo posted on Twitter on Oct. 25, we found several that are similar, including one shot for Reuters by photographer Mary Calvert on Dec. 14, 2019. That photo shows Trump wearing a long winter coat, and the photo posted on Twitter shows him wearing a similar coat, even though Oct. 24 was a temperate day with highs in the low 70s.  

Third, on Oct. 20 the White House Photos account posted another photo of a former president — Barack Obama. 

"Yesterday!" the account tweeted. But, of course, the picture wasn’t taken on Oct. 19. It was taken in October 2015, when then-President Obama held a press conference with the president of South Korea. 

We rate claims that this photo of Trump was taken this week False.