No, JFK Jr. didn’t attend Donald Trump’s inauguration

John F. Kennedy Jr. was dead by the time of former President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, but a video circulating on Facebook claims otherwise. 

"What if I told you? The entire planet saw JFK Jr on the day of Donald J. Trump’s inauguration!" reads badly-punctuated text over an image of Kennedy. It then shows a clip of Trump walking on inauguration day and focuses on the face of one man. 

"Meet the ‘blue-eyed’ U.S. Secret Service agent ‘John Galt,’" reads the next block of text that appears in the video, which goes on to claim that this person is actually Kennedy in a silicone mask and blue contact lenses. 

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 Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

We don’t know the name of the agent who was walking alongside Trump during his inauguration. (John Galt is the main character in the Ayn Rand book "Atlas Shrugged.")

Featured Fact-check

Social Media

stated on September 16, 2024 in a post

“Coca-Cola cuts ties with Taylor Swift over (Kamala) Harris endorsement.”

But it’s not Kennedy, who died in 1999 when the plane he was piloting crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. His body was recovered several days after the crash. 

This agent was the subject of another conspiracy theory back in 2017. The Daily Mail and Inside Edition among others reported on false claims that he was wearing prosthetic hands so that he could hold a gun under his coat. Video footage of the event disproved this rumor. 

Claims that Kennedy is alive stem from the QAnon movement, whose proponents have suggested that he is behind the so-called Q drops. 

We rate claims that Kennedy attended Trump’s inauguration Pants on Fire!