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| - Hours ahead of U.S. Election Day in 2024, actor and stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt posted (archived) a purported screenshot of a Truth Social post made by former President Donald Trump. According to the image, Trump posted in capital letters, "I was not performing oral sex on my mic, folks! I was pretending to eat a corn dog while waiting for the totally incompetent crew to fix my mic. This is pure election interference! Fake news!"
After receiving over 500,000 views in the matter of one hour, Oswalt's post disappeared. As of this writing, the post's link displayed the message, "Sorry, that post has been deleted," indicating Oswalt or someone managing his account removed the post.
The truth was the Trump post about oral sex and corn dogs was fake. On Nov. 3, X account @DarthPutinKGB — whose bio mentions parody content — posted (archived) the image in question. A popular Reddit post from the same day also labeled the matter, "It's satire."
However, as PolitiFact reported, the Agent Self FBI (@FraudWatch89) user — whose bio mentions parody — appeared to originally post (archived) the fake screenshot with a "satire" label on Nov. 2. The user pointed out (archived) the label in a subsequent post. One or more users cropped that "satire" label out of reposts. As such, we rated this fact-check as having originated as satire.
Other users also posted the same image of the supposed Trump post on the newsmast.social platform, Reddit, Threads, X and sports forums.
Former Snopes reporter and current senior manager of education design with The News Literacy Project Dan Evon previously shared the facts about the fake post, as did BBC Verify senior journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh.
Sexual Reference in Fake Trump Post
The fake Trump post about oral sex and corn dogs played on a moment occurring during the former president's Nov. 1, 2024, presidential campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
At the rally — while standing at a lectern and holding a microphone in his hand — he told his crowd of supporters that he had experienced rallies with his microphone positioned "too low." He then motioned his hand around the microphone arm on the lectern in a repeated up-and-down motion. Then, he also repeatedly bobbed his open mouth near where the microphone in his hand would normally be positioned.
The New York Times reported of the matter, "The crowd roared with laughter. But observers on social media shared a 5-second clip of the moment, suggesting the former president was pantomiming oral sex. Those short clips quickly received millions of views."
One prominent example of users sharing a 5-second video clip of the moment came in a post (archived) from X user Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) — a researcher and senior digital editor for the progressive network Meidas Touch. The post received over 35.4 million views.
The Washington Post shared a video clip on YouTube displaying the context of Trump's gestures, including the moments missing from the 5-second clips in which he talked negatively about the positioning of his microphones at rallies.
For further reading, we previously reported the facts of Trump's gestures with the microphone at the Milwaukee rally.
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