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| - The original video showed Trump Jr. leaning down to speak to Beverly Aikins, Vice President JD Vance's mother, who was seated in a chair.
A rumor circulating online claimed a video captured Donald Trump Jr., U.S. President Donald Trump's eldest son, using cocaine in public during his Inauguration Day ceremony on Jan. 20, 2025.
For example, on Jan. 20, a TikTok user posted a clip (archived) shot from the perspective of someone moving close to a TV to only show Trump Jr. on the left side of the screen. In the video, Trump Jr. leans down and out of view, obscured by a person in the foreground. He then leans back up and smiles. Notably, the video's creator did not show the middle and right sides of what was visible on the TV screen during the key moment. The user captioned the post, "Don Jr. is not a sly guy. It's all noticable [sic], all the time. #boogersugar #devilsdandruff #Donjr #scarfcenot." The clip itself also displayed the words, "Getting a bump of that devil's dandruff" — slang for cocaine. The post received over 650,000 views.
On Jan. 21, a user on X reposted the TikTok video with the caption, "Surely not right there in front of everyone?" That post earned well over 7 million views.
However, this rumor was not true. The video displayed an ABC News Live broadcast. ABC News published the entirety of their Inauguration Day coverage in one YouTube video lasting nearly 12 hours. The same moment from the TikTok and X posts begins at the 3:39:10 mark (below). At that moment in the YouTube clip, the broadcast shows Trump Jr. leaning down to speak to Beverly Aikins, the mother of Vice President JD Vance, who sat behind her son. Aikins' wore red and sat to the right of Vance's wife, second lady Usha Vance. As such, we rated the fact-check claim as miscaptioned, meaning no one altered the original broadcast with editing or artificial intelligence but instead improperly labeled the video.
For further evidence, we noted the 3:29:44 mark of the video showed a panning shot clearly depicting Trump Jr. next to Aikins. At the 3:38:42 mark, Vance enters and obscures Aikins from the broadcast camera's view.
We previously reported on a similar rumor claiming a different video depicted Trump Jr. using cocaine at a SpaceX rocket launch in November 2024. Our research uncovered no evidence to help confirm the matter, resulting in an unfounded fact-check rating.
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