A real photo of Tom Hanks in the “Keep America Trumpless” t-shirt? -Snopes.com

Claim:

A photograph authentically shows Tom Hanks wearing a T-shirt that reads “Keep America Trumpless.”

Rating:

Context

A paparazzi photo of Hanks from March 2020 was digitally altered to place the words on his T-shirt.

Since at least 2023, a photo of Tom Hanks apparently wearing a controversial T-shirt – featuring the phrase “Keep America Trumpless” and an American flag shaped like the United States – has gone missing. viral on social networks. Photography has spread on the Internet the most recently in May 2024, with one X user writing that Hanks had chosen “democracy over loyalty to the false orange prophet”, referring to former US President Donald Trump.

(User X @PopularLiberal)

It was a digitally enhanced photograph. Hanks did not wear such a T-shirt. The image was an edited version of a paparazzi photograph that showed Hanks walking around Sydney, Australia, in March 2020, just before he caught the COVID-19 virus and had to isolate. We have therefore classified this statement as “false”.

In the original photograph – published by The Sun and The Daily Mail – Hanks wore the same cap, which read “Santa Monica College”, but his T-shirt was plain. It did not have a design of an American flag or the statement “Keep America Trumpless” on it. The photograph was an enlarged, uncropped version of the digitally manipulated image, providing a broader look at the scene: Hanks was walking with his wife, Rita Wilson, while wearing the shirt and hat.

The Sun credited celebrity photography agency Backgrid for the paparazzi photo. The Daily Mail credited KHAPGG, an Australian agency that licenses its images to other media companies, including Backgrid.

The photo that went viral in 2023 and 2024 was not the first of its kind. In September 2022, social media users circulated another digitally altered photo of Hanks purportedly wearing a T-shirt with the same phrase – “Keep America Trumpless” – while walking in New York the previous month. Reuters debunked this fake image, pointing out that the original photograph of Hanks in a plain T-shirt was published by the Daily Mail.

Hanks is an outspoken Democrat. He publicly stated that he voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, and years later appeared in an advertisement for U.S. President Joe Biden, touting his administration’s accomplishments.

Digitally manipulated T-shirts about famous people are a common misinformation technique we encounter at Snopes. Learn how to spot such images here.

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