Internet Detectives Went Insane Trying To Figure Out If Trump Photoshopped His Hand
No, Trump did not photoshop his inauguration photo. But the internet is wild, y’all.
1. On Friday, in a tweet that has since been deleted, the New York Observer’s Dana Schwartz claimed a photo of President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama had been photoshopped to enlarge Trump’s left hand.
The photo she referred to is currently hanging in the White House.
Schwartz told BuzzFeed News she found the photos from other tweets, and thought, “his hands looked enormous” in them.
“Like clown-shoes enormous,” she added.
She then used the photo and tweeted with confidence that the POTUS had altered the photo to make his hand appear bigger.
2. Her tweet was immediately picked up, with a flurry of jokes and shocked responses.
3. The only issue was that Schwartz had put two different photos next to each other in her original tweet. She then went to Getty to download a similar photo and juxtaposed them to prove the photoshopping. But they were still different photos.
Schwartz referred this new side-by-side to skeptics, and maintained the photo was altered. (Her tweet has since been deleted.)
For quick reference, the photo on the right in Schwartz’s updated tweet is supposedly taken from Getty Images’ news wire, and the photo on the left was a screenshot someone had taken from an ABC News TV special.
ABC News confirmed to BuzzFeed News the photo that was used in the special was a press photo.
4. People online didn’t just take her word though. They did their own photo forensics with these two photos — all to prove Trump’s hand was enlarged. And by a great deal.
@DanaSchwartzzz tried to scale the photos based on their shoes (and was generous). Trump’s hand is still enormous c… https://t.co/WMwDr05ovx
— Joon Lee (@iamjoonlee)
For
5. There were circles.
6. There was isolated hand-cropping.
Yep, Trump definitely photoshopped his hand to be bigger. I compared them side by side
— Simon Owens (@simonowens)
8. GIFs were even created to show the difference in hand size.
@DanaSchwartzzz I made a GIF comparing it with the Getty Images source file. It's a warp deformer, look at the heli… https://t.co/DzJgo1NWfS
— Joaquin Baldwin (@joabaldwin)
Some tweets featuring similar photographic “evidence” have since been deleted.
9. Neither Getty nor ABC News have commented on the photoshopping allegations. But people online have already started debunking the claims, and those who believed them have started backpedaling.
sorry but the Trump hand photoshop story is bullshit https://t.co/Ypaor3hAPo
— Kelsey M. Sutton (@kelseymsutton)
12. There were then GIFs to disprove the Photoshop allegations, and to prove the hands are the same size in the ABC News screenshot and the Getty wire image.
And here you go: A GIF that I just made. Not aligned perfectly (my fault), but the hand is the same.
— Philip Bump (@pbump)
I replicated the same process with @pbump's screenshot and Getty image from his article, and here's the result.… https://t.co/6DpaoPw136
— Christopher Keelty (@keeltyc)
14. Soon, and expectedly, #handgate became a trending hashtag. And people started mocking the internet detectives.
lost in this madness of #handgate is the fact that @realDonaldTrump showed up to his inauguration *IN WEDGES*
— Emilio Ramos (@emilios_are)
Stop being ridiculous, people. Trump did not have his hand photoshopped bigger. #handgate
— Joshua Gray (@hoorayitsjosh)
16. And, of course, the jokes rolled in.
I'm no expert but it looks like the hand in this photo of Donald Trump meeting Theresa May might have been altered.
— マイル (@martian_munk)
18. “Trump CLEARLY replaced his wife Melania with this photo of Peter Dinklage holding a laser cannon.”
Wow, look closely. Trump CLEARLY replaced his wife Melania with this photo of Peter Dinklage holding a laser cannon
— Jason O. Gilbert (@gilbertjasono)
I think Trump photoshopped his hand bigger for this picture hanging in the white house. See if you can spot it.
— Ariel Dumas (@ArielDumas)
20. In a series of tweets, Schwartz has apologized for making the claim and “inadvertently contributing to a culture of not knowing which facts are legitimate.”
I'm honestly, genuinely, really sorry. I saw an image, tweeted it because I thought it was funny and seemed true.
— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz)
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