X posts
X posts
stated on October 27, 2024 in Social media posts:

Photo shows people lined up outside Madison Square Garden before an Oct. 27 rally by former President Donald Trump.

False

Photo shows Obama’s 2011 Ireland crowd, not Trump’s in New York City in 2024

By Gideon Hess
October 28, 2024

If your time is short

  • This image was taken in 2011 and showed people waiting to get into a Dublin event featuring then-President Barack Obama.
See the sources for this fact-check

As crowds formed outside New York City’s Madison Square Garden arena for former President Donald Trump’s Oct. 27 campaign rally, some social media users shared a photo they said showed the scene.

“I took this photo 3 hours ago of people lined up at Madison square garden,” a user posted on X, formerly Twitter, at 11:38 a.m. alongside a picture of a crowd of thousands of people gathered on a street behind metal barriers. The post had more than 17,000 likes and 1.3 million views as of Oct. 28.

Although Trump drew a large crowd that gathered hours before he was scheduled to speak, this photo wasn’t taken at Madison Square Garden. As a community note soon pointed out on X, it was taken in the Irish capital in May 2011, outside an event where then-President Barack Obama was to appear.

“People line up at a security check in Dublin before a concert to be attended by the US president,” read a caption on the image as it appeared in a May 23, 2011, article in The Guardian. Photojournalist Peter Macdiarmid captured the image; it appears on the Getty Images website, albeit with a typo in the date.

Photos, videos and news stories documented Obama’s visit to Ireland, including the May 23, 2011, speech he gave to crowds at Dublin’s College Green.

Trump’s Madison Square Garden campaign rally drew thousands and filled the 19,500-seat venue, with people lining up for blocks hours before the event’s scheduled start. Video and photos captured that scene, but the photograph in this post did not.

We rate claims that it did False.