A PHOTO SHOWING a crowd gathered in Dublin for US president Barack Obama in 2011 has been spread online with descriptions falsely saying it shows people lined up for a recent rally for Donald Trump.
The posts, which appeared on social media platforms X, Threads, and Instagram, garnered more than 1.7 million views.
Thousands of people attended a 27 October 2024 rally for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, New York City.
“I took this photo 3 hours ago of people lined up at Madison square garden,” one tweet posted to X on the date of the rally reads.
However, the photo in the tweet, which has been viewed more than 1.3 million times according to metrics on X, shows a crowd on Dame Street, Dublin, not New York.
An uncropped version of the photo, still available on Getty Images, shows Christ Church Cathedral in the background.
The photo was taken on 23 May, when Obama spoke at College Green, Dublin, advising a crowd of thousands that they should answer naysayers with the phrase “Is féidir linn,” the Irish version of his slogan: Yes We Can.
Obama came to Ireland in 2011 and, as well as Dublin, visited Moneygall, Co Offaly, the village from which his maternal great-great-great-grandfather emigrated. A motorway service station, the Barack Obama Plaza, now stands near the village, named to commemorate the then-president’s connections to the area.
Former president Trump has been scrambling to quell backlash for racist rhetoric at the Madison Square Garden rally, where he filled the nearly 20,000-seat venue, as well as attracting supporters and protesters around the arena.
Incidents at the rally included a comedian describing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” as well as other speakers who called Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and said she had been a prostitute.
The US presidential election will be held next Tuesday, 5 November.
With reporting from AFP
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