Claim:

An image authentically shows a screenshot of a post on former US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, saying: “I wasn’t giving oral sex on my mic, folks! I was pretending to eating a corn dog while waiting for the totally incompetent crew to come and fix my microphone.”

Rating:

Hours before 2024 US election day, actor and comedian Patton Oswalt job (archive) a purported screenshot of a Truth Social post made by former President Donald Trump. According to the image, Trump posted in all caps: “I wasn’t performing oral sex on my mic, folks! I was pretending to eat a corn dog while waiting for the totally incompetent crew to fix my mic. This is pure election interference!”

After receiving more than 500,000 views in an hour, Oswalt’s post disappeared. At the time of writing, the post’s link displayed the message: “Sorry, this post has been deleted,” indicating that Oswalt or someone managing his account deleted the post.

The truth was that Trump’s message about oral sex and corn dogs was false. On November 3, the X account @DarthPutinKGB – whose biography mentions parody content – job (archive) the image in question. A popular Reddit post of the same day also called the affair “It’s satire”.

However, as Political fact reported, Agent Self FBI user (@FraudWatch89) – whose bio mentions a parody – originally appeared job (archive) the fake screenshot labeled “satire” from November 2. The user underlines (archive) label in a later post. One or more users have removed this “satire” label from reposts. As such, we considered this fact-check to have originated as satire.

Other users too job the same image from Trump’s supposed post on the newsmast.social platform, Reddit, Topics, X And sporty forums.

Former Snopes reporter and current Senior Director of Instructional Design at the News Literacy Project Dan Evon has already shared the facts about the fake post, as has senior BBC Verify reporter Shayan Sardarizadeh.

Sexual reference in fake Trump message

Trump’s false message about oral sex and corn dogs played into a moment during the former president’s November 1, 2024, presidential campaign rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

At the rally — while standing at a lectern and holding a microphone in his hand — he told supporters that he had experienced rallies with his microphone placed “too low.” He then wrapped his hand around the microphone arm on the music stand in a repeated up and down motion. Then he also raised his mouth open several times near where the microphone in his hand would normally be positioned.

The New York Times “The crowd erupted in laughter. But observers on social media shared a 5-second clip of the moment, suggesting the former president was miming oral sex. These short clips quickly received millions of views.”

A prominent example of users sharing a 5-second video clip of the moment came in a job (archive) by user X Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) — researcher and senior digital editor for the progressive Meidas Touch Network. The post has received over 35.4 million views.

The Washington Post shared a music video on YouTube showing context for Trump’s actions, including missing moments in 5-second clips in which he spoke negatively about the positioning of his microphones at rallies.

For further reading, we previously reported the facts about Trump’s microphone gestures at the Milwaukee rally.