Trump Didn’t Alter a Photo at the White House to Make His Hand Bigger

By the standards of Donald Trump’s presidency so far, Friday was pretty tame for a while. Then arts and culture writer Dana Schwartz tweeted (and later deleted) this message about an image from the president’s interview with ABC News (we have the original clip here):

Soon, better comparisons followed, like this one:

https://twitter.com/joabaldwin/status/825051188550787072

As you can see from the retweet count, the story immediately went viral. It seemed so perfect: Trump is famously very willing to argue about the size of his hands. It dates back to Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter calling him a “short-fingered vulgarian” regularly during his time at Spy Magazine, which dates back to the first issue of 1988. However, the image of the White House Trump/Obama photograph from Trump’s ABC interview that Schwartz tweeted appears to have already been manipulated when she found it.

The Verge took their own screenshot from the ABC interview, compared it with the original photo on Getty Images, and found no differences. Schwartz followed up with these tweets:

https://twitter.com/DanaSchwartzzz/status/825072111656001536

https://twitter.com/DanaSchwartzzz/status/825072550887686144

https://twitter.com/DanaSchwartzzz/status/825073001586688001

Joaquin Baldwin, who tweeted the comparison animation used above, later corrected himself after finding the video:

https://twitter.com/joabaldwin/status/825070492562313216

A lesson for the future: If you want to compare something to a screen shot and the video is easily available, then you really shot grab the still yourself.

[Photo: ABC News screen grab]

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