No, these photos don’t show Trump golfing after assassination attempt

Did former President Donald Trump hit the golf course shortly after a gunman attempted to assassinate him at a July 13 campaign rally?

We were not able to get an answer to that question, but we do know some photos circulating that show him on a golf course are not proof that he did.

"Imagine getting shot at 7pm and still making your 9am tee time," read text on a July 14 Instagram post that showed a photo of Trump driving a golf cart.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) We also saw this photo being shared on X.

(Screengrab from Instagram)

This photo of Trump playing golf is two years old. A reverse-image search using Google Images found that an Associated Press photographer took the photo in 2022 at Trump National Golf Course in Sterling, Virginia.

A July 16 Threads post shared another photo that claimed to show Trump golfing after the shooting. But this photo appeared to originate from a YouTube video posted 10 days before the shooting.

A shooter opened fire on Trump’s July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in what the FBI is investigating as an assassination attempt. Trump said a bullet hit the upper part of his right ear before he was escorted offstage and taken to a local hospital for treatment. One person in the audience was killed and two others were injured. The Secret Service said its snipers killed the gunman.

That night, Trump traveled to his home at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

On July 14, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would leave at 3:30 p.m. for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

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stated on November 3, 2020 in a tweet

“Only sign outside Bucks County voting place. Democrats shown, republicans blurred out. … More scamming in Pennsylvania!”

Claims about Trump golfing following the shooting surfaced after Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, in a July 14 X post shared — and later retracted — a video that he said showed Trump went golfing "the next day" after the shooting. It was tagged with a community note that said the video was not filmed that day, July 14. In an update an hour after his X post, Lee said, "I’m now told this video was uploaded today but *not* taken today. My bad!"

The TikTok account that posted the video is now private, so the video cannot be publicly viewed. An archived version of TikTok video showed it was published July 14.

PolitiFact contacted Trump’s campaign to ask whether Trump played golf during his short stay at the Bedminster golf club, but we did not receive a response by publication.

Trump National Golf Club Bedminster was closed July 14, Politico reported.

We rate the claim that these photos show Trump golfing after being shot False.

UPDATE, July 16, 2024: We have updated this fact-check to account for additional social media posts that used outdated photos to claim Trump golfed following his July 13 assassination attempt.