A very much alive President Donald Trump reacted to social media rumors suggesting he was ‘dead’ during a White House event on Tuesday.
The president was asked by Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy about the rumors that went viral over the Labor Day holiday that he was mysteriously missing or perhaps ‘dead’ after he did not hold a public event at the White House for several days.
Trump said he did not see the social media trend himself, but that he got reports on it from his staff.
‘I have heard, it’s sort of crazy… It’s so fake … I was very active this Labor Day,’ he said.
Trump joked that the media was not holding him to the same standard as former President Joe Biden.
‘I didn’t do any [public events] for two days, and they said there must be something wrong with him. Biden would not do them for months, you wouldn’t see him, and nobody ever said there was ever anything wrong with him, and we know he wasn’t in the greatest of shape,’ Trump said.
The president spent nearly 50 minutes speaking and taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, which suggests that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated.
On Friday, the hashtag ‘whereistrump’ went viral on social media as people speculated why the president had not held a public event.
Despite the rumors, the president was spotted by reporters traveling to and from his golf club in Sterling, Virginia throughout the weekend.
Trump was originally scheduled to go to his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club over Labor Day weekend but he stayed in Washington, D.C. instead.
He was spotted on Saturday heading to the golf course with his granddaughter Kai, 18.
He also golfed with former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden on Sunday and golfed again on the Labor Day holiday.
A viral photo of the president with local talk radio host John Fredericks on Sunday was also immediately called into question, but he insisted it was real.
‘This photo was taken August 31, 2025 … by my wife Anne on her phone at approximately 4:00 PM EST after golf & lunch at Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia,’ he wrote. ‘Secret Service allowed the photo at POTUS direction. Thanks & have a great day!’
But skeptical users on social media questioned the reality of the photo, running it through AI programs to see if it was real.
Users posted that Grok had flagged the photo as originating from May 2024, others claimed the photo was from Trump’s Florida club at Mar-a-lago or Bedminster, NJ.
Others claimed the photo was fake or doctored or questioned why Fredricks’ pants were wrinkled and examined the carpet and even the nearby staff for whether they could have been from a different club.
Fredricks repeatedly posted to skeptics that the photo was in fact taken by his wife.
He also posted a video to TikTok and X to address the ‘Trump deniers’ on social media about the controversy.
‘It was just insane, but the reality of this is that we are now in a place here where anything you see on the internet, anything that’s AI, you can’t trust any of it,’ he said.
Fredricks appeared incredulous by the number of people who repeatedly attacked his photo as doctored or a fake, or an earlier photo.
‘It was out of like the Cartoon Network, the number of people that engaged in this and thought this photo was fake and somehow believed the president was dead, or sick or in the hospital, or he’s not there … it was absolutely incredible,’ he said.