After the derailment of a train carrying hazardous substances happened in Ohio, many leaders and organisations are contributing to help the people around the affected area. Ex-US President Donald Trump, too, visited Ohio to extend his support to the citizens.
Against this backdrop, a viral image of a carton of bottles containing a yellowish-liquid and with the name Trump Ice printed on them is doing the rounds on social media. Many users have shared the image claiming that Trump is sending these bottles of Trump Ice to Ohio.
A Facebook user posted the viral post with a caption: EWWWWW release the Pee pee water.. trump is grifting the people of E. Palestine pushing his own “colorful” water. These people haven’t been through enough apparently. He’s telling them to only drink Trump water! WTF!! #Watersports #Democratsdeliver
You can check the post here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the viral post, and found it to be MISLEADING.
Running a Reverse Image Search of the viral post, we traced a news article on CNN, dated October 6, 2015, with a title: First on CNN: Trump sent prank care package to Rubio.
The article informs that in October 2015, Trump sent a special delivery case of 24 bottles of ‘Trump Ice Natural Spring Water’ to US senator Marco Rubio as a prank. The image in the article matches exactly with the viral image except for the colour of the water, indicating that the latter may have been edited.
We found the image with clear water on a few other websites like Spectrum News and WGXA News as well.
Searching further whether Trump has made any announcement to donate water bottles or not, we found out that he, indeed, donated water bottles at an event in a fire station, in East Palestine, Ohio. Reading about his donation, we got to know that he gave away bottles with different label, “Trump Spring Water,” instead of “Trump Ice”.
Reuters pictures posted a close-up view of the bottle labels from the event on February 22, 2023, proving that the bottles in the viral image have nothing to do with the current events.
Therefore, we can conclusively say that the viral image, claiming Trump donated water bottles of Trump Ice to the citizens of East Palestine, Ohio, is misleading.
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