A picture showing US President Donald Trump allegedly endorsing Narendra Modi is fake, and has been used before to make peddle fake news.
This picture is actually of him holding up a signed pledge in 2015, where he promises not to run for President as a third-party candidate if he did not win the Republican Party nomination to contest the presidential elections. He further pledged to endorse the candidate who wins the Republican nomination.
BOOM received this image on its helpline and can be viewed below.
The image has popular BJP content that the party uses for election canvassing:
- BJP slogans
- An appeal to vote for Modi along with his picture
- A BJP logo in the top right corner of the document
However, a stark feature of this image is that it carries the signature of Donald Trump. Endorsing a foreign candidate in such a fashion would be making an extraordinary statement.
This image is a popular meme format, and has been used before by Nigerian social media to create fake images around him endorsing a candidate - Atiku Abubaker - in their presidential elections in February this year.
This image can be seen here.
The morphed version of the picture also vent viral on Facebook, as reported by Nigerian news agency The Cable.
However, the original post from Facebook since then has been deleted.
Trump made this pledge on September 3, 2015. Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus' signature appears as a witness on the pledge document.
This is the original picture of him displaying a signed copy of that pledge. An image of him doing so can be seen below - and it is the picture which has been morphed to show him endorsing Atiku and Modi.
While coverage of this pledge by Trump in 2015 can be read here, a video of him taking the pledge can be seen here.