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Photo Of Donald Trump Posing With Parents Who Wore KKK Robes Is A Hoax [Fact-Checking]

By Heather Tooley
Published on: 05:39 PST, Aug 14, 2017

A photo of Donald Trump posing with his parents who were wearing KKK robes is a hoax. The image is circulating on social media in the aftermath of the Charlottesville, Virginia, protests. It’s a photo that originated in September of 2016 at the height of the presidential election, and there’s a resurgence of sharing the manipulated image of Fred and Mary Anne MacLeod Trump.

Snopes reports that the original photo was digitally altered from an original that showed no signs of Donald Trump’s parents wearing Ku Klux Klan attire that had the group’s insignia. Fred Trump was wearing a dark suit and red polka-dotted tie, and Mrs. Trump was wearing a colorful-patterned dress with double-stranded pearls. Someone snagged the image and used it to place doubts in the minds of voters undecided about electing Trump as president over his opponent and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

The photo of Donald Trump posing with his parents seen in KKK robes was an attempt to link him to the white supremacist group during the presidential campaign. As the race to the White House got closer between Trump and Clinton, political propaganda reached fever pitch. Nothing was off limits in terms of trying to fool the public through false imagery and fake news. It turns out this image is nothing more than a fabrication.

An earlier report by Snopes took a closer look at claims made by the blog, BoingBoing, about Donald Trump’s father and the KKK. BoingBoing cited a 1927 article from the New York Times about a man at the same address Fred Trump eventually resided at being arrested for violence at a KKK event in Queens. It was determined that Fred Trump was too young at the time of the incident and not a well-known figure yet. Several individuals lived at the address before Mr. Trump took residence there.

Parts of the story were true, such as the Fred Trump being among the individuals arrested after a “near-riot” involving the KKK and New York City policemen at a “Memorial parade.”

What was false was the article not documenting Fred Trump as a KKK member or supporter, or that he was charged with a crime linked to the KKK event.

Additionally, allegations of Fred Trump’s involvement were “too vague” to hold as credible. Snopes, however, interjected that it’s “possible” the elder Trump may have attended the Ku Klux Klan event, but it’s also possible that he was “minding his own business” in his neighborhood and got “swept up by police after unknowingly finding himself in the middle of an enormous brawl.”

If a photo of Donald Trump posing with his parents who were wearing KKK robes is seen, just know it’s a hoax and has generated new attention after the Charlottesville protests.

[Featured Image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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