Kansas City Chiefs: Patrick Mahomes Never Wore Anti-Trump Shirt
Days after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl, an unfortunate meme involving Patrick Mahomes and Donald Trump started circulating the web. After the victory, a picture surfaced on social media showing the Chiefs’ quarterback wearing a shirt that featured the outline of the state of Missouri with the caption, “The Great State of Kansas.”
The Daily Herald reports it was a doctored image that was shared more than 15,000 times before people started catching on to the photoshop job. The point of the doctored image was apparently to poke fun at a tweet that was sent out right after the Chiefs won the Super Bowl by President Donald Trump. The tweet said, “congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs on a great game and a fantastic comeback, under immense pressure. You represented the Great State of Kansas and, in fact, the entire USA, so very well.”
Trump later deleted the tweet, apparently being informed that the Chiefs are located in Missouri. He eventually sent out a corrected tweet where he made sure to mention the right state.
The photo of Mahomes in the shirt was taken from when he was in Walt Disney World right after his team won the championship. The picture was posted on social media by his agent.
In the original photo, the quarterback is getting on a plane and has a shirt that has his number on it as well as the caption, “Showtime.” Politifact reports that the post with the fake image of Mahomes circulated the most on Facebook but was eventually called out by the fact-checking website after it was able to do some digging.
Run by the Poynter Institute, the website is aiming at taking out any of these kinds of false pictures and claims, no matter what side of the political aisle the posts seem to be coming from. Photoshopped images on Facebook were at the center of a number of political campaigns over the last few years. Athletes have been at the center of politics over the last few years as well. Sometimes, they’ve inserted themselves into the fray. Other times, like Patrick Mahomes with a falsified picture, they were inserted entirely against their will and even unknowingly.
The joke about Donald Trump and the President not knowing where the Kansas City Chiefs played was one that took off after the Super Bowl. Social media was inundated with jokes about how the President was going to be using his powers to change the name of the state were prevalent. The picture, now proved false, appears to have been a part of those jokes.
