After the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, a Facebook video recorded by Donald Trump Jr. went viral, which many have claimed shows the Trump family celebrating while watching the riots unfold from a private tent. While the video is real in that it wasn’t digitally altered, what people are claiming the video shows… not so much. Here’s how we fact-checked it.
Start off with a keyword search
Using words like, “Trump watch party riot,” brought up a bunch of results, including this fact-check from Snopes.
According to Snopes, the video was posted to Trump Jr.’s official Facebook account before the riot at the Capitol broke out. But the way that Snopes was able to build this timeline is pretty interesting. Snopes used footage from Bloomberg to piece together the events of the day. And it turns out, the 1982 pop song “Gloria” by Laura Branigan, which is heard during Trump Jr.’s video, was a big clue.
From the Bloomberg footage, the song was heard through the loudspeakers twice: once at around 11:30 a.m., then again about 30 minutes later — before Trump took the stage at The Ellipse park to address his supporters.
It wasn’t until around 1 p.m. that the Capitol barriers were breached — which was about an hour after Trump Jr. shared the live video.
See what else has been reported
When it comes to fact-checking, you always want to check multiple sources. The Associated Press also reported that the video from Trump Jr. was taken prior to the events at the Capitol, writing that the video instead shows the Trump family watching scenes of the crowd at a rally, since there is a visible “Save America March” banner.
The article goes on to say that the screens in the video don’t show any violence happening.
Rating
We’ll have to rate this video as Not Legit. Claims that this video shows the Trump family celebrating while watching the riots in a private tent are not accurate, since this video was recorded and posted well before the events at the Capitol took place.
