In late September 2023, a roughly one-minute video of former U.S. President Donald Trump walking to a podium to address a packed crowd was shared by pro-Trump social media influencers as if it were a recent video, based on commentary other users added to the video in their shares of it.
Told you, it's over! pic.twitter.com/mKUJBu9YMr
— Wayne DuPree (@WayneDupreeShow) September 26, 2023
The video footage was authentic — it truly depicted Trump and a packed stadium of fans — though it was not part of any recent event or linked in anyway to his 2024 presidential campaign. In reality, the video was from a March 15, 2017, appearance by Trump at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium in Tennessee. We came to that conclusion by finding other videos depicting the same event, which included a live rendition of "God Bless the USA" sung by the Gatlin Brothers.
At the time of the recording, Trump was about two months into his presidency. As described by The Tennessean, while addressing the crowd, Trump touted those months "as the most productive ever for a president":
President Donald Trump touted his first two months in office as the most productive ever for a president and compared himself to President Andrew Jackson during a raucous rally Wednesday in Nashville that resembled the campaign that catapulted him into office.
Drawing roars from the thousands in attendance, Trump slammed a Hawaii federal judge's decision from earlier in the day that temporarily halted the administration's new attempt to ban much travel from six majority Muslim countries. It marked the third judicial decision that has gone against the president's attempt to stop refugees and some immigrants from entering the country.
The music in the videos that circulated on X (formerly Twitter) in late September 2023 matched audio of the 2017 event captured by C-SPAN. Here's that C-SPAN footage, which shows the in-question moment of Trump walking to the podium, from a different angle: