A video is circulating on social media in the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter protest in the United States sparked after the death African American citizen George Floyd’s. Amidst this a viral video on social media claims that the US President along with his wife visited Former US President Barack Obama and his wife in an attempt to ease the situation and anger of protestors in the country. But, Obama in return threw way the gift the President took as a souvenir. The video shows former First Lady Michelle Obama awkwardly accepting a gift from first lady Melania Trump. Next, we can see former President Barack Obama taking the gift from his wife and tossing the gift to his left. Twitter is flooded with this video. The description of the post reads as “Trump took his wife to visit Obama and gave gifts in an attempt to calm the anger of the black people. Unexpectedly, Obama took the gift and dumped it as soon as he turned around. This is today’s video.”
Fact Crescendo received this video as a request for Fact Check on our official WhatsApp Number 9049053770.
Fact Check-
In the beginning of our investigation we saw that this video is a footage from the CNN channel as the “CNN” watermark is visible on the right corner of the video. Next, we used a relevant keyword search to find the original video which led us to the video uploaded by CNN on 20th January 2017. This video has 53M views. Hence it is proves that this video is not a recent one. If we observe the video carefully, we can see Melania Trump giving the blue gift box to Michelle Obama which later former President Obama takes and hands it over to someone standing behind him. Nowhere in the video can we see that the gift was tossed away. The description of the video says “President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama greet President-elect Donald J. Trump and wife Melania at the White House on Inauguration Day.”
You can watch CNN’s complete news report below. The viral video part can be seen at 25 seconds.
Ruptly streamed this incident live on YouTube on 20th January 2017. The headline reads as “LIVE: Obama welcomes president-Elect Donald Trump and Mrs. Trump to White House.” In this wide-angle video, we can see that at 7 minutes and 12 seconds Barack Obama walks inside with the gift and hands it over to a house staff.
Thus, it is clear that the viral video on social media was digitally edited to show that Barack Obama tossed away the gift that was presented by President Trump and his wife Melania Trump.
Conclusion- Fact Crescendo found the above post to be False. The viral video is not recent and dates back to 2017. The video has no relation with the ongoing George Floyd protest in USA. The video is digitally edited to show that former President Obama tossed away the gift that was presented by President Trump and his wife Melania Trump.
Title:Barack Obama tossing away Melania Trump’s gift is digitally edited.
Fact Check By: Aavya RayResult: False
