About

Fake Melania Trump Conspiracy refers to a theory that First Lady Melania Trump has been replaced by a body double, which makes public appearances next to President Donald Trump.

Origin

On October 13th, 2017, Donald Trump spoke to the media about the relief effort in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. NBC News tweeted a clip of the press conference, which featured Melania Trump standing next to the president wearing sunglasses (shown below).

In the comments on the post, Twitter user @rhyddler^[1] said it appeared that Melania Trump did not look like herself and may have been a body double, gaining over 1,000 retweets and 5,000 likes (shown below).

Spread

The conspiracy took off on October 18th, when Twitter user @JoeVargas isolated a part of the clip in which Trump says "My wife, Melania, who happens to be right here" and added the caption "This is not Melania. To think they would go this far & try & make us think its her on TV is mind blowing. Makes me wonder what else is a lie."^[2] The tweet gained over 57,000 retweets and 92,000 likes (shown below).

This launched a series of jokes in which people photoshopped other characters next to Donald Trump and imagining Trump trying to pass them off as Melania. Twitter user @pattymo^[3] quoted @JoeVargas' original tweet and photoshopped a picture of Trump standing next to a Muppet, gaining over 3,900 retweets and 18,000 likes (shown below, left). User @sbstryker^[4] noted that Trump pointing out Melania standing right next to him was the behavior of a man who may have been lying, gaining 4,300 retweets and 14,000 likes (shown below, right).

The story spread through many major media outlets, including Daily Dot,^[5] Select All,^[6] Washington Post,^[7] and more. Snopes^[11] debunked the conspiracy in 2018.

Alabama Visit

On March 9th, 2019, the Fake Melania conspiracy was revived following a visit by the President and First Lady to Alabama to observe damage from a tornado that hit the state. Twitter users believed that the Melania Trump pictured in photographs on the trip appeared significantly different from other images of the First Lady. User @mel_med_larson tweeted that the chin shape of "Fake Melania" looked different than the First Lady's, gaining over 1,000 retweets (shown below, left). User @TheMominatrixxx claimed "Fake Melania" was shorter than actual Melania, gaining over 700 retweets (shown below, right). The spread of the conspiracy caused "Fake Melania" to trend on Twitter that day.^[10]

The revival of the conspiracy was covered by Daily Dot,^[8] Esquire,^[9] Cosmo,^[10] and others.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References