What was claimed
An image shows Donald Trump keeps a picture of Theodor Herzl on display in his office.
Our verdict
The picture was taken in the New York Times offices in 2016.
Picture does not show Donald Trump with an image of Theodor Herzl in his office
Posts on Facebook featuring an image of President-elect Donald Trump in front of photographs in an office are being shared with the caption: “President Donald Trump keeps a picture of Theodore [sic] Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, displayed in his office!”
But this picture wasn’t taken in Mr Trump’s office. It shows a room at the New York Times.
Using Google Lens, Full Fact traced the picture back to a New York Times article in 2016. This article includes several other images of Mr Trump in the same room, with the same picture behind him, at different angles.
A full transcript of Mr Trump’s interview with the newspaper, published a day later, also includes a picture of him in the same room, and is captioned “President-elect Donald J. Trump during a meeting at The New York Times’s offices in Manhattan on Tuesday”.
The picture behind Mr Trump is a photograph of Theodor Herzl taken in Basel, Switzerland during the Fifth Zionist Congress in December 1901. Mr Herzl is considered the founder of modern Zionism.
We have fact checked a number of claims about Mr Trump this year, including a very old false rumour that he called Republicans ‘the dumbest group of voters’, and a photo seemingly showing him kissing Vice President Kamala Harris that was created using artificial intelligence.
False or misleading claims online have the potential to harm individuals, groups and democratic processes and institutions. Online claims can spread fast and far, and are difficult to contain and correct.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the picture was taken in the New York Times offices in 2016, not Mr Trump’s personal office.