ABC News used a fake image of Trump in the White House and is anything real?

Fake pics. Oh goodie.
 By 
Nicole Gallucci
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Fake news, "alternative facts" and now fake images? Boy, politics sure has gotten a lot more complicated these past few months.

The latest media source under fire is ABC News, who used a mocked up image of Donald Trump in the Oval Office to promote anchor David Muir's interview with the president.

ABC News actually grabbed the image straight from a September 2016 article in The New Yorker, who created it to imagine how Trump's first term would pan out.

ABC News cropped the photo and added its logo and the words "No questions off limits." However, there was a telltale sign the photo illustration, created by Ji Lee, isn't from Trump's presidency. It's the weather outside the window.

The image shows Trump standing in the Oval Office beside a table filled with family photos -- nothing out of the ordinary yet. However, he's gazing inquisitively at the snow-covered White House lawn. This makes absolutely no sense, because, um, it hasn't snowed in Washington since Trump's inauguration.

According to Politico, a spokesperson from ABC News explained, "When the marketing team created the promo, they included the wrong image by mistake. They updated it with a new photo as soon as they realized the error. We regret the mistake."

Though it's not an official photo of Trump in the White House, it's pretty on point considering America is having a pretty hard time determining the difference between fact or fiction anymore.

Trump's ABC News interview is set to air on Wednesday evening at 10:00 p.m. ET.

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Nicole Gallucci

Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.

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