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FACT CHECK

Kamala Harris didn't place this ad for rally actors. It's a fabrication | Fact check

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USA TODAY

The claim: Image shows Craigslist ad sought actors for Kamala Harris rally

An Aug. 9 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) amplified by former President Donald Trump shows what appears at first glance to be a Craigslist ad seeking actors in Arizona.

The description for the ad states in part that the role includes “holding signs that are Anti-Trump.” Text in the image, which is a screenshot of a social media post, links the supposed ad to Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.

"Democrats are paying people to show up at her so called rallies," the post text reads in part.

The post was shared more than 100 times in four days. Versions of the claim were reposted to Truth Social by Trump and to X, formerly Twitter, by actor Kevin Sorbo. The image also circulated widely on Instagram.

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Our rating: Altered

The image is an edited version of a years-old, fabricated Craigslist ad purportedly seeking to hire actors to pose as Trump supporters. The version circulating in August 2024 was doctored to indicate the actors would instead play Trump opponents.

Image of fabricated ad doctored to change 'Pro Trump' role to 'Anti-Trump'

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, held a rally Aug. 9 in Arizona, where they outlined their policy priorities before a crowd estimated by the campaign to be roughly 15,000 people.

But contrary to the claim in the post, the image does not show an authentic Craigslist ad seeking actors to attend that rally. It is a doctored version of a fabricated image that circulated in 2019 purporting to show an ad looking for actors for a Trump event. Similar versions of that claim were previously debunked by USA TODAY and other fact-checking outlets.

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A key difference between those images and the one in the Facebook post is the job description. In previous versions, that section states the signs to be held by the actors would be "Pro Trump" in nature. The prefix “Pro” is replaced by “Anti-” in the new version, but the font does not match the rest of the text.

Several other components of the images are identical. Those include the shape of the circles drawn around the titles and the positioning of the three red lines underlining text, the URLs and the use of the “talent gigs” taxonomy on the Craigslist website, where the listings purportedly were posted “about 2 hours ago” with no specific time or date.

The purported ad also gets one important detail wrong – the venue. The Harris-Walz rally took place at the Desert Diamond Arena in the suburb of Glendale, not the Phoenix Convention Center, where Trump held a rally in 2017.

USA TODAY reached out to the Trump campaign and several social media users who shared the post but did not immediately receive responses.

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