Former President Donald Trump held a rally Saturday in Wildwood, New Jersey, speaking to supporters for about 90 minutes.
The next day, conservative political operative Roger Stone tweeted a photo of a large crowd gathered on a beach and said, “New Jersey is in play for @realDonaldTrump.”
The photo, however, does not depict Trump’s rally: It actually shows a 1994 concert in Brazil. As of the time of publication, the image had more than 1.5 million views on X, and screenshots of the post have also appeared on platforms like Threads.
A reverse image search quickly identifies the image—which features mountains in the background— as originating from Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Some online sources credit the crowd to a 2006 Rolling Stones concert, however, most identify the image as depicting a December 31, 1994, Rod Stewart performance. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Stewart drew a crowd of approximately 4.2 million people during a free New Year’s Eve concert on the Brazilian beach, more than any other concert in history.
In a follow-up post later that day, Stone acknowledged that the image was of an unrelated event and criticized fact checks of the claim as having “no sense of humor.”
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