A screenshot shows that The Atlantic published an article with the headline “Trump Is Literally Hitler”.
This is not a real screenshot. It was created as satire, and a spokesperson for the Atlantic has confirmed such an article has never been shared by the publication.
A screenshot of a fake article in The Atlantic with the headline “Trump Is Literally Hitler” has been shared thousands of times on social media, including by X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk to his more than 200 million followers.
The screenshot shows what appears to be an article published on The Atlantic’s website, featuring an image of Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler back to back.
This is not a real article, and it was never published by The Atlantic. The account that shared the screenshot to X first has confirmed multiple times that it was intended as satire.
Anna Bross, senior vice president of communications at The Atlantic, told Full Fact: “The image tweeted by Elon Musk is a fabricated article. No such article has ever been published by The Atlantic.”
Several examples of Facebook posts we’ve seen sharing the screenshot online appear to believe it’s a real article—one shares it with the caption “Never seen the entire system go against one man in such a slanders [sic] way” while another says: “Democrat are the real threat to Democracy! [...] STOP THE INSANITY! [sic]”.
The image used in the fake screenshot appears to have been taken from a Washington Post opinion article, published in December 2023, with the headline: “Yes, it’s okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don’t let me stop you.”
While The Atlantic has never published an article with the image or headline used in the fake screenshots, it has a very similar visual format to a real article written by the same author, supposedly published on the same date, in the publication’s politics section.
Fake screenshots of articles from genuine news sites are very common on social media, and we have fact checked them many times before.
As we approach the upcoming US presidential elections we are also seeing a significant amount of false information about the candidates circulating online. You can read our work covering claims about the election and its two leading candidates—Donald Trump and Kamala Harris—on our website here.
We have contacted Mr Musk for comment, and will update this article if we receive a response.
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 satire because the Atlantic has confirmed this has never been published and the original account that shared it said it was intended as satire.
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