Fake tweets from Rob Reiner, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump all made the rounds this year.
Social media in 2025 was absolutely swamped with fakes. AI tools have made it easy for anyone to make fake photos and videos that can fool many people into thinking they’re real. The tech has now advanced sufficiently that you shouldn’t necessarily feel bad if you fall for one that pops up in your feed. OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Nano Banana Pro are both getting very good.
But you don’t need AI to trick unsuspecting masses of people on sites like Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and X. Sometimes, you can do the same with good, old-fashioned Photoshop techniques. And we saw plenty of that with fake tweets that went viral over the past year.
Did you see that tweet about the botched surgery on Elon Musk’s penis? There were several tweets, actually, but they were all fake. Same with the tweets about President Trump claiming the World Series was rigged and another about far-right influencer Andrew Tate calling any man with a girlfriend “gay.”
Below we’ve got some of the viral tweets (or Truths, as they’re called on Truth Social) that caught our attention over the past 12 months. And none of them are real.1) Rob Reiner never tweeted ‘fuck all of you MAGA assholes’
Comedy legend Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were murdered last weekend in their Los Angeles home, prompting an outpouring of grief and tributes to the director’s incredible body of work. But fans of President Donald Trump took the opportunity to spread a tweet that appeared to come from Reiner calling Trump supporters “assholes.” The tweet is fake.
“Until Trump goes to prison I will no longer be posting on Twitter. I’ve had it with the insults and put downs. Fuck all of you MAGA assholes,” the fake tweet reads.
The image, purporting to show a screenshot from 2023, spread far and wide on social media and was often used by Trump fans to attack anyone who was mourning the beloved director. Reiner, a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, deleted his X account sometime around the 2024 presidential election, but the AFP notes that he addressed the fake tweet in January 2023 after it had gone viral for the first time.
“This is not my account,” Reiner tweeted Jan. 23, 2023, in a post that was archived.
The fake post looks like it was probably modified from an authentic Reiner tweet that read: “Until Trump is Indicted for leading a Deadly Insurrection to Overthrow the United States Government, our Democracy will not be restored.”
President Trump attacked Reiner in an unhinged screed the day after the director was found dead, calling him “tortured and struggling, but once very talented.” The president even made the killing about himself, claiming with no evidence that Reiner was murdered “due to the anger he caused others” by being anti-Trump.
Trump fans clearly took that as a signal to besmirch Reiner’s memory, and the fake tweet spread widely as a justification to attack the director. Reiner’s 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, has been arrested and charged with murder.2) Joe Rogan fell for a fake tweet about the No Kings protests
Joe Rogan is America’s most popular podcaster, averaging about 20 million listeners per week. But Rogan consistently falls for fake images and videos online, even after they’ve been widely debunked. The latest example? Rogan fell for another fake tweet on Wednesday that was supposedly from President Donald Trump.
In an episode from October, Rogan had guests Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin, both conservative British political commentators, and the three men talked about the No Kings protests that happened Oct. 18. The demonstrations saw millions of people take to the streets in opposition to Trump, and Rogan tried to belittle the efforts, insisting that people were being paid to be there and those who weren’t being paid were just “geriatrics.”
Rogan also claimed that if the protests were being allowed to happen at all, that must be evidence that Trump couldn’t possibly be a king. And that’s when he promoted the fake tweet he saw—a post made to look like it was from the president on Truth Social.
“No, he didn’t send the troops to stop the protests,” said Rogan. “In fact, he congratulated them on doing a great job, and he said I’m still your president. Tweet’s fucking hilarious. It’s very funny.” One of Rogan’s guests chimed in to say, “yeah, I saw that,” with a laugh.
Rogan told his producer to pull up the tweet, though it seemed clear he was having trouble tracking it down. “Try Truth Social,” Rogan told his producer, who was just off-screen. “You can probably find an image of it since it was posted everywhere.”
The fake tweet Rogan seemed to be talking about reads, “A HUGE THANK YOU to all the ‘No Kings’ protesters yesterday! I was very concerned a king was trying to take my place, but thanks to your tireless efforts, I am STILL YOUR PRESIDENT! Great job all!!!” But there’s nothing about it that’s real.
The producer never did seem to find the post, probably because he didn’t want to tell Rogan it was fake. It wasn’t even a recent fake tweet. It first started circulating around the first No Kings Day on June 14. The screenshot went viral back in June on platforms like X and Instagram. As the Daily Beast notes, the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., shared the fake tweet but acknowledged it was fake. Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo shared the fake post in June as well, though she didn’t know it wasn’t real.
Rogan droned on and on about the protests during his show and claimed they were identical to what happened with Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign. The podcast host insisted that the Harris campaign “filled up stadiums” with people who were paid to be there, a claim with no basis in fact. Rogan said that it “became a job” for the people at Harris rallies and that “should not be legal” because it’s “deception.”
Incredibly, Trump’s actual commentary on the No Kings protests is somehow more aggressive than the fake version Rogan highlighted on Wednesday. In reality, Trump shared an AI video on Truth Social showing himself flying a fighter jet and dumping literal shit on protesters.
Rogan is not a particularly bright man. But, again, he has an enormous audience in the millions. And he’s always falling for fake shit, whether it’s AI videos of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz or tweets about “Jewish tunnels,” sourced to fake accounts with characters like Dick Stroker.3) Charlie Kirk never tweeted about scratching his anus
There was a tweet that went viral back in July, before Charlie Kirk’s killing in September, that appeared to show the MAGA influencer criticizing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for eating with his hands.
“I have so many thoughts on this that it literally keeps me up at night, Zohran Mamdani eating rice with his HANDS during an interview,” the tweet read. “I very sincerely doubt he has to scratch his anus any less than the rest of us which makes that whole display unbelievably disgusting.”
The image appeared on sites like Reddit, X, and Bluesky, and it seemed plausible enough. Right-winger users on X hurled racist comments at Mamdani about it. Even elected Republicans got in on the act, with Rep. Brandon Gill, a Republican from Texas, writing, “Civilized people in America don’t eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.”
The tweet that looked like it was from Kirk was believable, though it seemed like it was accidentally admitting that Kirk really dug in to scratch his anus. But this one was fake.
Kirk’s real commentary on the issue mostly centered around the idea that Mamdani didn’t actually want to eat rice with his hands. The late commentator suggested it was actually all for show: “It’s a calculated stunt, just like him constantly changing his accent. Honestly, that’s a lot worse and more disturbing than if he just authentically ate that way. One is backwards.
