Tim Walz didn’t post this attack on Ann Coulter. Image is doctored | Fact check

The claim: Image shows Tim Walz post attacking Ann Coulter for calling his son ‘weird’

An Aug. 22 Threads post (direct link, archive link) shows what appears to show an exchange on X, formerly Twitter, between a governor and a political commentator.

“Talk about weird,” reads the caption of a post from conservative commentator Ann Coulter that includes a link to a story about Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s teenage son. A supposed response from Walz includes a screenshot of a sentence from Coulter’s Wikipedia page about her marital status along with text that reads, “Talk about why your fiancés keep leaving you.”

The Threads post was reposted more than 400 times in three days. Similar versions also circulated widely on Threads, on Facebook and on X.

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The image is a fabrication. There is no record of the post on Walz’s verified X account and no credible evidence that it was ever posted in the first place.

No record on Walz account of post about Coulter

Walz’s 17-year-old son Gus, who has a nonverbal learning disorder, anxiety and ADHD, openly sobbed as his father accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Aug. 21 at the party’s convention in Chicago. The following morning, Coulter posted about it and included a link to an article about the younger Walz.

But the Minnesota governor did not respond with a post mocking Coulter’s marital status. The image purporting to show that post is a fabrication.

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Walz’s official campaign account does not contain any record of the purported response or any subsequent replies to it. Had the post been real, or had it been posted and later deleted, any responses to it would exist because replies to deleted posts remain visible. For example, while Coulter later deleted her post – and explained it in a post that mischaracterizes Gus Walz’s conditions – the responses to the original post are still visible.

Additionally, had the post been an authentic response from one of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile figures, it certainly would have been noticed by and generated significant coverage from credible media outlets. But unlike numerous articles published about Coulter’s post, there are no such reports of Walz’s response to it.

The image also does not include a timestamp to indicate the time and date the purported post was shared. The only indication of its timing is a notation that it was shared an hour earlier. The engagement numbers – 185 replies; 146 reposts; 5,200 likes and 48,000 views – are identical on versions that do not have them cropped, a strong suggestion they originated from the same source. An authentic post viewed that frequently and shared that widely surely would have been captured and reposted with different metrics at different times.

Additionally, the image of Coulter’s Wikipedia page shown in the purported post contains a clue that it was doctored. While the sentence about her marital status matches in both versions, the authentic one contains a superscript, a number that indicates a footnote, which is not included in the post in question.

In his brief time as a major figure on the national political landscape, Walz has been the subject of significant misinformation. USA TODAY has previously debunked false claims that Walz has a net worth of $138 million, signed into law a bill that includes pedophilia as a sexual orientation and lied about coaching a high school football team to a state championship.

USA TODAY reached out to several social media users who shared the post, but none who responded provided evidence to support the claim. USA TODAY also reached out to spokespeople for Walz’s campaign but did not immediately receive responses.

Snopes and Lead Stories also debunked the claim.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tim Walz post attacking Ann Coulter is a fabrication | Fact check