Fact Check: Is Walmart having a 99-cent clearance sale on all Trump merchandise?

WASHINGTON, DC: An image widely shared on social media claims to show a Walmart store selling all Donald Trump merchandise, including hats and books, on clearance for just 99 cents.

So, let's see if there is any truth to that claim.

Claim: Walmart puts Trump hats and books on 99 cents clearance shelves

The photo, which began circulating on social media platform X in November 2025, sparked immediate conversation, with some users claiming it was evidence of diminishing popularity for the President's products. The photo showed a shelf full of red hats, T-shirts, stickers, and several books, all bearing a “Clearance 99¢” sign.

The picture was shared by the @EastEndJoe account on November 19, 2025. It came with the caption: “Meanwhile…at Walmart.”

Fact Check: False, viral image is AI-generated

This image contains, in its lower-right corner, the Gemini AI watermark, a small, four-pointed star, otherwise known as the SynthID watermark. This watermark is embedded by Google’s generative AI to mark an image as synthetic, meaning it was created by an AI tool and is not an actual photograph.

It may further be noted that nonsensical or misspelled text on items in an image is a common indication of AI generation, especially when text rendering is involved.

Some very obvious examples of this appear in the Trump merchandise shown in the viral image. For instance, there is a red MAGA hat misspelled as “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAMI,” in which a jumbled word replaces the intended “AGAIN.”  

Other text, such as a label that should read “Trump Bible”, is distorted into nonsensical words such as “Trump Eidle.” Even the acronym “MAGA” itself appears corrupted in various places on the display, at times rendered as “Traga.”

The AI watermark and these typographical inconsistencies make it clear that the photo depicts a digitally fabricated scene of an event that never occurred in an actual Walmart location.

Previous misinformation surrounding Trump

Earlier this week, Donald Trump was again linked to a false story when an audio clip surfaced featuring a Trump-like voice claiming he would block the release of Epstein documents to the cabinet. According to disinformation watchdog NewsGuard, the audio appears to be AI-generated.

The vocal texture and certain patterns in the audio indicate it was created using Sora (OpenAI’s text-to-video model).

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.