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Apparently, the White House Press Secretary tweeted a picture of a chocolate pecan pie over the Thanksgiving Holiday. She claims that she made the pie and took a picture of it.

enter image description here

People are claiming that this is a stock photo - apparently due to the white background and perfect looking pie. I haven't seen any actual claims that show the original pie photo that is the same as the one in the tweet.

Is the pie picture an original picture as the White House Press Secretary claims or is this picture a copy that she found on the internet?

I've tried googling and reverse image searches but I only get the original tweet, re-tweets and stories about the tweet. It may be a stock photo that isn't available on the internet.

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    The title asks if she "lied about a pie", but the question focuses only on whether or not the photo is fake. Another possibility is that the photo is genuine, yet the pie is store-bought or made by a friend/neighbor.
    – Johnny
    Nov 29, 2017 at 7:28
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    the newspaper style capitalization of this question is kinda weird
    – user1306322
    Nov 29, 2017 at 14:38
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    Even if it were a stock photo that wouldn't mean she lied. It's common for people to say something along the lines of "I made this" with "this" being a 'Platonic ideal'. And they may point to a pretty photo of an example of that ideal as a representation of what they made. Most likely that photo even looks better than what they actually made. In most cases this wouldn't even be interpreted as a deception, much less an outright lie. Calling that a lie might be similar to saying that someone is lying when they show you their driver's license and say "this is me". The controversy is ridiculous.
    – Michael Burr
    Nov 30, 2017 at 6:38
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    Seriously? This is a thing now?
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Nov 30, 2017 at 11:07
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    Did she claim she made (took) the picture? Maybe this is just my age showing, but I don't take pictures of everything I eat/make, so if I wanted to show someone the pie I made, I'd send them the photo from the website I got the recipe from.
    – Quasi_Stomach
    Nov 30, 2017 at 17:03

1 Answer 1

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According to this Gizmodo article, this controversy was started by a Twitter user who seemed to believe the photo was taken from PBS based on the URL of where the photo was hosted:

The amateur sleuths of Twitter thought that they had uncovered a Thanksgiving conspiracy today, claiming that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stole a photo of a pie from PBS and posted it as her own.

original tweet accusing Sanders of not baking the pie

The article points out that the photo is hosted on a Twitter subdomain:

But the thing is, pbs.twimg.com is just a subdomain that Twitter uses to host photos. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Public Broadcasting Service.

Gizmodo also claims that reverse image search reveals that the image is an original. I double-checked, and that appears to be the case.

While this is not definitive evidence in itself that Mrs. Sanders made the pie herself, I think it rules out the theory that she used a stock image.

As always, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don't see any evidence that she used a stock photo or that it wasn't she who made the pie.

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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – Sklivvz
    Nov 29, 2017 at 9:20
  • Also relevant: the author of the tweet in the above screenshot later posted this: twitter.com/VictoriaNamkung/status/934183572818112512 (Quote: Turns out pbs.twimg.com is what's called a CDN (content delivery network). Thanks to the tech savvy folks who pointed it out. Twitter referred to their CDN as pbs.twimg.com so that’s where the confusion happened.)
    – ShreevatsaR
    Nov 29, 2017 at 23:44
  • It's entirely possible to interpret her statement in a way that she merely bought the pie. "I managed this" doesn't have to mean that she made it (but it would definetly be a weird statement, if she just bought it).
    – Clearer
    Nov 30, 2017 at 10:39
  • Thanks - I thought it was kind of weird that reporters would assume this was a stock photo just because of the white background and it's looks. It looks like you just dump pecans on top of the chocolate stuff so I don't see why people said it was "perfect".
    – Hannover Fist
    Nov 30, 2017 at 17:50

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