Antifa activists didn’t vandalize Trump banner on Department of Labor building

A rumor that circulated online in late August 2025 claimed an image showed the result of antifa activists vandalizing a recently installed banner of U.S. President Donald Trump on the Department of Labor’s Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C. According to the image, the supposed activists allegedly added convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s image behind Trump and altered the words “American Workers First” to read “Pedophiles First.”

For example, one Reddit post displayed an X post screenshot from user @PaulleyTicks, reading, “BREAKING: Antifa thugs vandalize banner depicting the face of President Trump, that was unfurled this morning on the facade of the Department of Labor.” Users also shared this rumor on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram (archived), Reddit and Threads (archived), as well as in more posts on X (archived).

(Relevant_Demand7593/Reddit)

One Snopes reader asked, “Was Trump’s Department of Labor building banner changed changed by activist hackers?”

Some readers seemed to interpret the rumor as a factual recounting of real-life events. However, there was no evidence of antifa activists, or anyone else for that matter, defacing new banners outside the Labor Department building — a matter Snopes previously reported as authentic.

Rather, the rumor originated in an Aug. 25 post (archived) on the satirical Facebook profile named Tom Adelsbach. Adelsbach’s Facebook profile displayed an affiliation with the aforementioned @PaulleyTicks X account, as well as labels in the profile’s category space reading “Digital creator” and “Satire/Parody.” The user also updated their post to add the words, “DISCLAIMER: Digitally altered photo #parody.” Meanwhile, the X account’s bio read, “I meme, therefore I am,” and the user also replied (archived) to their original post with the label of “parody.”

We reached out to Adelsbach via Messenger to confirm he created the fake photo and will update this story if we receive more information.

For further reading, previous fact checks examined the true rumors claiming Trump once laughingly agreed to being called a “sexual predator” on “The Howard Stern Show,” as well as the time Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy,” and added, “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources calling their output humorous or satirical.