As expected, former president Donald Trump said a lot of things Donald Trump would say during his return to political rallying on Saturday in North Carolina. Also as expected, he wore pants — and according to a new Snopes investigation published Sunday, he did not wear them backward.
While any public comments made by Trump tend to cause controversy and a large number of the former president’s critics stand eternally ready to scrutinize his actions, few could have expected an out-of-focus video of the former blogger’s crotch to make headlines this weekend. In the possibly doctored video, which circulated across the internet on Saturday night, it was not clear whether or not Trump had a fly on the front of his pants. Sans other evidence, some came to the obvious conclusion that Trump had put on his pants backward, not realized it, traveled from wherever he put on his pants to the stage of a political rally in North Carolina without him or anyone else noticing his pants were on backward, or without him having to try to go the bathroom, sit down, or attempt to use his pockets. Regardless, questions were asked, laughs were had, and #TrumpPants trended on Twitter.
It’s possible that people entertaining this theory made other leaps of logic and came up with more plausible reasons for him supposedly wearing his pants backward. For instance, perhaps Trump was wearing some kind of slip-on slacks, designed for the GOP influencer-in-chief following the sweat-pant renaissance caused by the pandemic he mishandled (and soon they’ll be on sale, along with other Executive Time leisurewear, from his Save America PAC). Perhaps he flipped his pants backstage at the rally after dropping a Big Mac on his lap in the car ride over. Maybe he wore his pants backward to own the libs, somehow, or to distract us from whatever his last scandal was. Maybe he did it to symbolize the need to reverse the results of the 2020 elections, or the need to now lead the country ass-forward, while the nation’s fly remains pointed backward to when America was the great it must once again be. Unfortunately, Intelligencer cannot confirm whether or not anyone considered these additional explanations for a fuzzy viral video featuring the groin of Donald Trump’s oversize pants, only that people on Twitter seemed to believe — or wanted to believe — Trump was a big enough idiot to put his pants on backward (and probably not because he is secretly a huge Kriss Kross fan).
Since a lot of people wondering something on the internet is so often news, the reaction became an overnight news story. “PANTS ON ASS-BACKWARDS!?! Looking Like a No-Fly Zone” went the headline of TMZ’s post on the story. “While Donald Trump had plenty to say during his speech on Saturday night, his critics instead chose to focus on his appearance, mainly his supposedly backwards pants,” observed Russia Today.
Then, on Sunday afternoon, Snopes caved to the demands of its readers and launched an investigation into the matter:
Snopes looked through photographs taken at the event and published by the visual media company Getty Images that clearly show the former president on stage wearing pants with a zipper in the front … And a video posted by C-SPAN of the 90-minute speech also showed the former president wearing pants the right way.
After an approximately ten-second follow-up investigation, while briefly searching for a photo to use atop this very post, Intelligencer was able to confirm Snopes’s findings: Saturday was the night Trump finally became the former president who definitely still knows how to put his pants on straight.
