Unpacking claim photo shows US flag touching the ground at White House

[Thiệu Ngô]

According to the United States flag code, the national flag should never be allowed to touch the ground.

By Jack Izzo

On Nov. 16, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House after spending a weekend at his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago. As usual, a press photographer was on scene to snap photos. They went viral on social media not long after being posted online.

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That's because, in the background, a U.S. flag appeared to be on the ground, which would be a breach of the U.S. flag code. That code states that the flag should "never touch anything beneath it, such as the ground, the floor, water, or merchandise."

Upon viewing the photos, several Snopes readers wrote in asking us whether they were real. They were. However, photos were taken at an angle that did not allow us to confirm whether the flag ever touched the ground. We reached out to both the White House and the photographer who took the image for more information. Until we learn more, we have omitted a truth rating for this claim.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle called the claim that the flag had touched the ground "fake news" in an email statement to Snopes. "Due to the high winds on Sunday evening in the Washington, D.C. area, the flag was lowered into a special container out of an abundance of caution during the Marine One landing," he said.

That statement still contradicts the flag code, because the "special container" would still have been beneath the flag.

Official press photographs are generally posted to the stock photo site Getty Images. Looking for recent photos of Trump at the White House quickly revealed the snapshots as legitimate images, credited to photographer Mandel Ngan. Some posts on social media provided a potential alternate angle, but Snopes could not confirm whether that image was legitimate. Regardless, both images (and video footage) did depict the flag in a position that could have made it touch the ground. Some kind of box-shaped container was visible near the flag in the photos.

The flag in the photograph was attached to one of the two flagpoles Trump installed after he re-took office in January 2025.