No evidence Trump spent 2017 Thanksgiving with Epstein
U.S. Rep. Sean Casten, a Downers Grove Democrat, recently posted about a past holiday celebration involving President Donald Trump.
“Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected President with Jeffrey Epstein. 2017,” Casten wrote in a Nov. 12 post on X.
To back up his claim, the Democratic representative included an email exchange that was among the messages released from the file on convicted child sex offender Epstein.
In a Nov. 23, 2017, Thanksgiving Day conversation with Faith Kates, cofounder of the modeling agency NEXT Management, Kates asked Epstein, “Where are you having thanksgiving?”
After a discussion about two other people, one that Kates described as, “such a snooze,” she asked Epstein, “who else is down there?”
Epstein replied, “David fizel. hanson. trump.” To which Kates said, “Have fun!!!”
But those emails are short on details, according to PolitiFact. And there is no evidence that Trump spent the Thanksgiving holiday that year with Epstein.
“Those emails prove literally nothing,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told PolitiFact.
According to Trump’s presidential schedule, he spent Thanksgiving 2017 in West Palm Beach, Florida. He spoke to members of the military in a video conference, visited Coast Guard members, issued a Thanksgiving message to the U.S. and stopped at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
Flight records from one of Epstein’s private jets indicate that Epstein was in West Palm Beach the same time as Trump. But there is not proof that the two men were ever together.
“Epstein did NOT say he was spending Thanksgiving with Trump,” wrote Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown in a Nov. 14 X post. “It is very common in South Fla during winter/holiday season for folks to use the phrase ‘down there’ — it means are you down in Florida (in this case Palm Beach) for the holiday — not that you are sitting at the table with everyone who is ‘down there.’”
No drop in Thanksgiving dinner price
President Donald Trump touted the drop in price for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner.
“I just saw that Walmart came out with a statement last night, they’ve done it for many years, that Thanksgiving this year will cost 25% less than Thanksgiving last year,” he said during a recent news conference at the White House.
But Trump’s numbers are off, according to The Associated Press. This statement is misleading. Although the basket of food is nearly 25% less than it was last year, it contains fewer and different items than the 2024 offering.
“It’s not apples to apples, right?” David Anderson, a livestock economist at Texas A&M University, told the AP. “What this does highlight is individual retailers’ strategies for getting customers in the door.”
The 2024 basket was $56 and contained 29 items. The 2025 version costs $40 and includes 15 items, but is missing some dessert foods, such as pecan pie, mini marshmallows and muffin mix. Some name-brand items were replaced with the Walmart brand, and the turkeys promised last year were larger than those offered this year.
An October report from Purdue University’s College of Agriculture showed that 2025 retail prices are about 25% higher than a year ago.
Trucking post is satire
A recent post claimed some truckers don’t want to work with New York City’s newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“The nation's largest trucking company says it will no longer service New York City after Mamdani takes office,” read the Nov. 6 Facebook post. “‘We've instructed our dispatchers to reject loads to any of the Five Burroughs,' said Company Spokesman Joe Barron, 'We don't see a way to continue doing business in the Big Apple.’”
But this claim is false, according to Lead Stories. The post was supposed to be a joke.
There were no other mentions of this happening on other news sites. This post appeared on a satirical website and included a photo of a truck driving down a highway. In the corner of that photo is a box that reads, “Satire. Nothing on this page is real.”
Students created using AI
Videos posted to social media show what appears to be students in a classroom as a teacher instructs the children to bow and chant “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Great” in Arabic), and told to repeat “Subhan Allah al-A'la” (“Glory be to God the Most High” in Arabic).
The caption on an X post with the clip read, “Young, white children are being indoctrinated into Islam. They raise their hands in the air and chant Allah Akbar. This has to stop.”
It has stopped because it didn’t really happen, according to Reuters. The video was created using artificial intelligence, or AI.
University at Buffalo computer science professor Siwei Lyu told Reuters that the video “exhibits multiple signs of AI generation.”
He said there are various giveaways that the clip originated using AI, such as the teacher sitting on a chair that doesn’t exist, distorted faces and wall decorations appearing to move.
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.