Did man with Trump face tattoo claim job rejected him over MAGA hat?

In September 2026, an image spread online of what appears to be a screen capture of a man with a large face tattoo of U.S. President Donald Trump being interviewed on TV wearing a red MAGA hat. 

A chyron near the bottom of the image stated, “Man said he was rejected for a position after interviewer saw his MAGA hat.” It continued with a purported quote from the man: “I was wearing it outside the building.”  

(X user @Miketrenchezs)

The image spread across social media, with many online taking it (archived) it as real, and Snopes readers asked us to verify its authenticity. 

(DONG PAC Satire)

The above image is fake. It originated with a satirical source, as evidenced by the logo at the bottom right that says “DONG PAC Satire” (though in many posts the logo and satire label were edited out, obscuring their origin). The image also features several signs that it was generated by artificial intelligence.

In the background, there appear to be two identical framed posters with a red heart underneath illegible wording hung side-by-side at the top right of the image. Second, the man’s cheek and ear appear unnaturally widened. The Trump tattoo also appears superimposed over the face as it does not account for the slight bump that is natural over a jawline. We also noted an odd discoloration along the man’s chin.

We ran the image through OpenAI’s research tool that can determine whether an image was generated by OpenAI. The tool found “a SynthID watermark that originated from OpenAI.” 

Snopes also searched online for evidence that an actual TV interview with this man took place. We looked up examples of people allegedly losing jobs for supporting Trump and this man’s story and face tattoo was not featured in any publicly reported cases. 

We found a website at the URL dongpac.com featuring the same logo as the bottom right corner of the image, though the website didn’t appear to have this exact meme on its page. The site describes its content as “satirical.” 

Snopes has covered numerous examples of satirical content, including other fake images of men in MAGA hats. Read more about why we report on satirical content on our site. 

Sources