In October 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump recognized a White House janitor retiring after 22 years of service on his last day of work.
In October, a rumor circulated that U.S. President Donald Trump had personally recognized the service of a White House janitor on his last day of work. The janitor, who was not named in the posts, was supposedly retiring after 22 years.
For instance, a Facebook post from Oct. 23 (archived) sharing the claim began as follows:
NIGHT UPDATE | USA, a White House janitor who just retired after 22 years of service went to the media on his very last day — and completely EXPOSED Donald Trump. And what he revealed about what Trump did has left the entire internet speechless.
Many Snopes readers contacted us to ask whether the rumor was true.
We found it was fictional. By using the watermarks on the image in the post — labeled “Garvit@Trump” — we traced that version of the rumor to a Facebook page called “Garvit pandey” that originally shared it on Oct. 21. We also found evidence that a near-identical rumor spread in August.
Searching DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo for credible evidence supporting the rumor turned up no results. If the story was true, we would have found reporting of the janitor’s account in a reputable media outlet, as he supposedly spoke to the media about his encounter with Trump. That was not the case.
The post also had several indications of being AI-generated text, including its use of emojis; short, terse sentences; and lack of specific details (the janitor was never named, for instance). We also ran the post through the AI detection tool Pangram, which determined with high certainty that more than 90% of the text was directly AI generated
Let us note here: These types of AI detection tools are fallible. Snopes cautions people against using them for definitive answers on media’s authenticity without supporting evidence.
We contacted the Garvit pandey Facebook page to ask why it had created the false story about Trump and the janitor without a disclaimer to note its inauthenticity. We will update this story if we receive a response.
The fictional story resembled glurge, which Dictionary.com defines as “stories, often sent by email, that are supposed to be true and uplifting, but which are often fabricated and sentimental.” Creators of such content capitalize on social media users’ willingness to believe and share the made-up stories, aiming to go viral and make a profit on the advertising revenue from the social media sites. (Snopes has previously reported on the business strategy.)
Snopes frequently debunks false rumors about Trump. In October, we traced the source of a false story suggesting Maricopa County had apologized to Trump for miscounting ballots in the 2020 election (it did not miscount ballots in the first place), and also investigated a story suggesting Trump had banned the Canadian band Rush because of a trade war.
