U.S. President Donald Trump demanded to equip all Navy ships with sails and considered adding cannons.
In August 2026, people shared a rumor that U.S. President Donald Trump demanded to equip all Navy ships with sails and considered adding cannons.
For example, on Aug. 16, an X user posted (archived) a graphic showing a very large ship with masts and sails. The image displayed the word “Live” and a “Breaking News” chyron. The image lacked a news media outlet name, reading, “Trump Demands All Navy Ships Equipped With Sails, Cannons Also Being Considered.”
The user added a bit of apparent humor in their post, writing, “And Wood Burning Stoves!”
(@JamesTate121 accessed via X)
The story spread in the days after Trump, in an Aug. 13 presidential memorandum, ordered the Navy to return to an older system of aircraft carriers using steam catapults for launching fighter jets.
Other users shared the same graphic on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived) and X (archived).
To investigate the rumor’s legitimacy, we first used search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google. If Trump truly had publicly demanded or considered adding sails and cannons, journalists with reputable news media outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on it, and those search inquiries would have uncovered such evidence.
That was not the case. We did not find any credible reporting about Trump talking about sails and cannons.
We concluded this claim originated as satire after taking into account the false and comedic nature of the rumor, the “Breaking News” image graphic’s inauthenticity and lack of a news media outlet affiliation, and the fact that a Facebook user mentioned later in this story who may have posted the earliest available record of the image graphic also previously published false or humorous content.
Researching the rumor
In an attempt to find the original source, we performed a reverse image search, a type of search that seeks to find other websites where the same image has appeared online. To do that, we visited the Google Images website, clicked on the camera icon on the right side of the search bar and uploaded the image. That upload and search found the aforementioned social media post examples, as well as the apparent ship illustration source, but did not locate the image graphic’s source.
Text searches on social media platforms for “Trump Demands All Navy Ships Equipped With Sails,” both with and without quotation marks, also failed to locate a source.
We then attempted more reverse image searches, using Google Images’ tool to crop the search area to only look at small parts of the image graphic, as opposed to selecting the entire image. One of those searches found what could have been the earliest post featuring the image.
Facebook user and group admin Joe Kleinschmidt shared (archived) the image in his Anti-QAnon Memes group just before midnight Pacific time Aug. 15.
(Joe Kleinschmidt accessed via Facebook)
We reached out to Kleinschmidt and another group admin on Messenger to confirm whether he created the graphic and ask for information about the generator or tool used to make it. After attempting to join the group, we received a general message declining the join request, reading, “that’s not a generator – that’s photoshop work – look up ‘Meme War Veteran’ on facebook to know where it came from.” We will update this article if Kleinschmidt provides further details.
We emailed Facebook’s The Meme War Veteran to inquire whether the user created the image graphic and “Breaking News” template. The user, displaying a bio about parody and satire, has shared other posts using the same template. The user confirmed creating a similar-looking template but denied involvement in making the image about Trump, sails and cannons. The image did not appear on that user’s page.
For further reading, we previously reported the facts about a rumor claiming Trump posted on Truth Social, “Only suckers and losers would enlist, go to sea on an aircraft carrier, and then complain and send their family nasty notes about our military. They weren’t at sea long enough.”
