Donald Trump and Bob Woodward ‘Depends’ Tweet

On January 31 2023, a screenshot purportedly of a tweet by journalist Bob Woodward disclosing information about former United States President Donald Trump’s “Depends” [sic] appeared on Imgur:

At the top of the image, the name “Bob Woodward” appeared alongside the handle “@realBobWoodward.” The only other element of the image was the supposed tweet itself, which read:

Since Donald Trump is suing me I will reveal something I’ve never revealed before about a public figure. The scent-barrier on his Depends™ is completely insufficient.

For context, Bob Woodward is an American journalist; Woodward’s big break occurred when he broke the Watergate scandal story with Carl Bernstein. On January 31 2023, CNN reported that Donald Trump had filed a lawsuit against Woodward:

Former President Donald Trump has sued journalist Bob Woodward for copyright violations, claiming Woodward released audio from their interviews without Trump’s consent.

The former president has a long history of filing lawsuits that ultimately get tossed out of court. Woodward and the publisher Simon & Schuster said Trump’s case is without merit … But Trump, in the lawsuit filed [on January 31 2023] in the Northern District of Florida, claims he did not give Woodward permission to release the audio of the interviews.

The tweet mentioned “Depends™,” a reference to “Depend,” undergarments for people suffering from incontinence. Rumors about Trump wearing “adult diapers” circulated cyclically on social media, likely influencing the content of the purported tweet.

Screenshots of the tweet appeared at least two additional times on Imgur, and once on Reddit’s r/PoliticalHumor. All three variations contained something that the fourth did not — additional text at the bottom of the tweet:

That more complete screenshot contained two indicators the screenshot was created as a joke. One was the “6:68 PM” timestamp, and the other was text reading “Parody by Back Rub.”

We have encountered tweets with some variation of “Parody by Back Rub” circulating as “real” before. They included satirical tweets attributed to Lauren Boebert, Liz Cheney, and Betty White.

Bob Woodward didn’t tweet at all on January 30 2023, the date on the tweet. However, @FaithRubPol shared the screenshot that night:

Notably, three of the four iterations depicted the tweet with the “parody” label included, and only one of the four cropped it out. On Twitter, @FaithRubPol’s bio was visible next to the tweet, and it again identified the account as humorous in nature:

Trying to understand this crazy world & get a few laughs. Most of our screenshots are parodies.

On February 1 2023, iterations of a tweet attributed to Bob Woodward (accusing Donald Trump of wearing “Depends”) spread virally — most of the time labeled as a parody. The most popular of three Imgur posts featuring the screenshot misleadingly cropped the image to remove the satire disclaimer. The tweet was created as a joke, by popular Twitter parody creator @FaithRubPol.