Social media reports claim that former US President Donald Trump would appear on a “surprise visit” to Switzerland on March 1, 2021. The footage in question is more than three years old, taken from Trump’s arrival in Davos for the World Economic Forum on Jan. 25, 2018.
One Facebook post visible here shows the screens of a YouTube video titled “Donald Trump surprise visit to Switzerland” and contains the caption “Donald Trump surprise visit to Switzerland today on Marine 1 … interesting.” The YouTube video, found here, was uploaded on March 1, 2021 from the channel “AMERICAN EVENTS” and received more than 800,000 views on March 2.
Some of the remarks reflect the claims of supporters of the debunked QAnon conspiracy theory that Trump is still secretly president and will come to power on March 4 (here).
The original footage uploaded to YouTube on January 26, 2018 can be viewed here. The description reads: “US President Donald Trump lands in Davos / Switzerland to attend the 2018 World Economic Forum annual meeting. Camera: Beni Wülser. Edit: Armin Rüede. Swiss TV-SRF. ”
The moment of his landing on this date was also shared here by Euronews and Swissinfo.ch.
Since 1971, the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum has been held in Davos, Switzerland, to bring together CEOs and company chairmen and dozens of heads of state and government, as well as heads of major international organizations, technology pioneers and civil society representatives (here, here).
Reuters photos of Trump landing in Davos in 2018 can be found here, here and here.
As president, Trump attended the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2018 and 2020 (here, here).
In August 2020, the World Economic Forum canceled the January 2021 summit due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the organizers planning to reschedule the event to somewhere in the early summer of 2021 (here).
VERDICT
Failure. Footage of Trump arriving at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland is from 2018, not 2021.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.