(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The amateur sleuths of Twitter thought that they had uncovered a Thanksgiving conspiracy today, claiming that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stole a photo of a pie from PBS and posted it as her own. Did Sanders lie about her pie? No. And we’ll show you why.




The origin of this bizarre conspiracy theory seems to have started with random Twitter users before being taken up by journalist and author Victoria Namkung who posted a link to what she claimed was the original photo. Namkung seemed to believe that the “PBS” in the domain name of the photo she posted meant that Sanders had stolen the photo from the public broadcaster.


One of the tweets sent out today accusing White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders of stealing a photo of a pie (Twitter)

But the thing is, pbs.twimg.com is just a subdomain that Twitter uses to host photos. It has absolutely nothing to do with the Public Broadcasting Service. The best evidence that Sanders is the original creator of the photo? If you do a reverse image search, it’s clear that Sanders was the first person to post that image to the internet.

Namkung deleted her original tweet about PBS but still insisted that Sanders didn’t bake the pie that she posted, despite providing no evidence that it was a stock photo. Other Twitter users finally set her straight and she deleted all her tweets accusing Sanders of stealing the photo.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies pretty much on a daily basis for President Trump. But she didn’t lie about her pecan pie. The internet is a strange place filled with conspiracy theories about any number of things. But when you start accusing people of faking their pie photos, much like the dumb theory around Koigate, it’s maybe time to take a step back and remember that even liars tell the truth sometimes.


Sanders might lie on behalf of the president about everything from terrorist attacks to statements about collusion with Russia. But she wouldn’t dare lie about a pie. That would be low even for the Trump regime.