Karl Malone picked as Child Protective Services director? No, claim is satire | Fact check

The claim: Trump appointed Karl Malone as director of Child Protective Services

A Nov. 14 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) appears to show President-elect Donald Trump and former professional basketball player Karl Malone posing together.

"Donald Trump has appointed NBA legend Karl Malone as the new director of Child Protective Services," reads on-screen text included in the post.

The post garnered more than 16,000 likes in about two weeks. Other versions of the claim were shared on Instagram and X.

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Our rating: False

The claim originated from a satirical account. Trump can't appoint a new director for the Department of Child Protective Services because it is a state-run agency.

Karl Malone not appointed to federal position

Trump's Cabinet picks have sparked controversy among Republicans and Democrats alike. But these selections don't include Karl Malone as director of Child Protective Services.

To start, Trump can't appoint a new Child Protective Services director because it's not a federal agency. The department is supported by the federal government but managed by individual states as a branch of their respective social services departments. The agencies' leaders are chosen by state governments, as was the case in Illinois, where Director Heidi E. Mueller was appointed by Gov. JB Pritzker.

Both the claim and the image of Trump and Malone originated in a Nov. 13 X post shared by a self-proclaimed parody account. The claim is an example of what could be called “stolen satire,” where posts written as satire and presented that way originally are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.

There are no credible reports of Trump appointing Malone to any other federal position either.

The parody account says on its profile that its posts include "the most outta pocket NBA ai images." AI detectors offered mixed assessments of the image's origins, but the nonsensical word on the wall behind Trump is a typical sign of AI generation. The technology often struggles to produce legible text in this way.

The claim plays off the fact that Malone was accused of impregnating a 13-year-old in 1983 while he was a sophomore at Louisiana Tech University. The 13-year-old's family sued Malone at the time but the matter was later settled out of court.

Fact check: No, Trump did not name Lauren Boebert education secretary on Nov. 13

USA TODAY previously debunked similarly false claims about Trump's supposed Cabinet selections. These include claims that Trump appointed Tucker Carlson as the White House press secretary and model and reality TV star Amber Rose as the education secretary.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact and Snopes also debunked the claim.

Our fact-check sources

• AI Knows Ball, Nov. 13, X post

• AI Knows Ball, accessed Nov. 26, X profile

• Child Protective Services, accessed Nov. 26, What is Child Protective Services?

• First Star Institute, accessed Nov. 26, Federal Child Welfare Oversight

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Trump didn't appoint Karl Malone to political office | Fact check