Did Canadian performer Tate McRae post a photo of herself wearing a "Make America Great Again" red cap on Election Day in the U.S.? No, that's not true: Three online tools concluded that the image was digitally edited with AI. The original photo showed a cap with a sports apparel brand's logo.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X by @balladofanxcx on Nov. 3, 2026. The caption read:
⏰ Tate Mcrae [sic] via Instagram. 'go out there and vote ❤❤'
This is what the image in the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @balladofanxcx on X.)
Tate McRae (archived here) is a Canadian-born dancer and singer.
AI detector Sightengine said that the odds that generative AI was used in the picture were 99%:
(Image source: Sightengine.)
Hive Moderation, another AI detection tool, put the chances of that at 99.9%:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
One more tool, SynthID Detector (archived here), determined that the image was "made or edited with Google AI" and detected SynthID, an invisible watermark (archived here) showing the presence of generative AI:
(Image source: SynthID.)
When Lead Stories conducted a reverse image search via Google Lens, no exact matches led to the singer's account:
(Image search: Google.)
The original photo (archived here, here and here) on McRae's account on Instagram predated Election Day in the U.S. by more than nine months: It was published on Jan. 29, 2026. The real photo didn't show the performer wearing political merchandise -- it was a red cap that displayed a small Adidas logo and no campaign slogans:
(Image source: post by @tatemcrae on Instagram.)
Lead Stories manually reviewed recent posts on the singer's Instagram (archived here) and did not find other photos of her with political slogans.
Her channel on YouTube, also manually reviewed by Lead Stories, showed music videos.
Lead Stories performed a textual search on Google across McRae's account for the quote "go out there and vote." That showed zero results (archived here):
(Image source: Google.)
Had a celebrity with over 10 million followers posted a call to support a specific political party, that would have likely generated at least some media coverage. When Lead Stories searched pages indexed by Google News for the keywords "Tate McRae" and "make America great again" (archived here), no articles showed that McRae had made such a call around the 2026 Election Day in the U.S.
Earlier, in August 2026, the singer addressed internet rumors placing her among supporters of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Talking to Variety (archived here), McRae didn't give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer, but said she believes it should be obvious to the public what kind of person she is based on what she does. The article pointed out that the singer supported a project for LGBTQ+ youth.
