Photo: Lev Radin / Shutterstock
The resemblance is uncanny.
By Olivia Jakiel — Written on Jan 08, 2021
January 6, 2021 will go down as one of the saddest days in American history.
As pro-Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building with Congress inside, many rioters were actually able to get into the building, and some of those rioters vandalized the American institution in the name of Donald Trump and his commands to overturn the election results.
Now that more and more photos from that fateful day are surfacing, many of the rioters are being identified and (hopefully) charged for the crimes they committed.
One particularly interesting photo that’s been going around features a man in a Trump beanie carrying a podium and waving to the camera, and to HGTV fans, the man looked awfully familiar.
Was Chip Gaines at the U.S. Capitol riots?
Read on for everything you need to know about whether or not Chip Gaines participated in the U.S. Capitol riots.
A picture of a man resembling Chip Gaines at the riots quickly made the rounds on social media.
You have to admit, the man in the photo looks suspiciously like the former HGTV star.
“Joanna come get your mans,” a meme account on Instagram captioned the photo.
Social media users couldn’t get enough of the pic.
The comments section of the original post went off after the account posted it, and the picture garnered over 134,000 likes at the time of this publication.
“Waco clearly has something in the water. Lol,” one fan wrote, while another said, “I don’t think that will match the white ship lap in the sitting room :/,” referring to the podium the man in the picture was carrying.
The ship lap jokes kept coming on social media, as Twitter users couldn’t stop joking about the man carrying the podium.
“Chip Gaines trying to flip the capitol building. Magnolia design getting out of control,” one Twitter user wrote, while another said, “Is Chip Gaines renovating the capitol building? They’re going to be a hell of a lot more shiplap [sic].”
The man in the photo was incorrectly identified as “Via Getty.”
In a hilarious turn of events, social media users accidentally mistook the photo credit of the original image — Via Getty — as the name of the mysterious Chip Gaines look alike in the photo.
“And now we know his name is Via Getty (wtf kind of name is that, anyway?) can’t someone just go to his house, arrest him on his return and bring Nancy back her podium?" one Twitter user questioned. Another said, “That is Italian, 100%.”
Another cleared the air for the confused social media user, writing, “Punctuation. Via Getty, a rioter steals a podium. This means the image is from Getty Images. Via Getty, a rioter, steals a podium. This means, due to the second comma, the rioter is named Via Getty. The top version is what was said.”
And while Chip Gaines hasn’t been active on social media since December of last year, save one retweet from January 3, so it's hard to know his whereabouts, the chances of the man in the photo being Chip Gaines are absolutely zero.
The man in the photo has been identified as Adam Johnson, a married man with five kids who lives in Parrish, Florida.
Olivia Jakiel is an editor and writer who covers celebrity and entertainment news. Follow her on Instagram and keep up with her zingers on Twitter.