UPS plane crash: No, Grok, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's photo isn't from 2021 tornadoes

Piper Hansen, Lexington Herald-Leader on Nov 6, 2025

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Andy Beshear has gotten a lot of use out of his navy blue emergency management jacket in his six years as Kentucky governor.

He wore it when he visited London in May after a tornado ripped through the area killing 20. He wore it in 2022 when catastrophic floods killed 45 across Eastern Kentucky.

And he wore it Nov. 5, surveying damage from a UPS plane crash in Louisville that has left at least 12 dead.

Similarities among photos of the governor in the jacket with yellow text seem to be confusing social media users online — including a popular AI chatbot.

Beshear’s Director of Digital and Creative Services James Hatchett told the Herald-Leader he took the posted photo Nov. 5.

“It’s impossible to describe the devastation from yesterday’s deadly plane crash. My heart is broken,” Beshear’s recent post said. “My prayers are with all those affected, and I promise we will be there in the hours, days and weeks ahead. We will get through this together. We love you, Louisville.”

Replies to the post that went up Wednesday around 7:15 p.m. on X, formerly known as Twitter, criticized the governor for reusing a photo of himself among destruction.

Several users speculated, because of the grassy background, the image of Beshear was from a trip to Western Kentucky in 2021 when he consoled grieving families near Mayfield and Dawson Springs after a tornado outbreak damaged the area.

One user asked Grok, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot integrated with X, where the photo was from.

“This photo shows Governor Beshear surveying damage from the December 2021 tornado outbreak in Dawson Springs, Kentucky, where over 80 people died,” Grok replied. “It’s not from the recent UPS plane crash.”

That’s not true.

Hatchett, who is part of the governor’s digital and creative services team said Grok was “entirely false.”

“As someone who was there to photograph the 2021 tornadoes as well, those photos do not contain the fire damage clearly seen in the picture from yesterday in Louisville,” said Hatchett, who took the photo. “Our focus should be on the victims and their families at this time.”

In the photo, Beshear is wearing the same jeans shown in photos posted this week by Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg and U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, who represents much of Jefferson County in Congress.

When Beshear was in Western Kentucky Dec. 14, 2021, where he was joined the following day by then President Joe Biden, Herald-Leader photographers caught the governor examining the damage in khakis.

In an online photo album from the governor’s office titled “11.05.2025 UPS Plane Crash Site,” Beshear’s team has uploaded several photos of the governor shaking hands with firefighters and walking to the crash site with Greenberg and McGarvey.

Satellite imagery from the line of the crash just beyond Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport show wreckage continues past several businesses south of UPS Worldport separated by roads and some small patches of grass.

In the Grok Conversation, a feature that appears when you ask the AI tool a question, the chatbot corrected itself and identified the image as being one taken at the UPS plane crash site.

The original Grok post that incorrectly said the photo was from 2021 has not been taken down and has been amplified Thursday morning by two prominent Kentucky personalities: Terry Meiners, who is a WHAS radio host, and Andrew Cooperrider, who is part of the Liberty movement within the state’s Republican Party.

A number of replies on the governor’s post, which includes just one photo, take aim at what one user described as “an IG photoshoot at a gravesite,” and others agreed was nothing but a staged photo opportunity.

“This isn’t a harlequin romance. It’s a tragedy,” another user replied.

Beshear is, as the Associated Press called him in 2022, Kentucky’s Consoler-in-Chief, forged by natural disasters, fatal accidents and the blue jacket he wears when hugging those grieving.

Photos of the governor in the jacket with yellow text have been consistent throughout his two terms.

Since 2019, Kentucky has had at least 18 severe weather emergencies requiring state of emergency declarations.

Those are in addition to numerous declarations made during COVID-19, the state of emergency declaration following the plane crash and another recent one made in response to the disruption of federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that keeps more than 600,000 Kentuckians fed.