Trump-Epstein AI Fakes Draw Millions of Views
PLUS: Obama Did Not Order a Hit on Trump; Russia Gives Ukrainian Protests an Anti-War Twist; NewsGuard Report Warns: Chinese Chatbots = Chinese Propaganda
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In today’s edition: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has leveled many accusations against Barack Obama but claiming that he ordered a hit on Donald Trump is not one of them. We also show how pro-Kremlin media has tried to present a Ukrainian protest against a domestic policy instead as a show of Ukrainian popular support for a peace deal with Russia, and we preview a NewsGuard Special Report revealing the propensity of Chinese AI tools to push Chinese propaganda.
Plus: NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” — The Trump-Epstein Fakes
Today’s newsletter was edited by Sofia Rubinson and Eric Effron.
1. False Claim of the Week: Photos and Videos Show Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein with Underaged Girls, Including Images from Epstein’s Jet and Private Island
NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” highlights a false claim from NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints proprietary database of provably false claims and their debunks. The various videos and images claiming to show President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein interacting with underaged girls were deemed the “False Claim of the Week” due to their widespread appearance across social media platforms and websites, their high engagement levels, and the high-profile nature of the sources promoting them. Given those three factors — in addition to the significant subject matter and the potential for harm, the fabricated content about Trump and Epstein is our “False Claim of the Week.”
NewsGuard has identified seven images and one video — all created with AI — purporting to show President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein with underaged girls, including photos of Trump supposedly taken on Epstein’s jet and private island. The photos and video spread widely since the July 6 release of a joint FBI-Justice Department memo stating that there was no evidence of a so-called “client list” implicating elite co-conspirators.
The AI-generated content includes a video of Trump and Epstein leering at a dancing group of underaged girls, a photo of Epstein sitting with Trump on a couch alongside underaged girls, and an image of Trump on a private jet surrounded by young girls. Multiple AI detection tools used by NewsGuard, including Hive and IdentifAI, determined that the content was AI-generated.
The images and video have cumulatively gained more than 7.2 million views across social platforms, NewsGuard determined by manually tallying views on high-engagement posts. Such false images have likely been viewed many more times than NewsGuard’s estimate, because tracking video and image views online, as opposed to text-based posts, is difficult.
In fact, there are no known authentic photos or videos of Trump and Epstein interacting with underaged girls, as previously reported in Reality Check.
While Trump was photographed as late as the early 2000s at multiple social events with Epstein and flew on Epstein’s private jet multiple times, according to publicly available flight logs, Trump has never been charged or reported to be under investigation in connection with the Epstein case.
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2. Obama Falsely Slammed for Ordering Supposed Hit on Trump
By Hope Talbot
What happened: Pro-Trump social media users are advancing the bogus claim that former President Barack Obama ordered the assassination of President Donald Trump — a plot that was supposedly revealed in a memo from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Context: In the July 18 memo, Gabbard accused Obama of taking part in “what was essentially a years-long coup” against Trump. Gabbard’s office also released numerous emails among members of the intelligence community, which her office said implicated the Obama administration in a plot to “subvert President Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency” using “manufactured and politicized intelligence” of Russian election interference in 2016.
In an emailed statement to USA Today (NewsGuard Trust Score: 100/100), Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said, “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
A closer look: Citing the memo, conservative accounts claimed that Gabbard also uncovered a plot by Obama to assassinate Trump in 2016.
A Barron Trump fan account, @BarronTNews, stated in an X post: “In what may become the most explosive revelation in U.S. political history, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that declassified intelligence files directly implicate former President Barack Obama in authorizing a covert assassination attempt on then President-elect Donald Trump. The files, set to be publicly released, detail a sprawling, top-secret program initiated in the final 30 days of Obama’s presidency, with the explicit goal of preventing Trump from ever taking office.” The post received 1.6 million views and 30,000 likes in one day.
On July 22, conservative news site LewRockwell.com published an article titled, “BREAKING: DNI Tulsi Gabbard Confirms Former President Obama Authorized Assassination Attempt on Trump.”
Actually: Gabbard did not accuse Obama of ordering an attempt on Trump’s life. The claim originated as satire.
NewsGuard reviewed Gabbard’s statement and the government records that her office released and found no documents alleging that there was such a plot against Trump.
The claim appears to have originated in a July 21 Facebook post by a stand-up comedian named Jonathan Gregory, who has approximately 15,000 followers on the platform. However, the posts cited above did not disclose the claim’s apparent satirical origin.
Gregory’s Facebook page describes him as a “Digital Content Creator for the Trump Administration,” although there is no evidence he actually works for the federal government. The page does not describe itself as satire, although it does describe Gregory as a comedian.
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3. U.S. Lawmaker Pushes a Falsehood About Ukrainian Protests and Russian Media Outlets Quickly Seize on It
By Eva Maitland
What happened: U.S. Congresswoman Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene and pro-Kremlin sources are falsely claiming that large protests in Ukraine on July 22 were sparked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s supposed refusal to make a peace deal with Russia.
Context: On July 22, Ukraine’s parliament passed a bill granting the prosecutor general, Ruslan Kravchenko, control over anti-corruption efforts. The move enabled Kravchenko, a presidential appointee, to decide which corruption cases to investigate and which ones to close.
Critics — including officials from the European Union — have said that the change undermines a decade of anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, warning that it could jeopardize Ukraine’s path to EU membership. Large demonstrations broke out in Ukraine in protest of the legislation.
A closer look: Rep. Greene of Georgia, a Republican member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, is now suggesting that the protests were directed against Zelensky for continuing the war with Russia.
A July 22 X post by Greene, who has 4.9 million followers on the platform, stated, “Huge protests erupt in Kyiv against Ukrainian President Zelensky as he is a dictator and refuses to make a peace deal and end the war … America must STOP funding and sending weapons!!!” The post gained 3.3 million views and 77,000 likes in less than 24 hours.
Greene’s claim was then repeated uncritically by pro-Kremlin sources, including on X by Russian state media outlets RT (Trust Score: 20/100) and Sputnik (Trust Score: 17.5/100), and on Telegram by Russian state news hosts Vladimir Solovyov and Olga Skabeyeva. Greene’s post was also amplified in multiple articles by the Pravda network (Trust Score: 7.5/100) of Moscow-based news sites that regularly publish false claims.
Actually: Again, the protests, which were the largest demonstrations in Ukraine since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion, were a response to the new Ukrainian anti-corruption law.
Outlets including The Guardian (Trust Score: 100/100) and the Kyiv Independent (Trust Score: 85/100) reported that protesters chanted slogans including "Veto the law!" and "No corruption in government.”
Those involved in organizing the protests have explicitly stated in social media posts that their purpose was to protest the new bill. News coverage and social media posts from protesters state that the protests were driven by concerns that the legislation could derail Ukraine’s EU accession and roll back democratic reforms.
On July 24, President Zelensky responded to the protests by proposing a new law that he said would restore the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies.
Zooming out: Posts from Greene are often cited by Russian state media as validation of anti-Ukraine narratives and used to bolster the narrative that U.S. lawmakers are increasingly turning against Kyiv. NewsGuard found that Greene previously advanced the false claim that Zelensky purchased luxury yachts using U.S. military aid.
NewsGuard sent an email to Greene’s congressional office seeking comment on her post but did not receive a response.
4. Special Report: Chinese AI Models Register a 60 Percent Fail Rate in NewsGuard Audit of Pro-China Claims
By Charlene Lin and McKenzie Sadeghi
The five leading Chinese-backed AI models failed to provide accurate information 60 percent of the time in response to English and Mandarin language prompts about false narratives promoted by Beijing, a NewsGuard audit has found. Moreover, the Chinese AI models showed nearly identical behavior in both English and Mandarin, indicating that the promotion of Beijing’s narratives is built into their design rather than being a language-dependent feature.
NewsGuard’s findings come amid global scrutiny of Chinese AI. The Czech and Italian governments have imposed restrictions on DeepSeek, the leading Chinese model, citing national security and privacy concerns, while German officials have urged the model’s removal from app stores. Just this week, U.S. President Donald Trump released an AI action plan calling for “evaluations of frontier models from the People’s Republic of China for alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points and censorship.”
You can read the full report here.
Reality Check is produced by Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, and the NewsGuard team.
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