A rumor spread online in early 2025 that U.S. first lady Melania Trump sued daytime talk show "The View" and won $900 million. Some posts making the claim specified that the alleged lawsuit was based on comments the show's co-host Sunny Hostin made about Trump's marriage to U.S. President Donald Trump.
The claim originated as a video on YouTube posted on Feb. 1. A three-part video of the same footage later appeared on TikTok, where it received more than 3.8 million views collectively.
However, Melania Trump did not sue Hostin. The claims that she did were fictional, designed to gain views and spur reactions online.
The fictional video spread to other accounts on YouTube and X in slightly altered forms, garnering hundreds of thousands of views. Many users in the comments appeared to believe the claim, while others expressed skepticism.
One YouTube video voice-over claimed: "Sunny Hostin, in her usual smug, self-righteous style, decided to psychoanalyze Melania on live television. She claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Melania hated her husband, Donald Trump, and only stayed with him for financial gain."
Hostin has made headlines for real comments she made about the Trumps' marriage on "The View." For example, in an October 2024 episode in which the hosts discussed Melania Trump's stance on the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Hostin said, referring to the first couple, "I think she hates him."
A Google search for the terms "Melania Trump," "lawsuit," and "The View" only turned up results regarding the false claim. No credible news outlets have reported that such a lawsuit exists.
Asked about the claim, a spokesperson for "The View" told fact-checking site Lead Stories via email: "This is not true."
While some of the accounts that shared the video included disclaimers in the video description clarifying that the content shared may not be true, others did not, despite the claim being misinformation.
The clips used in the original Feb. 1 YouTube video were real footage that the video's creator edited and arranged to appear as evidence of the false claim. For example, the part of the video in which Melania Trump says "you need to defend yourself all the time" came from a 2016 interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Some elements of certain posts, such as the editing, voice-over and description of a Feb. 2 YouTube video, suggested the content may have been at least partially generated using artificial intelligence software. The video included a watermark crediting AI editing and voice-over software CapCut.
The description of that video also contained inconsistencies that a human writer was unlikely to make. For example, it claimed Melania Trump sued for both $900 million and $100 million and contained the hashtag "#MelGibson" although there was no mention of the actor in the video.
Melania Trump did win around $2.9 million in a 2017 settlement with the Daily Mail, which had falsely claimed she "provided services beyond simply modeling" before marrying Trump.
However, there was no evidence that she filed a lawsuit against "The View." For this reason, we rate this claim false.