In May 2026, during U.S. President Donald Trump's state visit to China, an image (archived) circulated online that claimed to authentically show Trump lifting a young girl he received as a gift during his visit.
Facebook user Tom Adelsbach wrote, "After Donald Trump disembarks Air Force One in China, he is presented with his very own 13-year-old Asian girl to take back home with him as a welcoming gift." In the post's image, a young girl in a pink dress looks scared as Trump lifts her into the air.
The image and the claim the girl was a gift to Trump also circulated on X (archived), Instagram (archived) and Threads (archived). Snopes readers contacted us, asking whether the image was real.
The image of Trump lifting a young Asian girl was fake and had been generated by artificial intelligence. It carried the watermark of Adelsbach, whose Facebook content Snopes has previously debunked as fake or satirical. Though Adelsbach did not acknowledge in his posts that this image was fake or intended as satire, stereotypical signs like poorly rendered hands and faces revealed it to be AI-generated.
We contacted Adelsbach via Facebook to confirm he created the image and to ask for his comments on the image circulating without indications it was fake. We await a reply.
The image appeared at the same May 13 on Facebook and Instagram pages titled Tom Adelsbach and an X account (archived) named Paulley Ticks. The Adelsbach Facebook page and Ticks X page used the same bio text, which read, "Changing the world by any 'memes' necessary." The pages linked to the same crowdfunding page in Adelsbach's name, leading Snopes to conclude the same person ran the pages.
Aside from the fact that the image appeared to originate from a page that Snopes knows to publish fake or satirical material, the image itself contained multiple indications that it was fake.
(Tom Adelsbach, accessed via Facebook)
The image appeared to show the president's son Eric Trump and his wife, Lara Trump. Eric Trump was missing his right eye. A man standing to the left of the aircraft stairs also had no eyes behind his glasses.
Several people's hands, including those of the girl Trump held, appeared to be either misshapen or lacked definition and detail. A girl wearing a red dress on the left side of the photo had a partly translucent face. Poorly rendered hands and faces are a telltale sign of AI-generated images.
The fake image appeared to be based on a real photo from the reputable photo agency Getty Images. In that photo, Eric Trump had two eyes, as did China's Vice President Han Zheng, the man wearing glasses to the left of the aircraft stairs,
Trump and China's President Xi Jinping did not announce any new trade deals during Trump's three-day visit. The leaders reportedly discussed the war in Iran and how to navigate relations between China and the U.S., which have historically been rocky.
The U.S. president did receive the promise of one gift while in China. After praising the roses at Xi's presidential compound, the Chinese president reportedly promised he would send Trump some seeds to plant in the White House Rose Garden.
For further reading, Snopes has debunked a slew of fake images from across the internet, often involving Trump.