In the early months of 2026, social media users alleged an image authentically showed U.S. President Donald Trump smiling and wearing a white tank top with young girls kneeling before him. The alleged black-and-white photo featured Trump sitting in front of a couch in what resembled a living room from decades past, along with two girls and a person wearing glasses who was mostly out of frame on the right side of the image.
For example, on March 13, an X user shared (archived) the picture with the caption, "Hey Donnie, why are you in your underwear with those children? What's going on here? COULD IT BE PEDOPHILIA?" Other users alleged the image appeared in a federal case file pertaining to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
(@DEMOCRACYDENNIS/X)
In short, the image was fake and generated with artificial intelligence. The image does not appear in the Epstein case files on the Justice Department website.
The image originated from an AI-generated video (archived) that appeared in a compilation (archived) of other AI-generated clips with fake depictions of Trump, Epstein, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, tech billionaire Elon Musk and imprisoned music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo failed to locate any news media outlets, whether prominent or independent organizations, big or small, reporting the image as genuine. If a video showing Trump wearing undergarments watching young girls kneel before him truly existed, at least some outlets would have published news about the matter. None did.
Signs of AI and the black square
Signs of AI in the compilation (archived) of clips primarily included the fact that the famous people's faces did not closely match their real-life appearances, as well as that the clips resembled other fake videos of Trump and Epstein with young girls that Snopes previously investigated. Further, the clip of Trump with the kneeling young girls featured a supposedly much younger-looking Trump, yet his face and hair seemed to resemble his modern-day appearance.
Some of the fake images and clips appeared to show pictures or video recordings of other devices, such as a phone recording the screen of another phone or tablet. A partially visible TikTok handle ending in the characters "-ekhanimran" also appeared in some clips. We have not yet located the social media account from which the fake video originated.
The fact-checking website Lead Stories reported about the reason why a black square covered the lower left portion of the images and videos. A previous version of the video showed a superimposed Tom Llamas, host of "NBC Nightly News," falsely making it appear as if he reported on the fake videos. Someone later added the black square to cover Llamas.
Posts sharing the fake image
A reverse image search for the fake image of Trump and the young girls found users sharing (archived) either the image or originating AI-generated video on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived).
One user's February 2026 X post (archived) with the image received more than 1 million views. The user's caption read, "Jeffrey Epstein recorded everything."
(@daviddunn177/X)
In an April 4 X post (archived), a user shared a compilation of AI-generated clips that included the one with Trump and the young girls. In the clip, Trump looks to his right, then quickly snaps back to looking at the girls. Other fake depictions included Epstein, Gates and Combs.
One Threads post (archived) featured a screen capture of X user @Iran_HD's post showing a longer version of the compilation of fake clips, including with one clip showing a girl struggling to get away from Musk. The video received at least 3 million views. X has since suspended that account.
For further reading, we previously reported about a collage of fake images featuring first lady Melania Trump and Epstein.