Did Trump say 'Meet the Press' interviewer Kristen Welker kept staring at his ear?

In early June 2026, days after U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly ended an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" reporter Kristen Welker, an image circulated online purporting to show an X post in which he said he interrupted the conversation because Welker had been staring at his ear.

A bullet struck Trump's ear during an assassination attempt against him at a July 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The alleged X post appeared on Facebook as a video (archived):

(Jill Barrowclough Alexander on Facebook)

The alleged screenshot, dated June 7 (the day NBC published the "Meet the Press" interview with Welker), read:

The Fake News Media says I walked out on Kristen Welker because I didn't like the questions, like they were "tough" or something. Totally false. The questions were very easy. I could answer them with my MIT brain while sleeping, which many people say I sometimes do beautifully. The real problem was she kept staring at my ear. Very rude. My ear was horribly traumatized in Butler, Pennsylvania, and now I can feel people looking at the tremendous scar, maybe the biggest ear scar in political history. Nobody talks about the courage of the ear. Nobody. And as for these so-called tough questions, let me tell you something: they don't ask tough questions to Kim Jong-chee. They don't ask tough questions to Putin. They sit there very politely, very respectfully, probably with tea. But with me, President Trump, the greatest leader in the history of the world, they suddenly become Perry Mason. Who the hell do they think they are? I have a wounded ear, an MIT brain, and instincts that have been right almost every time, especially when the oil market is listening.

At least one Snopes reader contact us to verify if Trump really posted the message.

As we outline below, the screenshot was fake. Trump did not post the statement about his interview with Welker.

To investigate the screenshot's authenticity, we first used search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo. If Trump had really defended his abrupt departure from the interview by claiming Welker "kept staring at my ear," journalists with reputable news outlets, such as The Associated Press or Reuters, would have widely reported on the statement. Search inquiries would have uncovered such evidence. This was not the case.

In addition, a review of Trump's X account revealed he hadn't posted on the platform since May 2026 (Trump uses his own social media platform, Truth Social, more often). Also, Trump's verified check on X is gray, not blue like the fake screenshot shows. The gray check indicates he is a government official, per X standards. 

We identified the rumor's original source: a Facebook account for Karl Rominger who first posted the image on June 7 (archived). The account did not label its content as satirical or humorous, though it seemed to regularly share fake posts. 

We reached out to Rominger for his response to the fact he did not indicate the image was fake or satirical and that some people mistook the screenshot as a real post by Trump. We will update this story if we receive a response.

Rominger's posts included other fictitious stories based on real events or people. For example, on June 9, the account shared a fake Trump post in which he supposedly said NBC "added fake boos" to its broadcast of an NBA Finals game that Trump attended. (Snopes confirmed the crowd booed him.)

In the interview with Welker, which was recorded on June 5 in Wisconsin, Trump walked out after she pushed back on his conspiratorial claims about voting fraud in the 2020 presidential election and June 2026 California primary elections.

Shortly after the interview, Trump participated in a roundtable discussion about agriculture in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. There, he said of the prior interview with NBC, "because it was raining, I got a little bit angry at them" (at the 03:08 mark):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyo9DXgMLJg

I just did an interview in the most beautiful barn I've ever seen. Ken, it was a beauty, but it was raining. And it was with uh NBC fake news. And because it was raining, I got a little bit angry at them. I was not happy with them. But we had a good time. I just want to thank everybody for being here.

Trump did not mention his ear, nor that Welker supposedly stared at it.

Snopes has debunked several fake posts attributed to Trump before. For example, in June 2026, we alerted readers to a fake Trump post that included an image of him as a muscular football star surrounded by shirtless male cheerleaders.