A rumor that circulated online in early May 2025 involved a video purportedly showing U.S. President Donald Trump delivering a speech in which he complained about the organizers of the Met Gala allegedly banning him from attending their event. The annual New York City occasion, which prominently features celebrities wearing extravagant garments, raises funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute.
For example, on May 7 — two days after the 2025 Met Gala — an X user who reposted (archived) the video claimed it showed Trump "whining" about not being invited to the event.
The clip depicted Trump complaining about former Vice President Kamala Harris' attendance at the 2025 event and protesting his alleged ban:
Listen. These pitiful Met Gala organizers actually let Kamala Harris walk the red carpet, but they dared to ban me, the greatest president in American history, from attending. This is simply the biggest scandal in the fashion industry, the United States. No one understands the red carpet better than I do. During the golden era I created when I was in the White House, over 100,000 designer jobs were added in New York.
But these ungrateful fashion experts now would rather invite Harris, who can't even speak coherently, than allow a, a real star like me to enter. The Met Gala is nothing but a money laundering club of the Democratic Party. There must be taxpayers and money hidden in that ridiculous gown Harris wore. Just you wait. These corrupt fashion shows won't get any tax breaks anymore.
I will make the American red carpet great again and burn all those shabby gowns with socialist buttons.
While it's true Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, attended the 2025 Met Gala, the video showing Trump complaining about the Met Gala allegedly banning him from being invited, including him calling the matter "the biggest scandal in the fashion industry," was fake.
The X user's clip displayed a watermark for the TikTok user @7.dazzle_daily. That user's account hosted videos labeled as the products of artificial-intelligence tools. As of this writing, the in-question clip no longer publicly appeared on the TikTok user's account.
Snopes made attempts to reach @7.dazzle_daily that included requesting permission in a public comment under a video to send a private message to ask questions about the matter. A previous attempt to send a private message failed due to the user's settings disabling such correspondence from users they do not follow.
A White House spokesperson said of the video: "This is fake news."
The original, unaltered video — one that either the TikTok user or someone else used to create the fake clip — showed Trump delivering a speech about American investments at the White House on April 30, 2025. PBS NewsHour's YouTube channel hosts a video with Trump's full remarks. The moment matching the AI-edited clip begins at the 12:41 mark.
Another example of @7.dazzle_daily posting an inauthentic video occurred on May 8, with a clip allegedly showing first lady Melania Trump saying, "I actually regret marrying Trump." The fake video displayed a TikTok notice reading, "Creator labeled as AI-generated." The same label appeared on some of the user's other clips. Because the in-question video about Trump and the Met Gala no longer appeared on the user's account, we could not verify whether the AI label also appeared on that video.
Snopes previously reported that Anna Wintour, Vogue editor-in-chief and longtime co-chair of the Met Gala, in 2017 named Trump as a person she would "never invite back" to the prestigious event. Whether Wintour's statement constituted a formal ban remained unclear. Trump attended the Met Gala with his wife, Melania, as recently as 2012. We also found that a video purporting to show Wintour describing her reasons for allegedly banning Trump was an AI fake.