In mid-July 2025, a photograph spread online that claimed to show a younger Donald Trump kissing a teenage model on the mouth. The image was shared with a photograph of Trump standing alongside the same girl on what appeared to be a boat.
Some of the captions claimed Trump was kissing a "Miss Teen USA" contestant, suggesting that the girl in the photograph was underage.
(X user @ShaykhSulaiman)
The top image is indeed real, but the one showing Trump kissing the girl is fake. The image of Trump seated next to the girl was manipulated to make it appear as though he leaned forward to kiss her.
Using reverse-image search for both photos, we found the source of the top photograph in a Guardian article from March 2020, titled, "Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year." Two consecutive photographs show Trump looking at the unidentified girl while chatting. In one image, the girl is leaning in to say something to Trump. The girl's age is unknown.
(Screenshot via Guardian)
However, when we conducted a reverse-image search of the picture of them kissing, we found no news coverage or photographs from authentic sources. Furthermore, when we zoomed in on the manipulated image, we found the building over Trump's right shoulder had clearly been edited and darkened to appear real, while the building was blurry in the authentic photograph.
Trump was judging the 1991 "Look of the Year" competition. The annual competition was run by the Elite Model Management agency under John Casablancas and was credited with launching the careers of supermodels like Cindy Crawford. Decades later some of the models who participated in the competition made allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against Casablancas and the men in charge of the competition—though not against Trump.
Guardian journalists spoke to a dozen models and found they were aged between 14 and 19 at the time they competed. It is thus highly possible that the girl Trump was speaking to was a teen. One of the teen models described being told to "walk" for Trump and the other men. She said she knew she wasn't doing it as part of the competition but for "their entertainment."
We found more images of Trump in the same outfit standing with a group of models on the yacht in 1991.
(Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images)
While Trump was a major sponsor of the competition, he did not own the event. He once owned a number of beauty pageants, including Miss USA, Miss Universe and Miss Teen USA.
We previously reported how Trump, in his own words from 2005, admitted to walking in on partially dressed pageant contestants (referring to either Miss USA or Miss Universe), though not the above modeling competition. Former Miss Teen USA pageant contestants have accused him of walking into their changing room. Years later, his representatives would deny that he ever behaved that way.