Image of Trump Using a Walker Is an AI Fake: NewsGuard’s False Claim of the Week
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False Claim of the Week: A December 2025 Image Shows Donald Trump Using a Walker
NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” highlights a false claim from NewsGuard’s False Claim Fingerprints proprietary database of provably false claims and their debunks. The claim that a December 2025 image shows Donald Trump using a walker is NewsGuard’s “False Claim of the Week” due to its widespread appearance across social media platforms and websites, its high engagement levels, and the high-profile nature of the sources promoting it. Those three factors, as well as both its significant subject matter and potential for harm, makes it our False Claim of the Week.
Debunk: Image of Trump Using a Walker Is an AI-Generated Fake
What happened: Liberal social media users are sharing a supposed image of President Donald Trump using a walker for assistance after signing an executive order, citing the photo as purported evidence of his frailty. In fact, the photo is an AI-generated fake.
Context: On Dec. 11, Trump signed an executive order aimed at limiting states’ ability to enforce their own AI regulations, centralizing oversight at the federal level.
The order drew political backlash, particularly among Democrats and digital rights advocates, who argued that it overly favored big tech companies, Newsweek reported.
A closer look: The next day, liberal social media users began sharing an image that purportedly showed Trump walking down a hallway with a medical walker, accompanied by staff. They claimed the image was taken moments after Trump signed the AI executive order.
The image appears to have emerged in an X post by Democratic strategist Keith Edwards, who has over 1 million followers on his YouTube political commentary channel and consulted on Michael Bloomberg’s 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. Edwards shared the image and stated, “BREAKING: an image has leaked showing Trump using a walker moments after he signed an executive order banning states from regulating AI.” The post garnered 9.7 million views and 72,000 likes in under one day.
Edwards may have intended for the post to be satirical to highlight a perceived urgency of AI regulation, as indicated by a large number of replies from X users who treated the claim as a joke. However, he did not label his post as satire and many users apparently took it seriously.
Liberal X account @LucasSa56947288 shared the image and stated, “It looks like an image has leaked showing Donald Trump using a walker moments after he signed an executive order banning states from regulating AI.” The post received 63,500 views and 1,600 likes in one day.
Actually: The image was created by artificial intelligence, according to AI detection tools used by NewsGuard.
A NewsGuard analysis performed using Google’s Gemini AI and Hive confirmed that the image contains Google’s SynthID digital watermark, a machine-readable pattern that allows detection models to identify AI images produced by the model. This indicates that most or all of the image was generated using Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro image generator.
Edwards did not respond to NewsGuard’s Dec. 12 direct message on X inquiring about the matter.
Trump has faced scrutiny over his health due to moments of apparent fatigue during public appearances and the presence of bandages on his hand. However, there have been no credible reports indicating he has any conditions that would require mobility assistance.
Trump has recently been seen walking unassisted at multiple public appearances, including on Dec. 7 when he walked the red carpet at the 48th Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, and on Dec. 9 when he was photographed disembarking from the presidential helicopter Marine One.
More context: A December 2025 NewsGuard report found that Google’s Nano Banana Pro AI image generator apparently lacked safeguards to prevent the creation of images of public figures, highlighting the tool’s potential for misuse in spreading falsehoods.
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