US President Trump. Photo Source: Variety.
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Claim: A Facebook user shared a video claiming President Trump sexually assaulted an elderly man in the Oval Office, live on camera.
Verdict: False. The video has been altered. The original video shows Trump announcing the termination of the Biden administration’s cost requirements on purchasing refrigerators and air conditioners.
Full Text
United States President Donald Trump rolled back Biden-era refrigerant regulations to lower grocery costs. The Trump administration says these rollbacks will lower grocery costs for consumers by approximately $800 million.
Against this backdrop, a Facebook user, Bone Rone, shared (archived here) a video of President Trump caressing the belly button of a man during the press briefing at the Oval Office.
“Trump sexually assaults elderly man in the Oval office, live on camera,” the digital creator wrote.
A similar claim was found on Facebook (here and here), and on X (here). As of Friday, May 22, 2026, the post has received 9 likes, 4 comments, and 6 shares.
In the comment section, some Facebook users were shocked, while others dismissed it as a product of Artificial Intelligence.
“The hell!!” Dannykeona wrote.
“Is this AI?” Vionne Williams-Quarle questioned.
Due to the post’s political implications and the need to forestall disinformation, DUBAWA decided to verify the claim.
Verification
DUBAWA subjected keyframes of the Facebook video to Google Lens and found a similar video shared by @News18Telugu.
In the YouTube clip, Trump publicly announces in the Oval Office the intention of his administration to substantially lower consumer costs, protect hundreds of thousands of jobs, and save Americans $2 billion in a year. Trump said he intends to do this by terminating the Biden administration’s costly requirements for purchasing refrigerators and air conditioners.
We further conducted a keyword search related to the announcement and found a video by NBC 15 reporting that Trump has rolled back refrigerant rules in a push to lower grocery costs.
DUBAWA also noticed that, in the video, which is similar to the one shared by the claimant, Trump did not at any point turn around to caress the tummy of any of the men standing behind him.
We subjected the video clip to the AI Deepfake Detector, and it indicated that the clip has a 55 per cent forgery probability. It highlighted signs of manipulation, including unnatural blinking and minor lip-sync issues in the clip.
We also subjected the video clip to Zhuque AI Detection Assistant, which evaluated the video clip as having 38.64 per cent of artificial intelligence content.
Conclusion
The claim is false. The video was taken from Trump’s public announcement at the Oval Office and altered to drive the sexual assault narrative. At no point did Trump turn to touch the belly button of one of the men in the room with him.
