Does a photo show President Joe Biden sporting a red "Make America Great Again" baseball cap during his meeting with incoming President Donald Trump at the White House? No, that's not true: Media coverage of the meeting shows that the two men were wearing different clothing than what's seen in the photo. Online image-analysis tools found substantial evidence that the photo is the product of artificial intelligence.
The photo appeared in a post (archived here) on Instagram on November 13, 2024. Its caption read:
#PresidentTrump just left the #WhiteHouse where he met with #PresidentBiden for an hour an a half.
Do you think #DonaldTrump gave #JoeBiden a signed #magahat? Maybe that's why Joe was all smiles today 😂
(Source: Instagram screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 15:15:25 2024 UTC)
Biden and Trump held their first official face-to-face meeting since Trump won the 2024 presidential election on November 13, 2024, at the White House (archived here).
Agency photos of the event show Biden wearing a blue pinstriped suit and a purple tie -- different from the blazer and maroon tie he wears in the picture on Instagram. Trump was sporting his trademark red neckwear, not the primarily blue tie seen in the post. One of the photos, by Evan Vucci of the Associated Press, can be seen in this article that appeared on Fox News' website on the day of the meeting (archived here). A screenshot is below:
(Source: Fox News screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 18:31:40 2024 UTC)
The Instagram shot also shows Trump wearing a wedding band on his right hand -- and Trump is known not to wear a wedding ring, according to a 2016 article by The New York Times (archived here). He was not wearing one at his meeting with Biden, as can be seen in this screenshot taken at the 0:08 mark of the BBC's video of the event:
(Source: BBC.com screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 19:04:11 2024 UTC)
A tool on Hive Moderation, a website that detects AI-generated content, said the picture of Biden in the MAGA hat was 96.5 percent "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content," as seen in this screenshot:
(Source: Hive Moderation screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 15:50:00 2024 UTC)
A similar tool on the TrueMedia.org website found "substantial evidence of manipulation" (archived here):
(Source: truemedia.org screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 21:08:33 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories also conducted a Google News search (archived here) that turned up no news stories about Biden donning a MAGA hat during his encounter with Trump.
On September 11, 2024, Biden did put on a red "Trump 2024" cap handed to him by a Republican supporter during an event commemorating the 9/11 terror attacks in Shanksville, Pennsylvania (archived here). In a post on X (archived here), White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates explained:
At the Shanksville Fire Station, @POTUS [Biden] spoke about the country's bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that. As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it.
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Joe Biden can be found here. Fact checks of claims about Donald Trump are here. Fact checks on claims about the 2024 U.S. presidential elections can be read here.
