Does a video authentically show a wooden cross being installed in the Oval Office? No, that's not true: A viral video captioned "Trump becomes 1st sitting U.S. President to install a cross in the Oval Office" showed some traces of being generated using AI according to detection tools. The video also contains artifacts like a worker blending through a wooden beam and a building visible through the window that is not present near the actual White House.
The video was uploaded on TikTok (archived here) on February 17, 2025 on a channel named @weatheredmind. It was described as:
🚧 Historic Installation in the Oval Office! 🇺🇸 Watch as builders install a 15ft wooden cross behind the Resolute Desk . Reporters capture the moment as snow falls outside, marking February 2025 ❄️. A powerful and thought-provoking scene--what are your thoughts? 👀👇 #OvalOffice #HistoricMoment #trump #jesus#jesuslovesyou
#OvalOffice #WhiteHouse #HistoricMoment #BreakingNews #WashingtonDC #BuildersAtWork #FaithAndLeadership #February2025 #PoliticalHistory #NewsUpdate
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Sat Feb 22 08:54:29 2025 UTC)
This is the video in question:
@weatheredmind 🚧 Historic Installation in the Oval Office! 🇺🇸 Watch as builders install a 15ft wooden cross behind the Resolute Desk . Reporters capture the moment as snow falls outside, marking February 2025 ❄️. A powerful and thought-provoking scene--what are your thoughts? 👀👇 #OvalOffice #HistoricMoment #trump #jesus#jesuslovesyou #OvalOffice #WhiteHouse #HistoricMoment #BreakingNews #WashingtonDC #BuildersAtWork #FaithAndLeadership #February2025 #PoliticalHistory #NewsUpdate ♬ original sound - My Playlist
Lead Stories ran the video through the AI detection tool at hivemoderation.com. The tool gave the video an aggregate score of 27.9, concluding it was "not likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content" but not discounting the possibility either, detecting some possible Stable Diffusion imagery:
(Source: screenshot of Hive moderation results obtained by Lead Stories on February 22, 2025 at 09:05:00 UTC)
However, the video contained several other clues that it wasn't real. One worker can be seen blending through the beam of the cross as the camera moves, and the view from the window shows a tower building that is not present in The President's Park outside the actual Oval Office:
(Image: collage using screenshots from the video, Google Maps and a WikiMedia map of the Oval Office)
