Does an authentic photograph show President Donald Trump posing with Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu inside the White House? No, this image is fake: An AI generated image detection tool determined with 98.7 percent likelihood that the image was generated by AI. There is no evidence all three men were together at the White House or in public on or before February 3, 2025, when the image was posted. Netanyahu did meet with both Trump and Musk, but not at the same time.
The image appeared in a post (archived here) on X on February 3, 2025. It was captioned in Hebrew and tagged the three men shown in the image. Google translated the caption:
Dawn of a new day
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Feb 06 21:30:36 2025 UTC)
(Source: Hivemoderation.com screenshot taken on Thu Feb 06 21:30:36 2025 UTC)
A date-limited search in the editorial image collections of Alamy (archived here) and Getty (archived here) for the name Netanyahu between February 2 and February 3, 2025, did not show any press photos of the three men together in a public setting. This would cover the time between Netanyahu's departure from Tel Aviv, Israel, (archived here) to when the fake image was posted on X.
Musk and Netanyahu were photographed together, but in a very informal setting and without Trump present. A photo of Netanyahu, his son Yair and Musk was taken at the government-owned Blair House, not with the opulence of the White House in the background as in the fake photo.
On February 4, 2025, Yair Netanyahu posted a picture (archived here) to his Instagram account. The photo showed him and his father posing with Elon Musk (pictured below). All three men were dressed in casual attire, Musk in a dark winter coat with a white T-shirt with a printed design.
The photo was taken in Blair House, in a room adjacent to the drawing room (archived here). The website for the historic residence (archived here) says:
An invitation from the President of the United States to occupy this historic residence is an honor of the highest significance. Operated by the Office of the Chief of Protocol, U.S. Department of State (www.state.gov/s/cpr), Blair House provides accommodations for visiting foreign delegations and office space for State Department protocol, security, facilities, and curatorial representatives, as well as for the Blair House Foundation.
Lead Stories reached out to the White House Historical Association, the National Security Council and the spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister for comment and will update this fact check if we receive a reply.
At the time of writing, this claim had also been debunked by the Digital Forensics, Research, and Analytics Center (DFRAC) based in New Delhi and Logically Facts.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims about Elon Musk can be found here.
