Was a viral picture of Donald Trump kissing a young female model authentic? No, that's not true: A comparison with the original photos from a Guardian article shows that the image was digitally manufactured. The details of the background and the outfit of another woman present in the frame didn't match authentic stills.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) on Threads, where it was published on July 15, 2025. It opened:
I know how to edit photos and what an edit looks like. I strongly doubt this is an edit.
The caption across the shared image of what appeared to be Trump kissing a young woman continued:
Come clean already!
This is what the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the threads.com/@atheistadamx account)
A reverse image search led to a Guardian article published in March 2020 (archived here) that discussed Trump attending a party with the Elite Model Look of the Year contest participants on board the Spirit Of New York yacht in 1991. This is where a larger, unedited version of the top picture from the post on Threads was published.
The one purporting to portray a kissing scene, however, was not among the images illustrating the article, even though the page contained a series of images from that location.
A closer look suggests that the kissing scene was digitally manufactured.
One piece of evidence is the background architecture and clutter. Here is what it looked like in one of the images featuring Trump and the contestants from the Guardian piece:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of an image from the Guardian article "Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year")
In the kissing scene, however, the building appears differently: There are no dark rectangles. Furthermore, what appears to be a pier lacks the geodesic dome-like structures.
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the threads.com/@atheistadamx account)
Another detail that was off in the kissing scene was the embellishment (sewn-on crystal or stone) on the top worn by the woman seen behind Trump. In the image on social media, we see a circle resembling the embellishment, but it is immediately below the V-cut neckline of her top:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of the threads.com/@atheistadamx account)
The original image from the Guardian piece shows the large embellishment further down from the v-cut and at least three clearly visible small sequins directly above the large embellishment :
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of an image from the Guardian article "Teen models, powerful men and private dinners: when Trump hosted Look of the Year")
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Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Donald Trump are here.
