Did an actual news outlet report that an oil executive said Donald Trump "smelled like rotten roast beef" and audibly farted multiple times during a White House meeting with oil industry leaders? No, that's not true: The viral message making those claims originated on a satirical X.com account. There were no actual news reports that any participant in the Jan. 9, 2026 meeting with Trump had made on-or-off-the-record comments of that sort to journalists.
The Jan. 10, 2026 X post (archived here) was published by The Halfway Post and read:
BREAKING: A top oil company executive says Donald Trump "smelled like rotten roast beef" during his big White House meeting on Venezuela, he farted audibly no less than a dozen times, and he kept getting up to look at and compliment the nonexistent ballroom like he's senile.
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: The Halfway Post on X.com)
The Halfway Post bio (archived here) reads:
Dadaist graffiti news. Halfway true comedy and satire for your doomscrolling by @DashMacIntyre. I don't report the facts, I improve them.
Subscribe to my Substack ➡️substack.com/@thehalfwaycafe
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of news sites for articles with the terms "oil executive" and "Trump and "smelled like rotten roast beef", finding no coverage (archived here) of any such report, which would have been widely re-posted and covered if it were a real report.
