Did President Donald Trump visit the Secret Service officer in the hospital after the officer was shot on April 25, 2026, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner? No, that's not true: The video is AI-generated, and online detection tools indicate it is fake. It contains a SynthID watermark, meaning it was created or edited using Google AI tools. There are no reliable reports that the president visited the officer in the hospital.
The claim appeared in a post and video (archived here) by the _omoduni account on Threads on April 29, 2026. It read:
Donald Trump visited the Secret Service officer who was shot last week at the hospital.
This is what a screenshot of the video in the post looked like on Threads at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by _omoduni on Threads.)
The clip can be viewed here:
View on Threads
Video analysis
Lead Stories ran the video through Gemini, Google's AI assistant (archived here). It reached this conclusion:
The visuals of this video were edited or generated with Google AI, as indicated by the SynthID watermark detected in the video's imagery.
There are also inconsistencies and distortions common in AI-produced content. Two of them are circled near the top of the image in the upper right:
(Image source: post by _omoduni on Threads.)
The lettering in red (न्यूय़ॉर्क-प्रेस्बिटेरियन) is Hindi and is a translation of "New York-Presbyterian." The English below it reads, "Weill Cornell Medical Center." NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center is a hospital in Manhattan, New York, more than 200 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. It is unlikely the Secret Service officer would have been hospitalized there for an injury he suffered in the nation's capital.
Separately, the Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool concluded the image was 76.1% "likely to be AI-generated":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and did not find any matching reports for "Trump visits Secret Service officer" for late April 2026. If the president had visited him, the world's media would have widely reported it.
There may have been little time for the President to visit the hospital. At about 8:36 p.m. ET, the Secret Service officer was struck by bullets that were stopped by his protective gear. Trump was rushed from the scene, but held a press conference at The White House at 10:37 p.m. ET, according to C-SPAN. The officer was released (archived here) from the hospital on the morning of April 26, 2026, only hours later.
Additionally, Trump said on the evening of the shooting that he talked (archived here) to the officer, saying he was "doing great" and was in "very high spirits." He did not mention a trip to the officer's bedside. The clip can be watched here:
