Does a viral image of U.S. President Donald Trump and tech billionaires Elon Musk, Jensen Huang and Tim Cook, plus money manager Larry Fink eating Panda Express food show a real scene aboard Air Force One en route to China for an official visit in May 2026? No, that's not true: The image was gerated or altered using AI. It appears to be based on a real photo that showed a group of people, including Trump and Musk, eating McDonald's meals in 2024.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here and here) published on X on May 13, 2026. It opened:
Panda Express was served on Air Force One tonight as the boys are headed to China.
The post included an image purporting to show Trump and Musk having a mid-flight meal in the company of others. This is what the picture looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @greg16676935420 on X.)
The claim went viral as Trump left the U.S. for his May 2026 official visit to China (archived here).
Pictured in the fake photo are, from left to right: Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Trump, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Larry Fink, the Chairman of BlackRock.
AI detection tool Hive Moderation said it was 99.8% likely that the image was generated using AI:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
AI detection tool Sightengine said there was a 99% chance that the image was AI-generated:
(Image source: Sightengine.)
ZeroGPT concluded that the image was "97% FAKE":
(Image source: ZeroGPT.)
The image was an altered version of a photo published by a member of Trump's communications team (archived here and here) and Donald Trump Jr. (archived here) on X on Nov. 17, 2024. In it, the group that included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (archived here) was eating McDonald's, not Panda Express. At the time, Trump had just been elected president, hadn't yet taken the oath and would not have been using Air Force One.
