Did a real photo posted by President Trump show a golden eagle gifted to the White House for its 250th birthday, hanging from the columns in front of the balcony? No, that's not true: The image is AI-generated; one online detection tool identified it as such because it "was generated or edited using Google AI," while another said it was "likely to be AI-generated." There are also no credible reports of such an eagle appearing at the White House.
The claim appeared in a post and image (archived here) by Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) on Truth Social on June 29, 2026. It opened:
A Golden Gift to the White House for its 250th Birthday Year!
This is what the image looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social.)
Image analysis
Lead Stories ran the image in the post through Gemini, Google's AI assistant (archived here), it reached this conclusion:
Based on an analysis of the file, this image was generated or edited using Google AI.
The Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool concluded that the image was 63% "likely to be AI-generated":
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
The higher the number, the greater the amount of AI content in the image.
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no reports from credible news outlets that a real gold eagle had been hung on a White House balcony, only an AI-generated version.
Lead Stories reached out to the White House for comment on the AI-generated image, but did not receive an immediate response.
