Does a real selfie taken by Barack Obama show him with fellow presidents Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter? No, that's not true: There is no evidence the image is authentic. No official White House photographer or news outlet has ever documented such a gathering and Carter had died before the image appeared online.
The claim appeared in a post and image (archived here) by the @Gianl1974 account on X on May 31, 2026. It read:
...nobody wanted Trump in the photo. The last good times of the USA...
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @Gianl1974 on X.)
A reverse image search (archived here) on Google Images found many copies of the fake selfie, but none before late May 2026. Some of the search results showed dates as early as Oct. 5, 2025, but when Lead Stories checked the social media posts, the posts themselves were dated to that earlier period but did not actually contain the image at that time.
There are several problems with the photo that make it unlikely to be real, and probably AI-generated. President Carter entered hospice care in February 2023 and died in late December 2024. Carter had been using a walker or a wheelchair since 2019 after a series of falls (archived here). At the funeral service for his wife Rosalynn Carter in November 2023, he appeared in a wheelchair (archived here):
(Image source: Pool/Getty Images.)
In the photo from social media, Carter appears to be standing unassisted and in good health.
Lead Stories found two photos -- from 2009 (archived here) and 2013 (archived here) -- showing four of the five men standing together and with Carter up to a decade earlier:
(Image sources: AP and Official White House photo.)
The image is inconsistent with how presidential gatherings are typically documented. A gathering of presidents is typically a formal affair, as the two images show, and is well documented by White House photographers and members of the media.
Lead Stories also searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here) and did not find any matching reports showing a "selfie photograph by President Obama with Presidents Biden, Clinton, Bush and Carter." Lead Stories also did a Google Images search (archived here) for a photo showing all five leaders in a photograph together. There were none.
AI indicators
A close look at the image reveals several signs of AI generation. Obama's hand holding the phone appears distorted, with unusually long and misshapen fingers. Biden's hand on Clinton's shoulder also appears unnatural, with poorly defined fingers. The image's reflection and skin textures show blurred and distorted details commonly seen in AI-generated images.
Lead Stories reached out to the Obama Foundation and the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama to see if either could authenticate the social media image. Neither provided an immediate response.
