Are photos in a meme showing NBC's "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker's dramatic expressions demonstrating "five stages of Trump Derangement Syndrome" real? No, that's not true: An AI content detection tool concluded the images of Welker's face while interviewing President Trump were likely AI-generated. A review of the interview video does show a range of expressions, but none matched any in the 'five stages' compilation.
The meme appeared in a post (archived here) shared by @planetofmemes X account on June 7, 2026. The caption read:
Kristen Welker demonstrates all five stages of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
This is what the image in the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @planetofmemes on X.)
The "five stages" meme appeared on social media in the hours after NBC broadcast Welker's "Meet the Press" interview with Trump on June 7, 2026. Trump abruptly ended the interview after several minutes of Welker repeatedly challenging his claim that there was evidence of voter fraud in the June 2026 California primary elections. The segment is available on YouTube (archived here).
Lead Stories tested each of the five images with the Hive Moderation AI-generated content detection tool, which scanned them for indications that they were fake. Hive Moderation concluded that all of the images were "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content."
"Stage 1"
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
"Stage 2"
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
"Stage 3"
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
"Stage 4"
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
"Stage 5"
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
The fake images are close to several real screenshots Lead Stories captured from the NBC video, but Lead Stories could find nothing that would match the facial expressions in stages three, four, and five. These images below are examples of Welker's real expressions.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of YouTube.)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of YouTube.)
