Did President Donald Trump post a video of the U.S. men's soccer team player Folarin Balogun showing a "Trump card" in response to his red card during the 2026 FIFA World Cup game? No, that's not true: While Trump did post the text content thanking FIFA for overturning Balogun's red card on his Truth Social account, the post did not include a video. The video of Balogun holding a "Trump card" and mocking the referee while saying, "How does Trump always win?" showed AI-generation hallmarks.
The claim appeared in a July 5, 2026, video posted on X account @sarrah_bellus (archived here). It opened:
Trump cheats at EVERYTHING. THE F***KING PEDO 🤮
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @sarrah_bellus on X.)
Here is the video that was included in the post on X:
Trump cheats at EVERYTHING. THE F***KING PEDO 🤮 pic.twitter.com/KSrTZWu89H
-- Sarrah Bellus (@sarrah_bellus) July 5, 2026
Trump posted a message on his Truth Social account @realDonaldTrump (archived here) on July 5, 2026, thanking FIFA for suspending the one-match ban imposed on Balogun. He wrote a simple message that read, "Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice! President DONALD J. TRUMP."
While Trump often posted AI-generated videos, the video posted on X was not included in his Truth Social post about FIFA. Here is a screenshot of his post:
(Image source: post by @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social.)
Online AI detection tool Hive Moderation gave the video a score of 97.4% likely to be AI-generated:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
There are several telltale signs of AI generation in the video. The patch on the front of the referee's jersey is blurred, as seen in this screenshot taken at the 0:07 mark in the video (red circle added by Lead Stories):
(Image source: post by @sarrah_bellus on X.)
The crowd in the stadium is also blurry, with some people having misshapen arms or missing hands, as seen in this screenshot from :10 in the video:
(Image source: post by @sarrah_bellus on X.)
Here is the original footage of the referee giving Balogun the red card posted on the Fox Sports YouTube account (archived here) and Balogun does not hold up a Trump Card in the video:
