Does a real video show aide Natalie Harp grinning behind President Donald Trump while he was speaking at the NATO Leaders Summit in Turkey? No, that's not true: The six-second video circulating on social media was made with AI. Only the first frame of the video is an authentic photo, taken by a New York Times photojournalist.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @sarrah_bellus account on X on Sept. 8, 2026. It read:
Jeepers creepers I know what my Halloween costume is this year
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @sarrah_bellus on X.)
This thumbnail image, the first frame of the fake video, is a real press photo. It appears in a paywalled Aug. 18, 2026, New York Times article (archived here) and an Aug. 27, 2026, article in The Irish Times (archived here). Both articles are about Harp, the executive assistant to the president.
For context, another photo from the same event (archived here) is in the Getty editorial photo library. It shows a wide-angle view of this meeting room that includes Trump and, in the background, Harp wearing white. The photo is captioned:
2026 NATO Leaders Summit In Ankara
ANKARA, TURKEY - JULY 7: US President Donald Trump and American officials (L) meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish officials at the Bestepe Presidential Compound on July 7, 2026 in Ankara, Turkey. Leaders from NATO's 32 countries, plus NATO allies like Ukraine, gathered in the Turkish capital to discuss a range of issues involving spending targets, defense industrial production, and support for Ukraine, among other topics. (Photo by Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images)
The fake video is six seconds. It is typical for AI-generated clips to be under 10 seconds, as explained in an article from the AI video website invideo.io (archived here). Lead Stories took a screenshot from 5.33 seconds in the video and uploaded it to Hive Moderation (archived here). The AI-Generated Content Detection Tool determined the image was 93.6% likely to be AI-generated (pictured below).
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
