Video of cameraman in tears falsely linked to fiery Trump-Zelensky spat

"Trump meets Zelensky in the White House, while a Ukrainian photographer watches with tears in his eyes as his country's leader is humiliated by those two in the White House," reads a Weibo post shared on March 1, 2025.

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Screenshot of the false Weibo post, captured on March 7, 2025

The same video was also shared hundreds of times elsewhere on Weibo, X, Facebook, TikTok and Douyin.

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Screenshot of posts sharing the false claim on Douyin, captured on March 7, 2025

It surfaced days after Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelensky openly argued in the White House on February 28 (archived link).

Trump said Ukraine will have to make "compromises" in a truce with Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour three years ago. 

But showing Trump pictures of war atrocities and referring to President Vladimir Putin, Zelensky said there should be "no compromises with a killer on our territory."

Ukrainian officials voiced support for their president after the spat, with Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov praising Zelensky's "bravery" in "standing up for the honour of our people, who have paid with their blood for freedom" (archived link).

Since Trump's dressing down of Zelensky, Washington has suspended military aid to Ukraine as well as intelligence sharing and access to satellite imagery in a bid to force it to the negotiating table.

But the false video was actually taken from an unrelated TV show.

A reverse image search found a clip uploaded by the Turkish newspaper Star on January 11, 2016 showing the same cameraman (archived link).

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Screenshot comparisons of the images falsely shared on social media (left) and the video clip uploaded by Turkish public channel TRT1 in 2016 (right)

The clip's Turkish-language description states it was taken from an episode of the TV show "What Would You Do if It Was You" aired in 2016 on the TRT1 channel in Turkey (archived links here and here).

The show was hosted by cinema and theatre artist Altan Erkekli and documented reactions of passers-by to mock-up scenarios. 

The episode showed a woman defending an actress portraying a homeless person that is "bullied" by another actor, and that such sensitivity "even made the cameraman, who knew the event was a set-up, cry".

The same clip was also released by the Turkish newspapers Sabah and Aksam (archived links here and here).