Fake Trump sleeping photo spreads after White House event
- Published on April 27, 2026 at 22:39
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
An image rocketing across social media purports to show Donald Trump knocked out asleep during an April 23, 2026 event in the Oval Office of the White House. But while official, livestreamed footage from the health care event showed the US president closing his eyes at various points, the picture making the rounds online comes from a doctored video that was created by a graphic artist who says his fakes are parody.
"This photo should be on the front page of every single newspaper in America today," liberal commentator Jon Cooper wrote April 24, 2026 in posts sharing the image to X, Threads and Bluesky.
The image spread widely across platforms, amplified by prominent public figures including former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger and Rick Wilson, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an organization built by former members of the Republican Party who oppose Trump.
Some posts called for the invocation of the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution, which provides mechanisms to transfer power if a president is unable to govern, particularly in the event of illness.
After years of attacking his predecessor Joe Biden as senile and unfit for office, branding him "Sleepy Joe," Trump in his second term has had to repeatedly push back against claims that he has fallen asleep during cabinet meetings and other White House events.
Trump, 79 and the oldest elected president in American history, has faced calls for removal and questions about his health from critics and some former allies amid the war in the Middle East, including after he threatened to wipe out Iranian civilization in early April.
Some clips shared online -- including from independent journalist Aaron Rupar -- appeared to show Trump closing his eyes at various points during an April 23 White House event announcing a drug pricing deal with the pharmaceutical manufacturer Regeneron (archived here and here).
But the image spreading across platforms is fake.
Reverse image searches found that the visual comes from a video that depicts Trump sleeping in the meeting with his face pressed against the desk, posted to X by the account "@PaulleyTicks" (archived here).
The @PaulleyTicks X account, along with Facebook and Instagram pages where the video was also posted, is run by Tom Adelsbach, a graphic artist and satirist who has operated several X accounts under handles that sound phonetically like the word "politics" (archived here and here).
AFP has repeatedly fact-checked misinformation stemming from Adelsbach's parody posts.
Reached by Instagram direct message, Adelsbach told AFP he created the fake video from which the image was pulled, using Adobe editing software in combination with AI programs.
"Of course it's meant to be parody," he said April 24.
The White House's official livestream of the event shows the moment that Adelsbach altered, in which Chris Klomp, director of the Center for Medicare, was speaking from behind Trump and gesturing with three fingers up on his right hand (archived here). In the genuine footage, Trump was leaning slightly to one side and looking down at the papers on his desk.
As the doctored image spread, Rupar posted on X to clarify that it did not come from the video he clipped of the event.
"That photo of Trump nodding off that everybody is sharing today is fake," he wrote (archived here). "The real footage is on my timeline."
AFP has debunked other misinformation about US politics here.
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